Two Women (12 page)

Joey was laughing inside. He knew what June was really like and in all honesty he had missed her. He was glad to have her back, and pleased that he was seen as the maniac who had taken out a Glasgow bully-boy to reclaim his wife.

Already he was getting offers of work from local debt collectors, legal and illegal. His next big step would be to go up West, around the clubs. He would be raking in a grand a week at this rate and was determined to make sure he got his due.

He smiled at the two girls and Debbie threw herself into his arms. She was enjoying it all as much as Joey was, and knowing her like he did he was pleased for her. She knew how to play the game did his Debs. It was the other miserable bitch he had to take down a peg, and he was determined to do just that.

Opening his arms, he said jovially, ‘Come on then, Sue. No kiss for your old man?’

Susan went obediently towards him and kissed his cheek. June had arrived with the tray of tea and watched the little scene with interest. Susan was pulled into a bear hug and dragged on to her father’s lap. Davey laughed as she squealed loudly.

Then, pulling her round on his lap, Joey grabbed at her breasts. Holding them tightly in his grip, he shouted, ‘See them, Davey boy? You don’t get many of them to the pound.’

Even Davey was shocked though he didn’t say anything. He knew his wife would have ripped his heart out if he’d attempted that with one of his kids. Not that he ever would have, he assured himself, he wasn’t that way inclined.

June slapped Joey none too gently on the side of his head and pulled Susan away from him. She ran from the room, face burning with shame.

‘You’re a bastard, Joey. You know how touchy she is about her knockers. Now in future leave her alone.’

There was a warning in those words and everyone was aware of it, even Joey. The small room went quiet and Ivy decided this was the time for her to speak up.

‘Funny little mare she is that one, not like Debbie at all. But blood will out, I suppose.’

Joey looked at his mother and snapped, ‘Button your fucking mutton, Mother, we have got guests.’

Ivy’s face was a picture of indignation.

‘I was only saying, son . . .’

Joey turned in his seat and looked the old woman straight in the eye.

‘Well, don’t. I ain’t interested in your opinion and neither is anyone else, all right?’

June poured the tea then went to her daughter’s bedroom. Susan was lying on the bed, curled up into a ball. June sat beside her and stroked her hair.

‘He didn’t mean it, love, you know what he’s like. It’s only his way of being affectionate.’

Susan looked into her mother’s face.

‘I hate him, Mum. Hate him and everything he stands for.’

Her words were low, but the feeling in them was obvious.

June smiled sadly.

‘It’s your age, Susan, you hate the world at that age . . .’

Susan interrupted her.

‘I don’t hate the world, Mum, I hate him and only him.’

June didn’t know why but she really did not want to get into a conversation with her daughter about Joey. Somehow she knew that if she did it was going to cause trouble for them all.

‘Don’t talk about him like that, Susan. He is your father.’

She snorted with contempt.

‘Is he? That’s not what I’ve heard all me life. I think you’d better have a chat with his mother. According to her I should be renamed Heinz - fifty-seven varieties and all that. I’m a mongrel according to her - and him when he’s had a drink. Even you have queried my parentage over the years. Trying to remember who you fucked who looked like me, are you? Put a face to a name, eh?’

The slap on her cheek was like a gunshot in the quiet of the room.

‘You little whore! You always have to cause hag, don’t you, Susan? Always got to have the last word. It’s all that reading, it’s turned your bleeding head. Well, listen to me and listen good - I ain’t in the mood for you and your fucking hysterics today. One more word out of you and I’ll rip your head off, do I make myself clear?’

‘Crystal clear. I think we both realise that much, don’t you, Mum? If you don’t talk about things then they never happened, did they?’

‘What you on about now?’

Susan shook her head sadly, the red handprint burning on her cheek.

‘Think about it, Mum, just think about it.’

June looked down into her daughter’s face. She regretted hitting her already, but it was preferable to the alternative. She didn’t even want to contemplate that.

 

Joey looked at the dinner on the table and sighed happily; smiling at the two girls he scooped up a whole roast potato and shoved it in his mouth. It was too hot and he made a great pantomime of trying to cool it down. Everyone laughed except Susan but no one mentioned the fact.

Ivy was in her element. Her golden boy was home and he was well. That pleased her more than anything. Joey was all she had in the world, and she was terrified of losing him.

She looked at June’s gaping mouth as she laughed at something he said and grudgingly decided that her daughter-in-law wasn’t that bad really. If Joey had married a different kind of woman Ivy was sensible enough to know she would have been shown the door years before. Unlike most East End women, June had a casual and relaxed attitude to everything to do with the home and her kids, whereas most of the women Ivy knew ruled their husbands and families with a rod of iron.

Oh, the men might be hard cases and the women might look downtrodden, but the truth was often very different. These women used their position as mother and wife to keep their men in line.

June never bothered. With her and Joey it was a strange mish-mash of a partnership. June did what most men did; she slept around, blew all their money and spent her time in and around the pubs. Joey did the same but on a smaller scale.

Ivy grinned, happy in the knowledge that once the honeymoon period was over she could stick her beak into everything once more and they could all get back to normal.

She looked at Susan and her grin faded.

That little mare wouldn’t know what had hit her once Ivy stuck her claws into her. Raise her hand to her granny, would she, and expect to get away with it? Well, God was good, as her own mother used to say. He waited until it was time then He made sure people paid for their sins.

Ivy would see that little cow paid and paid dearly for her tantrum.

‘What you thinking about, Mum? You got a face like a wet weekend in Brighton.’

Ivy looked into her son’s shrewd eyes and smiled.

‘I was thinking how lovely it is to have you home again, son. I missed you.’ Then two fat tears spilled over her cheekbones and she was bawling her head off.

Joey raised his eyes to the ceiling incredulously. Ivy was genuinely distressed and even Susan felt for her. The old woman was visibly shaken by her son’s ordeal and it had laid a damper on the party atmosphere. Susan instinctively reached across the table and grasped her grandmother’s hand.

‘Come on, give us one of your songs.’

She was soft-hearted enough to try and make Ivy feel better. Ivy, though, had other ideas.

‘Don’t you come the old mucker with me, you rotten little mare. What I’ve had to put up with from you would make your father’s blood boil if he knew.’

June closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she cried, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, can we just for once eat a meal without a flaming row starting? If you cause any hag, Ivy, you’re out the door and I mean it.’ She pointed at Susan with her fork. ‘And as for you, lady, take the miserable look off your boat before I knock it off, all right?’

Joey looked at Debbie who rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

‘I get the right hump living here. All it ever is is fighting and arguing, morning, noon and night. Don’t you get the ache with it, Mum?’

June grimaced.

‘Yes, I do, Debbie, as it happens. So I tell you now: if it all kicks off again I’ll walk out that door and I ain’t never coming back, I take fucking oath on that one. You remember that, Ivy, and you, Susan. I have had all I can take in the last few weeks and I can’t hack it any more. I want a bit of peace for once in me bleeding life, a meal in peace, to sit in me own home in peace. To talk to my bloody husband in peace without you two at each other’s throats. Do you get my bleeding drift, eh? Think you can manage that, do you?’

Ivy hung her head. She knew she was on distinctly dodgy ground at the moment. Susan swallowed down the lump in her throat and concentrated on the food in front of her.

No one spoke a word for five minutes; the air in the room was heavy with malice. Ivy kept looking at Susan as if she wanted to say something but daren’t. Susan looked at her plate. Anywhere but at her mother, father or sister. Ivy she didn’t even think about.

Joey watched them all as he ate.

His mother was a case, really. Any other man would have chinned her before this but he knew that he was her whole life and at times was grateful for that. At the end of the day your mum was your mum.

‘What time are your painkillers due, Joey?’

He shrugged, glad the silence had been broken.

‘I don’t know. Anyway I’ve got some stronger ones off Davey’s mate Georgie Dixon. He says they’re the dog’s gonads as far as killing pain goes, and they give you a high. Gotta be better than the crap they doled out at the hospital. They wouldn’t kill the pain of a gnat bite!’

June grinned.

‘When you’re ready, mate, get a couple down your Gregory then I’ll tuck you up in bed, eh?’

Debbie rolled her eyes to the ceiling once more. Her parents’ constant sexual gymnastics made her feel sick. You could hear them at it at all times of the day, and it made her feel queasy. But she loved telling her friends about it, it made them laugh.

‘You make sure you’ve taken them, though, son. A painkiller is a wonderful thing. Best invention after alcohol, if you ask me. That was the poor man’s painkiller years ago, you know. A bottle of Scotch and they’d cut your bleeding leg right off with a hacksaw then put tar on the stump to stop the bleeding. And I mean bleeding. The blood would spurt out into the air . . .’

Debbie almost shouted then, ‘All right, Nan, we get the picture.’

Joey laughed and swallowed down his wine.

‘Trust you, Muvver, when we’re eating really rare beef to bring up something like that. Mind you, remember what’s his name? The torturer for the Daleys. He used to remove people’s toes with a pair of secateurs.’

He pointed at his wife with his knife.

‘Rose fanatic he was, had a lovely garden. Anyway he’s in Broadmoor now and tends the gardens there, I heard. Well, he told me once that he cut their toes off to stop people having any balance, see. If you lose your big toe then you fall over all the time, something like that. But he said he did the toes mainly because the thought of it was so terrifying that when he turned up on their doorstep they would literally give him anything to get shot of him. It’s psychological. The thought of something is much worse than it actually happening. Or something like that. Anyway he was a nice bloke really.’

Ivy grinned. She loved conversations like this, they excited her.

‘So long as you didn’t upset him.’

Even June laughed now, and Debbie.

‘Of course, he cut off Alfie Archer’s ears with a broken glass because he grassed up Harry Petersen. Remember him, Mum? Big Harry the Scandinavian docker?’

‘That’s right, his wife was a nice woman, felt sorry for her I did. That Harry was a right nice-looking bloke and all, white-haired with icy blue eyes. He was a looker all right. Ended up doing an eighteen for armed robbery after Archie grassed him. So he had his ears removed. That used to be a warning then, in the forties and fifties like, not to grass up what you heard. It was a kind of message to others when you saw him ear-’oleless walking about the place. I remember his name - Jacob Daniels. That was it, weren’t it, son?’

He nodded dreamily.

‘Yeah, Jacob Daniels. Christ, Mum, you’ve got a memory, you have.’

Ivy preened at the compliment.

‘Well, they was the good old days, weren’t they? It’s a different world now. Villains ain’t got the class no more. I mean, even the Davidsons and the Bannermans don’t really belong to the upper echelons, not like the old-style manor bosses. They looked out for their own they did. I remember during the war they made sure we had a bit of whatever was going, you know. Bacon, a few eggs, whatever. Consequently people kept stumm, respected them. Not like nowadays when you have all these young kids dealing drugs and that. Like that Barry. He deals drugs, I heard.’

She looked pointedly at Susan, who answered her through gritted teeth.

‘You want to get your facts right, Ivy, he don’t deal drugs. He leaves that for the likes of Georgie Dixon who Dad got his from.’

Joey laughed at the two women trying to score points off one another. But Ivy wasn’t impressed.

‘That’s different. They’re for medical reasons, ain’t they, son?’

Joey nodded.

‘But she don’t go out with Barry any more, do you, love? You took your old dad’s advice, didn’t you, Susan? And if me mother’s right, you got out of it just in time. Them drug dealers are heading for a fall. Davey’s got his eye on them, and Bannerman.’

Susan looked into her father’s face.

‘What’s that? After a cut, are they?’

Joey looked full at his daughter. His voice low and angry, he snapped, ‘That’s right, love, they’re after a cut, and that cut is what will put food on this table in future so you keep that in mind.’

The pure loathing in her eyes made him angry and he could feel it spiralling through his body to his head. But he would not lose it today. Today he was on his best behaviour.

‘Well, I can’t sit here listening to you lot waffling on, I have a hot date.’