Stay Dead (8 page)

‘That’s right.’ Gina’s chin set suddenly in a stubborn line. ‘That’s the truth.’

‘That
ain’t
the truth,’ said Max. ‘Because Constantine is dead. He died in an explosion years ago, in Montauk.’

Gina raised a trembling hand to her brow, closed her eyes. Then she opened them and stared malevolently at Max. ‘How dare you come here. Constantine will see to you, my friend. You can be
very sure of that.’

‘That would be a hell of a trick. The bastard’s dead in a box in a New York cemetery.’

Suddenly Gina was clutching harder at her chest. ‘Can you fetch Fidelia . . . ?’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Max moved in a little. ‘What is it?’

‘Get Fidelia. I feel . . .’

The only sound in the room for long moments was Gina’s laboured breathing. She was slumped further over in her chair now, holding her chest. All at once, huge globs of sweat were popping
out on her face.

Christ
,
she’s not faking it
.

Max ran to her chair and pulled her upright.

‘Gina? Miss Barolli? Come on, you old fuck, don’t bloody die on me now!’ He patted her thin cheeks, looked at the blue-tinged lips and thought,
Shit, that looks bad
.

Her eyes were flickering closed and her brow was soaking wet and creased with pain. Then the eyes, dark and hate-filled, fastened on his and she spat at him. He pulled his head away sharply, as
if drawing back from a striking snake, and now she was
smiling
although he could see she was in agony.

‘She’s not your wife at all,’ she gasped out, having to pause between each word to catch her faltering breath. ‘She’s his. She has always been . . . she will always
be . . .
his.
’

Max put a hand to her chest. He could hardly feel a heartbeat and suddenly he thought of mummies, ancient mouldering Egyptian mummies, coming to life after thousands of years. He’d always
laughed at horror films, but he was living one now.

‘Constantine Barolli is dead,’ he said between gritted teeth. This mad old
bitch
, what the hell was she saying?

Now she really was smiling, although the smile became a twisted grimace of pain.

‘He’s not dead,’ she said, so low that Max had to strain to hear it. ‘He’s
alive.
’

‘He died in the explosion at Montauk,’ said Max.

She was shaking her head, laughing at him, crying out in pain, but still mocking him, jeering at him.

‘He didn’t die. You can’t
kill
a great don like Constantine . . . oh . . .’

She was wincing, clawing harder at her chest, kneading frantically at her left arm.

‘He died,’ said Max.

‘He didn’t die,’ she gasped out. ‘And she knows it.’

‘She?’ Max stared at the contorted face.

‘Annie Carter.
Her
. The puttana. The bitch. She’s . . . always known.’

With those final, damning words, Gina Barolli took one last halting breath and her eyes closed. She slumped, lifeless, in the chair.

And Max knew at last.

Gary Tooley had been telling the truth.

Annie
had
betrayed him.

Limehouse
,
1958

Turned out, Dolly was wrong about the safety thing. While Mum sat like a vegetable in the rocking chair up in the bedroom and the younger kids were at school or out playing, things would
happen. Mum was becoming more and more cut off from reality. Dad would come in from his job and while usually he just had a wash-down with a flannel, occasionally he would bathe in the tin bath in
front of the fire. Dolly would fill the bath for him with endless heavy kettles of water off the stove while he sat at the kitchen table watching her. More and more he was doing this, taking a full
bath – and she knew why. She always went off into the sitting room and let him get on with it.

‘Dolly girl!’ he’d call out.

It was the shout that filled her with fear. She would creep to the closed door and say: ‘Yes, Dad?’

‘Come and scrub my back, there’s a good girl,’ he called back to her.

‘I’m doing my homework, Dad!’ she shouted back, although that was a bald lie, she never did homework. If they put her in detention for it – and they did, often –
she was pleased, because that meant she wouldn’t have to come home until later. She never wanted to come home, not now.

‘That can wait! Come on.

What else could she do? This was Dad.

Trembling, she opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. In front of the fire, there was Dad sitting naked in the tin bath. He was bulky, hairy. She stood there, undecided, until he
looked back at her over his meaty shoulder and said: ‘Come on then, girl. Soap my back for me.’

Dolly thought she might be sick, and if she was sick then she hoped it would choke her and end all this weird, claustrophobic misery and torment. But she went over and took the soapy flannel
from his hand and started scrubbing her dad’s back. She kept her eyes firmly on his back, hotly and horribly aware that he was undressed and that this was wrong. But he was her dad and he
loved her, didn’t he?

So was it wrong?

She didn’t know, and there was no one she could talk to about it. The teachers? Impossible. A friend at school? She no longer had any friends there, she’d drawn away from people,
thinking they might guess her dirty secret and be disgusted with her just as she was disgusted with herself.

Her brothers and sister? No, she couldn’t tell them. They would be jealous of the gifts, they wouldn’t understand. Already Sarah was acting strange with her, being cool and
offish. She thought that Sarah might know what was going on, and a hot tide of embarrassment flooded her at that thought. Mum, then?

No. Not Mum. Dolly was Mum’s rival for Dad’s affections, she could see that. And somewhere in her heart she relished it, felt a certain twisted, ghastly pride at the feeling. She
wished Mum was normal like other mums, that she wasn’t a head case, that she would be here, really here, and shield Dolly from these things that shouldn’t be happening.

So she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. And anyway, this was Dad, and Dad loved her. She soaped his back, and then he caught her arm and took it down the front of his body. He leaned
back in the water and pressed her hand to that long white hard thing that loomed out of the soap suds. Horrified, Dolly thought she might scream but instead she cut off from the here and now and
thought of the stained-glass angels in the little church near the primary school she had loved so much, of how happy she had been then, when she had been innocent and untouched; before she knew
about the man-and-woman thing and everything had turned bad.

Desperately she tried to blank out what he was doing, moving her hand up and down, faster and faster until his whole body stiffened and she thought he must be having a stroke or something.
She hoped he was. Then the hard thing went soft, and finally Dad sighed and relaxed and let go of her arm.

‘You’re my special girl, ain’t you?’ he murmured, lying back, eyes closed.

Dolly hugged her arm, which felt bruised. She let the flannel drop into the soap suds with a shudder of horror. Then she turned, and saw Mum standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching
them.

Dolly was shamed to her soul by Mum seeing what was happening in front of the fire. Her face, her whole body, burned with embarrassment and guilt that her mother had seen
her doing the bad thing with Dad.

What Dolly expected was that Mum would shout and scream, that she would cuff Dolly around the ear, and she deserved that . . . but none of that happened.

Dolly would never forget the image of that room: the hot fire blazing, her mother standing on the bottom step, staring; and Dad’s head slowly swivelling around as he saw Dolly’s
horrified face turned toward where Edie stood.

Sam Farrell stared at his wife, and said nothing. After long, long moments Edie simply turned and went back upstairs. Dad sat back in his bath. And Dolly fled the room.

Dolly thought that after the bath thing Edie would talk to her husband, angry words would be exchanged; but again she was let down. If anything, Mum seemed to withdraw even
more, only sometimes Dolly caught her mum staring fixedly at her, saying nothing, just looking at her daughter as if she was looking at a stranger.

Then one Saturday Dad came in from the pub. Mum was in the kitchen in her usual seat, staring at nothing in particular, and the kids were out playing. Dad came in, weaving a little on his
feet, slightly drunk, and looked at his wife slumped there. His expression was one of impatience and disgust.

‘Going to sort out the box room,’ he snapped at his wife. Then he turned to Dolly. ‘Come on, Doll, you can give me a hand.’ And he headed for the stairs.

Dolly looked at Mum, but Edie’s eyes remained resolutely on the floor. What was he talking about, the box room? The tiny room was a tip, everything went in there, all the shit in the
entire world it seemed, so why was he talking about sorting it out? Dad never bothered himself with stuff like that.

‘I said come on – you deaf?’ Dad snarled at Dolly from the bottom of the stairs.

Confused, Dolly followed him up. But instead of going left to the box room, he went into the bedroom he shared with Mum. Her heart suddenly in her mouth, Dolly hesitated at the door and he
took her hand, pulled her inside, shut it. He passed a hand over his face and she thought she saw a flicker of something like despair there before it was gone, quick as a flash, and then he was
smiling.

‘You’re my best girl, ain’t you, Doll?’ he said, and his voice was almost whining, almost pleading, as he led her to the bed.

‘What about the box room?’ Dolly blurted out in terror, her face red with shame because she knew what he was going to do, he was going to do the man-and-woman thing to her, she
knew it . . .

And Mum knew it too.

That thought cut into her, sharp as a knife. Mum was sitting downstairs letting him do this, because it kept him away from her.

‘That’ll keep. Lay down there, Dolly, there’s a good girl.’

What could she do? This was wrong, but it was Dad, and she loved him, of course she did. So she lay down on the bed and when he lay down next to her she didn’t bolt for the door. It
took willpower not to, but this was her dad. He loved her. She had to keep reminding herself of that, she had to.

Down in the kitchen, Edie heard her daughter’s piercing scream.

‘Oh Christ in heaven,’ she said, and as Dolly screamed again she put her hands over her ears and rocked backward and forward in her chair, crying. ‘Forgive me,’ she
moaned. ‘Please forgive me.’

After that first time, it happened again and again – so many times that Dolly lost count, and she tried to count, to think that some day she might reach the end of
this, that it might stop. But it didn’t.

Mum knew.

That was the bit that really choked Dolly. Mum knew about this, and she didn’t intervene, didn’t give a monkey’s. She was just relieved that Dad’s attentions were
elsewhere. But maybe this was normal? Maybe this was just one of the adult things that Dolly hadn’t previously known about, and which she had to learn? She didn’t know.

Time and again she thought of the angels in the little church, of how stupid and innocent she had been to think that there was beauty in the world. She remembered the sweet-faced old priest
with his fine words about God and redemption. But the priest had been wrong, so wrong. There was no beauty. There was nothing in this world except filth and degradation.

Beauty?

What a laugh.

It didn’t exist, not in her world. Nothing worth a flying fuck did.

Mum wouldn’t look her in the face any more, Dolly knew that much. And more and more they carted Edie off to the hospital to get ‘zapped’, as Nigel
mockingly called it. Nigel thought Dad could do no wrong, but Mum? He’d grown critical of her, aping his father’s attitude. When Edie got home, it was Dolly who had to put her to bed,
clean up the sick, deal with her vague, mad statements. It always took a day or two for Edie to come back to herself, and in between she was lost to them. Not a mother at all, really, just a thing
in a bed, babbling nonsense, poor cow. Dolly saw how Edie cringed away from her husband whenever he came near, and she didn’t wonder at it. She felt rage and bitterness toward her mother, no
love at all now, but in the cold logical core of herself she could see Edie’s viewpoint. She could see that Edie had chosen to sacrifice her eldest daughter and save herself.

So it went on, months and months of endless torment. Dolly ate chocolates, the guilt-gifts she got from her dad, and she grew fatter, comfort-eating. Home was a war zone and she was just
spoils, to be enjoyed as the man of the house thought fit.

It went on, and on – until she was ill.

Everyone was ill that winter; the flu bug was doing the rounds and sure enough the whole bloody family went down like ninepins. First it hit Edie, who’d been in the
hospital again getting her brain fried, and her usual sickness and nausea when she came home just went on and on, until they had to call the doctor out.

‘Influenza,’ he pronounced, and left. ‘Bed rest, liquids, warmth.’

Then little Sandy, the weakest and youngest of the kids, fell victim, then Dick and Nigel, and finally Sarah, who’d been helping Dolly care for the whole damned lot of them. Inevitably,
Dolly herself got up one morning and fell back on to the bed, too hot and dizzy to stand. For two weeks it was Dad who had to do the honours, stopping off work to heat up soup to feed them all and
carrying buckets and bowls to and fro to all their sickbeds. Dolly was viciously glad to see him having to empty the shit and vomit in the khazi out in the back yard.