‘I can remember this as if it was yesterday. The man who took the photograph said I should have been a model. Said I had a perfect bone structure.’
And he should know, thought George. He moved in with us for a while if I remember rightly. He squeezed his eyes tight shut. He could see that day so clearly. They had all had their photos taken and afterwards his mother had sent them home. He could picture Edith in his mind shepherding them on to the bus, then making them something to eat at home. Later on his mother had come back with the man, a large gregarious type with a tiny pencil moustache and a Prince of Wales checked suit. He had brought back their mother, rather drunk, and a parcel of fish and chips, which had endeared him to Joseph and George immediately as he had not forgotten them. He had also brought them a large bottle of Tizer, then made them all laugh with stories of his time in the army. Telling the two avid-eyed little boys about shooting the Boche.
Then, later that night, much later, George had woken with a tummy ache from the fish and chips and the Tizer. On his way to the toilet he had heard groans coming from his mother’s room. Opening the door quietly he had investigated. He had seen his mother kneeling on the bed with the man. His hands were in her long thick hair, fanning it around her head, pulling on it. He was groaning.
‘That’s it, Nance. Take the lot, Nance.’
He could see his mother’s naked body in the dim firelight, could see her head and mouth moving up and down on the man. Then the man had spied him. Pulling Nancy up by the hair, he had dragged a sheet across himself to hide his nakedness. Too late George saw the fury on his mother’s face.
‘Get out, you nosy little bugger!’
Then she was scrambling from the bed, her face twisted in temper, her lipstick smudged around her chin. She was stalking towards him with her long-legged stride, her mouth like a big gaping cavern.
He had been three years old.
‘Here, Georgie, look at this one.’
He was dragged back to the present.
‘Look at my dress. I remember saving up for that dress for ages.’
George forced himself to look at the picture. He could feel the rapid beating of his heart subside.
‘Who’s the girl with you?’
‘That, Georgie boy, is Ruth Ellis.’
He peered closely at the picture.
‘I worked her club. It was called the Little Club, of all things. In Knightsbridge.’
Nancy looked at her son, a half smile on her face, enjoying the shock she was creating.
George peered at the photograph again.
‘She ran a brothel.’
‘Hardly a brothel, Georgie boy. More like a gentlemen’s club.’
George looked into her face and saw the gleam in her eyes. She was using her past now, the past she would not have mentioned to a soul, to try and undermine him, intimidate him. From religious grandmother, the epitome of decency, she was reverting to the days of her whoring to bring him low. He knew her so well. How sanctimonious she could be. He remembered her berating Edith when she had fallen pregnant that time; remembered the false impression of genteel poverty she liked to give to the neighbours. Remembered how she had told all and sundry of Edith’s fall from grace. Now her real life could be used to hurt one of her children, to wound, and she used it without a qualm. He felt an urge to strike her.
Nancy watched her son’s face and guessed what he was thinking. The old malice was back in her now.
‘Someone once said to me: “Nancy, you’re sitting on a gold mine.” How right they were. And do you know who said it? Your father’s brother. I ran off with him. Your father hadn’t died, Georgie. I dumped him.’
‘You said he was dead! I believed . . .’
Nancy laughed again. ‘He is dead now. He died about ten years ago. The police traced me and told me. He died in a bedsit in South London. He’d been dead ten days before they found him. Cheeky buggers wanted me to pay for the funeral! I told them where they could get off and all. He was useless, Georgie, bloody useless. Couldn’t even die properly. Alone to the last.’
He felt himself rise from the floor, aware that his legs had gone dead at some point from kneeling - and then he slapped her. He knew he had slapped her because he heard the crack as his open palm met her baggy flesh, felt the force of her head snapping back and heard her scream of outrage.
Lily, outside the door, was hopping from one foot to the other in agitation.
‘You evil slut! You dirty filthy slut!’ George had balls of spittle at the corner of his lips. ‘My father was alive. He could have saved me from you. Could have saved all of us from your men friends and your evil ways. You let men touch me for money . . . Touch me and use me!’
His mind was like a burst sore, all his hatred spilling out. He was dangerously close to tears and swallowed them back.
‘You fucking filthy whore! You stinking tart!’
All his life she had taken pleasure in hurting him, while she gave pleasure to others for a price. He felt bile rising in his throat, burning him. He pursed his lips together to stop it spewing out on to the woman sitting in front of him with the old mocking grin.
‘None of my children ever had any gumption. You were all like him, weak and sickly. I hated you all.’
Her voice was filled with malice and something else.
It was fear.
She was scared of him, of what she had caused. Of what the outcome might be.
George dropped back into a seat. Suddenly he was exhausted. It had been a mistake to come here. He should have known that. She had stolen his childhood, his innocence and his father.
The last he could never forgive.
The number of times he had run away from her, only to be brought back, when all the time he’d had a father he could have run to. A man to take care of him properly.
He looked at his mother as if for the first time. He finally hated her one hundred per cent. She disgusted him. She was a whore. They were all whores, every last one of them.
Suddenly he began to laugh, a high-pitched laugh bordering on hysteria, and it was that frightening sound that brought Lily bursting into the room.
The old bitch! All those years of her sanctimonious rambling, listening to Joseph pandering to her, coming second to the paragon of virtue who rang her bell like a demented school mistress and shouted, ‘Get me this, get me that!’ When in reality she had been a common prostitute!
‘You lying old cow!’ All Lily’s hard-won refinement was gone now.
‘You was on the bleeding bash!’
Nancy stared at her daughter-in-law, eyes like pieces of flint.
‘You’ve driven us all up the bloody wall. Well, that’s it now, my girl. It’s a home for you. I don’t care how much it costs. Wait till Joseph gets in! I’ll give you Ruth Ellis! It’s a pity they didn’t bloody well hang
you
, you old bitch!’
George wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and with a final glance at his now terrified mother, walked from the room and out of the front door. Lily’s shouting carried after him.
He started the car. On the back seat was his suitcase, packed and ready for his holidays.
Wait until he told Edith. George knew he would never see his mother again.
Patrick Kelly made his way to Brighton. It had not taken him long to find out the addresses of Tony Jones’s family. If necessary he would take the elder daughter hostage until Jones came forward. It wouldn’t take long for the whisper on the street to get back to him, Patrick knew that.
The Rolls Royce pulled up at an address in Steyning. Kelly nodded at Willy and they slipped from the car. Inside the small bungalow Tony Jones was drinking Scotch while his wife watched him. On his lap was his granddaughter Melanie.
She loved her grandad and cuddled into his big flabby frame. It was Tony’s daughter who answered the door and she stood by silently as they walked in.
Patrick nodded at the girl. She was not part of this, he knew that.
‘Where is he, love?’
She pointed to a door at the end of the passageway. ‘In there. Look, Mr Kelly, my daughter’s in there . . .’
He ignored her and walked into the room.
‘Hello, Tone, long time no see. I’ve come to take you for a little drive. Have a chat like.’
Tony Jones blanched. The little girl on his lap sensed his fear and hugged him tighter.
Kelly looked at the long blond hair and enormous blue eyes. She could have been his Mandy as a child. He put out a hand and touched the soft downy head.
‘Hello there, my darling. What’s your name?’
The little girl looked up at the man and grinned, exposing tiny pearl-like teeth.
‘Melanie Daniels and I’m three.’
‘You’re a big girl for your age, aren’t you? Let Grandad get his coat, darlin’, while me and you have a little chat.’
The child looked at her grandad and was glad when he nodded assent. She decided she liked the big man in the big coat. Willy watched fascinated as Patrick took the girl’s tiny hand. He then accompanied Tony Jones while he got his coat. Tony opened his mouth to speak and Willy silenced him.
‘You must have been barmy if you thought you could pull one over on Pat where that scumbag’s concerned.’
Tony hung his head.
Melanie was sitting on Patrick’s knee, regaling him with stories about her life.
‘I’ve got a little cat called Sooty. Have you got a cat?’
Patrick shook his head.
‘How about a little doggie? You got a little doggie?’
Patrick smiled at her with genuine good humour. She was an enchanting child.
‘Can I make you a coffee, Mr Kelly?’ Jeanette’s voice was flat. She knew enough about Patrick Kelly to know her granddaughter was safe. She had known Renée many years before. She knew that he would remember that.
‘Why not?’ Patrick looked into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry about this, Jeanette, but you know the score.’
She couldn’t meet his gaze so got up and went to the kitchen. Willy and Tony came back into the room.
‘And I go to play school.’ Melanie was still chatting and Patrick was enjoying the conversation.
‘Really? What do you do there?’
Melanie bit her top lip in consternation as she thought. ‘We do singin’ and paintin’, sometimes. I can sing “The Wheels on the Bus”, all the way through.’ This last bit of information was given with a toss of her long blond hair and Kelly laughed.
‘You’re a clever little girl, Melanie.’
‘My grandad says I’m as pretty as a picture. And he sings me songs. Don’t you, Grandad?’
Tony nodded his head, watching the scene in front of him.
Patrick looked at him as he spoke. ‘And what songs does he sing you?’
‘Can I sing one, Grandad? Please?’
Tony nodded again and she began to sing.
Patrick let Tony Jones sit stewing for another twenty minutes before he decided to leave. By this time Melanie had become so enamoured of him she screamed the place down because she wanted to go with them. Her cries followed them from the house.
She had insisted on a kiss from all three of them, and Willy had had to be scowled at severely by Patrick before he complied. Patrick, on the other hand, had stroked her hair and comforted her before leaving, enjoying the innocence and babyness of her; an innocence that had reminded him of another life, one where he had had a wife and a child.
In the car, he turned to Tony.
‘A lovely child. You must be proud of her?’
Tony nodded, he couldn’t answer.
‘Wasn’t she a lovely little thing, Willy?’
He half turned from his driving. ‘Oh, yeah.’
Patrick continued conversationally.
‘Imagine how you’d feel if someone took her, buggered her, and then left her for dead on a filthy floor. Half her skull battered away, hair stuck to the floor in a pool of blood. If you had to watch her die, slowly and painfully, in the hospital. Watch her fight for her life, after operations to cut her skull away bit by bit because her brain was so swollen inside her head. Makes you sick just thinking about it, don’t it?’
Tony’s nod was barely noticeable.
‘Well, now maybe you’ll understand why you’re going to get the hiding of your fucking life, won’t you? But first I want that cunt’s address, phone number, post code. I want to know everything you know about him. All right?’
Tony nodded again.
At least Kelly hadn’t said he was going to kill him. As far as Tony was concerned, that in itself was a result.
Book Two
‘Hanging is too good for him,’
Said Mr Cruelty
- John Bunyan, 1628-88
A rape! A rape!
Yes, you have ravish’d justice.
Forced her to do your pleasure
- John Webster, 1580-1625
Life for life,
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
Hand for hand, foot for foot.
Burning for burning, wound for wound,
Stripe for stripe
- Exodus, 21:23
Chapter Twenty-Six
George booked himself into the Hilton Hotel at Gatwick. He was feeling upset. He knew he would not sleep.
He opened his suitcase. He had packed one of his favourite books and tonight he needed it. He needed the release from the real world. He opened the magazine at the centre pages. A girl was looking up at him. She had real auburn hair. George knew it was real because it was the same top and bottom.
He slipped off his clothes and hung them up neatly in the wardrobe, then relaxed on the bed in his underpants. This time tomorrow he would be in the USA. He allowed himself a grin. He’d be in Florida, starting a new life.
His tongue was just poking from the corner of his mouth now as he concentrated his energies, thinking up different situations and pastimes for the girl on the page.