Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (29 page)

I was supposed to be giving Maria a life as far from mine as possible, but it wasn't easy. Seeing Maria with the white pony didn't make me feel happy for her. Instead I had this other feeling, this horrible grudging feeling that I didn't even have a name for then, but a feeling I knew well enough. I'd felt it often enough in the past. It was like that day long ago when Elsie Salmon taught me what guilt was all about. This feeling that I had towards my own daughter—I'm sure
that
was what was in the package wrapped up in ribbon; that's what Moll passed to me. Shameful feelings, taboo ones, ones you shouldn't feel towards your own beloved daughter, but you do. It makes me wonder if anyone can ever give their child something they don't have themselves. Don't we pass on exactly what we don't mean to, despite our best intentions? After all, what had Maria had so far? A locked-away mother, and an only-there-some-of-the-time father.

I didn't realize that then. There was a way to go before I saw that. No, at that point it was all about Tony, and picking up where I left off, and having a laugh with Stella
,
doing all the things I'd been denied. I was only twenty-seven years old, and I had a lot of catching up to do. Oh, and ironically enough, it seems it was me who had paid for Maria's pony in any case. Gloria had dipped into my money over the three years: no wonder the envelope felt light. Her light-fingered habits were hard to break.

Living with Tony, with a man, was not what I expected. We rubbed each other up the wrong way; we were both independent and loved our own routines. I couldn't cook, producing burnt toast and eggs so floppy they wriggled off the plate; he wasn't a bad cook, but if he'd worked in the café all day he wasn't about to do it again in the evening, and anyway, cooking is a woman's job.

He slept longer hours than me; he liked to lie in on a morning, and if Maria woke him, he'd be in one of his tempers, charging like a bull at things, frightening us both. He kept on and on about getting hitched, and I kept fobbing him off. I didn't know why I didn't want to; I just used to tell him that I'd never imagined myself married, and Tony would reply, “Surely every bird does,” or, if he was in a bad mood, “Fucking hell, Queenie, you ain't no spring chicken . . .” If he was in a
very
bad mood he'd call me a bitch and say I should be glad that anyone wanted an ungrateful old cow like me, but he was always sorry for those outbursts, and I'd scream equally ugly names back at him and then feel sorry for him. I didn't have a good reason not to get married and it was in the days when “living over the brush” was something quite shocking, frowned upon, though everyone knew someone who did. I felt I was being unfair. I didn't understand myself.

We scraped along like this for a couple of years. Money was tight—we were living off my few remaining savings and Tony's wages from the café—and, in the end, Tony accepted that as the reason not to get married. But it drained us, the fighting.

And once again, they got nasty. One time Maria stood between us—she actually plonked herself right in the kitchen between us—and I saw that she was red in the face, and shaking from head to toe, and Tony came tearing at me and pushed her out of the way, and she was screaming,
screaming
, and I was trying to notice her, trying to duck as Tony's fist came flying, and trying to sweep Maria out of the way all at the same time, and I did think, I remember thinking, this is how it was for me and be honest for once, Queenie,
it wasn't all right was it, it was terrifying
, and as I try to allow this thought to form I'm also fending off Tony with the nearest thing to hand—a pan, a heavy pan—and I smash one of the lightbulbs as I swing it and it pops and Maria screams again . . . and I tell her, “Run, run upstairs, don't come down!”

That night I cried into my pillow, remembering Maria's little red face, her bravery, standing between us, and yet the sight of her, how scared she looked. I've never seen anyone shake that hard. And then suddenly my sobbing was about Moll, and myself, and remembering. Taking Bunny to bed with me, hiding under my pillow, holding Bobby's little sweating hand, and how I dealt with it by thinking: I'm not like her. Why does she let him do that to her, and hating her, and furious with her, blaming her, for
allowing it.
I sat up in bed at this thought, crept out from beside the snoring Tony, and went to stand at the kitchen window, looking out towards Well Street. What Stella said before I went inside came back to me.
You're half Tony's size.
Wasn't Moll half Dad's size? Why on earth had I been mad at her for so long—wasn't it unfair to expect her to have been able to stand up to him, defend herself against him?

I went next door to check on Maria, sleeping with her nightie rucked up and her face hot against her pillow. I tugged the cotton material down over her bottom and covered her with the sheet. And then I lay on the narrow single bed beside her, my face close to hers. She breathed out and the smell of cherry-flavored toothpaste wafted towards me. And I kept remembering her, placing herself between us, trying to be strong, trying to prevent a twelve-stone man from hitting me with her tiny little girl bulk. How long before she realizes she can't save me and can't stop the horrible scary things from happening all around her, and switches to hating me?

Maria remained elusive. That's how I thought of her. Flitting, intermittent. It was as if she faded in and out of existence, like electricity being switched on. I'd be doing something: vacuuming, lighting a cigarette, chatting on the telephone to Stella, about to pick up a book. I'd look down, vividly conscious of her, like something was suddenly on fire right beside me. There she'd be, shimmering. A dark glittering child. Angry, like Tony. Other times she'd be running. On the way to Vicky Park, off to visit Granddad and Annie, or her big cousin Gracie; she'd be bowling by, fast as a blown leaf, and giggling and in her own little world and I'd try and catch her and swing her up or kiss her or even get her to smile at me. Nothing. It was as if she couldn't see me at all; I didn't exist. She'd keep on running, whirling, chasing birds. I worried about her. I talked to Stella, who I didn't see that often by then—I think it must have been the summer of 1962—and her reply surprised me. “Well, you didn't think you'd get off scot-free, did you?”

That stung. Stella meant the years I'd been inside, of course. I hadn't expected her of all people to rub my nose in it. Stella often asked me, looking round the little flat in Hackney, didn't I miss the rush, the glamour of my hoisting days? She'd learned to drive, and her boyfriend—this huge fat man she'd met at Murray's who had two other mistresses dotted around London and only liked sex once a week and without looking at her (he liked it really cold and official, she said, from behind)—had bought her a cherry-red Mini that she was driving around in. Hard not to feel a twinge of envy, seeing her in that car, and yes, I did miss hoisting; I felt a kind of twitchiness when my life, like now, seemed so dull, and that made me want to do something to stir it up.

A fight usually did it. A huge fight with Tony. The pattern was the same: the drama and the adrenaline and the rage, and then the fog, the strange foggy sweetness that always enveloped me with such reassuring predictability along with the bruises afterwards.

S
o this one night, Tony comes home for his dinner and immediately I sense a mood. A warning mood. He's excited. Hopping from foot to foot, hiding something. He did a little job, he says. Nothing big. He rolls his eyes, meaning: I can't say more in front of Maria.

I'm in the kitchen in my apron—yes, really!—heating some peas in a pan on the stove; Maria is looking at a book of numbers on the table. She's started school by now and she loves it, as long as she's allowed to sit in the home corner and read all day. She's lost in this book, only once glancing up from it to ask, “How many sweets are in a quarter pound of pear drops?”

“I don't know. Twenty?” I answer.

“Good. Because I ate four earlier so I've got sixteen left.”

That's what she likes to do, Maria. Little calculations, figuring stuff out. Tony kisses the top of her head and puts his hands round my waist at the stove. “Got something for you, doll,” he says. He's twittery and agitated; he produces a box. A little black box that pops open and sparkles.

“There you go. What d'you say to that?”

There's nothing I can say. Not now, not in front of Maria. I pretend to be pleased, and kiss him, and slip the diamond ring on and admire it, extending my fingers as if I'm a film star, as if I'm Marilyn—only not poor Marilyn, no, news of her is everywhere—all the while my heart ticking like a time bomb and I'm thinking: God, no. Not if you were the last man on earth.

So we sip Babycham and eat the tinned peas and gammon steaks I've made us and I run Maria her bath and read her stories and tuck her in and Tony flicks through
The
People
with his feet up and his slippers on, half-watching
Z-Cars
on the telly, and all the while the feeling is brewing in me, swelling and filling every inch of me. I've been waiting for this somehow. Waiting for the moment to make things
irreparable.

But the moment doesn't come, and we watch more telly and I make us a cup of Nescafé and the evening drags on and soon Tony's yawning and saying let's go up to bed. Of course he thinks his luck's in tonight, because of the ring, and I won't have a headache like I have had every night lately. And even then, I get a reprieve. It seems as though he's even going to accept mildly my murmured rejections; we're going to be able to just fall asleep with a grudging kiss, and his leg flung over me, and if I'm not careful I'll wake up and it will be tomorrow and I'll find myself engaged to be married to Tony and the key will turn forever on a life I'm already locked in to, but ludicrously feel I could still escape at any time. There's no logic to it. The only thing I know is that it's got to be done. Now.

“Tony. I can't do this. I don't want to . . . marry you.”

His face in the half-light in our bedroom seems to melt. He's lying beside me; his side is to the wall, mine to the door. I'm already primed for feminine duties: to be the one ready to get out of bed to bring cups of tea, comfort a sleepwalking child. I don't know what I expected from Tony: roaring, gnashing of teeth, thumping the pillow—or me, perhaps. Instead there's a sadness so forceful that I think I must be mistaken, I must take it back; I surely can't be saying this, can't be deciding three people's future all alone like this. Tony lies still for a while, then reaches a hand for mine. From the way the bed is shaking, I know he is crying.

L
ater, that night, in the middle of the night, I'm almost relieved to find myself shaken awake, to find the sadness gone and replaced: Tony shaking me, his strong hands tight around my throat, his coffee-smelling breath hot on my face, hissing at me: “You ain't never going to take Maria, you know that? I'll fucking kill you first. Or kill her.”

Not for one instant do I think he could do it, strangle me. Kill me. He's frightening, yes. But I'm made of rubber, I'm sure of it: I'll bounce right back.

I'm up on all fours in a flash, grappling with him. I reach for a mug, at the side of the bed, and smash at his head with it. He lets go of my throat, and rolls away from me, only seeming to be half awake, and now groaning in pain. I've cracked him a huge whack on his temple.

“See!” I'm shouting, careful to yell from the hallway, at some distance from where he's holding his arms round his head, staunching the blood with a sock. “I can't marry you, you stupid bastard. That's why! See! See what I mean?”

9

One Last Job

S
o. That's another reason I had to do it. Come out of retirement. That last big job, I mean. To get some money, some independence, to support Maria by myself, but more importantly, to escape from Tony. You don't reject a man like that and expect it to end there.

If you want to know why women stay with a violent man, it's simple. Because instinctively we've always known that he will become dangerous at the point at which we leave him. As long as you stay, you're convinced you can manage him, appease him, control him, match him, keep him sweet in some way. Leave, or try to, and his threats become real. To kill you, kill the children, kill himself. He might well do it now, because he's desperate; the full force of him is unleashed if you're leaving him—he's got nothing to lose.

T
he sadness returns, soon enough. New Year—1963—comes and goes, and with it Maria's sixth birthday. I feel dimly that I'd rather Tony was angry than sad, because only when he's angry can I feel certain I'm doing the right thing. I pack some stuff in two cases and leave Tony slumped over a coffee in the kitchen, Maria's defeated birthday cake on the table, candles and icing all mashed up, wrinkled balloons bobbing round the floor, tired old faces. She runs to say goodbye to Daddy, no doubt thinking it's a short-term thing, flinging her arms around him and then, when he clutches her, saying squeakily, “Daddy! You're holding me too tight . . .”

We go to Annie and Dad's in Lauriston. I tell them we've had a row, but nothing more. In any case, I know that Tony won't be able to stay away. Four days later, he turns up, battering the door. Dad is out, Gracie, too, but Annie and Maria and I jump out of our skins, recognizing at once the quality of the knocking.

“Take Maria upstairs to the bedroom,” I tell Annie.

I open the door to Tony. He's drunk, unshaven, black-eyed, and visibly shimmering with anger, like a lit firework on the doorstep. Sizzling.

“I want to see my daughter.” Everything about his face, his words, reveal the mood he's in. As if he can't actually see me, he's so thick with malevolence.

“D'you think that's a good idea? In the state you're in?”

“I want to see my fucking daughter!” he roars.

I hear a couple of locks turning somewhere. A dog barking. A window opening. The mood is familiar enough. That day I was first caught hoisting, when Annie and Dad were fighting. Here, on this very doorstep.

“OK, I'll get Maria. Stay outside. We can go to Vicky Park. But Tony—tuck your shirt in. Try and sort yourself out. She'll be upset, seeing you like that.”

I'm determined to talk to him as if everything is normal. As if I'm not wondering about that Kropp razor that he sometimes taped open, and whether he has it in his pocket. As if I'm not thinking: I always knew you had it in you to be like this; I wondered when I would see it. As if my whole body isn't braced, like a dog's: to attack, or defend, or whatever is needed.

Tony allows me to close the door and go back inside. I stand in the hallway for a moment, rest my cheek against the raised shapes on Annie's wallpaper. Annie's worried face appears at the top of the stairs and then Maria darts out, a flickering black-and-white shape, running towards us. “Daddy! Is it Daddy?” She races towards the front door and without hesitating flings it open, throws herself into Tony's arms.

And I'm thinking, again: can I really do this? Break them up? She loves him. She loves him more than she does me. What right have I to make this appalling decision, to deny her the only father she'll ever have?

I watch them for a moment or two. He's down on one knee, on the pathway, burying his face in Maria's hair. He's holding her very tight, and once again, she squeals: “Daddy, you're squeezing me . . .”

Then he looks over her head at me, and I see it, but too late. There's no love there for Maria. This is all about punishing me. In an instant he sweeps her up and he's off and running. He strides away, down Lauriston Road, before I can follow. I dart out after him, not bothering to fetch my shoes, only dimly conscious of the iciness under my bare feet, screaming and shouting, and watching helplessly as I see him bundle her into a parked car, a car he'd parked out of sight, but screams off in a moment, as if he left the keys in, the engine running. Like a getaway. His talent, of course; how could I hope to follow him?

An old man comes over to me, to where I've sunk to the ground. I think I might be crying.

“Is that your husband?” the old fella asks.

When I say nothing he points to the call box near us with his walking stick.

“Shall I call the Old Bill for you?”

Call the police. Should I? That would be a first. Annie has come running out onto the street after me, and she's brought my shoes. She puts an arm around me and nods to the old man, dismissing his help, and huddles me up onto my feet, ushers me back towards the house. I'm sobbing, but I'm also stunned; I can't think straight. I can't believe my own stupidity: that I would let Tony get this close to us and not realize he was going to do something. As if he would take a rejection lying down.

“When Gracie comes in, I'll get her to fetch your dad,” Annie says. “He'll know what to do. Your dad's got friends, you know, someone who could sort Tony out . . .”

I can't bring myself to answer her. To voice my worst fears. That it would be too late. That before anyone could get to him, Tony would do something to Maria. And that in any case, it wouldn't be enough to sort Tony out once. He'd never stay away. I'm not numb anymore; my mind is racing. Am I really made of rubber? Perhaps it's wood, like that wooden heart Tony once made me—“
Treat me right, treat me good, for I'm not made of wood . . .”
—and those things are
not
indestructible
.
Whatever I'm made of, I'm an idiot. Where has he gone? Should I phone the police and get them to chase him?

Then there's suddenly a commotion at the door, and Annie leaps up, thinking no doubt that Dad's returning. But someone is pounding, thumping with a fist on the front door. Annie opens it, and a tumbled Maria is heaped over the threshold, weeping hysterically, dumped on the welcome mat.

“You fucking bitch!” Tony roars. I slam the door in his face, rushing towards Maria, hugging her and holding her. What was that all about? Was it just meant to be a threat? Or did he regret it, think better of it? That explanation somehow rings true; Tony's moods are unpredictable, and I know he despises his own temper, tries sometimes to get a hold of it.

Once again, I feel how terrified Maria is: her entire body trembling, her teeth chattering, her arms clamped around my neck.

“
Save
me, Mummy,” she keeps crying. Which makes no sense. She's home now. But I understand what she means. I have to get us away. Somewhere Tony won't find us. Not Gloria's . . . that would be the first place he'd think of. Bobby's in a place on Vallance Road; Tony knows that, too. Maybe I can go to Stella's for a while; I don't think Tony knows where her new flat is, the one belonging to the fat boyfriend, the huge fat one who likes the clinical sex, although it won't take him long to find out. I need some money. Enough to move somewhere Tony can't find us, somewhere he'll never think of. Enough to start a new life, and save us both.

O
K, enough excuses. Yes, it was a huge risk to take part in a robbery of this scale, just when I'd got my life on track, when I was out of prison, had got my daughter back, and was trying to go straight, to give Maria a different life than mine. Yes, yes, I've tried looking at my life, and how I got here, and I think I've covered quite a lot. Genetics, parents, family background, social environment, the wider society I found myself in, blah blah blah; peers, education, values of those around me—yes, yes, you must admit, I've covered all of that. What have I left out? What else makes you who you are? Have you ever asked yourself that? Do you believe in destiny, fate? God's guiding hand? I don't, I have to say. No, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing.

I
'm staying at Stella's flat in Mayfair with Maria. It's a squash, for three people, and it means Maria can't go to school. Also, as we are all sleeping in the same bed, Maria and I have to make ourselves scarce for one hour every week when the huge fat man comes around. At least Tony hasn't yet figured out where we are and we've been here six months, scrounging off Stella and using up the last few quid of my saved money.

To my horror, I miss Tony sometimes. I feel sickened by the way that a song, a particular song, like that Roy Orbison one, “Falling,” can catch me off guard. I feel quick to bruise, like a peach. Just a snatch on the radio, that aching plea to be forgiven. Tony had a good line in aching to be forgiven. Stella jumps up whenever she hears it. Switches it off.

So we edge along to the summer of 1963. The summer of the Profumo Scandal. Everywhere you go you hear Randy Mice-Davies jokes and record shops are selling a daft album full of silly songs about the case; there are Profumo cartoons in all the newspapers. Stella is particularly obsessed with following it all, because she met both Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler a couple of times; both of them worked at Murray's as dancers, or showgirls on and off, like Stella. Stella remembers Christine as being striking. She had haunting eyes, like an Egyptian goddess, Stella says, an extraordinary face. What surprises Stella is how the girls are always presented like best friends in the newspapers. Stella remembers them fighting. She remembers a time when Mandy chucked a whole load of Leichner theatrical powder over Christine in the dressing room. Well, threw it into the air and it whirled around in the fan and landed on Christine's hair as she was sitting there in her Red Indian costume, doing her makeup, ready to go on. And another funny thing: Stella remembers Christine as a blonde, and Mandy as having dark hair, almost black, with a fringe and kiss curls on each cheek. In the papers it's always the other way around: Christine with her snaky black hair and her mate Mandy a daft blonde in a petal-strewn hat, swaggering out of court.

Anyhow, we follow all this gleefully, poring over the photographs, heartily approving of the fact that Christine and Mandy are, according to the press, still going to Vidal Sassoon in Bond Street throughout the trial to have their hair done; or that Mandy comes out of the Old Bailey in that lovely wrap dress, giving everyone a whirl.

Stella remembers suddenly, reading about the trial, that the name Stephen Ward means something to her. Wasn't Stephen Ward a name in the little black book of Ruth Ellis, all those years ago, when we went to visit her at the Little Club? What a strange coincidence, but Stella's sure she's remembered right. That Ward knew Ruth's friend Vickie, who was killed in a car accident in 1956. And there's another name from the Profumo Scandal that prompts a memory in Stella. The landlord Peter Rachman, ripping off all those colored tenants. One-time lover of both Christine and Mandy. But she can't remember why or how she came across his name before. I remember immediately: he was in Ruth's book, too. Small world, Stella says.

J
ust about to get smaller. Because the robbery was introduced to me through two separate routes. What a criminologist would no doubt call my “social milieu.” The main players were all people Bobby knew. That's Bruce Reynolds, Charlie Wilson, Buster Edwards, and Roy James. Three of them were boys he knew from borstal; another was a racing-car driver he'd known from his kennel-boy days at Hackney Wick. One of them had been in primary school with us; another in primary school with Stella. They're all about our age (thirty-ish). Too old to be the Beatles but still wanting their five minutes of fame. Not that I remembered meeting any of them before, but they were deeply familiar, just the same.

Only one of them, as far as I knew, had links to either of the gangs that might mean Tony would know the plan—the Krays or the Richardson gang—and that was a bloke called Tommy Wisbey. It soon became reassuringly clear that Tony wasn't invited. His current heavy drinking and wildness would have been known of and ruled him out. Also, surprisingly for the time, the Krays weren't behind this plan. The money was being put up by someone else, though no one ever seemed to know who.

The second connection was through Stella. Her fat man bought his properties with the help of a solicitor, John Wheater. She mentioned him casually to me; she was thinking of trying to buy a flat of her own, and had been talking to this John Wheater about it. He had an Irish friend, handsome, who was always with him; this fella had a couple of rich girlfriends who intimidated Stella. She was always trying to get the two men alone. She did finally, plying them with whiskey when her boyfriend was away visiting one of his other mistresses. These two men started talking to Stella—indiscreetly—about a robbery on a fantastic scale that they're involved in. She had no doubt, years later, that the Irish man was the one referred to by the robbers as the mysterious “Ulsterman” who tipped them off about the train leaving Glasgow. The train they were about to rob. The solicitor John Wheater was later arrested and sentenced to three years in connection with that same robbery. I'm sure you know which one.

I
t's Bobby who suggests it first. Says he needs my help, and there's a really good whack in it for me if I do. We're round at this terrible place he's now living in, on Vallance Road, a real slum; yours must be the only remaining one, I tease him, I thought they were all demolished? I have Maria with me, and I'm nervous. It can only be a short visit: Tony might find us here.

Bobby's in some sort of trouble. He's left the firm, or his boyfriend—he doesn't say which and I don't ask—and he owes someone a lot of money. An enormous sum, something like twenty-five thousand pounds, and there's no way on earth to get that kind of money without a really huge job. Why does he owe it? Because he was gambling with it, and it wasn't his to flush away, but he believed his luck was in (he always believes his luck is in), and he kept piling more and more bets on, that seam of optimism in him, like a strip of mercury, poisoning everything.