Anyone Who Had a Heart (31 page)

Marcie sat very still, as though a frost had suddenly encapsulated her whole body and if she moved she would surely break. Father Justin did not need to state the name of the female perpetrator. Marcie knew it. Rita had set fire to Angie’s Boutique. She’d lied to save her own skin, and what was that Father Justin had said?

One should not speak ill of the dead. Rita was dead?

‘How did she die?’ Her voice seemed far away, just like the past that she and Rita had shared.

‘Drugs. Some kind of pills she was taking at the same time as drinking alcohol. That’s what I heard. But terrible don’t you think that she murdered her own father? That’s what the witness states. Terrible,’ he went on shaking his head. ‘Just terrible.’

Marcie shook off the numbness she was feeling and asked the Catholic priest if he would like another cup of tea and a piece of fruitcake. As he’d already devoured two pieces of cake plus two cups of tea, he declined.

‘Must think of the waistline,’ he said jovially.

She considered it too late for that but did not say so. Father Justin O’Flanagan, she noticed, smelled of fruitcake on account of eating so much of it on his parish rounds. His belly was as round and firm as a fruitcake just fetched from the oven.

‘So what have you come here for?’ she asked him.

She noticed that her sudden enquiry seemed to throw him off balance. His mouth, which had opened merely to laugh or utter some inane comment, hung open before he regained his power of speech.

‘Ah well. Time I was leaving. I’m off to see your father don’t you know.’

Marcie nodded. ‘Ah yes. My father hasn’t been going home to see his lady wife. I wonder why? But there it’s a man’s world and a woman is not supposed to question either her husband or her father.’

Her sarcastic tone was not wasted on the priest.

‘Now, now, Marcie. A little Christian charity if you please. Your step-mother has a point. Husband and wife. Those whom God have joined together let no man put asunder.’

Or a motorcycle on the North Circular
.

Marcie wasn’t sure whether the thought was her own or she was hearing things again. Too much work, she decided. At least having Joanna here will stop me from designing and sewing all the time. We can have some time to ourselves.

‘Do I mention to your father that I found you?’ he asked.

She thought about it. When she was younger and with fewer responsibilities she would have stuck to that first inclination. Now she felt more sure of herself, more able to cope with whatever her father’s opinion might be.

‘Tell him,’ she said. ‘Tell him if he needs someone to talk to, I’m here. Tell him that.’

When Father Justin O’Flanagan got to his feet, he pressed one hand onto her shoulder, his fingers tightening in an ambiguous action that Marcie couldn’t be sure of.

‘You’re a good daughter, Marcie Brooks. A good daughter to your father and a good daughter of Mother Church.’

‘Thank you, Father.’

There was that hesitation again. ‘I was wondering …’ His hand resettled on her shoulder like a homing pigeon that didn’t wish to leave.

‘I was wondering if I could stay here for the night? I do have a bed booked at St Anne’s with an old friend, but …’

Horrified at the thought of the old lecher sleeping close by, she tilted her head back and beamed up at him. ‘I’m sorry, Father. I’ve got a date tonight. He’s coming back here to sleep. With me.’

She got quickly to her feet. His hand dropped from
her
shoulder. His jaw dropped. She’d meant her comment to pull him up short and it had. A good girl would never admit to a priest that she was sleeping with someone. A good girl would hang on his every word and do everything he wanted her to do. There again, a good priest wouldn’t touch a girl like he did or look at her the way he did.

The message was loud and clear. She was neither available nor malleable. The little girl she’d once been was growing up.

After he’d gone she bolted the door and didn’t open it again until Michael came to take her to dinner.

Over a grilled steak accompanied with a bottle of Beaujolais, she told him what she’d said to the priest.

‘That’s my gate to heaven locked and bolted,’ he said with a grin. ‘Thanks to you I’ve got a black mark against my name for something I haven’t done yet.’

She looked at him, her black lashes forming a frame around her blue eyes.

This message was loud and clear and had to be said. She missed being close to a man. Part of her also wanted to blot out her recent bad experience with Roberto too; she wanted to make love with a man because she wanted to not because he forced himself upon her. On Sally’s advice she’d been to the clinic and had been furnished with a supply of birth control pills. At first she’d been hesitant. Life with
her
grandmother had moulded her into what she was, or at least what she had been.

Sally was more worldly wise.

‘The Brook Clinic supplies so you don’t have to keep your legs crossed,’ she’d said in that flippant way of hers.

Perhaps wanting a physical relationship was also part of growing up, though it had to be with someone she trusted. She’d thought of it all week and now, she judged, was the time to say it.

Placing her cutlery neatly on her plate, she said, ‘It needn’t be a lie, Michael. We could make it
not
be a lie.’

She kept her gaze lowered to her plate and the wine glass she reached for.

Michael sat silently across the other side of the table, hardly daring to breathe and fearing he’d misheard.

‘You’re asking me to sleep with you tonight?’

‘Yes. The priest wouldn’t approve of course …’

He laughed. ‘OK. Let’s go to hell together.’

Marcie shook her head. ‘No. Heaven. That’s where we’ll be going. Let’s go to heaven.’

JOANNA SETTLED IN
nicely and Marcie was glad that her grandmother would not be alone. Garth was with her.

She’d had a funny feeling on that visit that there were colourful auras surrounding the pair of them. It was an odd thing to see and the colours didn’t always seem to be the same. Sometimes they seemed to blend in together, as though they were two sides of the same penny.

Roberto had not found out where she was and even if he did it seemed that Michael would be there to protect her. ‘He doesn’t bother to ask me. I don’t count,’ Michael told her.

Michael was always there for her. He wasn’t the hip guy wearing the right clothes, the right hairstyle and driving the right sports car. Neither was he so brash and keen to project a ‘look at me’ impression the moment he stepped into a room.

Roberto’s half-brother was more reserved, more thoughtful. She took him down to Sheerness and introduced him to her grandmother.

Marcie had watched her grandmother’s reaction,
noticing
the searching black eyes that seemed to look directly into a person’s soul.

‘He too is Sicilian,’ she said later, at a time when there was just the two of them.

Marcie had nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘He has kind eyes.’

It was all Marcie needed to hear to know her grandmother approved. And she wasn’t often wrong. Michael cared for her. He cared for Joanna too. She could tell that by the way he joined in any game Joanna wanted to play.

The child was particularly keen on puzzles depicting animals and the alphabet. A is for ant and B is for bear was the usual mantra heard when Michael came visiting, the child having persuaded him to join her down on the floor, the puzzle spread out before them.

Word regarding the new designer and maker of exotic costume had spread like wildfire. Marcie had enough work in her order book to last for months. Most of the orders came through the mysterious Carla.

‘She adds a bit on, of course,’ Sally stated.

Marcie stayed up all night getting her portfolio together. Sally had hovered over her shoulder like a critical parrot, advising her on what girls preferred and what the punters – the men who frequented the clubs – liked to see them wearing. Not much by the sound of it.

‘Your fame’s spread far and wide. Arbroath has heard of you and is coming to place an order,’ Sally said.

‘That’s a funny name,’ said Marcie.

Sally’s face was wreathed in smiles and she looked to be on the verge of a giggling fit. ‘Funny person,’ she chuckled.

Arbroath turned out to be a man. He was at least six feet tall and had smooth gingery hair brushed back from his high forehead.

‘I’ve brought the wig, hen, so we can see the full effect. Sally tells me you have a few samples that can be adjusted to suit individual requirements.’

The accent of the Gorbals in Glasgow had come south with him. The wig was a mass of shoulder-length curls.

Some people might have stood there with a shocked expression on their face, their jaw dropping onto their chest. Marcie didn’t do that. This was her first male customer and although surprised, she made the effort to be polite.

She showed him a mauve lurex outfit that he instantly fell in love with. He came out of the changing room preening like a peacock, hands on hips and mannish feet shoved into purple satin stilettos.

‘I
love
lurex!’ he exclaimed in a sudden and surprising
falsetto
voice. The voice had been adopted the moment his wig went on. ‘Just one point, hen – could you give me a bit more room in the jockstrap area?’ The request was accompanied with a pat on the crotch.

‘I’m here to please,’ Marcie responded.

‘You didn’t bat an eyelid,’ Sally said to her afterwards.

‘Did you expect me to?’

Sally laughed.

Between drawings and sticking samples of materials on stiff cardboard, she tended her daughter, who was teething again.

The girls who made a living taking their clothes off turned out to be a mixed bunch. A lot of them were bold and brash like Sally Saunders. Some were gorgeous to look at but gave their origins away the minute they opened their mouths.

‘Bleedin’ ’ell. Look at these tits. If they gets much bleedin’ bigger I can chuck the mink stole and put these over me shoulders instead!’

Her name was Dorothy Lambert and her boobs were her fortune. She stood just five feet two inches in her bare feet. Her hips were as slim as a boy and her waistline was tiny. Her breasts on the other hand were huge and the reason for her success.

‘So you wouldn’t ever have them cut off,’ Marcie asked her.

‘Sometimes I would – when me back’s aching like nobody’s business, but then I lie down on me back and think of money.’

She cackled like a laying hen at her joke.

The incident with Roberto was hard to forget, but her new line of business and her new company certainly raised her spirits. She’d also had a period since Roberto’s onslaught and was thankful she wasn’t pregnant. Now she was safely on the pill and safe to make love with Michael any time she chose. She was putting the past behind her as best she could.

It was on a Wednesday morning that the famous Carla came calling. Close to six feet tall, her presence seemed to fill the workroom the moment she came in the door. She had dyed honey-blonde hair pulled back into a French pleat, oozed perfume and a trashy glamour, the latter emphasised by virtue of the oversized leopard-skin coat she was wearing. It had a huge collar flopping like a cape onto her shoulders and swung from a central shoulder yoke into a swirling circle at knee level. Obviously no slave to current fashion where chunky heels and square toes were currently the norm, her shoes were still old-style winkle-pickers with four-inch stiletto heels; in the right hands they looked capable of stabbing somebody and were safer staying on her feet.

‘My name’s Carla Casey,’ she said extending a black-gloved hand. ‘You’ve got me to thank for
putting
business your way.’ Her voice grated like iron dragged against gravel, no doubt the result of smoking sixty plus per day.

‘In that case, thank you.’ Marcie shook the offered gloved hand.

The gloved hand held hers. She noticed a bracelet worn over the elbow-length glove. A pair of striking grey eyes looked her up and down. She was smoking via an ebony cigarette holder. ‘Sally said you were quite a beauty.’

The voice was intrusive, like grit being thrown against the windowpane close to the ear.

‘Did she?’ Marcie felt momentarily flattered.

‘Sally isn’t always right,’ Carla proclaimed dismissively.

Marcie felt deflated.

Carla appeared not to notice. ‘Now. Perhaps you could show me around. Fifi La Mare tells me she’s very pleased with the outfits you’re running up for her girls.’

Fifi La Mare was the doyenne of a troupe of dancing girls with a vaguely horsey connotation. They carried long riding crops and wore tight-fitting outfits that exposed far more than they covered: little waistcoats, tiny briefs and long black riding boots with spurs and spiked heels. The expanse of thigh between boot top and knicker leg was covered in fishnet tights.

Marcie had been along to see their act with
Michael
. Eva, one of her freelance seamstresses, came in to look after Joanna. It had been Sally’s night off and Allegra had come too though had left early with the excuse that she had a business appointment. It seemed an odd time of night for a business appointment, but Allegra led an odd life, being available more often during the day than she was at night.

‘I saw their act,’ Marcie informed her.

Again her comment did not draw a response.

The woman sauntered around the workroom as though she owned it, inspecting the garments hanging from rails and the items being run through a machine.

‘Are you confident of always delivering work on time?’ Again she used an imperious tone.

‘Subject to fitting. Some of the girls put weight on between ordering and fitting,’ said Marcie.

Carla looked at her without a trace of a smile. ‘It concerns me that your measurements are that inaccurate.’

‘They’re not. One or two got pregnant.’

‘Ah!’

Carla unsnapped the clasp on her handbag, placed one ebony holder back in her bag and got out a fresh one. Marcie watched, fascinated, as she lit up. She’d only seen film stars with cigarette holders, never in real life. But never two.