Two Women (33 page)

Doreen stayed late and they drank the bottle of champagne Barry had brought home with him. Susan, drunk on the wine, told her friend about threatening Barry with the knife. They both laughed their heads off. All in all Wendy’s birthday had been a success.

Susan felt empowered, as if finally she was in control. She had fought back for once and it had worked. He had listened to her, respected her.

One week after Wendy’s birthday bash she was hospitalised when Barry attacked her in a drunken rage.

It seemed he was not so forgiving after all.

Chapter Sixteen

Roselle Digby was tiny. Not just small, which she was, but tiny. Her hands were like a child’s, stubby fingers ending in heavily painted nails like talons. She had little feet, a turned up nose, small pointed breasts. Her eyes were wide-set, giving her an air of vulnerability even though she was far from that. The biggest thing about Roselle was her heart. She had a big heart and was well liked by everyone.

She was a reader, which made her interesting to Barry because she seemed so well informed. He decided to forget that Sue was a reader until she met him, a pastime he had banned because he’d said it gave her ideas above her station.

With Roselle it was different, she was a person in her own right.

As head girl at the Hiltone Club she was respected in her own little world because she did not have to flog her arse, as the other girls expressed it. And that suited Roselle right down to the ground.

She had been on the game since she was fourteen in Chapeltown, Leeds. Now in the Smoke she was respected, someone who did not have to work the trade any more for a living.

She had embarked on an affair with Barry Dalston and was loving every second of it. He had swept her off her feet: buying her flowers, taking her out for romantic meals and treating her like a normal woman would be treated.

She was opinionated, intelligent and streetwise, all the things Barry abhorred in his women usually, but Roselle had something none of the others had. She was one of the few toms who had invested her money wisely.

A natural loner, though friendly enough to everyone, she had made her money work for her by buying a small but well-positioned flat and filling it with expensive furniture and fittings. Barry had been shocked but impressed when he had seen how she lived. She even put napkins on the table just to have a sandwich. She had a son in private school and drove a top of the range car.

Roselle made money and looked after it wisely. Barry for once in his life was openly admiring. So far, if he’d had money he’d spent it on things such as drink or lately drugs. The hostesses had introduced him to the delights of amphetamines and cannabis. He also liked clothes, electrical goods, all the latest gimmicks.

Now he’d had a glimpse of how life could be lived if someone had the sense to look out for themselves. True, Roselle smoked dope, but she kept away from anything else, and in this environment that was difficult.

Now as he watched her walking around the club, talking to the punters and making sure everything ran smoothly, he felt he loved her.

Barry wiped his nose with one heavy-knuckled hand. He was as high as a kite. He had not been home for over a week and knew that Sue would be out of her mind. Not with worry, she knew he could take care of himself, but she would be skint and that would be the real bug bear.

Wendy and Alana wanted to go on a school trip to Lourdes and he was supposed to find the money. This annoyed him, and because of the speed and the drink he began to get paranoid. Felt that Susan and the kids expected too much from him. It would never occur to him that the money he was spending on Roselle and drugs could have paid for the trip twice over. He had worked for that money, he was entitled to it.

He knocked back the last of his drink at the bar and walked out to the foyer. It was a Wednesday night, a slow one for the Soho workers. As he stood by the reception desk a tall black girl approached him.

LaToyah Fielding, a twenty-year-old brass from Brixton, was on reception while the usual girl was off after a botched abortion.

‘Some woman rang for you. Said she was your wife, Susan. Asked if you’d been in and if I could get you to ring her?’

She was smiling. His domestic arrangements had always been a secret in the six months he had worked in the club. Mainly because of Roselle with whom he had begun an affair almost immediately.

Now she was everything to Barry. He lived for the nights they spent together and was finding it increasingly hard to leave her and go home. He never really knew what she did when she wasn’t with him. Sometimes she went out clubbing with the other toms, had what she called a blinding night and did not expect him to question her right to do this. After all, they were not a couple as such. She was her own person, as she pointed out constantly. This was the late-seventies after all.

If Susan had tried to give him that old fanny Barry would have punched her lights out, but with Roselle he knew he wouldn’t get away with that. She was too on the ball, too much her own person even to give him the chance to try and clip her wings. He knew in his heart she slept with other men, he just knew it. He also knew that so far as she was concerned it was none of his business.

As he looked into the black girl’s pretty face he nodded, angry with Sue for intruding into his other life. Daring to ring the club and shame him like this. He decided he would brain her when he got home, because he would have to go now whether he wanted to or not.

 

Little Barry was teething and as miserable as sin. Nothing Susan did seemed to calm him. His cheeks were red, his ear was red and he had a hump on of Olympian dimensions. Coupled with the girls’ constant demands for money for the trip to France and the fact that she had borrowed off everyone and now had nothing in her purse, not even the money for Junior Disprin, Susan was at the end of her tether.

Her mother was boracic due to her father’s complete refusal to get a job so she was unable to help out any more, and Susan didn’t like to keep asking Kate as it just made relations between her and her son more strained. Doreen needed her money herself, though Susan knew she would lend her another couple of quid if she asked. But she didn’t want to ask Doreen again, she wanted to know where Barry was and what he was doing.

At four months pregnant she was just about fed up to the back teeth of it all. The kids were living on jam sandwiches and eggs on toast and she was behind with the rent, gas and electric. The meter would go at any time and then they would be in the dark on top of everything else.

The two girls came in with Doreen. Susan smiled wearily at them.

‘You look done in, mate. Sit yourself down and I’ll make us a cuppa, eh?’ Doreen’s voice was kind and Susan laughed bitterly.

‘Still no sign of him, Dor. I reckon he’s got a bird, don’t you?’

Doreen, a patron of the clubs herself, knew he had a bird and just who that bird was as well.

‘Probably, knowing him, Sue. It’s the way he is, you know that. It don’t mean nothing.’

She wanted to spare her friend more heartache and was also hoping that if what she’d heard was true Barry might leave her for Roselle and let Susan get a bit of a life.

‘The electric’s nearly out, the food’s nearly gone, and the rent and everything is overdue. I’ll have to find the fucker. I know he’ll go mad but I have to speak to him, try and get something from him. It’s not like he ain’t got the money, is it?’

Doreen didn’t answer, she knew she wasn’t expected to. Susan was just sounding off to her, getting it off her chest.

‘I gave the girls beefburgers and chips with my lot. Okay?’

Susan smiled gratefully.

‘Fucking real, ain’t it? He’s walking around in the top fashions like a rock star and his kids ain’t even got a bit of fucking grub in the house. He is one selfish ponce.’

Doreen laughed.

‘Ain’t they all? I never met a man yet with a brain in his actual head. Most of them keep it in their cocks.’

Before Susan could answer the lights went out.

‘That’s all I need now, ain’t it, with babes teething like mad. Thank fuck I’ve got a gas cooker.’

The two girls ran into the kitchen.

‘The lights have gone, Mum, and the telly’s gone off.’

Susan laughed loudly.

‘I never would have noticed if you two hadn’t pointed it out.’

The two girls giggled with glee.

‘Good job you got us then, Mum, if you didn’t notice that.’

‘Go through to my kitchen and get me purse, lovies. I’ve got a bit of change. See if we can get the telly back on for you, eh?’ said Doreen.

They ran out of the back door and Susan had to hold back tears.

‘You’re too good to me, Dor. What would I do without you?’

Doreen held her close and tried to lighten the situation.

‘That’s what friends are for, mate.’

As if on cue little Barry started to cry, a great yell that sent Susan running from the kitchen. By the time she had taken him out of his cot and cuddled him the lights were back on. Walking down the stairs, she pondered her situation. She had to see Barry and sort something out. She wondered briefly if he might have left her, but decided that her luck wouldn’t run to that. If only he would leave her she could get herself on the jam roll and sort herself out from there. At least with the dole she would have a budget, know what was coming in each week so she could spend accordingly. At the moment she never knew where she was when in fact Barry was earning a good wedge. Though Christ knew what he did with it, he was always pleading poverty.

Her gold was pawned and everything else on which she could raise a quid or two. This time she didn’t think she would ever be able to get any of it back from uncle.

Putting Barry in his playpen and telling the girls to keep an eye on him, she went back out to the kitchen. Doreen had made the tea and was smoking a cigarette at the table.

Susan felt she had taken as much as she could. Everywhere she turned someone had their hand out for money and she was getting desperate. Even the few quid she’d had saved was gone. She was on her uppers and that meant literally. Her shoes had given up the ghost as well. She was reduced to wearing slippers constantly because of her swollen feet.

Now there was another child on the way and Barry was on the missing list and she didn’t know what to do. There was nothing in the house for the kids tomorrow morning. Then Wendy came into the kitchen.

‘I’ve still got three pound notes from my birthday money, Mum, you can have that if you want?’

Susan looked at her gratefully.

‘That’s all right, darlin’, Mummy will sort it all out.’

The child held the notes out without a word. When Susan didn’t take them she placed them on the table by her cup of tea. Then she walked back into the lounge and sat down by little Barry’s playpen. She was making him laugh by pretending to disappear behind her hands then popping up and saying ‘boo’ to him. He was crowing with enjoyment and holding his ear at the same time.

Susan looked down at the money. Leaping from her seat, she said to Doreen, ‘Will you watch this lot for a few hours?’

‘Where are you going?’

Susan smiled. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

Pulling a comb through her hair and dragging on her old coat, she left the house with the three pounds safely in her pocket.

 

Roselle was dressed to kill in a revealing spangly dress she had bought that afternoon in Regent Street. She felt good and looked better. Barry was supposed to be taking her to a Chinese in Greek Street that catered for the night workers and did a great breakfast-cum-dinner at three in the morning. It also had a little gambling room and she fancied a flutter.

Now, though, he was telling her that he had to get home and sort a few things out. He was constantly moaning about his wife. Saying they only stayed together for the kids and how she was a spendthrift who blew all his money, etc. It just went on and on. Now he had to go home when Roselle wanted to go out.

‘That’s okay, Bal, I’ll go with the girls. They’re going to the Stage anyway. I’ll tag along.’

The Stage was a blues in Brixton just off the Railton Road, or the Front Line as it was called. A blues was a disused house that became a twenty-four-hour-a-day nightclub. An enterprising person would board up the windows, put in a makeshift bar and sound system, and take money on the door. It was perfect. You could smoke dope or speed or trip all day and all night if you wanted to.

Roselle knew Barry hated her going there which was why she told him she was. Elementary female psychology.

A stripper came on stage and started to gyrate to a Slade single. The noise was deafening and Roselle walked away from Barry and over to the bar. He watched the stripper, a strikingly ugly brunette with a hook nose and acne and the biggest pair of tits this side of the water.

When he went over to the bar Roselle had gone. Smiling to himself, he walked out into the foyer and into the worst possible nightmare for a man like Barry Dalston.

Susan was standing there, large as life in her old blanket coat, with her hair looking like something from a book on birds’ nests and her sagging body revealed to all the world along with the latest lump.

To add insult to injury Roselle was standing with her, looking like a magazine plate and actually listening to what Susan had to say. Then his wife spied him and, smiling broadly, gave him a friendly little wave.

‘Here he is, love, thanks for helping me out.’

Susan was smiling at Roselle and Roselle was smiling back at her. Only
her
smile was tinged with sadness and a trace of disbelief. They both looked at Barry and he wished the ground really could open up and swallow him.

Susan looked just what she was and it hurt Barry to have her show him up in public. He saw her from Roselle’s point of view: badly cut hair in need of styling, a heavy body unrestrained by anything remotely resembling a girdle; a face devoid of even the most basic cosmetics; and a huge belly denoting the fact she was once more with child. He saw her bitten nails with the skin around them chafed and red-looking. They were caked with grime from cigarettes and housework. He saw the large heavy breasts that could touch her belly button these days and needed a bra with enough metal in to armour a tank. He saw her teeth, yellowing and blunt. Saw her legs - no tights, a month’s stubble on them and varicose veins already evident.