Nameless (24 page)

Vanessa was staring at her sister-in-law with disgust now.

‘Not to
me. I
would never have shamed my family, disgraced my good name, in such a way.’

Daisy cringed. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ she murmured hopelessly.

‘Look, all I’m saying is that it’s not the end of the world. We’ll deal with it, whatever the outcome.’

‘Oh, my God. You think there could be . . . ?’

‘Hopefully not. But we’ll see, won’t we?’

‘Oh, Daisy, how
could
you?’ howled Vanessa, shaking her head. ‘How could you be so
stupid
?’

‘Oh, come on, Vanessa. Enough, now,’ said Julianna.

‘If it comes to that, he’ll have to marry her.’

‘Now you’re talking rubbish, Vanessa. He’s practically engaged to Breamore’s daughter.’

Vanessa got wearily to her feet. She stared down at Daisy.

‘How could you cheapen yourself like this? I’ve brought you up properly. But it’s true, isn’t it? Bad blood will always out.’

‘What do you
mean,
bad blood?’ Daisy burst out, hurt. ‘I’m your daughter, yours and Pa’s, how can you say a thing like that to me? There’s no “bad blood” in me.’

Daisy looked from her mother to her aunt in bewilderment. She knew she’d done wrong. Drunk too much and behaved like a fool. But to castigate her like this, talk about her as if she was a slut – she just couldn’t take it.

‘No,’ said Aunt Julianna briskly. ‘Of course there isn’t. Now, I think we’re all overtired, and very soon someone is going to say something they really don’t mean.’ She looked pointedly at Vanessa. ‘Let’s just go to bed, forget about it.’

‘
Forget
about it? Are you mad?’ Vanessa was pacing again, her face twisting in agitation. She stopped in front of Daisy, huddled there like a criminal in her armchair. ‘I think it’s best if she stays here in London with you for a while, Julianna. I’ll think of something to tell Cornelius. I’m just . . . I’m just so exasperated I can’t think straight. And you’re right. We’ve all said quite enough.’

With that, she turned and left the room, slamming the door closed behind her.

Daisy flinched and shot to her feet. She had never been spoken to like this before. Like she was nothing. A disgrace. A flare of temper rose up in her as she stared at the closed door. Perhaps she had been stupid. But was it the crime of the century? Really?

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Aunt Ju comfortingly, putting an arm round Daisy’s shoulders. ‘She’ll calm down. And hopefully it will all come to nothing.’

‘She hates me,’ said Daisy, trembling with anger and hurt.

‘It gave her a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
Because she hates sex
, thought Julianna.
And it’s pretty plain that you don’t.
But she didn’t say it out loud. ‘Anyway, it gives us the perfect opportunity to have some fun in the Smoke, just you and me, all girls together. Yes?’

Daisy shrugged listlessly. All she knew was that her mother was sending her away in disgrace. But then, it wasn’t the first time she had felt the chilly weight of rejection from Vanessa. All through her growing-up, she had tried so hard to please her remote and rather reclusive mother, and she had always come away with the feeling that she had failed her somehow by being lively and hungry for life – that she could never live up to Vanessa’s exacting standards of delicacy and gentility.

Bad blood
. Her mother had hurt her before, but never so much as when she had uttered those two words – like she was a foreigner, an alien. Nothing to do with Vanessa at all.

‘All right,’ she sighed. She was being sent into exile, however nicely Aunt Ju tried to dress it up. Boarding school, finishing school, Aunt Ju’s place in London, it was all the same to her. She just had to make the best of it.

59

1963

Kit was enjoying working for Michael Ward; he’d spruced himself up, got two bespoke suits, five shirts, some new shoes from Hobbs and a selection of dark-toned ties. He looked the business now, and Mr Ward was putting work his way on a regular basis. He often went two-handed with Reg, the big white-haired bloke who’d hauled him in from the restaurant. Reg was all right; a sound man, trustworthy.

So Kit was happy enough and he was beginning to see his old drinking mates for the losers they were as he settled into his job as a breaker. Michael Ward was big news. Like the Richardsons and the Frasers from South London, the Delaneys from Battersea, the Nashes from the Angel, the Krays from Bethnal Green and the Carter mob from Bow, Michael Ward ruled his manor with a rod of iron.

Michael was ready for anybody and anything. He had an arsenal of weaponry hidden away that staggered Kit the first time he saw it – there were Thompson sub-machine guns, shotguns, hand guns, grenades, swords, knives. He also had close ties to a trading place for guns called Port Road, where dealers traded in war souvenir weaponry – which could easily be converted back into useful life.

People came to Mr Ward for favours, and he was generous to a fault, helping them out when trouble came their way – on the strict understanding that, should the favour ever need to be returned, then it would be, without question. He paid Kit a hundred pounds one evening and told him to get himself over to an address in Hoxton to do a favour for a man who’d found out his wife was fucking around.

Kit looked perturbed. ‘I don’t do women, Mr Ward,’ he said.

Michael Ward looked slightly surprised that someone had just questioned his orders. But he took it well; Kit was only a kid, and a good kid at that; he’d learn. ‘Don’t worry yourself, boy, it’s the bloke who’s down for a caning. Not that you should be worrying too much about her. She’s a right old shagbag, by the sound of it.’

‘You don’t want to be so hasty,’ said Reg once they were in the car. ‘Think before you even
blink
, boy. Mr Ward don’t like having people talk back at him.’

Reg drove them over there. Kit took the rebuke, because he respected Reg. One thing that Kit had found distinguished Mr Ward’s boys, they all had nice motors and soon, he knew, he would have one too, through one of the car dealers who paid money to the firm.

For now, he was content. He knocked on the door. When it was opened by a startled-looking chap with crooked teeth, he went straight to work. State of those gnashers, he figured he was doing the geezer a favour anyway, knocking them out.

‘You Ted Rowles?’ asked Reg, stepping in behind Kit and closing the door after them.

The man was on the floor, pleading with Kit not to hit him again. His face was a mass of blood where Kit had right-handed him. It was dripping down the front of his shirt, staining his trousers. He was shaking his head, clutching at his face.

‘No! It’s not me.’

‘Liar,’ said Kit, reaching down to drag him back to his feet.

‘I’m not! I’m not! He’s upstairs,’ he managed to blubber.

Kit looked up. There was movement at the top of the stairs, a door slammed. ‘Shit,’ said Kit, and shot straight up there.

‘See? Hasty. I told you. You never get nowhere if you’re hasty,’ said Reg, following him up at a more leisurely pace.

60

Tito was a major face in the East End now. He’d easily shouldered the Maltese out of the way and taken over their manor. He was feared and revered in equal measures, and he had connections as impressive as the biggest and best of the firms that ran the city. He had contacts in the police, and in Parliament. He had Lord Bray in his pocket. He was sorted.

There was a private party going on in the palatial flat over Tito’s club. Tito’s regular girl Gilda was there, a striking golden-blonde with ocean-green eyes and a taste for gold jewellery, which Tito kept her well supplied in. Gilda jangled when she moved, she was so laden down with gold. She wasn’t wearing much else, at this precise moment. Neither was her pretty brunette friend, who was stroking Cornelius’s hair.

The spectre of those photos haunted Cornelius. Because of that old bastard Astorre, he had to be nice to Tito, and Tito had asked him here, tonight, because he needed a favour.

‘I have an acquaintance who’s in a little trouble with the police . . .’ said Tito, and went on to tell him about the son of a business associate, who had disgraced himself by snorting cocaine and then going on a ridiculous rampage, which he had topped off by urinating in the doorway of a church and then – allegedly – raping a fourteen-year-old girl.

‘It’s a bad business,’ said Tito. ‘If only there was something that could be done to rescue the boy from his own folly . . .’

Cornelius sipped his whisky; it tasted sour all of a sudden. ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said.

‘You will?’ Tito’s ice-blue eyes widened in fake surprise.

‘I will, of course. As a favour to a friend.’
You blackmailing wop bastard.

Tito relaxed and smiled.

‘You are so good to me,’ he said, indicating the doorway. ‘And in return, look, I will be good to you.’

Suddenly there was a young man of about eighteen standing there; a very beautiful young man, with long straight black hair falling to his waist, a tanned and chiselled face and soft girlish blue eyes. He saw Tito sitting there and smiled, lifting a hand in greeting. Then his eyes drifted over and rested with interest on big, blond Cornelius.

‘Isn’t he perfect?’ asked Tito, beckoning the boy over. ‘Wouldn’t you like to . . . ?’ and Tito laughed, not bothering to complete the sentence.

The young man approached Cornelius and Tito where they sat, surrounded by half-nude girls, and Gilda. He looked at the girls with disdain, then turned his attention to Tito.

‘Sebastian, this is Lord Bray,’ Tito told him.

The boy nodded coolly to Cornelius, checking him over.

‘Cornelius, meet Sebastian. He’s yours for the night, if you want him.’

Cornelius knew he really shouldn’t. He should be strong, resist temptation. But . . . Sebastian was the most fabulously beautiful creature he had ever seen.

After that first night, Cornelius met up with Sebastian as often as he could. In between the pressures of work, the dissatisfaction with his home life and the increasing nerviness of Vanessa, who was forever moaning on and on about Daisy (‘She’s impossible, she never does what I tell her, she’s out of control’) Sebastian was a sweet release.

Vanessa had wanted a child. He had
got
her a child. His child, too. Not the boy he had desired, of course, but it was far too late now to regret that. In between all
that
, the soothing balm of Sebastian was something he sought out more and more.

Never in Tito’s club, though. He’d been caught once and he was still paying the price for that. Now he took Sebastian to discreet out-of-the-way places and they made love there. Afterwards he would buy the boy gifts. An Asprey wallet. A gold money-clip. Tiffany cufflinks and matching tiepins. Anything he wanted, he could have. And Sebastian wanted a lot. He knew his value, down to the last penny, and he was as skilled in bed as any Japanese geisha.

61

1965

The Darkes department store chain was growing strongly and that at least gave Ruby some satisfaction. She had invested the money Cornelius had paid for her little girl wisely. She had expanded her father’s shop to a massive extent. She had acquired bombed-out premises near Marble Arch, Edgware Road and Oxford Street at knockdown prices, rebuilt, then ploughed all the profits she made straight back into the company.

Ruby had forced herself to live for her business. Every small thing about it had been a matter of great importance to her. She often stood in her stores, watching the customers, noting whether they turned left or right, what drew them, what pushed them away. She was always out on the floor, questioning the managers about stock levels, sales performance and new lines – because she had nothing else in her life, nothing at all. There was still food on sale, in separate food halls, but the clothes and the furnishings were the big sellers now. Post-war, people had just been grateful to be alive. But now it was the ‘Swinging’ Sixties. Now, they wanted to forget austerity, to celebrate. To live the dream.

‘What we’re selling now is a lifestyle,’ she told her accountant. ‘Not just the right clothes, but the right teacup, the right suitcase and bed linen, the right
style
.’

‘You’re expanding too fast,’ he told her gloomily, blinking through his thick black-rimmed glasses at the figures.

Ruby looked at him kindly. Her thin, myopic, grey-haired accountant Joseph Fuller would always be an overly cautious man. He had guided her well so far. However, she was not such a fool as to let an accountant run her business for her. Her years in retail had given her confidence in her own sound judgement.

‘Joseph, I told you: one year’s for growth, the next is for consolidation. That’s not fast, that’s sensible.’

‘Manufacturing costs are sky-high. The wholesalers keep pushing the prices up, and what can we do? They’ve got a captive market.’

Ruby knew this all too well. The latest price hike had sent her raging around the office for days. Finally, she’d sat down, Jane her secretary had brought her a cup of tea, and she had worked out what to do. It was, admittedly, a desperate plan. But she had to do
something
, or the wholesale bastards would be fleecing her until her dying day.

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ she told Joseph.

‘Oh?’

‘I think we should cut out the middle man,’ said Ruby.

‘Cut out the
wholesalers
?’ He stared at her as if she’d gone mad. ‘Ruby. Be careful. You’ll be blacklisted.’

To be blacklisted by the Wholesale Textile Association was no small thing. Ruby knew it. But it seemed to her that the wholesalers had had it all their own way for far too long.

‘I’ve been talking to the Cohen brothers in Leicester.’ Ruby had been up to their factory three times, wining and dining the manufacturers and their wives. ‘They’ve accepted an order – a
direct
order – for two thousand dozen men’s Y-fronts and string vests.’