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‘What’s the matter? It’s all right. Look, there’s room for us both. Come in here behind me and I’ll shield you.’
Julia looked up and down the alley. The city waiting beyond its dark mouth seemed threatening now. Reluctantly she stepped past Mattie and hauled the suitcases into the grimy space. She opened one and took out some of the least essential clothes, bunching them up to make pillows and a scrap of a bed. She lay down with the suitcases wedged behind her for safety, and Mattie squeezed herself in too. Julia tucked her knees into the crook of Mattie’s and hunched up to her warm back. Mattie’s mass of curls, still surprisingly scented with her Coty perfume, fell over her face.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Julia whispered.
‘You helped me to get away,’ Mattie said simply. And then, ‘We’ll be all right, you know.’
‘I know we will,’ Julia answered.
They lay quietly, hoping to sleep. After a while a smartly dressed couple came up the alley. The yellow light from the street lamp glittered briefly on the woman’s necklace. They glanced at the figures in the doorway as they passed, and looked quickly away again, separating themselves.
‘I’ve done that,’ Mattie whispered, when they had gone.
‘Me too.’
It seemed such a small step, now, from that world, padded with food and insulated with little tokens of security, to this doorway.
I’m so hungry.’
‘We must save the money for breakfast.’
The smell of food wafting from the ventilator made them feel ravenous, and sick at the same time. There were other smells lingering in the doorway too. Mattie and Julia clung together, and after a while they drifted into an uncomfortable sleep.
Mattie had no idea how long she had been dozing for. She woke up, confused and aching, with the panicky certainty that someone was watching them. She lifted her head from the nest of clothes and a gasp of terror shook her. A man was leaning over her. His face was covered with grey whiskers and his matted grey hair hung down to his shoulders. He was grinning, his lips drawn back to reveal black stumps of teeth. It was his breath that frightened Mattie most. It smelt rawly of drink and she recoiled, trying to escape from the memories that that close, fetid smell stirred in her. She felt Julia go stiff behind her, and her fingers digging into her arms.
‘Two lassies,’ the apparition mumbled and then cackled with laugher. ‘Two lassies, is it? Ma’ pitch, ye know, this is. Mine.’ He thrust his face closer and they tried to edge backwards.
‘Please go away,’ Julia whispered. ‘We’re not doing any harm. We’ve nowhere else.’
‘Ah can see that.’ He cackled more raucously still. ‘Well, seein’ it’s you ye can be ma guests. Just fer tonight. ’Tis the Savoy, ye know. Act nice. They serve breakfast, just round the corner, first thing.’ He picked up a filthy sack and shuffled away down the hill, still hooting with laughter.
Mattie was shuddering with fright and shock. Julia put her arm over her shoulders. ‘He was only an old tramp. We’ve pinched his place, that’s all. Come on, we’ll change places so that I’m in the front. You can hide behind me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie mumbled.
They scrambled stiffly to their knees and lay down again. Mattie stopped shaking at last, and she let her eyes close. It wasn’t the tramp who she saw at once against her eyelids. It was only his smell that had frightened her, and repelled her so deeply that all her flesh screamed and crawled in case he touched her.
He had made her think of her father, and of what she had really run away from.
She had been to see East of Eden, just as she had told Vernon and Betty Smith. She came blindly out of the Odeon in the High Street with the image of James Dean more real than the windows of Woolworths across the street, more flesh and blood than the two boys from the technical college lounging in front of them. For a few minutes more, while the spell lasted, the hated suburban shopping street and the teds whistling at her were nothing to do with Mattie.
For two whole hours she had escaped from home and her younger brothers and sisters, from work, and from everything that surrounded her. It was her fourth visit. Julia had come with her three times, but even Julia had balked at a fourth visit. So Mattie had gone on her own, and afterwards she drifted to the bus stop, lost inside her own head with Cal Trask.
The enchantment lasted until she reached home. She walked through the estate, where every avenue and turning was the same as the last and the next, and reached her own front gate. It creaked open, brushing over the docks and nettles sprouting across the path. She stopped for a second outside her own front door. The house was quiet. It must have thundered while she was in the cinema, Mattie thought. It had been a dusty, muggy day but the air was cool and clear now.
She put her key in the lock and opened the front door.
Ted Banner was standing in the dim hallway.
‘Where the bloody hell have you have been, you dirty little madam?’
Mattie smelt sweat and whisky and the indefinable, sour scent of her father’s hopeless anger. She knew what was coming. Her stomach heaved with fright, but she made herself say, calmly and clearly so that he couldn’t possibly misunderstand her, ‘I’ve been to the Odeon to see a picture. It was James Dean in East of Eden. It finished at a quarter to ten and I came straight home.’ As conciliatory as she could be, with as much detail as possible, so that he might believe her. But he didn’t. He came at her, and she glimpsed the patch of sweat darkening his vest as he lifted his fist.
‘Bloody little liar.’
He swiped viciously at her. Mattie flung up her arm to protect her face, but the blow still jarred and she stumbled backwards.
‘Been out with some feller, haven’t you? Taking your knickers off for anyone who asks you in the back of his car, like your sister. All the same, all of you.’
‘I haven’t. I told you, I’ve been to the pictures.’
‘Again?’
Some evenings, Mattie didn’t have the protection of the truth. But it made no difference anyway. Her father hit her again, hard, a double blow with the flat and then the back of his hand. Her teeth sliced into the corner of her lip, and she tasted blood, salty in her mouth. A little part of her, cold and detached and disgusted, heard the rest of herself whimpering with fear. He knocked her sideways and she fell against the rickety coatstand that stood behind the door. It collapsed with her, in a humiliating tangle of clothes and limbs.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Dad.’
I hate you. The words drummed in her head. I hate you.
A door creaked open at the top of the stairs, and Mattie looked up to see her sister Marilyn, nine years old, looking down at them. The girl’s eyes were wide with anxiety, but there was no surprise in them.
‘It’s all right, Marilyn,’ Mattie said. She pulled herself upright, pressing the palm of her hand against her throbbing lip. ‘Go back to bed now. Don’t wake Sam up.’
The child melted away again.
Ted was breathing heavily through his mouth. His cheeks were blotched and treaded with broken veins, and his big moustache was beaded with sweat and spittle.
Suddenly his shoulders sagged. He rolled his head to and fro, as if he was trying to break free of something.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last.
Mattie tried to slip past him up the stairs. ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, pressing herself against the wall so that even her clothes need not brush against him. But his hand caught her wrist.
‘Come in the kitchen,’ he begged her, in a new, wheedling voice. ‘I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea.’
‘All right,’ Mattie said. It was easier to acquiesce than to risk stirring up his anger again.
She watched her father warily as he lit the gas and put the kettle on. She was ready for him when he came at her again. She flinched, and slid out of his reach behind the table.
He held out his big, meaty hands.
‘Mat, don’t run away from me. Don’t, I can’t bear it.’
There was a bottle of whisky on the table and he took a swig from it, wiping his moustache with his fingers. He had gone from anger to self-pitying drunkenness. Mattie knew what that meant too, and it made her even more afraid.
‘Come here.’
Her skin crawled, but she knew that she couldn’t refuse him. She sidled out from the table’s protection.
‘Right here, I said.’
Her father’s hand touched her arm and then her shoulders. It weighed heavily, and the hairy skin of his forearm was hot and prickly against the nape of her neck. With his other hand he turned her face to his. He was very close, and she bit the insides of her cheeks to keep her fear and disgust hidden inside her. Ted’s hand slipped downwards, and his fingers touched her breast. He hesitated for a second, his expression suddenly dreamy, almost tender. Then his hand closed on her, squeezing and twisting, and she cried out in pain.
‘Don’t. Please don’t.’
‘Don’t you like it? Those boys do it, don’t they?’
They didn’t because Mattie wouldn’t let them, but her father didn’t know that. The sweat had broken out on his face again, and a thread of it trickled from his hairline, across his temple. His mouth opened and hung loosely as he rubbed his hand over her breast. He jerked her closer. Holding her so tightly that she knew she couldn’t break away, he thrust his face against hers and kissed her. Wetness smeared her mouth and chin, and then his tongue forced itself between her lips.
Mattie understood how drunk he was.
For years, since she was younger than Marilyn, her father had touched and fondled her.
‘It’s a little game,’ he used to say. ‘Our little game. Don’t tell anyone, will you?’
Mattie hated it, and the feelings it stirred in her frightened and puzzled her. But she also discovered that it was a protection. If she let him play his game, just occasionally, he was less likely to hit her. She would stand, mute and motionless, and let him run his hands over her. That was all. Nothing else. She kept the knowledge of it in a little box, closed off from everything else, never mentioning it to her older sisters, or to her mother while she was still alive. It was just her father, after all, just the way he was. Dirty, and pathetic, and she would get away from him as soon as she could.
She had never even whispered anything to Julia.
But tonight was different. Somehow Ted had slipped beyond control. He didn’t seem pathetic any more, so she couldn’t detach herself in despising him. He was dangerous now. Too close, too dangerous.
Mattie’s fear paralysed her. She couldn’t move, and couldn’t stop him. He was grunting now, deep in his throat. He sat down heavily against the table, pulling her to him. Her legs were trapped between his. His hand went to the hem of her skirt. He wrenched at it, trying to pull it up. But it was too tight, and it caught at the top of her thighs. He squinted at her, his eyes puffy.
‘Take if off.’
Mattie shuddered, struggling in his grip. ‘No. Leave me alone. Leave me …’
He tore at her blouse instead. It was a skimpy, sleeveless thing that Mattie had made herself with lopsided hand stitching. The shoulder seam ripped and Ted forced his hand inside.
‘Let me do it. Just once,’ he begged her. His face was hidden, but she could feel his hot, wet mouth working against her neck. ‘I won’t ask you again. Ever, Mattie. Just once, will you?’
Mattie held herself still, gathering her strength. Then she lashed at him with her hands, and twisted her neck to try to bite any part of him that she could reach. He didn’t even notice the blow, and he was much too quick for her. He caught both her wrists in one hand, and the other tightened around her throat. For a second, they looked into each other’s eyes. Slowly, his fingers unfastened from her neck. She could feel the print of them on her skin.
He fumbled with his own clothes, undoing them.
Somehow, out of her pain and terror and disgust, Mattie found the right words. ‘Look at yourself,’ she commanded in a small, clear voice. ‘Just look at yourself.’
He saw his daughter’s face, paper-white except for the black tear-trails of mascara, her torn clothes, and her swollen, bloody lip.
And then he looked down at himself.
Ted shrank, deflating as if the whisky had found a puncture in his skin to trickle out of.
There was a long silence. Behind them, shockingly cosy, the kettle whistled.
At last he mumbled, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hit you. I’m jealous, see? Jealous of all those lads that hang around you. I don’t mean to get angry with you, don’t you understand? You’ve always been my girl. My special one, haven’t you?’
Mattie saw big, glassy tears gather in his eyes and roll down his cheeks. She felt sick, and dirty, and she turned her face away.
‘You don’t know what I’ve been through since your mum died.’
Oh yes, Mattie thought. Feel sorry for yourself. Not for Mum, or any of the rest of us. Feel sorry for yourself, because I won’t. I hate you.
With the knowledge of that, she realised that he had let go of her. She began to move, very slowly, backing away from him. His hands hung heavily at his sides, and his wet eyes stared at nothing. Mattie reached the kitchen door. In the same clear, cold voice she said, ‘Do yourself up. Don’t sit there like that.’
Then she walked through the clutter in the hall to the front door. She opened it and closed it again behind her, and walked down the path. She held herself very carefully, as if she was made of a shell that might break.
Only when the gate had creaked after her did she begin to run.
In the narrow space of the doorway her legs twitched involuntarily, and Julia stirred in front of her.
‘It’s all right,’ Julia told her. ‘He’s gone, he really has. Are you still scared? Do you want to talk for a bit?’
‘I was thinking about Marilyn, and the others,’ Mattie told her, half truthfully. Marilyn was only nine, and Phil, the youngest sister, was two years younger. Two boys, Ricky and Sam, came between Mattie and Marilyn. The eldest sister, Rozzie, was married to a mechanic and had a baby of her own. She lived on the estate too, but Rozzie kept clear of the house when Ted was likely to be at home.
‘The boys are all right,’ Mattie said, ‘but I don’t want to leave Phil and Marilyn there with him.’
Guilt folded around her again. Even if what her father had done had not been, somehow, all her own fault, Mattie was certain that she shouldn’t have abandoned her younger sisters to him. She had never seen Ted look at them in the way that he looked at her, but she couldn’t be sure that he didn’t touch them. Or if hadn’t done, that he might not now she was gone. Rozzie had never suspected, had she? In her shame, Mattie had kept her secret until she couldn’t hold on to it any longer, but it was unthinkable that Marilyn might have to suffer in the same way … Mattie rolled her head, looking up at the stained walls of her shelter. What could she do to help them, from here?
‘I know what we’ll do,’ Julia said firmly. ‘We’ll ring the Council and tell them what’s happened. There are people there who are supposed to see about kids, you know. They’ll look after them until …’ she was thinking quickly, improvising ‘… until we can have them with us, if you like. We could all live together, couldn’t we?’
Mattie smiled, in spite of herself. ‘Here?’
‘Don’t be stupid. When we’re well off. It might take a year, or something, but we’ll do it. Why shouldn’t we?’
A year seemed like a lifetime, then. When anything might happen.
‘I can’t tell anyone,’ Mattie whispered. ‘It was hard enough to tell you.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Julia said fiercely. Mattie and Julia hadn’t spent much time at one another’s homes, but Julia had seen enough of Ted Banner to imagine the rest. Sometimes he was fulsomely friendly. At other times, the times when the veins at his temples stood out in ridges and his eyes shrank to little red spots, she thought that he was terrifying. ‘You don’t have to say who you are. Just telephone, anonymously. I’ll do it, if you like. We’ve just got to make sure that someone looks after them, because it can’t be you any more. Perhaps they could go to Rozzie. As soon as we can, we’ll get a really big flat. One with two or three bedrooms, plenty of room. We can play records as loud as we want, invite whoever we want in. The girls will love it. They’ll be safe with us, Mattie.’
Mattie nodded, grateful for Julia’s generosity, letting herself accept the fantasy for now, for tonight at least. She lay still again, listening to Julia’s murmured talk. The plans grew more elaborate, as Julia spun the dreams to comfort herself as well as Mattie.
Cramped in the doorway, listening to her, Mattie drifted to sleep again.
Julia listened to her regular breathing. At first she was relieved that Mattie wasn’t frightened any more, but without the need to reassure her, her own bravado ebbed away. The dim street lamp seemed only to emphasise the terrifying darkness of the alley, and the darkness seemed endless. At last she began to waver in and out of an uncomfortable dream-ridden half-sleep. The dreams were vivid, and horrible, and when she jerked awake again the alley seemed to belong to them, rather than to reality. And then, far from being eerily deserted, a slow tide of hunched figures began to wander through it. To begin with she was sure that they were dream-figures, but then she understood that they were too real and she shrank backwards against Mattie for a shred of protection.
The alley had become a kind of thoroughfare for the derelicts and tramps of the Embankment. They drifted past the doorway, muttering or singing or cursing. Some of them peered at the girls and whispered or shouted at them; others went past, oblivious of everything but their own obsessions.
To Julia, the tide of them seemed a grotesque parody of the Oxford Street shoppers in sunny daylight. This is waiting for all of us, she thought, the dream world half claiming her again. Darkness and despair. And then, out of nowhere, the thought came to her, is this what Betty is so frightened of? She was quite sure of her mother’s fear, whereas in her childhood she had been puzzled by the nameless force that seemed to control her. Darkness. And then, like a chant repeated over and over inside her head, I won’t let it get me. Not me.
She slept, and then woke again. She thought that the night would go on for ever and then, quite suddenly, it was dawn. The spreading of dirty grey light was like a blessing.
Julia sat upright, relief easing her muscles. Leaning against the wall, with Mattie still asleep beside her, she watched the light grown stronger and stronger. In half an hour it was broad daylight once more.
Her strength flowed back again. With the return of light, she felt that the world belonged to her, and that she could take it, and make what she wanted from it. They had survived the night, and the little victory made her triumphant. She shook Mattie’s shoulder, and Mattie yawned herself into consciousness again.
‘Look,’ Julia said, ‘it’s daytime. Isn’t it beautiful?’
