Bad Penny Blues

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Jealous?” he said and tried to laugh, tried to look incredulous, but a vein started pumping above his left eye. “I ain't jealous of shit. That dress? I bought that for her myself, cost me a whole week's bread. I looked after that girl. She didn't have no complaints.”

  “So,” said Pete, lighting himself a Player's and offering one to Coulter, deliberately not extending the courtesy to Ferrier. “You buy her a fancy frock, spend all that money on her, and this is what she does to you.” He caught Ferrier's gaze. “A night on the tiles with George, eh?” Pete shook his head. “Not the sort of night she was getting round here with you, was it? She was wearing your dress and yet it was George who was showing her a good time.”

  Ferrier blinked first. Dropped his gaze and shook his head.

  “No, man,” he started to say.

  “Then you found out about it, didn't you?” Pete went on. “Found out about it and didn't like it. A few hours later, your jealous rage is spent and poor old Bobby's lying dead, that dress you bought for her ripped to bloody pieces. See, I know it is the same dress,” Pete bored into Ferrier with his eyes, shifted his weight forwards as he did, “because I was the one that found her.”

  “No, man.” Ferrier leaned backwards, raised up his palms. “You bluffin’ me. You know I didn't do it.” He looked across at Coulter. “I had an alibi, man, I proved it at the time.”

  “We didn't have this photo then,” said Coulter. “And not to put too fine a point on it, we know that the coloured community do their best not to co-operate with the police, cooking up alibis for each other when it suits. So I went back over all the notes we had here that pertained to yours.” Coulter pulled out his notebook and flicked it open. “You were at the Blue Parrot Club on Westbourne Park Road, same as you were tonight. Interesting that.” Coulter nodded over to Pete, who on cue, took out his own notebook.

  “Meanwhile,” he said, “I did some checking up on old Lucky George. Seems he got arrested in Shepherd's Bush only two nights after Miss Clarke's murder, trying to break into a chemist's. Claimed that he was doing it out of desperation since he couldn't afford the drugs he'd been prescribed for injuries recently sustained in a fight. A pretty professional going over he'd had, as well; they've got it all recorded. The doctor reckoned it must have been someone who really knew how to hurt. A boxer, for instance.”

  Pete sat back himself now and watched it all go through Ferrier's mind, watched his face twitch and his eyes flicker as he pictured how this would look in court, how neatly it would fit together in the minds of the undoubtedly all-white jury. The coloured man put his head in his hands.

  “It doesn't look good, does it Algernon?” said Coulter. “Now, we've spoken to George,” he bluffed, “and he doesn't want to be dragged back through all of this mess either. So in order to help himself stay out of trouble, he admitted that you beat him up over the girl. On the same night she was murdered.”

  “What?” Ferrier's head came up, his eyes shining with outrage. “Oh no, man, he can't have done. He can't have done that to me.”

  “Got it all typed up neatly,” Coulter said. “He'll appear in court if he has to. See, we've been putting in a lot of extra hours on this one, but I think it's all been worth it.”

  Ferrier slammed his fist down on the desk. “That Judas!” he said, his voice descending an octave. “He lyin’.” He looked at Coulter. “Lyin’ to save his own sorry arse. You know why he in the can now? He in there ’cos he wanna be, ’cos he too scared to be out inna world on his own, the lyin’, theivin’, yellow-bellied motherfucker.”

  “He is that, aye,” said Coulter. “But why, Algernon? Why did you beat him up and why did he feel the need to get away so urgently? If he wasn't running from you, then who?”

  Ferrier started to say something and then shook his head, stamped his foot. Fear was rising off him like steam, coursing through the room, pumping behind his dilated pupils. He was trapped and he knew it, between the devil of grassing his old mate up or the deep blue sea of a trial for Bobby Clarke's murder.

  “He tricked her out,” he eventually mumbled.

  “I beg your pardon?” Coulter said. “Can't quite hear you, Algernon.”

  “Bobby,” said Ferrier, eyes level with Coulter's now, the whites all yellow and bloodshot, the pupils black as midnight. “George tricked her out that night. He was supposed to be meeting her when she came off work to take her home, but instead, he told some fellas he be drinking with they could take her to a party. Took twenty five pounds off them for the privilege.”

  He scowled, still sore at the memory of that lost fortune. Feeling it worse than the loss of Bobby. Icy prickles ran up and down Pete's spine.

  “Twenty five quid?” he said. “Who could afford to give him that kind of money?”

  Ferrier slowly lifted the index finger of his right hand, his punching hand, stabbed it down on the photograph.

  Pete and Coulter exchanged glances. “Let me get this straight,” said Coulter. “Are you telling me that George sold her to the man in this picture here? To Simon Fitzgerald?”

  Ferrier leaned towards them, his voice a hiss. “Why’n't you ask him? See wha’ the big man has to say about it now?”

  “All right Algernon.” Coulter got to his feet, scraping his chair back loudly. “You're nicked.”

  “Wha’?” Ferrier was incredulous. “But I jus’ helped you out, man…”

  “No you didn't.’ Coulter loomed over him, his face a thundercloud dripping icy words like rain. “You just made a highly fanciful accusation about a man who can't defend himself in order to try and get yourself off the hook. You're a liar and a ponce, Ferrier, and I don't want you back on the streets turning some silly little schoolgirl into your next Roberta Clarke. Women aren't safe around you and I intend to keep you as far away from them as I possibly can. So I'm arresting you for importuning a minor. That should keep you where I want you until we prepare this case for trial.”

  32 WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?

  “There's someone here to see you.” Jackie put her head round the door of her spare bedroom, where I had been sleeping for the last week. “He says he wants to explain himself. D’you want me to tell him to sling his hook?”

  “Toby?” I stared at her with eyes swollen by seven nights of tears and insomnia.

  She nodded, her own eyes glittering with rage.

  “No,” I said, picking myself up off the bed where I had been languishing in a spare pair of her pyjamas and an old tartan dressing gown. I knew I looked awful and I wanted him to see it, see what he'd done. “It's about time. I want to hear what he's got to say.”

  “All right,” Jackie said and bit her lip. She was leaning across the doorframe like a shield. “Shall I show him into the kitchen then?”

  “If you don't mind.” I brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes. “And Jackie,” I said as she made to move away, “is it OK if I do this alone? I'm sorry that it has to be here.”

  She grimaced. “No, no,” she said, “’S’all right. I'll make myself scarce, pop over the club for a game of pool. But I'll not be long. And you just ring Gina if you need me, the number's on a card by the phone.”

  If my own appearance was that of an emaciated scarecrow, Toby's was worse. When I walked into the kitchen he was staring out of the window, over the rooftops of Chelsea. My heart moved painfully in my chest as he turned around, blond hair flopping over red-rimmed eyes, hollow cheeks and skin the colour of ash. So far away from the first time I had seen him, caught in a shaft of sunlight in the life-drawing room at the Royal, so full of determination and purpose, glittering like a god. Now he looked more an itinerant, an old school blazer over an ancient striped shirt and jeans only held together by the paint stains, the expression on his face so acute in its misery that I actually felt sorry for him.

  “Stella,” he whispered, a tear dropping from the edge of his long lashes. “I'm so, so, sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen…” His face crumpled and he began to shake, holding o
ut his arms imploringly. What could I do but walk back into them?

  It took a while for both of us to stop. But in the end, I couldn't bear his embrace any more.

  “Let's have a cup of tea,” I said. “Try and talk about it.”

  He nodded, wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, sat down unsteadily on one of Jackie's chairs, which was too small to properly accommodate his lanky frame.

  I gathered my thoughts about me as I went through the ritual of lighting the gas, warming the pot, scattering the tealeaves. Thinking of Sunday teatimes back in Bloxwich, Ma reading futures in the bottom of the cups, Pa sat by the fire with his pipe and a paper, the ticking of the clock and the purring of the black and white cat at his feet, those last few bittersweet hours together before Monday morning.

  I put a cup down in front of him, took my own across to the chair opposite. It wasn't a very big kitchen, with only a little fold-down table that could fit into the space. But somehow, Jackie and I had managed to spend most of our time here rather than any other room, just as I had spent so many lonely hours at Powis Terrace only feeling comfortable in the kitchen.

  Toby took a tentative sip and put his cup down on the table in front of him. His eyes roamed across the room and out of the window, anywhere but meeting mine.

  “How long,” I asked, “has it been going on?”

  He winced, his mouth twisting up and down.

  “I tried so hard not to,” he said. “I tried to fight it, really I did, you have to believe me, Stella. I didn't want to give in to it. I wanted to be true to you.” His eyes did flick up to mine then, and he gazed at me imploringly.

  “How long, Toby?” The iciness in my voice startled me. That feeling I had had, walking home with Lenny, had actually proved to be correct. The reason he was so angry was because he already suspected something had been going on between Toby and Pat. He knew something about Toby's past that I didn't.

  “Only since,” more tears streaked down his face, “we were in the States. It all seemed different there, like it was just a dream that would fade away when I came back home. I was going to put it behind me, honestly I was. But when I got back and you were acting so strangely, I just couldn't handle it…”

  “So you used that as an excuse,” I said, “to reject me. I told you my deepest, darkest secrets and you just treated me like the madwoman in the attic so you could run to your boyfriend without feeling guilty.”

  “No!” His voice rose up an octave. “It wasn't like that, Stella. I just didn't know what to do, it all seemed so…”

  I waved my hand. “Don't bother,” I said. “I was always afraid that you wouldn't understand, that's why I never told you anything about it before. Even though I felt so guilty that I had kept a secret from you. Hilarious, isn't it, you were keeping your own from me long enough.”

  “Stella…” He reached his hand across the table, tried to take hold of mine, but I pulled it away. “Please, you've got to believe me. I did, I mean I do still really love you. You were everything to me, encouraging me, standing by me when we had no money, always keeping everything together, the house looking nice, food on the table for all our friends. And you work so hard yourself, you're so talented, I was so proud of you.”

  Now it was me who couldn't look at him.

  “Why did you marry me in the first place?” I said, my eyes fixed on the kettle and the steam drifting out of the spout.

  “Because I loved you. You were the smartest, funniest, most beautiful girl I had ever met. I didn't even know there could be a girl like you. We were so close, weren't we, I felt almost like we could read each other's minds…”

  “Ha!” I turned to face him. “But I thought you didn't believe in things like that?”

  My humiliation was making me cruel, making me want to hurt him.

  He flinched, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I didn't ever say that, Stella.”

  “So,” I went on, holding onto the rage so I wouldn't break down, needing to know every painful detail, “you thought that if you married me, you could stop being homosexual?”

  “What?” He looked shocked.

  “Lenny told me,” I said, “about the heart-to-heart you once had with him about the boy who was in bed with your mother. The real reason why you left home, and, I suppose, were so eager to start the straight life. I always did wonder how I could have been so lucky, that you would propose to me just like that, just when I needed it. It was because you were still trying to get over him, wasn't it?”

  Toby shook his head. “No,” he said, “no it wasn't. That was nothing but a stupid schoolboy thing, I had grown out of it a long time before I met you. I never wanted to end up like this, you know. Like my bloody father.” His voice broke and he began to sob.

  “Oh,” I said, the full realisation of everything he must have gone through seeping through my consciousness and along with it another wave of pain, of love ruined and hopes dashed. “So that was it.”

  The anger all crumbled into ash, into pity for the man who was still my husband, sitting there crying, his whole life in tatters over something he could no more control than I could cut out my communications with the dead.

  “The funny thing is,” I reached my hand across to him,“Lenny believed that you'd put it behind you too. He thought you really loved me, that's why he was so angry when he started to hear rumours about you.”

  “What does it matter now?” Toby gripped my hand tight. “I'm a bastard and I've ruined everything, just like my father ruined my mother's life. That's why I was so scared, you see, Stella, that night you had the nightmare, or whatever it was. I thought you were turning into a secret alcoholic like Pearl did, and I knew that it was all my fault.”

  “That's funny,” I said. “I thought it was you turning into one.”

  “I have been, I admit it,” he said. “Trying to block it all out. And even in the end I took the coward's way out, letting you find me like that instead of just coming clean.”

  “Well,” I said. “What do we do now?”

  “You must come back to the house,” he said. “I'll move out, I'll find somewhere else.”

  “No,” I said, “I don't think that's right. You need that space to paint in…”

  “God, never mind about that,” Toby said. “It's your home.”

  I looked at him, horrified at the thought of it. My home was a haunted house.

  “I'm sorry but no,” I said. “I can't go back there.”

  He shut his eyes, his own moment of realisation dawning.

  “Of course you can't,” he said, letting go of my hand. “Oh God, Stella, what a mess.”

  I couldn't think of anything else to say. We sat listening to the clock ticking, the sounds of traffic drifting up from outside. Sunday evening coming down.

  “Well,” he finally said, “I suppose you'll be wanting a divorce?”

  “I don't know,” I said, his words bringing fresh tears at the thought of the finality of it all. “I hadn't thought about it.”

  “I wouldn't contest it,” he said. “But if you were to bring a charge of adultery… If you were to say what happened… If you talked to the press… It would ruin me Stella, I could go to jail, you wouldn't do that to me would you?”

  Only now did he start to sound like a child and it turned my blood to ice. Was that the real reason for the grey face, the tears, the offer of the house? Was it all out of self-pity, that he was terrified of the power I could have to destroy his life completely? And did he really think I could do that to him, no matter what he had done to me?

  “No I wouldn't,” I said, “and the fact that you even think that I would just goes to show, for all your fancy words about love, you never really knew me at all. I think you'd better go now, Toby.”

  “But Stella, I didn't mean…”

  “Just go.” I stood up, cutting him off. “I'm not going to get you arrested if that's all you're worried about. You can divorce me for desertion, you can do what the bloody hell you want, just leave
me alone.”

  He tried to say one more thing, as he stood at the door to Jackie's flat, but I had heard enough. I shut the door in his face.

  Jackie let me stay at hers until I found a flat I could afford to rent. Lenny helped me pack up and move. He talked to Toby, made sure the house would be empty while we did it. “You did me a mitzvah,” he told me, “now I'm doing one for you.”

  My new lodgings were in Sutherland Place, a quiet road of tall stucco houses and beautiful linden trees, in a mainly Irish enclave that had formed around the St Mary of the Angels church at the top of the road. The landlord rented to art students, he was pretty tolerant and didn't charge much, which was just as well, as I was determined not to take a penny from Toby. We were making enough money from the shop not to have to slum it completely, although it was back to one big room with a kitchenette, the electric on a meter and a tiny bathroom. But my room faced west, with a huge window letting in plenty of light, and somehow the feeling of the place was perfect, far from the oppressive darkness I had come to associate with Powis Terrace. I felt sure I wouldn't be scared to be alone here.

  Once we had unloaded, Lenny went to take the van back and go and bring us supper. I felt a sense of calm I hadn't known for a long time as I slowly unpacked, putting out the kitchen things first so that we could eat in relative comfort, making a space on the little, round Formica-topped table. It was a funny thing, I realised – despite all that had happened in Ladbroke Grove, the idea of moving out of the area completely had never crossed my mind. It was still the only place that had ever felt like home.

  Here I was determined to make a fresh start.

  Lenny came back with some packages, fish and chips and a bottle of ice-cold white wine. It was the second week of July, another warm day hazing into a golden sunset. We opened the big sash window and positioned our chairs so that we could look out across the rooftops and the trees. We were only five streets east of Powis Terrace, but it was a completely different world.