Lil’s face twisted in a contemptuous sneer. ‘You could do better for us both than the likes of him.’
Cissie felt sick. ‘What’s wrong with you, Lil? You’re no mother. Yer son’s been dead for six months and how many times have you even been to the cemetery? Yer’ve never had any time for me, I know that, but you ain’t gonna treat me the way yer treated Davy. If you don’t watch that mouth o’ your’n, yer gonna come in for quite a shock, cos I ain’t got no reason to be your meal ticket if I don’t wanna. Got it? You ain’t gonna take liberties with me the way yer did with Davy.’
Cissie raked her hands roughly through her hair, pulling it back off her face.
Lil, the drink still sloshing around in her veins, was trembling with fury. She leant across the table and jabbed her finger at Cissie’s chest. ‘You ain’t got a clue. D’you really wanna know the truth about Davy?’
Cissie blinked warily. ‘Don’t say nothing yer gonna regret, Lil. Yer pissed. You dunno what yer talking about.’
‘Aw, don’t I?’ Lil taunted Cissie. ‘Well, let me tell you, if you hadn’t have been so bastard greedy, Davy would never have done what he did, and you wouldn’t be a widow with two little kids to bring up on yer own.’
Cissie shook her head. ‘No. I ain’t gonna listen. I’ve heard all sorts of shit about him before. All that stuff about him running a book and I don’t believe none of it. And nor should you.’
‘Running a book!’ Lil snorted. ‘That’s all you know. Betting ain’t the half of it.’
Cissie went to stand up, to get away, but Lil reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back down.
‘Not the half of it by a long chalk, yer silly cow.’
Cissie dragged her arm from Lil’s grasp and rose unsteadily to her feet. She shook her head and backed away towards the door. ‘You’re just saying all this to hurt me. You’re just a spiteful, wicked old woman who don’t know how else to get at me.’
‘Am I?’ Lil stood up too and began walking slowly towards her. ‘And what are you? A moaning, lazy—’
Cissie lunged at Lil. Lil stumbled sideways, and fell against the dresser, sending a shower of cups and plates crashing to the floor.
‘That’s it,’ she screamed, ‘attack a defenceless old woman.’
‘Attack yer?’ Cissie yelled back. ‘Yer lucky I ain’t throttled yer!’
The two women stared at one another across the room, neither of them moving, until Cissie suddenly turned her back on Lil, went over to the sink and turned on the tap.
She let the water run until it was icy-cold and then splashed it over her face.
She turned round and faced her mother-in-law. ‘You and me had better get a few things straight,’ Cissie breathed. ‘So I reckon you’d better sit down at that table and get ready to answer one or two questions. Like whether Davy really was involved in street betting, and whether there really is something else to tell me.’
Lil sat back down at the table and fiddled with her empty cup, turning it round and round in the saucer. Almost stone-cold sober now, she was regretting the price she was having to pay for her moment of drunken glory over her daughter-in-law.
Just watching her sit there made Cissie feel like running out of the house, but she had the terrible feeling that she was about to discover some very unpleasant truths, or rather, some very uncomfortable lies that she had been living.
‘So, come on then. What are yer gonna tell me?’
‘Not much,’ Lil said flatly, shifting her weight on her chair.
‘You’d better tell me what yer mean, Lil, when yer say “not much”.’ Cissie’s voice was not raised, but it was obvious that she would brook no more evasions.
‘I told him yer was gonna leave him,’ Lil said bluntly.
‘You did what?’
‘When he first started seeing yer, I told him that if he had any ideas about marrying a pretty girl like you, he’d better buck his ideas up and find a way of bringing in a bit more dough. I said that yer’d told me, in confidence like, that there was all these other blokes with loads o’ money sloshing about, and cos yer wouldn’t be able to manage to keep yerself looking nice on the sort of money he was fetching in from his dad’s old stall, you’d probably wind up going off with one of ’em. But it was all a terrible shame cos you was desperate to stay with him, cos he was the one yer really liked.’
Cissie rolled her eyes at the ceiling. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
Lil shrugged. ‘It worked out all right, didn’t it? He was already taking the bets like for himself, just like his dad used to, but he earnt a whole lot more once he started up for Turner—’
‘You mean he really was running a book for him?’
‘Course he was.’
‘And you knew all along?’
‘Blimey, Cissie. Course I did. I was his bleed’n mother, wasn’t I?’
Cissie was too dumbfounded to answer.
‘Well, it was nice, wasn’t it, having the extra money?’ Lil smiled, a sly, slow smile. ‘’Specially when everyone else round here was doing so bad. It made me feel proud, being able to flash a few quid about.’
She drained the last of the tea into her cup and lit herself another cigarette without offering one to Cissie.
‘But you know what it’s like.’ She was speaking as though Cissie was someone she was chatting to in the bus queue, rather than her son’s widow. ‘I had this feeling, deep down like, that having a little bit more would be even nicer. That’s when I put the idea in his head.’
‘What idea?’ Cissie asked flatly.
Lil smiled again, obviously pleased with the memory. ‘I told him he better watch himself, cos it was obvious, wasn’t it? Even though yer was married, a nice-looking girl like you, a girl what’d had plenty o’ blokes hanging around her in the past. Well, the first rich feller what showed a bit of interest, you’d be off with him, wouldn’t yer?’
‘You told him what?’ gasped Cissie, sending her chair flying as she sprang to her feet. ‘I ain’t never been with no one except Davy. No one!’
‘I didn’t think you had,’ she shrugged casually. ‘But what did that matter? He started doing other little jobs for Turner, and then a bit more besides – for himself like, and it all worked out all right, didn’t it?’
Calmly, Lil took a drag on her cigarette. ‘Well, at first it did. But it sort of got a bit out of hand. I must’ve pushed it too far. Saying how you was gonna leave him and that.’ Cissie was gripping the edge of the table. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, he sort o’ got carried away with the idea, didn’t he? And one night, when he got in right late, he come into me room, before he went upstairs to you, and he was crying his bloody eyes out. Like a right big baby he was.’
‘When? When was this?’
Lil thought for a moment. ‘Dunno. Ages ago. Matty could only have been a couple o’ months old, cos I’d just moved into that bloody front parlour, hadn’t I? I hate it in—’
‘Don’t even think o’ starting on that, Lil.’
‘Anyway,’ Lil wisely decided to continue, ‘it must have been about then. Well, he was moaning and groaning and carrying on.’ She shook her head fondly. ‘Silly sod. Anyone would have thought he’d committed a bloody murder, the way he was leading off.’
‘So what had he done?’ Cissie asked quietly. She was shaking all over.
‘He’d knocked off some little tart he’d picked up in a boozer near the market,’ Lil answered lightly. ‘He’d been feeling a bit sorry for himself, see? Wanted to prove he still had it in him. Yer know what fellers are like? Anyway, after that, it didn’t seem to worry him so much. He just got on with it. But he always told his old mum about his latest girls, and there was enough of ’em.’
Before Lil realised what was happening, Cissie had smacked the cigarette from her grasp with one hand and had caught her a stinging wallop across the cheek with the other.
‘You vicious, spiteful…’ Cissie couldn’t go on, words failed her.
<
br /> Lil rose to her feet. ‘Yer’ll be sorry you ever raised yer hand to me,’ she seethed.
‘Aw no, Lil, you’ve got that wrong,’ Cissie breathed. ‘I ain’t the one who’s gonna be sorry.’
Chapter 20
‘You said yer wanted yer answer today. About the shop lease.’
Having refused a seat, Cissie was standing in front of Clayborne’s desk. Her mouth was dry and her legs felt as though they might buckle under her at any moment, but she was determined to keep her chin in the air and her voice steady.
If she hadn’t been in such a state of raw-nerved anxiety, Cissie would have realised that Clayborne was in a far worse state than she was. In fact, if she had just looked at him, rather than stood before him addressing him as though he were a public meeting, she would have realised that there was something very wrong with Clayborne indeed.
‘That’s right ain’t it?’ she went on, with a superior flick of her eyebrow. ‘Yer wanted it today? Well, I’ve come to give it to yer.’
‘I’m very glad, Mrs Flowers,’ Clayborne replied weakly. ‘Delighted.’
Every word Claybome uttered made his chest hurt like hell. Turner had done his usual skilful job when he’d worked him over the day before. He’d hurt him good and proper without leaving a single visible mark on him. To all intents and purposes, Clayborne didn’t even have so much as a cat scratch. Unlike some of his less refined henchmen, Turner was a real professional when it came to beating people up.
‘Me name ain’t Flowers,’ Cissie snapped back, the pain of Lil’s words from the night before hurting her, did Clayborne only but know it, far more than his bruises were hurting him. ‘It’s Prentice.’
Cissie spelt out the name for him so that there would be no further mistakes. ‘And I can’t say as I even like Prentice very much, to tell yer the truth,’ she added, dragging her handbag further up her arm.
She could hardly keep still, it was as though she was standing barefoot on broken glass. She fiddled with her gloves, then stuffed them into her swagger coat pocket, tugged at her fringe, then tucked her hair behind her ears.
It was so claustrophobic standing there in Clayborne’s dismal, rotten office, with him staring up at her, appraising her, through his watery hazel eyes. It was like being some clapped-out, cheap old brass standing on a street corner while a dithering punter tried to make up his mind whether she was worth the ten bob he had left in his pocket.
That might have been how Clayborne made her feel, but Cissie didn’t look like some low-cost streetwalker. Far from it. She looked good, and she had every right to. She had taken so much care over her appearance that morning; she had dressed as though she was attending a wedding, had put on her powder and lipstick as though she was the bride herself, and had polished her shoes until they shone like mirrors. Cissie had decided that if she was to keep any sort of control of the situation where she would be dealing with a man who spoke as though he had swallowed a mouthful of prunes, then she would have to feel good about herself, and for her that meant looking good too.
But it hadn’t been easy. As she’d woken that morning, after what had seemed like a night spent wide awake and staring up at the ceiling with tears streaming down her cheeks and into her ears, the thought of Davy going with other women had stabbed into her mind as surely and as viciously as a kick in the kidneys or a stiletto blade across the cheek could ever have done.
Davy and other women. It was enough to kill her.
She’d rolled herself out of bed, had snatched the photograph of her, Matty and Davy at Southend off the side, and had shoved it roughly into the bottom drawer of the tallboy, where it could stay for ever for all she cared. Lil and her heartless, ugly words had ripped the very soul out of what Cissie had most cherished, and she would never, ever forgive her.
‘So, Mrs Prentice.’ Clayborne pronounced her name with great care. ‘You’re ready to sign the lease. I’m very pleased to hear that.’
Sticking her chin even further in the air, and looking down her nose at him, Cissie said calmly, ‘I said I’ve come to give yer me answer, Mr Clayborne. But I didn’t say what me answer was gonna be. And, if yer must know, you can stick yer lease, cos me answer’s no. I wouldn’t sign that bloody lease if it had flaming bells dangling off it.’
Clayborne bent forward across the desk. He was propped on the very edge of his seat. His body blazed with fresh agony every time he moved, but he knew he had to persuade her. He had to. He had to make her see sense.
‘But I don’t think you fully understand the implications, Mrs Prentice,’ he wheezed urgently.
Cissie frowned. Clayborne sounded odd, sort of fidgety. Why should he give a toss about whether it was her or one of a million other flower sellers who rented his poncey shop? She’d already made it quite clear that she wasn’t interested in having any of his funny business. He could have offered her a double-fronted property, wrapped in red ribbons, right in the middle of bloody Regent Street and she still wouldn’t have changed her mind.
All right, she had her price, Cissie knew that now, and would have to come to terms with the fact that she had, over the years, chosen to turn a blind eye to the question of how Davy had managed to provide so well for them during such hard times. But her price would never be the sort that Clayborne or Big Bill Turner had in mind. That was a price she would never pay. Not ever.
‘I dunno if yer’ve got something stuck in yer lug’oles, Mr Clayborne, but I told yer, me answer’s no,’ she said firmly. She rocked back on her heels and folded her arms challengingly across her chest. ‘I think it’s you what don’t understand. I ain’t interested. And that’s final.’
‘But you can’t mean—’ he breathed, his eyes closing with the effort of speaking.
‘Aw yes I can. I can mean anything I bloody well like. But if yer too stupid to get what I’m on about, I’ll spell it out for yer, shall I? You, Mr Clayborne, can take yer offer and stick it right up yer jacksie with both hands. Understand that all right, do yer? Clear enough for yer? Cos I’m telling yer, I don’t need the likes of you, or yer nasty, snide little offers of help. I’m gonna manage just fine. And without your sweaty little mitt going up me skirt for a feel whenever yer fancy a bit on the side from Mrs Clayborne, whoever she is the poor cow.’
Clayborne was feeling hysterical. He let out a strangulated giggle, an anxious titter more suited to an elderly aunt at a tea party than to a supposedly powerful property developer. ‘And how exactly do you think someone in your position, Mrs Prentice, will be able to manage?’ he gasped, clutching at any straw that might save him from another kicking.
Infuriated by such a personal question from such a disgustingly sordid, horrible man, Cissie stabbed her finger at him across the desk. ‘I’ll tell you how, Mr Clayborne,’ she yelled, the force of her anger making him shrink back in his seat – a sudden move that he, and his pain-wracked body, immediately regretted. ‘I’m going into the grocery business, that’s how.’
‘The grocery business?’ he stammered, smacked in the face by this latest twist of madness.
He cast a hasty glance over his shoulder and then lowered his voice to a barely audible rasp. ‘May I ask how you intend doing so?’
‘I dunno why yer whispering, Mr Clayborne. The way you’re acting, anyone’d think being a grocer’s something to be ashamed of. But let me tell you, I’m proud I’m gonna do it. Proud. D’you hear me? You’re the one who should be sodding ashamed. Thinking yer can buy people with a sodding shop lease. I’m worth more than that. And I’ve made the right decision. A decent decision. The sort of decision what the likes of you wouldn’t even begin to know nothing about.’
Cissie was shouting angrily, but from her expression and her tone of voice, it should have been more than obvious to Clayborne, had he not been in such a state of shock, that she was trying harder to convince herself than him by what she was saying.
‘And it’s gonna make my life better than it’s ever been,’ she went on. ‘Better than…’ Her word
s trailed away. ‘Ever.’
‘But surely, Mrs Prentice, you must see that you should at least reconsider.’ Clayborne was pleading with her, his voice rising to a pitiable whine. ‘You have no experience of that type of business.’
‘No, yer right. I ain’t. But the bloke what I’m gonna marry has.’
While Cissie was standing there, stunned at the words she had just spoken, the words that she’d actually said out loud as though she really meant them, the door behind Clayborne flew open and Big Bill Turner burst into the room.
As Turner pushed past Clayborne’s desk and loomed over Cissie, Jim Phillips followed him into the room at a far slower pace, a pace that had more to do with nerves than with dignity.
‘You stupid little tart!’ Turner spat each word at her as though he were a reptile ejecting venom at his victim, his face an ugly mask of twisted hatred. From the look of him he’d been up all night, his clothes were creased, he needed a shave, and his oiled hair had flopped forward over his eyes.
‘Yer gonna chuck yerself away on some bastard grocer? Throw away the one decent chance yer’ll ever have to better yerself?’
Cissie was so overcome by the anger, the stench of stale booze and the wafts of cigar smoke that Turner had brought with him — and the sight of the trail of saliva that was dribbling disgustingly from the corner of his slack red mouth – that it took her a while to register what she was actually seeing: Turner was somehow associated with Clayborne.
And Jim Phillips. What was he doing here? None of it made sense.
Cissie ran her hands through her hair, staring wildly about her.
When the realisation of what was happening finally dawned on her, Cissie was almost too incensed to speak. Her mouth opened and closed, but no words, no fully formed words that is, came out. It took a few moments of real effort for her even to begin to make herself coherent.
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