The Wayward Wife (34 page)

‘Yes,' Susan said wryly. ‘I'm okay at Vivian's.'

‘If you need a few bucks …'

‘You're the last person I'd ask.'

‘How come?' Bob said.

‘Because I'm not a tart.'

‘No, but I'm your friend and friends pitch in.'

‘A friend? Is that all I am to you?'

‘Damn it, Susan, I'm doing my best to be reasonable.'

‘Reasonable?'

‘Helpful. Helpful. I mean helpful.'

She stared at her untouched glass, at the hue of the wine, the shape of the candle flame showing through it. There were tears somewhere within her but she would not let them out, wouldn't let him see just how vulnerable she had become.

She said, ‘Vivian made me a loan. I'll pay her back, of course.'

‘What about your husband?'

‘What about him?'

‘Is he still mad at you?'

‘Would you blame him if he was?' Susan said.

‘I guess not,' Bob said. ‘I just want to be sure if I do have to go away, you'll be taken care of.'

‘Are you going away?'

‘Maybe. God knows what's coming up next. If the
Union Post
decides it needs a correspondent in Cairo or Algiers …'

‘You're their man.'

‘Yeah, I'm their man. That's what I am. That's what I do. You knew it when you took me on.'

‘Took you on? Really? I was under the impression you did the taking.'

‘Now that,' he said, ‘that
is
unfair.'

‘English girls are easy; isn't that how it goes?'

‘One thing you're not, kiddo, is easy.'

‘That's good to know.'

‘Oh, cut it out, Susie, for Chrissake,' he said. ‘I don't know what's gotten into you.'

‘Don't you?' she said. ‘You should.'

He paused, head cocked. ‘You're not pregnant, are you?'

‘No, Robert, I'm not pregnant. If Cairo calls, or Libya, you may depart without a qualm. The only thing you'll be obliged to terminate is your contract with the BBC.'

‘I don't much care for broadcasting, you know.'

‘You are good at it, though.'

‘That's what Quent told me.'

‘Quent? Who's Quent?'

‘Quentin Reynolds, the best journalist in the business. You met him once in the Lansdowne.'

‘Did I?' Susan said. ‘After a while all you journalists begin to look the same.'

‘Like penguins?' Bob said.

She smiled. ‘Yes, like penguins,' then, feeling marginally better, reached for her glass of wine.

The stallholders were packing up early. You never quite knew when Jerry would send over a few spotters and drop the odd incendiary just to spread a bit of panic before dusk settled in and the heavy bombers appeared in force.

It looked like any other weekday street market, a little busier than most, perhaps, for those folk who had been bombed out were in desperate need of clothing and, this being the East End, there were plenty of suppliers eager to meet demand.

Handcarts, donkey-drawn flat carts strewn with second-hand garments, penny-whistle men, scam-artists with three greasy cards and tables you could fold in a wink if a copper appeared shared the street with fruit sellers, pie-men, purveyors of drinks, hot and cold, and, bizarrely, one old woman with a washing basket filled with cracked mirrors and chipped vases that, to Breda's surprise, seemed to be selling like hot cakes.

Breda was on the scout for a warm second-hand coat to see her through the winter and a half-decent pair of boots that might fit Billy. She had seven shillings and eight pence in the pocket of her one and only dress, a floral-patterned cotton rag that she'd happened to be wearing on the night Pitt Street had been hit. It was too light now for an autumn afternoon and had been made all the lighter by the amount of scrubbing she'd had to do to get the mud stains out of the material.

Hidden under a blanket in St Vee's were a pleated knee-length skirt, one respectable blouse and a spare underskirt that her mother had retrieved from the bedroom in Stratton's, plus the underwear that Danny, without a blush, had bought for her at Crossland's. From various charitable sources Billy had acquired quite a decent wardrobe of cast-offs, including a brand-new pair of stockings. Unfortunately, he was still hopping around in shoes at least a size too small for him. She should have brought Billy with her but he'd been such a handful of late that she'd left him with Ma and had slipped out alone to search for affordable bargains which, up to now, hadn't exactly fallen into her lap.

Further up Fawley Street were the barrows of optimistic booksellers ridding themselves of ‘damaged stock' which, as far as Breda could make out, was just the same old stock as it had always been: dog-eared copies of Dickens and Thackeray and cheap yellow-backed novels that fell apart as soon as you opened them. On the step of a bomb-blasted building that had until recently housed an insurance office an elderly gentleman in a top hat and a morning coat that had seen better days was loudly touting the miraculous properties of a pill that would settle stomach upsets, soothe the nerves and cure constipation which, at a shilling a box, seemed to Breda just too good a bargain to be true.

Pausing at the rear of the jeering little crowd to listen to the old charlatan's florid spiel, she felt a hand on her arm and the point of a knife blade prick her hip. Her first thought was that some swine was after her seven shillings and eight pence. She clamped her elbow over the pocket of her dress and opened her mouth to give the bugger a mouthful.

‘Keep your trap shut, girly,' Vince said quietly, ‘or I'll carve out your kidneys. Now, smile nice an' take a walk with me, all lovey-dovey, like. You got me?'

‘Yeah,' Breda said. ‘I got you.'

He palmed the knife and snared her arm. Breda had no doubt that if she made any kind of fuss he wouldn't hesitate to carry out his threat and leave her bleeding on the pavement.

‘Where you takin' me?'

‘Somewhere nice an' quiet where we can 'ave a little chat.'

‘I thought you was in the army?' Breda said.

‘The army's for mugs.'

He wore a rumpled battledress without regimental markings, a beret instead of a helmet and shoes, not boots. He had none of the sort of equipment Breda thought a soldier should have, no belts or pouches, not even a gas mask.

‘Where's Steve?' Breda said. ‘Why ain't he with you?'

‘Steve's stuck in camp in bloody Durham pissin' his pants an' keepin' his nose clean case they call 'im to Harry King's trial.'

‘Will they?'

‘How the hell do I know?' Vince said. ‘They might have Steve Millar by the balls but they ha'n't got me no more.'

‘In other words,' Breda said, ‘you're a deserter. They shoot deserters, don't they?'

‘Only if they catch them,' Vince said. ‘Won't make no difference to you what I am, not when I get through with you.'

‘What you gonna do to me?'

Vince tightened his grip, knife blade flat against her arm. . ‘I ain't had a woman in weeks,' he said, ‘so what you think I'm gonna do to you?'

‘You don't want me, you want Leo's money, don'cha?'

‘That's the second thing on my list.'

‘I don't 'ave it. I never 'ad it.'

‘Lyin' bitch,' Vince said. ‘You're the only person in the world that greasy little Eye-tie would trust with his loot. Well, I'm gonna make you squeal, girly, believe me, I am.'

Up ahead where Fawley Street split round the old clock tower, she caught sight of Ronnie's friend, Clary Knotts. He was in fireman's uniform and was walking briskly across the corner heading, she thought, for Oxmoor Road.

She wrenched at Vince's arm and opened her mouth to scream but Vince was too quick for her. He grabbed her, hugged her, thrust his face into hers in a mock kiss and, with the knife pricking her belly, pushed her into an alley between the houses and shoved her through an open doorway into what had once been someone's back parlour.

Gelid light from a broken window showed an iron grate spewing cold ashes, a battered armchair and a patch of torn linoleum littered with fragments of glass, ceiling plaster and broken bricks. The room had been used as a lavatory and stank to high heaven. Two brown rats that had been feeding on something unspeakable rose up, squeaking, and streaked between Breda's legs out into the alley. Breda let out a yell. Vince wrapped a forearm around her throat and, wasting no time, rammed a hand under her dress and dragged down her knickers.

Elbows pumping like pistons, Breda pummelled his stomach and hips and tried to kick his shins. He pulled her closer, smothering her frantic attempts to defend herself, then dropped down, bent his knees and tossed her on to the floor. He disentangled her knickers from her shoes and threw them away, furled her dress up to her waist then sat back on his heels, grinning.

Breda said, ‘I had it, yeah, but it got stole.'

He called her a filthy name, told her she was a liar, then, sliding his hands up under the top of the dress, yanked her brassiere over her breasts and stroked her nipples.

Breda said, ‘Stole. All of it. They took it all.'

He leaned into her and brought his mouth close to her ear. Mention of money had distracted him, if only for a second. Breda spread out her arms as if to brace herself, to capitulate in what he was about to do to her and, groping, closed her hand round a chunk of broken brick.

‘Who did?' Vince said.

‘The rescue squad,' she said. ‘Our 'ouse got bombed, bad. The rescue squad found the money in the debris an' stole it 'fore I could get there. It's the truth, Vince, honest to God, it is.'

‘Yeah, an' I came up the Thames in a canoe,' he said. ‘You willin' to die for a lousy three grand, girly? 'Fore I'm done with you, you'll be wishin' you
was
dead.'

And, Breda thought, they'll find me lying in this dirty hole, torn and bleeding and write me off as just another poor cow who lured a man here to earn a few bob; another corpse nobody cares about, like the girls they find in the corners of shelters, round the back of bombed buildings or floating, bloated, in the dock.

‘You ask me,' she said, ‘you're all mouth an' no trousers.'

‘What you say?'

‘You 'eard me, big boy. You gonna show me what you got or just brag about it?'

He removed his hands from her breasts, sat back and fumbled with his trouser buttons. He rose awkwardly into a half squat and dug his member from his underpants. He was short but very thick and very ugly. Breda had seen lots of men before Ronnie, some sleek and shiny, some large, some small, but all the same down there when roused.

Smirking, Vince glanced down and touched himself.

It was the moment, the one moment, her one and only chance. Breda cocked her knee to her chest and caught him off balance. He performed a little Cossack dance to right himself. Breda drove the heel of her shoe into the pale, upstart part that protruded from his fly and, more by luck than aim, struck the target head on. Vince roared and fell back.

Breda rolled out and away from him before he could recover and, on her knees, swung the half brick in a scything arc that caught him on the side of the head. Then rage overtook her, a great welling surge of rage at all the humiliations that had been piled upon her, all that she had sacrificed: Ron, her house, her daddy and damned near her mother and her son.

She raised the broken brick above her head in both hands and brought it crashing down.

It struck Vince midway between the bridge of the nose and the hairline. Blood started from his nose and his eyes rolled back in his head. He let out a cry that in other circumstances might have aroused her sympathy then slumped on to his side and lay motionless, legs drawn up and arms crushed beneath his chest.

Breda got to her feet. Rage still burned in her like a gas jet. She raised the piece of brick once more and was on the point of smashing it into his skull when sense took over. She prodded Vince with the toe of her shoe. Blood came from his mouth as well as his nose. Taking him by the shoulders, she flopped him on to his belly, face down, so that he wouldn't choke. When he spluttered and coughed she knew he wasn't dead but, to her relief, showed no signs of regaining consciousness.

Fear and rage drained out of her. For a moment she felt as if she might swoon. She closed her hands into fists and stretched her arms stiffly down by her sides to stop herself shaking.

‘Right,' she said aloud. ‘All right,' and fished about on the floor to find her knickers. She shook the knickers free of dirt and, still unsteady on her pins, carried them to the doorway and, leaning against the jamb, put them on.

The air that filtered down the narrow alley was cool and, clinging to the door jamb, she drew in several huge, deep breaths to clear her head. The odd thing wasn't that she felt bad but that she didn't feel worse. It was as if the sudden storm of anger had purged her guilt and released her from uncertainty.

She glanced round to make sure that Vince was still out cold, then, taking her time, brushed grit from her dress, front and back, tidied her hair and, spitting on her fingertips, gave her face a bit of wash to restore some colour to her cheeks.

She drew herself up, braced her trembling knees and walked down the narrow passageway and out into Fawley Street in search of a policeman.

It didn't take long to find one. He was hanging about the kerb on the curve of the cobbled area in front of the old clock tower and he looked, Breda thought, quite bored.

She approached him boldly, doing her best to strut with a little of her youthful self-confidence.

‘Wonder if you could 'elp me?' she said.

‘Certainly do my best, miss.'

‘Lookin' for a place I can send a telegram.'

‘Post Office do that for you,' the constable said. ‘The one up in Shannon Street's still open. Better get a move on, though, they closes at half past five.'