‘Nice outfit,’ Vi said, checking out her daughter’s reflection in passing as she outlined her lips. ‘I fancy a trouser suit.’ She turned round to have a look at Angie’s feet. ‘And matching red patent shoes. Blimey.’ She smiled nastily, knowingly, as she returned to studying her own face. ‘That new job must be paying well.’
Angie clasped the side of the table, trying to stop the shaking.
‘And able to afford a flat as well. Who’d have thought it. My little Ange.’
Angie stared down at the greasy kitchen floor. How it got that way, she couldn’t imagine, her mum certainly never did any cooking. It must be all the scraps of fish and chips and saveloys that had been dropped on it since Angie had stopped skivvying for her. How long had that been? Two months? Three? When had she got her hair cut?
She felt dizzy.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I am?’ Vi admired her completed face, lost in thoughts of Craig moving down south, of being in bed with him and of him treating her like the queen she knew herself to be.
‘How are you?’ Angie managed to ask. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth.
‘Managing, just, to get along without my little girl. But I’ve got some lovely news. Craig’s—’
‘I’m in trouble, Mum.’ Angie broke in. ‘Terrible trouble.’
Vi spun round and stuck her fists into her waist. ‘I might have known. That explains why that grandmother of your’n turned up earlier. It was obvious she wasn’t coming to see me.’
Angie looked up, trying to focus. ‘Nan was here?’
‘Yeah. Bloody woke me up she did. And in a cab if you don’t mind. When I said I didn’t have a clue where you were, she cleared off.’
Angie buried her face in her hands.
‘Don’t worry, Ange. I know someone who can get rid of it.’
This was all too hard for Angie, too difficult for her to understand.
‘And you will have to get rid of it, you know. I can’t be any help, not with—’
With considerable effort, Angie lifted her head. ‘Get rid of what?’
Vi nodded at Angie’s middle. ‘The baby, of course.’
‘But I’m not pregnant.’
‘There’s no need to pretend to me, Angie.’ She sighed self-pityingly. ‘You don’t know how hard it is to raise a child alone. I fought so hard to keep you. Maybe I should have let them take you, then you’d have had a better life and wouldn’t have wound up in this state.’
‘Mum—’
‘You’re a daft little cow.’ Vi pinched Angie’s pale cheek. ‘Fancy getting yourself in the same boat as me.’
Angie stared at her mother, with her lipstick just a shade too bright and her hair tinted just a shade too red and with the cigarette burns in her mauve nylon housecoat. ‘Same boat as you?’
‘Pregnant before you’re eighteen.’
‘I’m not pregnant. I’m in trouble.’ The tears brimmed in her eyes. ‘Mum, I’m so worried.’
‘Worried? You? You don’t know what worry is.’ Vi lit another cigarette. ‘You’ll learn though, before long. When your looks start going.’
Angie’s panic had earlier dissolved into confusion, but it was now sharpening into anger. Why wouldn’t this woman – her own mother – help her?
‘You’ve had it too easy, Angela, that’s been your trouble all along. You should have had my terrible life, then you’d really have something to complain about.’
‘Your terrible life?’
Vi glared at her daughter. ‘How dare you use that tone with me? I hardly know you any more.’ She picked a fleck of tobacco from her lip. ‘I’ve never known what it’s like to be free. Not like you. Always at the beck and call of a child, when I was barely more than a child myself. And now look at me.’
‘What, at a selfish, spiteful woman, who didn’t even know she had a child most of the time? I was practically brought up round Nan’s until you fell out with her. Then, when we got this place, I was always at Jackie’s. You’ve never cared about me. Never.’
Vi looked at Angie as if she had just stabbed her through the heart. ‘Angela!’
‘Leave off, Mum. We both know what you’re like. Anything you ever do is only for yourself!’
Vi couldn’t be bothered keeping up the charade of being hurt, it took too much effort. She shrugged. ‘I’m just not the motherly type.’
Angie looked at her as she flicked her ash into the sink full of dirty plates and cups. ‘Do you know, Mum, I’m beginning to feel sorry for you. Your own daughter comes to you for help and what do you do? You moan about how life’s treated you.’
Vi snorted unpleasantly.
‘You reckon you’ve never been free. If you ask me, you’ve been a bit too free. You never took any responsibility for me. None. All you cared about was yourself, and going out, and your latest, useless boyfriend.’
‘You watch your tongue. I’m still your bloody mother.’
‘Mother? Mrs Murray’s been more like a mother to me than you ever have. And you know it. And she’s never gone on about being free. Her and Mr Murray have had kids and they’ve looked after them.’
‘Stifled them, you mean.’
‘No. They’ve just done their best.’
‘So have I.’
‘Have you, Mum? Who for?’
‘This is getting boring.’ Vi sighed wearily, but, in the moment it took her to register that someone was knocking on the door, a sickly smile had spread over her heavily made-up face. She pulled her housecoat demurely to her throat. ‘Get that for me will you, love?’ she wheedled. ‘I can’t go to the door looking like this, can I?’
‘I’m leaving. I’ll get it on my way out.’
Vi listened as her daughter opened the street door.
‘It’s for you,’ she heard Angie call.
‘Is that you, Craig?’ Vi’s voice was light and girlie.
‘It certainly is,’ a loud Scottish voice replied.
Vi dashed out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. ‘Put the kettle on and make Craig a nice cup of tea, will you, Ange?’ she yelled from the other side of the door. ‘Just while I finish putting my face on?’
Doing her best to hold back her tears, Angie pushed her way past Craig, and stood for a moment on the grimy, unpolished step. ‘I said, I’m leaving,’ she called over her shoulder, then hurried down the path, shoved open the gate and ran off down the street, in too much of a hurry and too preoccupied to hear Craig’s long low whistle of appreciation.
Martin opened the Murrays’ front door. ‘This is not a very good time, Squirt. There’s been a bit of a row.’
‘Let me come in, Martin. Please. I need to see Jackie.’
He hesitated. ‘She’s upstairs with Mum.’
‘Please.’
Despite not wanting an audience for the ructions that were going on in the house, Martin could hardly refuse her, not with the distress she was in. ‘Go through to the kitchen. But no noise, eh?’
She sniffed miserably. ‘What’s going on?’
Martin could kill his bloody sister. He handed her his handkerchief and she blew her nose loudly.
‘There’s no need to pretend, Squirt. Jackie’s been along and told you my news, hasn’t she?’
Angie tried to summon up interest in Martin’s ordinary – appealingly ordinary – little life. ‘No, Mart. She hasn’t.’
Martin knew she had, the interfering cow, and he knew how much Angie had always fancied him. Anyone could see it was breaking her heart. Jackie could be a spiteful bitch at times. Just because Angie had grown up into such a looker.
‘Ange, I know she’s your mate, but you don’t have to protect her.’
Angie wracked her brains for a clue as to what this was all about. ‘Have you messed up your exams?’ She was speaking automatically, platitudes that she didn’t have to organize or think about. ‘And you worked so hard.’
Martin sat down next to her at the kitchen table. She really didn’t know. Jackie hadn’t blabbed for o
nce. ‘It’s nothing to do with exams. The results aren’t out for ages yet. It’s …’ He bent forward and clasped his hands over his head, as though he could hide himself away from all this. ‘It’s something more personal. And it’s bloody terrifying. I’m getting married.’
Angie lifted her chin and looked at him, hunched over like a beaten dog. He looked as if he’d been condemned to the scaffold.
‘That’s nice. When?’ What else could she say? There she was, the witness to what might well be a murder, frightened out of her life, desperate for someone to tell her what to do next, and here was Martin, about to get married, acting as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
If her situation wasn’t so genuinely terrifying, she might have found Martin’s melodramatics quite funny.
He straightened up, throwing back his head and staring at the ceiling. ‘In about a month. Mum went mad when I told her. She’s been in her bedroom bawling her eyes out ever since.’
‘Doesn’t she like the girl?’
‘She loves her. She’s posh and rich and comes from a good family, whatever that might mean. In fact, she’s all her dreams come true.’
Angie noticed that he hadn’t said she was all his dreams come true. ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘She’s pregnant. And Mum reckons it’s the most disgusting show up of all time and I’ve brought shame on us all, and she’s never going to speak to me again. Her and Dad scrimped and scraped to give me a chance in life, and this is how I repay them – act like I’m straight out of the gutter. Oh, and I mustn’t forget this bit, it’ll kill Dad stone dead when he gets home from work and finds out.’
What should she say? She didn’t even care that much. Just like no one seemed to care about her.
‘It’s Jill. You remember. You met her at that party.’
‘I remember.’ Why hadn’t the toffee-nosed idiot gone on the Pill?
Martin looked at Angie’s tired, tear-stained face, reached out and stroked her cheek. She looked great, even with red eyes and smudged make-up. Why had he got out of his depth with Jill when Angie was just along the road all the time? ‘You all right, Squirt?’
‘Fine.’
He stood up and pulled her to him. ‘I’ve always been fond of you. You know you can tell me anything.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, backing away. ‘I’ve just got all worked up.’
‘I want to help.’ He stepped towards her, closing the gap between them again.
Angie managed a thin smile. This was all she needed. On top of everything else, Martin making a pass at her. ‘I’ve had a bit of boyfriend trouble, that’s all. And I just got everything out of perspective.’
He had her backed against the sink. ‘If only things had been different.’
‘Angie.’ It was Jackie. She didn’t sound, or look, very pleased. ‘Martin, why didn’t you tell me she was here?’
He moved away from Angie and sat down sulkily at the kitchen table.
‘You’re obviously not going to answer me,’ she sniped at her brother, then turned to Angie. ‘Has he upset you as well?’
‘No. Look, I’ve got to go, Jack. Nan’s expecting me.’ Angie hurried out to the hall. ‘Give my love to your mum,’ they heard her call before she shut the street door behind her.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Jackie poked him in the arm. ‘Upsetting Mum. And now you’ve had Angie in tears. You are such a pig.’
‘Me? I never did anything? She was upset when she got here.’
‘Yeah, course she was.’
‘Why don’t you keep your mouth shut, Jackie?’
‘And why didn’t you keep your trousers on?’ Jackie flounced out of the kitchen into the hall. ‘Just you wait till Dad gets home.’
Angie wasn’t sure how she dragged herself back to the tube station and then made the journey to Mile End before getting the bus over to Poplar to her nan’s. But somehow she’d made it.
She turned the corner, and saw the familiar walls around the estate, but something was different today. Blocking the entrance to the courtyard, where vehicles turned in for the car park, there was a crowd of chanting, jeering women, many of them with toddlers, prams and pushchairs. Standing to one side were half a dozen police constables, looking distinctly uncomfortable at the prospect of having to attend a demonstration made up of women and their kids.
Stop the killing now! read one of the many placards. Murderers! read another.
For a moment, Angie froze. Was it anything to do with David? Did they know she was his girlfriend? Girlfriend? That was a joke. Didn’t she mean his bit on the side? God, she’d been so stupid.
Finding one last surge of energy, she fought her way through the demonstrators and made her way up the stairs to her nan’s flat.
‘Thank goodness you’re here, darling.’ Sarah folded her arm round her granddaughter’s shoulders, shut the door tight and hurried her through to the sitting-room. ‘I’ve been so worried.’
Angie felt ill. ‘Nan, what’s going on down there?’
‘It’s awful. They’ve started selling this LSD stuff in the buildings. And round the school. A young boy, thirteen he was, died up on the corner by the Eastern last night. Jumped off the top of a building.’
Angie was ashamed of the relief she felt at it having nothing to do with what had happened in Greek Street, that it was nothing to do with her or David.
‘That’s sad,’ she managed to say.
‘Angie, is there something you want to tell me?’ Sarah thought about that little turd Jameson and how he had been shouting the odds about Angie’s boyfriend being in trouble – pity he didn’t use his time tracking down the drug-pushers.
Angie shook her head. She couldn’t involve her nan.
‘I popped round your mum’s earlier. To see if I could find you.’ Sarah spoke as if her turning up on Vi’s doorstep was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I’ve been a bit worried about you. You know what I’m like. You’ve been such a stranger lately.’
Angie said nothing.
‘I’ll make us a cuppa tea.’
Angie followed her through to the kitchen, wanting the comfort of her presence.
‘Nan,’ she said quietly. ‘Why is Mum like she is?’
Sarah put the teapot on the scrubbed wooden draining board. She had her back to Angie as she spoke. ‘I blame myself, if you really want to know.’
Angie moved closer to her nan. ‘Why?’
‘Let’s take our tea through and sit down, shall we love?’
‘Your mother was a strong-willed, difficult girl, Angie. And I never checked her.’ Sarah slowly stirred sugar into her cup. ‘I spoiled her, because I was trying to make up for things.’
‘What things?’
‘Her not having a dad for a start.’
‘But that wasn’t your fault. Grandad Pearson was killed down the docks.’
‘There’s an old saying, love: the tragedy of a happy marriage is that it can never have a happy ending.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘One of you has to go first, and leave the other one. Grieving. Broken-hearted.’
‘That’s so sad.’
‘But not for me.’
Angie frowned. ‘I thought you idolized Granddad.’
‘Sweetheart, that’s what most people thought. It’s what I let them think. But I was just a good actress, exactly like your mother. There was no Granddad Pearson. I was a stupid young kid who let her head be turned by a good-looking Swedish sailor. He could hardly speak any English. And he was dark, funnily enough. Not what you’d expect of a Swede at all. Lovely rich chestnut hair, he had. Just like yours.’
‘Don’t upset yourself, Nan.’
‘I felt so bad, I wasn’t as strict with her as I should have been.’
‘How did you get by?’
‘It wasn’t easy in those days, bringing up a kiddie by yourself. There wasn’t much help. But I managed. I found ways.’ She paused, remembering. ‘And
Doris was ever so good to me. She guessed almost right away I’d never been married. But she never looked down on me.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
Sarah fiddled with her teaspoon, straightening it in her saucer. ‘It wasn’t too bad. Not really.’
They drank their tea in silence for a while, then Sarah shook her head and said, ‘But then when your mum went and did the same thing …’
Angie almost dropped her cup. ‘Are you saying Mum was never married either?’
‘I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that, darling, but no, she wasn’t. There was no Billy Knight who got run over on the Mile End Road, but there was this bloke she met in some night-club up West. A Canadian, she said he was.’
‘And his name was Knight?’
‘No. She’d seen this film about knights in shining armour.’ She smiled fondly. ‘You know what a dreamer she is.’
‘So Knight’s not my real name?’
‘Don’t worry, babe, it’s all legal, all on your birth certificate and everything.’
‘And I’m half-Canadian.’
‘I suppose you are.’
‘Do you know who he was? Is?’
‘Sorry, Ange, I don’t. But I do know he never realized she was carrying. By the time she found out, he’d already gone back home. He never did a runner on her. Nothing like that. Not like my Swedish bloke. He was thinking about settling in the East End when he met me, he liked it here. Then, when I told him I was in the family way, he was off on the trot like a carriage horse.’
‘Did your mum help you?’ Angie had never thought of her nan as having a mother before now.
‘No, she chucked me out. But you get over it. You have to. You cope. And you try and make a decent life for yourself and your baby.’ Sarah paused again, thinking about how she had gone on the game just to buy food, and how Doris had taken them in to her little terraced house, where they had lived until it had been bombed out during the war.
How differently her own daughter had ‘coped’ …
Playing Around Page 30
