Anyone Who Had a Heart (6 page)

‘You’re new. I have to be sure about the quality of your work before allowing you to make uniforms,’ Miss Gardner had stated. ‘If you’re good enough we might even ask you to work full time.’

Working full time was the last thing she wanted, but she didn’t say so. The work was mind-numbing but she kept her head down and got on with it. Besides Miss Gardner and Miss Pope, eight seamstresses were employed; two were close to her own age, two just entering their twenties. The other women were older. Like the other girls they were all unmarried.

Marcie was wary of becoming too friendly with any of them. No one on Sheppey was that much of a stranger, but luckily there was no one there who knew her. Most of them lived closer to the hospital than she did, but one person did recognise her.

Mary Durban was about forty-five with iron-grey
hair
and pink-rimmed glasses. Just a few hours into the job and she caught Marcie in the ladies’ cloakroom washing her hands.

‘Here. Am I right in thinking that you’re Tony Brooks’ girl?’

Marcie went cold inside but couldn’t deny it. ‘That’s right. He’s my dad.’

Mary beamed and the pale eyes behind the pink glasses twinkled. ‘We were at school together, me and your dad. Well, not exactly together. He was in the secondary boys and I was in the girls. But we boys and girls used to get together after school. You know how it is. I had a crush on your dad. My, but he was a good-looking bloke back then. Best in the school with his dark Mediterranean looks. Not that he would have given me a second glance. He could have any girl he wanted. And he did!’

‘Is that right.’ Marcie smiled nervously. She didn’t know quite what else to say. On the one hand she didn’t want to appear unfriendly; on the other she was loathe to become too close and have Mary asking her questions. Miss Gardner had been very specific about not employing married women whether they had children or not. She needed this job. She couldn’t afford to lose it.

The hospital had a canteen. All the girls and women employed in the sewing room went there. Marcie made the decision not to, afraid that she might
inadvertently
let something slip and her secret would be discovered once everyone was away from the strict discipline imposed by Miss Gardner and Miss Pope. Instead she went out of the hospital and round to the shops. She found a small park where she could sit and eat the sandwiches her grandmother had prepared for her. That was OK on fine days, but in bad weather it wasn’t so good. She sat shivering beneath an umbrella, the rain dripping in silvery drops from the ends of the spokes. The pigeons came scrounging around her feet come rain or shine.

It was on one such day when she was watching a group of pigeons scrambling for the pieces of crust that someone discovered her. The pigeons scattered as a cigarette end landed on the ground. The steel-capped toe of a black work boot stubbed it into the tarmac path.

‘Well, I never. It’s Marcie Brooks. What you doing ’ere then?’

Bully Price was younger than her. She estimated he was probably fifteen though he had the body and height of someone far older. He was looking down at her with what passed for a smile on his face.

‘Eating my lunch,’ she said warily. She’d crossed Bully’s path before and the experience had been far from pleasant. Bully’s real name was Billy but the nickname suited him down to the ground. He’d always been a gang leader and intimidator of small fry – young boys
like
her brothers and the vulnerable like Garth Davies. She’d given him a good talking to, on more than one occasion, not that it had done any good. Although he was younger than she was, Bully had a thing about her. She’d much prefer to avoid him if possible.

He didn’t ask whether he could sit beside her on the park bench; Bully never asked to do anything. He just did it.

He smelled of oil.

‘Left school now. Got meself a job in a garage. An apprenticeship, like.’

‘I guessed.’

He laughed. ‘Yeah. Great boots. Great overalls.’

She didn’t look at him but sensed by the tone of his voice that he was beaming broadly.

One of the boots kicked out when a pigeon came looking to retrieve a piece of bread. It fluttered off in a flurry of feathers.

‘Not doing too bad for money now. I don’t get much on the apprentice front, but the boss lets me do a bit of overtime and pays me full rate for that. He’s not supposed to really, but a bloke’s got to have a few shillings for nights out, know what I mean?’

Suddenly she knew where this was going and was ready to laugh in his face at the thought of it.

‘So how’s the youngster?’

The question took her off guard. This was not the one she’d been expecting.

She decided to play ignorant. ‘Youngster?’

‘Your kid. I heard you had a kid. Heard the father got smashed up on the North Circular. That right?’

Marcie exhaled a deep breath and said in a small voice, that yes, Johnnie had been killed in a road accident.

She felt him glance down at her left hand.

‘Didn’t get round to marrying you then?’

She curled her fingers into her palm wishing she’d brought the pretend wedding ring in her pocket for use in moments like these. Lying was not second nature to her but under the circumstances the lie was preferable to leaving Bully to make his own conclusion.

‘I don’t mind if a girl’s made a mistake. I’d still take her out.’

There it was; the question she’d sensed was coming.

‘How about coming with me to the pictures? There’s a good one on at the minute.
Bonnie and Clyde
. There’s a lot of blood in it. How about it?’

Marcie had heard about the film. There was a lot of controversy about the violence in it.

‘It’s an eighteen certificate,’ she said matter-of-factly.

‘Yeah. I know it is. I only go to over eighteen or X-rated films. I don’t like soppy stuff.’

Marcie was under no illusion that if she consented to go with him she’d spend most of the film fighting
him
off. In the darkness his hands would be everywhere. The thought of him trying to kiss her made her feel sick.

She felt his arm sliding along the back of the bench, his hand heading for her shoulder.

‘You have to be an adult to watch X-rated films,’ she muttered, meaning to say that he was still a child.

He bent his head, ducked beneath the umbrella and looked up into her face. ‘Now come on, Marcie. Do I look like a little kid?’

He smirked at the thought of anyone thinking his overlarge frame was below eighteen years of age. He definitely had a point, but it altered nothing for Marcie. There was no way she wished to accompany Bully Price anywhere.

‘No, thank you.’

He looked surprised at her rejection, the smirk sliding into a sneer.

‘Washing your hair or something?’

Marcie made an instant decision. She’d stood up to him in the past, and she’d damn well stand up to him now.

She sprang to her feet, her half-eaten sandwiches falling to the ground. ‘No. I just don’t want to go out with you.’

‘Just because you’re older than me? That don’t make no difference. No difference at all.’

The sun was coming out. She shook her head at
the
same time as shaking the rain from her umbrella. ‘That isn’t the reason, Billy. The fact is I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all.’

To her great surprise he laughed at that. ‘What’s that got to do with anything? Fact is, Marcie Brooks, who else is going to bother with soiled goods? Granted you’re a tasty-looking bird, but you’ve been broken in.’

‘Broken in!’ Marcie recoiled with horror. ‘I am not a bloody horse, Billy Price! You’re disgusting … a disgusting little boy!’

That sickly grin returned to his face. ‘No I’m not,’ he said, towering above her now and clutching his crotch. ‘I’m a big boy. I can show you if you like.’

Marcie didn’t give him chance. Swinging the closed umbrella in a wide arc, she brought it smashing across the side of his head. Only the fact that his boots were heavy stopped him from falling over.

Feeling elated, she stalked off with her head in the air. The fact that he was shouting after her made no difference to the lightness of her footsteps. She imagined that if she cared to look down her feet would be floating four inches off the ground.

‘You just wait, Marcie Brooks. I’ll bring you down a peg. You’ll come running then when no other man wants you. You just see if you don’t.’

LONDON WAS GREY
and it was raining. So much for April.

Tony Brooks was uncomfortable with what his new employer was asking him to do. I must have mellowed with age, he thought to himself.

‘I just want them to understand that I am not a fucking charity. They owe me nearly a fiver in back rent. Sort the dough out or chuck them out. That’s the terms of my contract.’

Victor Camilleri leaned back in his leather swivel chair and placed his feet on the desk, crossing them at the ankles. His footwear was shiny and begged attention though Tony knew better than to stare at them. Victor wore a made-up boot on his right foot. Rumour had it that he’d suffered polio as a child. But nobody was so stupid as to ask why the built-up boot and the limp; nobody would dare.

Tony knew that Victor did not give the tenants of his rotten properties the kind of written contracts like the sort he’d signed with the council. They were told verbally what the terms were: you pay the rent or piss off.

Some of the punters who rented flats and bedsits from Victor deserved to get a bit of aggro. Most paid up pretty promptly once Tony and another bloke, Bernie, went calling round. The majority were immigrants and were having trouble finding jobs let along paying the rent. Colour prejudice meant what jobs there were – mainly with London Transport and British Rail – were fought over. The same prejudice also prevailed in the private renting sector. That’s why Victor could charge what he did for property in the East End of London, most of it earmarked for demolition and redevelopment. In the meantime people lived in buildings where the brickwork was mouldering as a result of age, neglect and bomb damage. One of Victor’s flats was better than no flat at all.

‘Right,’ said Victor at last. ‘Go to it, boys.’

Bernie followed Tony out of Victor’s office, leaving their employer lighting up yet another King Edward, his expensive suede shoes resting on the desk.

Bernie offered Tony a Woodbine.

Tony eyed it ruefully. ‘Christ! How can you smoke that crap after getting a sniff of that cigar?’

Bernie laughed. ‘Victor’s the business, and that’s a fact.’

Tony opted to drive. That way he didn’t
have
to smoke. The fact was that sometimes this job turned his stomach. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the people
he
had to face; on the contrary, he felt sorry for some of them, hence the terrible taste in his mouth. A cigarette would have tasted pretty grim, hence refusing one.

He’d been cock-a-hoop when he’d first got the job with Victor Camilleri. His reputation had been carried by word of mouth straight to the big Sicilian’s front door. There were no takers for the job besides him. He chose to believe that this was because everyone knew he was the best man for the job and nobody wanted to cross him. He chose to blot out the fact that the previous incumbent had got knifed in the guts by a West Indian pimp who hadn’t quite got the lay of the land just yet – the criminal land that is.

The ‘tenant’ today lived on the ground floor of a Victorian tenement.

Tony looked up at the dirty brickwork. ‘I bet you can see all the way to Battersea Bridge from the top of this place.’

Bernie giggled. ‘Yeah. The last view a punter’s likely to get before they spin down to the ground like a bleeding Sputnik.’

He got no response from Tony, who liked to think he was hard but fair. He also liked to think he had more of a brain than Bernie. All Bernie had were big meaty hands and a temper that was the wrong side of normal.

Six stone steps led up to a wide front door. The
door
had chipped paint and a huge knocker with a big black knob underneath. Not that they needed to knock. They had keys, not that they needed them; the door was already ajar.

The hallway smelled of stale cabbage and chip fat. A pram was parked against the right wall, another a bit further along against the left. On glancing into the pram Tony saw a pair of small brown fists like blobs of chocolate against the pure white of a knitted blanket.

Bernie got in front of Tony, fist already bunched to hammer on the door.

Tony eased him out of the way. ‘My job I think.’

He was right. It was his job to give out the official line – the demand for payment. A Mrs Ella Reynolds lived here. She owed three weeks rent at ten and six a week running to a total of one pound eleven shillings and sixpence. As far as Victor was concerned, it was a fair deal even though it did not include electricity and gas which was paid for by slot meters.

He caught a glimpse of a door opening further along the passage and a pair of frightened eyes peering out. One glance at the visitors and the door closed again. Everyone knew who they were – or at least, the tenants of this place certainly did.

A young and pretty black woman came to the door. She had a toddler clinging to her skirts and her dark eyes flickered nervously. For a moment Tony
half
expected her to shut the door in his face. It wouldn’t be the first time.

‘Well now, Mrs Reynolds. What appears to be the problem?’

He heard Bernie giggling behind him. Bernie thought he handled matters too politely and sounded like a copper. He didn’t care. Bernie would give the woman a clumping without a second thought. He wouldn’t. That was the difference between him and Bernie. He knew when to go for it and when not to.

Mrs Reynolds wrapped her hand around the small child’s head, clamping her to her skirt. It was as though there was strength in melding them both together. There wasn’t, but Mrs Reynolds was frightened.

‘My husband, Joe, he’s gone down the National Assistance,’ she said in a thick Jamaican accent. ‘Joe pay when he get back.’