His younger daughter brought him in a cup of tea and he smiled at her like a man who had won the pools and then found out his son-in-law had died.
Happy could not even begin to describe it.
This was the new order and it was not before time.
Freddie and Jimmy were tired, but they had to finish what they were doing. It was imperative that they made sure their tracks were covered.
As they carried the man out of the house they started laughing. Jimmy knew it wasn’t funny, but Freddie’s eyes as he looked at the inert form between them had made him crack up.
‘When I saw he was dead it shit me right up. At least it got me out of that fucking room, though!’
Freddie laughed again. ‘He’s fucking dead all right. But what made me start laughing just now was remembering your face when I finally opened the bedroom door. You did not even hear us nailing it shut, you mad bastard.’
Jimmy grinned. ‘Thanks to you I was out of me fucking box!’
‘Too right.’
They laid the man in the boot of the taxi they had purloined. He stared up at them with a half smile and milky white eyes
Slamming the boot shut, Freddie smiled. ‘I’ll deal with this. You get yourself home and ready for the last walk. The condemned man, that’s what you are today.’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘No I ain’t.’
He was serious and Freddie watched the boy’s anger as it rose to the surface.
‘I have the best little bird in the world, she is good and kind and decent. She would stand by me through anything and she is a little grafter.’
‘’Course she is, mate.’
It was said as if he had never heard such tripe in his life, and as he walked round to the driver’s seat, Jimmy followed him and grabbed his arm.
As he pulled Freddie round towards him, he said quietly, but with enough menace to start a real argument, ‘Don’t mug her off, Freddie, she is everything to me. No one will ever take her place. She is my life, she is everything good that I have, and no one will ever talk about her without respect.’
It was a threat, it was a starting point for war. It was the most truthful thing he had ever said.
Freddie took a deep breath. Looking into Jimmy’s eyes he saw real love, and it wasn’t just for Maggie, it was for him. Jimmy was asking him not to ever make a crack about Maggie when she was his wife. He was asking him to afford her respect in every way possible, he was asking him to remember they were blood brothers, that they had ties that went beyond everything they had ever known.
Freddie was in a quandary. He knew that this was tantamount to mutiny, but he also understood where Jimmy was coming from. He loved the little whore, and she was a whore. He only had to sit it out and wait for her to blot her copybook, because she would. They all did in the end.
So he smiled and said gently, ‘It was a joke, mate. You’ve got a little fucking blinder there. Ease up, boy, it’s your fucking wedding day.’
Jimmy watched the way Freddie avoided his eyes, and in that moment he saw him properly for the first time in years. Really saw him. From his gold snide Rolex to his diamond signet ring. He saw the ragged nails on his hands and the stubble on his chin. The rough silk suit, and his hand-made shoes. Even with all the money he was earning he still looked dilapidated, he looked seedy and worst of all, he looked what he was.
A cheap hood.
They were a lot of things, but cheap hoods should not be one of them. They were the best you were going to get in their world and Jimmy had made a conscious effort to reflect that in his manners and his dress. Freddie, as always, just expected everything to come to him because of his attitude and his fearsome reputation. The drugs and the loans were just coming into their own. People who had never had the money before now wanted recreational puff, or cocaine. Speed was for the cheapos, the Giro generation. The new designer drugs were for the new generation of people who worked hard and played hard.
This new world was going to give Jimmy everything he had ever dreamed of or wanted, and he knew at that moment that this man, the man he loved more than any other, would always be his Achilles heel.
Their world was changing and they had to change with it.
Freddie was what Ozzy called a romancer, and Jimmy finally understood what that meant. He suddenly felt depressed, but he drove back to his mother’s house and forced himself to get into the enjoyment of what was to be his wedding day.
Jackie was dressed in a blue Ossie Clark trouser suit that had walked out of Maison Riche in Ilford High Street hidden underneath a sheepskin coat, and had then made its way to her house at half the asking price. It had bell-bottom trousers and was hand-stitched. In baby-blue crepe, it was cut for a woman with large breasts and Jackie’s spilled over the neckline and made her look sexier than she had in years.
The kids all looked lovely, dressed like little angels in their bridesmaid dresses, and Freddie was nowhere to be seen.
Jackie had already drunk a bottle of wine and it was only eleven o’clock in the morning. The car was picking them up in an hour and she was sorry now that she was so early for once. Normally she’d be late for everything, including her own wedding.
Baby Freddie was gurgling away and little Rox was helping hold his bottle of tea for him even though he was more than capable of holding it himself. He loved tea and Maggie, being the fussy bitch she was, had dropped off a new bottle the day before, one that didn’t have tea stains inside it. Jackie smiled as she opened another bottle of cheap German wine. Wait until marvellous Maggie had a few fucking ankle biters, see how she got on then!
At the moment she was like all new brides, dreaming of her lovely home and her perfect kids. Well, she had news for her - they all dreamed of that. Reality unfortunately made you see the error of your ways. Marriage was like war, and if you were lucky you managed to win a few battles.
She had watched her sister the last few months, with her wedding lists and her swatches, and now she looked at the girls in their peach-coloured bridesmaid dresses and stifled the urge to laugh once more. Madame Modèle had been there at eight that morning and put all their hair up, and she had then decorated the French pleats with little peach-coloured flowers.
Jackie’s own hair looked stunning and she was grateful for the woman’s light touch.
She could not help feeling jealous because this was so different to her wedding. That had been a quick marriage when she had been five months pregnant because Freddie had not been sure it was what he wanted to do.
The humiliation still stung.
It was only the way Freddie had ridiculed all these arrangements that had made her feel better about it all. He had taken the piss from day one, and then when Maggie and Jimmy had bought the house he had slaughtered them.
Deep inside, however, she knew that it was not funny, in fact it was wonderful what they had achieved, considering their ages. But even though she knew that, her natural antagonism and feeling of inferiority stopped her enjoying what they had achieved with them. Her sister had eaten, shat and slept this wedding, and she had not even tried to help her, not really. She had taken her cue from Freddie as always, and even the bridesmaid dresses had only come about because the woman who was making them lived locally and had been happy to come to her house.
She was drunk now and she knew it. The world was suddenly taking on a rosy glow and the kids were looking at her with that look they had but she was determined that no one was going to piss on her firework today.
Freddie still wasn’t home when they got into the wedding car and left for the church.
Joseph walked up the aisle of the Holy Trinity Church in Ilford and felt so proud he wanted to burst.
Jimmy was watching from the front pew and he could see the worried expression on his face. It was only then that he realised they had no best man.
Freddie was nowhere to be seen.
He felt Maggie tense beside him and automatically slowed down. The wedding march was playing and the rest of their famil
y and friends were there. No one, not even Freddie Jackson, was going to ruin this day.
As they approached the altar he heard the sighs of the women. They were all remarking, he was sure, on how beautiful his daughter looked.
And she was beautiful. She was stunning and she was his heart.
He could hear Lena crying and smiled to himself. Bless her, at least this time she was crying for the right reasons. Last time she had been crying because she had known her elder daughter was about to make the biggest mistake of her life. That had been proved time and time again. Where was her prick of a husband, anyway? He should have been here by now. Since the boy had been born he had been a bit better. At least he came home more often than he ever had before.
Personally, Joseph couldn’t take to the child, not that he would ever say that out loud. His wife and all the other women in the family thought baby Freddie was the second coming. But he had his father’s shifty eyes, and he was a lazy little fucker. Blood will out, as his old father used to say, and he had always been right.
Joseph was annoyed that even on his daughter’s big day Freddie somehow managed to overshadow it. Maggie smiled at him as he lifted her veil over her head, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a skinny black man with dreadlocks and a morning suit moving along the front row and sitting himself next to Jimmy. He guessed this was the new best man, and held back his anger that Freddie, as usual, could not be depended on.
Maggie was finally married, and even though she had not expected Glenford Prentiss as the best man he had done an admirable job at such short notice. Jimmy had become very good friends with him, and she liked him a lot. He was nice, his girlfriend Soraya was a star, and they had had some great nights out together.
Jimmy was acting as if nothing was amiss but she knew he must be really smarting, because unless Freddie had been nicked, he had more or less snubbed them both on the most important day of their lives. Even Jackie was looking sheepish, so it showed Maggie how serious this breach of etiquette was.
In her heart of hearts, though, she hoped he didn’t turn up. He was a loose cannon and she wanted the reception to go off without a hitch, a fight or drunken brawling. Without Freddie there, the odds of anything like that happening were cut by ninety per cent. But she was happy - he was finally her husband and so for her Jimmy’s sake she hoped that Freddie would turn up just to put his mind at rest and make his day.
Jimmy kissed her hard on the lips outside the church and everyone cheered, but she could feel the tension in him and cursed the man who even on her big day could take the shine away without a thought. She smiled her best smile, though. Whatever she felt inside she was not going to let anyone see it. They were husband and wife and that was all that mattered.
Maddie was sipping a brandy and Coke and watching her grandson being taken round the room and shown off. It was a lovely reception, and she wished her husband could have been persuaded to leave the house to enjoy it. She had told everyone that he had the flu, and this flu had been around for so long no one expected anything else. It was like he was dead, but she had not buried him.
Freddie’s absence from the church had been noticed and, she was sure, commented on. But inside, like Maggie, she hoped that he kept away. He ruined everything he touched, he was like the Jonah in the old myths. He was her son and she hated him these days.
She sighed and swallowed down her drink in one go. It was difficult, this constant smiling and pretending everything was hunky-dory when in reality all she wanted to do was place her head on the table and cry until she had no more tears left. But she couldn’t. It was all about the con, all about how you were perceived. She was too old for this game. She had lost the urge for it many years before, and now all she wanted was to go home and sit with the husband she loved and who smiled at her and agreed with everything she said.
She hoped that young Jimmy and his new wife had a better shot at marriage than they had. She had a feeling that they were going to fare better than most because, as young as they were, they were so obviously in love. But then so had been the majority of the people in this room on their wedding days. It was a matter of whether that love survived the trials and tribulations of everyday life.
As Lena told anyone who would listen, Maggie wasn’t even pregnant, they were young and in love, simple as that.
If only things could stay that simple.
Freddie and Patricia were in bed, and even though he was out of order, the chance to be with her was too good to miss. At least that is what he told himself, though really he knew she was an excuse.
He had dropped the taxi off at a scrap-metal yard in South London and watched as it had been crushed with Hapless Harry in the boot, then he had gone back to the house to make sure they had cleaned away everything to do with the man. He knew the girls would not be able to resist using any credit cards that might be floating around. He had disappeared, and that was that. The last thing they needed was his cards being kited around Brentford shopping centre.
Then Patricia had offered him a lift, because he had no car and had been dropped back at the house by one of the men from the scrappy who was after a freebie with the girls for his time and effort. He had realised then that the wedding was a no go, and in fact he’d known all along that he was not going to show up. He would have started a fight with a complete stranger if he’d had to in order to keep away.
Something inside him had berated him, told him that nothing should keep him away from Jimmy’s big day. That it would cause bad blood, because Jimmy had put a lot of store on his wedding, and he also put a lot of store on Freddie being his best man. It was an honour, and on one level he was gutted that he had let him down, but he also knew he would now be the talk of the wedding, and, like Jackie, he needed to be the centre of attention no matter what.
Patricia got out of the bed and lit a cigarette. She sighed and yawned. ‘You had better get your arse in gear and show your face, hadn’t you?’
He sighed. ‘Bit late now.’ He grinned lazily at her and patted the sheets. ‘Come back to bed, I’ve fucked meself now anyway.’
His arrogance, as far as she could see, knew no bounds. She stood up and said nonchalantly, ‘No way! I am invited to the reception and I am going, mate. I like little Jimmy and so does Ozzy. I have to give them their wedding present, Ozzy spent ages agonising over it.’
With those few words Freddie finally realised exactly what he had done. He would have to justify a blanking of this magnitude with something big.
The Irish club was packed now, and the reception was in full swing. Even the priest was drunk, and leading a private singsong of Irish rebels’ songs in the corner by the bar.
Maggie was still wearing her long ivory dress and her hair was still perfect, and Jimmy gazed at her in wonderment. She was finally his, and they were going to be together for ever.
There was plenty of food, the drink was flowing freely, everyone was having the time of their lives, yet for all his smiling and joking Jimmy had never taken his eyes off the door.
Freddie had been a complete no-show.
He felt in his pocket for the keys given to him by Patricia. They were the keys to a small hairdresser’s in Silvertown, and he was astonished at Ozzy’s generosity. He had yet to tell Maggie but he was saving it for later, for the right moment. When he had explained that to Pat, she had understood his reasoning and told him he was an old romantic at heart.
He had responded with a smile. ‘I hope so. I want her to have all the romance and love she can handle.’
Pat had walked away then, and he would have laid money that she had tears in her steely green eyes.
Glenford was talking about his Irish grandfather and everyone around him was in stitches. He had made the day for them, had stepped into the breech, as they say, and Jimmy would be grateful to him for that until the day he died. The wedding had been a success, but to him it had been marred by Freddie’s absence. He also knew he would never forgive Freddie for this humiliation.
&n
bsp; Maggie went to him then, and she slipped into his arms comfortably. He held her tight and they swayed together to Teddy Pendergrass’s ‘Love TKO’, a record they had made love to so many times. Feeling his disappointment over Freddie’s disregard for them she whispered, ‘I love you, Jimmy Jackson.’
It was heartfelt and, looking into her deep-blue eyes, he decided then and there that he was not going to let Freddie ruin this moment, this day, or this wonderful journey they were about to embark on. He would look after this girl, and he would try to ensure that she never knew an unhappy day in her life. And if she ever did, it would not be because of him.
‘Maggie, I love you, girl, and I promise you will never know hurt from me.’
Jackie was dancing nearby with Joseph and, hearing the words, she wanted to cry. Not just for them and their obvious happiness, but because she was alone and she was living a lie. She saw Jimmy kiss her sister gently on the lips, his arms protective as he held her, and her sister’s eyes so trusting and so bright as he whispered in her ear.
‘Ozzy sent you something wonderful, baby.’
Maggie was nonplussed and she laughed as she said, ‘What? What you on about?’
Pat was nearby now because Jimmy had motioned to her to join them. Jimmy placed the keys in Maggie’s hand and she stared at them in bewilderment.
‘What are these for, then?’
Pat took her cue and said happily, ‘It’s a salon, babe, and it’s yours. Ozzy has also earmarked ten grand for you to do it up exactly how you want.’
Maggie’s scream could be heard all over the Irish club. People snapped their heads in her direction and then smiled as they realised she was squealing with happiness. She was hugging Patricia and then jumping up and down with glee as she told everyone what had just happened.