Anyone Who Had a Heart (11 page)

Marcie felt as though someone had poured iced water over her. The last person she wanted to see was Alan Taylor.

Marcie pushed him away, though in that crush it wasn’t easy.

‘Let me just hold you,’ he said, caressing her hair as he held her close.

Marcie found it impossible to move away. The crowds pressed too close and set her heart racing.

Alan’s breath stunk of booze. He couldn’t possibly smell that bad after just an hour or two. He’d had to have been boozing all day.

She saw her father’s face contorted with rage, his anger now directed at his one-time friend, Alan Taylor.

A pair of hands came over her head clutching two pint mugs.

‘Two pints of best,’ the man was shouting.

Shielded by the crush of people trying to get to the bar, she didn’t see who landed the first blow. The first she knew that her father and Alan were fighting was when the crowd thinned out, circling the two men who had fallen on the floor.

Her father was on top of Alan, his hands around his throat and he was shouting.

‘Keep away from her, you fucking nonce! Keep away from her or I’ll swing fer you!’

‘Get off him, you silly sod. Get off him, Tony!’

It was Babs shouting and Babs who was kicking her husband in the stomach with the toe of her winkle-picker high-heeled shoes.

‘Babs! You’ll kill him!’ shouted Marcie who was sweating with fear.

‘Better that and get him to stop rather than him ending up in the nick!’ Babs retorted.

The whole thing would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious. Her stepmother’s Brigitte Bardot getup was seriously awry. Her bouffant blonde hair had flopped and was falling over her eyes, and her pouting pink mouth was shouting all the worst expletives under the sun – words that would never pass the lips of the French film star.

There was something primitively exciting about what she was seeing, but also something fearful, something best avoided. Marcie could smell the excitement and see the bloodlust in the eyes of those watching.

Suddenly there was a gap in the crowd on the opposite side of the ring of spectators. A familiar figure wearing a plum-coloured suede cap and a haunch-high mini skirt waded into view. Rita Taylor was screaming at the top of her voice.

‘Get off my effing dad, Tony Brooks. Get off my effing dad!’

She kicked into Tony’s guts with far more force than Babs had used.

‘Get off! Get off! Get off!’

Marcie saw her father look up at Rita. At first he looked surprised. Then he began to laugh.

‘It’s your girl, Alan,’ he said, his angry scowl gone in an instant. He began to chuckle as though something
was
very funny indeed. ‘Bloody hell, Alan. Have you seen that stupid hat she’s wearing? It looks like a pimple on a rock!’

Rita was squatting down beside her father, her face now the same colour as her cap.

Marcie’s dad got to his feet while Rita cradled her dad’s head. Blood was streaming from Alan’s nostrils and he was coughing as he tried to catch his breath. Tony had almost strangled him.

‘You Brooks! You’re all fucking animals,’ shouted Rita. Initially her eyes were fixed on Marcie’s father. Then she saw Marcie. ‘Just like you, Marcie Brooks,’ she snarled, her face set like a livid wax mask. ‘I know what you did. My dad told me so. You’re a tramp! Nothing but a tramp and the sooner you leave Sheppey the better. And take your brat with you,’ she shouted as Babs and her father herded Marcie to the door.

‘What was she on about?’ Babs asked once they were outside.

‘Nothing to concern you. She’s as thick as her old man,’ said Marcie’s father. He rubbed his stomach. ‘Christ, she packs the kick of a mule.’

Neither woman mentioned that Babs had sunk a few kicks into her husband’s guts. He’d had enough beer to safely forget that fact.

‘Come on. Let’s get home. I’ll drop you off our Marcie.’

Marcie didn’t argue with that.

Not being in on Marcie’s big secret, Babs was puzzled. ‘What did you do to upset your old friend Rita, then?’

Her father began to mumble an explanation. ‘Well, it’s like this …’

Marcie got there first. ‘He used to treat me like a daughter. She got jealous.’

She was sitting in the front passenger seat so saw him glance at her. Babs was riding in the back as though she were the Queen or at least the lady mayoress.

What was that?

Marcie jerked upright in that semi-state between sleeping and waking, when the line is thin between what is real and what is not.

One glance at the curtains billowing into the room and the open window swinging on its hinges and reality reasserted itself. The nightmare was broken, though the shadowy figure she half recognised still lingered somewhere at the back of her mind.

Satisfied she was definitely in the real world she got out of bed and crossed the room. The bedroom lino was cold beneath her feet and the breeze from the window pleasantly crisped the film of sweat that covered her body.

Once the window was closed and she’d checked
that
Joanna was still sleeping, she got back into bed. Pulling the green satin eiderdown up to her chin she gazed at the lampshade and the black shadow it threw across the ceiling and asked herself a simple question. Why now? What was the significance of her worst nightmare returning after all this time?

Turning onto her side she heaved the eiderdown even higher, closed her eyes and wished.

Everything will be alright in the morning. Get to sleep
.

She tried to convince herself that Johnnie was close by, if only in spirit, supporting her no matter what. She fell asleep though slept fitfully, semi-alert in case the dream returned.

In the morning she had butterflies. She eyed her reflection in the bathroom mirror, alarmed to see that her expression confirmed what she felt. The fine brows were arched and the blue eyes were luminous – a little excited, a little afraid. She told herself that the nightmare would not return and half convinced herself that it was so. In the nightmare she’d been once again in the Taylors’ bungalow. Alan Taylor’s face had loomed over her.

In the morning she recounted her dream to her grandmother.

‘I know it’s not real, but just a bad memory left over from what he did to me.’

When her grandmother eyed her it was as though
she
could see into her mind, into her very soul. ‘The nightmare will open a door.’

Marcie frowned but made no comment. She knew – or rather – she
felt
that her grandmother would enlighten her.

‘The nightmare is left over from an unhappy experience, but in time will develop into something more, an intuition that is always right and always frightening.’

‘But is it real?’ she asked, aware that she was knotting her fingers, not because she was scared, but purely because she was feeling so confused. ‘And I feel so apprehensive, yet I don’t know why.’

‘Approach it with an open mind. Believe like a child that something will happen and it will,’ said her grandmother. After having said it, she went off out into the back garden to tend to the herbs.

Marcie sat very still, not sure exactly what was being said.

You’re a woman now, not a child. Think logically
.

She was halfway through tacking the last dress ordered by Angie when the bad news came.

First there was the sound of her father’s car pulling up outside. Then there was Babs, her face flushed and her breath racing.

‘Angie’s is gone,’ she said, shouting the news straight into Marcie’s face.

Marcie could see by her stepmother’s face that this was no time for silly quips. Something bad had happened.

‘Went up in flames,’ exclaimed her father who had rushed in behind his wife.

The kids had come too. The two boys rushed straight through the cottage and out into the garden. Annie wandered over to where Joanna was sitting on a blanket eating a Farleys’ Rusk. Annie espied a dropped piece, picked it up and shoved it in her mouth.

Marcie stared. ‘Angie?’

Her father shook his head. ‘Poor girl. She was led away by the police crying her eyes out.’

Stepdaughter and stepmother had never got on very well, but on this occasion Babs was on her side.

‘Marcie, I’m so sorry, love. First you lost the job at the hospital and now this. It’s just not fair.’

Marcie flopped down into a chair, her mind reeling. Now what? The sound of her grandmother’s footsteps, the old down-at-heel shoes tapping on the kitchen floor, made her look up.

‘One door closes, another opens,’ her grandmother repeated softly.

Marcie prayed she was right.

MARCIE WENT ALONG
with her grandmother to see the still smouldering shop that had been Angie’s Boutique. The best news about it was that Angie had not been inside at the time. She’d gone away to Brighton for the weekend to visit her sister. News came also that having seen the damage for herself she wouldn’t be coming back. She was too upset.

Joanna was sitting in her pushchair. Marcie rocked her backwards and forwards on the pavement outside the remains of the shop. All that was left were blackened timbers and moulded lumps of plastic that had once been mannequins and shop fittings.

The most fashionable dress shop in Sheerness – in fact in the whole island – had come to an ignominious end. A lot of people said they were devastated by it. For Marcie it was more than that. She was gutted. All her hopes and dreams for her designs were now no more than cinders. The question was what was she going to do now? She had no wage from a job and no income from the shop. On top of that she was concerned about her reputation. Rita had had evil in her eyes. Marcie was convinced that her name
was
about to be dragged through the mud. The thing was she could cope with her name being dirt. As usual these days, it was Joanna she was concerned about.

A cloud of ash whirred on the breeze and cold cinders made a pitter-pattering sound as they were blown out onto the pavement. Some of them scattered around Marcie’s feet. She looked down at them.

‘I feel like Cinderella,’ she said wistfully.

Her grandmother, Rosa Brooks, a woman famed for her psychic powers, was strangely quiet.

Marcie looked at her.

‘Garth has gone missing,’ she said simply.

The rest of the day seemed to pass in a dream. Joanna still laughed and played and had to be changed and fed. Rosa Brooks went about her chores silently and looked as though her mind was far away.

Once Joanna was put down for her afternoon nap, Marcie resumed work on the last of three dresses earmarked for Angie’s Boutique. The dresses were no longer wanted, but Marcie found it impossible not to finish them. Being creative was like giving birth; come hell and high water, there had to be a birth, a complete article at the end of all the hard work.

Her father came calling at around tea time. He’d been out looking for Garth.

‘He is not dead,’ said Rosa.

Father and daughter exchanged knowing looks. They both knew better than to argue with her.

‘So,’ said her father, ‘what’s that you’re making? Another of your fancy frocks?’

Marcie smiled until she recalled that she and Angie had laughed about her father and his old-fashioned phrases. Still, at least Angie was alive.

‘No one wants it now. There’s no boutique in Sheppey now,’ she said angrily. ‘Great! No job. No boutique. What the bloody hell am I going to do?’

She threw the garment onto the floor. She didn’t care that her language had caused her grandmother to glare disapprovingly. Everything in her life was turning sour.

‘You’ll be fine in a day or two,’ said her father.

His attempt at joviality only served to anger her more. What did he know about it?

‘Dad! I will not be fine! I have no job, no husband and no prospects of anything good ever happening to me again. And I’ve a baby to support! So don’t say that. Just do not say that!’

He looked surprised at her show of temper suddenly recognising that there was a great deal of himself in his daughter. Strange he’d never noticed it before, he thought, and wondered why. The truth was that he’d only seen her mother in his daughter’s features, but he wasn’t ready to face up to that. Not yet.

Much to his merit, he tried again to show sympathy, resting his big rough hands on her shoulders, then
taking
them off again when he saw how incongruous they looked, how ugly and rough compared to her.

‘Look, love, something will turn up. It always does you know.’

Her temper had not calmed that much.

‘Not in Sheppey!’ She gulped a lungful of air before continuing. ‘There’s nothing here. It’s got nothing except mangy sheep and mangy people! I want a career in fashion, but not here. I need to be in London. That’s where I need to be. London!’

Tony sucked in his bottom lip. He didn’t often feel helpless but on this occasion he did. He felt a desperate urge to sort something out.

‘I’ve got contacts,’ he said suddenly.

Marcie had met some of her father’s contacts. ‘Don’t tell me! One of them owns a boutique.’

He looked hurt. ‘As a matter of fact, yeah. Yeah, he does.’

She didn’t say outright that she thought he was talking a load of flannel, but that was exactly what she was thinking. Her father would say anything to make her feel good because making her feel good would make him feel good. Whether he was telling the truth or not had nothing to do with it.

‘You wait,’ he said, less jovial now, more serious. ‘I’ll fix you up with something in London. Just you wait and see.’

IT WAS FATHER
Justin who found Garth Davies and brought him round to Endeavour Terrace.

‘He insisted he lived here,’ he said to Marcie’s grandmother.

‘He does now.’

Rosa Brooks asked no questions but pressed Garth to sit himself at the table. Two doorsteps of white bread were set in front of him followed by a spoon. A pot of lamb stew was simmering on the stove. Rosa dipped a ladle into the thick, aromatic potage and poured a generous portion into a white china bowl. Garth fell on it, devouring the bread in great gob-stopping mouthfuls between spoonfuls of soup.