Dangerous (2 page)

Hatton the rent man had told Kathleen that their landlord Lenny Lynch had ‘put the schwartzers in to de-stat’, and Kathleen had to explain to Clara what that meant – that since the 1952 McCarran–Walter provisions blocked the Caribbean’s emigration outlet to America, West Indians had been pouring into Britain and landlords had seen this as a golden opportunity.

People like Lenny Lynch had lost no time in packing the immigrants into places previously occupied by white families, and had ruthlessly encouraged them to do their worst: to piss in doorways, leave rubbish up and down the pavements, play jazz at all hours, install white prostitutes to pimp off, behave in a threatening manner toward the whites so that they would move out . . . and then landlords could move the more profitable, more easily exploited blacks in.

So Clara spent a long, anxious time waiting for Bernie’s return. When she eventually made it home in one piece Clara was relieved. But the news wasn’t good. The district nurse was off across town attending some other poor bitch who couldn’t afford the ten shillings a proper midwife would cost.

‘But her husband said she’d come straight over as soon as she got back,’ said Bernie, who was now hovering, fidgeting, her pixie face screwed up with worry, in the bedroom doorway. Little Henry was clinging on to Bernie like she was a life raft in a sea of doubt.

Hours crept by.

‘Should I go over again and see if she’s back yet?’ asked Bernie finally, her face wet with tears of terror at the sight of her mother in such pain.

‘Yeah,’ said Clara. She thought of the doctor’s place, several streets away, but they didn’t open until nine, that was
hours
off, and anyway the doctor was never there, he hadn’t been there yesterday because it was Sunday and no one worked on a Sunday, it was a Holy day. Still, they had to try. This couldn’t be right, not this long. ‘And I’ll write you a note for the doctor – you can drop it through his letterbox too. And for God’s sake, be careful. Don’t talk to anyone.’

They could only hope. They could only
try
.

Bernie charged off down the stairs and at the noise of the door slamming behind her Kathleen’s eyes fluttered open. She let out another deep, growling moan. Then, pitifully, she tried to give Clara a reassuring smile. Clara thought her heart would break, to see that smile. A bleak bitterness gripped her.
Fucking men
. There had been a time when she believed her father could do no wrong – not any more. There he was, swanning about who knew where, having ducked his creditors, and a jail term too, and here was poor Mum, who was worth ten of him, no
twenty
, suffering because of what he’d done to her.

‘Mum, I think we’re going to have to try and get you over to the hospital,’ said Clara.

‘Oh yeah? What we gonna do then? Fly? Or walk?’ Kathleen smiled and then winced as a fresh contraction hit her.

Clara winced too as Kathleen gripped her hand and let out another one of those gut-wrenching moans.

She could die
, thought Clara with a thrill of real horror.
Oh, Dad, why did you do it? How could you leave us like this?

They’d lost their lovely house, their precious home, when he’d done a runner. Clara felt ready to puke her guts up when she thought of their house; it had been so beautiful, with its manicured lawns. They’d had a gardener then, and a cleaning lady who came in once a week, and there was a fish pond with a fountain shooting up to the sky. There was an elegant top-of-the-range Jaguar on the drive that Dad liked to use as a runabout, and a Rolls-Royce in the garage for family outings.

Clara would never forget that life, their other life, their
real
life. There were trips out to the races, expensive holidays at the seaside. She could still see him in her mind’s eye, Tom Dolan, her father, that bastard, laughing and flicking his silver monogrammed Ronson lighter, the flame flaring as he lit another Havana cigar. His gold tie-pin and matching cufflinks would glint in the sunlight. His black hair – like Clara’s own – was thick and glossy, and his eyes – also like hers – were the striking violet-blue of an English bluebell wood, always shining with confidence.

And Mum, she’d looked so different then! Mum in designer dresses, her copper-brown hair swept up, styled by the hairdresser at a costly salon up West. Five pounds a week each – a bloody fortune! – for Clara and Bernie, and Henry, the apple of his dad’s eye, indulged so much.
Too
much, maybe. No expense spared, not then. The sky was the limit. But suddenly it had ended, it had all come unwound, the threads of their once-gilded lives. Clara had been vaguely aware that creditors were queuing up, staff were being laid off, suppliers who hadn’t been paid in a long while were baying for blood and demanding money that was no longer there.

And then the biggest shock of all.

The money was no longer there because Dad had been systematically robbing the company. He’d creamed off sixty thousand pounds to live a lavish lifestyle way beyond his means, all so that he could impress his friends, play the big I-am, buy Rollers and spend days out at Ascot and mix with the nobs he so admired, so wanted to
be
like; pretending he wasn’t an ordinary working-class bloke who’d made good, pretending he was something he wasn’t.

But what use was it, thinking about that now? Kathleen had rented this flat. They were here. They
had
to cope.

‘I’ll get hold of a copper, see if he can’t whistle up an ambulance,’ said Clara. She knew this was like wishing for gold bars down a sewer. The coppers never came round this area if they could avoid it; and on the rare occasions they did, they came in twos and threes, never alone.

They didn’t have a phone here – a
phone
, what a bloody joke! – and no one else who lived in these rat-hole flats did either. The telephone box out in the road had been vandalized months back and no PO engineers had proved brave enough to venture into this warren of thieves to fix it.

‘We could get a taxi,’ gasped Kathleen, still trying to smile through the agony.

This too was a joke. They couldn’t afford a taxi. A taxi was the stuff of dreams. They couldn’t afford fuck-all. Not any more.

So this is what they mean by being up shit creek
, thought Clara.

They had no money and they were three weeks behind with the rent. One of the few things they’d hung on to from their old life was Mum’s battered Singer sewing machine, and for the first few months Kathleen had got by taking in dressmaking work, never bringing her clients here – of course not – but going out to do fittings and deliveries. The last few weeks, however, Kathleen had been too ill to even lift a needle.

They couldn’t turn to the neighbours for help, either.

‘You mustn’t talk to anyone,’ Kathleen had told her children when they’d moved in here.

Clara had been mystified by this to begin with. It took her a while to understand that all the big terraced houses along this street and the adjacent ones had been greedily parcelled up into flats and let out by uncaring landlords, mostly to migrants and their white ‘girlfriends’, who were prostitutes whose wages the men lived off. Late into the night there were fights, music played full-volume, people loitering in groups, smoking and grinning on the stinking stairs as they tried to pass, watching the family who occupied the top floor as though they were prey.

This, truly, was a nightmare. Clara had heard of such things, but she had never dreamed she’d see them close-up. This place – the furnished flat Kathleen had assured her eldest daughter would be the answer to their newly homeless state – was hell: red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, and there was never any peace. The basement of their building had been turned into an illegal cellar-club where people could gather to smoke marijuana and gamble day and night. The Dolans had to share a squalid, filthy toilet two floors down with everyone else in the block, and it was a battle just to get down there and back without being stopped or asked for cash or manhandled.

And the flat itself was no haven from the squalor. The walls were green with damp, old wallpaper peeling off and hanging in brown mouldering strips from every corner, cockroaches scuttling around in the rotting floorboards beside the skirting board. All the Dolans’ own beautiful furniture had been seized by bailiffs before the eviction order was served, so they had to make do with the stuff that came with this ‘furnished’ sweatbox. The stained mattresses reeked of piss and were crawling with bugs. The bedside cabinets were empty orange boxes with bits of fabric tacked onto them. The previous occupants must have had a dog or a cat, because soon after they moved in Henry developed flea-bites all round his ankles.

Kathleen had rented this flat because she’d had no choice: it was the only one they could afford. Now, they couldn’t even afford this. It had got to the stage where they kept the front door firmly locked at night and daren’t answer it by day, knowing it would either be someone wanting to rob them of what little they had, or the never-never man wanting payment for items Kathleen had bought on tick. Or, worst of the lot, Frank Hatton.

Clara shuddered.
Hatton
. Last week Kathleen had been too sick to deal with the repulsive, bristle-chinned old thug when he showed up at their front door to collect the rent money, so Clara had reluctantly answered the door and told him that they had a few problems but would pay him in full next week.

‘Promise?’ leered Hatton. He wore a battered brown leather coat and he had an Alsatian, mad-eyed and with thick black-and-tan fur, on a stout lead at his side. Round here, Clara reckoned he daren’t go out without the damned thing or else someone would rip his teeth out and sell them for dentures. The dog was snarling. It looked like it wanted to tear Clara’s throat out. She thought that if Hatton let it go for a second, it would do just that.

Clara hated the way Hatton’s eyes roamed over her; it felt disgusting, like having a slug crawling over your skin.

‘A pretty girl like you need never starve, you know,’ he’d said. ‘Well, I suppose you do know. You must.’

Clara felt her face stiffen with distaste. She knew she was a striking girl, with her black hair, white skin and violet-blue eyes. Men had propositioned her before. But he was old enough to be her
granddad
.

‘Tuesday,’ she said, and shut the door in his face.

‘Three o’clock, I’ll be here!’ he shouted.

Clara leaned against the door, feeling sick, her heart hammering, her mind chasing around in never-ending circles. They were trapped here and they would all die here, in poverty and in fear. They were in hell, and there was no way out.

2

Soho, 1953

Lenny Lynch looked at his flashy gold watch as he stood at the bar in the Blue Banana club. The place was packed, everyone having a good time, playing chemmy and poker. Eartha Kitt was pouring out sultry vocals on the turntable, singing ‘
C’est Si Bon
’; Lenny didn’t know what that meant, but he guessed it was something sexual, something hot.

It was almost time.

Pet an animal too much, feed it too well, and eventually, the thing’s going to turn and bite you on the arse. Simple common sense. Dogs, women, men – they were all the same in this respect, Lenny knew it for a fact. But . . . what could you do? He’d always had a soft spot for Marcus Redmayne.

Lenny studied his reflection in the mirrors behind the optics.
Poor old cunt
, he thought, half-laughing to himself – or trying to, anyway. All the Brylcreem in the world couldn’t hide his thinning hair, all the costly wet shaves and hottowel head massages at Trumper’s couldn’t disguise the fleshy pouches around his bloodshot blue eyes, or the way gravity and time were pulling the sides of his mouth down. His shirt was expensive, his suit bespoke, Savile Row, the best.
But, come on, let’s face the music and dance, shall we? I’m old
, he thought. And now he felt tired and sad, too, because it had reached the point where something had to be done about Marcus, something drastic.

And it would be done tonight. He’d already arranged it.

‘Put me another one in there, would you, sweetheart?’ He handed his empty glass to Delilah, a statuesque Nigerian beauty in her forties who for years had managed this Soho basement bar for him. She tended the bar naked but for a pair of thigh-high black leather boots, as was her usual rather startling practice.

Lenny looked around. The place was busy for a Monday, full of English, Americans and Italians – all sorts of scum in here since the war – most of them playing at the gaming tables, and he’d take a cut from every winning pot. The tarty-looking hostesses with their hard acquisitive eyes and ready smiles were giggling and flirting while serving the punters overpriced drinks and anything else they fancied.

‘You a bit down, m’boy,’ Delilah purred, eyeing him up. ‘Troubles?’

Lenny thought about confiding in her, then bit his tongue. Delilah was one of the people, his old trusted people, who had put the finger on Marcus, saying he’d been coming in here with that scrawny sidekick of his, checking out the books, acting like she was scooping off some of the honey for herself, which of course she would never do. Delilah had been outraged by this implication, by the mere suggestion that she would ever take from Lenny Lynch. And Lenny was, too. There were lots of complaints coming in about Marcus now, half of Soho was in uproar.

‘You know what, Lenny boy? You want to sort that pup Marcus out afore he bite you,’ said Delilah, reading his thoughts.

Lenny looked at her, startled. But she was right. Delilah was a wise woman. Lenny watched her swagger away to the optics at the back of the bar. Once upon a time, that black arse jiggling around the place would have excited him. In the past, he’d romped happily with Delilah in the back room. Now? Forget it. He was limp as a windsock on a dull day.

Delilah refilled Lenny’s glass and turned back to the bar with a broad smile, but inside she was furious. Fucking Marcus Redmayne, sticking his nose in things that didn’t concern him, coming in here like a frigging accountant, checking the stock, examining the books, asking questions like she was a damned criminal. She’d run this bar for Lenny ten years now, right through the war and everything – of
course
she dipped in now and then, didn’t everyone? Lenny wouldn’t mind, even if he knew; she was sure of that. Not that he did know, and she was never going to tell him, but if Marcus would only back off and let well alone, everything would go on as normal and things would be just fine.