Debbie sipped her Pernod and blackcurrant and said waspishly, ‘Well, he must like your personality, that’s all I can say.’
Susan felt her euphoria disappear and answered her sister in similar fashion. ‘Well, there’s no fear of anyone liking you for that reason, is there, you nasty little bitch?’
Debbie stood up unsteadily.
‘You’re right there, Susan, but I wouldn’t want anyone to like me like that. ’Cos it means you’re too ugly to get them any other way, don’t it?’
She lurched off towards the bar and Susan saw her go up to Peter and put her arm around him. Give him a kiss and a cuddle. Watching it depressed her.
Doreen sat in the seat vacated by Debbie and said in Susan’s ear, ‘Look at her, the little fat bitch. Like anyone would fancy that without the help of hallucinogenic drugs!’
The two of them burst out laughing so loudly that everyone turned to stare at them. Debbie looked at them. Guessing the laughter was at her expense she sidled closer to Peter and poked her tongue out at her sister.
Susan gave her a wanker sign, and that made her and Doreen crack up again.
‘I bet he does a lot of that on his ship - wanking, I mean.’
‘Stop it, Dor, he’s a really nice man.’
Doreen nodded.
‘I know, mate, and why ain’t he your man, eh? Think of the life you’d have had with him. Away at sea, only seeing him now and again. Regular money, your own life while he was away. Fuck me, I think I’ll go after him meself!’
Susan grinned.
‘He don’t fancy me. He just likes me, that’s all. As a friend.’
Her voice was wistful now and they stopped talking for a while, both engrossed in their own thoughts. Both wondering what it would be like to be with someone who actually liked you.
Then they saw him push Debbie from him at the bar and her laughter as she nearly fell over, her little fat legs like cricket stumps in her impossibly high heels.
‘Do you know what? She looks just like me mother there, don’t you think, Doreen?’
She nodded sagely. ‘It is your mother, mate. Only a smaller, younger, more vindictive version. I wouldn’t want to be them for all the tea in China. They ain’t women, they’re parasites.’
Susan nodded in agreement, but once again it depressed her.
‘I want to go home now, she’s really pissed me off.’
Doreen picked up her empty glass and chided Susan.
‘Don’t let her see she’s bothering you, she’s just jealous. You’re a nice person, Susan, and they can’t ever take that away from you. Remember that, mate. Always bear it in mind. Now shut up and sit there and wait while I get us a couple more doubles.’
Susan, as usual, did as she was told.
Barry was angry and he was stoned. He had been round a little bird’s house in Manor Park. Christine Carvel was a thirty-year-old mother of five. She still had traces of her former beauty, a fat body but the best nature a woman had ever possessed.
Chrissy saw everything in terms of glowing enjoyment.
For six days since his attack on Susan, Barry had laid up there, being treated like visiting royalty, fed and watered until he felt back to his usual self.
Chrissy had then given him her supply of cocaine and amphetamines and rolled him a few joints to chill him out. Finally getting his head together, he had left her with promises to return soon and repay the compliment.
Chrissy was used to being used by men like Barry. She knew that at some point she would be given a few quid and a few drugs in return. People came to her when they needed a bed for a night or a week, if they were on the run from Old Bill or unhappy wives and girlfriends. She enjoyed the company and took it all for what it was. Thereby never getting any grief and never causing any.
Her children were all the colours of the rainbow and she adored them. But she could not resist a face, especially one as good-looking as Barry Dalston. She had taken him into her bed and had a good few days. Now he was jogging on, she let him go with a smile and a fiver.
That was the type of person she was.
Barry left her with a big smile and a bad case of herpes. But she wouldn’t know that for a while.
As he let himself into his house he was already annoyed. The sulphate and Driminal had made him feel paranoid, and he was convinced Roselle and Susan had conspired against him. In Chrissy’s flat he had lived in a make-believe world of closed curtains, good music and camaraderie. Outside in the real world he was feeling less of the good-natured woman’s vibes. Barry Dalston was suffering from the Pete Paranoids as drug users called a bad come down.
Wendy, lying on the settee after settling the kids in bed, heard his key in the lock and froze. As he came into the lounge she was standing by the kitchen door.
Barry looked at her, saw the fear in her face and was appeased. At least his daughter understood who she was dealing with.
‘Where’s your mother?’
Wendy shrugged. ‘She’s gone out, but she’ll be back soon.’
She knew better than to say Susan had gone down the pub until she saw what kind of mood he was in.
Barry mimicked her voice and stance but she didn’t answer him.
‘What do you mean, gone out? I never said she could go out, did I?’
Wendy could see he was out of his head and tried to appease him. ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea, Dad? Something to eat?’
Barry ignored her. Sitting on the sofa, he took out a small foil packet. Putting it on the table, he told Wendy to bring the mirror from the kitchen. She did as she was told and Barry started to cut the sulphate on the mirror. A razor blade was used to chop it expertly into a fine powder. When he was satisfied he made four fat lines, scraping them into shape, every sound amplified in the quietness of the room.
Then, rolling up a fiver, he snorted two lines one after the other. Holding his head back and hawking in his throat as he felt the first burn.
He looked at Wendy afterwards.
‘Want to try some? Have your first buzz with your old dad, eh?’ He looked almost friendly.
She shook her head violently.
‘I don’t touch drugs.’ Her voice condemned and angered him.
‘I don’t touch drugs,’ he mimicked her once more. ‘You tight-arsed little bitch!’
Wendy wondered what she should do. She daren’t leave the kids with him. In his present mood, if one of them woke up he was liable to give them a good hiding. Then her mother would kill her. She was caught between a rock and a hard place as usual.
‘What were you watching on TV?’
‘Nothing. I was just revising.’
Barry nodded slowly, as if he was too thick to understand what she was talking about. ‘Oh, I see. She was revising. The clever little girl was revising.’ He was talking as if there was another person in the room. He picked up the book she was reading. ‘The Grapes of what?’
‘Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath. It’s a novel by John Steinbeck.’
‘Who the fucking hell is he when he’s at home?’
Barry threw the book down on the floor. ‘Come and sit with your old dad, give him a cuddle.’
Wendy stayed by the door.
He stared at her for a few moments.
‘I just told you to come here.’ He pointed to the floor between his legs. ‘So come here. Now!’
His voice was almost a roar, and thinking of her brother and sisters Wendy walked towards him. He pulled her between his knees and looked her over.
‘There, that wasn’t too hard, was it?’
He was holding her hands in his and she wanted to pull away from him, run out of the house, but knew she couldn’t.
‘You’re growing up, girl, look at the tits on you already. Your mother was like that - ripe and ready for action. I bet all the boys want to go out with you, don’t they?’
She nodded.
‘I don’t want to go out with them, though. I want to go to university first. Travel the world one day, I w
ill.’
It was important to her that he should know what she was really like. That he understood her and her needs and wants.
Barry laughed. ‘No fucking chance! You’ll end up like all the rest of them. A belly full of arms and legs, married to a fucking waster. Your mother had all those delusions years ago. Well, I soon knocked them out of her and I’ll knock them out of you.’
Wendy bit on her lip.
Barry looked into his daughter’s face. She really was a good-looking girl. She was Susan if Susan had got the breaks. She had beautiful hair, thick and dark, like a chestnut halo around her head. Already she looked older than her years. Eighteen maybe. She had the body of a woman, though, with full breasts and long legs. She was like a young Joan Collins. All cheekbones and languid eyes.
He felt the pull of her then, the allure of her youthfulness.
He just knew she was going to be taken down by some young boy with rough dirty hands and nicotine breath. Some little shit would talk her round, give her the chat, and she would lie on her back for him. Barry knew exactly what would happen. Christ knows, he had done it enough times himself.
He pulled her on to his lap.
‘Give your old dad a kiss.’
She tried to get up again and he laughed as she fought with him.
He was joking with her at first.
But the feel of her gave his joking an added kick. He made a grab for her breasts, and then she really started to fight him. She could feel his hands all over, feel him laughing at her and her attempts to escape from his grasp. She elbowed him in his stomach, a violent shove that had the strength to knock him on to the floor.
As Barry landed heavily on his elbow he knocked the coffee table flying. Empty coffee cups and small cheap ornaments were crushed. Susan’s pride and joy, a large glass bowl where she kept fruit and sweets at Christmas time, was shattered.
Wendy pulled herself to her feet and made to run, but she had to step across her father and as she did so he grabbed at her ankle, sending her sprawling on the floor. Landing heavily on the broken glass, she shrieked as she felt a sliver enter her knee.
Then her father was straddling her, sitting heavily on her stomach as he slapped her three times across the face.
‘Fucking calm down, you silly little bitch.’
She bucked her hips in an attempt to throw him off her once more.
‘Leave me alone, Dad, let me get up.’ She was talking through gritted teeth and, looking down at his daughter, Barry realised she felt no actual fear of him. She was frightened of what she thought he was going to do, not frightened of him personally.
In his amphetamine-induced rage he felt this was wrong. That she should at least respect him.
‘You’re like your mother, Wendy, think you’re better than me. You all think you’re better than me. You, Roselle, your fucking mother. You all think you’re something special just because you’re women. Because you still have that fucking split-arse between your legs.’
He forced his face closer to hers.
‘Well, you’re not. Someone once said to me, “How can you ever trust anything that bleeds once a month for a week and doesn’t fucking die?” Well, they were right. You’re all evil fucking bitches. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Well, do you?’
He was bawling at her and she started to cry at his words.
‘Please, Dad, please . . . Let me get up. I’m hurting. You’re hurting me.’
He stared down into her face, her beautiful face, strained and white. She was his daughter, his own flesh and blood. But was she, though? Was she maybe the product of Joey and his own daughter? In his paranoid state this thought was latched on to so he could justify to himself what he wanted to do to her. The sex act was Barry’s way of punishing women. He could plant his seed, expend his lust, make the woman feel degraded. Make it good or bad for them, depending how he was feeling.
He thought back to her birth, to the trouble she had caused him with her crying and griping. Susan had no time for him or anyone except her fucking kids after that.
He was going to teach them all a lesson. Wendy, his mother, his wife, even Roselle. In his befuddled mind he believed he would also get one over on his lover by what he was about to do.
He put his hands on his daughter’s breasts and kneaded them, a vicious action that made her squirm in front of his eyes.
‘You’re a cunt, just like your mother . . .’
Wendy was sobbing hysterically now and cried out in distress.
‘Dad, please! Let me get up. I’m bleeding and hurting . . .’
Barry laughed. ‘I ain’t your dad, Joey’s your dad, love, like he was dad to all of you. Your mother was shagging her own father for years. He ain’t your granddad, he’s your father. Not me. Rosie’s mine, and only her. The rest of you disgust me.’
Wendy fell quiet as she listened to him. She was sure he believed what he was saying. Wendy knew of the tortuous relationship between her mother and her granddad. How June displayed jealousy at times if they were left alone together. Her granddad was a great one for wandering hands around on his little granddaughters too.
‘You’re all interbreeds, girl. Fucking duelling banjos, you lot.’
Alana and little Barry were standing at the door looking at him. He made eye contact with the two children framed in the doorway. Barry was holding a teddy bear in his arms, a scruffy thing covered in Weetabix and rusk. Susan had to sneak it from him every now and then while he slept to give it a wash.
Barry, somewhere in his fuddled mind, knew he had gone too far this time. But the drugs gave him a feeling of omnipotence that took over.
His daughter’s crushed expression made him sure that what he was doing was right.
‘Get back to bed, you two, or you’ll fucking know all about it.’
He pretended to rise and they ran back up the stairs where a crying Rosie was lying in her cot, wondering what all the noise was about and why she wasn’t with the others in the thick of it all as usual.
Wendy saw her father’s face coming towards hers and instinctively bit him. Her teeth sank into his cheekbone, the finely sculpted cheekbone she had inherited from him. She bit down as hard as she could, tasting his blood and her own fear as she did so.
Then Barry really hit her. Pain and anger mingled to make him demented. Wendy’s terrified cries could be heard all over the house. Rosie was sitting on the bed with Barry and Alana as they all listened to the fracas down below.
As their sister’s animal cries of pain and shock reached a crescendo, little Barry lay back on the bed and put his tattered bear over his face. They were all crying except Rosie who had spied a half-eaten biscuit on the floor and was pointing at it, trying to make Alana understand exactly what she wanted. For the first time in her short life she was ignored as Alana sat mute, silently crying as she guessed exactly what was happening downstairs in the front room.
‘Did you see her? My God, I thought I’d die laughing.’
Susan and Doreen were walking home from the pub.
‘I can’t believe she did it, can you? I mean, imagine showing yourself up like that. And over a piece of shit like him and all.’
Doreen and Susan roared with laughter again.
‘Still, he is her husband. You could see Debbie’s point of view really. But the punch she gave that bird! Jesus, I felt it and I was at the other side of the bar.’
Susan nodded.
‘Poor Debbie. That’s the type of stunt Barry would pull, inviting his bird on a night out with his wife. I feel sorry for her really. I know she can be a mare but I mean, Dor, what a sod to do that to her.’
They were in the lane at the back of the houses.
‘I’ll see what my lot have been up to then I’ll give you a knock if you fancy a cup of tea.’
‘All right, Doreen. Give us ten minutes to get sorted and come on in.’
Susan let herself in at the back door and was surprised to see her four children sitting at the kitchen t
able. One look at Wendy’s face told her all she needed to know.
‘Where is he?’ Her voice was low and taut.
Taking her daughter’s face gently in her hands she looked at the marks and the bruising on it.
‘What happened? Was he drunk?’
Wendy nodded then she spoke sadly, her voice husky as if she had not used it in years.
‘And he was on drugs, Mum. He was like a maniac. He made me . . . He made me . . .’
She couldn’t finish the sentence and Susan, looking at the blood on the girl’s dressing gown, knew exactly what he had made her do.
‘He said it was all right because he wasn’t me dad. He said Granddad was my dad.’ Wendy was sobbing now, her shoulders heaving with every word.
The other children were quiet, as if they knew something momentous had happened. Even little Rosie sat quietly on the floor eating a rusk, her face blank, eyes glued to her sister’s face.
Susan felt the air leave her body as she realised exactly what had befallen her precious daughter.
She had been here herself, knew the self-disgust that her daughter was feeling inside, knew the pain of the knowledge that the man who should be protecting you was using you as no man should use a woman, not even a paid prostitute. Knew the anger and the sense of futility in her daughter’s heart as she tried to come to terms with what had happened to her. Knew it would haunt her all her life, ruin every good day as she thought back on what had happened to her.
How it would make her feel dirty inside. How she would never again be the girl she had been because that girl had gone. Would never come back. Neither would trust. After all, who could you ever trust again if you couldn’t trust your own flesh and blood?
Doreen came in then, a big smile on her face until she took in the scene before her. Her bleached blonde hair and heavy blue eye-shadow looked false in the bright kitchen; her tight top and high heels made her look like a pretend person. A Barbie doll look that suited her in a plastic, pretend way. Her bright red lips were parted in shock and horror as she looked at the girl in front of her.
‘Oh, Sue, what’s he done now?’
Susan felt the trembling begin. That utter shock that made her feel as if she was moving through water. She turned to her friend.