Playing Around (3 page)

‘Do you mind?’

‘Sorry.’ He sucked noisily on his teeth trying to dislodge a piece of bacon.

He was driving her to bloody distraction. She stomped over to the sink and dumped the plate on the side, ready for the daily to deal with. Daily! That was a laugh. Despite how well Sonia treated her, the cow
couldn’t
even be bothered to drag her fat, lazy arse over to the flat just because it was a Sunday, so the dirty dishes and clearing up just accumulated over the weekend until Monday morning. It was disgusting. Just like him.

‘David, I have to know.’ She stared down at the filthy plate, took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been very quiet. Have I upset you in some way?’

David made a show of thinking about it. ‘Nothing that occurs,’ he lied, leaning back in his chair. He reached out and pinched her – hard – on her neat little backside. ‘Just appreciating your cooking, darling.’

Sonia closed her eyes. Thank God for that. She wasn’t ready – not yet, anyway – to give up everything that the aggravating, uncivilized swine could give her. She intended to accumulate rather more in her private account before she did that.

So, Sonia Fuller, time to be nice.

She turned round to face him. ‘I might change my hairstyle,’ she said, flirting down at him through her lashes. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you’d look the business whatever you do with that barnet of your’n.’

‘You are sweet,’ she pouted, and ran a perfectly manicured fingernail across his cheek.

Just like she’d done to him. To bloody Mikey Tilson. David could have killed her stone dead on the spot. But he wasn’t going to. Not yet, anyway. He was a man who knew the value of hiding his hand.

By biding his time he could make a situation really work for him, when other men didn’t realize that a situation even existed. He’d show the pair of them, and any other disloyal fucker, exactly who was in charge, that he couldn’t be monkeyed around with. Any idiot who thought they could cross him would see exactly
who
called the tunes in David Fuller’s organization. He’d make them suffer. All of them. In all sorts of ways.

He shoved his chair away from the table and stood up. He hadn’t gone from errand boy to top man by being impatient; he’d got there by using his brain. He tightened the robe round his taut, muscled belly and smiled to himself. And by using his brawn, of course. What was more, he enjoyed playing games. It amused him. Even his teachers had said he was always playing around, always acting the goat. And they’d been right. Mind you, they’d been wrong about one thing. They’d all said he would never amount to anything. That he would never get anywhere, that he’d stay stuck in the same, poxy, Bethnal Green backstreet he’d been born in for the rest of his natural. He’d like to see their faces now. He’d rub their sneering, bastard noses right in it.

‘Don’t you drive that thing too fast, will you, love?’ Tilly Murray and her daughter Jackie stood on the Cardinal-red doorstep, watching Martin and Angie standing on the other side of the privet hedge, preparing to set off on the Lambretta.

Jackie was grinning at them in bemusement. Did her big brother actually fancy Angie? She was her best friend, had been ever since she could remember, but
Angie
? Nobody could ever rate her as fanciable, and, as much as she teased her brother, Jackie had to admit Martin was considered something of a catch. It was all very strange.

While Jackie grinned, Tilly frowned: the concerned mother hen. Rotten scooters, why ever had she let Stan talk her into letting their boy get one in the first place? Bloody deathtraps. You heard such stories.

‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll take care of her.’ Martin handed Angie a crash helmet, a rarity amongst image
conscious
mods, with a dramatic flourish. ‘See, look how responsible I am.’

Tilly flapped her tea towel at her son in surrender and went back indoors to work her way through the mounds of clearing and washing-up that cooking a decent Sunday dinner for her family inevitably seemed to result in.

Jackie stayed where she was, watching her brother’s every move with a confused fascination, but had she been close enough to notice how Angie was quivering as Martin bent forward to fasten the helmet under her chin, she would have been genuinely amazed.

Misreading Angie’s excitement for resistance, Martin whispered to her, ‘Don’t worry, Squirt, I know it’s a bit big, but I’ll stop round the corner and you can take it off again.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Don’t want to mess up your hair, now, do we?’

Angie suddenly visualized what a shocking state her greasy brown hair, only partly dragged back in an elastic band, was in and what it must look like poking out from under the helmet. She snatched a crafty look at herself in one of Martin’s long-stemmed side mirrors.

She looked ridiculous.

Why hadn’t she washed it this morning?

Why? Because her mum never had any change for the gas meter, that’s why, and any change Angie might have had in her purse would have disappeared, as usual, and boiling up kettles and saucepans to fill the plastic washing-up bowl in the sink took time, and all Angie could think of that morning was getting out of the house as soon as she could, and then—

‘You all right?’

‘Sorry?’

Martin zipped up his parka. ‘You looked like you were about to pass out. Not that frightening, am I?’

As she shook her head, vigorously denying such a preposterous idea, the loose helmet slipped round.

Stopped only by her nose from covering her entire face, it still managed to completely cover one eye. Forget frightened, he must think she was a moron.

Why couldn’t the ground just swallow her up and let her disappear?

‘Here, you daft doughnut, come here.’ Gently, he put the helmet back in place, then threw his leg across the scooter, and twisted round to help her on behind him. ‘Good job you don’t wear miniskirts, eh, Squirt?’

This was getting worse. Not only did her hair look a complete mess, she was now all too aware that she was wearing her old, brown, corduroy slacks, the ones her mum said made her look like a refugee from the Land Army – whatever that was – and here she was about to get a lift from Martin. Martin! With his scooter, with all the chrome, the big, waving aerial with its foxtail flying out behind, the latest, long-stemmed, shiny mirrors, and, most of all, him, with his brains, his mod haircut, and looking just completely, totally, gorgeous in his parka. What was she – what was he – thinking of?

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘Too much roly-poly, Ange?’ shouted Jackie with an encouraging wave. ‘Why don’t you hurry up and get on the back of that thing and clear off? The film’s coming on in a minute and I don’t want Dad settling down in front of the telly, thinking I’m going to let him watch some old rubbish on that BBC2.’

‘I thought I might go out for a walk.’ Sonia was peering round the door of what she referred to as the study, and what David called the spare room.

‘Hang on.’ David raised a finger to silence Sonia as he spoke into the telephone. ‘I’ll call you back.’ He
replaced
the receiver. ‘What did you say?’

‘Such a lovely afternoon. I thought I might take a stroll over to the park and have a look at the daffodils.’

‘Daffodils? You’ve got a flat full of sodding daffodils. And roses, and whatever else all them other flowers are.’ He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. ‘But what do I know? I just pay the florist’s bills.’

‘I’m bored.’

‘So why don’t you go and clear up the kitchen?’

Sonia ignored such an insulting suggestion. Instead, she stepped into the room and lifted her chin dramatically. ‘God, I hate Sundays. You’re always working. The shops are closed.’ She sighed loudly. ‘I am
so
bored.’

Abruptly, David stood up, knocking over his chair. ‘All right, you win. I’ll go out with you.’

This wasn’t the plan. ‘But—’

‘I’ll drop you over at Speaker’s Corner. You’ll have plenty of company there. And I can drop into the office. Like you say, some of us have plenty of work to get on with.’

This was more like it. She could almost have kissed him.

Almost.

‘Go and get your stuff, I’ll see you down in the car park in five minutes.’

As soon as Sonia was safely in the bedroom, buried in the delights of her walk-in, room-sized wardrobe, David made a telephone call.

‘Bobby. I’ve got a job for you.’

David watched Sonia hover around the edge of the throngs of tourists, as the regulars heckled and laughed at the placard-wearing preachers vying for the crowd’s attention at Speaker’s Corner. Exactly as he had
expected
, Sonia hung around, pretending she was interested in what was going on, but actually just waiting for him to leave.

David stayed where he was for a few more minutes, his blood pressure rising along with his temper, then, as soon as he caught sight of Bobby’s shiny black Humber approaching in his rear-view mirror, he did a screeching U-turn in the middle of the Bayswater Road, drove off at speed along Oxford Street, and then suddenly stopped his car with a squeal of brakes and a surprising mouthful of expletives from a passing middle-aged female dog-walker.

David slapped a ‘
DOCTOR ON CALL
’ sign on his dashboard, and ran across the road, flipping a two-fingered salute at a taxi driver who had almost run into him, and yanked open the door of the telephone box that stood on the corner of Duke Street.

‘Mikey?’

‘Yeah.’ He sounded put out. ‘That you, Guv?’

David’s jaw was rigid. ‘I need you over at the office.’

‘But, Guv—’

‘I’ve got a job for you. Be over in Greek Street in fifteen minutes or I’ll be all upset and think you don’t want to work for me no more.’

David knew that was enough of a threat. Even for a hard little bastard like Mikey Tilson.

Mikey Tilson, the bloke who David was now sure was shafting him in more ways than one.

As they whizzed their way along Goresbrook Road, heading for the A13, Angie breathed in great gulps of air and was sure she could smell the sweet scent of the bright flowering bulbs that swayed gently in the spring breeze in the neat little front gardens behind the privet hedges.

She had nearly swooned when Martin told her she could either lean back and grip on to the chrome luggage holder behind her, or lean forward against him and put her arms, tightly, round his waist. She had, of course, opted for leaning back, although she had regretted it immediately. So, when Martin stopped the scooter on the corner of Flamstead Road for her to take off the helmet – just as he had promised! – she resolved, just as soon as they were mobile again, to hold on to him rather than on to the cold metal.

But Martin didn’t seem in any immediate hurry to be on their way.

‘Mind if I have a quick fag first?’ he asked her a bit sheepishly, stowing away the helmet. ‘I know I’m nearly twenty and shouldn’t give a damn about what Mum says, but you know what she’s like, she could nag the Krays into going straight.’

He offered Angie the packet of Player’s No 6, but she shook her head.

‘I think she means well. She’s just being kind.’ She stared down at her feet while Martin lit his cigarette and then took a deep lungful of smoke. ‘I wish my mum would show a bit more interest in what I do.’

Martin took another drag. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, Squirt, not having someone wanting to know everything you’re up to every minute of the night and day. It’s bad enough having to live at home still, without having a jailer thrown in for good measure.’

Angie’s head snapped up. ‘Do you want to leave home?’

‘Are you kidding? The other students are all having a great time living up in London, and I’m stuck down here in Dagenham. Why wouldn’t I leave?’

‘So why haven’t you?’ Angie had to struggle to keep her voice steady.

‘That’s easy.’ He looked at her, eyes narrowed against the smoke. ‘Mum says they won’t help me any more if I do, and that would mean using the money I earn working at the petrol pumps for living on.’ He tapped the toe of his desert boot on the footrest of the scooter, then smiled wryly. ‘And then I’d have to sell the scooter and I wouldn’t be able to buy any more new clothes. Shallow, eh?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’re a good kid, Squirt.’

Angie glowed under the light of his praise.

‘But I am shallow. I really care about that sort of thing. Sometimes I feel right out of place at college. Sort of separate. The other students are so different from me. And not just in the way they dress. But the way they talk and …’ He blew a plume of smoke down his nostrils and laughed, not entirely convincingly. ‘They should see me when I’ve got my full mod gear on, eh? They wouldn’t know what had hit them.’

He dropped the cigarette butt into the gutter and ground it out under his heel. ‘I’ve wondered, you know, if I should try to be more like them. The other students. The way they do things. I’m just as clever as they are, but I don’t really—’ He stopped mid-sentence. ‘Hark at me, going on to my little sister’s mate, like she was Sigmund Freud or someone.’

Angie frowned, wondering what this Sigmund Freud looked like. Knowing her luck, she probably had squeaky clean hair and a really fashionable pair of trousers.

He nodded at the Lambretta. ‘Come on, Squirt, let’s get the wind in our faces.’

Angie climbed aboard. ‘He must be nice, though.’

‘Who?’ Martin shouted above the noise of the revving engine.

‘The boy who’s lending you the books.’

Martin turned his head to check the traffic before pulling out into the street. ‘
He
, Squirt, is a very nice young
she
.’

Jill Walker was wondering how all this had happened to her. Here she was, on a Sunday afternoon, ironing in the semi-darkness because she couldn’t afford to waste the electricity –
Of course I can manage, Mummy
– in a dingy basement room in a house that she shared with two miserable biology students, who were more interested in things in jars than in going out anywhere. There was a world outside that everybody said was ‘swinging’; but she had yet to see any evidence of it. To think she had actually chosen to live here: to leave her family, her friends and the beautiful Sussex countryside, and to come to London to study economics because everybody said what a fantastic place it was. Well, she had yet to see what was so fantastic about it. In the six months or so that she had been here, what had she seen? The Mile End Road, damp washing, and nasty things in formaldehyde left on the bathroom shelf. Oh, and don’t forget the library, she’d seen that as well. Totally thrilling.