Human Croquet (37 page)

Maude tried to beat the sin out of Violet Angela. ‘This is for your own good,’ she huffed and puffed up the stairs with ‘Father’s’ leather belt. How could this be right, Violet Angela wondered? To be beaten half to death by your parents? Weren’t they supposed to love and protect you?

Deep in the night, the walrus body of Herbert heaved itself between the darned sheets in her narrow little bed. ‘Now, Violet Angela,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, as his ink-stained fingers pushed and pulled, ‘this is for your own good, and if you ever tell anyone then I swear God, who’s watching over us right now, will kill you,’ and, to demonstrate, his big hands encircled her thin little neck and when he felt how thin she was, how young she was, imagined her bird-bones snapping – then Herbert was suffused with shame at what he was doing. But it was too late now, he reasoned with himself, he’d already bought his ticket to hell, and hers with it. And, after all, it wasn’t as if she was his daughter. He bought her bags of boiled sweets to make up to her.

‘I’m not a monster,’ Violet Angela sneered. ‘Mr Reagan promised me things.’

‘Things?’

‘Pretty things,’ Violet Angela said stoutly. ‘He said he’d give me pretty things if I let him have his way.’ Mrs Potter slapped Violet Angela’s face and Violet Angela screamed, ‘And he was only doing what he’s been doing [she pointed dramatically at Mr Potter] for years!’ Mr Potter slapped Violet Angela’s other cheek. ‘You little liar!’

‘You little whore,’ Mrs Potter yelled and Violet Angela ran from the room before she got slapped to death.

‘Give her back?’ Herbert said, scratching his head.

‘To where she come from – those Brevilles,’ Maude said. ‘Let’s see
them
deal with her wicked ways.’

‘We ain’t got nothing to prove who she was,’ Herbert says glumly.

‘All I ever wanted was a nice little girl what I could dress up and show off,’ said Maude sadly. ‘This is all the thanks we get for bringing her up.’

‘She’ll come to a bad end, that one,’ Herbert said, shaking his head.

‘Where is she?’

‘Locked in upstairs still,’ Maude said proudly. ‘I’ll take her up her tea.’

But she hadn’t done yet. Later, much later, when the whole world was asleep, Violet Angela slipped in at the back gate, opened the outhouse door where the tools were kept and picked up the heavy woodchopping axe. She tiptoed up the stairs to Maude and Herbert’s bedroom. They lay sleeping on their backs. Ugly. Vulnerable. Maude snoring like a trooper. She had a hair-net on, like a bonnet, and her teeth were on the bedside table. A dribble of saliva trailed down Herbert’s silver-stubbled chin. Violet Angela imagined lifting the axe and letting it fall down under its own heavy weight, cleaving Herbert’s head in two on the pillow without him even waking up. His brains splattering the wall, splattering Maude’s face. Maude waking up drowsily, opening her mouth to scream at the sight of her husband’s brains spilt everywhere, Violet Angela stopping her scream with the axe.

‘Nah, don’t feel like it, let me get him.’

‘Who?’

‘The sea-lion.’ Violet tripped over in her black and white, white broderie cap pulled low on her forehead, thick black stockings. Violet could see something in the sea-lion’s eyes, knew it might be good for her. He
was
like a sea-lion, blubbery in an overcoat, old-fashioned really, ‘Good afternoon, sir, what can I get for you today?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Violet.’

‘What a pretty name. How old are you?’

‘Eighteen, sir,’ Violet lied sweetly. She was only sixteen.

‘Imagine that,’ he said with a smile and raised a small plump hand and touched her on the forearm. ‘My name’s Dickie Landers, sweetheart – have you heard of me?’ and Violet said, ‘Yes, of course,’ although she hadn’t. ‘If you work very hard,’ he said, half-closing his lazy eyes, more salamander than seal, ‘I’ll tip you very, very well, my dear,’ and out of sight of the rest of the tea-shop, he reached out and stroked her thigh, just in case she was in any doubt about what he meant. She wasn’t.

‘Who am I then?’ Violet asked. Eliza Jane Dennis.

‘She was real,’ Dickie Landers grinned, ‘little girl, died before she was two.’

He took her out – to the theatre (‘That’s you,’ he laughed when they saw
Pygmalion
), to night-clubs, to restaurants, even to the opera. There wasn’t anybody that Dickie Landers didn’t know, from high court judges to common criminals. Dickie himself was an aristocrat amongst criminals. He owned a West End club called the Hirondelle. The club was where he did ‘business’, reaching over the tables to murmur things in willing ears, rubbing his greasy fingers together to illustrate what he meant, leaning back and laughing expansively, stretching the stiff shirt of his evening suit. Eliza perched on a stool at the bar, drank gin, learned who was who. And what was what. She learnt to do all kinds of things, things that nice girls didn’t know about, wouldn’t have believed if they’d been told. ‘But then I’m not a nice girl, am I?’ Eliza said to her mirror.

Eliza wasn’t just one of Dickie’s girls any more, she was special. ‘You’re special, darlin’,’ he laughed and hired her out only to his best customers (‘top whack’). Eliza learned to talk properly, learnt from films and from the aristocracy who slummed it at the Hirondelle, draping themselves on the arms of semi-criminals, wishing that Daddy could see how wicked they were being. ‘I’ve made you into a lady,’ Dickie Landers said to her and Eliza laughed and said, ‘Darling, you’ve made me into a high-class tart, that’s all.’