Dangerous (6 page)

And she would kiss him, hug him, be delighted to see him, would chatter on, telling him about all the things she had done since they had last met. And he would tell her, proudly – because he
was
proud, dammit – he would tell her that he was in charge of the patch that had once been Lenny Lynch’s, he was
minted
, he could buy her another house, a better one.

‘So long as you’re happy, son,’ she would say, beaming with maternal pride. ‘That’s all I care about.’

Yeah. In his imagination.

Only here was the reality. Whistling ‘Say You’re Mine Again’ – he loved Perry Como’s voice, and the song was lodged in his brain – he knocked on his mother’s door and she opened it to him. She seemed almost disappointed to see him standing there. Then she turned without a word and led the way into the house, took up her station in the armchair beside the roaring fire – which
he
had paid for, let’s not forget that – and looked up at him in expectation.

Marcus knew the drill.

He handed her the pale blue ribbon-tied Tiffany box. There was a pearl-studded brooch inside it.

She gave the same sharp nod of satisfaction she always gave. Then, not even opening it, she set it aside on a small table and ran her dark cold eyes over him.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said.

‘Have I?’

‘You have.’

She didn’t invite him to sit down, offer to make tea, enquire whether he wanted biscuits or cake, tell him that he needed feeding up. Marcus didn’t expect that, and would have been startled if she had. His mother hadn’t a single maternal bone in her entire scrawny little designer-clad body. She was always immaculately and expensively dressed, her hair beautifully styled, her make-up faultless. And all the jewels he bought her? He’d never yet seen her wearing any of them. Another poke in the eye. Another rejection.

Since boyhood he’d been doing this, trying to tease some semblance of warmth out of her. A gift, there always had to be a gift. And news of his achievements, bringing with them the promise of more. But what did he get in return? Fuck all.

‘I’ve taken over Lenny Lynch’s manor,’ said Marcus, taking a seat even though she hadn’t invited him to.

‘Oh?’

‘There are four clubs. Five snooker halls. Pubs. Restaurants. Rental properties.’ He didn’t mention the massage parlours and whoring establishments. His mother didn’t like ‘rough talk’. ‘So I can get you a bigger house. A better one. In a better area, maybe.’

‘I like it here.’

Marcus gave a tight smile. So typical of her, to toss it back in his face. ‘You fancied Chelsea, you said so.’

‘Perhaps,’ said his mother. ‘We’ll see.’

‘We’re rich, Ma,’ he said, and felt weariness grip him.

‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we,’ she said.

11

Hours after she found Mum dead, Clara was sitting at the table in the next room. She was still deep in shock and she didn’t know what she was going to do. Bernie was sobbing beside her, her head buried in her arms. Henry was standing beside Bernie, struck dumb, his thumb in his mouth, reverting to babyhood in the face of disaster.

Clara had closed all the curtains, as was proper with a bereavement. In the room next door, their mother lay dead. It was beyond belief, heartbreaking. And if they had been in trouble before, now they were up shit creek for sure. With Katherine’s small income as a dressmaker, they’d struggled; without it, they had no chance.

‘We’ll have to tell someone,’ said Clara.

Bernie looked up from the table, her grey-blue eyes bloodshot, her pretty pointed little face swollen with the force of her tears. ‘What . . . ?’ she mumbled, dragging a shaking hand through her hair.

Clara gulped. ‘About Mum.’

Bernie nodded. There was only quiet in the flat. Deathly quiet. Noise still drifted up from the flats below: music, chatter, noises from another world.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ asked Bernie. She was shaking.

Clara stared at her. She had always been ‘big sis’, the one who cared for the younger girl, made sure she was smartly turned out in the mornings, properly washed, sitting her up on the draining board when she was little and scrubbing at her face to get her clean and ready for the day. Bernie was delicate, needy, easily upset. She bit her nails to the quick and she cried every time Hatton came to the door with that horrible great dog of his. Bernie depended on her.

Then Clara looked down at her brother. With Mum gone, Henry was her responsibility, but how would she clothe him, feed him? She had helped Mum out on the sewing sometimes. She could do that, carry on with that, maybe get more work in.

But it won’t feed three of us
, said a voice in her brain.

Well, it would have to. She could put cards in windows, tout the business about more. Mum had never really pushed much for work, not as much as Clara would have liked her to. She gazed at the old Singer sewing machine at the end of the table and thought of all the times Kathleen had sat there working, turning the fabric, chatting to her while she fashioned dresses and blouses for her limited clientele. And the family had scraped along, barely surviving.

Not that she was in any way criticizing her mother – God no. Kathleen had been a great woman, much too good and decent for that flashy waster Tom Dolan. But now it was Clara’s turn to care for the family, and she’d do it, right up to her dying breath. Her eyes filled with tears that overflowed and splashed down.

Mum was
dead
.

It struck her all over again, the awful gut-wrenching tragedy of it, and suddenly she was sobbing too.

‘Oh, Clara – don’t start, or you’ll set me off,’ moaned Bernie.

Clara swiped at her nose and eyes. Bernie was right. She had to be the strong one; she
had
to be. She turned a tear-bright gaze upon her sister. Gulped. ‘Don’t you worry, Bernie. We’re going to manage just fine,’ she promised. ‘Now run and fetch the doctor, there’s a good girl.’ She swallowed her grief. ‘There are things to be done, legal things.’

‘I want Mum,’ Henry wailed, his voice high with panic.

Clara pulled him in close to her and looked right in his eyes as she gripped his frail shoulders. ‘Mum’s with the angels, Henry,’ she said gently but firmly. ‘But listen to me. I’m going to look after you. All right?’

He nodded. Sweet little Henry, he was the most biddable, the most good-tempered child even when his world was being torn apart. Clara ruffled his copper-brown hair and he blinked up at her with big bloodshot grey-blue eyes – like Bernie’s, like Mum’s. Clara looked like her dad, she was the only one that did. And God, how she hated that at this moment. How she hated
him
.

Now she was remembering what they’d had to do when Gran died; they’d summoned the doctor so that he could write the death certificate. Maybe the doctor could advise them about a funeral – only they had no money to pay for one.

He came two hours later, a large moustached man, bustling into the flat with an air of brisk self-importance, wearing an ill-fitting tweed suit and carrying a Gladstone bag. Clara showed him into the bedroom. The doctor drew back the closed curtains, and in the brightening daylight Clara could see again that her mother looked awful – truly dead. All the life was drained from her, never to return. An empty shell lay there, not Kathleen Dolan. She was gone.

Clara watched as the doctor checked for signs of life, looked under the sheets. Then he glanced up at Clara. ‘Wait for me next door, will you?’ he asked a bit more gently.

Clara left the room. Bernie was sitting at the table, staring vacantly into space. Henry was there too. Clara put the kettle on for tea. They could afford that, at least. And Kathleen had baked a fruit cake last week, they had some of that still in the tin.

Mum’s dead.

Before, their situation had been precarious; now it was truly dire. Clara clenched her teeth to stop herself crying again, and made the tea, then found a little milk from yesterday which was curdled, but what the fuck. She opened the tin and cut three slices of the stale cake, and placed them upon Kathleen’s best plates, the ones she had managed to hang onto after Dad had lost all his money, the bone china ones with the lady in the pink crinoline painted on the sides.

Maybe those would fetch a few pennies?
thought Clara.

Presently the doctor came into the room. Clara poured out the tea, pushed the little sugar-bowl toward him and the milk jug, and a plate with the cake on it.

‘Thank you, girl,’ he said, busy writing out the certificate.

Bernie sat looking at the cake as if it would choke her. She took a tiny sip of tea. So did Clara, as the silence in the room deepened. Finally the doctor stopped writing and put away his pen, took off his glasses. He looked at Bernie, at Henry, then at Clara.

‘How old are you?’ he asked Clara directly.

‘Eighteen,’ she lied. She had expected this. She was fifteen, but if she told him that then he would talk about taking Bernie and Henry into care, maybe even her too, and fuck that. She couldn’t let that happen. She hoped the doctor was busy, too busy to go back to the surgery and check her records and find out that she was lying. God knows the bastard had been too bloody busy to come and tend to Mum when she’d needed him.

‘And you’ve got work?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I have. Lots of dressmaking work.’

Another lie. Mum had always said she must never lie, but what alternative did she have? She didn’t want her brother and sister consigned to council care, she’d heard such tales about it. They might lose touch forever if she allowed that. So she had to appear confident of her ability to keep the Dolans afloat. Even if she knew she couldn’t.

‘And you’ll be looking after your sister, and your brother? You’d do that?’

‘I will,’ said Clara.

The doctor looked at the cake, took a bite. It was past its best and he put it back on the plate. Took another sip of the bad-tasting tea. Then he stood up, and looked down at the three of them. ‘The funeral director will be here within the hour.’

Clara nodded. She wished she’d had a better education, she wished she could be good at something. The needlework was nothing and she knew it. A hobby, at best. Not enough to pay for a damned thing, not really. Their Dad had been a rich man, and her parents had gone along assuming that would always be the case, and that neither Clara nor Bernie would ever have to work because one day they would get married and become housewives.

But what sort of men could they meet, who could be a suitable husband for either of them, around here? Eight horrible, panic-driven months since Dad had left them, and neither Clara nor Bernie had even thought about school. Kathleen had fallen into a kind of dull depression and didn’t care whether they went or not. The education authorities hadn’t bothered to chase them up, either: not here in the slums. And what about Henry? He should be starting school soon, but he probably wouldn’t. Of course, the plan had always been for Henry to follow Dad straight into the business . . . except now there was no business.

While Bernie showed the doctor out, Clara sat there, staring at her mother’s death certificate. Her head swam with the shock of it. The sheer dreadful
finality
of it.

‘Try and eat a little, Henry,’ she said. ‘Have some of the cake, for God’s sake. It’ll make you feel better. I’ll go in with Mum for a while, all right?’

Clara went into the bedroom and there her mother lay, her spirit, her soul, all gone. Clara closed the door gently. She went over to the window and drew the curtains closed again, plunging the room into gloom. Then she pulled up a rickety old chair, sat down beside the bed, took her mother’s lifeless hand in both of hers, and cried.

12

‘Marcus? Honey?’

It was a woman’s voice. Marcus’s eyes flickered open. He pulled in a shuddering breath and sat up in bed to bright morning light and the sound of traffic outside. He pushed his hair back out of his eyes. Paulette was there, holding out a mug of tea. She had the radio on in the kitchen and he could hear the Hilltoppers drifting out, singing ‘P.S. I Love You’.

He’d met Paulette last year in the Calypso, one of Lenny’s clubs – now his – and he’d found her sexy and obliging so he’d bought her a flat, which was where he’d wound up overnight. Occasionally she slept over at his place – and she had been moving a few pieces of her clothing into his wardrobe, which didn’t exactly delight him. She was his official mistress – most of the club owners had one – but Christ knew he didn’t want to go too far down
that
road.

He took the steaming mug she offered. It was one of her set of two Coronation mugs with Queen Elizabeth II on it. Paulette was a fervent Royalist; the crazy cow had even camped out overnight in June with some of her mates on a rain-soaked Mall to see the new Queen pass by in the big gilded state coach.

It tickled him to think of Paulette – who’d been giving herself airs since she started being seen around town with him – squatting on the Mall in the rain. Now, she wouldn’t do that. Now, she’d want to watch from a five-star hotel, doused in the fancy French perfume he’d paid for, wearing designer dresses with big net underskirts and tight bodices, maybe a mink over the top.

Marcus looked at her in the cold light of day. Her honeyblonde curls were glossy in the first rays of the morning’s sun; her hair, he thought, was her prettiest feature. Her face was too long for perfect beauty. There was a knowing look in her grape-green eyes and her skin wasn’t the best, but she was pretty enough, and – up to now – not too demanding, although she could talk the hind leg off a bleeding donkey. She had a good body and she’d been doing a lot of modelling when he’d met her; she still did a fair bit of modelling on the side.

Undemanding
, he thought. Yeah. After that dismal visit to his mother’s yesterday, an undemanding woman was exactly what he needed. His mother had no heart, no soul. Well, maybe he didn’t either.

She was returning his stare. ‘You shout out sometimes, you know. In your sleep.’

‘Do I? What do I say?’ He had dreams, he knew that. About Lenny,
dead
Lenny, standing at the end of his bed in the moonlight, with half his head shot away, asking why had he done it.