Tara (3 page)

Amy turned round to face him, struggling to produce a weak smile.

'Sausages,' she wheezed, and promptly broke into a spasm of coughing.

Bill sat down at the table as his wife tried to control her cough. Drinking water seemed
to
aggravate it still more. Finally, with streaming eyes, she ran out of the room clutching a handkerchief to her mouth.

He showed no concern, just flicked his braces down from his shoulders and unbuttoned the top button of his checked wool shirt. A smell of stale sweat wafted out as he reached for a slice of bread with unwashed hands.

Anne wanted to use the opportunity to insist he got help for her mother, but the grim set of his mouth deterred her. Instead she poured him a cup of tea, dished up his dinner and attempted to amuse him.

'There was a right to-do in the market this afternoon,' she giggled nervously. 'Some boy threw a tomato at Mr Singh and he chased him down the road. While he was gone Queenie nicked his bag of money from under the counter for a joke. When he got back and found it gone he nearly had a heart attack.'

The market was at the heart of Whitechapel. Characters like George in his Russian hat, Mr Singh in his turban and the voluptuous blonde Queenie on the fruit and veg stall were as dear to the locals as the smoky pubs and the Pearly King and Queen.

Anne embellished the story with actions of Mr Singh clutching at his heart, mimicking his Indian accent.

'Oh, goodness me. What am I to do? These are very bad boys.'

Bill smiled but it froze on his face as he saw his son staring at him.

'What are you gawping at? 'Ave I got a bogey hanging out me nose?'

Paul blinked furiously and bent over his plate. From the lavatory below they could hear Amy hacking away and then a violent retch.

'Just what a man needs when he's been out freezing his balls off all day,' Bill exploded, pushing his dinner away. 'This place is like a bleedin' zoo. A witless zombie staring at me and the wife throwin' up.'

Paul began to quiver with fear, and as he stuck a fork in his sausage it flicked off the plate on to the tablecloth, splattering gravy.

Anne dropped her knife and fork as her father leaped up, hand raised, but before she could intervene he had struck Paul across the head, knocking him so hard he fell sideways to the floor.

'You bloody animal,' he yelled and, picking up Paul's plate, threw the dinner down on top of him. 'Behave like a fuckin' animal and you can eat like one.'

The plate slithered off Paul's shoulder and smashed in pieces on the floor.

'Don't, Dad.' Anne reached out and caught her father's arm. 'He couldn't help it!'

Bill MacDonald's moods were mercurial. Sometimes he could be defused with as little as a cup of tea or a joke. But this time his brown eyes were full of spite and his lip curled back, showing his missing teeth.

'He can't 'elp nothin', that's 'is trouble.' Bill slapped away her hand. 'The boy's soft in the 'ead.'

Paul aggravated the situation by not getting up. He curled up among the food, whimpering, and to Anne's dismay she saw a spreading wet stain on his trousers. Before she could move round to hide this from her father, Bill was on to him. He yanked Paul up by the neck of his jumper, only to kick him across the room, smashing him into the stove.

'You filthy little bastard,' he yelled. 'I've got the perfect place for a fuckin' maggot like you!'

'No, Dad,' Anne screamed, shielding her brother with her body. Bill had often threatened to lock Paul in the coal shed out in the yard and tonight, somehow, she knew he meant
to do it.

'Get out of my way.' He caught Anne by the shoulders and hurled her back against the couch.

'Don't you dare touch him!'

Both Anne and Bill turned at the small, firm voice. Amy stood in the doorway, white-faced and shaking.

'You lay one finger on him and that will be it!' Even in anger Amy didn't shriek or bellow, but her words were a clear enough warning.

'Whatcha goin' to do about it?' Bill's eyes narrowed.

The room was smoky from the sausages, thick with a smell of fried onions, but even so Anne could smell fear, from herself, Paul and her mother.

In that second, as Bill waited for his wife's answer, Anne noticed the glass lampshade quivering on its chains above her and she was reminded again just how fragile her mother was.

'I've taken as much as I'm prepared to. Hurt either of my children and I'll get the police.' Amy's maternal instinct was stronger than her own fear.

'Your
children!' Bill moved nearer her. Anne could only stare in horror as she scrambled to her feet. 'I always knew that maggot wasn't mine, but are you trying to say Anne don't belong to me neither?'

'I wish I could say that.' Amy's chin stuck out defiantly. 'Because I'm ashamed of you.'

There'd been many times Anne had wished her mother would stand up to her father, but she knew with utter certainty this was the wrong one to pick.

Bill lowered his head and charged towards Amy like a bull, punching her first in the stomach with his right fist, the left thundering into her jaw. His assault was too fast to prevent one blow. Even before Anne could reach him he was laying into her mother in a frenzy.

'No, no!' Anne pulled at his braces from behind, but he was raining blows down on her mother as if she was a punchbag. For a moment Anne stood helplessly. Her father blocked the door, her fists alone would make no impact on his hard body. In desperation her eyes swept the room for a weapon. Her hand reached out for a brass candlestick on the mantelpiece, but as her fingers curled round it she saw the poker still stuck under the hot coals and heard her father punch her mother again.

'You slag!' he roared, hauling Amy up by one shoulder and driving his fist into her face. 'I've had it with your mealy-mouthed martyr bit. I know what you really are.'

Suddenly there was no alternative. Grasping the poker, Anne drew it out of the fire. The end glowed red, even the handle was so hot she could barely hold it.

'Leave her alone, you bully,' she screamed and lunged with the poker, thrusting it against her father's back.

His yelp made her jump back, but as he turned towards her she jabbed it forward again.

'I'll blind you,' she hissed/Get out!'

Amy slumped to the floor as Bill let go of her. He hopped from one foot to the other, grimacing with pain, his hands vainly trying to reach his burned flesh.

'You know how it feels now,' she screamed. 'Go on, try and stop me! I'll stick this in your eyes without thinking twice.'

'Put that down,' he yelled, but there was indecision in his eyes.

The hot poker felt good in her hands. Bill might be six feet tall and fourteen stone, but three feet of hot iron made them equal.

'I want you to try and take it,' she said through clenched teeth. 'I want to stick it in your face and mark you for life.'

It was quieter now, even Paul had stopped crying. Outside the traffic rumbled, car doors slammed, faint music drifted from the juke box in the café down the street, but in here there was nothing but her father's laboured breathing, and the dripping of the tap.

'Get out!' She jabbed at him again, just touching the front of his shirt, singeing a small hole. She hated his red, raw face, despised that sagging belly, and the smell of sweat made her want to retch. 'Get down the pub and drink yourself stupid. That's all you're good for.'

He backed away towards the door, past Amy lying like a rag doll. Anne knew she'd knocked the fight out of him, temporarily at least.

'Come on now, Anne, we've always been mates,' he said, his voice wheezy and uncertain. He had that imploring, cheeky look on his face that explained why women still found him attractive, his brown eyes soulful and questioning.

'Go.' She prodded with the poker again. 'Now.'

As he backed out on to the landing the sound of a train rattled the bedroom window. She kicked the door shut in his face and leaned her back against it.

'Go on, get going,' she shouted through it. 'Come back in here and I'll be ready for you.'

She waited, trembling so hard the poker twitched up and down like a water diviner's rod. Amy was motionless at her feet, her blood trickling on to the worn carpet. Anne knew her father was just standing there, perhaps trying to weigh up his chances of charging back in. Then, just as her arms were tiring from holding the poker, she heard him lift his donkey jacket down from the peg and move towards the stairs.

'Paul, watch the window!' she ordered. 'Tell me if he comes out!'

She counted each of the thirteen steps, heard the front door open, then slam behind him.

'Has he come out yet?'

'I can't see him,' Paul whimpered.

Bill was cunning enough to pretend he'd left and Anne was taking no chances. Bracing herself, she opened the door of the living room and peered out.

The naked lightbulb was swinging in the breeze above the stairs, but that meant nothing. He could be hiding in the lavatory by the front door, or even in the back yard.

'I can see him now,' Paul called out. 'He's going down towards the Black Bull.'

Still holding the poker she ran down the stairs and bolted both the front door and the one to the yard. When she returned to the living room her legs nearly gave way.

Amy's face was a mass of raw flesh surrounded by blood-soaked blonde hair. She was out cold, a lifeless broken doll. Paul had a split lip, a swollen eye and a lump of mashed potato stuck in his hair.

'What will we do when he comes back tonight?' Paul's voice was a squeak of terror.

Anne knelt by her mother, trembling all over, for a moment afraid she was dead. This was no ordinary beating; Amy's jaw was twisted to one side as if it were broken or dislocated. Her right arm lay at an unnatural angle, but as she put her head close to her mother's chest she could hear the faint sound of her heart still beating.

'I have to get an ambulance.' She turned to Paul, trying to control her own rising panic. 'Get some dry trousers on while I phone for one. I won't be a minute.'

It struck her on the way downstairs that an ambulance would only take her mother to the hospital across the street and that would be the first place her father would look. He would come for them, take them home and continue what he'd started.

George sprang to her mind. Time and time again he had offered help and a month ago, when Amy had a black eye, he had given Anne his telephone number. Did that mean he really wanted to help, or was it just politeness?

There was no time for hesitation. She ran back upstairs, found the number and four pennies, then belted out the back door and down the back alley to the phone box in the next street.

'I'll be there right away, sweetheart.'

That was all George said. No hesitation, no questions. All those other people Amy had implored for help in the past, doctors, social workers and even police, had shrugged their shoulders and looked the other way. Yet George, who wasn't even a relative, said he'd come.

She didn't immediately recognise the tall, dark man in a smart Italian pin-striped suit as George's son. It was three years since she'd last seen Harry and then he had been a gangly sixteen-year-old in an oversized red drape jacket, with a terrible crop of spots. This man barging up the stairs two at a time had brilliant blue eyes, sharp chiselled cheekbones and perfectly groomed black hair.

'Don't worry, sweetheart.' George hugged her briefly. 'Me and 'Arry'll soon have you all out of 'ere.'

There was no time to be embarrassed about anything, Harry simply strode in and took over.

'Jesus!' he exclaimed as he squeezed his way round the living-room door to see Amy crumpled behind it. 'What sort of animal does that to a woman?'

Anne found it odd later that she remembered so much detail about Harry that night, and virtually nothing about the role George played. Old Spice aftershave, cufflinks like small pistols and the side lacing on his winklepickers – how could she notice all this when her mother was so badly hurt?

Her father had conditioned her to think men were capable of no emotion other than rage, yet Harry, with his sleek college-boy haircut and his fashionable mohair suit, cradled Amy tenderly in his arms and his bright blue eyes were full of compassion.

'I'll make the bastard pay for this,' he vowed to her in a croaky voice as he looked down at Amy's battered face. 'So help me, Anne, I'll swing for him before I let him touch any one of you again!'

It occurred to Anne on the way to the Middlesex hospital that there was a triangular relationship between George, Harry and Amy that she knew nothing about. As Paul clung to her on the front seat, she glanced around at Harry supporting Amy in the back and wondered. She didn't understand it. Harry didn't even seem to notice the blood stains on his white shirt and expensive suit as he tried to protect her mother from further jolts.

There was plenty of time to study Harry further while they waited at the hospital, and a certain comfort to be derived from remembering that he had once been a skinny ragamuffin like herself. This was the dirty-faced boy who'd fired his catapult at fat old Mrs Maloney's backside and made her stumble and reveal her large pink bloomers. He had once entertained the kids in the road by doing handstands on his pushbike and he'd been known as the best runner in the East End.

He had grown into a handsome man without losing the qualities he'd had as a kid. His angular face, which could look fierce and uncompromising, broke into a warm smile effortlessly. He had developed muscle yet kept that nimble grace intact. But of all the things Anne found to like in Harry it was the sensitivity he showed to Paul that touched her most. Not only had he taken Paul off to find a toilet, washed his hands and face and got the potato out of his hair, but now he sat with him close beside him, sharing a magazine in companionable silence.

Each hour seemed like a week as they waited in the small glassed-in cubicle that passed as a waiting room. The air was heavy with anxiety, not just theirs but that of the countless tense relatives who'd permanently imprinted their bottoms on the sagging plastic chairs, scuffed the carpet and left tea stains on the cream paint. No-one had to point out that Amy's condition was serious, the number of grave-faced doctors and nurses scuttling in and out of the side ward along the corridor made that quite clear.