The Take (53 page)

Rox looked around the bedroom. It was filthy The bedding was rotten, the carpet was a mass of cigarette burns and coffee stains, and the whole room stank of sweat and stale perfume. But the saddest thing of all was that it didn't look half as dilapidated as the woman sitting up on the bed amidst all the squalor.

Jackie had pulled the quilt back over her, but any thought of sleep was long gone, and her anger was being expressed as vindictive personal insults.

She lit a cigarette and said loudly and sarcastically, 'So what is this about, then?'

She spoke in a high, sing-song voice, the utter contempt for her children's do-gooding evident. 'Rox is having a baby, so now she is a fucking fountain of wisdom. Well, you know fuck all, Rox, you never have.'

'She knows more than you ever will, Mother.'

Jackie smiled as she looked at Kimberley 'Oh, now me
junkie
daughter is giving me the benefit of her experience as well, is she? Well, shove it. Go and have a fix, Kim, at least you were smiling on the skag.'

Rox walked to the door. She had heard enough.

Kimberley said quietly, 'Look at yourself, Mum, and your life. It stinks,
you
stink and you drink yourself stupid so you don't have to accept that. But you do, you have to try and stop destroying yourself and everyone around you.'

Jackie laughed nastily, and pushing her hair back off her face she hollered, 'At least I have a life, what have you got, eh? No man, no
nothing
. Who'd fucking want you, Kim, with your miserable fucking boatrace? You tell me that.'

'Listen to yourself, Mum, I don't need a man to make me feel like a valid person…'

Jackie was laughing again. 'Kimberley, go and score, go and get pissed, jack up, snort, I don't give a fuck. Just get out of my fucking face!'

Rox and Kimberley looked at her, and the expression on their faces told Jackie all she needed to know about herself.

Kim spoke up, the disgust evident in her voice. 'You ain't got a man, Mum, you ain't even got Dad. You know what? He
loathes
you. He is out and about all the time…'

Rox was trying to make her sister leave the room, trying to prevent the blow-up she knew was about to erupt. 'Leave her, Kim, we're wasting our time…'

Jackie laughed again.

'"Leave her, Kim,"' she mimicked her daughter's voice. 'Go round Maggie's, she loves all this shit. You get it from her, the lot of you… another fucking drama queen. That poor child, she wouldn't give it the fucking time of day for years. Neglected him—'

Kimberley laughed with utter contempt. '
You
, to talk about neglect! You've got some nerve, Mother. Little Freddie's arse was always red raw because you couldn't be bothered to change him, he never ate a decent meal unless we provided one, and you talk about neglect!'

Jackie knew this was true, which just annoyed her more.

'I was always there for him, and whatever I am or I ain't, I've never not loved him! Maggie had it all, the house, the car, even the fucking dog! But no baby, and when she got one, finally got one, she didn't even know what to do with it! She is only off her trolley now because she fucking well knows she had no time for that little boy. She's feeling
guilty
, and so she should be after all those years of neglect.'

Jackie was shouting now. 'Even your father had more time for him than she did, and she couldn't stand him even touching the child! I used to watch her when he played with the poor little sod, her face screwed up, like we was all nothing. She hated him near the boy, yet she didn't fucking lay one finger on him herself unless she had to, did she? That poor child was neglected, and even my mother said it. My Freddie loved that boy and she wouldn't even let the poor child have the benefit of him making a fuss of the poor little fucker, let alone anyone else!'

'And just why do you think that might have been then, Mum, eh? You know so much, why do you think she hated him touching him, then?'

Rox could hear the inflection in her sister's voice and knew that something was going to be said that was going to cause trouble, big trouble, serious trouble.

'Shut up, Kim. Come on, let's go.'

Jackie leaped up on the bed, she wanted to hear this. 'You keep out of it, Rox. Come on, then, what are you getting at, Kim? Fucking spit it out. He loved that little boy, he doted on him, and thanks to him at least the child had a few good memories to take with him—'

'It was
his
child, you stupid bloody cow!'

Jackie was stunned and wondered, briefly, if she was hearing things.

'What did you say?'

'He
raped
her. Dad
raped
Maggie!'

Maggie was sick inside, and the pain she felt could not be relieved with the tablets her mother was forever trying to get her to take.

'Please, Mum, leave me, go home, I just want to be on my own.'

The strange thing was she was
fine
on her own, but no one believed her. Alone, she could gather her thoughts, pretend that things were OK, all right. She could relax, try to rest. She could forget what had happened.

Forget how her son had been conceived, remember him as the little boy he was, the son she loved. She would let Freddie Jackson rape her every day if it would bring her son back to her. He was a child of rape, he had been brought on to this earth because of an action that was so heinous, so evil, and yet she had learned to love him. He had been the innocent party, he had been the catalyst for her life being destroyed, and then he had been the catalyst that had given her life meaning, and given her marriage the kick-start it had needed to survive. Jimmy had loved him and that had allowed her to love him as well.

Now, her own company was preferable to anyone else's. Her own company afforded her the luxury of pretending he was still alive, that her son was still near her. Alone, her life could be what she wanted it to be, instead of what it was.

Alone was now a good thing.

Lena was at the end of her tether. Nothing she did seemed to make any difference. Maggie was determined to be alone and she knew that she couldn't get through to her, knew she was wasting her time.

But the guilt she carried around with her was weighing her down, and she needed to make her daughter better, needed her to need her.

If only they had looked in on him properly that night, checked him, protected him, he would still be alive.

Lena would never know another happy day, so how could she expect her daughter to? Her Maggie was dying inside. It was not something that you could look at her and see, instead it was more subtle. Maggie's eyes were sadder by the day, she looked at you and the bleakness was terrifying because somewhere inside you knew she was right. Her hurt and pain were right, the only option left to her daughter.

Without it, she felt nothing.

'You sure about this, Jimmy?' Glenford's voice was sceptical. He knew the Jacksons fought between themselves, but this anger from Jimmy was out of the ordinary, and unusual.

'As sure as I'll ever be, Glen. He is out and that's the end of it.'

Glenford was nonplussed for a few moments. 'There'll be murders and you know it. You can't row Freddie out, that would be outrageous! He will want to kill you, he will go mentalist.'

Glenford said it all in thick Jamaican, but he meant every word.

Jimmy grinned. 'Let him bring it on, as much fucking hag as he likes. Like I give a fuck.'

Glenford was surprised, but not
that
surprised. This had been a long time coming, he had just not expected it now, and not in such a voracious way. Freddie must have fucked up with honours this time, and caused untold aggravation to cause this upset. Freddie, in all honesty, must have been picking the pockets of the damned to get Jimmy this fucking aerated.

Jimmy was the
good
guy, Jimmy always looked for the best in people, looked for the easiest way out of things, tried to keep the peace, tried to make it all better.

Not any more by the looks of things.

Glenford had to question, though, the logic of aiming him out now. Freddie collected quickly, without arguments. He gave people ten hours and they never failed to deliver, they always paid up on time. He did the job, he talked the talk and he earned for them. He might not be the greatest mind they had on the payroll but he knew how to frighten money out of the biggest wankers in recorded history.

Freddie was a nutcase and people like Freddie were worth keeping around if for no other reason than that.

'You
can't
aim him out, Jimmy, think about it. He'll never rest if you do that. He'll go fucking mental. Who would employ him other than you? All he
has
is you.' Glenford was trying, in his own way, to warn Jimmy about reckless actions. 'Freddie Jackson is far more useful to you if he is in your good books.
Use
him as a heavy, let him have his moment, let him have his creds, but don't put him out altogether. He'll never live that down, he'll
never
get over it.'

He was actually wary of anything happening, because he knew Freddie spent his life on the edge. Looking for trouble was his forte, it was what Freddie did for kicks. Freddie would love an excuse to widen his circle of hatred.

'But that is just what I want, Glenford. I don't
want
him to get over it, I
want
him to know how I feel. I am going to finish him once and for all, I am going to wipe his fucking name off my pension plan, he is history. He is
out
of everything he ever wanted, everything he has always
felt
he was entitled to. Freddie is
over
and the sooner he realises that the better off he will be. I have carried that cunt from day one, and now he can start earning for himself, earn a fucking living like all of us.'

Glenford snorted in derision and annoyance. 'This goes deeper than that, Jimmy, this is far too personal. What the fuck has he
done, fucked
your wife?'

Jimmy didn't answer, and Glenford wondered what the upshot of this day was going to be. Life was a series of unavoidable events — until now he had not understood what his father meant by that. But he had known what the score was all his life.

His father was a handsome Jamaican called Wendell Prentiss, who had travelled over to Britain in the fifties with nothing but a Rasta hat and a sense of humour. He had a posse of outside children, from a gaggle of different white women, but his legal wife had unfortunately only ever produced one son, Glenford. Wendell had always argued with him, saying that you had only one life, and it was up to
you
, what you did with
it
.

Of course, Wendell would say, in his thick Jamaican accent and with a grin, there would always be the
unexpected
, you needed to allow for them kind of thing, mentally and monetarily, that would cost you dearly. Deaths, births, and more often than not, a serious prison sentence for the majority of Jamaican boys, because the British police don't like us one bit as a race, there
too
many of us now. Always remember, son, he had said with all the dignity he could muster, while drinking white rum and banging his dominos on the kitchen table, those things cost money, time, and the
serious
use of brain power. But other than that, he would say on a laugh, your life was your own, to waste or make the best of.

Jebb Avenue in Brixton, Wendell would say, his deep voice making his words as dramatic as possible, could be the marketplace you visit for a sheepskin coat in the
darkest
days of winter, or where you could end up
queuing
to visit your friends or family. Funky Brixton, as the prison there was called, was the place where white boys had eventually become the niggers.

Glenford had laughed with his father when he had philosophised about those things, yet he knew he had actually been stating facts.

Wendell had died ten years ago, still believing he was a prince, a walking flag of Ethiopia, and still smoking the weed that had actually prevented him from fulfilling his dreams. He had always been too stoned to do anything constructive.

'Life is what
you
make it,' he would say on a daily basis, loudly and seriously. 'You have a blank piece of paper, Glenford, and what you eventually write on it is of your own doing. Good or bad, you have to decide for yourself.'

Glenford had adhered to his father's teachings all his life, and they had kept him in good stead. His father had taught him that sometimes you
had
to hurt people, be cruel to be kind, but Jimmy Jackson, he was a different kettle of fish. He had always tried to make other people's lives
easier
, and the responsibility had weighed on him from day one.

Glenford had few real friends. Like his father before him, he was fussy about who called him by that name, to him friends were people you trusted as much as your family. In this case
more
than your family. Jimmy was a
real
friend. Freddie, on the other hand, was just
treated
like one. It was a subtle difference, but there all the same.

But to Jimmy, Freddie Jackson, was family, and in their world
family
, no matter how big a cunt they were, got a wage. That went without saying, but they were supposed to be grateful. They were supposed to understand their fucking good luck that someone close to them had the nous to earn a crust, a crust they were willing to share out.

Now Jimmy was threatening to remove that wage, was going to drop Freddie like a stone. It was Jimmy's call, and Freddie was one dangerous fuck, after all, but Glenford knew that in one way Freddie had a point and was within his rights to believe he was owed a job.

He also knew, by the way Jimmy was talking, that Freddie had irrevocably fucked up any relationship they had ever enjoyed, and Jimmy, whatever Freddie might think, was the better man in more ways than one.