Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (28 page)

The main difference, according to Tony, is the club scene. Was that new café opened when I went in? Next to the delicatessen on Old Compton Street? Yes, I say, it was—it had just opened.

“Fucking hell, that all went mad,” Tony says. He tells me about kids coming from far away, the suburbs, just for one night. Pavement's always full of them. He does this funny little hand jive movement with his hands on the wheel, to show me.

“I hate that Lonnie Donegan record though, don't you?” I say. Tracey had a radio and for a half ounce of tobacco she'd let me listen to it for an hour.

Tony starts singing it, in old-fashioned music-hall style—“
Oh
. . .
my old man's a dustman, he wears a dustman's hat . . .”
—until I laugh and whack him and tell him to shut up. He has a good voice, though: a rich, lilting voice. I'd forgotten that.

“Is it all kids then. Teenagers?” I ask, trying to keep the anxious note out of my voice. The sense of being old now, having missed something, being locked away while it was all going on.

Tony glances at me and his look is reassuring. Like he just flicked a hot brush over me.

He assures me it's not just teenagers. And we both agree we like Adam Faith, and he sings that one, too, for a while: “
What do you want if you don't want money?
” There are swanky places, too, Tony says. Churchill's and The Beehive and Winston's—the new club we were heading for on New Year's Eve that's become the top spot; yeah, that's the number-one venue in the West End. Also this place called Murray's, posh place, do I remember it—Stella works there now as a dancer. She has to get all these fellas to buy her drinks and then they charge them the earth, and Stella gets paid in what she calls scalps. How many losers buy her a drink. He'll take me. But Hackney, though. Back home. I won't recognize it. So many blacks . . . they're everywhere. There's cafés in Clapton where you don't see a white face; just all these pork-pie hats and a Blue Spot radiogram and pinball machines . . .

“Where we going to be living, then?”

“I'm renting a place. Not far from where you and Stella was—Frampton Park Road.”

He'd told me once when visiting inside that he'd left the Soho Don. I knew from before I went in that the control of London was changing and what Stella said was true: it would always be best to be working for the right firm. The impression I got, and I didn't like to delve, was that now Tony was working for himself—only doing piecemeal, casual things as they came up, if they were tempting—but generally, since Durham, trying to stay out of trouble. Mostly he was back working in his uncle's café. I'm relieved, because this means the likelihood of Tony being banged up for something is smaller; but it also means we won't exactly be rolling in money.

“Back there? Near Dad and Annie . . .”

I try not to sound disappointed. My mood is crackly, brittle. I can't quite believe that I'm actually on the outside. That someone won't come along and click handcuffs on me, haul me back there. Also, Tony keeps mentioning that we can get spliced now, we can get our little baby girl back and have a big do at St. James Church in Bethnal Green, or the Italian church in Clerkenwell, wouldn't that be
fine,
doll? I say nothing in reply to this. An elastic band tightens round my lungs; I feel like I can't breathe. “Can we open a window in here?”

It doesn't take long for Tony to get fresh. This is what he's convinced I've been missing most in my three years' bird. That I'm about to explode, right? I'm smoking one cigarette after the other, dragging deeply, blowing smoke towards the open window, as we leave London for Kent, where Gloria's house is, and he's leaning over, squeezing my knee, smoothing his hand over the cotton of my slacks and up to my crotch, smiling at me, trying to unbutton my blouse with one hand. “Leg-over and chips is what you need, doll,” Tony says.

We decide to pull over in a lay-by and push back the seats; Tony takes off his jacket and shoes and produces a bottle of Jack Daniels. We're on a country road. I look up from my position pinned under him—legs painfully braced, feet on the dash, seat-buckle sticking into my back—and see it all over his shoulder: birds, sky, a tree covered in pale pink blossoms, like a giant lollipop. The world again. Rumble of the odd lorry passing us, and mad twittering sounds from the birds. The tang of diesel and orange peel and plastic and whiskey and Tony's skin: a riot of scents. It's too much; it's nearly choking me.

Tony is hot, frantic, scuffling—like we're having a pub fight. He gets my knickers off and quickly unbuttons himself and gets inside me—he hasn't lost any of his urgency or abandon, but he hasn't learned to pace himself, either. Just as I start to get interested, it's over for him, and he's sighing and kissing my neck with an unmistakably satisfied air. I almost push him off me, but I stop myself, count to ten, ask for a tissue, and hold him for a while. I try to disguise the drumming of my fingers, pretending I'm just stroking his back.

It's fine, I'm in a hurry, too: I want to get to Maria. I wriggle about awkwardly to pull my knickers and slacks back on; Tony combs his hair in the rearview mirror, whistling and grinning at me. We open both windows and hit the road again. I'm drinking it all in: deer, fields, signs, petrol stations. As long as I live, a petrol station will never look as good to me as it does right now.

The long driveway from the road to Gloria's house is intimidating; we both fall silent. There's a little cottage to our right that I think at first is the house, but Tony—who's been before, to visit Maria—tells me it's the gardener's cottage, one of several dotted on the property. Perhaps because it's in Kent, I keep being reminded of the Approved School. I almost expect Sister Grey to come running out and sweep me inside. Ronald is away, Gloria has told me that. She's indicated that Ronald is often away, and she's glad of it. He's quite a drinker, and mean, as it turns out, and “daft old Gloria” has “been and gone and fell for him, after all,” she says.

It rears up at last, this grand house: grey stone, closed-looking, flanked by trees, an enormous lawn, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. A scale I hadn't imagined. I mean, I'd seen Gloria, the Rolls, the furs, the pearls. But those things seem like small-fry now, next to this. A house is something else. I'm surprised to find that I'm not just overawed, I actually feel afraid, and I can't understand why. I wasn't ready;
I hadn't yet imagined this
is the strange thought that pops into my head. No sign of Ronald's silver Rolls. There's a white Jag though; Tony parks up next to it and leaps out to admire it.

To my surprise it's Gloria herself, not a maid or butler, who answers the door. And she's reassuringly Gloria—glass of champagne in one hand, cigarette elegantly poised in the other, yellow silky dress stretched across her vast bust so that she looks like a ripe canary, all warmth and delight at seeing me spilling over as she ushers us into the kitchen and plonks glasses of bubbly in our hands.

Maria is out towards the back of the property with Betty and the nanny, she says. The nanny? Gloria had assured me she'd been raising both girls herself, with no help at all. I don't ask her about this, just note it, silently. I suddenly need to go to the lavatory; I think I'm going to be sick. Gloria shows me where it is, and I
am
sick, just a little—the champagne, no doubt, or the Jack Daniels, or just the shock of it all, after three years of sweet tea and stewed greens—and I sit for a second or two in front of the pristine white toilet bowl, closing my eyes, and trying to draw the strength to get up, and go back.

Then we're standing in the kitchen, gazing out to the garden, which backs onto fields—part of the property, apparently—and where I can see a young girl in a navy uniform, and two little girls. I mean to run outside, but find I can't move. Gloria prods me gently, and I step closer to the window. One of the girls is very small, barely more than a toddler. Black-haired, a scrap of a girl, in a white cotton dress, being lifted in the arms of the nanny. I can't see her face. I should know her face, every nuance, every eyelash, but a picture of her always eludes me, much as I stared hungrily at her on visits. She kept changing week by week, growing and altering, her eyebrows lifting and darkening, her chin firming up, her eyes widening and sprouting longer lashes, silky-black like Tony's. This is just what children's faces do, of course. Generally you see them every day and you don't notice. The gaps between visits made it impossible not to. As if I was seeing, in front of me, time passing. All the moments of my daughter's life I was missing.

So, for longer than I mean to, I just stand and stare at the window, savoring or putting off the moment, I'm not sure which. After a second or two, tears spill down my cheeks. I can see clearly what the three figures towards the field are looking at. A white pony. Gloria has bought Maria a pony, all of her own.

It's dark by the time we're ready to leave: Maria sleeping on the backseat of the car, the trunk packed with her things. We've had tea cakes and hot chocolate, and I've prattled away to Maria while she has given me her usual hard stare, only occasionally replying with one-word answers that seem to come from nowhere.

I try to suppress the gnawing anxiety that I'll never be able to give Maria the things that Gloria did; how will Maria accept life with Tony and me in the Frampton Park Road after this? Maria eats daintily, and looks to the nanny for prompting: is she allowed another piece of tea cake, should she now put the napkin on her lap? I note with a flicker of sadness that the person she's most relaxed with is Tony, who tickles her and suddenly scoops her up in rough kisses, calling her his “hunny bunny” and making her squeal. Surprise assaults of affection—I remember them well. Dad used to do that.

Later, Tony packs Maria's stuff into the boot and carries her to the backseat, telling her sweetly to lie down, while he tucks a blanket over her. She keeps lifting her head up like a tortoise. She looks bewildered as Gloria leans in to plonk kiss after kiss on her and Betty leans in, too, to say a weak goodbye, offering a formal handshake.

The nanny takes Betty inside. Tony slams the car door, saying pointedly to me, “Thought you ladies had a bit of business to sort out?” I know he's trying to get Gloria out of the way. It's also clear that Maria has no idea she's coming with us, and certainly not for good. Tony says firmly, “That's enough now. Don't get Maria upset,” and, giving Gloria a kiss and a pat, shoos us inside the house so he can sit in the car outside on the expensive gravel with the engine running, while Gloria and I pop upstairs.

In the master bedroom, Gloria delves about in her wardrobe for an envelope. The rest of my money she's been safekeeping for me since the jewelry robbery. I've calculated there should be about £1,400 left, after the money I'd been giving to Bobby for sheltering me, and other bits and bobs I'd told Gloria she could use it for while I was inside. Gloria hands me an envelope, which feels light, but I don't open it, not in front of her. That would be rude.

In any case, Gloria is sobbing, suddenly. Deflating in her yellow dress like a sunken lemon soufflé, mascara blackening her cheeks, the strands of pearls round her neck clattering painfully as her chest lifts and falls; sitting on her purple satin bed, all ruffles and flounces, clutching at me, saying, “Don't take Maria, she's all I've got . . .”

Alarmed, I lift the glass from Gloria's hand and put it on the bedside table. Now I'm so close I see that she must have been drinking steadily all day; she's sodden and glazed, her eyes barely focusing. A toot from the car horn outside makes me jump. Tony will be tapping his fingers on the wheel.

“Don't be silly, you've got Betty . . .”

“Betty hates me!” She collapses backwards onto the bed.

The one person I don't expect to see punctured: Gloria. Pouting, playful, bubbly, kindhearted Gloria. I don't know what to do. How to thank her, how to
repay
her. I sit down on the bed beside her, take her hand.

“Gloria—you can see Maria every weekend; or as often as you like, honestly . . .”

She gazes up at me, and struggles to sit up, brushing at her face with her hands and attempting a watery smile.

“Maria will want to visit, won't she, to see her lovely pony?” I say.

And strangely, at that, Gloria collapses again.

“I've got
nothing,
” Gloria wails. She sweeps an arm around the room, vaguely indicating the purple velvet curtains, the white dressing table, the half-open door to the dressing room stuffed with mink.

Taking my own child feels like stealing is my grim thought, as I close the door to Gloria's bedroom, sneaking across the landing to the staircase. Does nothing really belong to me? What do I have, what can I wrap up and tie in a bow and pass to Maria? Not a pony, or a white bunny rabbit. Is it nothing, like Gloria? Is that what I have to pass on—one big fat
nothing
? Gloria's despair washes over me, as I creep away down the polished staircase of her grand house. Fine fingers of glass from a crystal chandelier point accusingly, every step of the way.

S
o is
that
why? I wonder. Why I was tempted out of going straight—retirement you might call it? Tempted to risk everything, risk Holloway, all over again? Because I thought I was useless, nothing anyway, under all my bravado? Like that Marilyn Monroe quote—what was it?—about only wanting to be somebody so badly if you fear you're nobody really.

No, that doesn't strike me as true, actually. It strikes me as corny, the wanting-to-be-special idea; or if it was true for me, it was just a tiny, weeny bit. There were other reasons. Other pressing reasons. We'll come to those. Give me a chance: I'm trying to be honest here.