Goodnight Lady (30 page)

It was full. People who couldn’t find seats were standing around in small groups, breathing in cigarette smoke and perfume. She pushed through the throng, greeting people as she went. Not stopping to chat, she made her way to the small dance area, scanned the tables, and was surprised to see Tommy sitting with Rupert and Jonathan. She saw his flushed face and guessed he had been drinking. Jonathan noticed her and waved her over. His face was flushed and sweating too. Briony walked across the small dance floor and deliberately ignored the people watching her. She felt as if she was in a glass bubble, on show to the world. She sat beside Tommy and he kissed her on the lips.

She had dressed in a deep crimson dress which accentuated her white skin and green eyes. She looked startling, almost too bright. The colour gave her a brittle quality, her rouge a deep stain on her cheekbones, her lips a deep crimson to match her dress. Tommy eyed her for a few seconds before kissing her again, this time on her cheek.

‘Hello, darlin’. Have a glass of champagne.’

She took the fluted glass from him and sipped the cold liquid. Then, tilting her head back, she drank it down, holding the glass out again for another drink.

Five glasses later she was having a friendly argument with Jonathan about the films they were going to make. He wanted art, she decided to be contrary and insist on porn. Tommy sat back and listened to them with a smile on his face.

She was holding up. He had counted on that. While she was sorting out her mind, coming to terms with herself and her actions, he had been organising their protection and their new workforce. Tommy had no qualms about what he had done. It was over with, finished, done. Briony was a different kettle of fish; she needed to adjust to her new status. But he knew that once she did, the two of them would be a dynamite team, and nothing and no one could ever stop them.

People dropped by their table to pay their respects. Men who would not normally have been seen dead in their club had made a pilgrimage to the West End to offer their support and friendship, and Briony gave them just the right amount of her time and her interest.

Tommy sat back and relaxed. She was holding up all right, as he had known she would. By the time Kerry had finished her second set, Briony looked positively relaxed.

Briony lay in the bed alone, her head thumping. She closed her eyes tightly to stem the pain. She could hear the sounds of the household coming from below, the heavy tread of Mrs Horlock on the stairs, and the rattling of crockery. Her bedroom door was pushed open and the tray of tea was placed on her night table. Without a word the older woman went to the heavy curtains and opened them, letting in the weak sunshine.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Briony’s voice was low and angry.

‘What’s it look like? You deaf now as well as stupid?’

Mrs Horlock bustled to the bed and began pouring out the strong tea. Kitchen tea, thick and black, which she knew Briony loved.

She squinted up at the woman and said: ‘What did you just say?’

Mrs Horlock laughed loud. ‘So, the dead arose and appeared to many! My God, you look terrible. Worse than a Saturday night whore on Monday morning. How long are you going to keep this up?’

Briony was blinking her eyes rapidly and straining to keep her temper.

‘Keep what up?’

‘Drink your tea.’ She thrust out the white china mug, spilling a few drops on the bedspread.

Briony sat up in bed and, taking the mug, slammed it down on to the bedside table.

‘Keep what up, I said? Answer me, woman!’ Raising her voice made her wince and she held on to her head gently. ‘Oh, piss off, I ain’t in the mood.’

‘Look at you, Briony. You look a disgrace. You’ve bags under your eyes big enough for me to get me weekly shopping in. Your skin’s in a terrible state, no doubt due to your drinking like a fish and eating like a bird. You was thin before, fashionably thin, now you’re like a scrawny cat! Even your hair’s in rat’s tails. And don’t think you can talk to me any way you like because you can’t. I’ve put up with your bad mouthing for the last month, and all I can say is, grow up!’

Briony sat up in the bed, stunned.

‘How dare you...’

‘I dare, young lady! I dare. Because you might be Miss Big out there, but to me you’ll always be a child. You’ve drunk yourself stupid now for over a month. Out ’til all hours, coming in roaring drunk and upsetting the whole house. Arguing with Tommy like a demented woman.’

‘This is my house...’

Mrs Horlock stuck her face close to Briony’s and cut off her tirade.

‘Well, you might just find yourself all on your own in it if you’re not careful. Because you pull another stunt like you did last night and we’ll all bugger off!’

Briony racked her brains to remember the night before. ‘What happened last night?’ Her voice was low now, bewildered.

‘Huh! Last night you picked a fight with your new minders, Jimmy and David Harles. You woke up first the whole street, then the whole household, and you told Cissy to fuck off out of it at three o’clock this morning. You took a swing at Tommy, which is why he’s not in bed beside you. I don’t know where he went, but if it was to another woman, who could blame him.’

Briony groaned, it was all coming back to her slowly, in crystal clear pictures.

‘My God.’

‘Well, I’m glad you think of him as yours because I’ve a feeling on me you just might need him. What’s wrong with you, girl? You’ve been like a bear with a sore arse for weeks.’

Briony shook her head and said sadly, ‘I really don’t know. I feel like I’m going to explode or something. Since we had all the carry on with Olds, we’ve had people constantly sitting outside the house. I can’t shit but I have to have a minder with me! I feel as if my whole life’s in everyone else’s hands but me own. Even the clubs had to tighten security, the houses have more locks on them than Fort Knox! The girls treat me differently. It’s “Miss Cavanagh” this and “Miss Cavanagh” that. I feel like a freak.’

‘Oh, my heart’s bleeding for you. Don’t give me all that old fanny, Briony. You made your bed, as the saying goes. And there’s another saying might interest you: Don’t play with the big boys unless you know the rules to their games.’

‘Oh sod off!’

‘Drink your tea and get washed, you smell like a drayman’s cart! Then get yourself out of that bed and come and eat something. Your mother will be here soon, about the wedding. Not that you’ve shown much interest in that either this last few weeks!’

The old woman took the mug of tea and thrust it into her hands.

‘Get that down your neck and I’ll run you a bath, then you can apologise to Cissy and the minders as well. No one, no matter who they are, is above common courtesy. Remember that, young lady.’

She flounced from the room and Briony closed her eyes and sighed. The truth hurt, but sometimes it was a welcome pain. She drank her tea.

 

Molly sat with Eileen and Rosalee, her face dark. Briony walked into the room and smiled widely, ignoring the pain thumping in her head.

‘Hello, Mum, Eileen.’ Kneeling down she kissed Rosalee’s face. ‘Hello, Rosie.’ Rosalee hugged Briony to her.

‘This is a fine time to crawl out of bed, I must say, and your sister getting married.’

Briony laughed.

‘What? You getting married today then, Ei? Have I missed the service?’

Eileen burst into tears and Briony realised something had gone drastically wrong.

‘Sorry, Ei, I was only joking.’ She put her arm around her sister’s shoulders.

‘It’s that eejit Joshua. He wants to postpone the wedding now. It’s that scut of a mother behind it, I swear. He turned up last night all sweetness and light, saying they should wait, it was all a bit quick, and he thought they should have a bit longer together courting. The bastard of hell! And there’s me, making them tea and leaving them together while I went in to old Mother Jones’. When I came home I found this one crying and your man nowhere to be seen. I’d have scalped the face of him if I’d have seen him.’

Briony knelt before Eileen and said: ‘Has he mentioned anything before now? Anything that would make you think he’d changed his mind?’

Eileen shook her head. ‘He hasn’t said a word, but he’s been funny for weeks now. For the last month. It’s as if I got the plague overnight or something. And his mother, she cut me dead the other day at Mass ... She doesn’t like me, Bri. I don’t know why.’ She dissolved into tears again.

Briony’s face took on a hardness noticed by Molly. Both women were thinking the same thing. Joshua and his mother didn’t want to be related to her, Briony, in her new role. It was bad enough when she owned the houses, though her offer of help in buying Joshua his own home had been gratefully accepted. But now they were actually frightened of becoming involved with the Cavanaghs whose name was synonymous with violence. Well, Joshua O’Malley would find out what violence meant before he was much older! Briony determined she would see to that personally.

 

Elizabeth O‘Malley shook her head at her son. ‘Sure, you’re better off home with me. That Eileen was a pasty-faced bitch if ever I saw one. Not a spark of life in her at all. Jasus, she’d breed you mewling brats.’

Joshua stared into the fire. It was Eileen’s passiveness that had attracted him, but his mother was right on one thing. The Cavanaghs were not a family to get tied to. Not now anyway.

‘That Briony ... a murdering hoor if ever one was born! Your father must be turning in his grave. All those girls with skirts up their nostrils and legs bare to the world!’ His mother blessed herself fervently.

According to her, Joshua thought, his father must be like the Spinning Jenny in that grave of his. Yet he himself had been a rake who had been finally driven from the house by the harridan standing before Joshua now. His mother’s first sight of Kerry and Bernadette with their lipstick and bare-legged mode of dressing had incensed her, especially the short Eton crop worn by Bernie.

‘To think you would have been a part of them! You’re well out of it, son. You’re a young man with your whole life in front of you. There’s plenty of girls who’d be grateful to you for taking them on.’

‘Mother, I’m thirty-eight years old. Hardly a boy. And in case it’s escaped your notice there hasn’t exactly been a stream of women beating a path to my door.’

‘Men are fools! They shouldn’t marry ’til they’re in their forties. Even then they have to be careful. A pretty face can hide a multitude of sins, you know. You have to look at the stock they come from. If that Briony Cavanagh comes around here shouting her mouth off, I’ll fill it for her meself. I’m not scared of her, or any of them for that matter. Let them come and see what I’m capable of! My son will marry who he bloody well wants and it won’t be a Cavanagh. Over my dead body! You hear me, over my dead body!’

Elizabeth O‘Malley was in full swing when Briony walked in at the back door of the tiny terraced house in Longbridge Road. She stood in the scullery for a few seconds before she made herself known. As she stepped into the kitchen Elizabeth O’Malley nearly jumped from her skin in fright. Holding her hand over her mouth, she whispered: ‘Jesus cross of Christ!’

Briony smiled widely.

‘I take it you wasn’t expecting me then? Well, you should have been. You should have been sitting here with locked doors pretending you was out like I was the tally man coming for me money. Only unlike the tally man, the chances are if I don’t hear what I want to hear, I’ll break your fucking necks! Starting with you first, Mrs O’Malley.’

Joshua stared at the little woman in awe.

‘Shut your mouth, Joshua. You look like you should be on a slab at Billingsgate market. What’s this I hear about you dumping me sister after promising to marry her?’

Joshua just stared at the apparition in front of him.

‘What my sister sees in you I don’t even pretend to know, Joshua. But she wants you so she’s going to have you, see. Because you strung her along, you asked her to marry you, and now I’ll see to it personally that you do. You are going to get washed and spruced up, you’re going round my mother’s at seven-thirty tonight, and you’re going to tell Eileen all that old fanny you gave her was just wedding nerves. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

Joshua nodded.

‘And you’re going to do what I say?’

He nodded again.

‘Good boy. Now another thing while we’re on the subject. I don’t want you, Mrs O’Malley, within a ten-mile radius of my sister. If I find out you’ve even touched her without Eileen’s express permission, I’ll rip your ugly head off your shoulders and give it to me henchmen to play footie with.’ She smiled at them. ‘Well, I’m glad we had this little chat. It’s good for families to talk and get things sorted, don’t you think? Now if you’ll excuse me, I am a very busy lady and you’ve caused me enough trouble for one day.’

 

Tommy sat in the Dickens Club in Soho nursing a large scotch. He had earlier met a man called Siddy Trundley, a small Jew who took the bets for the traders in Soho Market and aroundabouts. He was hoping Tommy would come into his business with him so he could have the protection of Tommy’s men and also some extra capital. Tommy had been agreeable, seeing the chance to expand the business and double the turnover. He would give one of his more intelligent minders the job of managing it for him. That way everyone was happy. Now he sat thinking about Briony and the night before. She had gone off with Jonathan and Rupert again and got roaring drunk, coming home in the small hours causing havoc. It was becoming a regular occurrence. He was wondering whether to chance giving her a right hander, as he put it to himself, when her voice startled him out of his reverie.

‘You gonna drink that drink, Tommy, or get engaged to it?’ She sat beside him, smelling of musk and orange flower water. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’