Goodnight Lady

by Martina Cole

  ‘Did the twins go to Mass with you, Mum?’

  ‘They did, God love them. Liselle came too, as usual.’

  Briony frowned slightly. ‘What, no Kerry tonight?’

  Bernie sighed. ‘Probably drunk out of her head. She really worries me, Bri. The other day I rang her up and she could barely talk. It’s not fair on Liselle. That poor girl has to cope with everything now.’

  Briony said after a few seconds’ thought, ‘Kerry has a lot of responsibilities, you know. I asked her to cut down on the concert dates but she didn’t want to. I might go and see Victor. He manages her well, I admit, but I think he pushes her too hard at times. A friendly word might be in order there.’

  Molly made a disgusting noise with her lips as she let her breath out and said nastily, ‘Send the twins round to see him. They’ll make sure my Kerry’s not overworked.’

  Briony laughed. ‘If you had your way, the twins would be threatening everyone who ever drew breath! For God’s sake, Mum, Kerry has always pushed herself, you know that. She’s more famous these days than the bleeding Pope!’

  Molly loved her daughter’s fame, like she loved the twins’ newfound notoriety.

  ‘Well, all I’m saying is, she should have a bit of rest like.’

  Marcus joined in. ‘She should be dried out really. One of the barmen at The New Yorker said she done a bottle of vodka in an hour the other night. She won’t last long drinking like that.’

  ‘I always had a lot of time for Kerry, you know that, but if her drinking is as bad as you say, something should be done. I watched my old mum’s liver give out through the drink. She went bright yellow one day, and within a week she was dead.’ Tommy’s voice was low.

  Bernie coughed slightly and said, ‘I think he’s right.’

  Briony nodded.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to put it to her. If she won’t go we’ll have no alternative but to have her committed.’

  Molly felt her face stiffen. Another daughter sent to a mental home. ‘Oh, she’s not that bad, for goodness’ sakes. She’s not mad, for crying out loud, she just likes a drink.’

  ‘Oh, Kerry likes a drink all right, a bottle at a time. When she was in France, just after the war, Bessie told me that they had to sober her up every night before her performance. I don’t think it’s so much the drink as the pills she drops with it.’

  Molly, her own tongue loosened by drink, said, ‘She’s never been the same since she had that child. That’s what sent her on the drink. Not the singing.’

  Unbeknown to her, the twins and Liselle were in the hallway, having let themselves in with a key. They had decided to see if Briony wanted to come out with them. Molly’s voice floated through the door to them and all three stiffened as they heard it. Unaware, Molly carried on.

  ‘An illegitimate child’s bad enough, but one like that? I ask you?’

  Liselle was so still, she looked like a statue made of bronze. Boysie and Danny watched her fascinated.

  Briony’s voice broke through their grandmother’s. ‘Shut up, Mum. You’re always the bleeding same with a drink in you! Kerry loves that girl, we all do. No matter where she came from. Now just leave it, all right. Just bloody well leave it!’

  Molly stood up. ‘I’ve every right to speak me mind where me own child’s concerned.’

  Bernie was trying to placate her. ‘Mum ... Mum ... Sit down. Let’s leave it now. It’s in the past.

  Briony walked over to her mother and poked her in the chest. ‘Why do you always do this? A couple of bevvies and you get stroppy. The world according to Molly Cavanagh. You’ve never had any time for Liselle, we all know that. Well, listen to me and listen good. Our Kerry was a fucking saint to keep her, you should be proud of her. Anyone else would have got rid of her quick smart.’

  All Molly’s feelings burst like a cancer inside her. The strong rum toddy made her tongue run away with her. Forgetting everything, where she was and with whom, she bellowed: ‘And that’s what Kerry should have done! You should have made her do it. You could have talked her round. But no, not you. Not bloody Briony the marvellous wonder woman Cavanagh. You welcomed her in here with open arms. Knowing she’d slept with a bloody bl — ’

  Danny burst into the room and everyone stared at him. A second later the front door slammed and they heard Boysie calling Liselle’s name as she ran up the drive.

  ‘She heard you, Gran, she was listening to you! You nasty old bitch! What’s she ever done to you? What’s all this about? You been drinking as usual? Is that it? I’ll go and help Boysie find her and you’d better be gone by the time we get back, Gran. I ain’t in the mood for you tonight.’

  Tommy watched the drama unfold before his eyes and sighed. But the way Daniel had spoken was like listening to Briony. Earlier that day she had said ‘They’re my boys’, and Tommy was inclined to agree with her. Well, if they had some of their natural mother and some of Briony in them, they couldn’t be all that bad. No matter what he had heard.

  Briony said slowly, ‘Go home, Mum. Just go home.’

  Marcus got up and took Molly’s arm.

  ‘Come on. I’ll take you home, love.’

  Molly stared at Briony, her face troubled. ‘I didn’t know the child was listening, I swear. I wouldn’t have hurt her for the world.’

  Briony laughed bitterly.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t. You’ve never wanted to hurt anyone, you. But Christ himself knows, somehow you always bleeding well manage to!’

  Boysie caught up with Liselle at the bottom of the street. She was crying, really crying, and he held her to him, stroking her hair and whispering endearments.

  Danny arrived a little while later and they tried to take her back to their house but Liselle refused.

  ‘I don’t ever want to see me gran again! Ever.’

  Danny wiped her eyes with a clean white handkerchief and smiled crookedly.

  ‘You know Gran. When she’s had a drink she’s always stroppy. Look at last Christmas when she started on poor old Mrs H, accusing her of all sorts. Forget it.’

  Liselle looked up into his face and said through her teeth, ‘If she’d said about you two what she’s just said about me, would you forget it?’

  Boysie and Danny both looked away, knowing they wouldn’t.

  ‘Whoever my father was, he seems to have made quite an impression on everyone. I wish now I’d listened to the rest of it, I might have found out just what was so very wrong with him.’

  ‘Come on, girl, we’ll get the car and take you home.’

  Boysie and Danny had guessed that Liselle had what was termed ‘a touch of the tarbrush’ in her. But how could they tell her that if she didn’t even guess it herself?

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Tommy and Briony sat up waiting for the twins to return. Bernadette had left shortly after Marcus had taken Molly and Rosalee home. Sitting in her warm lounge with the fire roaring and Tommy Lane by her side, Briony finally felt the enormity of what had taken place. Her anger against her mother grew virulent.

  Tommy grasped her hand in his. ‘She should have been told, Bri ... before now.’

  Briony nodded and swallowed hard. Her face white and earnest, she looked at him. ‘I know that, Tommy, better than anyone. But how? How do you tell a girl something like that? Especially at this time, with all the black servicemen who were over here in the war? The feeling against them by men in particular? Black people live under a stigma. It’s wrong, we know it’s wrong. But not everyone’s us, are they? Christ himself knows I wanted to tell her, I wanted to tell her when she was fifteen. But when she don’t look black, it seemed unfair somehow. Now bloody Mouth Almighty’s started a chain of events that can only lead to trouble. Oh, Tommy, sometimes I could wring my mother’s bloody neck!’

  ‘Well, the twins will see Liselle all right.’

  Tommy kissed the palm of her hand. Briony smiled crookedly and touched his face with gentle fingers.

  ‘I’m so glad you came to the Manor tod
ay, Tommy. Really I am. You know us all so well.’

  He smiled at her then. She saw the lines around his eyes and mouth. The two deep grooves alongside his nose, the greying of his hair. Time raced on with no regard.

  She poured herself another drink and sipped it gratefully. ‘It’s funny, you know, Tommy, but a long time ago when Liselle was small I had a chat with one of the black girls in one of my houses. Nice girl she was and all. Real looker. She told me that a white-looking Negro could have children as black as night. We even had a black girl once with blue eyes. I think that’s when I built up a wall in me mind about poor Liselle. If you don’t think about it, it goes away. Well, it doesn’t go away, that much was proved here tonight. Problems don’t go away, mate, they just get bigger and bigger, and for the first time ever, I don’t know the answer to this one.’

  ‘You’ll find the answer. You always do.’

  Briony leant against him.

  ‘I could never share anything before, not really. Not with a man. Not with you. I honestly never thought of you really, all those years ago. I didn’t wonder what your reaction would be to anything, and it wasn’t because I was selfish. At least, I don’t think it was. I think it was because I didn’t know how to be with a man. Not really. Not properly. Henry Dumas and me dad saw to that. Today was like a whole new world to me. I really loved it. Then all this happened.’

  ‘Look, Briony, take a bit of advice. You can’t take on everything for everyone. No more than you can be everything to everyone. You need to keep a little bit of yourself for yourself. Does that make sense? You need to keep a little bit of all that love you’ve got back for yourself. For Briony Cavanagh.’

  She nodded and sighed.

  They stayed cuddled together in the firelight until the twins arrived home.

  Liselle was quiet all the way back to her house. Boysie sat in the back of the car holding her to him, as if frightened she’d open the car door and run off. Daniel drove, his face hard and set. His granny had gone too far tonight. Her attitude when in drink had always left a lot to be desired, though they had laughed it off before. But this time she had really hurt someone.

  Inside her house Boysie had made Liselle a strong cup of tea and they had sat with her, in their aunt’s ornate lounge, and silently kept her company. No one seemed to know just what to say to her.

  Finally, Liselle began to cry again. Quietly this time. She was held by the twins, both with an arm around her, both telling her not to worry, they’d sort it all out for her. And as they eyed each other over the top of her head, they both knew that that’s exactly what they would do.

  They’d find out who and what her father was. At least that way she’d know.

  Upstairs Kerry slept the sleep of the drunk, unaware that her daughter’s world had been shattered beyond repair.

  Evander looked at Skip Paquale who smiled at him. Evander smiled back, but the smile, or grimace, didn’t reach his bloodshot brown eyes.

  He noted the other man’s expensive suit, clean-cut good looks and flat, athletic stomach. Skip looked what he was, a ladies’ man, from his well-cut hair and sweet-smelling skin to his hand-made shoes. He was also a hood, a small-time Mafia man earning money from the numbers and a few other lucrative ventures. He was the great-nephew of Tommy Corolla, a big mob man who had his own family. At twenty-five Skip felt he wasn’t getting the action he deserved so he was making a little action of his own on the side.

  That was where Evander Dorsey came in.

  He had been very drunk one night, working in a seedy bar, his gnarled hands playing him up. During his break someone had put a record on the juke box. It was one of Kerry’s. He had sat back on the stool listening to her voice, looking down at the deformed fingers of his hands, when a guy beside him had asked him what he was thinking about. The guy was Delroy Burton, a black spiv who owned the club Evander was playing in. For some reason he had felt a great rage against Kerry, because she was big, a big star, famous, while he, Evander, was left broken down, working in dives because of her. He had told Delroy the whole story, having more and more drinks bought for him. The next night Delroy had been waiting for him, buying him drinks and getting names, dates, places, anything about his time in England. Then he had ignored him and Evander had just been sorry that the free drinks were not coming any more and forgot about Delroy.

  Then one night a few months later Delroy had come to his house. Evander lived alone since the terrible ‘accident’ to his hands. Hands that were numb a lot of the time where they had been hastily set in Liverpool by a little black woman called Rula Demoinge. Hands that could still play music to a degree, but had lost the suppleness and eagerness of before. Hands that were getting weaker and more gnarled as the years wore on. Delroy had come to the little shanty where he lived with two white men. Italians. The men had been introduced and one had produced a couple of bottles of Wild Turkey and a hundred dollars. All they wanted was to hear the story of Kerry Cavanagh. Evander, eyes wide at the sight of the money and the booze, had welcomed them in with open arms and told them everything, embellishing the story as drunkenness descended. Later that night they’d left him, a hundred dollars richer and drunk enough to sleep.

  He hadn’t seen them for six months when they once more turned up, minus Delroy, and with the intention of ‘helping him out’. They had taken him from Alabama back to New York, bought him new clothes, cleaned him up, watched his drinking, and now here he was, back in London, living in a nice place in Notting Hill Gate. Evander was to be the instrument of blackmailing Kerry Cavanagh. In return he would get back some money and self-respect, both the things that had been denied him when Kevin Carter and his henchmen had stamped their booted feet on his hands. It was a sweet revenge, a just revenge on the woman who had brought him this low.

  But the child had thrown him, he had to admit that. He hadn’t known about no child. A good-looking girl, more like an octoroon, like the whores in New Orleans. But she was his child all right. Looked like his sister Eulalie who’d had the same whitey look about her. His mama said she was the product of a sugar farmer, poor white trash. Well, Kerry wasn’t poor white trash, Kerry was loaded, and he was going to see, with the help of Skip Paquale and his boys, that a few thousand dollars came his way. It was just and fitting, it was right.

  Might even get enough to buy his own place. He wouldn’t be playing the piano for much longer, the rheumatism had set in and his hands were getting to be less than useless.

  He sat back in the chair contemplating his good fortune in meeting Delroy and Skip. Or ‘Mr Skip’ as he had to call him. Mr Skip to an Eyetalian! He smiled to himself at the thought. They were no better than him, they were just immigrants. His forefather had been in the States a mighty long time, longer than Paquale and his so-called family.

  He knew the drink was making him aggressive and closed his eyes, once more seeing the creamy limbs of Kerry Cavanagh. She had been one hell of a loving woman.

  She had also been his downfall, and he was looking forward to paying her back.

  Skip looked at the big, bloated man sitting opposite him and hid his disgust.

  ‘We move in tomorrow. You stop your drinking now, you hear?’

  Evander opened one yellowing bloodshot eye and nodded. So tomorrow was the big day?

  Big deal.

  He drank the last of his whisky and, getting up unsteadily, made his way to bed.

  Liselle woke up and looked out of her window. It was early December and in the night it had snowed. The snow already lay thick and quiet everywhere. It was just after five-thirty. She had only dozed. In her mother’s room she heard the radio playing. Liselle pulled on a dressing gown and went in to her. Kerry lay on her bed still in the crumpled green wrapper, a glass of orange juice in her hand. Liselle sighed. Taking the drink from her mother she sipped it and raised her eyebrows.

  Kerry laughed huskily.

  ‘Ain’t a drink to be found in the house. I take it you had a good hide up before you went to bed?’
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  Liselle had the grace to go red.

  ‘It’s snowing.’

  Kerry laughed again.

  ‘I know. I hate the snow meself. Always did. When we were kids, in the basements, snow could mean death. Honestly.’ Her voice sobered. ‘It was so cold in there anyway, damp and smelly. We woke up one morning and the whole inside of the room had a film of ice everywhere. Little babies froze to death that year. Little tiny babies. We used to have blue feet, navy blue feet, with big red sores on them.’

  Liselle snapped at her, ‘Stop it, Mum. For goodness’ sakes!’

  Kerry heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Lissy. It’s just that I woke up thinking morbid thoughts. I have a feeling on me that something bad’s going to happen. It’s the snow, I think. I hate the solitude of snow. Even if you shout it somehow muffles your voice.’

  Liselle shook her head.

  ‘I think the trouble’s already started.’

  Kerry sat up in the bed and frowned. Liselle saw in the harsh light of day the veins beginning on her mother’s cheeks from the drink. The deep hollows under her eyes that her make-up would make disappear, to leave her looking beautiful and young. Too young for this dark-haired girl to be her daughter. Yet unlike other mothers, Kerry always told people about her daughter and never, ever lied about her age.

  ‘What do you mean, love?’

  ‘Last night there was murders round Auntie Briony’s with me gran.’

  Kerry laughed then in relief.

  ‘There’s always murders where your gran’s concerned! Give her a drink and you’ve got a loony on your hands.’

  Kerry’s dismissive tone annoyed Liselle and she said nastily, ‘Yeah, well, last night she informed the whole world and his wife that I should have been aborted. That having an illegitimate child was bad enough, but one like me ... That’s what she said, Mum. Those were her exact words.’