Maura's Game (19 page)

“Then who do you blame, Tommy?”

It was a fair question but a hard one for him to answer. They both knew the reply would set the tone of their future relationship.

He was silent for a while before saying quietly, “I suppose I blame him, Maura. I blame him for being young and stupid and arrogant. I blame him for throwing his life away and giving his mother a heartache she didn’t deserve. That is who I blame. But I would be a liar if I didn’t say I hated Lee and Garry at times for what they did, even though I would do the same thing myself if I had to.”

She was glad he had voiced his thoughts out loud, but deep inside she wondered if this would be enough. He had still buried a child, and even if that child was a two-faced little fucker who had asked for all he got, he was Tommy’s boy and nothing could ever change that.

“Will it come between us, do you think?”

He shook his head sadly.

“I hope not, Maura. This has all been so good for me. After Gina I wondered if I would ever find anyone to really care about again. I admit I have trouble at times when I see you running the boys and the businesses. But I know that is what you have always done and I respect that.”

His gaze took in the beautiful limed oak kitchen where they were sitting. He had money, but not by her standards. This house was as big as his showpiece home in Liverpool and until he had come down south to see this woman he had been more or less happy with what he had. Now, he often felt disgruntled. He would have trouble keeping up with her lifestyle here and he knew it. This house was only one of her investment properties. Her main home in Essex was a huge place that could practically solve the housing crisis in London. She hadn’t lived in it since the bomb. But he knew she had worked hard all her life to attain her style of living, and respected that. Still, it rankled sometimes. Nothing went on in the south east without this woman’s express permission. Even he had had to ask nicely before knocking over a bank or post office, and pay her a small percentage for the privilege. It made a man feel diminished somehow and he didn’t like the feeling.

She grasped his hand.

“I do care about you, Tommy, very much.”

“Same here, Maura. You know that.”

“Terry had a problem with my family… with the work side of things.”

Tommy laughed nastily.

“Well, he fucking would. I mean, once a filth…”

He saw her expression and sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

Maura smiled wanly.

“It’s OK. The boys were the same about him.”

He put a finger under her chin and brought her face to his. Kissing her gently, he caressed her silky hair with his free hand. He loved her when she was like this. Vulnerable. Feminine. Everything he felt a woman should be. He felt the stirring inside himself that her touch always brought and knew then that he would sit this one out for the duration.

She pulled away first, as always.

“What did you see in him, Maura?”

She heard the genuine puzzlement in his voice and thought deeply before she answered him. She was as honest as she could be.

“I knew him from when I was a girl. We met on a blind date. Marge, me mate, set us up. I didn’t know he was Old Bill, and by the time I found out it was too late. I was head over heels in love with him.”

She said the words so simply that Tommy felt sad for the girl she once was with her broken dreams.

“I got pregnant and by the time I told him, he had already found out about Michael, who was a face by then. In reality I’m amazed we carried on so long before anyone sussed us. Michael went fucking ballistic. Nearly killed him. Terry had already dumped me by then. He never knew about the baby…”

Her voice trailed off as she remembered old hurts.

“What happened to the baby then?”

Tommy was interested in what she was saying. It was the closest she had ever come to talking intimately before and he was intrigued as well as pleased that she was confiding in him.

“Me mum took me to an abortionist in East London. This was the sixties and it was still all back street and don’t let the neighbours find out then. It went wrong and I was left unable to have a child again.”

Her voice faltered and she took a sip of wine before resuming her story.

“So Michael brought me into the family firm and here I still am. But Terry and me, we got back together when there was the usual aggravation from plod and found we still felt the same about each other. So that was it really. I loved him, I always will, but I’m not in love with him any more if that makes sense.”

She had deliberately skimmed over the precise circumstances that had brought them together again. Family matters were none of Tommy’s business. No need to fill him in on the way her own mother had shopped her to the police using incriminating files that Geoffrey, the bad apple among the Ryan brothers, had secretly kept on her before he met his own well-deserved end at the hands of the IRA. But not before they had killed her beloved Michael in the mistaken belief that he had betrayed one of their high-ranking officers to the Brits when in fact it was Geoffrey all along. Maura had refused to attend his funeral out of loyalty to Michael’s memory. Loyalty was everything to her. It was what being a Ryan was all about.

“That’s a sad story, Maura.”

Sadder than you know, she thought.

“No sadder than yours or anyone else’s for that matter. Shit happens all the time. It was hard knowing I’d thrown away my only chance of motherhood. That was the worst part of it, I think. I had murdered my own child.”

Tommy was studying her face. Even in the harsh sunlight she didn’t look fifty. She was still a stunning-looking woman in every way.

He could feel her pain and her anguish at something that had happened over thirty years ago and wondered if any one of us has no regrets. He doubted it somehow. He wished he had not let his son get caught up in the dealing game, but he had and Tommy B had paid with his life. Tommy knew he was responsible for that and sometimes the guilt and regret were unbearable.

“Come on, Maws, let’s go to bed for an hour.”

She smiled and followed him up the stairs. This is one place, Tommy thought, where I am the master. In the kip she was all his and they both knew it. Twenty minutes later she was coming like a freight train and as he watched her face he savoured every second of it.

Carol and Benny walked into Sarah’s house happily. He loved having a pregnant girlfriend, loved the way his gran fussed over them. Carol and Sarah got on like a house on fire. As he watched his grandmother making them coffee and cold drinks his eyes alighted on the flowers.

“Got a secret admirer, Gran?”

He was laughing as he said it and Sarah flapped her hand at him in a jolly way.

“I have. An old friend came by today, one of Michael’s old pals. He brought the flowers with him. Aren’t they gorgeous!”

“Who was it, Gran? Gerry Jackson?”

Benny wasn’t really that interested; he was being polite. He was the dutiful grandson today. Just one of his many personas.

“Oh, no. God love him, he rings me every week does Gerry. No, I don’t think you’d know this man. Before your time, son. Vic Joliff…”

The name sent Benny rapidly out of his chair.

“Did you say Vic Joliff, Gran?”

He had to have heard her wrong; it had to be a mistake. Vic Joliff in this house!

“That’s what I said. Came in here as large as life he did…”

Sarah was ecstatic, telling the story once more. She had already regaled her old friend Pat Johnston with the whole thing on the phone earlier. She was suddenly aware that her grandson was getting himself into one of his monumental tempers.

“Vic fucking Joliff was in this house? Is that what you are telling me, Gran? You actually fucking let him in here?”

Benny’s voice was coming out in staccato bursts.

Sarah, realising that something was badly amiss, was suddenly afraid. All her natural antagonism coming to the fore, she cried, “And why not, Benjamin Ryan? I knew him before you were even shagging born!”

He put his head in his hands in despair. The thought of what Joliff might have done made his blood run cold. He was taking the piss now, taking the piss big time.

Benny tried to level his voice and act normally.

“Listen, Gran, if he ever comes here again you do not let him in, right? You ring me or…” He was running his hands frenziedly through his thick black hair, making it stand up. Carol knew the signs and was visibly frightened.

“Better still, Gran, I am going to leave someone outside in future. We should have done it earlier but that’s beside the fucking point. Vic Joliff is one mad cunt, Gran, and you do not talk to him or see him without my express say so, OK?”

“You can’t tell me who I can and can’t talk to. Even my Michael couldn’t do that…”

Sarah’s hectoring voice seemed to send him mad. She was provoking him with her show of resistance and she knew it. Benny was so upset he forgot himself and the softly-softly approach went out of the window as he screamed at the top of his voice, “Oh, shut up, you silly old cow! We’ve got hag with Vic. He didn’t come to see you, he used you to wind us up. Can’t you see that, woman? Vic would walk straight past you if you had a heart attack on his doorstep. He wouldn’t give a shit!”

Sarah was humiliated and it showed. She seemed to deflate before his eyes and he immediately felt sorry for what he had said.

“Stop it, Benny. Can’t you see she’s upset enough as it is?”

Carol’s voice was low. She was trying to comfort Sarah who shrugged her off with surprising strength.

“Look, Gran…”

His voice was calmer now, kinder. She waved him away as she said wearily, “I understand, Benny. He was using me. I was used. It wouldn’t be the first time that has happened, would it?”

She walked from the kitchen and he saw how fragile and diminished by age she had become. He followed her out. In the hall she turned to face him, very much on her dignity.

“Why don’t you go now. And shut the door behind you, Benny. I wouldn’t want any more of your enemies coming in here with flowers, now would I?”

It occurred to him then that no one else had brought her flowers in years. He was ashamed, he was angry, and he was going to take Vic Joliff and break his fucking neck for the embarrassment he’d caused if it was the last thing he did in his life.

Sarah sat in her bedroom, alone and upset. It was hard for her to be dismissed like this by her own flesh and blood, her beloved grandson. Benny acted as if she was worth nothing. That Vic Joliff had only come to her home to score points in a game they were all playing.

It hurt. She knew there was some sort of panic afoot, she wasn’t stupid: hadn’t she reared Michael and his sister? Hadn’t she had guns in her outhouse and villains at her breakfast table? It was the way Benny treated her, like she was a silly old woman, that really rankled. It was this reminder that she was old and she was useless that was hurting her. In her day she had stood shoulder to shoulder with the best of them, her sons had been the terror of Notting Hill, and yet Benny treated her like she was a fool.

She deliberately put out of her mind the fact that she was supposed to be against their way of life. She was cross and wanted him to remember that she was the matriarch of the foremost criminal family in the south east. Suddenly the respect that afforded her was important to her. She remembered with nostalgia walking down the market and getting her due from the traders and her neighbours. Michael had seen to that, she was his mother and he had adored her. If he was still alive that little snipe Benny would have thought twice before he treated her like a fool!

Sometimes she wished for the old days so badly. The days when Michael was head of the house, and young and strong. When he had been just a bit of a lad, not the mad murdering bastard he had become later. She had fallen out with him over Maura because she could accept her sons being villains but never her daughter, and Michael had called her over that. She had buried her boys in turn, fine handsome young men, her Geoffrey set up by his own family. Maura had arranged his death by talking to her IRA contacts, though Sarah had never let on she knew that. In her heart she knew he deserved it for having betrayed Michael and framed him as an informant.

Secretly she still craved the notoriety of being the Ryans’ mother, especially at times like this when even her own grandson shouted at her as if she was nothing and nobody. He who wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her.

Years ago when she had tried to get Maura arrested, after her Geoffrey’s death, she had been sure that all she wanted was for her boys to be out of the criminal way of life. Now she wanted to be shown the respect that the mother of successful criminals should get. In fact, did get. Strangers treated her well enough. Even the young fuckers roundabouts, black and white, gave her her due. Her purse would be safe if she walked about with it on her head. She was Old Mother Ryan, and people knew that. The new and famous neighbours spoke to her about her children, whose exploits sometimes occupied the centre pages of the tabloids though nothing was ever proved, her daughter made sure of that.

Sarah sighed, and felt the urge to cry once more. For Benny to treat her like that! He had finally started talking to her again, coming round with that lovely girl, and then he had attacked her once more.

Silly old cow, indeed! Her husband would have skelped his arse for him.

She missed Janine, missed her so much. They had understood each other. She heard the front door open and footsteps thunder up the stairs. For a split second she was scared, and when her bedroom door flew open nearly cried out in fear.

It was Lee. He bundled her into his arms, fear evident in the close hug he gave her. Sarah finally succumbed to tears.

“All right, Mum. I’m here, mate.”

Glancing out of the window she saw that Benny had sat outside with Carol until Lee arrived and that pleased her too. He wasn’t a bad boy really. Just hot-headed. Hadn’t he waited until she had someone with her? He must care deep down, he must.

That thought was a balm to her hurt feelings.