Anyone Who Had a Heart (8 page)

‘Angie’s,’ Marcie pronounced smugly. So! Even Bab’s had noticed the shop that was selling the dresses she made.

‘Marcie made it,’ her grandmother said, pride shining in her eyes. ‘And the one you saw in the shop was also made by her.’

Babs folded her arms and looked disbelieving. ‘Go on! That was one of yours? It wasn’t a home-made dress I saw. It was modern.’

‘Just because I made it doesn’t mean that it’s not modern. I made the pattern myself and measured it all out properly,’ Marcie said hotly. ‘And she’s sold them. And I’ve been paid my cut of the deal. Ask my dad.’

It never failed to surprise Marcie how much her father kept from her stepmother, almost as though he maintained an invisible partition between the two different sections of his family.

Despite her heavy foundation, Babs visibly reddened. There was a portion of hurt and a portion of anger in her eyes when she turned to her husband.

‘You didn’t tell me that. Well, isn’t that typical! Leave me to make a fool of meself!’

Tony Brooks had a temper threshold. ‘Shut it,’ he snapped, pointing his finger between her eyes. ‘Marcie makes frocks for the frock shop. Now you know. Now you can let the subject drop, right?’

‘Must be making a fortune,’ Babs muttered defiantly.

‘Shut it,’ Tony said again.

On the drive back to Endeavour Terrace, Tony was unusually quiet. Marcie was pretty certain that this wasn’t about Babs. Their marriage was a series of arguments, misunderstandings and making up under the bedcovers on a regular basis. Something else was worrying him.

Marcie looked out of the window.

‘It’s going to rain,’ said her grandmother.

Marcie nodded.

A flock of sheep were grazing on the tough grass.
At
first the scene was peaceful, but then the sheep began to run and flock together for safety.

Marcie strained to see what had panicked them and thought she saw a shadow alternately loping and creeping along by the hedge.

For a moment she thought she recognised the figure, but the glimpse was so fleeting and the car was moving quickly.

Back at number ten, Endeavour Terrace, Tony knew better than to refuse his mother’s invitation to come in. More tea was consumed along with buttered crumpets. Rosa Brooks was of the unshakable opinion that her daughter in law did not feed Tony properly. That was why his cheeks were so gaunt and he’d lost weight. She refused to put it down to dividing his time between the job in London and his family on the Isle of Sheppey.

He followed Marcie up to her room when she went up to put Joanna down. The little girl had enjoyed her day out and was now quite spent. Her father looked down on the sleeping child with her.

‘Does she look like me, do you think?’ Marcie asked him.

The question seemed to take him unawares. He took some time thinking about it.

‘Well, yeah. I think so. It’s a shame though ain’t it?’

She frowned and looked at him. ‘What are you talking about, Dad?’

‘You having Joanna. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning you for having her. The little tike didn’t ask to be born and I know we wouldn’t unwish her for the world but I do wonder how far you’d have got up in the smoke without having a kiddy, what with these frocks and all that.’

His terminology was getting irritating. Marcie rolled her eyes. ‘Dresses, Dad! Dresses!’

‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’

She sighed. Her dad was of a certain age and old names stuck. Like the steel needle on a wind-up gramophone, he was stuck in a groove and couldn’t get out unless he was pushed. She determined to do the pushing.

‘They’re called dresses nowadays. Mini-dresses.’

‘Well, they are that,’ he exclaimed, a wicked glint in his eyes. Like everyone else he had seen hemlines rise further and further away from the knees until they were little more than tunics. Thank goodness somebody had invented tights to wear with them!

‘Well, Dad,’ said Marcie, ‘that’s fashion for you, and fashion is all about moving with the times.’

His smile was genuine enough but his face crumpled ever so slightly. ‘Your old man’s getting old. Christ! Never thought I would. Thought I’d stay twenty-one for ever.’

They both smiled, but his comment about Joanna still grated on Marcie’s mind. What had he meant
by
it? They both fell into an uncomfortable silence. He broke it first, the awkwardness nudging him into explaining.

‘All I meant was, it’s like you were saying, that a frock … sorry … dress shop in London would pay you shedloads of money, well, beyond what a local little place here would pay.’

‘But I’ve got Joanna,’ Marcie said abruptly.

It was obvious that he would have said more, but her abrupt intervention had brought him up short.

‘That’s right,’ he said, his voice soft and full of affection. ‘You’ve got Joanna and nobody and nothing is ever going to alter that.’

RITA TAYLOR WAS
livid to think that her friend – her former best friend – Marcie Brooks had been having it off with her dad. Christ, what a little tart she turned out to be, and wasn’t she glad that they weren’t best friends any more.

It occurred to her to spread the word around that Marcie had got pregnant by her father. A warning voice in her head told her that wouldn’t be wise. People might blame her father seeing as he was a lot older than Marcie. Besides, she didn’t want to besmirch either his good name or her own. They had a position in the community. They had a nice house, a nice car and her father, although he hadn’t been so interested in business just lately, brought in a good income.

She was sitting in front of the telly watching
Coronation Street
with a chip butty for company. The people she considered friends hadn’t called for a few days because she’d been in such a foul temper. When she was in a bad temper she always resorted to food.

Her father was the only one who had phoned to say he was sleeping over at the car dealership he
owned
down in Deal. Deal was too far to travel if he’d been drinking, and she was in no doubt that he had. His consumption of alcohol had increased drastically over the past year. At first she’d put it down to her stepmother leaving, but now she knew the truth and the truth made her angry. She was set on exposing Marcie for the slut she considered her to be. Best of all she’d like to get her to leave Sheerness and Sheppey too. Trash like her didn’t belong here. That was her opinion anyway. But how could she get her own back at her? How could she do that without damaging either her or her father’s reputation?

The answer came just a few days later. She’d undertaken a secretarial course at the local college and through that had got herself a job as a clerk/typist in the offices of a local solicitor. Not for her the old job she’d used to have with Marcie selling candy floss to day trippers along the seafront at Sheerness. She’d made the decision to better herself so mornings and afternoons were spent buried up to her armpits in paperwork and typing. Lunch times were a welcome break when she could stroll along the high street, stuffing her face with a hot pie and chips bought from the local chippie.

It was during one of these lunch breaks that she bumped into Bully Price, though almost treading on him might have been a better description.

A pair of large black working boots was sticking
out
from beneath a broken-down car. Occupied with her thoughts, Rita tripped over them and fell against the side of the car. The car rolled slightly.

‘Oi!’

A face smeared in oil came out from beneath the car. ‘Rita Taylor! That’s my feet you’re treading on!’

‘Bully Price! You’ve got the biggest feet in Sheerness. No. Come to think of it, you’ve got the biggest feet in the whole of Sheppey.’

‘And you’re hardly bloody Tinkerbell the fairy, are you? And stuck-up with it, just like yer mate Marcie Brooks. Gets herself a job at the hospital and she’s all airs and graces.’

Rita had been going to walk on, but what Bully had said stopped her in her tracks. ‘She’s got a job as a nurse! Are you kidding?’

‘Nah,’ he said, sliding out from beneath the vehicle and getting to his feet. ‘She weren’t wearing a uniform or anything.’

So Marcie had a job at the hospital. Rita fingered her lip. One of the girls working in the solicitor’s office had once worked at the hospital. The girl’s name was Wendy Heale and she’d been sacked once she’d set the wedding date.

‘It’s hospital policy,’ she’d explained. ‘They prefer to employ single women in the support services like the canteen, the sewing room and such like.’

Rita almost whooped with joy at this. Marcie was
good
with a needle. She used to make a lot of her clothes. Poor cow had to. She couldn’t afford to buy straight off the rack like Rita could – thanks to her father.

She decided there and then that she’d find out exactly where Marcie was working. After that …

MARCIE FELT A
sharp jab in the small of her back. ‘Hey! You!’

Jane Gale had started picking on her only days after she’d first started work in the hospital sewing room. When the first jab had occurred she’d smiled weakly and took it as a joke.

‘That hurt,’ she’d said, but had kept her smile as she said it.

To turn the other cheek was the wrong thing to do when it came to Jane Gale. Retaliation and exchanging like with like was the only thing she truly understood. Marcie badly wanted to bash her one, but held back. Jane Gale was also something of a sneak. It didn’t help that she was Miss Pope’s niece and as such attracted some degree of protection.

‘Hey! You!’

The jabs were always accompanied with the same exclamation. Sometimes Marcie considered that Jane Gale practised those same words every night in front of the mirror. She wasn’t the brightest girl she’d ever met and her vocabulary echoed the fact. Being a bully was Jane Gale’s way of communicating that she really
was
better than Marcie, even if she could barely string two words together.

The turning point came when she jabbed at Marcie just as she was leaning over the sink washing her face.

Joanna had been poorly for a few days and so had kept her awake the night before. Sleep had been intermittent, punctuated with the wails of a red-faced child who wouldn’t settle. Marcie couldn’t wait for Wednesday and her day off, not that she’d be resting much. Angela Babbington had popped round to Endeavour Terrace with an urgent order for two more dresses in the geometric black and white style. Marcie felt obliged to fill the order as quickly as possible even though her grandmother told her to slow down, that there was no need to rush at things as though her wages might be cut short at any time. But that was exactly how Marcie felt about both her present and her future. She had to have financial security for herself, but mostly for her child. At the back of her mind was the nagging guilt about bringing Joanna into the world. She hadn’t asked to come, and it was her fault she was here, therefore she had to do everything she could to do her best by the child.

Tired and not in the best of tempers, this time she reacted to Jane’s bullying.

Jane gasped as Marcie grabbed her by the throat, her eyes popping out of her head.

‘Just leave me alone, you stupid bitch! Do you hear me? Just leave me alone!’

She suddenly realised that she was holding the collar of Jane’s overall so tightly the girl’s face was turning pink.

Marcie came quickly to her senses, instantly regretful of what she had done. She released the stiff collar, flattening it with both hands – as if that was going to make any difference to someone like Jane Gale. Neither did her apology.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quickly coming to. ‘You took me unawares.’ The sound of running water took her attention back to the sink where she’d swilled her face. She’d left the tap running and the water was beginning to spill over the edge.

Before she had chance to spring for the tap, Jane bounced back, her face contorted with a sickly grin. ‘Poke, poke, poke!’ Each word was accompanied with a jab of her finger.

This was too much! Marcie reached for the tap with one hand; with the other she grabbed Jane by the nape of the neck and ducked her head in the water.

Just seconds – that was all it was – but Jane came up dripping.

Marcie left her there.

‘You wait, Marcie Brooks!’ Jane shouted after her. ‘I’ll tell on you. You just wait. I’ll tell on you.’

Marcie shook her head and couldn’t help smiling because Jane sounded so juvenile, just like a schoolgirl threatening to tell teacher. The problem was this was more serious. Marcie hadn’t meant to lose her temper but she was tired and she’d had enough of Jane’s bullying. She consoled herself with the thought that Jane was really the one at fault. She had as much right to complain about Jane as Jane had to complain about her. All she hoped was it wouldn’t come to that, after all, Miss Pope was bound to side with her niece.

For the rest of that day she kept her nose to the sewing machine. Watching the stitching grow down each boring seam was monotonous but also strangely mesmerising. Jane was put out of her mind, at least for now.

Miss Pope did not ask to see her. Nobody mentioned anything having happened in the ladies’ cloakroom. Nobody even seemed to notice that Jane’s thick fringe was wet or that her eye make-up was smudged into a murky sludge colour.

The day ended as it always did, with the day’s work being folded and put away, and the machines switched off. All is well, Marcie told herself.

The next morning Marcie walked past Jane with a spring in her step, confident that nothing had been said and nothing would be said.

Jane didn’t say a word and Marcie said nothing
either
. Nose in the air she collected some work and went straight to her machine.

It wasn’t until mid morning that a sudden cloud appeared. Miss Pope said she wanted to have a word with her.

That bitch Jane Gale! Had she done for her after all?

She looked in Jane’s direction. Her machine was standing idle, her seat empty, a pillowcase clamped in place ready for sewing.