‘Her? Did you say her?’
Janie nodded. Her long face was even more worried now as she realised that Lil really had no idea about what had happened and she had gone so white she looked on the verge of fainting. Lil’s huge belly and swollen legs were suddenly all Janie could focus on and she saw that Lil Brodie was ill. She was also in a state of total shock at the news she had just imparted to her. She guessed that Annie made sure Lil didn’t get any information until after she had edited it to her own satisfaction.
‘My Lisa is only six and he pushed her off the bus; she landed in the road on her barnet and the hospital said she was lucky she wasn’t hurt really badly. Lil, I don’t want to put this in your lap; I can see you are ready to drop but I can’t let this go on. Lance has tortured them and he mouths me off if I say anything. He effs and blinds at me. I don’t want to cause any trouble for you . . . I don’t want Patrick after me, but if that’s what it takes . . . It’s either this or I have to move and I ain’t got the wherewithal to do that as I am sure you know . . . Me old man’s banged up.’
Janie’s voice was breaking now with sheer relief that she had said it out loud. Lil looked awful and Janie was sorry for her because she could see the woman genuinely had no idea about any of it. If she had not seen her reaction with her own eyes she would never have believed it.
Lil was digesting everything she had just heard and was now trying to make some kind of sense of it. She was stiff with anger and humiliation; this woman honestly believed that she had known of her son’s antics and that she had allowed those things to happen without any kind of redress. Did everyone else think that? Did they assume that she didn’t care? Did people think she condoned his behaviour?
She was mortified because she knew that it was her fault if people did think that about her because she had no interest in the boy or in what he did or didn’t do. She had no trouble believing what the woman was telling her, and she knew that she should at least be trying to justify his behaviour, make allowances for him, at least try to defend him, but she had no intention of doing anything like that. Instead, she jumped up and bellowed her son’s name out with all the force she could muster.
The kids had shot into the bedrooms when she had shouted at her mother and as they trooped back downstairs now she could feel the heat of humiliation and shame wash over her face and neck. The child seemed to move inside her with a sickening wrench and she had trouble staying on her feet.
Pat Junior and the girls were in the hallway and Lance was behind them, his eyes wide and, as always, displaying an innocence she knew he had never really possessed. He was a devil in disguise and she flew at him with a speed that belied the heaviness of her aching body. All she wanted to do was hurt him to make him realise exactly what he did to others; she wanted him to feel the same emotions as his victims.
Lance tried to escape her wrath and she grabbed at his ankle as he attempted to run back up the stairs. She dragged him by his legs and his screams were loud and piercing but she ignored them. She pulled him into the front room and flung him on to the floor. He lay there panting in fright and she saw the terror in his eyes as she shrieked at him. Her mother was trying to calm her down and she grabbed the front of Annie’s carefully buttoned cardigan and thrust her back out into the hallway, nearly knocking her over in the process. The children were all staring at her as if she had gone mad. She didn’t feel like she had gone mad though, she felt as if she had finally woken up from a bad dream. She felt as if she was free at last.
Annie’s voice was cajoling her now, she was trying to calm her down. Instead it made her anger swell inside her like a canker that was about to burst.
‘Lil, calm down, love. He wouldn’t do anything like that. He’s a little fucker, granted, but he wouldn’t do that. They pick on him . . .’
Lil shook her head in despair at her mother’s words and, placing her hands on her ample hips, she said with derision and contempt, ‘Oh, Mum, fuck off, will you? He could murder all the neighbours in broad daylight with an axe and you’d say they must have deserved it. That they must have done something to him.’
‘You going to take her word over mine then?’
Lil saw the hurt on her mother’s face and the frown lines etched there so she looked old before her time and she actually felt pity for her. Annie was almost delusional where Lance was concerned; it was as if she saw a different boy to the one everyone else did. She held herself in check, knowing it was pointless talking to the woman before her, a woman she didn’t even like most of the time, but who she had thought she needed.
‘Take the kids upstairs, Mother, and don’t fucking come down again until I tell you.’
Annie was beside herself with grief for the boy she could see no wrong in.
‘Nanny Annie, please, Nanny Annie, don’t leave me with her . . .’ Lance was choking on his sobs now and even with the tears running down his handsome face, the face that was so like his father’s, and his pitiable crying, Lil still couldn’t find it in her heart to feel any kind of pity for him.
He tried to bolt from the room then, to get away from her, and she grabbed him by the hair and dragged him back inside. Then, slamming the front room door closed, she untangled the arms that were now desperately trying to grip her round her waist to make her cuddle him and she laid into him with all the strength she possessed.
Her blows were heavy and carefully delivered. He curled into a ball on the floor so she grabbed him once more by his hair and, holding him upright, she gave him a beating that was as vicious as it was overdue. He was bleeding and she could smell the fear coming off him in waves but it just added to her anger and her need to teach him a lesson that would be remembered his whole life.
She could hear herself shouting at him and in her rage she couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying to him: ‘You fucker, you bullying, wicked fucker . . .’
Lil was screaming the same words over and over again and Janie sat and watched the scene before her with an awe that she would say later was due to the fact that Lance was still denying any wrongdoing even after his mother had opened up his eyebrow. She would tell people in a hushed voice that Lil Brodie was like a maniac, that she had doled out a hiding many a man would have been loath to be on the wrong end of. She would tell anyone who asked her that Lil Brodie was a decent woman who had administered a beating to that little bastard to teach him the error of his ways. She had paid him out tenfold for her girl’s injuries and without realising it, Janie set out Lil’s reputation as a battler once and for all.
Lil was crying now, a low groaning cry of despair and disappointment and long strings of snot were hanging from her nose as she knelt over the boy, and, forcing down the urge to crack his skull open with her clenched fist, she said to him, ‘I’m on to you, boy, and you will get this or worse every time you step out of line. You fucking bully, you rotten, stinking bully.’
Lance stared up at the woman he alternately loved and hated and he said through his tears, ‘It wasn’t me, Mum, it was Patrick . . . I swear . . . I swear to God . . .’
Lance was still lying to her, still trying to worm his way out of it. He had not a scrap of shame or pride inside him. Lil pulled his head up towards her face with a force so great that his teeth crashed together loudly enough to make Janie Callahan jump. Lance could feel her breath on his face once more as she bellowed at him.
‘You liar, you are still fucking lying. Tell me the truth, you mad bastard, tell me the truth or I swear to God I’ll fucking bury you!’
She was staring into his eyes and he knew then that she meant every word she said. She saw the lids of his eyes come down like blinds on a window and knew he was changing tack. The knowledge depressed her even as it worried her. He was such a strange child and now she had acknowledged that fact to herself and to Janie Callahan, she felt her fear of him evaporate.
‘It was me. I’m sorry, Mum . . . I’m sorry . . . She was looking at me . . . She thinks she is better than us, she does.’
Lance was battered and bloody and Janie could feel no remorse for what had happened to him. Like his own mother, she felt only distaste and relief that he had finally got his comeuppance. She had enjoyed seeing him squirm and it bothered her that a young child could stir up such feelings inside her.
‘Get out of my sight.’ He dragged himself up slowly and Lil could see that she had gone too far, that she had really hammered him, but she didn’t care. There was a kink in Lance’s nature and she was going to iron it out if it killed her.
When Lance was gone from the room, Lil sighed and, lighting a cigarette, she pulled on it deeply. Blowing out the smoke noisily, she said sadly, ‘I am so sorry, Janie. I knew nothing about it. Is the little one all right?’
Janie nodded. Taking the proffered cigarette, she lit it and said, ‘He could have killed her, Lil, and it was that which brought me round here. I don’t want any trouble and you know that. But my kids are mortally afraid of him. Not a day goes by but he is at them . . .’
She was crying again now. The sympathy that was in Lil’s eyes made her break down.
‘Where was my Pat while all this was going on?’ She was suddenly afraid that her eldest son was a part of it all.
Janie shrugged and wiped at her eyes with a grubby tissue, the cigarette stains on her fingers showing just how bad her nerves had become. Looking at her with the cigarette dangling from her lips and the tear-stained face that was blotchy and swollen, Lil saw her own life if she wasn’t careful. Lance was capable of making her into the wretch she saw before her and she was determined not to let that happen.
‘He puts a stop to him if he catches him. He’s a good boy, Lil.’
The words were like a balm to Lil and she sighed again, heavier this time, before bellowing once more at the top of her voice, ‘Don’t you dare go up to him, Mother...’
She got out of the chair again and, as she walked from the room, Janie could hear Annie Diamond arguing with her in hushed tones.
Janie looked around her at the lovely home that Lance lived in and she wondered at a boy who had everything laid on a plate and who still was going to the bad. The carpet was new and reached all the walls, the furniture was expensive and comfortable, and even the ashtrays were coloured glass, shaped like big blue fishes. A colour TV stood in the corner and velvet curtains adorned the windows. It was like something from a magazine or a shop window. Yet she wouldn’t trade places with poor Lil for all the money in the world.
‘I mean it, Mum, you leave him to stew in his own juices.’
Annie was agitated and upset. Lil was amazed at the way her mother felt for this child of hers, considering the woman had never once shown her so much as a scrap of affection while she had been growing up. No Christmases, no birthdays, nothing; it was as if she had not existed. Now she was willing to argue for a boy who had thrown a six-year-old child off a moving bus. As she pushed her mother none too gently down the stairs, she said in a deep whisper, ‘Fuck off home, Mother, and leave me to sort this out.’ Annie was beside herself as she said quickly, ‘You ain’t going to tell Patrick, are you?’
Her voice was high with fear and Lil was aware that she was shaking with emotion; her mother, on whom she would have bet her last penny that no real emotion had ever existed inside her body.
‘Fucking right, I am telling Patrick. That child needs sorting out once and for all and I am going to make it my business to see that happens.’
Annie was shaking her head like a wet dog, and then she shrieked: ‘He was only being a boy. All kids do silly things, Lil. Please don’t tell Pat about this. Pat will kill him; you’re bad enough but Pat don’t know his own strength . . .’
‘Go home, Mother. Leave me and my family alone. And while we are talking about Pat, he will blame you for all this anyway, so make yourself scarce before he aims you out the door once and for all.’
Lil went up the stairs then and looked in on Lance, he was lying on his bed sobbing and alone and she was reminded of how little he was really. But his plight still didn’t move her in any way. He was looking at her now with his big blue eyes and she saw the cunning behind them and shivered. He was a vindictive little bugger and she wondered where he had got that from. It had to be from her mother. Annie could be cold, she knew, and she was going to make a point of curtailing the time she spent with him.
When this baby arrived, she was going to take control of the reins once more, and she was going to watch him like a hawk. She never wanted to hear another story about him and his hate-fuelled antics ever again. This all stopped today. She was determined to make Lance finally appreciate that all his actions had consequences.
Closing the door on the sobbing boy, she went into Pat’s room where the wide-eyed girls were sitting on his bed holding hands tightly as Pat Junior read them a story.
‘Is he all right, Mum?’
Lil nodded. She was unable to trust herself to speak to a boy who was worried about his brother even though all his troubles were self-inflicted and even though it would ultimately make his own life easier if he didn’t have to look out for him constantly. Pat Junior’s loyalty was astounding really, considering who he was wasting it on.
That her children had been frightened by her actions was evident in the quiet around her and the fact that the girls didn’t run to her as usual for a hug; they just stared at her as if she was a stranger in their midst.
Going back downstairs, she made a cup of tea for her and Janie; and a friendship was born that day that would last the two women a lifetime.
If Lance had done nothing else in his short life, he had brought these two women together as friends.
Cain was watching warily as Patrick circled him holding a chair leg in his hands he had retrieved from the debris of the office. Cain had been beaten to within an inch of his life and he had put up a good fight; in fact, Patrick and his cohorts were secretly impressed. The place was a shambles but Cain was taking it like a man and that stood him in good stead with his protagonists. His defence had surprised them somewhat with its ferocity, after all the drugs he’d taken.
As Cain sat watching them through swollen eyes he waited for the next assault that he knew would be forthcoming sooner rather than later. The weight of the weapon in Patrick’s hands was evident in the way he was handling it; it was cumbersome, and the straight edges could do a lot of damage to skull and bone. And even though Cain was out of the game in comparison to the three men around him, he was with it enough to know that he was still in for a rough night. He was running on pure adrenaline now, unsure of exactly what was going on; he had no idea why Brodie was even there. Cain was unable to function properly, he couldn’t even remember what this was all about.
The ketamine was kicking in once more and he felt the sweat envelop his body. He could smell it, a dank staleness that, until his foray into the world of the drug user, as opposed to the drug dealer, would have made him feel physically ill. The tannic taste of blood was in his mouth and the cocktail of drugs in his system was making him feel invincible. He was once more of the opinion that he could fight his way out of the room. The ketamine, a powerful horse-tranquilliser, was once more rushing through his system and mixed with the amphetamines he had been snorting with it for the past eight hours, it was confusing him. His mind was raving once more and the paranoia was creeping up on him. The sweat was running down hi
s face and blurring his already limited vision. He could see the men looking at him, could make out their features as if he was looking through water; they were talking to each other and he knew it was about him. But he couldn’t understand what they were saying. They were cunting him though, he was convinced of that, taking him for a mug and they expected him to sit and take it?
Cain shook his head and laughed at their foolishness, that they thought he wouldn’t punish them for their outrageous insults to him? That he would swallow this kind of treatment? He screamed and, using his considerable strength, he jumped up from the seat and launched himself at Patrick Brodie. He was almost feral and his teeth were bared as he attempted to bite his face, tear off an ear or rip off his nose. The attack was as fast as it was unexpected and Patrick brought the chair leg down on his head and body over and over again until he finally stopped trying to rise up from the floor. He lay there, a bloody mess, his mouth open as he gasped for breath while still attempting to mutter obscenities and threats at his attackers.
Patrick stared down at him in amazement and, pushing him on to his back, he placed the chair leg on a nearby desk. Then he lit himself a cigarette with a calmness that belied his real feelings.
Looking at the two men with him, he said quietly, ‘Out of his nut or what?’
The bigger of the two men shrugged. ‘That ketamine will do it every time, mate; sends them off their shopping trolleys.’
Patrick nodded sagely and went out into the empty bar. He took the drink offered him by Leonard who had slipped back into the club a few minutes before and he gulped at the whisky, enjoying the burn as it went down into his belly. The fire of it was giving him the jolt he needed.
Leonard replenished his glass immediately and then he poured out two lemonades for the others. He knew that, unless Patrick said otherwise, soft drinks were all that would be allowed to them.
They sipped their drinks and chatted amongst themselves in the carnage of the trashed club as if nothing was amiss.
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