Playing Around

by Gilda O'Neill

  Another nod.

  ‘I told you, you should have come with me to the Palais.’

  ‘I couldn’t. You know I don’t …’

  ‘Angie, it’s only the Ilford Palais we’re talking about, not the Scotch of flipping St James or the Canvas Club.’

  ‘I wouldn’t fit in with your friends,’ wailed Angie. ‘You know I can’t …’

  ‘Angie, you are my friend. And you know I’d love you to come out with me. It’s only because you won’t that I still knock around with that lot from school.’ Jackie put her arm round Angie’s shoulder and gave her a little shake, in the mistaken belief that it would cheer her up. ‘We had a right laugh.’

  The door opened and a male voice asked, ‘Who did? What have you pair been up to?’

  Angie and Jackie looked round to see Martin Murray, Jackie’s big brother, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Hello, Squirt,’ he said, smiling at Angie, ‘you look pissed off. My little sister’s not been upsetting you, has she? If she has I’ll take her teddy off her. She still cuddles that ratty old bear every night, you know.’

  Angie managed to wring out a feeble smile in reply. Last October, Martin had become an economics student at London University, but he didn’t have a duffel coat or a scruffy beard. Martin was a mod, with a parka, a tonic mohair suit and a chrome-covered Lambretta, and, during the past couple of years, had grown into just about the most beautiful thing that Angie had set eyes on.

  ‘Ignore him, Ange,’ Jackie said haughtily. ‘Being the first one in the family to go to college has gone to that fat head of his. But what he doesn’t realize is, being clever doesn’t mean he’s got any sense.’ She pointed to the box of tissues on her bedside table. ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful and give Angie a paper hankie, then go down and brew up so me and Angie can have a cup of tea?’

  Martin handed the tissues to Angie. ‘Actually, I was going to offer to put the kettle on, sis, but, now you’ve asked, I think I’ve changed my mind.’

  He ducked just in time to avoid the tissue box, expertly aimed by Jackie, from hitting him on the head.

  ‘That was one sugar, wasn’t it, Squirt?’ he called as he ran down the stairs to the kitchen.

  ‘Listen, you two.’ Martin held out a tin tray bearing two cups of tea and a plate of Jammy Dodgers. ‘Mum’s bending my ear about persuading Angie to stay for lunch.’

  ‘Lunch? Ooh, lah-dee-flaming-dah!’ Jackie jeered at her brother in a high, mock-posh voice. ‘Don’t they have Sunday dinner at your toffee-nosed college, then? Too common for the likes of them?’

  Martin did not rise to the bait. He had sworn he would never wind up in a job like his dad’s: ruining his lungs as he cleaned out the crud from the boilers in the local car factory, with only a nightly pint of mild and bitter in the Fanshawe Tavern and a fortnight in a chalet in Leysdown to look forward to. He wanted more from life, a better life, but that hadn’t stopped him being as scared as hell about going to university. Jackie knew all about his anxieties, and, despite being at times boastfully proud of her big brother, it didn’t stop her exploiting them whenever she wanted to jerk his chain around.

  ‘How about it, Squirt?’ he went on, ignoring Jackie. ‘How about helping us all out by giving Mum the chance to cook an extra mountain of food?’

  Angie took one of the cups and handed it to Jackie, then took the other one for herself. ‘It’s really kind, but I already promised Nan I’d go over to see her.’

  Jackie blew across the top of her steaming cup, while helping herself to the plate of biscuits. ‘Go later.’

  ‘I can’t. Once I’ve got the underground to Mile End, I have to get the bus down Burdett Road, and you know what they’re like on a Sunday.’

  Angie sipped at her tea, agonizing over the choice of missing the chance of sitting down to eat with Martin or of letting down her beloved Nan. And even if she did stay, she would probably be too embarrassed to say anything much to him. It was so different trying to talk to him lately, not like it had been when they were kids. But she really liked him. Not like that, of course, but it was just …

  ‘Come on, Squirt.’

  ‘I suppose if I missed the bus, I could walk from Mile End.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Martin slapped the empty tray with his hand as though it were a tambourine, ‘I’m meant to be seeing someone from college about borrowing some books. I could go up there this afternoon and give you a lift on the Lambretta at the same time.’

  Angie’s mouth went dry. Was this like being asked out on a date or something?

  ‘I couldn’t let you do that, Martin.’ Oh yes she could.

  ‘Why not? They live in Mile End. Bancroft Road. Right along by the college. I could drop you at your nan’s, then go on. And I do need the books today. I’ve got to finish some work I’m meant to be handing in by the end of the week.’

  Jackie pulled a Jammy Dodger apart, separating the biscuit into two, and thoughtfully licked at the filling. What was this all about then?

  Angie could hardly breathe. Her world had just turned upside down: misery to pure joy in a matter of moments.

  ‘You’d have to make your own way home, though. I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’ He paused. ‘So? What d’you reckon?’

  Angie stared up at him from the bed.

  ‘It means you’ll be doing us all a favour: keeping Mum happy by staying and having –’ he paused and looked pointedly at his sister ‘– lunch with us first, means she’ll be able to cook even more grub than usual.’

  ‘If it makes Mrs Murray happy,’ Angie finally managed to gasp.

  ‘Great.’ He smiled and winked at the poor little thing. What a life that kid had. He felt really sorry for her. She was so grateful for everything. If only she realized what a real favour she was doing him, giving him the excuse to get out for the afternoon. Living at home was driving Martin Murray stark, raving bonkers.

  ‘Busy last night, David?’ Sonia Fuller put down her cigarette and sipped her orange juice, as she flicked lazily through the Sunday Times colour supplement. Her attention was suddenly focused. She really had to have her hair done like that. An asymmetric cut would look wonderful with her jaw line, and would take at least five off her thirty-two – off her twenty-nine – years.

  ‘Actually, I came home around half ten.’ David, a look and soundalike for Michael Caine – the first thing, apart from all his money, that had attracted Sonia to him – calmly continued with his breakfast, despite knowing he had just dropped a bombshell right in the middle of the bizarre kitchen table that Sonia had ‘found’ in some ‘wonderful little shop in Chelsea’. Until he’d met Sonia, David had had no idea that ‘finding’ things could be so expensive.

  He shook another dollop of ketchup on to his plate. Regardless of his wife’s attempts to get him to eat muesli – trendy, overpriced hamster food, in his opinion – and to drink orange juice, David was still a resolutely fry-up and dark brown tea man, especially on a Sunday, and even more especially when he’d had his appetite whetted by anger.

  Sonia was no longer concerned with the shiny pages and their drooling displays of the latest, overpriced fashions.

  ‘Half past ten?’

  ‘Yeah, where were you?’ He dipped his toast into the yolk of his fried egg, knowing how much she hated such ‘common habits’.

  ‘I popped out for cigarettes.’ Sonia waved her hand breezily, as though the gold-tipped menthol she was currently smoking was proof of her story, a king-sized, Virginia alibi.

  ‘Why didn’t you send the doorman out for some? Or a cab?’

  David was beginning to enjoy this, maybe even more than the crisply fried bacon that he had speared on his fork with half a grilled tomato. Sonia might have been a crappy liar – in fact, as a wife, she had proved to be a major let-down in most areas – but she could make a very tasty breakfast, and it had been a while since anything else about the little tart had interested him. But being made a mug of by people, that interested David Fu
ller, that interested David Fuller very much indeed. That guaranteed his full attention. And it made him think of all sorts of nasty things he wanted to do to people. Very nasty things. Things that would make Sonia’s dainty little lips curl right up.

  His appetite – for food – satisfied, David shoved the plate away from him.

  ‘Enjoy your breakfast?’ Sonia could have hit her husband right over the head with his nasty, greasy, egg-stained plate. God, she hated him. Why wouldn’t the pig just say if he had seen her and Mikey together in the car park?

  ‘Handsome, darling.’ David belched into his fist, and then scratched his bare chest under the lapels of his navy silk robe.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He sucked noisily on his teeth trying to dislodge a piece of bacon.

  He was driving her to bloody distraction. She stomped over to the sink and dumped the plate on the side, ready for the daily to deal with. Daily! That was a laugh. Despite how well Sonia treated her, the cow couldn’t even be bothered to drag her fat, lazy arse over to the flat just because it was a Sunday, so the dirty dishes and clearing up just accumulated over the weekend until Monday morning. It was disgusting. Just like him.

  ‘David, I have to know.’ She stared down at the filthy plate, took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been very quiet. Have I upset you in some way?’

  David made a show of thinking about it. ‘Nothing that occurs,’ he lied, leaning back in his chair. He reached out and pinched her – hard – on her neat little backside. ‘Just appreciating your cooking, darling.’

  Sonia closed her eyes. Thank God for that. She wasn’t ready – not yet, anyway – to give up everything that the aggravating, uncivilized swine could give her. She intended to accumulate rather more in her private account before she did that.

  So, Sonia Fuller, time to be nice.

  She turned round to face him. ‘I might change my hairstyle,’ she said, flirting down at him through her lashes. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’d look the business whatever you do with that barnet of your’n.’

  ‘You are sweet,’ she pouted, and ran a perfectly manicured fingernail across his cheek.

  Just like she’d done to him. To bloody Mikey Tilson. David could have killed her stone dead on the spot. But he wasn’t going to. Not yet, anyway. He was a man who knew the value of hiding his hand.

  By biding his time he could make a situation really work for him, when other men didn’t realize that a situation even existed. He’d show the pair of them, and any other disloyal fucker, exactly who was in charge, that he couldn’t be monkeyed around with. Any idiot who thought they could cross him would see exactly who called the tunes in David Fuller’s organization. He’d make them suffer. All of them. In all sorts of ways.

  He shoved his chair away from the table and stood up. He hadn’t gone from errand boy to top man by being impatient; he’d got there by using his brain. He tightened the robe round his taut, muscled belly and smiled to himself. And by using his brawn, of course. What was more, he enjoyed playing games. It amused him. Even his teachers had said he was always playing around, always acting the goat. And they’d been right. Mind you, they’d been wrong about one thing. They’d all said he would never amount to anything. That he would never get anywhere, that he’d stay stuck in the same, poxy, Bethnal Green backstreet he’d been born in for the rest of his natural. He’d like to see their faces now. He’d rub their sneering, bastard noses right in it.

  ‘Don’t you drive that thing too fast, will you, love?’ Tilly Murray and her daughter Jackie stood on the Cardinal-red doorstep, watching Martin and Angie standing on the other side of the privet hedge, preparing to set off on the Lambretta.

  Jackie was grinning at them in bemusement. Did her big brother actually fancy Angie? She was her best friend, had been ever since she could remember, but Angie? Nobody could ever rate her as fanciable, and, as much as she teased her brother, Jackie had to admit Martin was considered something of a catch. It was all very strange.

  While Jackie grinned, Tilly frowned: the concerned mother hen. Rotten scooters, why ever had she let Stan talk her into letting their boy get one in the first place? Bloody deathtraps. You heard such stories.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll take care of her.’ Martin handed Angie a crash helmet, a rarity amongst image conscious mods, with a dramatic flourish. ‘See, look how responsible I am.’

  Tilly flapped her tea towel at her son in surrender and went back indoors to work her way through the mounds of clearing and washing-up that cooking a decent Sunday dinner for her family inevitably seemed to result in.

  Jackie stayed where she was, watching her brother’s every move with a confused fascination, but had she been close enough to notice how Angie was quivering as Martin bent forward to fasten the helmet under her chin, she would have been genuinely amazed.

  Misreading Angie’s excitement for resistance, Martin whispered to her, ‘Don’t worry, Squirt, I know it’s a bit big, but I’ll stop round the corner and you can take it off again.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Don’t want to mess up your hair, now, do we?’

  Angie suddenly visualized what a shocking state her greasy brown hair, only partly dragged back in an elastic band, was in and what it must look like poking out from under the helmet. She snatched a crafty look at herself in one of Martin’s long-stemmed side mirrors.

  She looked ridiculous.

  Why hadn’t she washed it this morning?

  Why? Because her mum never had any change for the gas meter, that’s why, and any change Angie might have had in her purse would have disappeared, as usual, and boiling up kettles and saucepans to fill the plastic washing-up bowl in the sink took time, and all Angie could think of that morning was getting out of the house as soon as she could, and then—

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Martin zipped up his parka. ‘You looked like you were about to pass out. Not that frightening, am I?’

  As she shook her head, vigorously denying such a preposterous idea, the loose helmet slipped round.

  Stopped only by her nose from covering her entire face, it still managed to completely cover one eye. Forget frightened, he must think she was a moron.

  Why couldn’t the ground just swallow her up and let her disappear?

  ‘Here, you daft doughnut, come here.’ Gently, he put the helmet back in place, then threw his leg across the scooter, and twisted round to help her on behind him. ‘Good job you don’t wear miniskirts, eh, Squirt?’

  This was getting worse. Not only did her hair look a complete mess, she was now all too aware that she was wearing her old, brown, corduroy slacks, the ones her mum said made her look like a refugee from the Land Army – whatever that was – and here she was about to get a lift from Martin. Martin! With his scooter, with all the chrome, the big, waving aerial with its foxtail flying out behind, the latest, long-stemmed, shiny mirrors, and, most of all, him, with his brains, his mod haircut, and looking just completely, totally, gorgeous in his parka. What was she – what was he – thinking of?

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Too much roly-poly, Ange?’ shouted Jackie with an encouraging wave. ‘Why don’t you hurry up and get on the back of that thing and clear off? The film’s coming on in a minute and I don’t want Dad settling down in front of the telly, thinking I’m going to let him watch some old rubbish on that BBC2.’

  ‘I thought I might go out for a walk.’ Sonia was peering round the door of what she referred to as the study, and what David called the spare room.

  ‘Hang on.’ David raised a finger to silence Sonia as he spoke into the telephone. ‘I’ll call you back.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Such a lovely afternoon. I thought I might take a stroll over to the park and have a look at the daffodils.’

  ‘Daffodils? You’ve got a flat full of sodding daffodils. And roses, and whatever else all them other flowers are.’ He
leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. ‘But what do I know? I just pay the florist’s bills.’

  ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘So why don’t you go and clear up the kitchen?’

  Sonia ignored such an insulting suggestion. Instead, she stepped into the room and lifted her chin dramatically. ‘God, I hate Sundays. You’re always working. The shops are closed.’ She sighed loudly. ‘I am so bored.’

  Abruptly, David stood up, knocking over his chair. ‘All right, you win. I’ll go out with you.’

  This wasn’t the plan. ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll drop you over at Speaker’s Corner. You’ll have plenty of company there. And I can drop into the office. Like you say, some of us have plenty of work to get on with.’

  This was more like it. She could almost have kissed him.

  Almost.

  ‘Go and get your stuff, I’ll see you down in the car park in five minutes.’

  As soon as Sonia was safely in the bedroom, buried in the delights of her walk-in, room-sized wardrobe, David made a telephone call.

  ‘Bobby. I’ve got a job for you.’

  David watched Sonia hover around the edge of the throngs of tourists, as the regulars heckled and laughed at the placard-wearing preachers vying for the crowd’s attention at Speaker’s Corner. Exactly as he had expected, Sonia hung around, pretending she was interested in what was going on, but actually just waiting for him to leave.

  David stayed where he was for a few more minutes, his blood pressure rising along with his temper, then, as soon as he caught sight of Bobby’s shiny black Humber approaching in his rear-view mirror, he did a screeching U-turn in the middle of the Bayswater Road, drove off at speed along Oxford Street, and then suddenly stopped his car with a squeal of brakes and a surprising mouthful of expletives from a passing middle-aged female dog-walker.

  David slapped a ‘DOCTOR ON CALL’ sign on his dashboard, and ran across the road, flipping a two-fingered salute at a taxi driver who had almost run into him, and yanked open the door of the telephone box that stood on the corner of Duke Street.