That seemed fair enough. ‘What’s the price?’ Cathy asked.
‘I want you on my team. I run this shithole and I need all the help I can get. This place was once a home for unmarried mothers. Now it’s a secure unit for girls - or gels, as the social workers call us. I’m the strong arm of the place. What I say goes. Can you cope with that? If not, say so now and I won’t waste me fucking time. I’ll batter you straight away and get it over with.’
Cathy knew the girl was not talking for effect.
‘Suits me all right,’ she said calmly. ‘I just need to see how the land lies. I have to know what’s happening with me mum and others. Me bloke is probably wondering where I am too. We had a bit of a disagreement - I need to see him to sort it out.’
Denise nodded sympathetically. ‘You’ll be all right. Now go and get some more food. Tell Ugly on the counter I said to load you up properly. Other than a hot drink later, this is it for the night. Food is a bastard here - you never seem to get enough. The cold’s bad enough, but hungry and cold are the pits. I hear you’ve already had a touch of the quiet room. That’s nothing. Tie down is the bastard. That’s Mr Hodges’s department, and I’m warning you now, girl, watch that old fucker! He’s a dirty old git. Straying hands and tongue. Keep away from him.’
‘What’s tie down?’ Cathy was frightened despite herself.
Denise shrugged. ‘You’ll find out. It’s pointless me explaining it, it’s different for everyone. That’s his favourite pastime. Hodges is the official head of this place, but he lets old Mother Henley run it for him. Fuck knows what he does with himself most of the time because we don’t see him for weeks on end, then he turns up and there’s murders. You’ll soon get used to it all. You’ll have to. I can honestly say I’m sorry for you, though, girl. It’s bad enough when you’ve been sent here official like. Did you stab the bloke because he was after you?’
Cathy shook her head. ‘He was beating me mum up.’
‘And your mum’s took the fuck for you?’
Cathy nodded.
‘What a touch! I don’t even know who my mum is.’ This was said with complete honesty and no trace of self-pity.
‘Well, mine’s no angel but she’s me mum, you know?’ Cathy smiled gently.
‘You done the business yet?’ Cathy looked puzzled and Denise laughed loudly. ‘You had a bit of the other?’
Cathy went bright red and nodded.
Denise laughed once more, bringing all eyes to them. ‘Go and get your grub. You’re funny, Connor. I think me and you will get along nicely.’
When the girl serving the food got the nod from Denise, she furnished Cathy with a large slice of fruit cake and a cup of tea with milk and sugar. She also told Cathy that she could have as much bread and Spam as she wanted.
Taking her stacked plate back to the table, Cathy tried to work out in her own head what she was going to do, and more importantly, how she was going to get away from this place. That was the most important thing.
Getting out and getting back to Eamonn.
At that moment Eamonn was with two heavies in a cafe on the Commercial Road. They were waiting for a man to deliver some money and they were early. Drinking coffee and eating bacon sandwiches, they chatted idly.
‘That was a blow for you, though, Eamonn, the girl getting taken off like that, eh?’ This from Big Joe McCarthy. Joe was second-generation Irish, and like Eamonn wanted better than his father had had.
Eamonn stared at him levelly, and kept his voice carefully casual. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘I heard the girl did it and the mother’s carrying the can. Got that one from one of Susan P’s girls. They say the little ’un was nearly sent down over it and Gates forced the mother to take the blame. Nice little thing and all, that Cathy. Pretty as a picture and twice as lifelike, as my old mum used to say.’
Eamonn looked at the older heavy. Paddy Clark was in his forties and the picture of a thug for hire, but he was a nice bloke with daughters of his own and a little wife whom he loved dearly.
‘Cathy’s all right.’
Eamonn’s voice was harsh now and the men knew he wanted the subject dropped. Going up to the counter, he ordered more coffee, and Big Joe McCarthy said snidely, ‘She was his girl. You’d think he’d be moving heaven and earth to help her, wouldn’t you?’
The older man nodded. ‘He’s a cold one all right.’
Eamonn knew exactly what they were saying and it suited him. Far better they believe he was a selfish, heartless bastard than realise the truth: that without Cathy he felt confused, powerless as a child against the misery of this loss. There was only one way to drown out the pain: become the toughest, most ruthless enforcer the East End had ever seen.
The door opened, letting in chilly air, and the man they were waiting for breezed over to their table.
‘He’s tucked us up. I phoned in and we’re to go after him.’ He looked at Eamonn. ‘The boss said you knew what to do?’
Eamonn nodded. ‘Get yourself a coffee and we’ll away and look for the bastard. He’s had his last warning. He won’t see the sun come up the morrow.’ The men were all quiet as they digested this bit of information and Eamonn Junior enjoyed the atmosphere he had created.
Life was good, except for the fact that he missed his girl. But once she was back, everything would return to normal. Whatever normal was.
He smiled to himself, thinking of Cathy beneath him, of himself riding her. She was sweet, in all ways she was sweet, and he was looking forward to seeing her again.
The institution that housed the girls had been built in the 1890s and had once been the home of an affluent local businessman. It had subsequently been named Blake’s Folly, because after he’d built it for her, Blake’s wife had died in childbirth and the impossibly large house had been no good to him. He had succumbed to illness some years later and his family had closed down the house. It had been left unoccupied for many years. Eventually it had become a home for young women in difficult situations, as unmarried mothers were then described, until it had been made into a secure unit-cum-school for children unable to serve the appropriate legal penalty for their crimes because of their age or mental capacity.
Edward Blake had designed a house on a grand scale that furnished space without light. The windows, now barred, fought off the sun on a daily basis and the rooms were always dark and chilly, even at the height of summer. In winter, the house was so cold the inside of the windows iced up frequently and pipes burst on a regular basis.
Cathy came there in early October when it was just getting cold. Sometimes the girls were given a fire in the dining room, but only at Christmas or other holidays. For the most part they were left cold, hungry and tired.
Their day started at six a.m. and they were then kept occupied for the rest of the time until bed at seven-thirty. In winter the girls were glad of the regime; in summer they were heartbroken.
The sound of the gulls and the noise of the holiday-makers beyond the fence tormented them, and the inmates would listen and dream that they too were part of the outside world once more and free to enjoy Deal.
Cathy was not to know that a few of the girls in Denise’s circle had found a way to stop the boredom from growing too intense. In fact they had a system, and soon Cathy would be offered the use of it. It was just a question of whether she would have the guts actually to implement their daring plan of action, as other girls frequently had.
Only time would tell.
Denise wanted to make sure that Cathy was definitely kosher before she offered her the out.
Cathy was already classed as an ‘A’ girl by the fact that she was at the top of the house and not in one of the dormitories on the middle floor. These were the original bedrooms, made into bigger rooms with only butler’s sinks for sanitation. The girls were expected to defecate into buckets and empty them in the morning. Urine was put straight down the sink and washed away. They also washed themselves in the sink, under supervision of course. G
irls with periods were treated no differently. They washed their ‘monthly rags’ out after each use and dried them as best they could on the towel rail.
In the 1960s and early 1970s girls’ institutions were not commonly discussed. Most people didn’t even know they existed. Many of the girls were sentenced for trivial offences, often caused by appalling home circumstances, and then promptly forgotten about, even by their own families. Problem children were taken away and that was that.
Cathy was to a certain extent at home in this environment. After living all these years with a prostitute, the girls’ talk of violence, theft and their own premature sexual activity was not shocking to her. In fact she was swiftly made aware that what had happened to her at Eamonn’s hands had not been nearly so shocking as she’d thought at the time. He did after all love her in his own way, and was free to do so. Some of the girls had received treatment far worse from their brothers, fathers or uncles. Often all were using them at the same time. Denise had been offering fellatio for money since the age of seven and as she had been in care for a great deal of her life, the beneficiaries of her money-earning talents were the people who were supposed to be guiding and looking after her.
She had bragged over cocoa that she could bring a man to full orgasm in under two minutes, using only her tongue. After listening to Madge and Betty’s talk, this sounded pretty tame to Cathy, which was noted and respected by Denise who was really trying to psych her out.
The tough little angelic blonde intrigued Denise. She realised that there was a lot to the girl she hadn’t yet fathomed. Denise believed her when she said she had knifed the man. There was an underlying current of ferocity in Cathy Connor and she wanted to make full use of it if she could. As small as she was, she had an air about her of a girl who knew what was going on, who knew the score, and in institutions such as Benton School for Girls, this was a rare occurrence.
Most of the girls were dumb animals. A few were cunning, really cunning, and they ruled the roost.
Denise had a feeling that Cathy, once she was initiated into the school properly, would be an asset and wanted to use her as soon as she could.
The strict regime, instead of cowing the girls, made them more violent with each other. Constant humiliation, both physical and mental, made them crafty. They were meek in the face of their superiors, and gave vent to their feelings of suppressed rage by fighting each other.
It was the survival of the fittest, as in any institution, and the brains used the brawn all the time.
All were broken, all were hurting inside, all wanted to hurt others. It was a brutal and frightening environment and each girl had adapted as children do and worked out her own way of coping. Some were weaker and so became gofers, even offering sexual favours to older girls as well as their possessions. The stronger ones just took what they wanted and didn’t think twice about it. It was, after all, their right as top dogs.
In fact, many of them blossomed in the Home. They felt they had a place there, a niche, they were someone. They were important in their own little world. For many of them, Denise especially, that was enough.
Cathy unconsciously took all this in on her first day, and after the events of the previous forty-eight hours it was almost a relief to have something else to think about.
She had already relegated Ron to a distant unpleasant memory, just as she had rewritten history and turned the bruising encounter with Eamonn into a romantic interlude. She was already learning, as all the other girls had, that you must adapt. If you didn’t, you were as good as dead.
Cathy was escorted to her room on the second night by Sally Wilden; Denise had called her over to the table and introduced them. Cathy recognised the girl who had winked at her in the dining-room queue. Sally was a lot like Cathy and they hit it off at once.
So at seven-thirty the two girls were locked into their room and finally made each other’s acquaintance properly.
Sally was tall and slim, with a lean boyish figure. She had thick honey-coloured hair - her best feature - and greeny-brown eyes. She had a cheerful, easygoing manner and her voice was low and musical. She and Cathy were the perfect foil for one another. Sally, for her part, was pleased as punch to share with the new girl, as she was pretty and intelligent and had a nice way about her. Which was a welcome change after some of the girls she had roomed with over the last few years.
‘So what you here for?’ Sally’s friendly voice was reassuring in the dimness and Cathy quickly explained the situation.
Sally shook her head sadly. ‘You’re finished, girl. I’m sorry to put the kibosh on you, but I was in the same boat. Old Mother Barton hated me on sight. She knew it wasn’t me who’d caused the trouble . . .’ She paused then and explained exactly what had happened.
‘I was a witness to a fight between me brother and me stepfather. Me stepfather’s a bastard. All right when he’s sober but a fucker with a drink in him. Me brother battered the shite out of him and I helped, so to speak. Anyway, the upshot was Mrs Barton was sent round our house and I gave her some lip. This was made into a statement to the police and I was then arrested for threatening to kill her. I know that sounds crazy but it’s true. In court I was made out to be the cause of the fighting in my home, the cause of everything that had gone wrong with the world including the Second fucking World War! Mrs Barton put on her act so well even I felt fucking sorry for her! She blew my mind.
‘Anyway I got three years because the judge said I was a menace to society and that a woman of Mrs Barton’s stature should not be threatened and terrified when carrying out her legitimate tasks. So I was sent here and for the first week I was in the quiet room. It was a psychological thing, I realise that now. That place can really break some of the girls, you know. The dark and cold are terrifying things. Often the most terrifying to the people who come here. I was finally forced to lick condensation off the fucking walls to quench me thirst.’
She laughed again as she said this, but it was a bitter sound.
‘Still, I survived and I’m still here to tell the tale. One girl was found dead in there, and didn’t that cause a fucking furore? Officially she died of pneumonia. But really she died of fright. We all knew that, and Henley and Hodges gave us an easy time for a few months because of it. The last thing they wanted was all of us up in arms. We used poor old Mary’s death as they used her. So in a way we’re as bad as them. But you have to survive, girl.
‘I’m seventeen soon and then I’ll be out of here and back in the real world. I’ll be honest and tell you there have been times over the last few years when I thought I would never walk out of here. Now I use the system. It’s all you can do.’
Cathy was quiet after hearing this and both of them thought about the girl who had died. Then Sally continued with her advice.
‘I’ve heard the SP on why you’re here and all I can say is: use it. Let them know you were the murderer. It will give you kudos, even with Hodges and Henley. They won’t trust you, and that’s what you want. Be nice to their face, but a bit insolent like. You know what I’m saying, don’t you? Never give them cause for actual complaint, nothing they can accuse you of. Just have it in your face, in your eyes, and they’ll give you an easier time of it. Denise is all right, a bit of a nutter but fair. Cultivate her friendship. You might need it. Don’t stick up for the weaker ones. I made that mistake. They either learn to take it or to fight back; either way they survive without you getting involved. Now I’m going to ask you to do something, and I swear there’s no weird motive to it. Take the blankets off your bed and put them on mine.’
She grinned at Cathy’s expression and said jovially: ‘Then get in with me. Believe me, this isn’t a sex thing, though it would be if Denise or Harriet said the same thing. This is purely for practical reasons. Two bodies are warmer than one and, believe me, after a night in this room you’ll see exactly what I mean. Like, you’re pretty but you’re not manly enough for me!’
The two girls both giggled then and soon were enscon
ced in one bed.
By morning Cathy understood her new friend perfectly. Even cuddled up together, the room was like an icebox.
Breakfast was cold porridge, and bread and marge. Cathy was given sugar and honey with her porridge, and sugar and milk in her tea. Her new garments were huge and she laughed when Denise called out: ‘Fuck me, it’s the orphan in the storm!’
After breakfast they were all assigned jobs and Cathy was informed that she was to scrub the hallway by the front door with Denise. The work was hard, but at least the movement warmed them up and the scalding water gave their freezing hands some relief.
They chatted amicably as they worked and though the scrubbing was tough, Cathy soon had the swing of things. Denise was good company and regaled Cathy with stories and anecdotes about the school which shocked but intrigued her.
Suddenly, though, Denise went very quiet. Cathy looked at her and realised that something was very wrong.
A shadow passed over them and Cathy stared up into the most terrifying face she had ever seen.
The man was tall, and thin to the point of emaciation. He was in his late fifties or early sixties, it was difficult to tell because of the enormous beard that covered practically three-quarters of his face. It was a gingery colour with a lot of silver in it. Even in the dim light Cathy could see that his eyes were a flat grey and his eyebrows met in the middle, giving him a threatening look.
The worst thing of all was his slack red lips. She could see spittle at the corners of his mouth and he licked at it in an unconscious, habitual way.
‘Who are you?’