by Mia Dolan
‘I see. Is it a pleasant voice?’
Marcie tried to think. Was the voice pleasant? She nodded. ‘Yes. I think so.
In London she would not have admitted she was hearing voices. City people didn’t hear the pulse of life beating just beneath the surface. They certainly wouldn’t understand someone hearing voices of people who were not there. They would think she was mad. Here on the Isle of Sheppey was a different matter. Perhaps it was the air. Perhaps it was the people themselves that were different, the pace of life slower and minds more open to the basic rhythms of life.
Her grandmother didn’t ask her who she thought the voice might belong to, but there was a sharp brightness – a knowingness as Marcie had come to interpret it. Either she knew that her granddaughter was becoming more like her, or she didn’t need to ask who she thought the voice might belong to – because she already knew.
Archie and Arnold came round to lunch on Sunday bringing Annie with them in her pushchair. The little girl could walk perfectly well, but knew she could count on her brothers to push her over to see her grandmother and her aunt.
On seeing Marcie, she stretched out her arms. ‘Big cuddle,’ she lisped.
Marcie gave her that big cuddle, although the little girl’s face was sticky with jam. Annie’s mother, Babs, hadn’t changed one iota.
Archie and Arnold told her that Bully Price was trying to persuade them to work for him.
‘As what,’ she asked, her mind already racing ahead of the question to the obvious answer.
‘Nicking bikes,’ proclaimed Archie.
‘I somehow had a feeling it might be,’ she muttered.
‘And he reckons he’s going to marry you because nobody else will have you,’ Arnold added.
Marcie bristled with indignation. ‘Oh does he now!’ she said, her fists resting on her hips.
‘But I told him you wouldn’t marry him because you were married already.’
Marcie cocked an eyebrow. ‘Go on. I can’t wait to hear this. Who am I supposed to be married to?’
‘Jesus!’ said Archie with unbridled enthusiasm, his fine hair flopping like a horse’s mane over his eyes.
Marcie tried to work out where this was coming from. Impossible.
‘How do you work that one out?’
Archie laughed. ‘Because you’ve had a baby and ain’t got no husband. Just like the mother of Jesus. His father was in heaven just like Joanna’s father. My mum said he’d gone to heaven but he probably wouldn’t have married you anyway.’
Marcie mangled the dish cloth she was holding and wished it were her stepmother’s neck. The cow! Even Babs, who couldn’t keep her legs together even when she was married, was slinging slander her way.
Marcie watched as the two boys and Annie tucked into their roast beef, Yorkshire puddings and three different lots of vegetables. An enthralled Joanna looked on, spoon only halfway to her mouth. Michael arrived, his sunny disposition making it seem as though the freshness of the outside world had entered the house.
Marcie went outside the back door to get some fresh air. Michael followed her out, his arm creeping around her waist, his lips brushing her ear.
‘What a world,’ he said.
She thought she knew what he meant. There were no big problems here; no big money either. She thought both of them knew the value of that.
Silently they watched the simple things.
Cabbage butterflies fluttered over the heads of Garth’s vegetable patch. The smell of Sunday lunch brought him running down the garden path.
‘Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and cabbage,’ he said to her. ‘Me and Albert are going to eat it all up.’
‘You’re still coming back to London?’ Michael asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said because she knew she had to. That’s where the work was. That’s where her home was and, despite everything, she had good friends there, but also enemies, she reminded herself. You also have enemies.
* * *
On the Sunday afternoon before leaving for London, her grandmother handed her a letter.
‘I did not like the feel of it. Garth did not like the feel of it either so I kept it back. I wanted this to be a nice weekend. A family weekend.’
Marcie tried to read her grandmother’s face. She was famous for having the gift of second sight. Marcie mused that she’d never realised this might include having x-ray vision. How else could she perceive whether a letter was evil or not?
She tried to laugh off the sudden fear it generated. ‘Gran, you should be doing a stage act.’
‘It is not an act, Marcie.’
Marcie knew better than to continue with that particular approach. Without checking the handwriting, she ripped the envelope open, searching inside with hesitant fingers for a note that might bring joy, but could just as easily bring devastation.
Her worst fears were realised. There was no letter; nothing but a playing card – the Ace of Spades. It had to be Roberto. The Camilleris owned casinos as well as nightclubs. Sending her a death card would be easy for him to do.
As she crumpled the envelope and ripped the card in two, a cold shiver ran through her body like the first frost of winter. There was no need to check the handwriting at all. She knew who it was from and what it meant; Roberto had found out her home address. It was likely that her father had given him the information without a moment’s thought. It was also likely that Roberto had given him a very plausible excuse for wanting it.
‘You look pale. Do you wish to share this fear?’
She looked up into her grandmother’s eyes. The eyes that looked back at her were coal black and yet they had incredible depth. It was like looking into a long tunnel, a place to run to when things were bad and she needed safety and shelter.
She shivered. ‘I feel a bit cold.’
Her grandmother cupped her elbow and led her into the small front parlour where coal glowed in the hearth.
‘Come on. Let’s warm you up.’
Marcie threw the crumpled envelope and card into the fire where they curled into flames then blackness.
Her grandmother waited and watched with her as the flames devoured the card and the envelope. She did not pass comment. Marcie was grateful for that.
‘Garth told me it was a death card. The Ace of Spades. I guessed.’
She told her grandmother about Roberto. ‘He wanted me to give Joanna away. He said that if I didn’t give her away it meant I didn’t love him. So I ran.’
For a moment her grandmother’s narrowed eyes seemed deep in thought. ‘This is a man who is in love with himself, I think.’
Marcie nodded mutely. It seemed so obvious when she really thought about. Her grandmother carried on.
‘If he had loved you enough he would have loved and accepted your child as Michael does.’
Marcie nodded, her blue eyes enlivened by the fire and reflecting its glow.
‘Your father said that he is going back to London. He sets great faith in these Sicilians. He’s told them that you are doing very well and that he is grateful they took you in and taught you your sewing. He says he’s told them that you are now your own boss. He is proud of that.’
The flames threw shadows across her face.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘That means he’s told them.’
Her grandmother frowned. ‘Told them what?’
She told her grandmother about Michael being the half-brother of the sender of the letter. She avoided telling her too much about Daisy Chain and how young girls, excited to be working in the King’s Road, were enticed by clothes and money into a life far removed from selling clothes. She wouldn’t do that because her father worked for Victor Camilleri. She didn’t want to blatantly declare that her father was a small-time criminal who worked for bigger criminals. It would be too hurtful.
Michael had been helping Garth with his cabbages when she’d thrown the card into the fire, but she told him about it anyway.
‘He’
ll find out my address in London. I know he will,’ she exclaimed to Michael in alarm on the journey back to London. ‘I should have made my father promise not to tell anyone. He trusts Victor. He trusts all the Camilleris.’
‘And that,’ said Michael grimly, ‘is a serious mistake.’
Chapter Thirty-seven
THERE WAS NO one waiting for her back at her flat or lurking behind the sewing machines in her workroom. Two, then three, days passed and still there was no sign that Roberto had found out where she was living.
Michael told her not to worry. ‘I am going to sort this out once and for all.’
‘Don’t get hurt!’
She knew he intended confronting his brother. The thought of them facing each other and fighting was terrifying. They were both proud and headstrong, though each in their own way. She didn’t want Michael getting hurt.
Despite the ongoing concern, she did her best to make life as normal as possible. The business was doing well. The girls she sewed for were great fun; rich, brash and blatantly sexual.
Sally came round to keep her company. ‘Klaus is on holiday with his family. I’m at a loose end.’
Marcie didn’t condemn Sally for her relationship with a married man. Nothing was black and white any more in this modern world. What Sally got up to was her business.
It was on a Tuesday morning that she realised she was being watched. The rush-hour traffic had been and gone. Across the road from the trophy shop were a newsagent, a greengrocer’s and a bakery.
Marcie was on her way to the bakery with Joanna in her arms. Sally was having a go on a sewing machine in her absence. Her skills were woeful but she’d taken it in her head that she couldn’t be a showgirl for ever.
‘I’ve got to think of what I’m going to do once my tits start heading south,’ she said in her vulgar but funny manner.
The sewing machine whirred away and in the background an American group, The Monkees, belted out ‘Daydream Believer’.
Sally’s verdict on the manufactured group followed her down the stairs. ‘Not as good as the Beach Boys.’
Marcie chuckled to herself. ‘They’re supposed to be like the American version of the Beatles, not the Beach Boys,’ she said to her daughter.
Joanna chortled as though she understood. Marcie couldn’t imagine life without her now.
‘I wish your daddy was here to see you,’ she said softly.
‘Daddy,’ said the toddler.
A sharp pain stabbed at Marcie’s heart. If only … Her first thought was for Joanna not having her father. Her second was for herself – not having a mother. For the thousandth time in her life she wondered where she could be; whether she was alive or dead.
The heavy mood had to be lifted.
‘Let’s get a tube of Smarties for my favourite girl,’ she said to her darling daughter.
A workman came out of the shop opposite opening a packet of Senior Service before getting into a van and driving off. The only other vehicle parked there was a black limousine. Marcie glanced at it then glanced again. It looked like the same one that Carla had gone off in.
Just as she turned curious eyes in its direction, a puff of smoke came out of the exhaust and it pulled away.
A sickening fear stayed with Marcie even after it was out of sight. Were her worst fears justified? Was it possible that it was Roberto she’d seen in the car and he was awaiting his chance to pounce, to persuade, to intimidate her to bend to his will?
The old-fashioned bell jangled as she pushed the door open with her hand and her hip. Joanna was clapping her hands with delight, face upturned at the brass bell. Marcie put on a brave smile for her daughter’s sake and told herself it was nothing. Roberto didn’t have a car like that.
Though his father might and Carla must know Roberto. They frequent the same world of exotic dancers and smoke-filled nightclubs.
She stepped over the old coconut matting worn flat by thousands of feet over very many years.
The old woman who ran the shop had been there since the days when Stanley Baldwin had been prime minister and Edward VIII had been King for a year before popping off to marry his American divorcée.
Miriam Coffee claimed to know everyone for miles around. She was a small woman with dyed black hair and a pinched face. Her lipstick was always red and her eye shadow bright blue or aquamarine. She only wore glasses for checking her price lists. Everyone else she scrutinised with beady black eyes that didn’t miss a trick. New faces were treated with curiosity and subject to being asked where they lived, where they worked and what they were doing in the area.
Marcie had been no exception and had replied that she was a widow, had just moved in over the road, sewed undergarments for a living and was settling in very nicely thank you.
Her forthright answers had made a friend of Miriam Coffee.
‘Smarties!’ Miriam exclaimed, shaking a tube in front of Joanna for her to take.
Joanna laughed as she gripped the tube with her plump little fingers.
Miriam’s bright red lips stretched over her uneven teeth. A gold tooth flashed at the corner of her mouth.
Marcie wasn’t completely severed from concern about the black limousine. All and sundry had crossed the worn coconut matting. Miriam knew from experience when something wasn’t quite right.
‘You alright, my love?’ she asked.
‘That black car that just pulled away – did they come in here?’
Miriam’s sharp black eyes that were usually as beady as a curious rat, lit up.
‘That’s what I was going to tell you. I’ve seen that car a few times. It does the same thing every time – parks outside my shop. The nerve of it! Nobody ever gets out and comes in, so I went out to them. Bloody cheek! That’s my piece of parking there. My piece of pavement!’
There was no point whatsoever in pointing out to Miriam that the local council owned the pavement and not just the bit in front of her shop. They owned the whole lot. But Miriam didn’t see things that way. Every morning she put out her tin signs for Lyons Maid ice cream and Old Holborn tobacco. The signs took up half the pavement, but no one dared protest. Even the council had respect for a resident who had been here long before the Blitz and long before the local council representatives had been born.
‘So I went out to them and asked them what they were up to. They could have been casing the joint,’ she whispered in a conspiratorial manner, leaning across the counter. ‘Cigarettes! That’s what the thieves around here go after.’
Marcie didn’t doubt that cigarettes were in high demand, though not by people who could afford a shiny black limousine.
‘But they didn’t want cigarettes. They wanted in-for-mat-ion!’
Miriam said the last word like a drum roll. ‘They wanted to know about you.’
Marcie’s insides felt as though she’d swallowed a whole ice lolly. ‘What did they want to know?’
‘That’s what worried me,’ said Miriam. Her smile was gone. Jet-black eyebrows beetled over jet-black eyes. ‘They asked me about the child and how often you took her out and whether the child was well treated. They seemed to know it was a girl and was named Joanna. I’m glad you called in. If you hadn’t I would have come over to tell you. Do you think they’re something to do with the child’s father?’
Miriam’s face was a picture of worry and reflected Marcie’s own feelings.
Marcie shook her head. ‘Was it a man in the car?’
Her question brought a swift nod from the little woman behind the counter.
‘Definitely a lady. And I mean a lady. She had money written all over her.’
If the situation hadn’t been so worrying, Marcie would have chortled and commented that the woman in the flash leopard-skin coat was no lady – especially when she opened her mouth.
Miriam sighed and leaned across her worn countertop, her bony fingers flashing red nail polish clasped in front of her.
‘A lady doesn’t just dress well; it’s the way they speak. Ev
er so nicely and not dropping their aitches.’
Why was Carla asking so many questions? She frowned. It just didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. Carla was a business associate and although she had a high-handed manner she’d seemed quite happy for their business relationship to continue. So what was this all about?
‘That woman drops more than her aitches,’ Marcie exclaimed, no long able to hold back her mirth. ‘She swears like a trooper, though I think she can put it on when she has to.’
Miriam seemed quite hurt by Marcie’s condemnation of her appraisal. ‘I’m telling you, she spoke ever so nicely – just like Celia Johnson. If she wasn’t the real thing, then she must have been on the stage. I know how a lady speaks – believe me. I’ve had some of the most ladylike in the land in this shop.’
Marcie accepted it was likely that Carla might have done a bit of acting in her time – one way or another. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
She didn’t like to say that the stage Carla had likely been on was in a smoky nightclub where she was taking off her clothes. Elocution didn’t come into it!
Chapter Thirty-eight
THE SWAN DANCER was Victor Camilleri’s favourite nightclub and the most upmarket. The girls dancing on the stage were dressed as pink swans – if you can call a few strategically placed sequins and dyed pink ostrich feathers adorning their heads and their gloriously exposed buttocks being dressed.
People with money and power came to this club; men who were makers and shakers in the twin worlds of making money and politics. The two, he’d found in his experience, went together; as did their need to let their hair down when the opportunity presented itself. That’s why so many frequented the Swan Dancer. Victor was on first-name terms with most of them and welcomed them with a slap on the back, a knowing nod or a handshake smothered in cigar smoke.
He enjoyed meeting these men and, even more so, he enjoyed being privy to their bad behaviour. They were unknowingly furnishing him with material he could make money from. They already gave him tips for the stock market and funds where he could make a fast buck. And he gave them girls, fresh young girls who would do most things for money. Powerful men had powerful urges. He knew that himself.
