The Business (2 page)

He pulled up at the traffic lights and then, looking her in the eye, he said sadly, ‘But then drama is what you need, ain’t it, Mother? You thrive on it.’

Imelda looked at her only son and said quietly, ‘I can’t help the way I am. What you see is what you get.’

She was already halfway through the can of lager, and the stench of her breath was filling the car’s interior and making her son feel physically ill. She was, as always, stating what she saw as a fact, she thought that expressions like that made her honest, straight. She used them to justify her angry outbursts and her jealous asides. She was one of the most unhappy people he had ever come across, and that hurt him because, when the fancy took her, she could be a diamond. But, unlike most of the people she dealt with,
he
knew that she was hurting inside, had always been hurting inside. He knew that she didn’t like herself and did not believe that anyone else could ever like her either. She changed friends often, dropping people on a whim at any slight, real or imagined. She tried her hardest to be what she knew she should be, but inevitably she would lapse back into the person she believed she was really.

‘Trouble with Jorge is, she always thought she was better than everyone else, even as a child she looked down her nose at me . . .’

Kenny sighed heavily, he wasn’t going to dignify that shite with an answer. He was too shrewd to get into that conversation.

As he drove along the Whitechapel Road he spied someone he had been looking out for since the previous Christmas. Stopping the Range Rover he leapt out and began to punch the hapless victim of his rage. He battered him mercilessly, far more than was warranted because, deep inside, he really wanted to batter his mother, and this man, this ponce, was available. He was there.

Donny Barker had owed him money for a long time and, to make matters worse, he had disappeared off the face of the earth because of that debt. Now that Kenny could have coped with, understood even, but it was the fucker’s reemergence on his old stomping ground that had caused his ire. It was a piss-take - someone on the missing list was to be coped with, their blatant return without the payment of their debt was like a personal insult. And an insult of that magnitude had to be redressed at the earliest opportunity. All in all, the man couldn’t have surfaced at a worse time. Kenneth Dooley was a very hard man and, as such, he had a reputation to uphold.

 

Jordanna Dooley was whacked out. She was over the initial excitement that her mother had caused, and she was tired, seriously tired. As she lay on her bed, she wondered how people coped with the everyday. Most people she knew lived their lives without any kind of real hassle, real aggravation. Whereas her life had been fraught with all kinds of shit since day one.

This baby was her last chance at being normal, being like everyone else, and that was all she had ever really wanted. Normality, that was her only desire, her only dream. Just to be normal, no more and no less. But that was not something she felt was destined to be hers, and that was what terrified her. She was still so young, and yet she felt so fucking old.

 

Kenny fished a couple of wraps out of his jacket pocket and slipped them into his mother’s hand. ‘Here you are, go and have a ding-dong, girl.’

Imelda smiled at him then, suddenly aware that they had stopped outside her block of flats.

He opened the glovebox and threw her a wad of money. Then, poking a large finger into her face he said quietly, ‘And keep away from her, right? I’ll see what I can do in that department, but be warned, Mum, I don’t hold out much hope.’

She shrugged then, her face much happier now as it relaxed into a real smile. Money and drugs had always had that effect on her. A couple of grams of coke, an armful of brown and a onner in her purse was her idea of heaven.

As she walked into her block her son watched her sadly; she was like a child, a vain, demanding, selfish child. That’s why he felt so sorry for his mum, why he couldn’t blank her out, why he accepted her outrageous behaviour and her outbursts. She had always kept one thing quiet, even when she was hurting so bad he could almost feel the pain inside her. She had still kept her trap shut, and he knew better than anyone how hard that must have been for her. Especially when she saw her daughter and was once more rejected without any kind of explanation whatever. But, in fairness, Imelda had always treated her only daughter badly. Jordanna had never known one truly happy day in her life.

Kenny had the key, and he knew he would do anything to keep the door to the truth bolted whatever happened. Because the truth oftentimes was a hard bastard, the truth more often than not brought nothing but grief and hurt. It didn’t bring closure, or decency, or any of the other shit that people who had never been in a position where the truth was a destructive force spouted. The truth was a springboard for many other upsets, bringing them out into the open at last, and then burying the half-truths, the far less painful truths, so deep they were impossible to dig up again.

He knew, and better than anyone, that sometimes, just
sometimes
, the truth could decimate a person and their whole life. It could cause a reaction so devastating it would make Hiroshima look like a playground prank.

Like his mother, he had never trusted the truth, and in their world that wasn’t uncommon. He was known for his straight talking, his honesty. He knew that he would never lie about work - it was not feasible. But lying about some things was, in reality, fucking inevitable.

He remembered a priest once telling his class of five year olds that ‘The truth will set you free’ and the memory made him smile to himself. The truth could be a bigger jailer than most people realised. It was something that a lot of people just couldn’t afford. Especially his sister Jordanna, the truth was the last thing she needed to hear. But he also knew that, now she was back in her mother’s orbit, it was inevitable, that at some point the truth was likely to come out. Then what?

He didn’t know and neither did anyone else. The lies went back to their childhood, and he knew that one day it would all surface, and when that day came, it would blow them all out of the proverbial water.

He also had a feeling that the day he had dreaded his whole life was near and, in a strange way, he just wanted it over with, wanted it out in the open. Because, God Himself knew, he was sick of keeping it all secret. Sick of living this lie. And living everyone’s lie for them.

Chapter One

 

Mary Dooley was cleaning, she cleaned like other people slept; without any thought whatsoever. Her eyes constantly scanned surfaces for dust or smudges. Her mirrors were buffed to a high gloss, and her floors were polished to an almost dangerous sheen. She saw it as her given right, her God-given right, as she was well aware that cleanliness was the nearest she would get to Himself in this life.

When not cleaning, Mary was cooking. Huge, wholesome meals that her family ate without any real regard; after all, they had eaten this way all their lives. She cooked the old way; mashed potatoes dripping with butter and well-cooked joints of meat left to settle into their juices before being hacked apart and placed reverently on to her willow-pattern plates. She made shortcrust pastries and heavy rock cakes bulging with sultanas screaming for thick butter to be spread on them and devoured with a cup of sweet tea. She could do anything with suet and a bit of shin. She could make a cheap cut of meat fit for the Pope himself to devour, as her husband often pointed out when in his cups.

She pooh-poohed his compliments loudly and with her usual ripe language. She disparaged this new talk of salads and the avoidance of animal fats, and all the other crap they talked of that threatened her whole existence. She fed her family and she fed them in the only way she knew how.

Heart attacks indeed. As her own mother always said, sure, everybody had to die of something. Mary couldn’t take onboard that you didn’t need to die before your time, that she was slowly killing her family with love and good cooking. She saw it as some kind of conspiracy against her and all the other women like herself who had lived through the war and the want and were not going to go back to basic rations for anyone.

Tea was another of her passions. Mary left the big metallic pot on the hob bubbling away all day long until it was stewed black, and that was how she drank it. Black and sickly sweet. She said it gave her energy, and she was correct. It also gave her foetid breath and a furry tongue. This was at odds with her otherwise pristine appearance; like her home she was immaculate. From the tightly rolled French pleat that held in place long, thick, blond hair, coloured now every six weeks while her family were asleep, to well-fitting clothes that wrapped themselves neatly around her perfect size-ten body. For a woman well into her fifties she was still a looker. High cheekbones and deep-set dark-blue eyes saw to that. She had tiny, pretty feet that she was secretly proud of, and which she showed off every summer in cheap but tasteful sandals. They were her only real vanity.

Her hands were rough, well taken care of but still showing the damage from years of bleach and washing soda. Her skin was assaulted nightly with a good scrubbing of Pears’ soap and a thick layer of Pond’s cold cream. This seemed to work because she looked much younger than her years and she had the demeanour and carriage of a much younger woman.

Her only vice was smoking; a cigarette was permanently dangling from her cupid-bow lips, and she squinted up her eyes to counteract the constant stream of smoke whenever she had her hands full. Her husband joked it was the secret of her good cooking, the adding of cigarette ash that everyone knew sometimes fell into her batters and her gravies. She laughed as loudly as her family at this, seeing nothing wrong with the occasional lapse of concentration. After all, it wasn’t as if it could poison them was it?

Mary folded up her washing, enjoying the feel of its softness and the smell of its cleanliness. She was possessed of a twin tub that she would never part with, for all the newfangled gadgets they had these days. As she said to Mrs Phillips, her neighbour, what was wrong with these young girls with their constant striving for an easy life, without the chores what the feck was there for a woman to do?

She glanced at the kitchen clock and stopped her folding. It was eight-thirty on a Monday morning, most of the family were away to their works and she was due at the church for nine o’clock Mass. She heard the toilet flush upstairs and sighed heavily. Her only daughter, her late surprise, as she referred to her, as she was over forty when she arrived, was finally up and about.

Pouring the child a cup of tea she took it up with her as she had to get her coat and hat anyway from the wardrobe. She treated this child differently to the boys and, deep down, she knew that, but she would never admit to it of course. She loved them all the same, at least outwardly, though her Imelda was the baby, and that, as she knew very well, was the trouble.

Her daughter got away with murder and, even though Mary knew it was wrong, she couldn’t resist her. She was her last one, her baby, and she allowed her more licence than all the others put together.

Mary prayed daily that her trust in her youngest child wouldn’t turn out to be misplaced but, in all honesty, she didn’t hold out much hope. She had made one too many mistakes with that one, and it looked like they were coming home to roost.

Imelda Dooley was the image of her mother, the only one of the children to have her small build and ability to eat anything without putting on an ounce.

She had the same blond hair and small mouth, but she had her father’s large, blue eyes, and they only added to the package, making her look innocent and knowing all at the same time. She had finely arched eyebrows and a small, pointed chin which made her look younger than her years. But the thick make-up that she applied with an expert hand soon put paid to that. Men had been looking at her since she was twelve and her breasts had suddenly appeared overnight. If her father had not been a local Face and her brothers had not been known locally for their short tempers and ability to knock out anyone within two feet of them, she would have been taken down a lot sooner, she knew that much now anyway. She had been such a fool, a silly, childish fool.

She sipped the tea her mother had brought in to her and wondered at how she was going to drop her bombshell, and she knew she needed to do it sooner rather than later. Her mother’s personality was not conducive to secrets and if a neighbour sussed it out before her there really would be hell to pay.

Imelda felt sick with apprehension, she had played fast and loose and this was the result; her mother’s warnings and advice had fallen on deaf ears. She knew it all, like many a girl before her.

Now she was lumbered, well and truly lumbered, and she knew that this was the one thing her mother would not forgive her.

She was frightened and excited all at the same time, the thought of a baby interrupting her life was more terrifying than the thought of dying. She would actually rather die a thousand deaths than face her mother’s wrath and shame. And that was what she would be subjected to, she knew that as well as she knew her own name. Even in this day and age, it wasn’t acceptable for Irish Catholic girls to have children out of wedlock, no matter how fashionable it might be for the rest of the country’s youth. In this house it might as well be 1900, because those were the values they had to live by.