The Factory Girl (43 page)

‘And where've you been?'

He looked blank. It was an unfair question, he coming home at a reasonable hour for any man working during the day. He'd been away from the shop for most of the day, but so had she been out. Where, he had no idea.

At first he'd cringed with anxiety. It wasn't a pleasant thing, your wife finding out you've been unfaithful, but he was so in love with Di that not even Geraldine would stand in the way of that. Soon would start the rows, the accusations, the cry of divorce – he'd expected that. He suspected this evening would see its commencement. Geraldine had been bottling it all up these last couple of days and now he sensed it was about to burst, this unreasonable demand, ‘Where have you been?' as if he had been out all night. Well, damn her, he wasn't ready to be cowed by a raging wife.

Casually he took off his trilby and top coat. ‘Where d'you think I've been?' He made his voice a casual drawl.

‘I don't know where you've been. That's what I'm asking.'

‘I do have work to do,' he answered, flinging the coat and hat on a nearby chair – blowed if he was going to hang it up, she loving to have the place so spic and span. ‘There are people I need to go and see during a working day.'

‘Like
her
!'

‘Like business people,' he corrected.

‘Like those
business
people you hang around with,' came the irate reply. ‘Crooks, thieves whose dirty work you do for them, them bringing the stuff they've lifted for you to do your part.'

This put his back up. ‘Let me remind you that you don't do too bad out of it either, do you? The only time you complain about what I'm doing is when it's not going all your way.'

‘Does that include you going off to some other woman?'

‘I told you before, it's only people making up lies about me. They enjoy spreading dirty rumours.'

‘And you can call them your friends?' she sneered, but then resumed her glaring at him again. ‘Don't give me that lark. You practically admitted it yourself.'

He allowed a laugh. ‘And when did I admit that?'

‘When I told you what I knew and you asked me what I was going to do about it.'

‘I was annoyed, being accused out of hand.' He gave a sigh. ‘So I thought if that's what you want to believe then go ahead and believe it.'

‘Oh, no,' she came back at him. ‘You can't wriggle out of it like that.'

Feigning nonchalance though he didn't feel it, he flipped open a silver box beside him for a cigarette. ‘And you prefer to take notice of gossip.'

‘I believe what I was told.'

She'd begun to bellow, alarming him. He'd have chosen all this to be more civilised, at the most she pleading for him to drop Di Manners. Instead she was standing squarely facing him, dry-eyed, a raging virago.

‘Cynthia actually thought I knew all about it, like everyone else does. She said she thought I was being so brave. Brave! I could almost see her biting her tongue when she realised I knew nothing and that she'd let the cat out of the bag. That's how much of mere gossip it is. So don't try giving me that, Tony. I know. What's more, you know I know. You asked me what I was going to do about it. What did you think I was going to do, sit meekly by and let you get away with it? That's the last thing I intend to do.' Her yells had risen higher. ‘I
know
where you've been today so don't give me none of your crap about business meetings. You've been with her!'

He hadn't. Today he had been doing business, maybe not legitimate, but business even so. Sam Treater had telephoned him, had said to come over right away, something he needed to talk to him about urgently. It could only mean some important job.

There'd been a certain amount of tension in the voice and he'd put it down to the size of the job soon to be carried out. A real big haul, he was told when he got there. The Big One. He was to be ready for a lot of stuff coming through, taking days, maybe weeks for him to reduce it to more manageable ingots. Others would take it from there, people he didn't know, people who would pass it through banks here and abroad until everything was reduced to innocent paper money and everyone finally got his cut.

‘This is a job in a million, in fact it's actually worth millions, if not more. We'll all be able to retire on it, live respectable lives in great comfort. More comfort than you've ever dreamed of. Your cut too will be substantial, as I expect you've guessed by now. You do very valuable work for us. You're someone we can rely on, someone we can trust. That saves a lot of worry at the end of it. That's why I'm telling you all this now, Tone, old son.'

He'd nodded sombrely, aware that those words,
we'll all
, meant those he was in league with, and had promised to keep his mouth shut about what he'd just been told. If he didn't he'd be in for it. Anyway, he'd never dream of shopping anyone. What, and land himself in the stewpot as well? No fear.

In fact he'd come home excited, looking forward to starting on the job, carefully placing the bright precious haul piece by piece, whatever shape and design it was, into his smelter, the heat on his face. He couldn't wait to see it come pouring out in a smooth, liquid, golden stream like some living thing into the moulds to become the required smaller ingots, as he sweated with toil and greed, for he could feel the greed inside him even now.

And what a marvellous feeling it was, one Geraldine was now trying to destroy for him, interested only in herself. No wonder he'd turned long ago to Di Manners with her selfless care for him, her beautiful body, her lovely face, her amazing blue eyes, her ability to make him burn all over for her. He just wanted to be rid of Geraldine and spend the rest of his life in Diana's arms.

She was still going on, flinging herself about the room now, her hands gesticulating, screaming something about getting back at him for what he'd done, that she'd never divorce him, he could stew, and more than that, she had been to the police about what he did for money, his crooked alliance with a whole gang of thieves and criminals.

That was when his brain stopped thinking about gold and Diana and the future.

Reaching out, he grabbed Geraldine viciously by one arm as she swept past him in her tantrum. ‘What did you say?'

She managed to stop ranting to stare at him. ‘What?'

‘I said, what did you say? That you've been to the police about me?'

He saw her pale, the red anger melt. Her mouth had remained wide open, her words caught in her throat. He saw the mouth shut to a tight line. Then in a steady, defiant voice, she said, ‘Yes, that's right, Tony. I went to the police about you. I told them what you did. I gave them your name.'

Before he could stop, fury leapt from him like Satan himself, his free arm sweeping back its full length to return in a fierce arc, the flat of his hand smashing across her cheek with such force that it knocked her from his grasp and onto the floor.

For a second he thought he was about to kick the prone, shocked form, but instead, with fear filling every tiny extremity of him, he dashed out of the flat, coatless, hatless, out into the street and flung himself into his motor. Sam had to be warned.

It took an hour or two of driving around, trying to think straight, to get his mind together, his nerves shattered. Should he alert Sam or Ernie to what Geraldine said she had done?

What if he said nothing? The police might have totally dismissed the gabbling of some stupid woman, and racing off to alert Sam would only be disastrous, those who trusted him realising their trust was in danger of being betrayed by his stupid wife. The wives of these men would never dream of doing such a thing. They knew on which side their bread was buttered, were loyal to their husbands who were thoughtful of their happiness and tender fathers to their children. What they did outside the home was no concern of the wives who loved them and if they bothered to consider it at all, saw what they did as their work, much as any other man's. Geraldine wasn't like them. There were times when she worried and fretted about what he did, and that wasn't healthy. If Sam knew what she was like underneath that society exterior of hers, he'd be dropped like a hot potato, or worse. Tony shuddered at what that worse could spell.

But what if the police did follow up what Geraldine had reported. What if it got back to the others and he got blamed for it. What if the police made investigations, waited for them to do a job, even this big one coming up, and because he had failed to alert anyone to that possibility, they were caught? Those that weren't would come looking for him. Then God knows what would happen. Jail for him, or even worse.

Sam would have to be alerted. He'd taken him into his confidence, only hours before had asked him over, had invited him in and offered him a drink, had sat talking to him in the chummiest of terms about the value of the job taking place within the next day or two, and that he would be included in a generous cut,
enough to retire on.
Yes, Sam had been straight with him, and he had to be straight with Sam. He must be told. But the thought set Tony's nerves jangling again, blurring his vision and making his driving erratic.

It was gone eight o'clock when he finally entered Sam's extensive driveway. Lights were on in the hall but nowhere else, although he didn't take much account as panic again began to mount, every bit as bad as that at his own home. By the time he got out of the car he was shaking with anger at Geraldine and in terror of breaking this fearful news. Sam could kill him, quite literally. His hand shook as it pressed the bell, his finger seeming to be stuck there, incapable of releasing it until suddenly the door opened to reveal a young woman, her plain face flustered by the continuous ringing. She drew back from the contorted face of the caller, her own face filled with fear.

‘Mr and Mrs Treater's out,' she managed to his staccato enquiry.

‘Where's he gone?' came the manic demand.

The woman's voice shook. ‘I don't know, sir. They went off to dinner somewhere. I give eye to the children. They didn't say where. Sorry, sir.'

Before Tony could ask any more questions she had shut the door, eager only to repel this madman, leaving him to stare at the ornately carved door.

Around ten o'clock she tremulously answered the door to yet another caller, a large man with grim, heavy features who also looked rather frightening, and to whom she repeated what she'd already told the first. The man's face became even grimmer as he gave his name, asking her to say he'd called, but then changed his mind and told her to say nothing, that he'd come back tomorrow morning.

By that time she'd have gone home anyway with no need to see either of these strange men and certainly with no wish to.

Getting herself slowly up from the floor, there had been a sense of utter disbelief more than shock at finding herself reeling away like that, helpless to stop herself falling. There was a feeling of wretchedness too.

Tony had never raised a hand to her until now. In all her moments of pique, of outburst over this or that, he had never resorted to any physical reaction. A raised voice was as far as he had ever gone. One could say that for him: he had always been mild-mannered, could become a little overexuberant at times, jumping in without thinking, but no more than that, not even if drunk. It was usually her who had the tantrums.

Geraldine lowered herself into an armchair, her face still numbed from that mighty smack. Soon the numbness would go and the ache would begin, not a smarting but an ache, she knew it, for it had not been a mere slap, the flat of the hand had landed like a hammer blow.

He must have been thoroughly terrified to do what he did and to bring the blow down with such force. She should never have taunted him that far, or said anything about going to the police. In his place she'd have lashed out too, finding herself in peril. Not that she forgave him a thing, not the blow and certainly not his infidelity.

It was daylight when she awoke to the ring of the downstairs doorbell of the private entrance, realising she had been asleep in the armchair all night, stiff from lying in one position. The clock on the mantelshelf registered five past eight – too early yet to open up the shop and no one she knew would be calling at this hour. The postman perhaps, with a parcel, but parcels delivered to the shop came later. Perhaps it was Tony, having forgotten his door key in his headlong rush from the flat. But he must have had the key to his car on the same chain. Where had he rushed off to? To her to seek her bed and a sympathetic ear? No need for a car when buses, trams and trains still ran that time of night and he in desperate need of what Di Manners could give him. The thought of them coupling began to turn her stomach. She could see them making love as though they were doing it here in front of her.

The doorbell sounded again, bringing her back to the present and sharpening her befuddled mind. Her cheek throbbed only a little now, and when she looked in the mirror in passing, to run fingers through her short hair so as not to look too dishevelled to whoever was standing there, she could see that any red imprint of his hand had faded enough not to be noticed.

Again the doorbell rang insistent now, being pressed several times in quick succession as though in frustration at being kept waiting, making her quicken her descent downstairs with a sudden sense of urgency. Names went through her mind faster than she could reach to open the door.

Mum, Dad, Wally, there to say something dreadful had happened at home? Fenella – she'd seen Fenella just before Easter – had something happened there? Maybe not. Maybe only Tony coming back to apologise. If that were so, he'd be doing it to empty air. She wanted none of his apologies.

In the breakfast room Sam Treater was reading
The Times
over his boiled egg; Lily was eating a piece of toast, the butter spread sparingly as she was watching her already slim figure. The dress she'd worn last night for dinner with friends had become just a tiniest bit tight across the hips, although she had only worn it the once before and, made to fit, it had been fine then.