Goodnight Lady

by Martina Cole

  Briony shook her head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mariah.’

  ‘So you blinking well should be. Now let’s change the subject. How’s all the other houses going along?’

  Tommy launched into a long conversation with Mariah about the different houses and Briony sat quietly, watching the two of them talking, her mind troubled.

  The boys were once more getting too big for themselves and it worried her. She had had word off the street that the Cavanaghs’ days were numbered. They were being watched, being monitored by the tax man, and they still were flying dangerously close to the wind. They thought they were indestructible. Well, she knew from experience that no one was indestructible. No one.

  The worst of it was there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

  Tommy’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘What? sorry, Tommy love, I was miles away.’

  ‘We’d better make a move if we’re to get to Kerry’s in time for tea.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot we were due there.’

  As they said their goodbyes and walked out to their car, Briony saw as if for the first time the stooping of Tommy’s shoulders and the hair that was now all grey. As he held the car door open for her she wondered when he had got so old-looking, and why she hadn’t noticed it before.

  Doreen Rankins was beside herself with pleasure at having Boysie Cavanagh inside her house. Every time she thought of his Rolls-Royce outside her front door she felt a thrill inside her eighteen-hour girdle.

  ‘Have another sandwich, Boysie.’ She said his name timidly, shyly.

  He took another cucumber sandwich and bit into it. ‘Best sandwiches I’ve had in yonks, Mrs Rankins.’

  Doreen patted her newly permed and treated hair and giggled like a schoolgirl.

  ‘Oh, call me Doreen. We don’t stand on ceremony in this house.’

  Suzy raised disbelieving eyebrows at her mother’s complete change of character. But Boysie had that effect on people.

  ‘We’re over the moon at your news, Boysie. Our little girl has made us very happy, hasn’t she, Frank?’

  Doreen looked at her large silent husband with an expression of desperation on her face.

  Frank nodded. ‘Oh, yes, son. We’re over the moon.’

  Boysie grinned and winked at Doreen saucily before taking another slice of walnut cake.

  ‘May I be so bold as to ask for another cup of your excellent tea, Mrs ... I mean, Doreen?’

  ‘Of course you can. We went to Spain last year, and they have a saying there: “My casa your casa”. Something like that. It means ...’

  ‘My house is your house.’

  ‘Oh, Suzy, isn’t he clever? Imagine knowing Spanish.’

  Boysie and Suzy laughed.

  He liked the old bird Doreen, she was all right. The father was a bit weird, a bit too quiet. But as long as they had no objection to the wedding, he wasn’t bothered.

  ‘We’re booking St Vincent’s for the wedding, Doreen, my Aunty Briony is seeing to that for me. She’ll be in contact soon, so you can decide along with Suzy what you want. I hope you won’t be offended, Mr Rankins, but I would like to insist from the start that I shall be paying for the wedding, and there will be no expense spared.’

  Suzy watched her father’s face. It looked almost pleasant now. He absolutely hated spending money. His favourite saying was: ‘A penny earned is a penny saved.’

  Frank Rankins leant forward in his seat and picked up his pipe.

  ‘Please, son, call me Frank,’ he said happily.

  An hour later Boysie was at Suzy’s front door kissing her goodbye before going off for an evening of business.

  ‘Well, that went all right, love.’

  ‘Oh, Boysie, I can’t wait!’

  He kissed her cool clean lips and grinned. ‘Neither can I, love. Neither can I!’

  Chapter Forty-two

  Jimmy Sellars woke up feeling drained. He had been tripping for most of the previous day, but now he’d come down with a vengeance, from the feeling of paranoia to the quick ‘rushes’ that kept making his heart beat a violent tattoo in his chest. He could hear Delia’s soft breathing beside him and Faith’s low crying coming through the thin wall from the bedroom next door. It was the crying that had woken him. He gritted his teeth. The kid got on his nerves. This whole set up got on his nerves.

  Leaning off the mattress that was on the floor, he picked up half a joint from the overflowing ashtray and lit it, taking the cannabis deep into his lungs and holding it there for a good while before letting it out slowly. He felt the rush hit his brain and tried to relax.

  He let his eyes roam around the room, settling for split seconds on the posters and paintings all around. He looked at his favourite poster, a back view of a girl dressed in a short white tennis dress, holding a racquet in one hand. With the other she scratched a perfectly tanned buttock. She had no underwear on. Feeling himself getting hard, he allowed his usual sexual scenario to run through his head. The girl turned to face him and lifted the front of the dress, giving him the come on.

  He turned over in bed and looked at Delia. Her breasts were spilling out of the covers in the early-afternoon light, the stretch marks visible, blue-grey. He felt his erection deflate and wished he was still tripping. He could handle Delia then. Sexually he couldn’t bear her any more. He wondered briefly why he’d ever taken up with her. Since the birth of Faith she was a pain in the arse. Correction, he told himself, she had always been a pain in the arse. But she had been good in the sense she’d had money. She’d always had money. And with Purple Hearts going at £60 a thousand in Piccadilly, she had supplied him the capital to start his own business.

  Now they lived in the council tower block, and she didn’t take money from her family any more. She relied on him to keep her and the kid. That was the most annoying thing of all. All that lovely money going to waste, and that crying bastard in the other room.

  He glanced at his watch. It was just after one-fifteen and that bitch was still asleep. The kid should have been fed hours ago, no wonder she was crying. Sometimes the child went to bed at five after only being up three or four hours. He elbowed Delia in her ribs none too gently and she woke with a start.

  ‘What was that for?’ Her eyes were ringed with mascara and kohl pencil, her hair a mass of backcombed knots.

  ‘Get up and see to the fucking kid, will ya? It ain’t been fed for ages.’

  Delia turned on to her back and let out a long breath. ‘Give us a toke first.’

  Jimmy passed the roach to her and as she pulled on it she burned her fingers. Jumping up in bed, she flicked the red hot flakes off her chest.

  ‘Serves you right, you fat bitch. Now make me a cuppa and get that kid sorted out.’

  Delia got out of the bed, her large cumbersome body heavy with the LSD and cannabis of the night before. Jimmy closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at her.

  Delia pulled on a dressing gown, none too clean, and he heard her bare feet padding out of the bedroom.

  Jimmy waited, tense in the bed. He heard the short slap and the child’s heartrending cry. Leaping off the mattress, he stamped into the child’s bedroom. Faith was standing up in the cot that was too small for her, a red handprint on her cheek. Her nose was running snot and her eyes were obliterated by tears.

  He grabbed hold of Delia’s hair and slapped her across the face three times, back-handed slaps that sent her head this way and that with the force of the blows. Holding her chin in one big grubby hand, he pressed his face close to hers.

  ‘One of these days, Delia, I’m gonna tell your precious family about the way you treat that kid. I’ll tell them all about your little act, good old Delia, mother of the year. Now feed the child, for fuck’s sake, and let me get some peace. I’ve work to do this afternoon.’

  She looked into the long-haired, bearded face before her and bit her lip to stop the tears.

  She knew what his work was this afternoon, what it was nearly every aftern
oon. Hanging around the ’Dilly trying to look like he was somebody, selling a bit of this, trying a bit of that, and ending up in bed with some little tart in a cheesecloth top with no bra.

  Gathering up all the spittle she could in her drug-coated mouth, she spat into his face.

  Then the fight really started.

  Detective Inspector Limmington was sitting in the offices of the Home Secretary. His hands were nervously picking at bits of lint, real or imagined, on his good black suit, which last saw the light at his son’s funeral. His only son had died during National Service, one of those freak accidents that mean nothing to anyone but the victim’s parents and the people who witness it.

  A woman of indeterminate age smiled at him from behind a large desk and said, ‘You can go in now.’

  Harry Limmington walked through the doorway to the right of him and closed the door quietly. The large man behind the desk offered him a seat and Harry sat down, listening to him finish his telephone call.

  ‘OK ... Yes ... OK then, I’ll be there at about eight-thirty ... Yes, usual place, the Lords’ Bar.’

  He broke the connection and smiled widely at the tall, grey-haired man before him. Standing up he held out a large hand, not a gentleman’s hand, more a workman’s. That first impression stayed with Limmington.

  ‘Sorry to keep you, old chap, a bit of urgent business. Now, can I offer you a drink? Coffee, tea, something stronger?’

  Limmington smiled. ‘Tea would be good, thanks, sir.’

  The man pressed a button on his telephone and said: ‘Tea please, Miss Pritchard, for two.’

  Limmington wondered how often he had tea for one when he had appointments. The man in front of him, despite all his good-humoured camaraderie, looked capable of it. For that reason Limmington was glad he was on the right side of him. He’d seen him on television countless times and now he was with him, was even more aware of the power that emanated from him.

  They chatted about nothing ’til the tea was served to them, a weak brew in paper-thin cups that Limmington was not sure he really wanted to hold. Then, when Miss Pritchard shut the door, the man before him grinned.

  ‘You want the Cavanaghs, I want the Cavanaghs. I think we could help one another there.’

  Limmington raised one eyebrow and sipped his tea to give himself more time before answering. All the time he was thinking, Why pick on a DI? Why me? He could smell a dead dog before it was stinking.

  The man before him seemed nonplussed at his lack of response. Harry Limmington enjoyed the sensation he was creating.

  ‘I want you to give everything you collect on them to me, me personally. I think that between us we can nail them.’

  ‘You do?’ The two words were spoken low.

  The man smiled now, happy to have a response.

  ‘I certainly do. I think you should know, though I have a shrewd idea you already do, that the Cavanaghs have ears in all departments. They know everything, or at least their aunt does, before you can say knife. To catch them we will have to get up very early in the morning, very early indeed. But you look like an early riser to me.’

  Limmington smiled back then. A slow smile.

  ‘I think I get your drift, sir.’

  The man rubbed those large hands together and smiled back. ‘All their big friends are getting cold feet these days, you know. The Cavanaghs are making a lot of enemies and now their so-called friends want them off the streets almost as much as we do. But it has to be done diplomatically, which is where you come in.’

  Harry Limmington settled back in his chair then. Even his fear of breaking the porcelain tea cups deserted him. He knew what he was here for now, and the knowledge was like balm to him. He didn’t care how many big, well-heeled arses he had to save in his quest to get the Cavanaghs. He wanted them so badly he could taste it. Now it seemed they were within his reach.

  Henry Dumas had expired at the select Sunnyside Nursing Home in Torquay, his wife and son with him. Albeit not so much from choice as for appearance’s sake. Now Benedict and his wife sat in the lawyer’s office with his mother, waiting for the final reading of the will.

  Isabel, looking younger since her husband’s death, sat with her hands clasped in her lap, wishing this was all already over.

  Mr Otterbaum the solicitor looked at the three of them over his pince nez and took a deep breath.

  ‘This will was made in 1951. It’s short and to the point. Your husband was never a man of many words, Mrs Dumas, as I’m sure you know.’

  Isabel nodded slightly, thinking, Get on with it, you silly old fool. Before it occurred to her the man was younger than she was.

  ‘“I, Henry Dumas, being of sound mind and body, leave everything I possess to my natural son Benedict. He can see to his mother as he sees fit.”’

  The three people sat up straight in their chairs, outraged expressions on their faces.

  ‘“As his mother is Miss Briony Cavanagh, I expect he will make his own mind up about that. My wife, however, Isabel Dumas, gets nothing, her father having left her well provided for.”’

  Mr Otterbaum looked at them with a pained expression.

  ‘I can only tell you what your husband put down. I can’t begin to express my sorrow at the contents. It was drawn up by my father...’

  His voice trailed off.

  Isabel had closed her eyes tightly.

  ‘The bastard! The dirty rotten stinking bastard!’ The words were whirling around her head. She had not realised she had said them out loud.

  Benedict looked at his wife, then his mother, with a stunned expression on his face.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  Isabel grasped his hand and shook her head. Then the tears came.

  An hour and a half later, Benedict had been told the true story of his birth, and such was Isabel’s rage at her departed husband, she told it with the same cold callousness she knew he would have used. Benedict listened gravely to the story of a young girl giving birth at thirteen years old and felt the rainbow trout he had eaten for lunch rising up inside his stomach.

  Now he knew why he had never liked his father, why he’d always felt a distaste for him. Now he knew why his father had never been to him as other fathers were to other sons. The truth of his life was laid bare and Benedict, not having the hardness or strength of his natural mother, cried.

  Fenella Dumas, his wife, listened to the story with detachment. There was one thing in Fenella’s favour. No matter how much Isabel disapproved of her otherwise, nothing threw her. Nothing at all.

  She was quite looking forward to telling the children. Natalie especially, being a golden sixties child, would absolutely love this. Their real granny was a tart of the first water. It was like something from the News of the World.

  Benedict, however, had different thoughts on the subject.

  Briony, Kerry and the twins sat drinking weak coffee and talking about the wedding. It was the first time Kerry had shown a spark of interest in anything for years. She wanted to know where it was, what they were wearing, what they were going to eat. She wanted to know every detail. Her face was animated and Briony detected something of the old Kerry then, the live wire Kerry of her youth, and this spark saddened her.

  Boysie sipped his coffee and took a large bite of a cheese sandwich. ‘I was wondering, Auntie Kerry, would you sing for us? In the church like. I know that Suzannah would love that.’

  Briony watched Kerry’s face close. ‘Oh, I don’t know...’

  ‘Come on, Kerry, we can’t have a marriage and you not sing. You always sing at everything.’ Briony’s voice was light.

  Kerry lit a cigarette and shook her head. ‘I ain’t sung properly for years, Bri ... I don’t even know if I still can.’

  Briony gripped the arms of her chair and laughed out loud. ‘I’ll tell you what, let’s have a go. Me and you. I’ll help you. We’ll practise every day, see how it goes. What do you think, boys?’

  ‘I think Boysie’s wedding won’t b
e the same without his favourite aunt singing for him. Come on, Auntie Kerry, you can pick the number yourself. We’ll get Bessie’s old band, they’re still going strong. Last I heard they was at Ronnie Scott’s. What do you say? Bessie will be going anyway.’

  Kerry began to feel a thrill of enthusiasm surging through her body.

  ‘Well, I can give it a try. I heard a great number the other day actually ... It was on the wireless...’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I don’t know, boys, I don’t know if I can still hack it.’

  Boysie and Daniel grinned at her, identical grins, showing identical teeth.

  ‘’Course you can. Us Cavanaghs can do anything!’

  Kerry smiled and took another deep drag on her cigarette. Some of the Cavanaghs can do anything, she thought. But not all of them.

  Not me.

  ‘Is Evander coming over for the wedding?’ Her voice was light.

  Boysie’s face sobered instantly.

  ‘Would you mind if he did? If you don’t want him there he won’t be invited. Lissy will understand.’

  Kerry sighed. ‘I don’t mind, Boysie. You have whoever you want, my lovely, it’s your day after all.’

  Boysie kissed her cheek gently. She could smell his lemony aftershave and the remnants of the scotch he had drunk at lunchtime.

  Her mouth watered.

  One drink, that’s all she needed, and she’d sing like a blasted canary. The wedding would be laden down with booze and they couldn’t watch her continuously.

  Not even the Cavanaghs could do that.

  ‘Did I tell you the BBC were after your aunt to sing on one of their shows?’ Briony told the boys proudly. ‘Since “Miss Otis Regrets” has been used for that perfume ad, she’s become quite famous again.’

  Daniel shook his head.

  ‘Why don’t you go for it, Auntie Kerry? I’ve heard you singing to yourself and you sound OK to me. You’d probably be a guest on loads of programmes. Might even get on Simon Dee’s.’

  Kerry laughed nervously.

  ‘Look at me, Danny Boy, I’m an old woman. Who’d be interested in me?’