Two Women (42 page)

With that she pulled away from him and walked out of the flat, picking up her car keys from the hall table as she left.

 

‘Shut them fucking kids up, Susan, I’m trying to sleep!’

Barry’s voice was loud. Aggressive. He was angry inside and out. The kids’ noise was driving him to distraction. All he wanted was to lie in bed and be depressed in peace. The kids’ shouting and fighting, their laughing and screaming, were just about the last straw so far as he was concerned.

Susan came into the room and bellowed at him.

‘I can’t make four kids be quiet, Bal, it’s a physical impossibility. Get up and sort yourself out. Come back into the world and be a man for once.’

She stormed into the bathroom next and slapped Rosie and little Barry across their fat bums, making them howl.

‘Now keep it down, the pair of you, or I’ll get you out and put you both to bed.’

The howling ceased immediately. They loved their bath. It was their favourite time of day. It also wore them out and got them settled for bed.

It was five-thirty on a Monday night in Bethnal Green. Barry was depressed because he had no life any more. Even though Ivan had told him of another job in Soho at a lesser club, and still on good money, he had lost the heart for it and was deciding what to do with himself next.

He was thinking of going back into the debts only this time doing it properly. Buying debts and then recalling the money himself. Making a bit over the top for his trouble.

He was convinced if he could prove himself to Roselle everything would be fine. Yet she would have nothing whatsoever to do with him.

He had learned through Susan that her test had come back negative, and that had disappointed him. If she’d had herpes too then it would have made them even, given them something to bond them together even closer.

Barry was actually stupid enough to believe that.

Wendy put on a record in her room. It was Paul Young singing ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat’. The lyrics were so poignant that he felt like crying. That was him before the herpes, before he had had his life ruined.

Wendy, enjoying the music, turned it up louder, and then Barry jumped from the bed and raced across the landing to the room that housed three little girls and his son.

‘Turn that fucking crap off now, Wendy, just shut the fucking thing up!’

Wendy did as she was told but her face said a different thing altogether.

‘Don’t you look down your nose at me, girl. I’m your father!’

He was all self-righteous anger and red-faced temper.

‘You load of little bastards. Why I bother with any of you I don’t know.’

This included little Rose who since her father had come back home had gone off him overnight. He looked around the room, at the pop star posters on the walls and the hi-fi on the dressing table.

‘Clear this fucking shit-hole up and all, you. Like your mother you are. A useless ponce!’

Susan shouted from the bathroom, ‘Charming, I must say! But you’d know all about useless ponces, wouldn’t you, Bal?’

She came out on to the landing and Barry, having had enough of everything, punched her until she dropped to the floor. The kids could all see him. Rosie screamed with fright, little Barry screamed too, and Alana hot footed it from the stairs back into the lounge. Wendy came out of her room and, feeling responsible for her mother’s plight, grabbed at her father’s hair and tried to pull him away.

It was pandemonium.

Barry slapped his eldest daughter in the mouth, splitting her lip.

It was only when Doreen came in that he finally calmed himself enough to leave the house.

She took Susan into the bedroom and laid her on the bed, her face a pulp. She got the little kids from the bath and with the help of Wendy dressed them and sent them to her house with Alana. She then sent Wendy for Kate, and told her to tell the older woman to bring the doctor on her way.

Doreen bathed her friend’s face and sympathised with her.

‘You have to get rid of him, Sue. Somehow, girl, you have to get shot, love.’

Susan didn’t answer her.

She knew that herself.

But how?

How did you get rid of someone like Barry? Someone who wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t let anyone have any peace? Could see no wrong in what he did?

He had ruined so many lives, hers included. The kids’, Roselle’s, his mother’s. Strangers’ lives even with his violence. She had heard about what he’d done to Maggie Brittan, that had been another nine-day wonder.

Barry Dalston was a law unto himself and until he found alternative accommodation, as in another bird, she was in lumber and that was the strength of it. She just wished he would give the kids a break now and then. It was harder for them. After all, she was used to his outbursts.

The doctor didn’t come but they knew Barry had broken her cheekbone and her ribs and did what they could for her as usual. Life was back to its old pattern and Susan had to sit it out and wait for new developments.

It was soul-destroying, but all she could do. Barry was in charge as he always had been.

The police finally arrived after he had long gone. Looking at Susan, they sighed, drank the cup of tea that Doreen brought them, made a few jokes about how they were just getting used to not coming round here any more when Barry came back on the scene and buggered up their night shift.

But they did not
do
anything. There was nothing they could do.

Barry came home at twelve-thirty, drunk and stoned. He had been out with his father-in-law and they’d tied one on like the old days. Susan was still in bed and Wendy had fallen asleep on the settee, watching TV. As he came into the room he saw her lying there, her lovely face vulnerable, abundant hair framing her head.

Her brand new breasts were straining against a too small nightie and dressing gown. Kneeling down by her, he looked into his daughter’s face. She was going to be a knockout. At almost fourteen she was already an eyeful. Many people had said as much to him.

In his drunken state, he decided she was too lovely for the boys around here, too good for the shite she would eventually meet. He didn’t listen to all the crap about university or college and a good education. That was all just bollocks.

What his daughter needed was a man, a real man who would show her what to do with her body. How to get what she wanted with it. That was what real women did in his book. They were sitting on a goldmine.

The expression made him laugh and this woke Wendy up. He saw the fear on her face and the instinctive way she covered her breasts from his gaze, wrapping her arms over her chest like a dead person. Like she was in a coffin.

He pulled them gently apart and sighed. Bending down he placed his cheek to her breasts and caressed her buttocks gently with his hand, holding her hands together over her head as he did so.

Wendy tried to force herself up from her prone position and he forced her down with his body. She could smell beer and whisky, fags and chips.

His lips were on hers now. She could taste his mouth and pushed him away in disgust, turning her head from him. Trying to make him leave her alone without disturbing her mother.

She knew that her mum would go mad if she learned of this.

But she was up in bed, her face swollen and bruised, her three youngest children still in Doreen’s. Her mother could sleep in peace knowing they were all looked after, that Barry couldn’t harm them.

Why had Wendy decided to come home? Why hadn’t she stayed at Auntie Doreen’s? She felt as if it was all her fault, that she was to blame for it all. Her records had started the fight, and her lying on the settee half dressed had caused all this.

‘Please, Dad, stop it! Dad, please. Stop it!’

His beery breath was heavier now as he tried to force her legs apart. She could hear the animal grunts coming from him and taste the salt of her own silent tears. Finally she used all her strength and shoved him as hard as she could. In his drunken state Barry fell sideways and she ran from the room like the wind.

She fell halfway up the stairs and made a noise. She picked herself up and as she reached the top of the stairs heard her mother calling softly. Going into the room she allayed her mother’s fears, told her that her dad had come in drunk and fallen over.

Barry came up the stairs, and when he was in her mother’s room Wendy went to her own and pulled the chest of drawers against the door. Then she got into bed and for the first time in years wished her brother and sisters were there.

Barry fell into bed with his wife and went straight to sleep, his snoring loud and broken only by his mumblings.

Wendy lay in bed, terrified of the man she had always hated.

She could still feel his hands on her body, feel his foul breath and tongue trying to slip into her mouth. She heaved, feeling her whole belly rise up in protest at the thought of what he’d wanted to do to her.

His own daughter.

Chapter Twenty

Wendy brought her mother a cup of tea and some toast. Her father had gone out earlier and she had waited until he’d left the house before getting dressed and moving the furniture back into its usual place.

She had hardly slept all night. Every noise or movement woke her as she dozed. It was as if her whole body was on red alert. Waiting for something to happen.

As she looked into her mother’s face Wendy sighed. If she confided in her there would be trouble, and looking at her bruised face and body she felt her mum had quite enough on her plate already.

‘You all right, babe?’ Susan’s voice was concerned.

Wendy replied sadly, her big blue eyes brimming with pain.

‘Mum, I’m fine. It’s you we should all be asking about, for crying out loud! Look what he’s done again. Can’t we just make him go away?’

Susan looked at her beautiful daughter and felt the futility of her own life. She could cook for her kids, clean for them, protect them from the outside world. But where Barry was concerned she could do nothing.

She grasped her daughter’s slim hand, its childish heart-shaped gold ring pointing up the woman emerging before her eyes.

‘Listen to me, little heart, that man loves you all in his own way. I wish things were different, you know that, but I can’t make him do anything he don’t want to do. If wishes were kisses I’d drown you all in my love, darlin’, you know that. All I can do is hope for the best. It’s all any of us can do. He’ll feel really bad later and everything will be all right for a while, you’ll see.’

Susan knew her words were pointless, just words. But she so desperately wanted her daughter to feel better.

Every breath she took was a trial, her ribs were screaming with pain. But she had to pretend that nothing was too bad. That she was just a bit under the weather. That being beaten like this was nothing really, just another merry day in the life of Susan Dalston.

‘Throw him out, Mum. Get rid of him, please.’

Wendy’s voice was low, full of meaning and broken from her yearning to cry.

Susan grasped her hand tighter.

‘I can’t, darlin’. You know the score, love. Old Bill ain’t interested, no one’s interested in the likes of us. That’s why I want you to educate yourself, get out of all this. Get a proper life for yourself where people are civilised and talk to one another and the use of their fists isn’t the only option.’

Wendy felt such a rush of love for her mother then she threw herself into her embrace. Squeezed her mother to her as if she would never let go. Susan felt the love, and also the excruciating pain in her ribs from her daughter’s embrace.

Pushing her away gently, she kissed her on the forehead tenderly.

‘He will fuck off one day, I promise you that. We’ll bore the arse off him soon enough. We always do. But until he deigns to leave, we’re in lumber, mate.’

Wendy knew her mother’s words were true but with the youthful exuberance of all girls believed that somehow there had to be a way of getting rid of him once and for all. There was always an answer to a problem, you just had to find it.

‘Stay in bed and rest, Mum. I’ll watch the kids, have a day off school. I need to revise anyway.’

Susan nodded, feeling better now that they had had a little talk. As Wendy stood up Susan saw the emerging body, the high breasts so like her own at that age, the beautiful face she couldn’t believe belonged to a child of hers.

Wendy had a brain, a good one, and she would use it to better herself.

Susan was determined on that.

 

Roselle heard the banging and crashing on her door and sighed. She knew who it was and walking wearily out into the hallway, called, ‘Go away, Barry, before I call Ivan and get you removed once and for all.’

‘Let me in, Roselle, we have to talk.’

Leaning on the cool white-painted wall of the hallway, she felt an urge to cry. Barry was a piece of shit really, a wife-battering, violent thug, but not with her. Never with her. With her he had been the man he should have been all along if circumstances had been different.

Yet once out of her orbit he reverted to Mr Macho Man. It was laughable.

Picking up the phone she dialled quickly, knowing in her heart she had to make the final break.

Five minutes later two men arrived from Ivan’s gambling den in Dean Street. She watched from the window as Barry was threatened with baseball bats and beaten severely on a busy London street in the early afternoon.

No one interfered, no one called the police, no one cared. Except her, and maybe Susan. Because she would take the flak. She would take the kickback of his anger and his rage. Roselle knew this and the thought disturbed her, but she had to get Barry Dalston out of her life.

He was her folly, her one crack at taking what she wanted whatever the consequences. How could a man’s looks make you so unconcerned about everything else? She knew that if she looked into his eyes again she would be sorely tempted to forgive him. Something she knew she must never, ever do.