by Mia Dolan
After rubbing her eyes she leaned closer to the window pane. There was no one there, just black shadows falling like mats among the silver.
A sudden creaking on the stairs caused her to turn round. Her grandmother was standing there, a small figure in black, eyes piercing even in the muted glow of the bedside light.
‘Oh. Gran. I thought you were already in bed.’
Rosa raised one well-defined eyebrow in disbelief. ‘Is that what you think?’
Her eyes were unblinking. Marcie felt instantly guilty.
‘Did Dad find Babs?’
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
Of course she did. If her father had found her stepmother he wouldn’t be spending his days pacing around the house like a caged wolf.
‘He will be going up to London for good, I think,’ said her grandmother. ‘It is best he is there so he can find her more easily, especially now he has left his job with Mr Taylor.’
Mention of Alan Taylor made Marcie blush. He’d caught up with her one day outside the shops.
He’d smiled as if nothing had happened, as if he’d done nothing wrong.
‘And how’s my little Marcie?’
She’d flounced on by, her face burning and a queasiness in her stomach. The events of the night when she’d gone to his place came back like a bad dream. Alarmed at the sight of her stained underwear, she’d washed them swiftly in the sink rather than adding them to the laundry bin where her grandmother would see them. Her face blazed at the thought of it.
‘Leave me alone.’
He’d grabbed her arm. ‘Me and you are made for each other, Marcie,’ he’d hissed, his breath hot and moist against her cheek.
‘People are watching,’ she hissed back.
‘They would do. Small-town mentality,’ he said, his comment accompanied by the signature whiter-than-white smile. ‘How about we go away up to London? Just you and me. I could show you a good time. A real good time.’
Jennifer had come to her rescue.
‘Am I right in thinking that was Rita Taylor’s dad?’
Marcie had confirmed it.
‘Thought it was,’ said Jennifer. She popped a crisp into her mouth. ‘I hear he can’t keep his hands off young girls – or anything in a skirt for that matter. Have you heard that?’
Marcie shook her head. She’d been shaking then, and she almost did the same now.
‘I expect Dad will find something better in London.’
Her grandmother’s eyes stayed locked with hers. ‘You are leaving too.’
Too! The word made Marcie smart.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Gran.’
She told herself that it was too early to confide in anyone about her condition. As Johnnie had said, what if something happened? She’d heard of women having miscarriages. It might happen to her, but if not, Johnnie had promised to marry her.
‘There’s not much round here,’ she said. ‘I might leave sooner or later.’
‘There’s a boy.’
Again her grandmother had startled her with her insight. This was how she was sometimes.
Her grandmother nodded and although a smile twitched at her lips there was sadness in her eyes. ‘I can see it in your face.’
‘I’ve got a boyfriend. I think I might marry him.’ Her grandmother blinked then shook her head. ‘No, you are not.’
‘Yes. Yes. Of course I am. It’s just a case of getting Dad to sign the permission because I’m under twenty-one.’
‘Your father will not like it.’
She’s right there, thought Marcie. Her father wouldn’t like her running off and getting married. Seeing as she was not twenty-one, he had to give his permission. She convinced herself that he would, but deep down she knew he would be furious. He’d be even more furious if he knew about the baby. Hadn’t he said he would kill her if she brought trouble home?
Turning away she threw the bedclothes back. ‘I’m tired, Gran. You must be too.’
She climbed into bed.
Rosa Brooks stood absolutely still, her expression unfathomable. ‘You saw the people at the end of the street?’
Marcie made a big show of pummelling her pillows. ‘I saw them. What was it all about?’
‘Mr Ellis was buried in his air-raid shelter. It collapsed. He’s dead. Garth was in there too, helping him.’
Marcie gasped.
‘Mr Ellis is dead. Garth is safe. We should thank God for that.’
Rosa Brooks went back downstairs and made herself a cup of tea. Her heart was heavy and she was feeling drained. Perhaps if she hadn’t been she might have sat Marcie down and talked with her. As it was, recent happenings had taken their toll.
‘Cyril, so many things, so many bad things,’ she murmured as she sat herself down in her favourite chair.
The dream about the dark earth falling in around her had been broken. The nuclear fallout shelter that had taken up so much of Sam Ellis’s time had fallen in on him. The poor man had been buried alive. Garth had been lucky to get out. He was in hospital but basically fine.
The things she was seeing were jagged and piecemeal, like bits of jigsaw from more than one puzzle, all jumbled up together and needing a clear head to sort them out.
‘I am tired, Cyril,’ she said and closed her eyes. She imagined he patted her head and told her to sleep, just as he used to when they were sharing the same bed.
Wise words. She needed to sleep on it, though before falling asleep she prayed that her granddaughter would survive the mishaps that fate would put in her way. Her instinct told her that although it wouldn’t be long before Marcie left home, she was equally sure that one day she would come home.
Upstairs in her bed, Marcie lay staring at the ceiling. It was at her suggestion that Garth had offered to help Mr Ellis with his digging. The suggestion wasn’t entirely from the centre of her heart. She’d wanted him to stop following her around. She countered her guilt with the fact that she hadn’t done everything from selfishness. Alan had stopped Billy Price from bullying Garth. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Even so she felt guilty. Tomorrow after work she’d go to see him in hospital. First she would go along to the telephone box to check that he was still there. If he wasn’t she’d visit him at home. He deserved that at least.
Chapter Thirty-two
Tony Brooks wanted his wife back. He also wanted his job. Not the one with Alan Taylor cleaning his cars and sweeping his floors. He wanted his old job back up in London, but only temporarily.
They called him the rent collector. He called round at all the businesses – nightclubs, pubs and massage parlours – collecting the insurance dues. If anybody got shirty about paying, then he’d phone up for the heavy mob to sort things out.
There was an added advantage to it – if he was up in London it would be easier to call at his mother-in-law’s on the off chance of seeing Babs and the kids. Once he found them he would bring them back to where they belonged. The Isle of Sheppey was where he’d grown up. He’d done the big city thing. He wanted to be home, but home was nothing without a family.
In between he had to lay the groundwork for returning there full time, which meant making his peace with Alan back in Sheppey. He’d regretted scratching Tony’s motor; he told himself he wouldn’t have done it if that bitch Stephanie hadn’t wound him up. What did she know? She hardly knew Babs. OK, they’d had the odd night out in a foursome, but they hadn’t said much to each other.
He had decided that Stephanie was jealous. He shouldn’t have mentioned Alan being out with a bird, but then, he argued, Alan shouldn’t have swapped sides and opted to pay the protection money on his club to the Krays – relative newcomers in the world of intimidation and protection.
The door had a notice on it saying ‘Lounge Bar’. Tony Brooks pushed it open. It was a Saturday night. Someone in the public bar was singing ‘Ferry Across the Mersey’ and falling off more notes than he was hitting; the same applied to whoever was hammering
the life out of the piano.
Alan Taylor was standing at the bar with three blokes. By the cut of their suits they looked as though they were down from London. He vaguely recognised them – not big players but blokes who dealt in dodgy cars. If he’d been sober he might have held back, but he’d just got back from yet another trip to London searching for his family, and he’d had no luck. Alighting from the train he’d immediately made his way into the nearest pub and had been supping in there for a few hours. Then he’d got word that Alan Taylor was in the Britannia.
‘I want a word with that bastard,’ he’d muttered.
Downing his seventh pint, he’d made his way out of the pub he was in. Everything in his life had gone wrong lately. To a greater or lesser extent he blamed Alan Taylor, but he had to play this carefully, mainly because of the secret, the one they’d both been nursing all these years.
He staggered slightly as his eyes came to rest on Alan Taylor, who hadn’t noticed him. His attention was focused on his business associates. Mr Conviviality of the Year. That was Alan. He was buying them drinks, laughing at their miserable jokes and generally being ‘mine host’, the man who was grateful for their patronage.
As Tony elbowed his way through the crowd, Alan saw him and his expression froze.
‘Well! Look what the cat brought in.’
Three sets of eyes turned to look at him. The eyes were cold, emotionless – like dead fish on a slab.
Tony pretended they were real friendly types even though he knew they were far from that. Three blokes from the East End; hard types who talked with their fists rather than their gobs.
‘Look, Alan old son. How about we have a quiet word?’
He hated the way Alan threw a smile at his new pals before sneering at his old friend.
‘Do we have anything to say?’
Tony had sunk a skinful, but he prided himself on being able to take his drink and still think straight.
‘Just remember, Alan. We’ve got skeletons in the same cupboard.’
He saw Alan blanch. His mouth closed in a thin, rigid line.
‘Not so much my skeletons, Tony, as yours.’
Garth had recovered and been sent home. He was wearing a dark-red dressing gown when he answered the door of the dreary flat he shared with his mother. His face lit up when he saw her.
‘Marcie! Have you come to take me to the pictures?’
‘No, Garth. I came to see how you were after your little accident.’
‘Accident?’
He looked totally blank. She wondered if being buried in Mr Ellis’s back garden had erased his memory.
‘The accident in Mr Ellis’s garden. I heard you got buried under a lot of dirt.’
Realisation dawned instantly. ‘Oh! Yeah! But I’m alright now.’
She wondered if he knew that Mr Ellis was dead. Somehow it seemed pointless mentioning it. Anyway, he might get distressed if she did.
‘Do you remember what happened?’
His eyes rolled in his head. He looked skywards. ‘I think so. We were moving some bits of wood to hold the roof up. And it all came down.’
‘Is your mother looking after you?’
‘She’s out collecting.’
‘Collecting?’
He nodded but didn’t elaborate.
‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ Garth said suddenly.
Noticing the state of the place and working out that the cups wouldn’t be much better, it occurred to her to refuse. She didn’t have the heart.
‘OK. But I can’t stop for long.’
She followed him up the stairs. The kitchen was old-fashioned and smelled of old grease and overcooked cabbage. A dresser took up the whole of one wall. It was painted a dark green. The walls were brown.
Garth’s cat was the only other occupant of the flat. The ginger-coated feline was curled up in an old orange box lined with paper. There was another orange box next to it filled with more newspaper and earth. Catching a whiff of cat’s pee she guessed this second box served as a toilet.
Garth explained that the cat wasn’t let out now since the incident with Bully Price.
‘I don’t want him to get hurt,’ he said plaintively.
She could see that he wasn’t very good at making tea and took over. The first thing she did was to wash the cups, getting as much of the stain out as possible.
‘So when did your mother go out?’ she asked by way of conversation.
‘After Mrs Brooks left.’
Surprised, Marcie turned round. ‘My grandmother’s been here?’
‘She came round to see how I was and then she had a cup of tea and a chat with my mother.’
The cheery way he mentioned her grandmother was very noticeable. ‘You like my grandmother, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ He chortled with joy as he said it.
Despite her own predicament, Marcie brightened too. ‘She must like you too.’
He nodded vigorously. At the same time he dribbled tea down his chin and the biscuit he dunked in his cup sank without trace.
‘She asks me what I see and I tell her.’
‘That’s good.’
Someone took an interest in him, asking what he saw on a day-to-day basis. It struck Marcie as odd that her grandmother, who was usually quite unapproachable, could be kind to someone like Garth.
‘I do drawings for her.’
‘You do?’
This was a surprise.
‘Would you like to see some of them?’
Before she could answer either way, he’d set his tea down and was tugging open one of the dresser drawers. The wood was old, warped and stiff so made scraping sounds as he heaved.
There was a rustling of paper. Another smell was added to that of the cat, though not nearly so pungent. Garth’s drawings were done on butcher’s paper, the sort used to wrap a pound of liver or a couple of pork chops.
‘Here,’ he said, straightening and flattening out the paper with stubby fingers. ‘There you are.’
The drawings were childlike, but even so it was easy to see what they represented. The first was of two men. One was standing upright. The other was buried beneath a pile of earth. Both were waving what supposedly represented spades.
‘Is this you and Mr Ellis?’
‘Must be,’ he said. ‘I saw it in my head.’
She guessed he’d done the drawings on his return home. Like a camera he’d wanted to capture what must surely be the most exciting event in his humble, humdrum life.
He brought out more pictures, all of them done in crayons. One of them was very crumpled and fell to the floor. Garth dived on it.
‘This is one of my old ones. My mum burns them on the fire when we’re a bit short – but only the old ones. Not this one though.’
Marcie could tell it was old. The butcher’s creamy coloured paper was fast turning to a tan colour.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
‘Oh my God!’
She only whispered the words, but Garth heard. His round eyes scrutinised her face looking for approval, but in this case she had none to give. Instead there were questions, questions perhaps that Garth could not answer.
The drawing was of two men digging. They were burying a third and smaller, less distinct figure. There was a shed just above the makeshift grave. It was as though Garth had juxtaposed one drawing on top of another.
There should be a number of interpretations, but as far as Marcie was concerned, there was only one. Suddenly she felt very, very sick.
‘I have to go.’
Clapping her hand over her mouth, she ran out of the door and down the steps.
Garth watched her from the door.
‘What about your cup of tea?’ he called after her.
Marcie didn’t look back. She needed air. She needed to talk to someone about what she’d seen and what it meant. The only person she could turn to on Sheppey was her grandmother. But she couldn’t do that. Neither could she talk to Alan Taylor.
There was only her father. This was as near to evidence as she was ever going to get. The time had come to face him and beg him to tell her the truth. As soon as he came home, that was exactly what she would do.
Chapter Thirty-three
It was three o’clock in the afternoon in the East End of London. Tony Brooks looked the business in a light-grey Italian suit, sharp shoes and white shirt with button-down tabs. His hair was well cut and his tie was made of silk. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was where he was, he would have been taken for your everyday London businessman, a man of the City and worth a few bob. As it was, stockbrokers and commodity traders didn’t stray much into places like Rotherhithe and Whitechapel and all the places in between.
He glanced up at the pub sign: a picture of a long-nosed king complete with crown and ermine-edged robe. The Royal George.
Most pubs round here were empty by closing time and it was past that. The patrons had wound their way back to the docks and factories. There might be a few old timers still sipping in the public bar, picking their horses and coughing up phlegm with each puff on their Senior Service.
The acrid smell of stale beer and fag ash flushed outwards as the door hushed shut behind him.
There were no lights on and no old blokes sitting at round tables picking the winner in that afternoon’s three-thirty at Newmarket. There was only the landlord leaning on the bar. He was leafing through the Daily Sketch. He kept turning the pages even when he glanced up and acknowledged that Tony was there.
A load of unwashed glasses sat on the bar. Tony swept them to the floor in one swift movement.
‘Ooops! They’re a bit fragile.’
The landlord stopped reading the paper. Tony knew he had his attention. But something was wrong. He wasn’t screaming at him; he wasn’t offering to cough up what he owed either.
Tony started taking steps backwards, his eyes nervously darting this way and that for the attack he knew would come.
They were on him before he got to the door and he was buried beneath an avalanche of fists. The other side had got to him. He heard the name calling but was unconscious by the time the ambulance came.
