by Martina Cole
Dolly caught the nervousness in Donna’s voice and kept her peace.
‘Christ, Dolly, surely I can go away for the weekend if I want, can’t I?’
‘Of course you can, darlin’, it was just unexpected.’
Donna wiped her hand across her face in agitation. ‘Has Paddy rung in at all today?’
‘No, love. I expect he’ll phone about seven-thirty as usual.’
Donna nodded curtly and walked from the kitchen into the small office. Closing the door, she curled up in the deep easy chair in the foetal position.
She was in over her head even before it had all started. Listening to Alan today had been a frightening experience; she had felt the fear seeping out of her pores even as she sat there in Joe Allen’s. All her big talk was forgotten. As much as she loved Georgio, and she did love him dearly, the full significance of what he had asked her to do had now come home to her. Donna Brunos was being asked to set up a prison break-out with men she would rather not know even existed, let alone have to meet.
She was expected to keep a level head, help with the arrangements, sort out the businesses as well as get her husband his freedom. Suddenly she realised that what she had taken on was too much for her. She wasn’t strong enough to cope. When she was sitting with Georgio she could cope; when she was lying in bed missing him desperately she could cope; now the first steps had been taken, she wasn’t sure she could cope with any of it. Alan Cox’s smug grin had shown her that he could read her like a book, that he knew the fear his words had evoked. That the real truth of the situation had finally dawned on her.
Dolly knocked on the door and brought her in a cup of coffee and a letter.
‘This came from your man by second post.’
Donna took the letter as if it was a live snake. Placing the coffee on the small table by Donna’s chair, Dolly left the room to give her some privacy.
Opening the letter, she read the familiar words of love, loneliness and need. She read between the lines his plea for her to help him escape. She felt the waves of frustration coming off the two pieces of ruled prison paper. The well-worn phrases: I love you, I miss you, and I need you, were interspersed with, I am depending on you. Reading the letter again she knew that there was no going back now. For better or worse, she would have to keep her part of the bargain. Folding up the letter, she let it drop on to the thick carpet. She was to realise later on, during a sleepless night, that much as she loved her husband, a new element had entered her feelings about him. It was resentment.
She resented him for asking so much of her now, after never asking anything of her before.
Slowly she felt panic rising inside her, felt the cold heavy sweat across her back and shoulders that always accompanies acute fear. Lighting a cigarette with hands that trembled, she sat and pondered her situation properly for the first time.
Before today it had been talk, just talk. Now it was fact, she was really into all this, up to her neck. She was now part of it all and it was scaring her. It was all somehow coming true.
One thought was with her constantly. No matter what she felt, how frightened she became, she would go through with it. She owed Georgio that much.
Outside in the kitchen Dolly was on the phone to Big Paddy. He was as surprised as she was to hear that Donna was going off to Scotland for the weekend.
Paddy quickly understood that Donna’s seeing so much of Alan Cox and now going away could mean only one thing: they were going to spring Georgio. And he also knew that Donna, whether she let him in on the secret or not, was going to need all the help she could get.
Maeve was listening to Stephen as he talked with his brothers. She could hear the peculiar whine in his voice that he affected whenever he spoke these days about Donna. Maeve knew that somehow the two had fallen out, but about what she couldn’t even begin to guess. The worst of it all was, she wasn’t in a position to ask. It was a situation where once you found out, you would be dragged into the centre of it and asked to take sides.
That was the last thing she needed at this time. With Georgio’s being away, the family was already minus one member. She didn’t want to open her mouth and estrange another two.
Nuala’s voice was tight as she spoke to her brother. ‘What’s this with you and Donna all of a sudden? Why the upset?’
Stephen shrugged. ‘There’s no upset really, I just wish she would stick to her own businesses and leave mine alone.’
Nuala tossed her dark hair impatiently. ‘You were on to her about taking on everything, we all were, she’s only doing what was expected of her. Myself, I knew she’d be great at it all.’
Stephen carried on drinking his coffee. Then, ‘All I’m trying to say is, she should keep her nose out of my affairs. When I asked Georgio to be a silent partner, I didn’t think for one moment I’d have his little wife, dear Donna, breathing down my neck.’
Maeve was disturbed and upset at her son’s tone.
‘What have you to hide then, that all of a sudden your business is so private? What’s the rub, Stephen? That child is only doing what her husband wanted, nothing more, and as Nuala says, it’s what we all advised at the beginning.’
‘That “child” is a grown woman, Mum,’ he said viciously, ‘and she can take the helm of all Georgio’s businesses if she wants, I don’t give a damn about that. It’s her interference in my operations that is annoying me.’
Maeve smiled nastily. ‘So, I ask you again, what have you got to hide that’s so important Donna can’t know about it? Is it something to do with Talkto at all?’ Maeve’s voice was heavy with innuendo and Nuala listened in dismay to the burgeoning argument between her mother and brother.
‘Talkto is a good money-making company—’
Maeve interrupted her son, her voice rising in temper. ‘Do you think I’m some kind of fool, me laddo? I knew from day one what the escort agency really was, and it didn’t take me long to suss out this Talkto crap. You’re me son and I love you, Jaysus Himself knows that, but sometimes I wonder just how eejity you think me and your father are.
‘I’ve seen some of the so-called girls that work for you. Even that secretary, the one with the face like a boiled shite, even she isn’t as good as she tries to make out. How she can take your calls and still hold that snooty beak of hers in the air, I don’t know. So don’t you sit there with your big galoot-looking features and come on at me about Donna Brunos! You should take a leaf out of her book, son, and see how a business should be run. I’ve a good mind to take me hand across your arse, as big as you are.’
‘Mum!’ Nuala’s voice was scandalised.
‘Don’t you “Mum” me, Nuala. This one here thinks he’s some kind of gift from God. Well, it’s about time he was knocked down a few pegs. I’ve known for years he was whoring. Sure, your father knew straight off. Escort agency, my arse! Now he has the gall to sit and pull my Donna apart like that because she’s likely found out what he’s up to and, being a decent kind of girl, wants no more to do with it.
‘Him and Georgio were both great disappointments to me, Georgio because he could never see what he already had, only what he wanted, and him because he’s not man enough to get himself a real job, a real business. When I think of them women it turns me stomach inside out. So now you know, Stephen Brunos, that I know all about ye, and I don’t like it.’
He stood up unsteadily. ‘I will forget what you just said, Mum. I can see you’re overwrought.’
She laughed scornfully. ‘You were always the man with the words. Even as a child you could talk the hind leg off the table. Well, let’s clear the air here once and for all. Every time I think of what you’re doing I feel as sick as a priest at a Jewish wedding. You and Georgio broke me heart between you, and now I’ve had it up to here.’ She poked herself in the forehead to emphasise her point. ‘When I think of how you spoke about Donna, you two-faced bastard of hell, I could cut the legs from under ye.’
‘I think I’d better go.’
Nuala pulled
on her brother’s arm, shocked to the core at all her mother had said.
‘Oh, let him go, Nuala, I’m sick of the sight of him.’
Nuala watched her brother walk from the room and Maeve ran to the doorway and called down the stairs to where Stephen was opening the front door.
‘And tell that fat bitch you’re knocking off it’s a sin against God. She’s old enough to be your mother!’
Nuala stood with her fingers across her lips at her mother’s parting words. Maeve pushed past her daughter and stormed back into the tiny front room.
‘The cheek of that one! I saw him with me own eyes, kissing and pawing at an old biddy, be Christ. I could have ripped the head off the two of them. What have I bred, Nuala girl? One away till Judgment Day and the other a granny lover. If it wasn’t so sad it’d be hilarious.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘Jaysus and Mary, is that all you learnt at that convent? “Oh, Mam!” I only told him the truth, it’s about time someone did.’
She lowered herself on to the old settee which groaned under her weight.
‘This room used to be full of children. I felt blessed because my seven kids were eating well, were healthy. I used to thank God every night on me knees for it all. Now I ask Him what happened? What went wrong? Mario is as queer as a nine-bob note, Georgio’s away for eighteen Christing years, and Stephen . . . clever, handsome Stephen is running women, and living the life of Riley on the proceeds. Only you, Mary and Patrick seem half-normal, and Mary is so boring you’d fall asleep on the phone to her. All her talk about the neighbours, and what will people think, and all the rest of it. Jaysus, she’s another one!’
Nuala shook her head in wonderment. In all her life she had never heard her mother talk as she was now.
‘Oh, Mum.’
Maeve lit herself a Number Six and said through clenched teeth. ‘If you “Oh, Mam” me once more, I’ll rip every hair out of your fecking head, and trample it into the carpet!’
Nuala stood dumbfounded as her mother smoked her cigarette in short, erratic puffs. After a while she said gently, ‘Shall I make you a nice cup of coffee, Mum?’
Maeve shook her head. ‘No, lass. Take that look off your face, it’s tearing the heart out of me. Me and you will go to the restaurant now, and open a good bottle of brandy. We’ll drink till we start laughing. But I warn you, child, that could be some time.’
‘Oh Mum, what’s happened to this family?’
Maeve stood up painfully. ‘Nothing much happened, Nuala love. You all grew up, that’s all.’
Her mother’s voice had tears in it and Nuala held her in her arms, fighting back tears of her own.
Dolly tapped on the office door and entered quietly.
‘Are you all right, darlin’? I was getting worried about you.’
Donna looked into her face and felt a surge of shame at the way she had spoken to her of late.
‘I’m all right, Dolly. Come away in and pour yourself a sherry.’
Dolly poured herself a generous measure of sweet sherry and sat in a deep leather chair by the window.
‘I always liked this room, Donna. If I close me eyes I can see Georgio sitting where you are and shouting the odds over the telephone, winking at me at the same time. He was a lad!’ Her voice was filled with sadness and nostalgia.
Donna sat forward in the chair, listening intently to what Dolly was saying.
‘Do you remember the time you were going to Blackpool and at the last minute he made me come with you? Those were the days, I wish to God they were still here. He was a great man, Georgio, a good man.’
‘Dolly, he’s still with us, woman, he’s not dead!’
The housekeeper shrugged and sipped her sherry.
‘Well, he might as well be, stuck in bleedin’ Parkhurst. I ask you, Donna, what kind of life is it for him? It’s bad enough for you and you’ve got your freedom.’
Donna watched as Dolly’s face brightened.
‘Here, Donna, do you remember that time my old man came after me and started yelling and carrying on at the front door! His face when Georgio came out to him. It was a picture that I’ll never forget. Georgio went ballistic! I can still see him kicking me old man up the khyber as he slung him off the driveway.’
Donna smiled at the woman’s glee.
‘He was a bastard to me, my old man.’ Dolly’s voice had lost its jocularity now. ‘When I was pregnant with me boy, he knocked me from one end of that house to the other. I remember going up Mile End Road Hospital . . . oh, it must have been 1943. The bombing was well underway then, in the East End anyway. I had a black eye and a fat lip and the baby hadn’t moved for three days. I knew it was brown bread, like. He’d kicked me in the stomach. That was always old Joey’s finale. The kick in the guts.’ She flapped her hand in a gesture of contempt.
‘Anyway, in I went, all sorry for meself like, and they deliberately ignored me boatrace. Like I looked normal or something. In them days, see, it wasn’t discussed. Not like now, with all these shows on with people telling everyone how they can’t stop thieving or can’t stop gambling. In them days you kept your own counsel. Once you were married to the fucker, that was it, for better or worse, for richer or poorer. And believe me, girl, for most of us it was worse and poorer, not the other way round!
‘I was fifteen when I lost that little boy. Hard to imagine anyone married at fifteen, ain’t it? But back then, well . . . I had a belly full of arms and legs. The old man beat him up, we got wed, and that was it, the rest of your life. He was eighteen, with a cock that stood to attention if a breeze went up his trouser leg! Randy bugger he was. Probably still is.’
Donna listened to Dolly’s sad voice and felt the usual wave of anger at the treatment she and other women like her received.
‘Why did you stay with him, Dolly?’
‘That’s the hard one, girl. That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’ She put her head to one side and thought for a few minutes. ‘One, because I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t go back to me mother’s. She still had six left at home younger than me, even if she was married. And two, because in a strange way I loved him. I loved him for a long time, you know. I know it’s hard to believe, but you must understand, in the war marriages were quick because you never knew what was around the corner, see? You could be bombed out, blown up, anything. So you did things you wouldn’t have ordinarily. Like let an eighteen-year-old bloke give you one in your back garden, up against the coal shed. It was the most exciting night of my life. He could have had the pick of all the girls and he chose me. Everyone was after him!’
Dolly grinned snidely. ‘I wish to fuck one of the others had got him. Sally Lancaster was so jealous when I married him she never spoke to me again. She married an insurance salesman after the war, and moved to Penge. I used to think that was the epitome of sophistication. Penge! Always looked nice she did, her kids was always immaculate. In those days that was your yardstick.’
Donna refilled Dolly’s glass.
‘You’re happy now though, aren’t you?’
Dolly nodded. ‘Take no notice of me, love, I’m just missing the big fella. You and him have always treated me decent, like. I’ve got a little niche here, something I never thought I’d have. There’s me little flat, me work, and you two. It’s more than I ever thought I’d get and I often think it’s more than I deserve.’
Donna looked into Dolly’s eyes and felt a great rush of love for her.
‘We were the lucky ones, Dolly. We were lucky to get you.’
‘Lucky? Well, perhaps you were, girl. If you knew the number of women who have to live lives similar to the one I lived with my old man, you’d be really shocked. At least Georgio loves you - you can see it in him. It shines from him. I envy you that, in a nice way of course, but it’s envy all the same.’
Donna looked into her glass and sighed heavily.
‘I miss him so much, Dolly. Since he’s been gone everything seems to have gone to pot. I miss him
so much.’
Dolly heard the loneliness in Donna’s voice.
‘Once your man’s home, we can all get back to normal, eh?’ she said gently.
Donna sat back in her chair and pushed her heavy hair off her face.
‘Do you think Georgio is guilty? Honestly now. Do you think he deserved what he got?’
Dolly shook her head vigorously.
‘What the hell are you asking me that for? Of course he didn’t deserve it! He’s innocent as a newborn babe. What’s come over you, Donna Brunos, to be asking me a thing like that? I can’t believe I heard right.’
‘Oh Dolly, calm down. I’m asking you this in private. I want to know if you think my Georgio was involved in any of the things he was accused of?’
Dolly shook her head once more vehemently.
‘No way. Never. He had his faults, but at the end of the day, he wasn’t bad, not at rock bottom. He wouldn’t have ordered those men to kill the guards or anything like that. He cried when the dog died. Can you really imagine him planning something like that? He might have supplied the cars, I wouldn’t be surprised about that, but the other? Never, not in a million years.’
Donna pulled on her cigarette. ‘You sound very sure about that.’
Dolly stood up. Tossing back the last of her sherry she said bitterly, ‘Well, it’s just as well one of us feels sure, ain’t it? Only it doesn’t sound as if you know what you think. I’ll give you a bit of advice. Don’t think too much, Donna Brunos, it’s not good for you. Once you start thinking too much, you get to brooding, and brooding leads to trouble. Take my word for it.
‘Now, if you’d been married to my old man I could understand it, but not with Georgio. That man worshipped you, and I always thought you worshipped him. I know you did. So don’t you start doubting him now. It would kill him. He ain’t dead, you’re right there, but as I said, stuck in Parkhurst, he might as well be.
‘Everything he ever wanted or ever cared about is in this house, remember that. If he loses you, he’s lost everything. He’s depending on you to see him through this, to have faith and confidence in him. Bear that in mind, young lady.’
