Wishing and Hoping (6 page)

‘
WHY HAVE YOU
moved your bed into the front room, Gran?'

Marcie watched as her grandmother laid out the breakfast things on the table. ‘It is warmer down here and my legs are old. I am finding it difficult to climb the stairs.'

Marcie's eyes met Michael's over the tops of the children's heads. Rosa Brooks was keeping her head down, busying herself over a job that didn't necessarily need to be that busy.

‘I hope you didn't bring the bed down by yourself,' said Michael.

‘Of course not. Garth got Arnold and Archie to give him a hand. Garth is very strong.'

Marcie had expressed her fears regarding her grandmother the night before.

‘She's stubborn. What's the betting that something is wrong but she's not admitting it? Did you notice how many cardigans she's wearing? Three! Three thick cardigans.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘See if she's been to the doctor – get him to keep
me informed. I'll try and get it out of her in the morning, but I doubt she'll tell me anything.'

Her prediction had turned out absolutely right.

‘Did you sleep well?' her grandmother asked her.

‘Yes, I did.'

Although realising that her grandmother was attempting to divert the conversation, Marcie had answered truthfully. She'd had no dreams about exploding signs whilst asleep here. Back in London was a different matter. She'd been having dreams about a man in a white suit sitting on a wall, his face shaded by his hat. She'd not seen his face but instinctively knew that he was looking for someone. In her dream she looked to the same stone archway he was looking at, but saw no one.

Just a dream, she'd told herself in the mornings after, but she couldn't help wondering at the identity of the man and whoever he was waiting for.

She would have gone on there and then to describe the dream and ask what her grandmother made of it. But more important things were on her mind. She was worried about her grandmother, worried that she wasn't taking good care of herself and that she might not be quite as well as she made out.

‘Would you like us to walk with you to church today?' she asked.

‘Could you take me in the car?'

For an uncertain moment Marcie felt as though
she'd walked into a trap. If her grandmother was going to church in the car it stood to reason that they'd all have to go.

Marcie considered declining. It had been a long time since she'd attended either mass or confession.

‘OK. We'll go with you.'

‘No. You stay with the children. There will not be room for all of us. Michael can drive and Garth will sit in the back with me.'

Marcie shook her head. ‘If that's the way you want it.'

Whilst her grandmother was gone Marcie did the chores around the house, preparing dinner, making the beds and dusting in corners where spiders wouldn't have dared to spin webs in days gone by. There was no getting away from it; her grandmother was growing old.

‘How was she?' she asked Michael when lunch was over and they were on their way back to London.

‘Fine. A bit confused as to the whereabouts of the door handle in the car, but once she was on the pavement she was fine. In fact I've never seen anyone walk such a straight line into church. Garth took care of her. I followed on.'

‘She's very independent,' Marcie muttered. ‘She always will be.'

‘There's nothing wrong in that.'

Marcie sighed. ‘I just wish that Babs would pop round to see her more often. It wouldn't hurt her to do that. But no, that's my stepmother for you. Selfish through and through.'

Michael laughed.

Marcie eyed him accusingly. ‘What's that for?'

‘The concept of your stepmother being under the same roof as your grandmother. Have you ever seen that old Chinese sign for war?'

‘No.'

‘The sign for peace, so I'm given to understand, is one woman under one roof. The sign for war is two women under one roof.'

Marcie laughed too. ‘Point taken.'

She dozed on the way back and, as she dozed, she dreamed. In her dream this time she saw her grandmother and stepmother living under the same roof. The air was electric, explosions happening all around.

When she woke up they were in the middle of a thunderstorm. A roll of thunder sounded overhead.

Michael glanced at her before turning back to the windscreen wipers lashing across the screen. ‘Sweet dreams?'

‘No. I dreamed that my grandmother and stepmother were living in the same house.'

Michael laughed and pretended to shudder all at
the same time. ‘That's not a dream. That's a nightmare!'

She had to agree with him.

The next day was Monday and Marcie took the children into the sewing room with her.

Sally and Allegra were there.

‘Kids!' Sally cried, her usual exuberant self.

Allegra was more subdued. Even the way she dressed was far less glamorous than in the past. Marcie put it down to the fact that she was merely adjusting to a life without Victor Camilleri. A few other men had offered to take her out – not surprising, of course. Allegra was stunningly beautiful. Few invitations had been accepted and those that had seemed promising in Marcie's eyes had petered out into nothing.

Reopening the sewing room had been a tough decision. Having two children now, Marcie had wondered if she would be able to manage work and looking after them. There had also been Michael's opinion to consider. She'd been afraid of him taking the old-fashioned view and not wanting her to work now she had children. A lot of husbands preferred their wives to stay at home despite all this bra burning by women who considered they were as good as men and could have home, husband, kids and career.

As it turned out, Michael had encouraged her to continue with designing and making stage costumes
for the exotic dancers and female impersonators who performed in nightclubs all over London and further afield. He assured her that having an outside interest would do her good.

‘Exotic dancers are the jam on our bread and butter,' he'd said to her. ‘Someone has to make their costumes, so why shouldn't it be you?'

‘Not quite my colour,' he'd added on holding a sequinned brassiere to his ample and very masculine chest.

She'd laughed and whipped his arm with it.

She was happy in her marriage and in her work. If anyone had told her a few years back what she'd be doing she would never have believed them. It had always been her ambition to design and make fashionable dresses, but getting into that scene had proved more difficult in London than she could have imagined. Fashion houses would only take on girls with some kind of design or art school qualification. Marcie had neither and although Mrs Camilleri, the wife of Victor Camilleri, Michael's father, had given her a start, it didn't last. It couldn't last once Marcie had found out the real reason she was there. Thinking her a virgin and a good Catholic, they determined she would be a good and uncomplaining wife for their legitimate son. It had all gone well at first; Roberto Camilleri had been enamoured of her and she'd been attracted to him.

As big a criminal as his father, he'd seemed at first to be a charming rogue, a ladies' man, but he really had wanted a wife with an unblemished reputation. Unfortunately when he found out that she had a kid out of wedlock his attitude had changed.

Marcie still shivered at the thought of the day he took her for a drive in the country. She'd never told him about Joanna, safely at home on the Isle of Sheppey with her grandmother. Thanks to a bitter ex-friend, Roberto had found out her secret. Not a word was said about it on that drive until she saw the walls of the home for unmarried mothers looming up in front of them. She'd denied nothing, and after that his mood had become violent. He'd raped her. How could anyone say they loved somebody if they could do that? And then he'd acted as if they could still carry on. He'd wanted her to give up Joanna. She'd refused, but he'd kept on at her, insistent that she would change her mind. Roberto Camilleri was used to having his own way.

It was Michael who had sorted things out; Michael who had caused his half-brother and his father to be arrested. Roberto had ended up in prison. Victor was out and, although he hadn't exactly vowed revenge on his son, Michael was wary and keeping his distance.

If it hadn't been for friends like Sally and Allegra – both of whom had been with her at Pilemarsh, the Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers – she
didn't know what she would have done, gone back to Sheppey probably. And then there was Michael. For his sake as much as for her thriving little business, she'd stayed in London. Marriage to him had seemed a natural progression. She was happy with him and happier still when Aran had come along. Perhaps it was her own happiness with her life and family that made her so angry with her father.

‘I think my father's got a fancy woman. Have you heard anything?'

She directed her question at Allegra who shook her head. ‘I am no longer part of the nightclub scene, Marcie, so in all honesty, I wouldn't know. What makes you think that?'

Marcie began unwrapping some material samples sent to her by an East End fabric merchant.

‘Oh. Just something my stepmother said. He's not going home much. The kids are missing him.'

She had no intention of describing her stepmother's outburst. Much as she disliked Babs, her words had not fallen on deaf ears. She knew her father too well.

‘Perhaps he has just been working too hard,' said Allegra.

Her beautiful dark eyes looked trusting, as though no man could possibly behave like that. Since when had she changed, and why haven't I noticed before? thought Marcie.

Sally looked up and laughed. ‘Rubbish. That's the way he is. He's that sort of bloke. A lot of blokes are like that. It's the chase that matters and as long as the wife is at home playing mother bleedin' hen, they consider it all right for them to be out chasing spring chickens – even though they ain't one themselves. And being involved in nightclubs don't help. Think of it as a playground for men or the kid in the sweetshop. They're surrounded with the stuff of their dreams, only in their case it isn't chocolate or pear drops, it's sexy girls taking their clothes off. It's bound to get to them sooner or later.'

Sally said all this whilst playing horsey with Joanna. The voluptuous blonde who stripped off for a living was on all fours while Joanna sat astride her back shouting, ‘Giddy-up, Auntie Sally.'

Allegra had picked up Aran and was humming a lullaby while smiling down into his sleeping face. Looking at her now, it was hard to believe that Allegra had once been Victor Camilleri's mistress. She'd left him following Marcie getting raped by Roberto. He'd beat her after finding out that she'd tried to warn Marcie that Roberto was looking for her.

Nowadays Allegra was trying to build a more respectable life for herself. At the same time she was also repairing the links with her parents, who had been appalled at her shacking up with Camilleri. All this had happened after her sojourn at Pilemarsh
where she'd given birth. She'd never admitted who the father of the child was but swore that it wasn't Victor Camilleri.

At present she was studying for a law degree, though she admitted she hadn't quite made up her mind whether that was the way she wanted to go.

‘The right path will come to me in a flash,' she said to her friends.

Allegra had a precise way of speaking which was laced with a Spanish accent. Her parents hailed from Jerez and were something to do with the sherry trade. She'd not been her old self since parting from Victor Camilleri, though her clothes were still designer and, thanks to her wealthy – though largely absent – family she was not short of cash. All the same, Marcie detected a change in her, a more deep-thinking Allegra had replaced the elegant confidence she'd known before.

‘So do you reckon your dad is still knocking around with that black girl, Ella?' Sally asked.

Marcie shrugged. ‘You tell me.'

‘How would I know?' Sally said casually.

Marcie was not fooled. She could tell by the way Sally immersed herself in playing with Joanna, not meeting her eyes, that she knew more than she was letting on.

‘I didn't know that her name was Ella,' said Marcie.

‘I know that she had two kids and her old man does a runner every now and again, depending on
whether the police are looking for him. I've not heard that she's around. So p'rhaps your dad is on the straight and narrow and it's all a mistake.'

‘I'm not stupid, Sally.'

Sally had a way of sighing when she knew the game was up. She did that now. ‘OK,' she said, tipping Joanna gently off her back. ‘I did hear there's a new bird on the scene. But I don't know her name. That's all I know. I would have thought he would have told you more. I'm only repeating gossip – you know how it is in the club scene – everybody is always shagging somebody, the most unlikely people too, blokes who you'd always understood were happily married, but, as I said, that's the club-land scene for you. All blokes are the same – all of them, without exception –'

She stopped abruptly, suddenly aware of what she'd just said. ‘Not Michael, of course. Michael I would swear by. Honest I would. He's the only bloke I know who I'd lay my life on being faithful. One hundred per cent.' She laughed lightly.

‘I know he is,' said Marcie with undisguised confidence. ‘I know he is. He's the best thing that ever happened to me – besides my kids that is. Absolutely the best.'

But the barb had hit home and that night, as she lay in bed waiting for him to come home, she wondered if he hadn't been with someone else.

PADDY RAFFERTY LIVED
in a palatial drum behind wrought-iron gates as far away from his centre of business as it was possible to get without being totally out of touch. London was still in his blood and the loot he made from his varied business interests flowed from the East End and North London into his bank account. From Tottenham to Whitechapel he had his fingers on the pulse of the less salubrious side of life. Prostitution, drugs, protection and property: they were all part of his book as he put it.