Two Women (16 page)

Debbie slipped into the room and Susan was glad to see her. Even though they did not really get on, she had come to rely on her sister’s visits to keep her sane. Even Debbie’s chatter was better than nothing.

‘I just seen your bloke, Barry Dalston.’

This was said in a low voice and Susan felt her heart race at the words.

‘What did he say?’

Debbie snorted nastily.

‘He said to tell you hello. Not much of a conversationalist, is he? Even the blokes outside the pub could do better than that.’

It was more than enough for Susan in her isolated state, it was like a ten-page letter. He had not abandoned her, he knew the worst and still wanted to see her! She felt the pounding of her heart as it quickened. She had to get out of here, had to get back to some kind of normality.

‘He’s a wanker and if you have anything more to do with him you’ll be sorry, Sue. If Dad knew there’d be murder done and you know that. Just let him go.’

Susan looked into her sister’s painted face. All panstick and cheap mascara, she looked much older than her years, sounded much older too.

She sighed at the futility of their lives.

‘How did he look?’

Debbie curled one pink-painted lip in a gesture of contempt.

‘Well, put it this way, he didn’t look like he was pining for you if that’s what you mean.’

Susan knew that he had annoyed Debbie and was sorry for the fact. She could have been a go-between, but now it was out of the question and that depressed her even more.

‘Have a nice time?’

Debbie shook her head.

‘Nah, not really. The pub was fucking empty and Dave was with that slag Lynda from the buildings. What he sees in her I don’t know. All tight skirts and make up.’

Debbie looked at herself in the mirror as she said this and Susan wondered how she didn’t see that she was just like that herself.

In fact she was more made up than poor old Lynda, a good-looking girl who had to live down the fact that she was from an even worse family than their own. At least they had some cachet as the daughters of the local bullyboy. Not much to brag about, Susan knew, but in their world it afforded them a small amount of respect.

Lynda’s father was an Irish drunk who beat their mother in the street and had got the two elder daughters pregnant before they were thirteen. But then, everyone knew about him. Pity they didn’t know about Joey. That would put a stop to his gallop in more ways than one. Even the Bannermans and the Davidsons would balk at employing him then.

You could do a lot of things in the East End: murder, steal anything, inflict violence. But touch children, especially your family, or rape and you were on your own. It was an unwritten law.

‘Did he look nice then - Barry?’

Debbie took pity on her sister and smiled.

‘Yeah, he looked lovely. But listen to me, Sue, he reckons he was in Nan’s when it all happened, and if that’s true there’ll be murders. I mean, if he was there why didn’t Ivy say anything?’

Susan rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

‘Why do you think? She likes him. Thinks he’s all right. If Dad knew, imagine what he’d do to the old cow.’

They laughed at the thought of Ivy getting one over on the son she professed to adore.

‘All the same, Sue, Dad wouldn’t be a happy bunny if he knew.’

‘Fuck him. I’m sick of thinking about him.’

The words were loaded and Debbie was quiet for a moment. The two girls looked into each other’s eyes.

‘He might not be your dad anyway. At least you can console yourself with that much.’

It was the first time Debbie had hinted at such a thing and Susan was grateful to her.

‘If he ain’t me dad, then who is?’

Debbie laughed gently.

‘Well, not being funny, mate, but with Mother’s track record that’s a question that may never be answered.’

They laughed then, girls together, finding humour in the darkest of secrets and circumstances.

Sitting upright in bed Susan looked prettier than she had before. She was much slimmer and her dumpy legs had fined down.

‘You look better than you did, Sue. Try and keep the weight off and you’ll look great in no time.’

She shook her head.

‘I don’t really care what I look like, not any more. With my face and figure what chance have I got anyway? Barry liked me the way I was, or at least he told me he did. Not with words, of course, more with actions. You know.’

Debbie nodded. She knew Susan meant he wanted to sleep with her so ergo he must like her. Susan, she reasoned, for all her book reading knew nothing about blokes. They would sleep with anything at Barry’s age, it was the law of youth and hormones.

‘I’d better go. Mum’s snoring off the lunchtime sherry and the old man’s due in soon. I’ll try and pop in later, all right?’

The phone started to ring and Debbie rushed from the room. She knew it would be for her.

Now their father was a gangster they had a phone. It was used by all the neighbours and the number was given out to relatives to ring if there was a problem, such as a death or a birth.

Susan found it laughable.

Debbie loved it, she felt as if she was the queen of the street now because of it - giving out the number to everyone and anyone with her eyebrows arched and her pert bottom arranged expertly to look the picture of the sophisticated phone owner.

Susan heard the front door open and sighed. Joey was home. Her life could only get more difficult now.

 

Joey had the raving hump. It was in the way he walked, the way he closed the door and in his face as he saw his eldest daughter curled up on the new Dralon telephone table-cum-chair.

He had been drinking, that much was evident, and he had also lost a lot of money on the horses. That much would not be evident until later in the day. Sufficient to say that one look at her father told Debbie to cut the call short. The sensible part of her brain was telling her this, but the stupid part of her wanted to talk to Dave who had apparently dumped Lynda from the buildings and had now rung her.

He was trying to talk her into going back down the pub. She was going to go back down the pub but her womanly instincts told her to make him beg first. If her father had the hump then that was his look out, not hers.

‘Get off that fucking phone, I’m waiting for an important call.’

Debbie put her hand over the receiver and whispered, ‘Two minutes, Dad, that’s all.’ She put the phone back to her ear and carried on talking to Dave.

Joey watched her and in his drunken state his daughter’s heavily made up face and tight clothes registered on his brain.

It could have been June sitting there twenty years before. For some reason this annoyed him. Debbie annoyed him just by looking like her mother. Everyone annoyed him tonight.

‘Get off the fucking phone, Debs, or I’ll rip it out of the wall.’

As he spoke he took the phone from her and slammed it back on to the cradle.

Debbie jumped up from the mock Tudor love seat and bellowed, ‘What you fucking think you’re doing? I was talking to someone.’

She had no fear of her father, he always let her get away with everything. She picked up the phone again and started to dial a number. Ripping the phone from her hands, Joey threw it against the wall. It crashed to the floor in pieces.

Debbie’s eyes were like saucers as she looked at her father.

‘Well, that was clever, weren’t it? No fucking phone now for you, me or anyone.’

She dragged her coat off the hook by the front door and started putting it on.

‘Where are you going, madam?’

Her father’s voice was dangerously low but Debbie was too angry to care.

‘Out. What does it look like?’

Joey stepped towards her.

‘You ain’t going nowhere, lady, you hear me? And you talk to me with a bit of respect. I’m your father not some kid off the street.’

‘Piss off, Dad, you’re drunk.’

Her dismissive words were like a knife through his brain. June had woken up at the noise and come into the hallway.

‘What’s going on now?’

Joey looked at her. She looked terrible; her make up was smudged, her clothes creased.

‘What’s going on, June? I’ll tell you what’s going on. Your daughter is talking to me like I am a piece of shit. Now I wonder where the fuck she could have got that from, eh? Not you and that other fat cunt in the bedroom by any chance?’

He dragged Debbie roughly towards her mother and pushed the two women into the lounge.

‘You,’ he pointed at Debbie, ‘are going nowhere. And you, lady,’ he pointed at his wife, ‘are not going anywhere either. What the fuck am I in this house, eh? I earn the wedge, I put the food on the table and clothe the lot of you, me mother included. And you two treat me like I’m the local fucking nonsense. Well, not any more.’

He was bellowing now, his face red with temper and fists clenched ready to strike them.

He looked at them in disbelief, his anger so acute he felt capable of taking on the whole Metropolitan Police Force and winning the battle if he did. He had had a day that would make anyone upset and the family he provided for, looked after and cared for, were mugging him off.

Today he had lost not only his own money but a debt he had been paid to pull in. Consequently he was three grand down and had no way of getting by that night when he was supposed to give the money to Davey Davidson.

The worst of it all was it wasn’t a debt he could go and collect again, which he had done numerous times over the last few years. People paid up twice if you frightened them enough. Davey knew this man and he was sound. Joey knew he could not trounce him, Davey would not allow that.

‘Who’s rattled your cage then? What you done to make you like this?’

June, ever the voice of reason, opened her mouth before thinking twice. Joey looked at her for a full minute before answering.

‘I have lost three grand over you, that’s what I have done.’

She was stunned.

‘Over me? How could you lose it over me?’

Joey shook his head as if he could not believe what she’d said.

‘The horse was called June’s Surprise. I backed it because I’d heard it was a good earner, but like my dear wife it was left at the fucking starting gate. It was useless - fucking diabolical in fact. I have seen fucking hamsters with more go in them.’

June stared at him. Then, her voice as incredulous as her husband’s had been, she screamed: ‘And so it’s my fault, is it? The horse lost and it’s
my
fault. You’re a fucking head case, Joey. Now piss off back out and leave us alone.’

Debbie started to button up her coat.

‘I’m going out, I ain’t staying in listening to this lot.’

Joey looked at his wife and daughter through hooded eyes.

‘Make her take that coat off, June, or I take oath I will rip it off her fucking back and everything else the little slag is wearing into the bargain.’

He shook his head again as if clearing it.

‘What you doing letting them walk about like whores anyway? Look at her, like mother like fucking daughter. A pair of slags together here.’

He pointed at June.

‘Go and get the other one from the bedroom then I can look at the three whores in my house at once.’

‘I ain’t a whore, Dad, don’t you dare call me that.’

Debbie was upset now as she realised her father was not going to let her out of the house and Dave was going to be down the pub by himself.

‘Even my poor mother would have done a better job of raising these girls than you, June. I must have been off my rocker to have you back after your stint with that Scottish pimp.’

‘You didn’t have me back, mate, I came back . . .’

Joey interrupted her, raising his fist to quieten her.

‘I had you back, you two-faced cunt. I took you back after you’d shagged that ponce and all his mates, I bet. Why change the habits of a lifetime, eh? Not good old June the margarine legs of fucking Bethnal Green. Spreads easily does June. Your mother should have named you Marge.’

Normally Debbie would have laughed at her father’s words but tonight it was not the usual fighting, it was more serious. Both she and her mother guessed as much and were careful of him.

‘Please let me out, Dad, I have to see someone.’

Joey mimicked her.

‘Let me out, Dad, I have to see someone. Who the fuck you got to see? You’re only a little kid. You should be in here doing what kids do, not hanging round a fucking notorious pub. That’s your mother’s job, love, not yours.’

‘Let her go out. Your mother’s coming round, she’ll keep an eye on her if need be.’

Joey looked bitterly at his wife and daughter.

‘That’s right, take advantage of my poor old mum. At least I can depend on her, even if she is a silly old bag at times. At least she’s loyal to me and mine. Not like you lot, you grasping bastards.’

As he spoke Debbie was once more trying to do up her coat. She had had enough of her father for one night and was going out whether he liked it or not.

‘Talking of your mother, Dad, did you know that the night you went round after our Susan her boyfriend Barry was in Nan’s bedroom, listening to everything that went on? I know because he told me. Tonight actually. So your mother’s not as loyal as you thought, eh?’

When Joey’s hand caught her by the throat Debbie knew real fear for the first time in her life.

‘What did you say, you cunt? What did you just say? Who was there . . . are you trying to tell me Barry Dalston was in my mother’s flat that night? Is that what you’re telling me?’

He was shrieking with rage.

‘Jesus fuck, Jesus fuck, are you telling me he heard everything?’

June was trying to drag him off her daughter and she was frightened. Frightened because in her heart she knew what was scaring Joey so much. He had been found out.