Anyone Who Had a Heart (30 page)

‘So how do you know that the woman is telling the truth?’

‘Of course she’s telling the truth!’

‘She may just want it to be the truth,’ offered Rosa, taking the kettle off the gas stove and using a little water to warm the pot. ‘She may have set her cap at my Antonio without him realising it. Women can be very devious when they want something.’

There was meaning in her voice and in the swift uplifting of her dark eyes.

Babs was only momentarily deflated. She knew where Rosa was coming from. She’d angled her
particular
cap at Tony, determined to get him even though he hadn’t exactly been free at the time. Yes, Mary had gone missing, but that hadn’t meant they wouldn’t get back together. It had been she who had persuaded Tony to divorce her on the grounds of desertion.

‘She’s his woman. I’m sure of it. Someone needs to find him and speak to him. I thought Marcie could.’

Babs hadn’t said she’d like a cup of tea, but Rosa poured one anyway.

‘Yes. Marcie could. But I do not think it would do any good. She is his daughter. He still thinks of her as a child even though she is a young woman and a mother.’

‘How about if you go up and speak to him?’ Babs leaned forwards, the look on her face leaving Rosa in no doubt that this was what she’d come here for in the first place. She wanted her mother-in-law to talk to her son and make him see sense. It would hurt Rosa’s pride to do so and Babs knew that. Rosa saw little wrong in her son because he was her son – her only son.

‘No.’

‘Huh! Well, that’s typical. And you, always the one for the family and all that!’

Again Rosa turned those dark eyes on her daughter-in-law, fixing her with a hard, fiery glare.

‘I will not go. I have Joanna to look after. I will
ask
Father O’Flanagan to go and speak with your husband. I will also ask him to take Marcie with him. Your husband loves one and respects the other.’

Babs was satisfied. She left Endeavour Terrace with a gloating look on her face. Getting Rosa Brooks to admit that her son wasn’t bloody Prince Charming was, to some extent, an act of revenge for all the crap she’d put up with over the years.

Do not swear in my house, Barbara
.

Do not smoke in my sitting room, Barbara
.

Do not read trashy magazines at my kitchen table, Barbara
.

Close the garden gate after you, Barbara, or next door’s dog will get in and foul my garden
.

Well sod it! She purposely left the garden gate swinging on its hinges and with a toss of her head made for home.

In her warm cosy kitchen, Rosa sat thoughtfully in one of the overstuffed armchairs to the side of the fireplace. Closing her eyes she let her thoughts drift towards the ceiling while her tea went cold on the table.

She didn’t need to speak to Cyril out loud. The words were silently thought and Cyril responded. Not all the time. Sometimes he just didn’t seem to be there. Atmospherics used to affect the radio transmissions of fighter aircraft during the war. When Rosa
didn’t
get any response from Cyril she put it down to the same thing.

She decided to speak to Father O’Flanagan anyway, but wouldn’t send him to check on Marcie. She’d seen the look in his eyes. He couldn’t help it of course. The church ordained that priests should be celibate. Nature decreed otherwise. She’d send him direct to her son to remind him of his marriage vows – even though there had been occasions when Babs had failed to remember hers.

Marcie too had not been home these last two weekends. Rosa was scared. Was it a case of like father, like daughter? She hoped not. This weekend Marcie had promised to be home to see her and Joanna. She’d tried to persuade her to visit Garth, but Marcie had refused. She’d seen the look in her eyes. Nobody liked to visit asylums – even if they cared for the person incarcerated there.

Marcie rang the phone box at the end of the street. Somebody fetched her grandmother. They exchanged the usual greetings. Marcie finally plucked up courage to ask what was on her mind.

‘Gran …? I was wondering …’

She was wondering whether Rita had been around making a nuisance of herself or whether she’d heard of any gossip spreading about her and the night she’d met Alan Taylor on the beach. In her darkest
moments
she still wondered what might happen to her if anyone found out the truth about that night. It wasn’t that she felt consumed by guilt at what she had done, more she worried about what would happen to her daughter if she were ever arrested. What if she ended up in prison, just as she was finally building a better life for her and her child? She swallowed hard and shut her eyes, finding a strange comfort behind her closed lids.

‘What is it?’ asked Rosa Brooks.

Marcie had second thoughts about asking. It wasn’t fair to burden her grandmother with any more of her troubles.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said and severed the connection. Let sleeping dogs lie.

A sliver of light showed between the curtains to Bob Wilson’s room. The light caught on the gold chain twinkling among Bob’s chest hairs. He was lying in bed smoking. Rita was lying beside him seemingly dead to the world, one heavy leg draped across his groin.

He gave her a nudge. ‘Hey! Sleeping Beauty!’

She didn’t make a sound which was unusual for her. Usually after they’d done the usual, they had a bit of shut-eye and she’d be snoring like a good ’un.

Easing his leg across the bed, he reached over to pour himself the last of the whisky. No more than
an
inch trickled from bottle to glass. They’d sunk the rest the night before. Rita had taken a few pills with hers. She’d offered him some, but he’d declined. He dealt with the stuff, made a packet from it, but he didn’t indulge. Give him booze any day. Bob Wilson was no prat. He knew what was good for him. Whisky was good. Pills were something you took for a headache.

He tried again. ‘Hey! You fat cow!’

Usually if he called her that she’d turn round and catch him a blinder around the kisser. But she didn’t.

Her face was very still and very white. He touched her face. She felt like ice.

His blood turned cold. His face paled.

‘What the fuck …?’

He looked closer and tried the procedures he’d seen on
Doctor Kildare
on the telly. No pulse. No breathing. It didn’t take a doctor to know that she was dead.

Being a canny sort of guy, he knew what he had to do. He had to prepare some kind of defence. The cops would question the pills in her body so he had to come up with a reason for them being there, and he had a corker.

JUST BEFORE GOING
down to Sheppey to bring Joanna to London, Marcie nipped along to the King’s Road to do some window-shopping. The exotic costume business had gone off with a bang, but she still had a yen to design dresses. Going along to the King’s Road, gazing in the windows and fingering the rows of blouses, skirts, dresses and accessories were fodder for her own designs.

There was a risk in doing this, of course, though she reasoned that since she’d left Daisy Chain and the Camilleris, Roberto had no reason to visit his parents quite so much.

Even so she kept a sharp lookout and hid her features behind dark glasses and the broad-brimmed felt hat that she’d bought the last time she’d been in Daisy Chain. Her new dress was of a psychedelic design, swirls of purples and mauves diffusing into strawberry pink and pistachio green.

‘Marcie? Is that you?’

The voice was familiar and took her by surprise. She presumed the worst. My God! Roberto?

She didn’t wait to find out. Without looking back she hightailed it in the direction she’d come.

I’m not looking back!

What good would it do if she did? A second less speed could make all the difference.

Out of breath and flustered, she caught a taxi for home. It occurred to her that he would follow. His car was fast. The taxi did well to press its way through the midday traffic. On arriving home, she dashed up the metal stairs at the rear of the shop, pushed the key in the lock and fell through.

Once the door was closed, she lay against it, still panting but feeling safer.

But you didn’t actually see anyone
.

You didn’t see anyone; you just heard him and set off like a frightened rabbit. Now how stupid was that?

Feeling silly now, she began to giggle. Running away because someone called to you! Silly cow!

Gradually her breathing abated, her panic subsided.

The footsteps were faint at first, no more than a slight clinking of leather on metal. Someone was outside. Someone was climbing the metal steps to her door.

Her breath caught in her throat. One metallic step followed another. She began to shiver at first.

No! Stand up to him! It won’t be the first bully you’ve stood up to
.

The voice was back again. The words seemed to come out of nowhere. They didn’t seem to be inside
her
head. It was more as though someone or something unseen was whispering into her ear.

It won’t be the first bully you’ve stood up to
.

She remembered Bully Price threatening to torture Garth’s pet cat if he didn’t steal for him. And how she had finally dealt with Alan Taylor’s unwanted advances.

The clanking of heavy shoes against metal was getting higher, coming closer.

The best form of defence is attack
.

That whisper again. Was she hearing voices like her grandmother did? Whose voice? Her grandfather’s? Her mother’s? Or perhaps Johnnie’s?

The idea that her mother was dead and helping her face Roberto caused Marcie to grit her teeth and swallow her fear.

She grabbed a heavy onyx vase from the table and raised her arm, ready to bring it down on Roberto’s head.

Before he had chance to knock, she swung the door open.

She gasped. ‘My God!’

Father Justin O’Flanagan flinched. ‘No. Just his earthly representative. My word, Marcie. Am I that unwelcome?’

Marcie lowered the arm wielding the vase. Her grandmother would offer tea, so Marcie did the same.

‘Your father hasn’t been home much. His wife is irked to say the least.’

Marcie pulled a face. ‘I bet she is.’

Barbara would be hell to deal with. She’d been bad enough the last time she’d seen her.

‘I thought I’d go round and have a talk to him – man to man. Your stepmother seems to think he’s got a lady friend – a black lady friend. I think she’s one of these immigrants coming over from the West Indies. There’s been hordes of them in the last twenty years since the end of the war. Barbara is very put out.’

Marcie almost smiled. She liked the thought of Barbara being put out. The smile didn’t break through. If Barbara was put out, how must the boys be feeling? They worshipped their father. They must be missing him and hurting bad inside.

The eyes that Marcie had likened to addled egg yolks scrutinised the living room of the flat.

‘This is a very nice place you have here, Marcie. I went to the address your grandmother gave me, but they said you’d moved on. It was sheer chance that I happened to spot you and follow your cab.’ His slack lips spread into a self-satisfied smirk. ‘The hat and glasses threw me for a moment, but I still recognised you. It’s about body shape you see. Everyone has a definite body shape; once I commit that body shape to memory I never fail to remember its basic structure.’

The words were slightly shocking coming from a
priest
but she gave away nothing of what she was thinking; she clenched her jaw and put up with it. The way he kept looking at her was making it very difficult not to wrap her arms around herself as though she were suddenly naked. But she didn’t. Working and living in the city had made her harder. She could cope with the old devil and was even able to look into his yellow, devilish eyes.

It was Saturday afternoon so there was no sound from the sewing machines. The girls didn’t work on Saturday afternoons. Thank God for that, thought Marcie. If Father Justin had heard machines he would have wanted to inspect the workshop. Even without the holy water to hand he would have resorted to tap water in order to give her venture a blessing. His eyes would pop out of his head when he saw the tiny G-strings and the exotic outfits she made. The last thing she wanted was him poking his nose around in there!

‘So you run up these mini-dresses that all the young girls are wearing, do you not?’

‘That’s right,’ she lied. ‘I’m doing very well.’

‘I would love to inspect them,’ he said. ‘To see your working operation so to speak.’

I bet he would!

The last thing she wanted was Father Justin inspecting a replica Victorian corset or a lustrous pair of panties with a narrow crotch and a spray of ostrich
plumes
sprouting out the back. He’d probably blow a fuse, or at least turn the colour of a turkey gizzard.

She was suitably apologetic. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that. One of the girls has gone home with the keys by mistake. I can’t let you in there.’

His eyes dropped to the saucer and his fingers resting on its rim. He’d turned thoughtful, his mind going elsewhere.

‘You know that Garth has been let out of the institution where he’s been spending these last merry months? The police have dropped all charges.’

Marcie gasped. ‘That’s wonderful news! What happened?’

‘The police found the real arsonist.’

‘They did?’ Marcie had to know more. ‘So who did set fire to the shop? Do the police know who it was?’

There was something ominous about the way Father Justin O’Flanagan leaned forwards, almost as though the information he wished to impart was straight out of a James Bond novel, like Doctor No. She’d been to see the film. The shooting and chasing was all very well, but best of all she’d loved the bikini Ursula Andress had been wearing.

Father Justin took his time answering, supping the last of the tea before raising his eyes, and this he did only very slowly.

‘Apparently the witness changed his story. He’d
been
lying to save his girlfriend, and didn’t she get what she grossly deserved!’ He crossed his broad chest. ‘Mother of God forgive me. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but …’ He shook his head and tutted like an old woman. ‘I heard this only second hand, but it seems this girl wanted revenge on someone so set fire to the shop, and it might also be that she killed someone. Her father as it happens. Now isn’t that a cruel and dreadful thing?’