Rock a Bye Baby (25 page)

‘Children? Whose children? Are they mine? Do I know that for sure?’

He pointed up at the stairs. The baby having heard the sounds of anger was wailing for attention.

‘That one’s not mine and I want it out of the house. Out of my sight! Is that clear?’ He looked at his sons. ‘And what about these two, I wonder …’

The two boys were sitting at the dinner table in the kitchen. They stared at their father round eyed, afraid to say anything, afraid to take another bite of their sandwich.

‘Where is she?’ he bellowed.

Hearing her father’s shouting, Marcie came down from upstairs where she’d left little Annie sitting on her bedroom floor playing with a plastic duck.

‘What’s up?’

Her father stared at her, blinked, then raised a warning finger. ‘Just you listen here, my girl. If I catch you putting it about like that fucking whore that calls herself my wife, I swear I’ll kill you. Do you hear me? I’ll fucking kill you!’

Marcie looked at her grandmother. Her grandmother’s eyes were firmly fixed on her son. She’d always been a tower of strength to the family, but
now, for the first time, Marcie saw the tiredness in her face. Her grandmother was getting old. Her strength was going.

Babs came in from the back garden burdened with a pile of laundry that had dried in the salty air and was now brought in for ironing. Her eyes widened when she saw Tony lunge at her. He hit out, his hand catching the side of her face and sending her reeling. Her head hit the wall. He hit her again. Only the fact that the laundry had piled up before her face stopped the blow from breaking her jaw.

The boys leapt from their chairs and crawled under the table, all the time shouting ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ They held their hands over their ears, desperately trying to shut out their mother’s cries and their father’s angry shouts.

Though her stepmother was hardly her favourite person, Marcie couldn’t stand by and do nothing. A freshly laundered bra had got caught around Babs’s neck. Her father was using it to strangle her.

Although only a fraction of father’s size and bulk, Marcie tried tugging at her father’s right arm, using her weight to pull it down and away.

‘Get off,’ she shouted. ‘You’re killing her.’

‘Too fucking right I’m killing her …’

Hot tears of anger and frustration began trickling down Marcie’s cheeks. All her pent-up emotions about her mother finally broke like a dam no longer
able to cope. She hit his arm, his neck and his head, her puny fists driven by anger. ‘Stop it! I won’t let you! Not again! You killed my mother!’ All the dark thoughts she’d been keeping to herself spilt out, the tears pouring faster now. ‘And you hid her under the shed! I know you did. You killed my mother!’

Only the last sentence seemed truly to get through to him. Still with the bra straps in his hands, he turned his head and looked at her. There was amazement in his expression, but also something else.

She didn’t have time to analyse that other look. There was a dull thud of metal against bone.

Unseen by Marcie, her grandmother had grabbed her biggest and heaviest frying pan and brought it down on her father’s head. Eyes rolling in his head, he slowly but surely sank to the ground.

Rosa Brooks accompanied her son to the hospital. The old iron frying pan had opened a cut in his head and he was out cold. An ambulance had been called. Grandma told them that her son had taken a fall. Nobody questioned the explanation of a tiny old lady dressed in black. Nobody suspected her of physical violence towards her only son.

The moment they were gone, Babs went into immediate action. Her cork-heeled mules thudded up the narrow staircase to the bedroom she shared with her husband.

‘Marcie! I need your help!’ she shouted down.

Once all the noise and excitement were over and done with, Annie had fallen asleep in Marcie’s arms. Curious to know what Babs had in mind, she lay the child on the settee, covered her with her cardigan and followed Babs.

The boys were cowering in the bed they shared, pretending to sleep. Marcie could tell they weren’t really sleeping by the quivering of their eyelids. To her surprise, Babs went in and pulled back the bedclothes. The boys were still dressed, complete with shoes and socks.

‘Splash some water on your face,’ Babs told them both. ‘And hurry up about it.’

‘We couldn’t find our pyjamas,’ said Archie.

Marcie knew the pyjamas were among the laundry that Babs had brought in, but Archie and his brother had been afraid to come back downstairs. Just for once they’d scuttled off to bed without being told to do so.

Babs dragged a spindly-legged chair over to the wardrobe. Kicking off her mules she stood on it and brought two suitcases down from on top of the wardrobe.

‘Right,’ she said, throwing open the wardrobe door. ‘I’m off.’

‘Off?’

‘Well, don’t sound so surprised,’ said Babs on seeing Marcie’s expression. ‘Your dad has always had a bit
of a temper but look at this! Look what the swine’s done!’ She pointed to the red mark around her neck. ‘This is too much. The bleeder’s gone too far and I’m not staying here for him to kill me or the kids. I’m off. Well, get moving then,’ she added on seeing that Marcie was standing open mouthed. ‘You’ll be alright with your gran, but me and the kids are off.’

‘No! You can’t go!’

‘Yes, I bloody well can!’ Babs was all action, tugging open drawers, throwing things into the suitcases.

The shock she felt took Marcie by surprise. Although she’d never got on with her stepmother, the fact that she was leaving and taking the children came as a blow. The house would be so empty without them and she’d come to love little Annie. From what her father had said, she also now realised why Babs had always been so offhand with the child. Annie was her guilty secret.

‘Where are you going?’ Marcie asked as she helped her pack.

‘London. I’m going to my mother’s, but don’t tell your father that. Just tell him I never want to see him again.’

The two boys looked at each other. Marcie could see from their expressions that they were upset at the prospect of not seeing their dad again. She could understand their feelings – he’d been away in prison for long enough and they’d been overjoyed when he’d
come home. Now it was they who were off to live without him. Life is so unfair, thought Marcie.

Babs insisted that she walk with them to the train station.

‘I can’t manage by myself.’

Marcie decided she had no alternative. Even if she refused to help, Babs was determined to leave anyway.

They were in time for the last train to Sitting-bourne where Babs and her children would have to change for the train that would take them to Victoria.

‘I’ll get a taxi from there,’ said Babs. ‘It’s sure to be too late for a bus.’

With a sinking heart and cuddling Annie on her lap, Marcie waited. There were no words to describe what she was feeling. Even thinking about Johnnie failed to raise her spirits. Everything in her life was changing. Nothing, she realised, ever stayed the same, not even her grandmother, though her skill at wielding a frying pan was quite impressive.

The train came and the last farewells were said. The boys took charge of the suitcases. With Annie in her arms, Babs paused before getting onto the train. There were dark lines beneath her eyes, a small cut mark that had healed at the corner of her lip. A pink chiffon scarf hid the mark around her neck. She looks worn out, thought Marcie, like a woman of forty, though she wasn’t much more than twenty-seven.

‘Take a tip from me, Marcie. Never marry a man
for love or fall for a handsome face. Find a bloke with a kind heart. No matter if he does look like the back of a bus.’

She smiled at that, a weak regretful smile as though she wished she’d done the same.

‘Ta-ta, love.’

She was gone in a rush.

Marcie stood and watched until the last puff of steam no longer stained the night sky. Then she was off home, not sure what she would find there and not really sure she wanted to return.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr Taylor?’

Alan resisted the urge to grind his teeth and tell her to sod off. Joyce was middle-aged, wore big glasses and had fine, fuzzy hair that vaguely resembled a halo. She mothered him, stuck up for him and was totally ignorant of the fact that he was a little less than honest.

‘No thank you, Joyce.’

His eyelids puckered at the corners as he surveyed the damage done to his prize possession. Perhaps if he’d told Tony what he was going to do, this might not have happened. But that was probably rubbish! Tony was hardly snow white himself; it stood to reason that he’d been making a bit on the side at his expense, taking a cut from the protection money he’d been paying.

Joyce had explained about the phone call. She said the caller hadn’t given their name, only said that they were family. Alan nodded, said nothing but knew they were a family alright. One big
criminal
family.

‘Thank you, Joyce,’ he said.

Joyce Fielding studied his face. His eyes were
narrowed. He did that when he was thinking deeply. His thin lips looked thinner and straighter. She knew when he was angry and he was certainly that now. Unlike other men he didn’t shout and bawl and throw his fists about. He analysed things carefully before taking action. He knew how to do things properly.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to call the police?’

‘No. I’ll take care of it.’

She nodded and went back to her little kiosk and her switchboard.

Grandma Brooks didn’t know her own strength. She’d done more damage with the frying pan than most people would have believed of an elderly woman who was less than five feet two and light as a feather. The hospital insisted on keeping her son in for observation.

‘About a week should do it,’ said the young black doctor with the pock-marked skin and the horn-rimmed spectacles.

Marcie made her grandmother a cup of tea and handed her the blue and white striped biscuit tin.

Rosa Brooks took the tea but refused a biscuit. She was having trouble taking in what Marcie had told her. Babs and her darling grandchildren had left, seemingly for good. She thought about the many times she’d prevented her son’s second wife from having a home of her own. Would things be any different if she’d acted otherwise? She took a sip of the hot, sweet
tea and considered. Whether it would have made a difference or not was beside the point. While her family lived under her roof she couldn’t help but do her utmost to cling on to them. The thought of them not being here was unbearable. She’d grown up with close relatives living all around her and she’d hoped to do the same in her adoptive country. Things had not worked out that way.

Her grandmother was quietly eyeing the places on the mantelpiece where photographs of her grandchildren had smiled out from silver frames.

‘I suppose she has gone home to her mother in London,’ she said suddenly.

Marcie shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You are not a good liar, Marcie. Your mother was not good at lying also.’

Marcie’s heart skipped a beat. Her grandmother rarely mentioned her mother.

‘What happened to my mother? Did my father …?’ Under her grandmother’s fierce dark gaze, Marcie’s question withered.

Eventually, her grandmother sighed, rested her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

‘She went away.’

Marcie held the warm teapot against her. Her grandmother’s statement sounded so final. She could see from the firmly shut mouth and tight jaw that her grandmother had no intention of saying anything else. The
house would be quiet this week until her father came home and his ego would fill the whole house. He would rant and rave about how Babs had let him down, and how it was her at fault – not his. Never his.

Best to keep out of the way, Marcie decided. She liked the empty house no better than he did. The summer season was ending on the Isle of Sheppey and her job would also be ending. Perhaps she’d never get the answers that she sought here. Not from her grandmother or her father. Maybe she too should go to London. It seemed to be the place to head for if you were running away from something. The thought appealed to her, though it wouldn’t be easy. Leaving would never be easy.

He came home at the end of the week just before six in the evening. His mother gave him an outline of what had happened.

He paced the house like a wolf in a cage. ‘She’s gone to her bloody mother’s!’ He turned to his own mother. ‘I’m going to London.’

‘Count to ten,’ said his mother. ‘Think before you act.’

‘I’ll do as I bloody well please!’

His mother had been standing between him and the stairs. He pushed her roughly aside. Rosa Brooks staggered and half fell against the wall. Marcie was livid.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ she yelled as she helped her grandmother to her feet. ‘You are such a pig. Why don’t you just leave or go to prison again? We were better off without you!’

He raised his fist as though to strike her.

She stood her ground. ‘Go on. Do it. You’re pretty good at hitting women, aren’t you!’

His eyes flickered. His fist dropped. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Marcie. I never wanted to hurt you.’

His shoulders began to shake as he sank onto his haunches, elbows on knees, hands covering his face. And he cried.

There was a strange feeling of helplessness when a man cried. Marcie would never forget it or get used to it. She had never heard her father cry before. She’d never seen him look so desolate, so totally despairing.

A hand brushed against hers. A voice murmured, ‘I will take care of him.’ Her grandmother’s old eyes were full of love for her son. ‘Antonio?’

The world that was her home was changing too fast. A sudden craving for fresh air turned her footsteps towards the front door, the street and the way into town.

The pubs were just opening their doors. Boys and girls she knew from schooldays waved to her. Some invited her to join them. For the most part she refused their offers.

‘Oh come on. You look as though you could do
with a drink or two. Come on. For old times’ sake.’