Playing Around (17 page)

As for Jim and Graham, the bouncers, they were
round
the back in the alley, taking advantage of Jeff’s absence, and enjoying the ‘hospitality’ of two young women who had been promised, in return for their willingness to have a quick knee-trembler up against the wall, free passes for the whole of the next month.

‘You were quick enough to take that second drink off me.’ Ray was now hollering, jabbing his finger at Angie’s face. ‘You are a prick teaser.’

Jackie was incensed. Not only had this idiot made her friend cry, but now he was showing them up. Both of them. In the middle of the Canvas Club, the place that Jackie had dreamed of going to. She wasn’t having this, some thick git spoiling her big night out.

‘Oi, you. She told you, she doesn’t care what other girls do, she doesn’t
go round the back
with strange blokes. She’s not like that. And especially not with stupid buggers like you.’

‘So why’s she dressed like that?’

‘Did you hear what he said?’ gasped a miniskirted girl to her boyfriend. ‘Bloody cheek. Who does he think he is? Thinking he can tell girls what to wear. Hit him, Paul. Go on.’

Paul wasn’t so keen. ‘Let’s go. This is daft.’

Jackie, on the other hand, was ready for action. She was ready to scratch Ray’s eyes out.

Just as she was about to make a lunge for his sneering, pasty face, someone grabbed her arm.

She twisted round, set to attack, but quickly changed her mind.

A very grown-up, very well-built, smartly dressed man was holding her arm, but he was pointing very firmly at Ray.

‘Oi! Mouthy!’ he yelled.

Ray looked shocked. This bloke was built like a number-nine bus, and his presence had coincided with
the
music stopping and all the lights being turned up full pelt. Ray, like most other people in the club, was blinking and wondering what was going on. He was also almost wetting himself. Being forceful with girls was one thing, but having a row with a great big bloke was quite another.

‘What?’ Ray asked, holding out his hands in the submissive, palms-up gesture of an innocent, injured party.

‘Are you going to leave quietly, sonny?’

‘What have I done?’

David let go of Jackie and grabbed Ray by the hair. He immediately let go again. ‘Blimey. What’s that muck on your hair? Surely it ain’t Brylcreem?’

Ray, now tight-lipped with embarrassment, but still ridiculously cocky, started dancing around on the spot like an abandoned sparring partner. ‘Hair conditioner, if you must know.’

David raised a single, shapely eyebrow – ‘Hair conditioner? Aw, sorry, ducks’ – then grabbed him firmly by the collar. ‘You. Out.’ He dragged Ray to the exit and shoved him hard, giving him an actually gentle, but thoroughly insulting, kick up the backside to see him on his way.

David went back over to Jackie and Angie, who were still standing, equally as shocked as they were embarrassed, in the middle of the dance floor.

‘OK, everyone,’ said David, guiding the girls towards the bar, and nodding for the disc jockey to get the music back on and the lights dimmed, ‘the rubbish has been cleared away. Let’s all get back to enjoying ourselves.’

The disc jockey, used to conducting a nightly form of crowd control, knew exactly what to play: as Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs blasted out ‘Woolly Bully’, practically the whole club was back dancing on the floor.

‘Now, girls,’ said David. ‘First my apologies for that uncouth little twerp, and secondly, are you both all right?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ The girls spoke in unison as if they had been rehearsing.

‘Good.’ David raised a finger and the barman was immediately there. ‘Rick. These young ladies are princesses for the night. Got it?’

Angie watched, impressed, as this big, tough man transformed the previously intimidating barman into Rick, their new best friend.

‘Got it, Mr Fuller.’

‘Anything they want. OK?’

‘Got it.’

‘Good.’

‘Thanks, Mr Fuller,’ said Angie.

‘It’s David, sweetheart.’ He winked and chucked her under the chin. ‘To a pretty girl like you, that is.’

As David swept out of the club, planning what he would do when he got hold of the bouncers – something involving a pair of fucking pliers, he was so wild – two men were looking first at him, then at the girls, then at him, then at the girls again.

‘I’m telling you, Matthew. That bird over there, it’s that Violet’s kid.’

‘Who?’

‘You know that old ripper I was giving one to.’

‘What the bird over in Dagenham?’

‘That’s her. Violet. And that’s her kid. Angie.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Chas. That girl over there’s gorgeous. A right sort. You must need your eyes testing.’

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.’ Chas chuckled to himself.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Violet was worried that you were after her.’

‘What? Violet?’

‘No. Her kid.’

‘Christ, Chas, she wasn’t only old, she must have been bloody senile.’

Wiping his hands on his handkerchief, with a look of disgust – hair conditioner, what was wrong with young blokes nowadays? – David got back into the passenger seat of his Jaguar.

‘You took long enough,’ sniped Sonia from the back of the car. Not only had she been left like a child, but she had been trying for weeks to get the keys for the club and had completely failed. Only David and Jeff had sets, and that awful Cassidy man on his one night in ten, and she couldn’t think of a way to get the damn things off any one of them. Why couldn’t he leave them around like a normal man? Throw them on the table, with his loose change when he came in at night? Anyone would think he didn’t trust her.

Bobby stared straight ahead as though he hadn’t heard a thing.

David shifted his leg so that he could stuff the handkerchief into his trouser pocket, then, changing his mind, he wound down the window and tossed it into the gutter. He didn’t look at his wife as he spoke to her.

‘You’re not gonna start, are you, Sonia?’

‘Start? You leave me sitting out here with this moron for company while you go inside and—’

‘I ain’t having this. Bobby, where’s your motor?’

‘I left it at the Blue Moon, Dave.’

David rolled his eyes. ‘Why?’

‘When you said you needed me to drive the Jag, that’s where I was. I got Terry to bring me over in case I couldn’t park and had to keep you waiting.’

‘All right, Bob, don’t give me earache.’

‘But it’s Saturday. You know what it’s like. Parking round here and that. I didn’t—’

‘What’s up with you? It’s either feast or flaming famine. You swallowed a dictionary or something?’

‘Sorry, Dave.’

‘Don’t worry, mate. She makes me nervous and all.’

Sonia sneered from the back seat. ‘How touching, the organ grinder worrying about his monkey.’

‘Just take us back over there, Bob. Pick up your motor. Then take Mrs Fuller home to the flat. I’ve got business to see to.’ David thought for a moment, angled the rear-view mirror until he could see his wife, then said: ‘Tell you what, while you’re there, you can kill two birds with one stone. Pop in the Moon and tell the girls that, if they know what’s good for them, they’ll think twice about doing any business on the side. Right? Tell ’em I’ve heard some rumours. Just to keep ’em on their toes.’

Bobby nodded.

‘It doesn’t do them any harm, reminding them who’s boss now and again.’

Sonia sighed dramatically. ‘So I’ll be left outside again, will I? While this cretin gives your tarts a pep talk. Saturday night on the town. Oh, such sophistication. I know, why don’t Bobby and I tour all your most sordid little clubs? It would be such fun. I could report the evening’s festivities for the social pages.’

David gestured for Bobby to pull away. ‘Shut your gob, Sonia. You’re really beginning to get on me nerves.’

David stopped his car at the back of the hospital in a space marked ‘Doctors Only’ and reached behind him to get his coat and a brown paper bag off the back seat.

It was a quarter to ten and could still have been quite light, but, from how dark it was, it looked more like midnight. The sky was heavy with the purple grey
clouds
of a summer thunderstorm, and the raindrops were coming down in fat, sploshing coins on the bonnet of the car.

David opened the door, pulled his overcoat collar up to his ears, took a deep breath and made a run for the entrance.

‘Bloody pouring down out there,’ he said, flashing his eyebrows at the nurse who had held the door open for him.

She smiled. At first sight, she had thought the big, well-dressed man might be a new doctor she hadn’t yet come across, but his voice had immediately given him away. No doctor, even at the London, spoke with a broad cockney accent.

‘Where can I find Lenny Tawse, darling? He’s in Turner ward.’

‘Second floor,’ she directed him in a singsong Caribbean lilt, and with an even broader smile. He really was handsome. ‘It’s a bit late for visitors, but tell sister up there that Nurse Bradley sent you. Nurse Coral Bradley. The one who gets off at half ten tonight, and who isn’t doing anything other than going home by herself to curl up with a good book.’

David winked. ‘If I wasn’t a married man, Nurse Coral Bradley …’

‘Pity,’ she said to herself as she watched him stride away with as much confidence as if he were the chief consultant himself.

‘Hello, Len.’

Lenny opened his eyes and stared up at the man hovering above him. ‘Dave.’

‘Don’t shift yourself, Len, I know how much you must be hurting.’ David flicked the back of his hand over the bedside armchair to remove any unwelcome
fluff
, and sat down, his immaculately cut navy overcoat draping in elegant folds about him. ‘So, how’s tricks?’

‘You know, Dave, fair to middling.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ Remembering the brown paper bag, David put it on Lenny’s locker. ‘Few grapes for you. Any idea when you’ll be out?’

‘Soon as the collar-bone sets. They’re still a bit worried.’

‘Yeah, I heard. Nasty that, the bone shattering in so many places.’

Lenny said nothing.

‘Still, that’s the price. If you want to be on the firm, Lenny, old son, you have to behave yourself.’

Lenny nodded, shame-faced. ‘I know, Dave.’

‘You’re silly to yourself. You could have been really hurt.’

At that moment a woman with over-bright blonde hair covered with a luminous pink chiffon headscarf tottered into the ward on high, spiky patent leather heels. ‘Dave,’ she said coldly and sat on the chair that he vacated for her. ‘How’s Sonia? Busy, is she?’

David didn’t flinch. ‘Sonia’s fine, thanks, Sylvie.’

‘Good. Me on the other hand, I’m knackered. I’m having to do extra shifts in the pub to make ends meet. Cos Len’s not working. Then I have to get over here to visit him. Then get home again. Nearly midnight it is when I get to bed. Good job they let me visit this late. As a favour. Or I’d never see my Len. Would I?’

‘I’ve been meaning to drop round and see you.’ David stuck his hand inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her a wad of notes. ‘To help you get by till Lenny gets better.’

‘Thanks.’ She didn’t take it from him immediately, instead, she took her time, taking off the scarf and shaking the raindrops on to the dark green tiled floor,
then
opening the chrome clasp of her pink, pearlized-plastic handbag. Only then did she take the money and snap it safely away into her bag. ‘The kids could do with some new shoes. They cost a fortune.’

David laughed at her cheek. She was a gobby cow, but she was loyal to Lenny. David approved of that. ‘You’re a one, Sylve.’ This time he took money from his trouser pocket, a thick roll, secured with an elastic band. ‘Here. Treat yourself and all.’

‘Thanks.’

He gave the thumbs up to Lenny. ‘Get well soon, mate, and we’ll see you back at work when you’re ready.’ With that he bowled out of the ward, knowing that, as in most places he found himself, all eyes were on him.

As soon as he judged David to be out of earshot, Lenny, despite the pain from his cracked ribs and busted collarbone, rolled over and turned angrily on his wife.

‘Why did you do that, you big-mouthed mare?’ he hissed under his breath.

‘Do what?’ Sylvie asked, making no attempt to keep her words private from the others in the ward.

‘Ask him about Sonia?’

‘I was being polite.’ She picked over the grapes, selecting the plumpest.

‘No you weren’t, you stupid bitch. You were winding him up.’

Sylvie, ignoring her husband’s abuse, took out the two wads of money and, shielding what she was doing from the other patients within the folds of her beige raincoat, began counting out the notes with accompanying breathy commentary. ‘Ten, fifteen, twenty—’

‘Sylvie!’ Lenny snatched the money from her hand. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? You can’t talk like that to David Fuller.’

‘Leave off, Len.’ She snatched the money back. ‘Everyone knows that stuck-up tart of his is schtupping Mikey Tilson.’

‘And everyone knows he had Mad Albert put me in here just because I forgot to lock up his bloody Jag.’

Calmly and coldly, Sylvie leaned closer to her husband and spat the words into his face. ‘Well, why don’t he have Mad Albert put fucking Mikey in here and all?’

Lenny flopped back on to the pillow and closed his eyes, trying to block out the pain and the aggravation of being married to a loud-mouthed simpleton like Sylvie.

‘Because David Fuller is a sadistic bastard who likes playing games.’ He almost laughed. ‘And when the games are played for stakes that include people’s lives and happiness, he likes them even better.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Angie popped her head out of the shop doorway and stared along the rain-slicked, Soho street. There was no sign of a cab, not a vacant one anyway. And it was pouring down.

‘I don’t know, Ange. I just wish we’d have gone to the Cubana. At least we could have walked home from Ilford.’

‘I don’t think we’re ever going to get a cab in this rain.’

‘I hope Mum don’t wake up. She’ll kill me.’

‘At least she cares about you.’ Angie stared at the tawdry neon lights reflected in the puddled pavement, the same lights that had, a few hours earlier, held so much promise.