by Jessie Keane
‘Use the front door in future, okay?’
Billy nodded and blushed.
‘Come and sit down and have a cup of tea with me,’ said Annie, putting the kettle on while Chris went back to his business. ‘How are you, Billy?’
‘I’m very well. Are you well, Miss Bailey?’
Although Billy thought of her as ‘his beautiful Annie’, he would never dream of addressing her by her first name. His mum had brought him up to respect ladies and to treat them properly. He sat down at the kitchen table, his briefcase on his lap. He removed his deerstalker. You didn’t keep your hat on when there was a lady present.
‘I’m fine. Keeping busy, you know. Biscuit?’
‘Thank you.’ Billy paused. He wasn’t sure whether he should say it, maybe Max wouldn’t like everyone knowing his business. But Annie wasn’t everyone, Annie was a Bailey, and family was important. His mum had always hammered that home to him. ‘I came to tell you that Mrs Carter is back living with Mrs Bailey.’
Annie dropped the biscuit tin. She turned and stared at Billy. ‘Ruthie’s moved back in with Mum?’ she said.
‘I thought you would want to know.’ Billy looked at her anxiously. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’
Annie snatched up the tin. ‘You haven’t upset me, Billy,’ she said. Flaming hell, did that mean that Ruthie and Max were over? Was this a permanent split?
Billy was afraid that he had upset Annie. Suddenly she looked distracted. He hoped not. He loved coming here and seeing her, they were so kind to him here. It had always been a nice warm place, a bit of a haven for him, even when Madam Celia had been here. When she had gone, Billy feared he would no longer be welcome, but his beautiful Annie seemed to have taken over where Celia left off.
Actually he wasn’t too clear about what they did here. He knew they paid protection to the Delaneys, just as places like this on Max’s patch paid protection to the Carters. That was just the way things were. But as to what they got up to, upstairs in their bedrooms, Billy wasn’t too sure about that. He had a feeling that they did dirty things. The same sort of things Mum had warned him about, the things that would make him go blind, she said – things that he sometimes did himself, much to his shame, but only ever alone in the privacy of his room.
And now here she was, chatting to him like she was interested in what he had to say! He was in heaven. When she’d upset Max – he didn’t know how but she had – he’d been afraid she would move right away, that he would lose her for ever. But here she was, talking to him. And then the phone rang, and Chris poked his head round the kitchen door.
‘It’s Kieron, Miss Bailey,’ said Chris.
‘Oh no,’ said Annie. ‘I’m late. I know I’m late. I’m coming, tell him.’
‘She’s coming,’ said Chris into the phone.
Annie ran out into the hall. ‘Kieron, I’ll be about half an hour,’ she said.
A pause. Billy listened.
‘Look, Kieron, you know I was reluctant to do this in the first place.’
Billy’s attention sharpened. Was this ‘Kieron’ making Annie do something she didn’t want to? His mind churned. Not something like they did in the bedrooms upstairs?
‘I said from the start, didn’t I, that I didn’t want to be lying there in my birthday suit for all to see? I don’t like it.’
Billy felt himself blush uncomfortably at what she was saying. What was this man doing to her, that she had to be naked? He thought he knew. His mum had told him about the birds and the bees and how only dirty people did things like that. His jaw clenched in anger. This wasn’t right, this man forcing Annie to do things against her will.
‘Okay, Kieron, half an hour,’ Annie said, and walked back into the kitchen only to find that Billy was gone. He’d only drunk half his tea. The back door was standing open and the rain was coming in. She closed it, paused for a moment to think again about what Billy had told her, then quickly got back to counting out yesterday’s takings. She had to scoot. It might only be Kieron, but you didn’t keep a Delaney waiting.
24
At four o’clock on a Sunday morning an arsonist slipped a rag soaked with lighter fuel through the letterbox of the Galway Club. Then the arsonist did the same at the Liberty. The clubs were both owned by the Delaneys. By five o’clock the fire brigade were in attendance, hosing both places down. By six, dawn was breaking and the twin jewels in the crown of the Delaney empire were nothing more than smouldering wrecks, black and gutted, open to the early morning rain. By seven, Orla and Redmond and Pat Delaney were outside the Galway looking at the wreckage. At seven-thirty, Kieron showed up, bleary-eyed and incredulous as he saw what had happened.
‘Fucking Carters,’ Pat roared, and hit the blackened wall.
The police were there, standing some distance away. They knew the score. This was a gangland reprisal. They had already taken details from Redmond, but every one of the Delaneys knew that the Bill would take the paperwork back down the station and promptly lose it. They had enough work on their hands policing law-abiding citizens, they wouldn’t trouble themselves over mob fights.
‘You think it was them?’ Kieron asked, open-mouthed with shock.
‘Give the boy a coconut,’ sneered Pat.
‘Because of what happened to Eddie Carter?’
Pat said nothing but kicked the wall.
Kieron looked at Redmond and Orla, both standing there like statues, saying nothing. He hadn’t ever allowed himself to think about what had happened to Eddie Carter. But at the back of his mind was a suspicion that his family had been involved. They might not have done the deed, but he suspected they had been behind it.
Pat was violent and a natural-born liar, and Kieron knew it. Pat had always been a loose cannon. But hadn’t Pat also been keen to get the family involved in the lucrative drugs trade? He’d talked about it to Orla in front of Kieron and, although Redmond had said no, Kieron knew that Pat chafed under his brother’s rule. They all knew that Pat wanted to be boss after Tory got himself killed. Maybe Pat had done some independent work and stirred up a hornet’s nest. Maybe this wasn’t the Carters at all. Maybe Pat had started getting interested in dealing and had stepped on someone’s toes.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Kieron stared at the wreckage of the Galway, Tory’s favourite of their two clubs, named for their Irish homeland. All gone now. As usual he found that he had to cut dead all thoughts of his family business. He had never been a part of it. They were involved in dangerous games. It was a nightmare to him, and that was why he had stayed away so long, travelling the world, forgetting where the wherewithal that allowed him to do so had come from. From crime. From gambling dens and prossies and casinos and dodgy deals and intimidation. He’d shied away from it. Enjoyed the privileges it bought, yes, but turned his head away from the facts of his family’s livelihood.
Now it was staring him in the face. At least they were honest about it all; whereas he was just a fucking hypocrite. He was glad Mum and Dad were back in the old country and didn’t have to see this.
His exhibition was starting tonight in Toby Taylor’s Jermyn Street gallery. Toby was a crime junkie. He nearly had an orgasm just talking to the Delaneys. He got high on the danger of it, tried to dress like Redmond, treated Orla like a queen. When Kieron Delaney asked about an exhibition, he’d turned him down flat. Fuck it, Toby said, he had Hockney lined up, he was having talks with Lucian Freud, he’d exhibited Warhol just last year, he was hot. Who needed a fucking no-hope novice? But then Kieron had given in and told Toby he was one of the Delaneys. He’d uttered the magic word. Toby was all over him now like hives.
Kieron had been at the gallery all weekend, working on getting the positions of the canvases just right and checking that the lighting did them justice. The nude of Annie was smack in the centre of the thing, visible the instant the punters walked through the door, raised up above all the other works, stairs ascending to either side of it. He’d sweated hard over the exhibition, had gone to bed in a state
of high excitement and happy exhaustion.
Now this. A reminder.
What was it Annie had said? That the gallery-owners wouldn’t say no to him, because he was a Delaney. She was right, and he knew it. It soured his achievement more than a little, to know people so feared his family. So did he have this exhibition because he was a great artist – or because Toby Taylor didn’t want his gallery to burn to the ground one night, or to find himself lacking a pair of kneecaps?
He knew the answer to that. All too well.
‘I’m going home,’ he said, turning away sick at heart.
Maybe he should stay and comfort Orla, but he knew from years of experience that she and Redmond were a pair, entirely co-dependent. As for Pat, big stupid bully that he was, banging on walls and snorting with rage, what a joke. Kieron didn’t even recognize Pat as his brother any more. He didn’t miss Tory. Tory had been a bastard. The worst kind of bastard. He wished Mum and Dad could be here. Ah, but they were old now, too old to stomach all this shit. Better for them to be where they were. The game was changing. The game was getting too dangerous.
25
‘Oh Christ, not you again. I’ve been wondering when you’d show up to gloat.’
What a welcome. Annie stood on the doorstep and wished she was somewhere, anywhere, else.
She looked at her mother through the fug that was seeping out of the half-open front door. God, what a pesthole this whole place was. Funny how when she’d been living around here she’d never noticed the litter in the streets or the dog mess on the pavements, or how scraped and battered Connie’s front door was, or how Connie never cleaned her front step or got the window sills painted, or how the new nets Connie had splashed out on for Ruthie’s wedding were now coffee-coloured and caked rigid with dirt.
‘I haven’t shown up to gloat, Mum,’ said Annie flatly. ‘I’ve shown up to see Ruthie.’
Or at least this had been her intention when she’d got up and dressed this morning. Her stomach had been churning with nerves ever since. It had been so long since she’d seen her sister. She’d had that brief glimpse at Eddie’s funeral, but that hadn’t helped; Ruthie had been as changed and as remote as a total stranger.
‘She don’t want to see you. I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to ask.’
Annie held on to her temper. When she looked at Connie she felt a sort of sad contempt. Connie was as scruffy as this shit-tip of a rented house. God knows how she kept up the payments. Annie didn’t even want to think about that. Maybe Ruthie pitched in to help? Annie didn’t suppose Connie was up to working any more. Her mother was more to be pitied than hated.
‘Why don’t we let her decide that?’ said Annie. ‘Is she in?’
‘Yes, she’s in,’ said Ruthie, stepping into the doorway beside Connie.
Annie looked at her sister and was suddenly struck dumb. No, this wasn’t the Ruthie she had known all her young life. This was a cool, sophisticated woman with pain-filled eyes. Pain that she had caused. Annie swallowed and licked her dry lips.
‘Hello, Ruthie,’ she said.
‘Hello Annie. Well, aren’t you coming in?’
‘You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to,’ said Connie, looking at Annie with open dislike.
‘What good would that do?’ asked Ruthie. ‘Let her in, for God’s sake, Mum.’
They went through to the kitchen. There were plates piled high in the sink and on the draining board. The lino was scuffed and sticky underfoot. The stove looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a month. Annie sat down at the kitchen table, looking carefully at the chair before she did so. Ruthie sat too, and smiled grimly as she saw Annie’s mouth thin with disgust at their surroundings. Jesus, thought Annie, she lived in a flipping knocking shop but she would never stomach this sort of mess around her! Surely, even if Connie was too drunk or bone-idle to clear up, Ruthie could shift herself and do it?
But this wasn’t the Ruthie of old. She had to keep reminding herself of that. This Ruthie didn’t do housework. This Ruthie had sleekly dressed hair and polished nails. This Ruthie wore a smart two-piece suit not dissimilar to the one Annie wore. Fuck it, they looked like two flamingos perched on a muck¬ heap in here! The thought was amusing, but Annie didn’t share it. Ruthie wouldn’t see the joke. Ruthie’s face – so much thinner than it used to be – was set in grim lines. She didn’t look like she’d laughed in a long, long time. And that’s my fault, thought Annie. She felt shrivelled inside with the guilt of it.
‘Don’t think you’re getting a fucking cup of tea,’ snorted Connie, hovering threateningly over Annie, scattering venom and fag ash and drink fumes. ‘What did you think I’d do, roll out the bloody red carpet for a cheap little whore like you?’
‘Mum,’ said Ruthie loudly.
‘Well, she’s got a fucking nerve, showing up here. Hasn’t she done enough damage?’
‘Just give us a few minutes, will you Mum?’ asked Ruthie coolly.
Connie withdrew, leaving the kitchen door open into the hallway. Ruthie got up and shut it. She sat back down and looked at Annie.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What is it you’ve come for, Annie?’
‘I’ve come to see how you are.’
Ruthie looked at her blankly. ‘You’ve come to see how I am,’ she echoed. Then she laughed. ‘I’ll tell you how I am, shall I Annie? I’m surviving. That’s all.’
‘Ruthie, I’m sorry.’
Ruthie nodded. ‘You should be.’
‘I wish you were happy, Ruthie. I really do.’
‘Well I’m not.’ Ruthie’s eyes were hard. ‘Let me tell you about my life, Annie. I spend a lot of time sitting alone in that mausoleum in Surrey now that poor little Eddie’s gone. If I go out to get my hair done or to go shopping I have to take my minder with me. The stockbrokers’ wives with their little Pony Club kids and their twinsets and pearls don’t like my accent or my dodgy connections and they shun me. I don’t see my husband very often, he’s a busy man, but when I do we’re at each other’s throats. Mum’s in bits on her own but Max won’t let her come and stay with us because she might mess up Queenie’s rugs or leave drink stains on the tables. So I came back to the Smoke. I go out to the shops here, but still I’ve got to take my minder with me. The shopkeepers all serve me first, before all the other women. I go straight to the front of the queue, even if I don’t want to. I have to apologize for that, but the other women say, oh don’t worry, we’re not in a rush. But they stare at me and they hate me and they envy me. They’re afraid of me. Or rather they’re afraid of Max. That’s my life, Annie. That’s my life.’
Suddenly there were tears in Ruthie’s eyes. Instinctively Annie put out a comforting hand, but Ruthie snatched hers away.
‘Don’t you dare pity me,’ she said.
‘I don’t,’ lied Annie.
‘I’d rather be me than you,’ sniffed Ruthie, her expression one of disgust. ‘Running a massage parlour! For God’s sake, whatever possessed you to get sucked into all that?’
‘Mum threw me out,’ Annie reminded her. ‘Where the hell else could I have gone? And Celia always liked me.’
‘And now she’s left you in charge?’
‘Yes.’
‘You ought to be careful,’ said Ruthie. ‘You’ll get all sorts banging on your door.’
Don’t I know it, thought Annie. But the parlour had been her lifeline. She was busy expanding it. Fuck it, she was proud of the work she’d done there. It had been running at a quarter of its full capacity under Celia. Under Annie’s rule, it was thriving.
‘I’m always careful,’ said Annie. ‘So … are you and Max still together, Ruthie?’
Ruthie looked at her sister scornfully. ‘Yes, we’re still together. Contrary to rumour. I’m going back at the weekend, we’re going to spend it together. Don’t think you’re going to step into my shoes, Annie Bailey. I’m still wearing them.’
‘I don’t,’ said Annie, colouring.
‘No?’ Ruthie gave a de
risive snort. ‘He always wanted you, really. But he won’t ditch me for you, Annie. Max doesn’t dump his commitments. He isn’t Jonjo. He takes his responsibilities seriously.’
‘I don’t want him to,’ said Annie, standing up sharply.
‘Sure you don’t,’ scoffed Ruthie.
‘I don’t!’ God, was she trying to convince Ruthie or herself? Flustered, Annie snatched up her bag. Her cheeks felt hot. She looked at Ruthie. ‘I just wanted to see you,’ she said.
‘What for? To see the damage you’ve done?’ snapped Ruthie.
‘We were so close before,’ said Annie.
‘Before? You mean, before you fucked my bridegroom?’
It wasn’t like Ruthie to swear. But then this was a different Ruthie – hardened and sharpened by life, by all that had happened to her. Annie stared at her and could see nothing of the Ruthie she had known and loved. Nothing at all.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Ruthie. ‘Of course you are.’
26
‘I think he’s had enough,’ said Annie, passing through the hallway and pausing to look at what Aretha was up to.
More and more Annie was becoming blasé about the sex parties. Men were a strange lot, straight sex seemed to be the last thing on their mind. One client had begged her to let him redecorate the kitchen – while stark naked of course – while Aretha whipped the crap out of him and told him to do it better. Annie had declined his request. The kitchen was off-limits to clients. Men! What a bloody strange bunch they were. In her limited experience, women were so much easier to please. Most women wanted a nice warm one-to-one cuddle – blokes wanted much more diverse pleasures.
‘Why? He’s a very naughty boy,’ purred Aretha.
This was becoming a practised part of their little act. Aretha was the slave mistress, the beater and abuser dressed in a leather basque and holding the whip, Annie was the prudishly clad, sweet voice of discipline and reason who said enough was enough. It was good cop/bad cop, really. Which was ironic, when you considered that the bloke who was strung up from the stairwell was a chief inspector.
