by Mia Dolan
The thought brought her up short. That’s exactly what my grandmother used to say to me, she told herself. Funny how alike we’re becoming.
The two policemen prepared to leave. At least they weren’t using handcuffs. As they said, Garth wasn’t the sort to run away and couldn’t run very fast anyway.
‘We’ll be off then,’ said the sergeant. ‘Unless there’s any tea on offer,’ he added hopefully.
‘No!’ Marcie was livid. ‘This way to the front door.’
All she wanted was them off the premises even though poor Garth had to go with them. She held it open for them.
The sergeant nodded a silent ‘thank you’, not daring to look her in the face.
The young constable gave her a quick smile at the same time as letting his eyes drop to her bosom. His look was blatant. His hand brushed against her belly as he passed.
‘Keep your hands to yourself!’ she snapped.
‘It was just an accident,’ he replied. The smug look on his face said otherwise.
‘We’ll be down to see you,’ she shouted after Garth. Garth was all smiles when he waved back, excited because he was going for a ride in a police car.
The old house shook when she slammed the door.
Perhaps Marcie would never have left Sheppey and pursued her dream if it hadn’t been for Alan Taylor.
Following another fruitless search for employment at the Labour Exchange, she’d wandered off along the beach at Sheerness, the sea breeze crisping her skin and sending her hair into thick tendrils behind her.
She looked out to the grey horizon trying to look further into her future. Would she always stay in this place? One half of her would always be here, she realised suddenly. This was where her roots were. The other half of her would always be out there searching for a better future and also to reclaim something of her past.
The breeze was brisk, the halcyon days of summer not yet here – if they would ever chance the east coast of England at all.
But at least it cleared her head and revitalised her flagging energy which in turn helped to lift her depression. Her grandmother said that things always came in threes and it was true in her case. First she’d lost her job, then the boutique – her only other source of income had burned down – and now Garth had been carted away by the police. Perish the thought that he should end up in an asylum. She didn’t care about Father Justin’s reassurances; the place had to be hell on earth.
For a moment she thought she heard somebody calling her, but didn’t bother to look round. The old fear that she was being followed and that someone was about to jump out on her had disappeared, obliterated by her current problems.
‘Marcie!’
A hand jerked at her shoulder bringing her to a stop.
Somewhat dishevelled but still possessing a dapper confidence, Alan Taylor looked inordinately pleased with himself.
‘Didn’t you hear me call you? You trying to avoid me, Marcie?’
Of course she was.
She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets and eyed him grimly. ‘What do you want, Alan?’
She was deliberately surly, though he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Marcie! My beautiful Marcie. You know we’ve got a lot to talk about, darling. Ain’t that right, sweetheart?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’ She tried to brush past, but he blocked her path.
‘Get out of my way, Alan.’
He shook his head. ‘I will not. I want to speak to you.’
Marcie narrowed her eyes. How could she ever have thought that this man was a better father to her than her real one? He’d betrayed her trust. He’d taken advantage of her – of her body when she’d been at her most vulnerable. Her shoulders stiffened and her jaw was like iron. ‘Well, I don’t want to speak to you.’
She shook off the hand gripping her arm. He grabbed her again. The breeze got up and tangled her hair over her eyes. In the skirmish she slipped on the wet pebbles and he went down with her.
For one dreadful moment he was on top of her, his slippery lips on her face, covering and sucking at her mouth and nose until she could barely breathe. He was suffocating her and didn’t even know it, too engrossed in ripping at her blouse, groping for her breasts! He was drunk and wouldn’t listen to her pleas for him to stop. She had to do something. And fast.
Gasping for air, she managed to turn her head away. His head dipped lower, his lips sucking at a bared breast.
Desperate to escape, her hand scrabbled amongst the cold pebbles, her fingers clawing for something, anything she could use as a weapon.
It was not a pebble but a thick piece of wood, a piece of driftwood most likely fallen from a passing ship on its way to Rotterdam or London. It was light enough for her to lift and heavy enough to make a clumping sound against his head.
He gave a strange, strangulated sound deep in his throat. The piece of wood remained sticking at an angle at the back of his head, as though it had stuck there, caught on his collar. One hand reached hesitantly back to remove it, his eyes bulging with surprise.
His fingers never reached the wood. His hand fell limply. His body slumped against her, no longer groping, no longer kissing; no longer moving.
Marcie struggled to wriggle out from beneath the weight of his body thinking she had merely knocked him senseless.
It was only when her body was free of him and she saw the blood soaking into the back of his hair that she realised he was dead.
The piece of wood was stuck at a right angle across the back of his neck. Now that she could see it more clearly, she realised that it had been part of a packing case but had been wrenched free. It was probably only two-thirds of its original length, the end she had grasped broken and splintered. The bare ends of huge nails stuck out from the intact end that had connected with Alan’s head. Four inches of an exposed nail was embedded in the nape of his neck. Blood oozed from the wound onto the beach beneath him.
She’d killed him! She hadn’t meant to do it … She’d been so determined that he not rape her again that she’d lashed out with the first thing that came to hand. It had been an accident, but it was still wrong, a mortal sin. She’d killed a man! Even if it had been the only way to stop him.
She thought of the two policemen who had collected poor Garth. Would they believe that it had been self-defence? Would they care about whether she was telling the truth about Alan attacking her?
She could almost hear their comments, already:
Girls like you always say that.
You’ve lost your job. Got no other means of support so I hear.
And you have a baby but no husband. You’re not married. You haven’t been telling the truth. So how do we know you’re telling the truth now?
A sense of terror overcame her. Her first instinct was to run away. No way was she going to own up to this. She’d made up her mind about that. The trouble was had anyone seen her? Had anyone seen Alan following her?
Eyes wide with fear, she scanned the beach in one direction and then the other. She even looked towards the sea wall then back at the sea, as though anyone was likely to be out there on such a blustery day as this.
The wind was cold, the beach deserted. Even the candy-floss booth where she’d once worked when first leaving school was shuttered up against the cold wind and the promise of rain.
Feeling sick at what she’d done, she took one more glance at the dead man lying there. The tide was easing itself further up the beach, clotted fronds of spume hissing into the pebbles.
She ran to the sea wall, not daring to stop until she was hidden from anyone who might be chancing a walk along the promenade. Lights were coming on in houses beyond the promenade as twilight and a rising mist took hold.
It was an accident!
That’s what she told herself. Once she’d caught her breath, she slowed her pace. Nobody but a fool would rush from the scene of a crime. Anyone seeing them would wonder and point the finger. She didn’t want the finger of suspicion pointed a
t her. She wanted to get on with her life, but she had to tell someone about this, someone who could help her.
Her grandmother guessed of course. She saw that Marcie’s buttons were not properly done up; she saw the wildness of her hair and the hunted look in her eyes.
‘Something bad has happened. Tell me about it.’
So Marcie told.
Rosa too knew who could best help her granddaughter in a situation like this. With methodical intent and without a trace of panic, she put on her coat, the black one with the fur collar that she used for weekdays. ‘I am going to the phone box. I am going to ring your father.’
Marcie sat waiting, fearful lest the police come calling before her grandmother came back. Fearful lest she should end up in prison and lose everything that mattered in her life, especially her daughter, her beautiful baby girl.
Chapter Seventeen
LONDON! THE ROWS of houses in green suburbs gave way to terraces and shops and corner pubs, narrow pavements and big red buses.
Although this wasn’t exactly her first visit to London, Marcie felt as though she had entered a foreign country. The move had been so abrupt, the leaving prompt and leaving no time for reflection.
Already she was missing the flatter landscape of Kent and the Isle of Sheppey. The air here was different too, laden with soot and traffic fumes, not fresh and tangy with salt and the smoke from the Isle of Grain. Most of all she was missing her daughter, Joanna.
Her father had appeared as if by magic in response to his mother’s phone call.
He insisted she’d done the right thing in calling him. ‘The bastard got what he deserved,’ he pronounced once he was sure Rosa Brooks was out of earshot.
It was all very well saying that, but in Marcie’s opinion, it would have been better if it had not happened in the first place.
The police did come to the house and had questioned her father about what had happened. Rumours about riffs and quarrels within and between families were always going the round on the island, so it was obvious that news of her father having a set-to with Alan Taylor would get to the ears of the police.
Once they’d asked for his alibi and the details checked out, they left looking dissatisfied but contrite. News later went round that Alan had stunk of booze and had likely fallen on the piece of wood accidentally.
‘Had ruddy great nails in it,’ so Babs had said in her mother-in-law’s kitchen, totally oblivious to the fact that Rosa and Marcie knew everything about it.
What with having no job and Alan Taylor’s sudden demise, it was thought that the time was ripe for Marcie to move to London. Perhaps she would have had second thoughts if her father hadn’t already done the groundwork. He knew people who could help her. He’d told her that before and she hadn’t believed him. Following Rosa Brooks putting on her second best coat and heading for the phone box, everything was now in place. The wife of a friend of her father’s owned an upmarket boutique on the King’s Road, Chelsea. They also had a sewing room above it and, although they bought in ‘frocks’ as her father insisted on calling them, they also designed and made up their own range. Marcie was being taken on to fill a gap left by a girl who had left to pursue a different career. It seemed to Marcie too good an opportunity to miss and everyone told her so. The only big drawback was that Joanna couldn’t go with her. Marcie made the heartbreaking decision to go home at weekends, her grandmother taking care of the child during the week.
Coping without Joanna was never going to be easy. If it hadn’t been for her daughter she would never had given a second thought to leaving the Isle of Sheppey – not under the circumstances. Alan Taylor had done her no favours. The only person who would really miss him was Rita, his daughter. It amazed Marcie now to think they had ever been close friends. Rita had showed her selfishness over and over again. She was not nice, though you can hardly call yourself that, Marcie thought. You brained her father. You shed his blood. Strangely, she could not feel any great remorse. She looked at her father; saw the tough features, the darting eyes always looking for the best opportunity. Was she so different from him? She decided that perhaps she was not, that the mother she resembled was on the outside only, that inside she was very much her father’s daughter.
He sensed her looking and smiled at her. ‘No need to be nervous, our Marcie. What’s done is done.’ He patted her hand. ‘Old Alan got what was coming to him. I couldn’t have done a better job meself.’
It occurred to her that he was talking to her as though she were Archie or Arnold, the two young sons who he expected to be just like him. She surmised he’d seen something of himself in her and she didn’t want to disappoint him.
‘I don’t regret what I did, though I didn’t mean to kill him. I had to protect myself, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to let him do that to me again. I was within my rights to defend myself.’
‘Of course you were, darling. Just don’t mention this little do to Victor’s wife will you. Gabriella is just an old-fashioned girl with a rich husband who tells her he’s just a businessman. If she knew half what him and his associates got up to, she’d have a bleeding fit. Know what I mean?’
Marcie smiled and said, yes, she knew what he meant, and yes, she would mind her Ps and Qs. What made her smile most was her father referring to Victor Camilleri and himself as business associates. Her father’s frequent prison sentences made it all too obvious that the businesses he was associated with were rarely legal. If her father’s profession was far from legal, then it stood to reason that Victor Camilleri’s profession was much the same.
‘Once you’ve settled in, I’ll show you around. We’ll have a night out together. I’ll introduce you to a few people that are useful to know. I don’t want you feeling lonely. After all there’s no bugger you know up here is there?’
‘I’ll tell Gran you said that,’ she said with a mischievous sidelong look.
Her father burst out laughing. He knew exactly what she meant. His language was moderated back in his mother’s house in Endeavour Terrace. The closer they got to London the less moderate it became.
‘You’re right! The old woman would have a head fit!’
Old woman! He wouldn’t dare use that terminology back in Sheppey!
Her father wasn’t entirely right about her being lonely in London. She’d brought the letter from Allegra. Up until now she’d avoided replying to it, thinking there was no point. Their time in Pilemarsh had been fleeting and, besides, they had nothing whatsoever in common. Allegra was from a different class to her. It was like comparing a sleek, pedigree feline with a moggy from the alley. That’s how Marcie felt about it, though things could change. Gabriella Camilleri sounded as though she were out of the same box as Allegra, all rounded accent and beautifully groomed. The Camilleris lived in Chelsea. Allegra lived near Regent’s Park. She didn’t know how distant Regent’s Park was from Chelsea. In time, once she’d settled in and got her bearings, she might very well seek her out.
I don’t feel afraid, Marcie thought as she looked up at the façade of the building in front of her. The Camilleri family lived in a luxury apartment overlooking a park. The building was built of red brick with white-framed windows and fancy stonework above windows and around the door. A commissionaire opened it for them.
‘Good morning, Mr Brooks,’ said the man. His fingers lightly brushed the brim of his hat in an unusually formal salute. ‘Shall I deal with the suitcase, sir?’
He was referring to Marcie’s small suitcase which her father was carrying.
‘Good morning, Forester,’ said her father. ‘No need. I can manage it, old son.’
The elderly doorman’s accent was a world away from her father’s, sounding more Harrow than Hackney. The contrast was so funny that if it were anyone else and on any other occasion, she would have laughed out loud.
They got into the lift.
‘What’s so funny?’ her father asked on seeing her expression.
Still smiling, she shook her head. ‘I was just thin
king.’
‘What?’ He looked peeved, sensing the joke was on him.
She wouldn’t hurt him. ‘I was wondering how a girl from the sticks is ever going to fit in. Will I, or won’t I?’
‘You’ll be fine,’ he stated, lighting up a cigarette.
She sensed he was thinking too, ready to retaliate when she said what she said next – but she said it anyway.
‘Why can’t I stay with you?’
He fidgeted from one foot to the other. ‘Nah! You wouldn’t want to stay at my drum. It ain’t nowhere near as good as this. Only the best for my girl! You’re getting a nice room here. And this place overlooks the park. Victor thought that was best because you’ll be near the frock shop and don’t need to catch a bus.’
Marcie eyed her father knowingly. Outwardly she’d pretend to believe all the spiel he was giving her. Inside she knew he didn’t want her living in too close a proximity. There were most likely two reasons for this: the first was that he didn’t want her to get mixed up in the criminality he himself was mixed up in; the second was that he was probably living with another woman. As regards the former, she herself wasn’t keen to be too close to the gangster world her father was a part of. As regards the latter it was better she did not meet this other woman. That way she could not lie if asked, she could only plead ignorance.
Chapter Eighteen
EIGHT POUNDS A week! Marcie could hardly believe she was being paid eight pounds a week to do what she loved doing. Nothing was taken from her wages for bed and board; Gabriella, a lovely Italian woman with warm brown eyes and brandy-coloured hair, insisted that she live as one of the family.
At first she’d been bashful about encroaching on the family life of people she did not know, but despite standing only five feet two inches in stockinged feet, Gabriella Camilleri was not the sort of woman who took no for an answer.
‘You are too young to be on your own in the city. There are many big bad wolves around,’ she said while shaking a warning finger. Then she laughed and said that seeing as she was Tony Brooks’ daughter, she might very well be able to take care of herself.
