‘Oh, him.’ The landlady looked at her with sympathy. Babs’ stomach rolled – this woman had already guessed what the deal was, the way landladies do. ‘I haven’t seen him around for a while.’
Babs’ desperation grew as the other woman got back on with the cleaning. While there had been some hope, she’d kept things under control, but this was her first port of call and already hope was draining away.
‘What do you mean, you haven’t seen him?’
The landlady looked back up, her eyes as tough as stone. ‘What I say – I ain’t seen him. It’s not a very complicated sentence, is it?’
Babs clenched her fists. ‘You’re a liar. He’s always in here. I know.’
The landlady put her dishcloth down and placed her palms on the bar. Her fingers twitched ever so slightly, showcasing knuckles that said she knew a thing or two about the hard knocks of life. ‘Look, I’m not taking any lip from a slip of a girl. He’s not here and we haven’t seen him for a while. Now – do you want to order a drink or what? Otherwise I have to ask you to leave.’
Babs looked around at the patrons nervously. They were staring at her in the same way as Doctor McDaid’s patients earlier.
She left.
So she never saw the barman shift up and ask, ‘Who was that?’
‘Some dopey bird looking for Neville,’ the landlady answered, pulling out a Virginia Slim and lighting up.
And Babs never saw the barman burst into laughter. ‘Silly bitch. Her and half the other scrubbers in the East End.’
Once she hit Commercial Road again, Babs caught a bus to Limehouse. When she’d met Nev, he’d had a pad there. In fact, it was there they’d first had sex, later the same night. She’d gone up the Reno nightclub in Stoke Newington with her mate Denny; they’d heard it had a classier clientele than the usual wide boys, spivs and pretend bank robbers they met on a night out in the East End. At first it seemed that wasn’t true, but that was before she met Nev. He hadn’t been that interested but when she turned him down for a dance, he suddenly became very attentive indeed. Nev wasn’t the kind of bloke who took refusals lightly. He spent the rest of the night pursuing her, chatting her up. Once he had his big strong arms wrapped around her for a slow dance in the small hours, she didn’t remember making any more decisions. She’d followed him in a dreamlike state to a cab, then to his flat and then to his bedroom.
Babs had had other guys of course, but Nev was different. He was tall, he was strong and he was cool. He didn’t show off or play act because he didn’t need to. The hard boys in the Reno all got out of the way for him. The manager and the bouncers all knew him by name. She knew no geezer was going to lean out of a car window and shout ‘Oi darlin’, show us your tits!’ while Nev was around. Not if they wanted to keep a matching pair of ears. He was so polite. And as Babs knew, guys like that were at a premium down her neck of the woods. She wasn’t going to let him go without a fight.
So the morning after the Reno, after she’d waited patiently for him to arrange to see her again, she got angry when she was finally forced to ask, ‘Are we going out together then, or what?’ – and he didn’t seem to understand the question. She got even angrier when he said nothing in reply. She’d shouted, ‘I’m not a fucking tart Neville,’ so loudly the neighbours must have heard.
He’d gifted her with his one-hundred-watt smile. ‘Yeah – sure we’re going out.’
Afterwards, she apologised for getting on his wick. It was obvious later he was just upset that she’d even asked the question in the first place. And that was the first excuse she’d made for her new boyfriend.
As Babs looked out of the bus window at the estate in Limehouse, she realised in the pit of her guts that she’d been making excuses for him ever since.
She’d never seen the estate in the light of day before. It was one of those old-style Thirties estates, already on its last legs, dirty and dingy. She walked up to the fourth floor. At first Nev had claimed it was his flat but later he’d admitted that he was looking after it for a friend who was on remand for something that he totally and absolutely hadn’t done. Of course, she’d believed him. She knew Nev wasn’t at the flat any more but kept her fingers crossed that he might have left a forwarding address.
Whoever was occupying the flat now had a poster in the kitchen window that said, ‘Demand The Impossible!’ She guessed they might be squatters. The same poster had been in the window of a squat on the street where she lived with her mum and dad. That was before the rozzers had come round and dragged the squatters out by their long, greasy hair, given them a good kicking and chucked them in the back of a Black Maria.
The lock on Nev’s old flat had been kicked off. It was a squat alright.
Babs tapped on the door. It was opened slightly by a young man with long straggly blond hair that was nearly down past his nipples. He wore flared jeans and a Che Guevara T-shirt.
‘Wha’cha want?’
‘I’m Neville’s fiancée. He used to live here. Have you got a forwarding address?’ Babs realised how stupid she sounded, standing at the door to this flat, on this estate, asking for her ‘fiancé’.
‘Never heard of him . . .’ The door slammed shut. But a few moments later it opened again, more widely this time. ‘Neville, you say? Wait there a minute.’ The freak disappeared again before returning with a handful of mail. He passed it to Babs without a word and the door shut again.
As she slowly made her way downstairs like a mourner at a funeral, she looked at the envelopes, each addressed to Neville but with various surnames. There were final demands, summonses and threatening letters about unpaid loans and overdrafts. Nev had always told her he was ‘in business’. That he had various ‘irons in the fire’. That he was looking at ‘investment options’. Now it was clear why he was so well dressed and could afford such expensive gear. He wasn’t actually paying for anything but living on the never-never.
Then there were the postcards. She’d cried no tears since her visit to Doctor McDaid hours earlier. Now they erupted again: acid ones that stung her face.
Hi Nev! Found a great spot for some nudy sunbathing! Can’t wait to get back and show you my new all-over tan. And I mean all-over! Loads of love! Tania!!!
Another one from Petra in West Berlin.
Baby! Course finish next week. I’m in London from Monday. I call. Petra XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ps but please don’t call me Nazi any more, yes?
Babs checked the postmarks on the cards. They’d both been written after she’d met her guy at the Reno club.
All those nights the little bastard was ‘busy’ or doing ‘business’. Or he was ‘seeing his family’. Of course he’d never asked her to meet them. It seemed that Nev had taken the same view as Doctor McDaid all along – she was a whore. What a fucking proper moron she’d been. And worse, what a fucking moron he must have thought she was.
When she got down to the courtyard below, Babs scattered the envelopes and letters in the gutter. But she took the postcards, tore them into tiny pieces, spat on them and threw them on the ground, before grinding them with her heel in fury.
She was done weeping and wailing. Her back straightened and steel set in her spine. She raised her head, more determined to find Nev than ever. She was Barbara Wilson. And no one was going to make a divvy out of her.
As she walked on, she remembered something. One evening when she’d been in the flat upstairs, there was a knock at the door. After a brief chat on the doorstep, Nev had said he was popping out for ten minutes to discuss business with his visitor. While he was out, the phone in the flat had rung. She was absolutely forbidden to pick up Nev’s phone and was sometimes ordered out of the room when he answered it. But as he wasn’t there, she’d picked it up. The voice was smooth and Cockney. ‘Alright, darlin’? Can you pop Neville on the blower?’
‘He’s just stepped out.’
‘No problem. Can you ask him to call the Go Go Girls Modelling Agency in Soho? We’ve got some work for him
. He’s got the number, but I’ll give it to you anyway.’
Babs had got a bit excited because Nev had mentioned that he did a spot of photography for a modelling agency. ‘OK. Can I tell him who called?’
The man seemed amused. ‘Me? I’m the proprietor, luv. My name’s Stanley Miller.’
Three
Twenty-two-year-old Cleo Clark closed her Bible, shut her eyes, took a deep breath and enjoyed her little moment of peace in the house in Mile End. Cleo was a cross between Diana Ross and her namesake Cleopatra – black, beautiful and a diva, if she needed to be. She let the hard realities of her life slip away as her soul was bathed in a world of angels singing and soft golden light. A world of beauty, gentleness and truth. But her precious moment was interrupted by a man downstairs bellowing, ‘Come on then! Come on then! I’ll take you all on.’
With a groan, she opened her eyes and was back in the real world, which didn’t include beauty, gentleness and truth at all.
‘Not again, Pete,’ she moaned, as the shouting got worse. ‘Why can’t you behave like a paid-up member of the human race for once in your miserable life?’
There was a sharp tap at the door. ‘Oi. Are you in there, Cleo? Come on, sweetheart, I’ve got a job for you to do. This ain’t a doss house.’
Cleo knew what this particular job would involve. When she wasn’t having sex for money in the knocking shop her other job was ‘taking care of Pete’. And taking care of Pete was pretty much a full-time job on its own.
She looked around her grotty room, in the grotty Georgian three-storey house where grotty people lived. Although those people were far better than the grotty Herberts who paid cash up front for her to take them squealing to heaven and back. She sighed, kissed her Bible and put it back in her bedside drawer. She turned the key and then put it in the locket she always wore, even when she was on her back working.
There were many light fingers in the brothel but Lord help anyone trying to nab her Good Book. She’d rip their mitts clean off. It had been a christening gift and whatever else she’d won and lost over the years, the book had stayed with her. The pastor at her mum’s church had explained, ‘Read a little every day, it will help you on your way!’
And Cleo needed all the help she could get.
The hammering started up again. ‘Open the bloody door. Our friend Pete is really creating down there.’
‘Keep your drawers on, I’m coming.’
Cleo stood up, popped her bouncy caramel afro wig on and smoothed down the tight blood-red latex dress. The top half of the dress was a lace-up corset, and the back had two holes so that her bum cheeks stuck out. She despised the dress. It made her hot and sweaty and squeezed her like a clenched fist. But it got the geezers who came through the door frothing at the chops, so she didn’t have any choice but to wear it. With a tired sigh, she ran her fingers through the wig and finally opened the door.
Dorothy Sure, called Daffy by one and all, stood outside, leaning on her black walking cane. She was small and dainty with a dyed flame-red Twenties bob and a few lines on her face that made most people mark her as around thirty. It was the sharp lines that popped around her lips when she was pissed off that showed her age. Cleo didn’t know what that age was, and Daffy wasn’t the type of woman to tell. But the walking stick she used to support her right leg said more about the rough life she’d once lived than her telling the tale.
‘You ain’t shooting up in there, are ya?’ Daffy asked, her eyes squinting in warning. She ran the place with an iron fist and had a thing about her girls getting strung out.
Miffed at the question, Cleo kissed her teeth and stuck her fists on her hips. ‘You know I’m a clean living girl . . .’ She scowled as she looked around. ‘Apart from this joint, obviously.’
‘I know you are and that’s why I need you now. We’ve got a problem.’
‘I’ve got a pair of ears; I can hear the silly sod from here.’
As if on cue, banging and crashing sounded on the floor below. It was always the same with Pete, he moved from verbals and threats to slogging it out pretty swiftly.
‘He’s on the sauce again and causing havoc.’
Cleo looked at her watch. ‘It’s only three in the afternoon. How can he be smashed outta his skull already?’
Daffy put her arm around Cleo’s shoulders and began to lead her towards the staircase. ‘When it comes to the booze, his mouth has the same slogan as the old Windmill Theatre in the West End – we never close.’
Cleo dug her heels in. She was tired of this carry on. ‘No – why should I do it? You’re in charge, why don’t you tell him to put the top on the bottle and go sleep it off. Or – this might sound a little crazy but stick with me – why don’t you get the guys to chuck him out and tell him to sod off for good?’
The place had a few hard boys on the door so the punters got the message to behave loud and clear. Or else ...
Daffy lowered her voice. ‘You know why we have to keep Pete sweet. Without him there wouldn’t be any of the specials.’
Cleo sighed heavily at the reminder of her, Daffy and Pete’s other business, which none of the other girls had a clue about. A very murky business indeed, but one she needed if she was ever going to get out of this shithole. Daffy hadn’t originally been part of it, but when she’d caught them one night she’d demanded a cut of the money to look the other way.
Daffy continued, ‘Plus he won’t listen to me; he won’t listen to anyone except you.’ She ran her hand persuasively down Cleo’s arm and lowered her voice. ‘Come on, luv, go and use some soap on him and tell him to pack it in. Shag his brains out if you have to, just stop the bastard tearing the place apart and scaring off the trade.’
Cleo stood her ground. ‘No. I’m a tart, not anyone’s mum.’
Daffy reached into her pocket, took out a couple of nicker and stuffed the notes down the cleavage of Cleo’s rubber. ‘Come on babe – help me out.’
Cleo patted the notes and hissed, ‘OK, but you’ve got to put the kybosh on this once and for all. It has to S-T-O-P. One of these days he’s going to do someone or himself a mischief and fuck up our business arrangement. Maybe you should have a little word with the owners to straighten him out.’
Cleo still wasn’t sure who the owners of the knocking shop were, despite working there for two years.
Daffy looked away. ‘If I knew who the owners were, I would.’
Cleo didn’t believe a word of it. Daffy wasn’t the sort of woman who ran an outfit like this without having the full S.P. on the money men behind it.
Downstairs, Cleo walked into a reception room that had been converted into a bar; a place for the punters to meet the girls and get their motors running before going upstairs. The room had once been in the neighbouring house but it had been knocked through to create one big sex-for-sale establishment.
Sure enough, good ol’ Pete was going into one, spit and fists flying. Without the drink in him he was a good-looking fella, all blond hair and blue eyes, but once the booze hit he was a dead ringer for an orangutan being denied his dinner. The two heavies from the door were trying to stop him attacking two terrified punters, trapped in a corner of the room. The barman behind the makeshift bar had his arms around bottles and glasses to protect them from Pete’s wild fists.
As soon as Cleo appeared, one of the bouncers desperately mouthed, ‘take care of the fucker.’ Normally they wouldn’t hesitate to dole out a proper kicking to any out of order geezer before heaving them down the stone steps outside. But they were under orders to take it easy with him. Orders from whom, Cleo didn’t know.
Pete had started as the manager about a year ago, but Cleo knew it was all a front. The real reason was to get the specials racket started. But Pete’s love affair with the bottle was starting to put a crimp on everything. He’d turn up at all hours getting into it with the girls, the customers, the staff and the bouncers. Then he’d end up bladdered in someone’s bed, on a chair or on the floor. Every now and then a blo
ke called Mickey – who Cleo suspected was the brains behind the specials – would come down to check on the premises and Daffy would raise the ‘Pete problem’ with him. But Mickey’s only response was to help himself to a bunch of banknotes from the cash box and say, ‘Pete? Don’t worry about him, he’s a pussycat, he just likes a wet once in a while, don’t he. Who doesn’t?’
It was hard to work out what would set Pete off. But there was always something.
He staggered forward, shouting the odds at the scared customers. ‘I’m not having a couple of benders coming in here, as easy as you like, and running their mouth about my girls. I’ve got fucking standards, ain’t I? Now square up, boys, and let’s take it outside. I’ll show you how we deal with wankers like you in the East End.’
The bouncers bunched in front of him to stop him in his tracks. Pete turned on them instead. ‘What’s the matter? Do you want some too? I could take on two plastic hard men like you any day of the week, no fucking problem; now get out of my fucking way.’ Pete threw a punch in their general direction. He had strong arms and big fists but his swing had no power and he was caught firmly by the wrist before he could do any damage. They secured his other arm and told him, ‘Cool it, OK? Calm down.’
Pete looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. ‘I’ll give you fucking calm down, you pair of penguins.’ He began to struggle but he was massively out-powered.
After a moment, he hung his head in shame. ‘Sorry. I’m out of order. Let me go, eh? No hard feelings.’
But when they did, he went off like a firework, launching himself at the men cowering in the corner. ‘Come on, then! How do you like it now, eh?’
He aimed a big punch towards the nearest man, but he was too pissed, and the two men scarpered towards the door. Pete yelped with pain as his fist hit the wall and he reeled backwards. When he realised his quarry was gone, he went bananas, tearing the room apart. Cleo and everyone else took cover. A leather sofa was overturned. One arm sent bottles flying and the other scattered glasses. He grabbed a chair and crashed it against the wall.
Blood Mother: Flesh and Blood Trilogy Book Two (Flesh and Blood series) Page 2
