Better to retreat on this occasion, and gather his ammunition for the future. Freddie put his drink down and walked silently from the room.
When the front door slammed Maggie turned to Jimmy and said sadly, ‘Thanks, Jimmy.’
‘I liked the way you fronted him. In his book I should have slapped you one upside your head. But he’s a Neanderthal, he don’t mean the half of it.’
‘I can’t have him here any more, Jimmy, not after this little lot. Poor Kim, and fucking Jackie, well . . .’
‘I understand. I’ll keep his visits to the minimum, all right?’
She smiled her thanks and he hugged her to him. For once she let him, relaxed against him.
At the breakfast table she was even relaxed with Jimmy Junior, even hugged him with real care and attention. He felt as if they had crossed over some invisible line, but why he should think that he had no idea.
Maddie, who had stayed for breakfast, winked at Jimmy from across the table, and it occurred to him that Freddie had left without even acknowledging his own mother’s existence.
Chapter Twenty
Maggie and Rox were laughing as they chose the material for Rox’s bedroom curtains. She was finally getting married to Dicky, and her happiness was complete.
‘Oh, Maggie, that is lovely. You have such good taste.’ Maggie smiled. She had chosen a soft grey silk that she knew would look stunning against the pale pink paint that Rox was determined to have on her walls.
‘Once you get married you have to live with this for a long time, so make sure you choose something that is not only good quality, but also durable.’ She could hear herself giving this child advice, and all she wanted to do was go back and drag that lazy drunken sister of hers out with them.
Not that Jackie would be any use, but it was terrible that everything to do with this wedding and their new home was left to her to sort out. Maggie didn’t mind, it was just that she knew Rox really wanted her parents to be involved. Her mother at least - Rox had never been her father’s biggest fan.
Jimmy Junior ran up to her and Maggie picked him up with difficulty. At four he was getting a large lad, and she kissed him on his cheek as he said in excitement, ‘I saw a clown, Mummy.’
The clown was a poster on the wall, and she knew he would ask to go to the circus, and she knew she would take him.
‘It’s the circus, Mummy.’
‘And you are going, honey!’
He laughed out loud and she kissed him once more.
Rox watched them and sighed happily. Maggie was all right now, and had been for some time. It was as if she had changed overnight, she was happier, more carefree. And Rox loved her more than anyone in her life except her Dicky boy.
But Maggie went off at the drop of a hat these days, and everyone knew it. One word out of place and she was up for a fight. It was so out of character, yet so much a part of her now, part of this new and improved Maggie, that everyone just accepted it.
‘You know you have to sort me out first, before you take any kind of a cut. That is what happens in this place no matter who you are.’
Ozzy’s voice was heavy with anger and the man he was talking to was wondering if he was in with a chance of retribution. He looked around him, and wisely decided he wasn’t.
Ozzy was impressed, though, that the young chap had actually considered trying to fight his way out of this reprimand, and this endeared the boy to him.
‘Look, Ozzy, I didn’t think you would be interested, mate.’
Ozzy laughed and shook his head slowly as if in the presence of the stupidest man in history. And he wondered if Carl Waters was the stupidest man in history.
He spoke loudly in his deep, serious voice, because unfortunately he had no other. ‘Do not take me for a cunt. I know you run with a good crowd, but remember, son, they are out there, and you are in here. Any more cuntish behaviour and you will be on the hospital wing, see.’
Carl nodded, but he knew instinctively that Ozzy wasn’t going to hold this against him. Ozzy was a realist and he would probably have tried it on just the same if he had been in his place.
‘I am sorry, Ozzy. I am a mug, you are right. I just wanted a bit of dosh, that’s all, and I have a little bloke who is willing to weigh me out.’
Ozzy grinned. ‘You will ply your trade, son, I’ve no dispute with that. You will just trade in my name and give me a good drink, see. We ain’t fucking that behind the times, though it seems like we are still in a feudal society to newcomers.’
It was more than the lad had expected, and he left the cell with a cheery demeanour a few minutes later.
Ozzy slipped a tablet under his tongue, and marvelled at a young man who had so much going for him, yet was happily taking the fall for a couple of complete fucking tossers. Carl had been on a robbery with two so-called Faces. The filth had jumped them on the chop, where they would change cars, clothes and if necessary divvy up the money before going their separate ways, which meant they must have been grassed up. How else would filth know where the chop was going to take place? This was a calculated fucking event, and this poor boy had been the fall guy.
So he had been caught, had kept stumm about who his accomplices were, and got himself an eighteen stretch. All his youth would be spent in this dump, while the older, wiser ‘Faces’ would still be on the outside plying their trades.
It was a fucking crying shame really, but the boy could be of use to him. He was young, he was willing and he could keep his trap shut.
Ozzy was ill. For a while now he had been on heart medication and he wasn’t sure if he could do this any more. He needed to talk to Jimmy properly, and he decided it would be on the next visit. He was losing the urge for it all, and once that happened in their environment, you were living on borrowed time.
His sister Patricia was still trumping anything with a nice smile and a big cock, Freddie Jackson included, and he didn’t entirely trust her any longer. As she was getting older she was getting less choosy about who she knocked about with, and this was becoming a worry to him.
He had serious poke and serious business to sort out, and now he was ill he had to do it. He had worked hard for his wedge and he had enjoyed the making of his money. So many people lost sight of that buzz when they made it to the big time, lost the want, and lost the respect for money that was actually a requisite for being rich. The spending of it had never been his forte, but the gathering of it was something he had lain awake at nights planning. He wanted to give his wealth to someone like him, someone who would use it wisely, someone who would understand just what it had taken to gather it in the first place.
He had to get his house in order, and he had to do it sooner rather than later.
He snapped his head around to look at his portable TV. Emmerdale was just starting and he loved to see the wide open spaces it showed. He was sorry now he had never bothered with the Dales when he had been on the out. They looked lovely, stunning. So he enjoyed watching them by proxy, on Emmerdale Farm.
The birds were fit as well, so it was not a completely wasted half hour.
But he wished he could explain to the general population that even though they might go to Spain or America and travel all over the world, they did not know their own country. This annoyed him now, because he had realised over the years just what a green and pleasant land it actually was. If he had a chance to do anything different, it would be to make sure he travelled around England. People came from far and wide to live here. They saw it as a haven and as a place to make something of themselves, and it took all this time in stir for him to understand just where those people were coming from. Like the old adage, you never knew what you had till it was gone.
Well, that could be said of the people he had been dealing with all these years.
He was finally going to make his last will and testament, and he knew it would cause fucking ructions. So be it.
‘Where is he, Jackie?’
She was panicking and this was annoying her hus
band.
‘I don’t know, Freddie.’
‘Then you fucking well should! What the fuck are you getting my wedge for, eh? You can’t even look out for little Fred. You know he is on a curfew, so where the fuck is he?’
Jackie could have skinned her son alive at this moment because his fuck-up had caused them to have a row. Freddie had put him on a curfew and, unlike every other time he had tried to rein his son in, this had been adhered to because Freddie had made a point of checking his son was at home. She was happy about this in one way, because it meant he spent more time with them, and not with his other women. But it was also nerve-wracking because Little Freddie didn’t think he should be timed, thought he was too old and experienced to be treated like a child.
His father was not a man to be mugged off but although she had tried to explain this to her son many times, he wouldn’t listen to her. He had never listened to her, that was the trouble.
As they stood in the front room like adversaries in a boxing match, the front door opened and Little Freddie strolled in with all the arrogance he possessed. He was enormous, and he was Freddie’s double, but unlike his father, who had been a tearaway at his age, this boy was in deep trouble. It was only Freddie who could keep him in check. Jackie knew this, and she was glad someone could keep him in line, but she still could not bear to see him told off, in trouble or accused of anything.
Little Freddie stood in front of his mother and father and cleared his throat noisily. It was a calculated insult.
Freddie looked at his son and wondered for the hundredth time why he bothered with him. But he was not the usual little fuck, he was a dangerous little fuck. Well, the buck stopped here. He pointed his finger at him and said loudly, ‘Where you fucking been, then?’
Jackie tried to lighten the situation by saying cheerfully, ‘Here he is! I told you he would be here, didn’t I?’
Freddie pushed her away from him and, looking at his son, said in a deep and angry voice, ‘You telling me you can’t tell the time?’
Little Freddie was staring at his father, and there was not one iota of fear in him despite his father’s anger. Freddie knew this boy was out of order, that he was off the fucking scale and he was determined to bring him back to the fold, whatever it took.
The questions and answers then came thick and fast and without any kind of hesitation on either side.
‘I said, where have you fucking been?’
‘Out.’
‘Out where?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Just out with me mates.’
‘What mates?’
‘Just mates.’
‘Do they have names?’
‘Do yours?’
Freddie’s fist connected with his son’s chin so fast that the boy didn’t have time to move away and protect himself. He was not expecting it, and he was even more surprised when his father followed through with another punch and then began beating him viciously.
Jackie watched her son as he was punched across the room, landing in a crumpled heap on the sofa, and she saw his father descend on him with that look on his face she deplored. She was screaming now, she was like a mad woman. No one hurt her baby, no one.
‘Leave him alone!’
Freddie grabbed her arms and forcefully threw her from the living room, shutting the door behind her. Then he carried on the interrogation as if they had never been interrupted.
‘What mates?’
His son was looking at him with open hatred and Freddie didn’t care. He needed to know where he had been.
‘Were you in the subway today?’
He saw Little Freddie’s eyes widen and knew that what he had suspected was true, and no one was more sorry than him.
‘So you were, then?’
Little Freddie shook his head in denial, with tears in his eyes. ‘No, Dad, please, it wasn’t me, it was them . . .’
Freddie looked at his son and wondered if he should do the world a favour and wipe him off the face of the earth now.
‘Where the fuck is he, Jimmy?’
Jimmy held his arms out in supplication. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know that? What am I all of a sudden, Freddie’s fucking dad?’
The anger in his voice did not go unnoticed by the other men in the pub’s back room. Glenford, ever the peacemaker, said in a reasonable way, ‘Relax, this is only a meet.’
Amos Beardsley knew he had overstepped the mark and was contrite. Everyone knew Freddie was a nutter, but Jimmy was the one to be seriously frightened of. Jimmy didn’t need anger to hurt people, Jimmy needed just cause. A different thing altogether. With Jimmy, violence was always the last resort, and that meant whoever was in the frame was in deep shit.
He might have started out as Ozzy’s front man but he was a main man now in his own right and, like all the big money makers, no one heard about him until it was too late. He surrounded himself with names, and yet he had never personally even had a parking ticket.
‘Any chance of a drink?’
Glenford’s voice was jovial. They all breathed a sigh of relief, including Jimmy, who knew what his friend was doing. ‘Come with me, Glen, and we’ll bring in a few bottles.’
They left the room. Once outside and in the bar area, Jimmy said quietly, ‘I could fucking stomp that cunt, I really could.’
Glenford ordered the drinks and then pulled Jimmy to the main door and out into the cold night air. ‘Stop it, Jim, you need to do damage limitation now. Freddie has had them over. You know that, I know it, he knows it, but more importantly, they know it. Now, boy, you have to give them their due. Do it with a bit of respect and they will let it go. Then you have to collar Freddie and read him the riot act once and for all.’
Jimmy didn’t answer, but Glenford’s easy-going, slowly spoken but serious-sounding West Indian accent was penetrating his brain.
‘Me mean it, Jimmy. This have affected my earn as well, you know, and my boys are fit to be tied. Blood is blood, we accept that, but this is not the first time. They have only come to you now because Freddie won’t listen to any kind of reason. Now he has disrespected them by not even bothering to turn up here tonight. These are Africans, and they won’t care who he is, or who he working for. They will not forget this. And they are earners, boy, good earners. Not a fucking liability like some I could mention.’
Jimmy looked at his friend, and he was a friend. He loved this man and he knew Glenford loved him. In their world, real friends were few and far between.
‘What am I going to do about him, Glen? It’s like he thinks he is a separate entity, like he believes he is a law unto himself.’
Glenford smiled then, that friendly gap-toothed smile that had guaranteed him women and sexual favours all his life, and he answered his friend now with absolute truthfulness. ‘But he is his own law, Jimmy. You have seen to that. No matter what he does, you protect him, and now I am going to tell you something that you won’t want to hear. He cunts you, he has even tried to cunt you to me. Many times, and he knows we are close. In drink he is a fucking treacherous bastard, and you got to rein him in, sooner rather than later, because if you don’t, you will lose your self-respect as well as everyone else’s.’
Glenford was telling Jimmy something he had known for a long time but had not allowed himself to accept. He had let himself believe that Freddie lived by the same rules as he did, but he knew in his heart that Freddie was not capable of that. Freddie saw himself as above them all, himself included.
He had to put the hard word on him, and he had to do it soon, but he was dreading it. Not because he was frightened of him, but because he knew it would be the end of them.
‘Leave him alone, Freddie, you’ll fucking kill him.’ Jackie had run back into the room and was trying to drag her husband off her son and stop the beating that was starting to look like a murder.
‘You little bastard, you fucking little cunt!’
Freddie was so angry he was spitting, and Jackie knew in her heart that this was serious b
ecause he wouldn’t bother unless it was for a good reason.
She pushed herself in between them. ‘Tell me what he’s supposed to have done.’
She sounded like she knew he was going to give her a load of old fanny. As if he would cunt his own son unless he had to! This was not getting them anywhere. All the time his mother was there Little Freddie felt that he would be in with a chance.
So Freddie pushed his wife away roughly, but even he felt sorry for the woman who was still trying to hang on to a child, to a dream, that had never been there.
Little Freddie hated her. He hated everyone.
Jackie, the drunken fucking prat, really seemed to think that Little Freddie was just a tearaway, that everything he did was just kids playing. She had to know by now that was not true, she had to have realised by now that he was not normal, that he was lacking something, was not the full ten shillings.
‘Well, come on, tell me what you think he’s done now.’
She was actually fronting him up, yet he could hear the fear in her voice. She suspected her son of being the perpetrator of something terrible, but she was more scared of hearing about it than of the actual deed. So, as usual, she would try to pretend that it was everyone else’s fault but his.
She was yelling at the top of her voice. ‘You never give him a chance, do you, Freddie? You always try and make out that he is doing something wrong. Well, he was with me all day. What have you got to say about that, then?’
Freddie shook his head, as was his usual habit when faced with Jackie and her ramblings. ‘Go and have a drink, Jack. I brought you in a bottle of good vodka to keep you out of my fucking face while I sorted this ponce out once and for all.’
‘But what is he supposed to have done?’
Freddie decided to tell her the score. He dropped his son on to the floor without even looking at him. He then walked his wife out to their kitchen, or what passed as a kitchen anyway, and he said in total seriousness, ‘Pour yourself a large one, Jack, you are going to need it.’