by Jessie Keane
‘Kathleen,’ said Clara.
Clara grimly stationed herself at her mother’s side and took hold of her hand while the nurse pushed the covers back and hitched up Kathleen’s nightdress. She rummaged around. Kathleen let out a moan as another violent contraction clenched her midsection. Sick with worry, Clara closed her eyes. It was as if Mum’s pain was so intense she could feel it too.
She could hardly recognize her sweet-natured, contented, sunny mother in the pitiful wreck of a woman lying on the bed. The triple humiliation of the firm’s collapse, their sudden homeless state and Dad’s abandonment had wrecked her, Clara could see that. And now this awful pain with the baby had left her chalk-white and sweating, her once sparkling eyes now bloodshot and rimmed with red.
‘Why won’t it come?’ asked Clara.
‘Shh, girl,’ snapped the nurse, trying to concentrate on what she was doing.
‘It ought to have come by now, why won’t it come?’ persisted Clara.
‘Shut up, let me see.’ The nurse was silent, probing with her hand. ‘Shit! It’s breach,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The head’s round the wrong way. You’ve sent for the midwife?’
Clara shook her head. She swallowed painfully. ‘We can’t afford it,’ she said, and the words hurt her. They didn’t have ten shillings for a midwife; they didn’t have fuck-all. And oh God, tomorrow Hatton was going to be here, wanting the rent, the lecherous old bastard. She thought of the address he’d given her, burning a hole in her pocket, and shivered.
The nurse’s eyes rested on Clara’s face for a long while. Then she turned back to Kathleen, still squirming and groaning on the bed.
‘We’ll have to do the job ourselves, then, won’t we,’ said the nurse with a brisk professional smile at the suffering woman. ‘All right, Kathleen?’
Bernie came back into the bedroom, carrying the bowl of steaming water. With shaking hands she placed it on the washstand along with fresh towels. Henry followed.
‘Now off you go, you two, and shut the door,’ said the nurse.
Bernie, with Henry hovering around her like a small satellite, left the room, closing the door behind her. Clara wished she could go too. She didn’t want to see this. But instead she stayed there, holding her mother’s hand.
The nurse was silent between her mother’s legs. Kathleen groaned and twisted as the woman delved into her. It must hurt so much, thought Clara, tensing as Kathleen’s hand gripped hers again.
‘Damn,’ said the nurse, emerging redder in the face than ever from her efforts. ‘Come here, girl, your hands are smaller, ain’t they. Get here, that’s the ticket.’
Horrified at this request, Clara hung back.
‘Come on!’ bawled the woman, and Clara moved. The nurse directed her between Kathleen’s legs. Clara, shuddering, tried not to look but there was a flash of blood, and of faeces on the wet newspapers they had spread out to spare the already worn and dirty mattress when her mother’s waters had broken an age ago.
Oh Jesus, help me, thought Clara.
‘Do it, Clara. Please do it,’ panted Kathleen, her eyes desperate as they rested on her daughter.
‘Put your hand in, see if you can get a hold on the baby,’ said the nurse.
Horrified, Clara did as she was told. If it helped her mother, she would do anything. Nauseated, repulsed by the stench and the awful degradation her mother was enduring, Clara closed her eyes and put her hand where the nurse directed it.
Ah, Jesus! She put her hand into the place, feeling wet slippery heat. Suddenly there was another contraction and her mother gave a long trembling moan – she was too weak to scream. Clara felt her hand being crushed as if in a vice.
‘God!’ she shouted in pain.
‘Can you feel anything? Can you feel the leg?’ asked the nurse.
Clara shook her head. She was too horrified, too terrified, to speak; all she wanted to do was run.
‘Feel around,’ said the nurse. ‘Hurry.’
Gagging, half-crying, Clara moved her hand. It touched something. Her fingers groped. It was a leg, she thought.
‘A leg,’ sobbed Clara. ‘I can feel a leg, I think.’
‘Put both hands in and get the other one too,’ said the nurse.
Ah God, this was torment, this was awful. Straining away from the smells and revolted by the glutinous feel of her mother’s inner workings, Clara did as she was told. She slipped in her other hand and groped around. Kathleen screamed in pain as she did so, and Clara trembled, certain she was going to throw up at any moment.
‘You feel it?’ asked the nurse.
Clara nodded, biting down hard on her lip.
‘Take hold of both legs. Do it quickly now,’ said the nurse.
Cringing, revolted, Clara did.
‘Now – Kathleen – with the next contraction you have to push, push as hard as you can.’
Kathleen gritted her teeth. ‘Oh God, it’s coming . . . ’ she said, her face screwing up in agony.
‘Push!’ shouted the nurse. ‘Girl, pull gently, do it now!’
One of the legs slipped free of Clara’s grasp. ‘Oh! I’ve lost it . . . ’ She scrabbled around in there. This was hell, this was a nightmare. ‘No! Here it is!’
‘Pull now!’
Kathleen pushed and screamed out loud.
‘Push, Kathleen, push!’
And Clara felt something give horribly then. There was a squelching sound and something seemed to come free. She pulled for all she was worth, and there at last came the blood-and-mucus-spattered little body, slippery-shiny and ghastly as an alien, then the arms and finally the head. The whole thing came sliding out onto the newspapers, and Kathleen fell back onto the sweat-stained pillows.
‘Oh thank God,’ she moaned.
‘It’s a girl!’ said the nurse, snatching up a towel and rubbing the baby over. ‘A girl, look.’
But then the nurse’s face grew still.
She rubbed harder. Her movements frantic.
Then she stopped rubbing.
‘What’s the matter?’ gasped out Clara.
The nurse looked at her and shook her head.
The baby had been too long trapped inside the womb.
It was dead.
8
‘The punters been paying one shilling for a bottle of beer – and it’s watered down, trust me, I’ve tasted it – that’s a knock-down price, but they also have to buy a liqueur, that’s two and sixpence, and I’ve tasted that too.’ Gordon clutched his writing pad and shook his shiny bald dome of a head. He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘It’s watered-down fruit juice.’
Marcus nodded. They were standing in the silent, empty bar of one of the four Soho clubs that had once been Lenny’s. Now Marcus had them in his power. His old school mate Gordon might be weedy, useless in a fight, bald as a coot at twenty-two, and always down with colds, but he was a wizard at maths and keeping books straight. Gordon was happily trotting around the place like a bloodhound, sniffing out boozer rackets. And there were plenty to find.
These clubs were a great wheeze for club owners. Didn’t matter whether you were in Soho or Berkeley Square, the scams were the same. The licensing laws were crazy, so to get around them the proprietors had the customers sign order forms, which were sent to all-night wine retailers; in effect, this meant that the customers ordered the booze, not the club. Everyone was a winner: no laws were broken, the punters could enjoy all-night semi-legal drinking and the clubs were free to make a hefty profit.
‘No reason to change an arrangement everyone seems happy with,’ said Marcus, with a shrug.
‘Poor fuckers,’ sighed Gordon. ‘All these damned hostesses have to do is bat their eyelashes and the punters stop worrying whether they’re being ripped off.’
‘Sounds OK to me,’ said Marcus. He suspected that Gordon would kill to get one of the hostesses up close and personal, but poor bloody Gordon never had a clue with women. Figures were his strength – the mathe
matical ones rather than the feminine kind.
The system worked. The Bill had tried to spoil things for everyone by making it an offence for all-night wine retailers to solicit orders by giving blank forms to the clubs, but so far no court in the land had been able to make it stick.
‘You know what? This is going to be good,’ said Marcus, stalking around his new domain.
Gordon put pad and pen onto the bar and looked at him. ‘No regrets over Lenny?’ he asked.
Marcus stopped pacing and turned his steady black gaze onto his mate. Anyone else asked him that question, he’d rip their heads off. But this was Gordon.
‘Nah,’ he said at last. ‘Had to be done.’
Gordon nodded. You had to hand it to Marcus. The takedown of Lenny Lynch’s little empire had been a thing of beauty, a carefully coordinated pincer movement of military precision. Napoleon couldn’t have done it any better. Once Marcus knew Lenny had turned on him, he’d swung into action. Hardly a drop of blood had been spilled, except for Lenny’s, and the two boys he’d sent to do Marcus, and that mouthy bitch Delilah – and she just had to go, she’d have been a thorn digging into Marcus’s side and he couldn’t allow that. In a matter of days, every single club, pub, snooker hall, restaurant, rental property and whorehouse that had once belonged to Lenny had been seamlessly transferred into the hands of Marcus Redmayne.
‘We’ll get it all legal and above board, I can do that. Get the properties transferred and all that stuff. No problem. Make sure the Maltese or the Eyeties or that mad fucker Jacko Sears don’t try to take it back off you,’ said Gordon. ‘All you got to do now is hang on to it.’
Marcus looked at Gordon with a grim smile. ‘I bet there are people all around Soho shitting themselves right now, thinking I could be coming for them next.’
Gordon took up his notepad and pen and heaved a sigh. Marcus had been his friend just about always, but sometimes Gordon found Marcus’s self-belief bloody terrifying.
What the hell made anyone so driven?
Gordon didn’t understand it.
He never would.
9
On Tuesday morning, Clara took her mum in a cup of tea. She put the cup and saucer down on the hideous little curtained table beside the bed. Yesterday had been horrible, almost beyond bearing. She shuddered to think of it. A baby sister, and she was dead. Unnamed – unwanted, truth be told. Poor little sod.
Mercifully the nurse had taken the dead baby away with her, saying she’d dispose of it. She also wrapped up the afterbirth in some of the soiled newspapers, and helped Clara get Kathleen fresh sheets on the bed, get her washed and into a clean nightdress. Kathleen was still seeping blood, but that would stop, the nurse told Clara. Now all they had to do was put it behind them, said the nurse, and go on with their lives.
What lives? wondered Clara. If this was life, being here in this awful place, potless, hopeless, then she didn’t want it. She’d rather be dead, like her baby sister. She trembled to think of Hatton coming to the door today, and her with no money to give him.
She went over to the curtains and pulled them back to admit the daylight, then she went to her mother’s bedside and was pleased to see that Mum was still asleep. She needed her rest. Already Kathleen had shed many tears over losing the baby, but – and Clara hated herself for thinking this – maybe it was for the best.
For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether or not to wake her, but Mum never liked to lie in and she got irritable if allowed to do so. Gently, Clara reached out and shook Kathleen’s shoulder.
‘Mum? Wake up, it’s time. Got your tea here.’
It was stuffy in the room, so Clara went over to the window and pushed up the mouldering sash an inch or two, to let in fresh air. It was raining out, and gusty; the sky was charcoal grey, ridged with thin bands of pinky white. The curtains billowed. She closed down the sash a little, she didn’t want Mum catching cold, not now when she was so weak. Then, smiling, she turned back to the bed.
‘Mum? Come on, got your tea,’ she said.
Clara stopped there, looking down at her mother. The smile stalled on her lips. Now that the curtains were back, she thought that Kathleen’s face looked faintly blue, not her usual healthy colour.
‘Mum . . . ?’ Clara’s voice was little more than a croak. She could feel her heart beating sickly in her chest, could feel a new terror starting to take hold.
Slowly, she reached out trembling fingers and touched the hand that lay unmoving on the coverlet. She let out a gasp and quickly withdrew. Her mother’s flesh was icy cold.
‘Mum!’ Now it was a cry. She shook Kathleen’s shoulder again. ‘Wake up! Come on!’
Her mother’s chest wasn’t rising and falling with the breath of life. Panicking now, Clara shook her roughly, and started yanking at the bedclothes.
‘Come on, Mum, wake up, you’re scaring me . . . ’ Clara pulled back the blankets and the sheet and then stopped, staring.
The sheet beneath her mother was red.
‘Oh God, oh God, no . . . ’ Clara was muttering, her hands flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock.
The bleeding hadn’t stopped as the nurse had promised. Her mother had bled to death. Clara fell to her knees and tears spilled over and cascaded down her face as she stared at her mother lying there, all the life gone out of her.
‘No . . . ’ she moaned over and over, sobbing with grief and disbelief. ‘Oh God, Mum, please don’t leave us. Not you too!’
10
Marcus had no idea why he kept coming back to see her like he did. Every time he’d say the same thing: That’s it, she can stew in her own juice, the old cow – this is the last time. But a week, maybe two, later, he’d be back again, like a stuck record.
Once again he’d made the journey to Old Bond Street, where he’d selected a little something bright enough to tempt her magpie eye and – of course – expensive enough. It had to be expensive. He’d come away with the pale blue Tiffany box in his hand, tied with the trademark white ribbon, and made the journey across town to the place where she lived, the place he had bought her, working for Lenny Lynch.
Every time, it was going to be different.
Every time, in his mind’s eye, it was.
In his imagination, his mother pushed away the gift and said: ‘No matter about that, my darling, how are you?’
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 immacu
lately 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.
