by Mia Dolan
‘It’s very likely,’ said Angie and burst into laughter. ‘You have to admit it, things happen in Sheppey. It’s not quite the backwater people think it is.’
Marcie was coy about answering. Things did happen in Sheppey but she had to wonder at the rest of the world. London was like a single brilliant star luring her to explore, to come, to stay. Not everyone could be content living on a small island surrounded by water and perched like a lost gannet staring out at the North Sea.
For the moment she was relatively happy with her lot. She had Joanna, but would Sheerness and Sheppey be all she ever wanted? Her father kept going backwards and forwards to London. Perhaps she really was a chip off the old block. She had to believe that because she couldn’t remember her mother.
Shaking the thoughts from her mind, she got the bus home. The bright lights of London were forgotten on her journey. Rain was smacking like birch rods against the windows. She shuddered. Home was definitely the place she wanted to be on a day like this. The warmth of her grandmother’s kitchen would be fragrant with the smell of baking cakes and soups rich with tomatoes and herbs.
The rain had stopped by the time she got off the bus and a huge rainbow seemed to arch from Sheerness to Southend. She made for the front door, put her key in the lock and turned. Nothing happened. The door appeared to be locked.
Thinking her grandmother might be having a quiet snooze she didn’t knock but walked to the end of the street and the entrance to the back lane.
The lane was muddy and wet grass fronds flicked at her knees. The back gate to number ten was open. Frowning she headed up the garden path for the back door and pushed it open.
Her grandmother was not alone. She was bouncing Joanna up and down in her arms.
‘Gran, the front door’s locked.’
‘I wanted you to come round the back. We have a visitor. He came round the back too.’
Her grandmother seemed relieved to see her, but it was neither her nor her daughter that drew Marcie’s attention. A scruffy, pathetic figure sat huddled in an armchair to one side of the kitchen fireplace.
‘Garth?’
A row of twisted teeth showed when Garth smiled. His pale eyes were big and as innocent as a child. The basic fact was that he still was a child.
‘Hello, Marcie.’
A coughing fit immediately followed.
She quickly took her coat off and took Joanna from her grandmother. Their eyes locked and said things as eloquently as spoken words.
Garth was in a bad way. His cheeks were sunken and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. His hands, as dirty as his face, clutched a mug of beef tea.
‘I found him outside the back door,’ said her grandmother. ‘He’s been sleeping rough and has not eaten for days.’
Another look passed swiftly between Rosa and her granddaughter. Rosa read Marcie’s look and answered as though she’d spoken her question out loud.
‘The men who threw him out of his mother’s home said that he had to be locked up away from normal people. He thought they meant a prison so he ran away.’
Marcie looked with pity in her eyes at a human being who knew nothing about lying; nothing about jealousy, hate or any of the other negative emotions that afflicted mankind. Garth Davies was not like other human beings.
‘I found him curled up by the bush where the hen house used to be. I fear his mind is not as clear as it was. He thought the hen house would still be there. His memories are not keen.’
‘But he remembered me. You remembered me, didn’t you, Garth?’
Garth smiled over what was left of his steaming mug. ‘Marcie. You’re Marcie.’
Marcie nodded. ‘That’s right, Garth.’
Jiggling Joanna up and down in her arms, she went closer to her grandmother.
‘What are we going to do with him?’
Her grandmother’s look was forthright. ‘He has to stay here. He has nowhere else to go.’
After they’d eaten dinner, Marcie had put Joanna to bed and Garth had fallen asleep on the small settee in the living room. Marcie followed her grandmother up into the attic where the boys used to sleep. Babs had taken the two single beds when she and the family had moved into the council house. Rosa had never wanted Babs or the children to leave, but eventually she’d come round to the idea – especially once she’d heard that Marcie was expecting a baby.
Luckily there was an old mattress and two old feather pillows still up there. Clean sheets were fetched plus half a dozen grey army blankets. ‘Your grandfather brought many of these here when he came home on leave,’ her grandmother told her.
Well, that explained a lot, thought Marcie. The blankets had obviously been army issue and had come marching home with him – just like a large number of things that didn’t belong to him came marching home with her father. Now he really was a chip off the old block, she thought as she pummelled a pillow into shape.
When she looked back at her grandmother she paused for breath. Her grandmother’s face was buried in one of the blankets. She knew she was sniffing it, searching for some last vestige of the man she had spent her life with.
‘Have they been washed?’ Marcie asked.
Her grandmother’s face emerged from the blanket. ‘Of course.’
Marcie found herself saddened by the way her grandmother answered and the way she had looked. Even though her grandfather had long passed over, her grandmother sensed his presence and could even smell some remnant of his existence, even if his bedding only smelled now of carbolic.
She found herself wishing she could do the same with Johnnie, but that could never be. It saddened her to think that she would never see him again, never smell him again and never touch him again. And yet she did have a remnant of Johnnie. She had Joanna.
Chapter Thirteen
THE LAST THING they’d allowed for was Garth creeping out in the middle of the night.
The first days of the week went fine, but having been living outside for a while, he’d got used to the cold. Usually they’d find him the next morning curled up in his favourite spot where the chicken shed used to be. On Thursday he was found on the beach and on Friday at the back of a shop in the High Street. The police brought him back on each occasion because Rosa Brooks had had the good sense to suggest that Marcie sew his name and address inside his coat.
‘He’s a bit mental. If he gets too much for you I’d have him put away if I were you,’ the policeman suggested.
‘In Dover House?’ said Rosa. Dover House was an asylum for the mentally insane.
Marcie was horrified. ‘You can’t put him there!’
‘It may come to it should he get into any mischief,’ said the police constable. He was young and spotty and had a superior air.
Marcie cringed in response to the way he kept looking at her.
‘That your baby?’ he asked.
She felt Joanna dribbling onto her shoulder. ‘Yes.’
His sly eyes dropped to her ring finger. She’d left off wearing the fake wedding ring because it was turning her finger green. She felt herself reddening under the intensity of his gaze.
‘I see.’
It was like some kind of condemnation, as though she’d committed perjury and had been found out. But she hadn’t lied and the young policeman had guessed the truth.
There were four dresses to be finished that week and Marcie found herself looking forward to Monday. Finishing four dresses all of the same design wasn’t so bad and she was pleased with the results.
Her father came home that weekend and asked if she wanted to go out with him and Babs.
‘No need for us to bring the kids round for Mother to look after. Our Archie’s old enough to do that. And next door will keep an ear out for them.’
The dresses were finished. She had no reason for declining her father’s invitation unless her grandmother refused to babysit. As it turned out her grandmother bid her go.
‘You have not been on a night out for a very long time.’
<
br /> It seemed strange putting on one of the dresses she’d designed herself. This one was a new creation made of lilac Crimplene, a new fabric that never creased and was easy to work with. A long zip ran from its mandarin collar to just below her navel. It was straight up and down; no darts to worry about except from armpit to bosom, and therefore easy to run up.
The night had turned warm, but she still pulled on her favourite pair of white stretchy boots. Her legs looked very brown against the white and her skirt was very short.
Hair washed and brushed and hanging half way down her back, she didn’t look so young and vulnerable as she used to do. As she eyed herself in the mirror she found herself wondering what her mother would think of her. Would she look even more like her as she got older? She thought of her mother often, especially now that she had a daughter of her own. Marcie knew that whatever happened she would always do her best for Joanna. Nothing in the world would make her walk out on her like her mother was said to have done. She recalled the fleeting looks she sometimes saw in her father’s eyes. And where was her mother? Nobody had any answers to that question, though in her heart all roads led to London and perhaps her mother’s path had led there too.
Saturday night was music night at the Lord Nelson and the pub was bursting at the seams. A girl with black hair and a hooked nose was singing ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ in as Cilla Black a style as she could muster. The band, especially the drummer, wasn’t helping the poor girl. They were too loud and almost drowning her out, but trooper as she was, she carried on. It was a bit like a battle between instruments and songstress. Fortunately the singer had the microphone.
‘Hello, Marcie, love. How are you?’
She was asked again and again how she was and always gave the same answer.
Obviously a lot of people did know about Joanna. Most assumed she really had been married and tonight, despite her green finger, she’d thought to wear the ring.
The music changed to ‘Not Fade Away’ by the Rolling Stones. The group bashed it out, a guy taking over the microphone. A few people began dancing around just in front of where the group were, trying their best to move in the little space available.
‘Can I have a dance, love?’
She recognised a bloke she’d known at school. It was just a dance. What did it matter?
Crowded as it was, Marcie lost herself in the music. She was almost herself again, young and carefree, though of course she was not. On the other hand, things were certainly looking up. The job at the hospital had been dull. Making really fashionable dresses and getting paid for them was something else. She was a success! And not yet eighteen. How fab was that?
There weren’t that many dancers among the clientele of the Lord Nelson. The fact was that most blokes were there to drink and had two left feet. Some, like her dad, were there with their wives.
When she got back to where they were standing – her father never sat down in a pub – they were arguing.
‘You’re showing your tits. Cover them up.’
Babs dared to answer him back. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’ As she reached for her drink, his hand smacked down on hers.
‘No wife of mine is going around with her tits out. Cover yourself up.’ He’d downed three pints already and was halfway through the fourth.
Babs pouted her pale-pink lips. The colour and the pout were copied from a magazine picture of Brigitte Bardot. Her stepmother was even wearing a pink gingham dress similar to the one the French starlet had been wearing. The hair was blonde too of course, but the figure was overblown. Babs was much more brassy than Bardot.
The dress hadn’t been so bad earlier in the evening. The fact was that Babs had undone a top button.
Young as she was, it occurred to Marcie that Babs liked winding her dad up. She liked to make him jealous. That was what this was all about. But her father could turn ugly – a fact that made Marcie nervous. Her father had mellowed a little, but he still had a temper. Tony Brooks was likely to add a deeper colour to his wife’s pearly blue eye shadow and black mascara if she didn’t watch out. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d sported a black eye, and possibly wouldn’t be the last.
This was the first night out Marcie had had for ages and though the Lord Nelson was no great shakes, she wasn’t going to have it ruined by a domestic fight.
She moved quickly, leaning close to her stepmother. ‘Let me button it up for you.’
Her father’s second wife was in no position to argue. She was pressed up against the bar and Marcie was pressed up against her.
‘Don’t do that.’ Red-painted finger nails attempted to claw Marcie’s fingers away.
The whole evening might have ended with Babs getting a black eye, except that someone else intervened.
‘Marcie! I want you to dance with me.’
Marcie felt as though someone had poured iced water over her. The last person she wanted to see was Alan Taylor.
Marcie pushed him away, though in that crush it wasn’t easy.
‘Let me just hold you,’ he said, caressing her hair as he held her close.
Marcie found it impossible to move away. The crowds pressed too close and set her heart racing.
Alan’s breath stunk of booze. He couldn’t possibly smell that bad after just an hour or two. He’d had to have been boozing all day.
She saw her father’s face contorted with rage, his anger now directed at his one-time friend, Alan Taylor.
A pair of hands came over her head clutching two pint mugs.
‘Two pints of best,’ the man was shouting.
Shielded by the crush of people trying to get to the bar, she didn’t see who landed the first blow. The first she knew that her father and Alan were fighting was when the crowd thinned out, circling the two men who had fallen on the floor.
Her father was on top of Alan, his hands around his throat and he was shouting.
‘Keep away from her, you fucking nonce! Keep away from her or I’ll swing fer you!’
‘Get off him, you silly sod. Get off him, Tony!’
It was Babs shouting and Babs who was kicking her husband in the stomach with the toe of her winkle-picker high-heeled shoes.
‘Babs! You’ll kill him!’ shouted Marcie who was sweating with fear.
‘Better that and get him to stop rather than him ending up in the nick!’ Babs retorted.
The whole thing would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious. Her stepmother’s Brigitte Bardot getup was seriously awry. Her bouffant blonde hair had flopped and was falling over her eyes, and her pouting pink mouth was shouting all the worst expletives under the sun – words that would never pass the lips of the French film star.
There was something primitively exciting about what she was seeing, but also something fearful, something best avoided. Marcie could smell the excitement and see the bloodlust in the eyes of those watching.
Suddenly there was a gap in the crowd on the opposite side of the ring of spectators. A familiar figure wearing a plum-coloured suede cap and a haunch-high mini skirt waded into view. Rita Taylor was screaming at the top of her voice.
‘Get off my effing dad, Tony Brooks. Get off my effing dad!’
She kicked into Tony’s guts with far more force than Babs had used.
‘Get off! Get off! Get off!’
Marcie saw her father look up at Rita. At first he looked surprised. Then he began to laugh.
‘It’s your girl, Alan,’ he said, his angry scowl gone in an instant. He began to chuckle as though something was very funny indeed. ‘Bloody hell, Alan. Have you seen that stupid hat she’s wearing? It looks like a pimple on a rock!’
Rita was squatting down beside her father, her face now the same colour as her cap.
Marcie’s dad got to his feet while Rita cradled her dad’s head. Blood was streaming from Alan’s nostrils and he was coughing as he tried to catch his breath. Tony had almost strangled him.
‘You Brooks! You’re all fucking animals,’ shouted R
ita. Initially her eyes were fixed on Marcie’s father. Then she saw Marcie. ‘Just like you, Marcie Brooks,’ she snarled, her face set like a livid wax mask. ‘I know what you did. My dad told me so. You’re a tramp! Nothing but a tramp and the sooner you leave Sheppey the better. And take your brat with you,’ she shouted as Babs and her father herded Marcie to the door.
‘What was she on about?’ Babs asked once they were outside.
‘Nothing to concern you. She’s as thick as her old man,’ said Marcie’s father. He rubbed his stomach. ‘Christ, she packs the kick of a mule.’
Neither woman mentioned that Babs had sunk a few kicks into her husband’s guts. He’d had enough beer to safely forget that fact.
‘Come on. Let’s get home. I’ll drop you off our Marcie.’
Marcie didn’t argue with that.
Not being in on Marcie’s big secret, Babs was puzzled. ‘What did you do to upset your old friend Rita, then?’
Her father began to mumble an explanation. ‘Well, it’s like this …’
Marcie got there first. ‘He used to treat me like a daughter. She got jealous.’
She was sitting in the front passenger seat so saw him glance at her. Babs was riding in the back as though she were the Queen or at least the lady mayoress.
What was that?
Marcie jerked upright in that semi-state between sleeping and waking, when the line is thin between what is real and what is not.
One glance at the curtains billowing into the room and the open window swinging on its hinges and reality reasserted itself. The nightmare was broken, though the shadowy figure she half recognised still lingered somewhere at the back of her mind.
Satisfied she was definitely in the real world she got out of bed and crossed the room. The bedroom lino was cold beneath her feet and the breeze from the window pleasantly crisped the film of sweat that covered her body.
Once the window was closed and she’d checked that Joanna was still sleeping, she got back into bed. Pulling the green satin eiderdown up to her chin she gazed at the lampshade and the black shadow it threw across the ceiling and asked herself a simple question. Why now? What was the significance of her worst nightmare returning after all this time?
