Читать книгу Daughter of Mine - Anne Bennett - Страница 8

Lizzie knew the centre of the town would probably still have people on the streets, couples like themselves, many of them entwined together, planning their night out or making their way to one of the many entertainment venues, and the Bull Ring would be full of people for a few hours yet. What she had to say needed as much privacy as she could get and so she led the way across St Phillip’s churchyard to Temple Row, and from there into a deserted and semi-dark Needless Alley.

There she stopped and faced Steve, and he smiled to himself. In his book there was only one reason a girl stopped in a dark and quiet place. He was right, Lizzie had fallen for him good and proper, and he decided he’d not go home tonight too frustrated to sleep. Desire, fuelled by the beer he’d consumed, rose in him. A man could only stand so much, he told himself, and by God Lizzie had had things her own way for long enough. He reached for her, pulling her into an entry, and was quite surprised when she twisted out of his grasp.

‘Steve, please. I need you to listen.’

‘Listen be damned,’ Steve cried. ‘The time for talking is past,’ and he grabbed her again roughly, holding her so tight she was unable to move, her chest so crushed she had trouble drawing breath, let alone crying out. Steve was kissing Lizzie madly, forcing her lips apart, his tongue darting in and out, and she wriggled and fought, tossing her head from side to side.

Eventually, she freed one of her hands and was able to push Steve away from her. She realised he’d misconstrued her actions in bringing him here, and so she forgave him his frantic lunge and said gently, ‘Steve, I came here tonight to tell you it’s over between us. I did what you asked and gave the relationship more time, but my feelings haven’t changed. I can’t go out with you any more. It wouldn’t be fair.’

Steve was knocked for six. It was the very last thing he’d expected Lizzie to say and he felt the hurt of it flow through his body. ‘What have I done?’ he asked in an effort to understand. ‘What’s the matter? I love you with all my heart, you know that. Christ, Lizzie, you only have to say what you want, anything, and I’ll get it for you. I love you; I adore you.’

Tears squeezed out of Lizzie’s eyes, for she knew her words had affected Steve deeply. Although it was too dark to see his face, the pain was apparent in his voice. She was angry for allowing herself to be coaxed into continuing to see this man when she knew she felt nothing for him but friendship, and she shook her head sadly. ‘It isn’t you, Steve, it’s me. I’m sorry.’

Steve had never begged, he’d never had need to, but he begged now. ‘Please, Lizzie. You don’t know what you are doing to me. I don’t think I can bear not to ever see you again.’

Lizzie shut her eyes and let the tears trickle down her cheeks.

‘Anyway,’ Steve went on stubbornly, ‘I don’t know why you’re saying these things cos you don’t want to. I can hear it in your voice.’

Lizzie felt for Steve’s fingers and held his hands. ‘You do hear sadness,’ she admitted, ‘because I am sad that I don’t feel the same for you as you feel for me. I care for you, Steve, I do truly, and I wish I could feel more, but I can’t.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Steve said again. ‘How can I? Look how you behaved the first night I met you.’

Lizzie was dreadfully ashamed of that night. ‘I was drunk and I can remember little about it. I am really sorry if I gave you the wrong impression of me.’

Steve’s eyes narrowed. He knew nothing had happened that night, but Lizzie had admitted she didn’t remember it. He was hurting to his very soul and he hit back. ‘Well you did give me the wrong impression, and not just me, I might add. People were scandalised by your shameless behaviour. And when you suggested going outside there was no holding you. I was good enough for you then all right. There isn’t much of your body I haven’t explored already, so what you’re being so prissy about now beats me. As for being drunk, my old woman always says that what’s in a man sober comes out when he’s drunk, and I reckon it’s the same for a woman, so don’t play the bloody innocent with me.’

Lizzie listened, appalled. She didn’t doubt the truth of what Steve said. Hadn’t Tressa hinted at something similar? But to hear the words dripping from Steve’s tongue. God, it didn’t bear thinking about.

But Steve hadn’t finished. ‘It was you begging me to go on then,’ he said.

‘My God!’ Lizzie thought. The disgrace of such behaviour engulfed her and she held her head in her hands.

Steve was enjoying her obvious discomfort and went on: ‘Ripe for it, you was. It took all my willpower, I’ll tell you, not to take you that night, for you wanted me to. Bloody fool that I am, I didn’t want to take advantage, like. I did think, though, after that performance, you’d be little goer like your cousin, but you turned into an ice maiden. By Christ, you’re a prickteaser all right.’

Lizzie was mortified. Never in her wildest dreams and however much she had drunk would she have believed she could have conducted herself in such a way. If her parents knew any of this they would disown her. She was so burdened down with the things Steve had told her, the total embarrassment of it all seeping out of the very pores of her skin, that she was unprepared for Steve, who chose that moment to make a grab at her.

She tried to wrench herself from his arm, and though she managed to push him away, one of Steve’s hands held on to the neck of her coat and the blouse beneath. She was suddenly scared of Steve for the first time. ‘Let me go, Steve, for pity’s sake?’

Steve didn’t answer, but Lizzie heard his breath coming in short pants. She knew she had to get away and quickly. The sudden lunge she gave took him by surprise and she heard some of the buttons from her coat fall to the ground and felt the blouse tear and Steve’s fingernails rake the back of her neck.

But it mattered little for she was free, and she began to run as she’d never run before, up Temple Row and across the churchyard to the hotel, expecting any minute to hear footsteps pounding behind her or clawing hands reaching for her.

She almost sobbed with relief as she reached the door of the hotel, and as most of the buttons had been ripped from her coat she wrapped it tightly round her before opening the door. Even so, Ron, the night porter, looked at her strangely as she made for the stairs. ‘You all right?’

‘Aye, I’m fine,’ Lizzie said. But she was far from fine. She was trembling all over and she wanted to be by herself in her bedroom and safe.

She was quiet, for both Pat and Betty were fast asleep, and she didn’t even put the light on. She was glad no one was up to see her take off the torn blouse, which she threw to the back of the wardrobe. She was in no mood for Tressa coming in enthusing about the night; she knew she’d see her in the morning, and so she turned over and tried to sleep.

Tressa was disappointed to find her cousin in the land of nod. She’d wanted to relive the night again, confide in Lizzie that her virginity was gone and forever and how wonderful the experience was. She was tempted to wake her up, but Lizzie slept deeply when she did go off—and what if, in trying to waken her cousin, she also roused Pat and Betty. She reckoned they’d string her up if she did that again. They’d been very stiff with her after last time.

So she lay on the bed and went through it in her mind and fell asleep with a smile on her face and dreamed of making love to Mike over and over again.

Tressa felt very delicate when she woke somewhere around mid-morning, but Lizzie didn’t look too hot either, she noticed. In fact, she looked dreadful. Tressa gasped when she saw the score marks on the back of Lizzie’s neck as she pulled her nightdress over her head.

‘Who did that to your neck?’

‘Who do you think?’

‘It was never Steve?’

‘Oh yes it was,’ Lizzie said grimly, ‘after I told him it was over,’ and she went on to describe exactly what had happened. ‘He frightened the living daylights out of me,’ she said. ‘And yet nothing really happened and I didn’t wait around to see if it would. But now…oh, I don’t know, I think it was partly my fault.’

‘How in God’s name did you work that out?’

‘Maybe I told him clumsily,’ Lizzie said. ‘You know, maybe I should have led up to it more, not just told him like that, straight out.’

‘He still shouldn’t have done that to your neck.’

‘He didn’t do it on purpose,’ Lizzie said. ‘He was holding on to me, holding my coat at the neck, and when I pulled away quickly his nails sort of caught me.’

‘Even so…’

‘Tressa, he wasn’t himself and he was so dreadfully hurt. I felt a heel. I should never have let it go on so long.’

Tressa could see the guilt settling around her cousin. She knew her well and was aware how that guilt would eat away at her. ‘Come on, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘Put this behind you now.’

‘I’m sorry, Tressa,’ Lizzie replied. ‘How did it go with you and Mike?’

‘Do you want to know, after your night ended so badly?’

‘Course I do,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m not that smallminded.’

‘Well I’ll tell you in the bathroom.’

‘Bathroom?’

‘Aye,’ Tressa said. ‘I’m going to run you a hot bath. It will do you the world of good.’

‘Tressa, I’m feeling a bit groggy.’

‘Then a hot foamy bath is just the thing,’ Tressa declared, and went on with a smile, ‘come on, and while you are soaping yourself, I’ll tell you about my night of passion.’

Lizzie forced a smile from her reluctant lips and began collecting her toiletries together.

The girls were tired when they returned to their room that night. It was Valentine’s Day and there had been a special menu, so the place had been bursting at the seams and they’d been run off their feet, for they’d been on the go since three o’clock. Lizzie sat thankfully down on the bed with a sigh when they’d got back to their room. ‘What time is it?’

Tressa consulted her watch. ‘Just turned eleven.’

‘Oh, Hell, and we’re on earlies tomorrow.’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

There was a lot of noise outside for a Sunday night and someone was yelling something out in the street. ‘Sounds as if someone’s celebrated a bit too well,’ Pat said from the other side of the room.

‘Aye,’ Tressa said, crossing to the window, and then she exclaimed, ‘God Almighty! Lizzie, it’s Steve.’

‘No!’ Lizzie crossed to the window and saw Steve, off his head with drink and leaning against Mike, who seemed to be trying to remonstrate with him.

The other two girls crowded behind them to see. ‘Ain’t that your feller?’ Betty said to Lizzie.

‘He was,’ Lizzie said. ‘I finished with him yesterday.’

‘Doesn’t seem to have taken it too well then,’ Pat remarked.

Lizzie watched him shake Mike’s hand away, totter a couple of steps and, looking straight at her framed in the window, he screamed, ‘Lizzie! Come out, you bitch. You hear me, Lizzie?’

‘Tressa,’ Lizzie said, ‘I must go down.’

‘There is no way you are going near that mad man in the state he’s in,’ Tressa said firmly.

‘Tressa, I’ll lose my job if the manager finds out.’

‘He won’t know it’s you,’ Tressa said. ‘How many staff do you think the boss can name?’

‘He’ll tumble to it eventually. He’s not stupid.’

However, the manager was tired and longing for his bed and had no patience with any drunk that the waiter said was screaming abuse in St Phillip’s churchyard. The whole incident would probably disturb his guests, who’d come to him in the morning with a list of complaints. It was not to be borne. ‘Phone the police,’ he told the head waiter. ‘It’s their business, so let them deal with it.’

Within minutes, the watching girls saw two policemen approach Mike and Steve. ‘Now, now,’ said the younger one. ‘What’s all this about?’

Steve, staggering on his feet, said, ‘She’s a bitch, a bloody bitch.’

‘I’m sure she is, sir,’ said the older man, ‘but I think it would be best to discuss it in the morning.’

‘It’s all right,’ Mike said, stepping forward. ‘I’ll see to him.’ He’d seldom seen Steve as drunk as this. He could handle his drink, could Steve, but then he’d been drinking nearly all day.

Mike had had no idea Lizzie was to finish with Steve the previous evening, and when Steve told him at The Bell that lunchtime he was shocked and felt sorry for him. Getting drunk had seemed a damned good idea. It was only when Steve started muttering about going into the town and what he’d do, both to Lizzie and the bloody hotel she worked in, that Mike had decided he’d better go with him.

‘Come on, mate,’ he said now, his arms around Steve.

‘Get off me.’

Steve’s hefty swing nearly had Mike on his back and the young policeman said, ‘Steady, sir.’

‘Steady, sir. Steady, sir,’ Steve mocked. ‘Why don’t the pair of you fuck off.’

‘We can’t do that, sir,’ the older policeman said firmly. ‘You either go home now, or you cool your heels in a cell.’

‘Look, there’s no need for this,’ Mike remonstrated. ‘I’ve told you I’ll see to him,’ and he tried again to put his arm about his friend. ‘Come on, mate, let’s go home, eh?’

Home. The word registered in Steve’s befuddled brain. He wasn’t going home. He wanted to speak with Lizzie; make her see she couldn’t just finish with him like that.

Again, Mike was sent reeling. ‘I’ll go home when I’m bloody well ready to go. After I’ve talked to Lizzie. I’ve got to see her.’

The policemen had decided enough was enough. ‘Come along, sir,’ the older one said. ‘You can’t see people at this time of night. Leave it to the morning, eh?’

‘Get your hands off me.’ Steve’s flailing fist caught the younger policeman’s helmet and it rolled into the road.

‘That’s it,’ the older man said. ‘You’re coming with us.’

‘There’s no need for this,’ Mike protested again.

The younger man retrieved his helmet and said warningly, ‘If you don’t want to accompany him, I’d get yourself home and tell those he lives with he’ll likely be out in the morning.’

And that’s all it would have been, if Steve hadn’t reacted so badly to the older policeman’s efforts trying to put his hands behind his back to put cuffs on. In the fist that slammed into the policeman’s face was the pent-up rage that had been building all day, fuelled by alcohol, and the policeman was knocked clean out.

‘Oh dear God,’ Lizzie breathed, watching the scene with tears streaming down her face. The younger policeman had handcuffed Steve and, holding him firmly, blew the whistle in his mouth.

Suddenly, a paddy wagon screamed to a halt and a policeman, with coshes raised, manhandled Steve into it with little ceremony. ‘And him?’ he then asked, indicating Mike.

‘No,’ the younger copper said, helping his stunned mate to his feet. ‘He was trying to calm the mad bugger down. Go home,’ he advised Mike again. ‘And tell his people, because he’ll be on a charge in the morning for this.’ He indicated his mate, who would have fallen without his support and stood swaying and shaking his head from side to side.

Mike knew he had no option but to do as the policeman suggested and he looked up at the window to see the faces framed there and gave one wave before making for home.

The Gillespie house was in darkness, and Mike hesitated. But they had to know. No tabs were kept on Steve, but they’d be worried if he wasn’t in his bed in the morning; and then there was work. He had no choice but to lift the knocker.

It was Rodney who came, his trousers obviously pulled hurriedly on, for the braces hung either side. His top and feet were bare, and behind him on the stairs Mike could see Flo in a dressing gown with her curlered hair tied up in a turban.

‘What is it, man?’ Rodney barked.

Mike glanced up and down the street. He could see no one but he knew many would have been disturbed by the sudden knock in the quiet street and might even now be peering out at the commotion on the Gillespie doorstep, and so he said, ‘Can I come in?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Rodney said.

Flo, seeing who it was, followed them into the living room and demanded, ‘Where’s our Steve?’

And Mike told them both as succinctly as possible what Steve had done and what the consequences were.

Flo knew Steve would have been drunk, for he’d had a skinful at lunchtime, but she had no idea what had brought it on. And now, prison. God, such a thing had never befallen any one of them before. ‘He’ll be out in the morning, though, won’t he?’ she said.

Mike shrugged. ‘He would have been, I think, till he hit the copper.’

‘But what was it over?’

It was no good Mike not telling. It would come out anyway. ‘Lizzie finished with him yesterday,’ he said.

Neil, who’d come down to see who the nocturnal visitor was, gave a hoot of laughter at that. ‘Oh, I bet that dented the big bugger’s ego,’ he said in delight. ‘The boot’s always been on the other foot. Love ‘em and leave ‘em has been that sod’s rule.’

‘Will you shut up!’ Flo cried. ‘Your brother’s in jail and might be up on a charge. Have you no sympathy?’

‘Not a jot,’ Neil said. ‘I hope they throw the book at him, and now I know I’m off back to bed. Night, all.’

Mike, watching Neil go, knew the boy had a point, for Steve had scattered broken hearts willy-nilly over the neighbourhood and never lost any sleep over it. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said. ‘I just called in to tell you, like.’

‘Will you not stay for a cup of tea?’ Flo asked, as she moved to put the kettle on above the fire, which she poked into life.

‘No, thanks all the same,’ Mike said. ‘I need my bed.’

‘What about work in the morning?’ Rodney asked. ‘What shall we say, for we can’t tell the truth—the lad will be out on his ear and jobs are like gold dust?’

Mike knew that. The unemployment rate was now touching two million and Steve couldn’t afford to lose his job. ‘What d’you want to say?’

‘We’ll say his stomach is upset.’

‘They’ll think he’s had a skinful.’

‘Then they’ll be right, but they won’t know it all and maybe they’ll not need to.’ Rodney glanced across at Flo and said, ‘You go along to the police station tomorrow and see what’s what. Just so we know where we stand an’ all.’

Flo nodded. She knew she’d have to. There was no one else and she knew she could expect little help from Neil.

But Flo didn’t follow her husband to bed after Mike had left. Thoughts of her boy in a prison cell would keep sleep at bay and she knew who was to blame. The same girl that had caused a row each time she was here. And now for that piece to throw her son over! She had no desire to lose Steve to any woman, but for one to indicate he wasn’t good enough! That wasn’t to be borne at all.

What else did Lizzie want in a man? Flo thought. True, he had a temper at times and a liking for the beer, but in that he was like a great many other men; and as for the women…Well, he was a normal man, after all, and the women usually chased him. You couldn’t blame a man for taking what was on offer.

Everything that had happened to her son that night was down to Lizzie Clooney, and Flo knew she’d never forgive her for as long as she lived.

Steve felt panicky when he came to the next morning and realised where he was. He couldn’t bear being cooped up and he had the desire to hammer on the door, but when he tried to stand, nausea caused him to vomit into the bucket by his bed.

The breakfast they brought him he couldn’t face, but he was grateful for the cup of tea. By lunchtime he’d not been sick for some time, but the headache continued to bother him and he was in no mood for the grinning face that appeared at the hatch.

‘Ready?’ the policeman asked, unlocking the door.

‘Ready? For what?’ So far no one had told him anything.

‘You’re before the magistrate, mate, so on your feet.’

Steve got to his feet gingerly. His head felt as if it were on fire and his red-rimmed eyes burned. The young policeman laughed. ‘You look a pretty sight, I don’t think.’

Steve shut his eyes for a moment against the pain. God, how he wanted to send the young copper’s teeth down his throat, but now he was sober he knew better and he was in no fit state anyway. But what was he talking about, before the magistrate? Just for getting drunk? He thought they’d tell him off and let him go. ‘What have I got to go before the magistrate for?’

‘Ooh, now let’s see. Little string of offences we have. Drunk and disorderly, causing an affray, assaulting a police officer.’

‘Assaulting a police officer?’ Steve said incredulously.

‘No recollection of it, mate?’ the policeman said with a grin. ‘Well, that won’t save you. Come on, let’s get going.’

Flo could have wept when she saw her son. His face was grey and his eyes were bloodshot and had black pouches beneath them. His hair stood on end and his Sunday suit was crumpled and stained.

Steve was fastidious about his appearance. His suits were regularly cleaned and returned to the wardrobe under a plastic cover and he was fussy about his shirts, which had to be pristine white and ironed just so, and on Sundays his tie always matched the handkerchief poking from his pocket.

But in the dock, Steve had no tie and no sign of the handkerchief either. He looked a beaten, crestfallen man and it tore at Flo’s heart.

When the police officer read out the charges against him, Flo saw him shake his head from side to side, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, and she knew he could remember little or nothing of what had happened. That didn’t seem to matter and the magistrate tore into him. ‘Assaulting a police officer is a serious offence and one that can carry a custodial sentence,’ he told Steve. ‘But as you’ve told the court you’re in steady employment we don’t think it would be in the country’s best interests to lock you up.’

Steve let his breath out in a sigh of relief. He’d never even thought of a jail sentence.

‘But, we don’t want to be considered as treating this as a trivial matter,’ the man went on. ‘No indeed, and if you come before me again there will be no doubt about the custodial sentence. This time, however, you are fined seventy-five pounds.’

Seventy-five pounds! The sum reverberated in Steve’s head. How in God’s name was he going to find that sort of money? Christ! The image of Lizzie staring out at him from the window of the hotel suddenly floated before him, and he knew just who was to blame for the state he was in. He’d never forget it for as long as he lived.

Steve and Flo weren’t the only ones blaming Lizzie, for she already did an adequate job of this herself. She thought she’d never get over the sight of Steve hauled into the van, handcuffs holding his hands behind his back, especially as she still thought it was her fault, at least in part. She certainly didn’t want to come across him, not for a while anyway, so when Tressa met Mike in her free periods, Lizzie would sit in her room and hem the sheets and blankets she had picked up cheap in the Bull Ring.

‘Come out with us,’ Pat urged. ‘We go to the flicks, or dancing at Tony’s Ballroom up the West End.’

But Lizzie would shake her head, thinking that at the moment it was best to lie low. Tressa worried about her, and in the end Mike reluctantly agreed she could come out with them a time or two, but she wouldn’t do that either. ‘She’s frightened of bumping into Steve,’ Tressa said, ‘and making things worse for him.’

Nothing could make things worse, Mike thought, for Lizzie’s decision had upset the man totally. He was paralytic each night, not tipsy or merry but fallingdown drunk, and before he got to that state he’d tell any who would listen about Lizzie and how much he had loved her and how he wished he could make her see that. He was hurting, and Mike was well aware of that, but he told Steve he had to keep well away from Lizzie. Steve knew that already and he drank himself into oblivion because that was the only way he could cope with it.

Then, he’d started becoming friendly with a man called Stuart Fellows, who lived at the bottom end of Bell Barn Road. They’d all been to St Catherine’s together, but as Stuart was considered a troublemaker, Mike and Steve had kept well away from him. But now, with Mike meeting Tressa as many nights as he could, they’d sort of been thrown together, and Mike could hardly blame Steve for that.

Stuart was only too willing to go after the women with Steve, despite having a steady girlfriend of his own. ‘Don’t it bother you?’ Mike asked him when the three of them were together one day. ‘What if your girlfriend finds out?’

‘She won’t,’ Stuart said confidently. ‘Anyroad, if she does, so what? It ain’t hurting her, it’s helping.’

‘How d’you work that out?’

‘Look, she don’t want to go all the way, frightened of finding herself pregnant; and she’s right to worry because I think her old man would kill the pair of us. This way I don’t have to push her.’

‘Tressa wouldn’t see it that way,’ Mike said, shaking his head.

‘You sleep with Tressa,’ Steve pointed out.

‘Well, we’re engaged.’

‘I ain’t going down that route, mate,’ Stuart replied quickly. ‘Have fun while you’re young, that’s me. But I don’t think it would stop me if I was engaged, or even married.’

‘Talk sense, man.’

‘Look,’ Stuart explained, ‘you can’t do nothing to stop having kids, can you, cos the Pope says so. Well, I wouldn’t want a houseful of kids and a wife like an old hag. Some of these women having a baby every year and living hand to mouth would take it as a bonus to have their old man dip his wick elsewhere once in a while, I’ll tell you.’

Steve thought about that. Next door to them lived Bob and Chrissie Roberts. They’d been married thirteen years and Chrissie was pregnant with her tenth child. All the children were pitifully thin, dressed in rags and usually barefoot, and Steve had heard them crying with hunger and cold.

And countless times he’d heard Chrissie pleading with Bob to leave her alone and the resultant slaps and thumps and punches, followed by her muffled moans and the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of their bedhead against the wall, and later in the quiet of the night he’d often hear Chrissie sobbing.

The young, once beautiful girl was gone for good. Her golden locks were dark, lank and greasy and her skin had lost its earlier bloom and was heavily lined and sallow and thin. Added to that, her body was shapeless and she’d lost a lot of teeth. And the woman was too poor and wretched to take joy in anything. Would you want that for any woman you married? No, by God you wouldn’t.

So, when Stuart said, ‘Seems to me the church has you by the balls every which way, and I’ll go on the way I’ve always done, wife or no wife, and no bloody church will tell me different,’ Steve could see the reasoning behind it.

‘Well, I have no wife, no girlfriend, no nothing,’ Steve said. ‘And I’m not doing without female company a minute longer. Are you coming along with us, Mike, or are you not?’

Mike shook his head, and the other men laughed. ‘Suit yourself,’ Steve said, and with a wave they were gone.