“’E’s better off ‘ere with me than kicking ‘round the streets getting into trouble. Stealin’ as well I shouldn’t wonder.”
Bert turned away from the harpy in disgust and, taking his pint from the bored barman, said to me as he passed, “Go home, boy.”
I stood unsteadily and would have obeyed him unquestioningly (unusual for me you must admit) except that Vi, viper-like, moved to push me back into my seat.
“Nonsense,” she laughed. “Sit down again, Mikey. We ‘aven’t ‘ad that chat you promised me yet.”
Bert hesitated only a moment and then shrugged and turned away. He would let the chips fall where they may. He honestly did not care. He took his pint and moved deeper into the dark recesses of the pub. I did not see him again that day.
Vi ordered another pint of the sickly orange fizz along with a bar of chocolate and seemed set on making me as sick as possible. I don’t know if she or the bored barman doctored this second serving of Ambrosia for I steadfastly avoided drinking it, a feat of quite astonishing strength of mind from one so young, I thought. I applied myself to the chocolate instead and Vi applied herself to getting the truth out of me.
“So, Mikey,” she simpered. “Goin’ to a posh school, I ‘ave ‘eard.”
I crammed chocolate into my mouth and shrugged.
“Well, you won’t want to know us, will you? Oh no, you’ll be too good for us now.”
I felt I was already too good for her and tried to indicate that with a look, but she was impervious to contempt when she had an object in view.
“Bet yer Mum’ll miss you.” We both knew that wasn’t true, so I didn’t even deign to shrug. “’Ow is she? I have not seen ‘er for a couple of days.”
“Awright,” I said noncommittally.
“Tell ‘er, I said ‘ello, anyway. Since she got the news of this legacy thing seems she’s too good for ‘er old friend Vi. Too good to celebrate ‘er good fortune wiv ‘er oldest friend.”
Like I said Vi did tend to lay it on a bit thick. She watched a lot of soaps on the telly and used them as a template. It was entertaining though and, if this was going to be the tack she was going to take, I felt pretty safe.
“But I am ‘appy for ‘er, poor lamb. No one deserves it more.”
That Vi believed my Mum to be worthy of such good fortune and that she was honestly exulting for her was so vastly untrue that it was laughable, absurd, a downright, bald-faced lie. I turned innocent eyes to her and tried to look as if I believed every word.
“Such good luck, I can’t get over it,” was her next foray, “and after everything they have been through this last year. It is strange, ain’t it, how life can turn things around without there being any connection. Between the shit stuff and the good, you know.”
Even she must have felt that was a bit clumsy, but I maintained my ingenuous expression and she soldiered determinedly on.
“After all that trouble with Mr. Freeman last year. You know wiv ‘im believing that your dad was in on the kidnappin’ and everything. ‘Cause we all know he wasn’t.”
She darted a look at me here, a look that I took to mean the precise opposite of course, although there was something unreadable behind it too.
“’E must be well pissed off. Mr. Freeman, I mean. If ‘e still believes that your Dad done it, I mean. You know, the man who killed, well, I don’t mean killed do I? But was, you know…involved some ‘ow in takin’ ‘er and then ‘im bein’ left such a large amount of money. It must make ‘im bloody furious. I know it would make me mad enough to kill someone…”
She left that hanging in the air, but Bert had looked anything but murderous when he bought his pint at the bar. Perhaps that was her point of course.
“So, what rich relative was this then?” Vi had laid a trail of distraction and now went to the heart of the matter. “In all the years I’ve known yer Mum and dad they ain’t never said anyfink about a rich relation. Piss-poor your dad’s family, except for ‘is Mum and she worked for every penny. Anyway they ‘ad everyfink from ‘er when she kicked the bucket. So ‘oo left ‘em all that dosh? You must know.”
“I don’t,” I said, “I gotta go.”
A rough hand with scarlet nails that did nothing to soften the claw-like impression, grasped my own tightly.
“Not yet,” she spat those words, but controlling her temper she forced her hard features into a smile. “You ‘aven’t touched your drink.”
“Don’t wannit,” I replied churlishly.
“Okay then, the apple don’t fall far from the tree as my grandma used to say. I’m done wiv pretending. I want to know what the hell is goin’ on and I want to know where the money that your Mum told me was coming is comin’ from because I know it weren’t no relation. I will pay if you will tell me.”
“’Ow much?” the words were out before I realised I’d said them.
“A tenner.”
I got up to leave. I mean, honestly! A tenner. I owed as much fealty to my family as they owed to me, but Vi’s offer was risible even to a nine-year-old.
“Twenty?” she squeaked, but I kept moving.
“I can land yer dad right in it if I want…” She made another poisonous attempt. “I can tell ‘em what I know and I can tell ‘em ‘oo done it. I can get ‘im banged up for years. But I can do worse than that. You know I can. Your Mum knows…”
Her cracked voice dropped to a whisper and her ugliness intensified as her desperation increased. She read the disgust on my face.
“But I don’t want to do that, Mikey,” she crooned, pulling me back into the booth. Her sudden expression of tender loyalty to us wasn’t fooling me. Anyway, I was sure that she had told everything she knew or thought she knew to any copper or newspaper reporter who would listen. All had seen past her lies and recognised her for the treacherous woman she was. Still, there was something else... I could see calculation in her eyes and a cold feeling touched my heart. Perhaps she did know something more.
She had made the link between Bert Freeman’s money and our sudden windfall and although she would never in a million years have understood or even guessed at the motives that had prompted it she knew that it was the same money.
“But somefink is goin’ on and it’s to do with the kidnapping and I have a right to know.”
“No, you don’t,” I muttered flinching away from her sour breath. “Why should you ‘ave a right to know?”
She drew back herself, startled out of her determination. It was a momentary lapse and she leaned in again for a resumption of the attack.
“Because I’m yer Mum’s friend, because I’m worried about ‘er, don’t you see. Ain’t you worried? She needs someone to look after ‘er Mikey ‘cos that brute of a man is killin’ ‘er. Sorry to speak so low of yer dad Mikey, but you know it’s true. ‘E’s told ‘er not to tell me, I know ‘e ‘as and it’s because of ‘im that she’s frightened to see me. But on the first night, when she told me about the money we made plans you see. We was goin’ to leave and go to live in Spain together. Not together like…just as friends of course.”
She interjected that last hastily as she became aware of how it sounded. I didn’t believe her anyway and at that time I was a bit vague about lesbianism although I was in possession of a wealth of spurious information about male homosexuality.
“Just as friends, you know. So, I need to know, ‘cos if it’s all a bit fishy I’ll ‘ave to keep an eye out and protect ‘er, you know. C’mon Mikey, tell me what the connection is. ‘Ow did they get the money off ‘im? For your mum’s sake.”
Of all of mum’s questionable friends, and there were quite a few, Vi was the one I was least likely to entrust with her protection. Whatever their relationship might be I, personally speaking, loathed the woman.
“It was a long-lost relation,” I said, stubbornly.
She had played her last hand, we
both knew it and I was bored, felt slightly sick, very reckless and was determined to go.
“‘E was a smuggler wiv one eye and a parrot in the olden days and ‘e buried thousands and thousands of gold coins and they dug it up and ‘ave been lookin’ all over the world to find ‘is great, great, great grandson and that is dad and now we’re all rich and we can afford to tell everyone to fuck off.”
Her nails caught my cheek as, in fury, she raised her hand to box my ears. But I ducked away and was out of the pub even before her howl of frustration had died on the stuffy air behind me.
13
Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The money arrived the next day. I wasn’t there. Someone phoned, Mum answered and was told that it was in their bank accounts and they must go in and sort out more paperwork.
I got home from school to find the leggy receptionist from Baldy’s office leaning against a red sports car parked in front of our house. She was dressed in high-waisted jeans, white stilettos and a red t-shirt. She looked spectacular but, given our previous relationship, I couldn’t bring myself to do any more than stare resentfully at her.
“Hello, Mikey,” she said. “Get in.”
“Me Mum told me not to get into cars with strange women,” I muttered challengingly.
“Oh, get in, you know you have to.”
“No,” I said and sloped past her and the red car.
“There’s no one home,” she said. I shrugged. I could get in through the side window. I’d been doing it for years.
“I’ve been sent to get you for a fitting for your school uniform.”
I mean, did you ever hear the like? A fitting for a school uniform! Everyone knew you bought them off the peg at the discount store. I slammed the side gate in her face. She didn’t hang around after that. I heard the car sputter into throaty life and roar off down Smallgains Avenue, far too fast of course.
They came back at about five ‘o’clock, all in dad’s Jag. Dad, Mum, Sarah, and Gary. They were very quiet as they climbed out of the car and trooped into the front room. I was sprawled on the floor in front of the telly watching Blue Peter which I feigned to despise but secretly liked. On this occasion, I didn’t care to maintain any illusions.
“Well, that’s that then,” I thought. They’ve lost the money, or it never existed. It was all a silly joke to punish them, I thought with satisfaction, but no… One look at the curve of a smile on my sister’s self-satisfied face, no less than the suppressed sparkle in my mother’s eyes and the triumph in my brother’s balled fists told me that I was in the presence of rich people. Only my father was unchanged. For the present anyway.
“So,” he said with a touch of defeat in his deep voice, “we know each other’s plans.”
“I don’t,” I piped up irritably. You must admit I had cause to be aggrieved.
“Shut up, Mikey,” snarled my brother.
“You should tell ‘im,” said my sister. “’E has a right to know.”
“Yes,” agreed my father. “He does.”
He didn’t seem to want to tell me though. Mum said nothing.
Sarah smiled at me. I have to say that it was creepy. She had rarely done any more than totally ignore me or belt me across the head but now there was something very different about Sarah. She had always been confident but now it seemed she was assured. Assured of her own worth perhaps and whether it was motherhood or her sudden wealth that had bestowed this blessing was anyone’s guess. Whether it would prove to be a blessing for us remained to be seen for Sarah appeared determined to manage the family from now on.
“We all have the money in our bank accounts now, Mikey, as agreed. There were no last-minute hitches which is what we was all afraid of and there is no doubt that we are all very rich people.”
“Not me!” I howled.
“Well, no, but you are going to ‘ave a lot of money spent on your h’education. Thousands and thousands, I expect so it all works out even I’m sure.”
You can imagine my reaction to that, but Sarah proved her worth by her next comment.
“Besides, he, Mr. Freeman I mean, might have put something aside for you, when you turn 18, you never know.”
I hadn’t thought of that. It was a sustaining idea and I clung to it from then on.
“Anyway, you will go off to school and you can come and see us whenever you like. Or, we will come to see you…maybe. Mr. Wotsisname, the lawyer bloke, is going to keep an eye on you anyway so you’ve no reason to be afraid of anything.”
“I ain’t afraid,” I shouted, aghast that anyone could have so mistaken my reluctance for this new life. “I just don’t wanna go. I’ll stay ‘ere.”
“Well, you can’t,” snapped my sister. “You ‘ave to go ‘cos it’s part of the deal, and anyway you’re only eight.”
“Nine,” I yelled.
“Nine then, but you still ‘ave to do as you’re told till you’re eighteen”
“Sod that,” I said and was clipped over the head by my mother. She didn’t do it with any passion, it was more of a reflex action.
“I’ll stay with…Dad,” I muttered. I should have said Mum, I know, but I didn’t.
“You can’t,” snapped Sarah. “Dad ‘as ‘is own plans. We all ‘ave and school’s the best place for you. If you don’t go, they’ll take the money away from us so don’t be so friggin’ selfish.”
That was the crux of the matter of course. I would be forced if necessary, but Sarah was willing to try bribery first.
“Think of all the money that might be at the end of it all.”
I tried to, but it was such a long, long way in the future. “Dad and Mum will see you right anyway if you do as you’re told and stick it out.”
I notice she wasn’t prepared to commit any of her own funds to the ‘keep Mikey on the straight and narrow’ cause.
“Mum ‘as decided to go to Spain for a while, for an ‘oliday and I am going to look for an ‘ouse for baby and me,” she continued with a self-satisfied smirk. “I don’t fink Barry and me is going to work out so the weddin’s off.”
No surprise there then.
I looked towards my father hopefully, but his chin was sunk into his chest and he said nothing.
“You ‘aven’t said what your plans are, Gary?” my sister prompted him. I’m not sure she cared except that it pained her to see so much unattainable cash being thrown away on someone who, quite apart from being so completely undeserving, had not enough imagination to form any plans for its disposal whatsoever.
“I dunno. A new car.”
“Great,” she said sarcastically. “And where are you going to live?”
This hadn’t occurred to him.
“’Ere,” he said in surprise.
“Are we keeping this place, then?” Sarah asked incredulously as if it were an old dress that had been discovered, dirty and torn in the back of her wardrobe.
“I can buy it,” Gary said, surprised both at having an independent thought and by the realisation that he could indeed buy it if he wanted to.
“Get something new. We can all afford a lot better now,” Sarah said dismissively. “We should sell this place and split the money.” She had forgotten that never having put any money into the family home she could hardly be expected to take any out.
“I want a divorce,” said Mum and the silence that fell was intense and spiky. No one was shocked of course. It was an inevitability. “But your father won’t give me one.”
Relinquish the last vestiges of control? No, he would never do that. Love her till he died, yes. Leave her to go unhindered into whatever darkness that whim and self-destructive tendencies led her, no.
I don’t think I knew all this then although I did suspect that there was a little more than just a bloody-minded desire for control behind his refusal. It was m
uch later that I began to suspect that my father’s motivations for pretty much everything he did were quite often misinterpreted and that, though not often what you could call noble, they did tend to be more complex and with more thought behind them than people gave him credit for.
Dad said nothing in response to the bombshell Mum had dropped even though I suspect that knowing Mum, she had not mentioned divorce prior to that moment. She knew that he would not agree to one and he knew without her asking that she wanted one.
“I’m going to Spain as soon as I can,” Mum said into the strained silence. “I need some time on me own and we’ve sorted out a flat what is owned by some of yer Dad’s friends. So, I’ll ‘ave some time on me own to sort fings frou and see what I want ter do next.”
This was unprecedented and smelt a bit fishy to me. Having demanded a divorce, she had done an about turn and was offering my Dad some sort of hope. ‘Let me go and maybe I’ll come back’, she was saying without saying it, but we knew she wouldn’t. We just knew it.
Dad shrugged. He’d know where she was, and she would be watched. Distantly and unobtrusively this time I imagined but watched she would be.
“So, what will you do, Dad?” Sarah asked boldly.
Dad rarely answered questions like that and he considered for some moments whether he should answer at all. He never had any intention of giving anything away, of course.
“I’ll be in London,” he said.
“With one of his ugly whores,” said Mum with feigned bitterness. She couldn’t care less, it was just a futile attempt to make him feel bad about himself and his life. It’s a good job Dad was the man he was because even now in these enlightened days I don’t know many men who drunk or sober would have put up with all the crap that Mum could throw without erupting violently in some way. Dad’s emotions didn’t seem to flare up, they just burned slowly and out of sight, like the underground peat fires that have burned for years and no one knows how to put out.
“Yes,” he said quietly, and she laughed.
“Well, then,” said Sarah after a moment. “We’re all going our separate ways it seems. We’ll all keep in touch though.”
A Patient Man Page 12
