Annie called out, ‘Melanie – I’m going back. Look – if you want to go to Gravesend we’ll go together. I’ll borrow my sister’s car. Do you want to do that?’
Melanie looked doubtfully at Annie. There was a final burst of Greek in the kitchen and George came out into the café, an expression of determination on his face.
‘Vanessa,’ he said, ‘I’d like to speak to you seriously. Excuse me,’ he said to Annie. Annie stood up. George waved her down. ‘No – no – listen. You can help me persuade her. Vanessa – this might seem a little bit of an unusual request but I’m taking my family back to Cyprus. It may be for a long time, or a short one. I don’t know. Maybe I’d like to get my daughters out of this place, this town. I don’t trust it any more, don’t trust the people. Now it seems the family can’t help me and I need to keep this place open while I’m away. Might be for ever. Might not. Now, I know you need a job, feed the kids, all that. And I need an honest manager. What do you think?’
‘Are you serious?’ asked Vanessa.
‘This is my business. I’ve had it thirty years. Course I’m serious.’
‘I couldn’t do this all on my own, George,’ said Vanessa, appalled. ‘I’ve got the kids to take care of. This is a full-time job. I can’t get Alec in a nursery till Easter at the earliest. I’ve got so many problems—’
‘That’s what they all tell me,’ George said disgustedly. ‘I’ve got to keep this place open and who can do it? Who can I trust? The family won’t help. Everybody tells me problems they’ve got. If I don’t get to Cyprus pretty soon I don’t know what’s happening to my father’s property. Round here, who is there to rely on? I look round and I see everybody’s on the fiddle. Anybody reliable, they’ve got two jobs already to keep going. Commitments,’ he said irritatedly. ‘Everybody’s got those suddenly. Commitments. Look, Vanessa – this is a nice little café. You can make a profit if you run it right. I’ve brought up a family on it with hard work. Temporary manager. You got to get a job, anyway. I know what’s happening. Two of Geoff’s workmen were here yesterday talking – you’ll have to take the children to your mum’s some of the time—’
‘She won’t do it, not regular.’ Vanessa told him. ‘Do you think I haven’t asked? She says it’s too much at her age—’
Melanie leaned over and said, ‘I can help out.’
Annie was becoming accustomed to Melanie. She intervened quickly, ‘You can’t. For one thing, you’re going to have to go home. Secondly, even if you didn’t you’d have to go to school. Thirdly, you’re planning to go to Gravesend.’
Vanessa was looking at Melanie speculatively. George chipped in, ‘This girl can do anything, that’s my opinion. Go to school, go to Gravesend, help Vanessa with the children, take over behind the counter from time to time—’
‘There are laws governing what happens to thirteen-year-old girls,’ declared Annie.
Vanessa and George, she noticed, were staring at her as if she were some rare animal. ‘There are,’ she repeated.
‘Then,’ George said encouragingly to Vanessa, ‘get your mum to help from time to time—’
‘Come on, George,’ said Vanessa, ‘you’ve given us an ear-bashing about your family – what makes you think mine’s any different? Look,’ she said, ‘I’d like to help but—’
He spread his hands. ‘Help, then,’ he appealed. ‘Three, four months.’
‘I couldn’t do it,’ Vanessa said. ‘There’s the accounts—’
‘You could learn—’
‘No I couldn’t, George. Don’t tell me what I can do and what I can’t do. I’m hopeless at money. Anything to do with figures is out of the question.’
‘You’re intelligent,’ he said.
Annie had been listening and was intrigued. ‘I’ll help with the books,’ she said.
Melanie, seeing Annie apparently trying to get a foothold in the café, chipped in competitively, ‘You told me you only knew about history.’
‘I ran a business,’ said Annie mildly. ‘When Julian started the firm there were only two of us and since he was the creative person I dealt with everything else. The firm’s still there,’ she paused, ‘though I’m not.’
‘You’re honest,’ George stated. ‘Anyway my cousin does the VAT.’
‘There you are then,’ said Annie.
‘All cash business here,’ he said cautiously.
‘So I would think,’ Annie agreed coolly. They gave each other a long stare. Satisfied that she understood him, he turned to Vanessa. There was a long pause. In the middle of it the elderly woman in the plum coat got up and left.
Vanessa, Melanie and Annie all looked at each other.
‘I could perhaps look at the books on Vanessa’s behalf,’ Annie suggested.
‘Now – if you would help her generally …’ hinted George.
‘I might,’ Annie agreed. ‘If the business would stand it.’
‘Then – what’s the answer?’ asked George.
Vanessa shrugged, ‘OK, George – you’re on.’
4
The Borough of Kenton with Particular Reference to Foxwell and Little Plastic Trees
Like all places, whether nation, geographical area, town or city, the London boroughs are not just labelled spots where people reside but over the years have accumulated round themselves a clutch of ideas, images and received ideas about themselves. If, for example, the name ‘Bath’ is mentioned, it evokes thoughts of Regency terraces, the Romans, a mineral spa. ‘Bradford’ may bring thoughts of wool, satanic mills, rows of terraced houses, the Industrial Revolution. ‘The Cotswolds’ and there is rolling English countryside, lovely villages, the sheep grazing peacefully (their wool destined to end up in ‘Bradford’). These simple impressions may not be right, they will certainly mean little to people who actually live in these places when they think about their own homes, but they exist. So, it is with the London boroughs – Westminster stands for wealth and dignity, Camden for the loony left, Brent for the loonier, Hackney as the most deprived London borough, whether it is or not. Like these places Kenton is not just a London borough inhabited by a quarter of a million people but an image, a dream, part fact and part fiction. Publicly, Kenton competes with Camden for the title of the most loony, doctrinally dictated borough in London and with Hackney for its crime rate. Officially declared nuclear-free it also holds the record for the most prosecutions taken out against the police on the grounds of police brutality.
Kenton has two MPs, one Labour, in the southern constituency, one Conservative representing the prosperous suburbs to the north. The borough has had a Labour council since World War II when men in shabby suits, remembering their bent-backed mothers toiling over stone sinks in terraced houses, hanging out laundry in freezing-cold yards, recalling overcrowded kitchens and baths in front of the kitchen fire, decided to clear the slums, so tore them down, filling the spaces formerly occupied by rows of cramped houses and the gaps left by bombs dropped during Word War II, with huge estates, which incorporated many high-rise buildings. When the estates had just been architects’ models studied by councillors they were white and gleaming, with little green plastic trees and green plastic open spaces; paradise for the people. Everyone would have a modern kitchen, a bathroom, an airing cupboard and enough bedrooms. Later, of course, it turned out that they should have given the matter more thought, asked their wives for comments and checked the specifications more closely. Somehow the big estates, dream of the men who wanted to clear away the slums for ever, became something that another generation in turn wanted to clear away for ever themselves.
Kenton’s problems as a local authority are numerous. They are rate-capped, so that they can’t maintain services set up in more prosperous days; there are a quarter of a million people living there but in some areas a fifth of the working population is unemployed; the borough covers approximately fifteen square miles from the River Thames, running south. Central government hates it, punishes it whenever possible and would abolish it
, if it could. The leader of the council is fifty-seven-year-old Joe Banks, one of the old guard. His deadly rival is thirty-six-year-old ‘Red Les’ Dowell. The Mayor of Kenton is Mrs Roxanne Fuller, who is black, a lay preacher, a mother of four and a primary school teacher.
The headquarters of Kenton Council is, of course, the ornate late-Victorian building standing at the top of Foxwell High Street, separating two streams of traffic which flow out to the borough’s more prosperous suburban areas. Foxwell itself is a by-word, having suffered two riots where the nation watched television in horror, seeing fires, the police battling with the rioters in streets at night, seeing looting and stalled ambulances and fire engines trying to get through to help. After the first riot Foxwell police station was rebuilt as a fortress and after the second funds were produced to build a sports centre and plant trees in the streets which had been the focus of the riots.
Officially, Foxwell had been regenerated but, pore over the models as you like, no amount of little houses, sports centres and plastic trees can fill the civic coffers, produce money for repairing public housing or schools, produce jobs for the population and pay their bills. Only children playing with a model village on the living-room carpet are allowed to go on believing in that sort of dream.
5
Love, Money and Revenge
At eight o’clock one Monday morning in mid-January, as the market traders set up their stalls, tugging at struts, hauling canvas canopies, and as the survivors of the night before dragged themselves along the pavements heading for the nearest shop where they could pick up a bottle of cider, Annie swung the ‘Closed’ sign on George’s Café round to read ‘Open’ and dashed back into the kitchen, where Vanessa was keeping an eye on a cargo of sausages under the grill and bacon sizzling in a huge frying pan.
The day before they’d cleaned the place from top to bottom, throwing out bucket after bucket of water stained with grease and tobacco smoke. Annie claimed George hadn’t cleaned the café since he’d taken it over back in the fifties. Vanessa thought he gave it a good clean-up annually. What they were seeing now was normal wear and tear. ‘I can remember when he decorated it,’ she said nostalgically. ‘I was in the fourth form – used to come in with my mates.’ Nevertheless, when they had finished, the café still looked seedy.
‘We know it’s clean, that’s the main thing,’ consoled Vanessa. ‘And the punters wouldn’t thank us for turning it into the Café Royal. Still, if I’d known about the state of this oven before I wouldn’t have drunk a glass of water in here, let alone had anything to eat.’
Annie, who was scrubbing the floor, bringing the lino tiles up to a magnificent blue, stood up, stretched and flopped down on one of the wooden chairs. She said vindictively, ‘I wish Julian was on his hands and knees doing this.’
Their discussions with George had not assured either of them that the caré would cover their expenses, but if Vanessa could persuade the council to remit her rent until she could get rent support and Annie could persuade the building society to allow her some time on her payments, the café might at least provide both of them with enough to stagger along with and that, as they both agreed, would give them time to make better arrangements for themselves.
‘It’s not much, but it suits us and it’s the best we can do,’ Vanessa said, carrying a bucket of water out to the back yard and throwing it down the drain. She came back and put it under the tap in the sink. Across the noise of running water she added, ‘Women are like the Third World, aren’t they? Working like dogs, getting less pay, doing all the dirty jobs, got to keep in with the big boys, like America, and Britain – how much would bananas cost if you grew them in Surrey? About a quid each. Where they grow them they have to work for fifty pence a day and be grateful. Same with us. The men with the money walk out and here we are – tote that load and lift that bale.’
‘It’s not right,’ Annie agreed.
‘Ha, ha,’ Vanessa said mirthlessly, pulling the bucket out of the sink and putting it on the floor by the stove. ‘Well, Annie, in my opinion you can ask your husband for whatever you like but you won’t get anything.’
Annie feared Vanessa was right. In a panelled office in Bloomsbury the solid and respectable Mr Danby, her parents’ solicitor, had assured Annie it was possible to sue Julian for her part of what might morally have been considered a partnership but that, since Julian had not legally made her a partner, she must have been, from the outset, an employee. The directorship, he thought, was not a question worth pursuing. Even if she obtained a judgment upholding her claim that she had been a partner in Vane Graphics, and still was, the firm might not be able to cover any money she was awarded. ‘In any case,’ Danby went on, Annie sitting meekly in front of his big desk, hands clasped in her lap, ‘I tend to advise clients in a position such as your own to be slow to act. All too often only a Pyrrhic victory can be achieved – the client may be awarded costs and damages, but they may never be paid.’
‘At least there’s my ten thousand pounds.’
‘If you can establish that the sum was a contribution to the business operation and not merely a personal gift to your husband, for him to use as he wished. If he claimed the money had been a gift, then it was not an investment by you in the firm. And from what you tell me, he’s not prepared to return the sum and may well use the argument that it was a gift such as a woman, receiving a legacy, might make to her husband.’
There was a silence. Gerald Danby, a large man in a dark suit, looked at Annie gravely. ‘This must seem very discouraging. But from what you tell me, your means are small. To proceed against your husband in an attempt to prove you were a partner in the firm, or for the return of your ten thousand pounds would, if he put up a good defence, cost a great deal of money. Legal aid is difficult to obtain but if, by that or other means, you embarked on the case, and if you won it, then as I’ve said, your husband could declare the company had insufficient funds to pay you what the court ordered.’
They shook hands, Mr Danby murmuring sympathy. If she wished to see him again, having thought the matter over, he would be pleased to help. Annie was doubtful if this was really the case.
Now, a bucket at her feet in George’s, Annie said to Vanessa, ‘I don’t think Mr Danby liked me, somehow. He was like something out of Dickins.’
‘I told you you should have gone to Mrs Chatterjee,’ retorted Vanessa.
‘She didn’t help you much,’ Annie commented.
‘Well, it came back to the same thing,’ Vanessa admitted. ‘Once a man’s self-employed he can get an accountant to say he’s broke, even if he isn’t. And I couldn’t tell her that from what I could see of Geoff’s mood if I started a case against him he might get angry. That could mean he sends round a few of the gorillas he uses on the sites to wreck one of my dad’s garages or pick a fight with my brother, who can’t afford any injuries because of being a professional footballer. On top of that I’ve got kids and I don’t want Geoff getting spiteful and trying to take Alec and Joanne away. Look here, Annie, the thing about law cases is they cost you thousands, take for ever and break your heart. They make you bitter and drive you mad. At the end of the day you’re there in court and some crusty judge falls in love with your husband and you get nothing. Or if you do, probably he finds a way not to pay …’
She returned to the cooker while Annie finished the floor. Later Annie began taking down the white glass globes which covered the light bulbs, handing them carefully to Vanessa to wash at the sink.
‘I suppose at a moment like this what you’re supposed to do is say to yourself what you really want from now on,’ called Vanessa. ‘The trouble is, I still want Geoff to come back. After that, if he doesn’t, I want him to fall under a bus while I’m watching. Crunch, crunch. Not nice, is it?’ she said, coming back for the other globe. ‘I was in the same class as a girl who’s a top model now and when we were at school everybody reckoned I was the best looker – better than her, even. Now she’s in Paris and Rome and New York. You s
ee her picture in magazines while I’m a woman with no husband, no money, two kids and stretch marks. Ironical, isn’t it? The same old story nobody wants to listen to.’ She took the globe from Annie and went on, ‘Carrying George Kypragoras’s greasy lights off for cleaning – is this what I want?’
‘I’ve been having awful dreams of being left behind at stations,’ Annie said. ‘Then,’ she confessed, ‘last night I dreamt I was pushing Julian out of his office window.’
Vanessa rinsed the globes and set them to dry. ‘I suppose you want revenge now. So do I. Nasty, isn’t it?’
Annie, scouring the scuffed table legs, looking up noticed the condition of the underside of a table. ‘Oh, Vanessa,’ she called. ‘Look at this. Grease – chewing gum – ugh.’
Vanessa came over to look. ‘We’ll have to turn all the tables over and clean them. And go under that counter along the side – it’s going to be just as bad. I thought we’d finished.’
They heaved the tables and chairs on their backs and began to rub and scrub. ‘I hope this is going to be worthwhile,’ Vanessa murmured. ‘I can imagine what those blokes are doing now, on a Sunday morning in bed with their girls. I don’t just need revenge. I need love and romance – I’m only a young woman, so are you. Whatever you feel like now, you’ll need to marry again some time.’
‘First, we both need money,’ Annie remarked in a practical way. On her knees, she looked up and tasted the words – ‘Love, money and revenge. Those should be our new goals.’
‘Right, then,’ Vanessa cried, levering a piece of chewing gum from the edge of a table with a bent knife. ‘Love, money and revenge it is!’
In Search of Love, Money & Revenge Page 7
