Anyone Who Had a Heart (7 page)

Her voice was stridently brave. Tony found himself admiring her and the gutsy way she was protecting her kid. He thought about Marcie. Unlike Mrs Reynolds she had no man to put the bread on the table. He knew how he would feel if anyone went around demanding money she couldn’t pay from his daughter. He’d fucking kill ’em!

‘Look, love,’ he said, lowering his face so they were eye to eye. ‘Mr Camilleri let you have this place out of the goodness of his heart when nobody else would
give
you house room being as you’re of a coloured persuasion. Know what I mean?’

She nodded slowly.

‘But he didn’t let you have it for free. That was not the intention,’ Tony went on. ‘He let you have this place out of the kindness of his heart and ten shillings and sixpence a week. Right?’

Mrs Reynolds nodded her head very slowly, her eyes round with fear. Sensing her mother’s discomfort, the toddler began to cry.

‘Joe pay you,’ said Mrs Reynolds.

‘And when might that be?’

‘When he comes home. He pay you then.’

Tony shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible Mrs Reynolds. Either I get paid now or take goods to the value of – got it?’

‘Like this pram.’

Tony turned round. Bernie was jiggling the pram so violently that the baby was rolling from side to side, bouncing off the inside padding.

‘Ain’t much of a pram though. Might improve it a bit if I push it down the steps and out in the road. Maybe a bus might run it down and make it look better. Bit squashed though.’

Mrs Reynolds screamed, ‘No!’

Tony grabbed the handle of the battered pram, which was worth practically nothing. The baby had started to cry.

‘Leave it out, Bernie.’

He gave the big bruiser a warning look. Though Bernie was an ape in a suit, he had respect for the geezers who gave the orders. Tony was the man, so Bernie obeyed, though he did point at Mrs Reynolds and tell her the boss would not be pleased.

No, thought Tony. The boss wouldn’t be pleased and even if he let Mrs Reynolds off, Bernie would spin a tale. The fact was that Tony was beginning to feel sorry for her. He kept thinking of his Marcie. He couldn’t shift the similarities from his mind.

‘Let’s go inside and discuss this further, shall we, Mrs Reynolds?’

He picked the baby up and told Bernie to stay where he was.

‘Mrs Reynolds and I will go inside to discuss business. No point in upsetting the kids now is there.’

Looking hesitantly up at him – no doubt worried she was letting someone in who was going to rough her and the kids up a bit – she let him in anyway.

‘Shut the door, Mrs Reynolds.’

Tony handed over the baby.

‘I haven’t got any money. Not yet.’

Tony’s eyes swept the cramped room the family lived in. The kitchen was in a small aperture behind a green chenille curtain.

Mrs Reynolds was rocking the crying infant in her arms. The toddler was crying at her skirt.

Tony looked deeply into her eyes. ‘You have to pay, Mrs Reynolds. You know that, don’t you?’

She nodded, her big eyes seeming to fill her face.

It was alien in this game, but he couldn’t help being sympathetic. Tony, my old son, you’re losing it, he thought to himself. You must be getting old.

‘Look. An old mate of mine works for the bus company. Get your old man to go along there. Ask for Jim Collins and tell him that Tony Brooks sent him along. Got that?’

She stared at him a second then her bottom lip began to tremble. ‘I don’t know … I might forget … me memory …’

‘Got a pencil? A piece of paper?’

She grabbed a child’s crayon from the table. Tony tore a scrap of paper from the back of her rent book and wrote the details down.

‘Get him to see Jim. He might be able to help.’

The face that had been so taut with fear now relaxed a little. Mrs Reynolds gave a small smile.

‘My Joe! He bin trying to get a job on the buses.’

Tony nodded. He was sticking his neck out and neither he nor Mrs Reynolds was out of the woods yet.

‘There’s still the matter of the outstanding rent,’ Tony said to her.

She shrugged helplessly. ‘I do have a ten bob note in me purse. I was keeping it to buy my groceries.
Milk
for the baby … and Theresa. I don’t mind going without meself …’

Tony held up his hand. ‘This time we skip it. Just make sure you pay the next time the collector comes round.’

He knew it was foolish, but when he turned for the door he got a fiver out of his pocket and entered it in the record book. He also recorded it in her rent book.

‘You owe me now,’ he told her.

She stared at him in disbelief.

‘Just one thing,’ he added. ‘You tell no one. Right? Not even your old man. If anyone goes shooting off their mouth, we’re all up the Swanee. Right?’

The rest of the rent collecting went as per normal. At the end of the day Tony went for a drink at his favourite East End pub. Around about eight o’clock he phoned the phone box at the end of Grafton Street where he, Babs and their three kids rented a council house. There were always kids playing out in the street so no problem it going on ringing indefinitely.

A kid answered. ‘Yeah? Who’s that?’

‘Tony Brooks.’

‘Dad!’

It was Arnold, one of his boys.

‘Arnold, mate. How the devil are you my son?’

‘I’m alright, Dad. We’ve chucked a rope over a lamppost and made it into a swing.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yeah. Our Archie’s on it at the minute. Do you want me to get him?’

‘No. I just want you to tell your mother and your grandmother that I’m home this weekend. Can you do that?’

‘Yeah. Mum’s down at the chippie at the minute. Our Annie’s round with Gran.’

‘Great. I’ll leave you to take care of it, son. OK?’

‘OK, Dad.’

Tony was thoughtful as he replaced the phone. He loved his kids and of course he wanted to see them again. Even little Annie. He’d never been quite sure whether she was his or not. Babs had put it about a bit in her time. But even that didn’t matter now. The problem was Mrs Reynolds – Ella. He wanted to see her again too.

MARCIE TOLD NO
one about her run in with Bully Price. The fact was that not only was she worried he might blab her circumstances where hospital staff hung around, she had been mortified by his terminology. He’d disgusted her with the words he’d used when applied to her, just a girl who’d got pregnant without being married. Would it always be like this? she wondered. Would she always be thought of as a girl who was easy, bestowing her favours on anyone who wanted them?

The thought of it made her sick. Only the fact that she loved Joanna so much prevented her from regretting what she had done.

Deep in thought over her sewing, she didn’t immediately hear her grandmother speaking.

‘Marcie! You are not listening to me?’

‘Sorry.’ She jerked her head up. Her cool blue eyes met the jet-black ones of her grandmother.

‘I said your father is coming home this weekend. The boys came round to tell me.’

Marcie was pleased to hear it. ‘This dress will be finished by then,’ she said as she lovingly caressed
the
peacock-green material. ‘I’m hoping Angie will have sold the other two.’

Her happiness was infectious. Her grandmother smiled at the same time as rubbing the heated iron over a pure linen sheet. ‘You will be like Coco Chanel in no time.’

‘I’d prefer to be like Mary Quant,’ said Marcie. ‘Or Biba.’

Her grandmother shook her head. ‘I do not know these people I only know that there is no chic like French chic.’

Marcie had no ambition to be plain chic or French chic. She wanted to be fabulously fashionable in a young person’s way. For the younger generation, the biggest name of all was Mary Quant. That was who she wanted to be.

Joanna had settled down to sleep. Marcie was tired but determined to finish what she was doing even though her eyes were sore.

She fancied her grandmother was watching her.

‘The hospital job will not last. You know that, don’t you?’ her grandmother said softly.

There were very logical reasons why the job wouldn’t last, though Marcie had not voiced them. She nodded. ‘I know. It’s very boring work in any case. If I could succeed in the world of fashion …’

‘It will happen.’

Her grandmother sounded very sure about it and
when
Marcie looked up into her weathered face, she saw there what seemed like strength. She knew that look, knew what it meant. Her grandmother was willing her to succeed. Somehow the old woman was reaching out to her, offering her own strength to bolster her granddaughter’s. Either that or she knew what would happen in the future. She did that sometimes, seeing what people could not see for themselves.

There was a big party when Tony Brooks came back to Sheppey. That was the way it was with the Brooks family. He had money to spend and what was money for if not for spending? The music was loud, the voices were raucous and those neighbours that did complain were invited to join in.

He came home on a Saturday and, much to his wife’s annoyance, went round to see his mother before going home to see her.

‘Had to see my favourite girls,’ he said kissing mother, daughter and granddaughter in turn.

Marcie had just finished pressing the second dress she’d made that week for Angie’s Boutique. It had been two weeks since she’d taken the first two round and they’d sold within that time. Now there were two more ready to be delivered. Her father said he was proud of her.

‘Were you going on the bus with them?’ he asked.

She told him that had been her intention.

‘I’ve got the car outside. Hop in,’ he said, straightening his tie, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘You coming too, Ma?’ he said. ‘Bring the kid. After the frocks are delivered, I’ll get my old lady to make us a cuppa. How does that grab you?’

It grabbed them right enough, though how it would grab Babs to have everyone descend on her at Tony’s invitation was another matter. Especially seeing as he hadn’t reported home first.

Marcie could forgive him for that. Her stepmother was hardly top of the pops on her personal chart. They tolerated each other and that was it.

Angie was over the moon with the new dresses. She paid Marcie her share of the dresses she’d already sold. She also put in an order for what she wanted next.

‘I’d like some geometric ones,’ she informed Marcie. ‘The dress divided into four quarters: black on the right chest, white on the left, black from the waist down on the left and white on the right. They’re all the rage in London at the moment.’

Marcie didn’t need to be told that. She read every fashion magazine she could get her hands on. She promised she’d have two dresses of that style ready by the end of the following week.

The two dresses had sold for three pounds nineteen
shillings
and eleven pence each. Angie gave her seventy per cent of the sale as promised.

Marcie was over the moon. What with her wages of four pounds ten shillings and sixpence a week from the hospital, plus the extra from her freelance work, she wasn’t flush but was doing well enough.

Her father questioned the amount when she told him.

‘I thought you were going to get more than that.’

It was true. They had discussed her ending up with around fifteen pounds per week – a wonderful sum. Unfortunately Angie hadn’t been able to sell the dresses for as much as she’d initially hoped. They had to face hard facts.

‘This isn’t London. People aren’t going to pay that much for a dress here. In London I could make that easily. I could make even more if all I was doing was designing and running up dresses. As it is I can only do it in my spare time. I have Joanna to think about.’

Her father turned thoughtful as they headed for the council house he shared with Babs, the two boys and little Annie.

Babs wasn’t at home.

‘She’s having her hair set round Doreen’s,’ young Archie pronounced. ‘I expect she’ll come back with it in one of them bouffers or something.’

They all knew he meant bouffant but didn’t bother to correct him. Archie was almost eleven and swiftly
growing
into a know-all and hated being told he was wrong.

‘Better get round and tell her I’m home and we’re all parched for a cuppa.’

He gave Archie sixpence. His younger brother Arnold held out his hand too so he had to give him the same.

Marcie put the kettle on and got out Babs’ best tea service of yellow cups and saucers with white spots all over them.

Babs came running round with her hair still in curlers and a fag hanging from the corner of her mouth. A multi-striped towel flapped around her shoulders.

‘You didn’t tell me you was bringing the family over!’ she snapped at Tony.

Marcie’s grandmother fixed her with black button eyes. ‘Are we welcome or are we not?’

Eyes outlined in black pencil and caked mascara flickered nervously and Babs managed a tight smile. ‘Course you are, Ma. It’s just that I’d made arrangements to have me hair done. If he’d said he was bringing you over, the kettle would have been on. But that’s my old man. Never tells me anything,’ she added, throwing a look in his direction.

Tony ignored both her look and the accusation in her tone. He slid his hand into his coat pocket.

‘Here. Have a tenner. Buy yourself something nice.’

Marcie poured the tea, but didn’t miss a thing. If there was one way to get to her stepmother’s heart, a ten pound note would do very nicely.

The boys had been given sixpence each to fetch their mother, but their father added a further half a crown. ‘Get yourself some fish and chips.’

They didn’t need telling twice.

‘Like greyhounds at the White City,’ their father observed as they ran off, knees grubby beneath short flannel trousers and long grey socks at half mast.

Marcie felt her stepmother’s eyes on her as she gave Joanna and Annie, her half-sister, a biscuit each.

‘That’s a nice dress. I saw one a bit like it in that shop that’s opened – a boutique they call it.’