Bad Girls Good Women

The kitchen was a morass of dirty pans, plates and food. The smell of sour milk was almost overpowering.

‘Ricky …’

‘I know. Look, it doesn’t matter. Me and Sam’ll get around to it. It doesn’t bother us, you know.’

It didn’t, Mattie thought. And she had left them. So she had no right to come back and fuss about details. She cleared a space and filled the kettle, rinsing out two cups from the filthy stack. There was no fresh milk so they drank their coffee black, sitting out on the back step and looking across the hummocks of dandelions to the backs of the next row of houses. Ricky told her what had happened. A woman had come from the Council, a bossy woman with papers. Ted had refused to see her at first, telling Ricky and Sam to say that he was out, but she had come back, and then she had simply sat down to wait for him. She had looked at the house, and she had talked to Marilyn and Phil.

In the end Ted had appeared. Ricky and the others had been sent out of the room, but they had heard Ted shouting, and then mumbling. The woman had gone at last, and Ted had come to find them.

‘He looked,’ Ricky said, groping for the words, ‘he looked like Phil does when someone’s pinched her sweets, and then yelled at her for creating.’

Mattie knew that look of her father’s. Unwieldy anger, too big for him, subsiding quickly into cringing weakness. She had seen it that last time, here in the kitchen, with the kettle whistling. Only when he looked at Mattie there was something else, too. That hot, anxious longing. Mattie wrapped her fingers round her coffee cup to stop the shudder.

The woman from the Council had announced to Ted that there was evidence of neglect. Either the young ones must go to live with a relative, in more suitable circumstances, or a place would be found for them in a council home.

Ricky relayed the details with matter-of-fact calmness. He had worked out a way of living for himself, Mattie understood. Ricky would be all right, and Sam too. Sam was the family survivor, happy so long as he could play football on the scuffed fields beyond the estate. The younger ones, the girls, were living with Rozzie.

‘They’re okay,’ Ricky said. ‘It’s better than here.’

‘I know that,’ Mattie said heavily.

‘The council woman asked about you. Dad said you’d done a runner. He didn’t know where to, and didn’t care either.’

Mattie stood up quickly and put her cup with the rest of the dirty dishes. It seemed a pointless gesture to bother to wash it out.

‘I’m going to Rozzie’s to see them. Walk round there with me?’

Rozzie lived a mile away, further into the estate. They walked together, past the effortful gardens bright with zinnias and lobelia, and the rows of windows guarded by net curtains. Rozzie’s house was almost identical to the one they had just left, but better kept. The window frames and the door were painted maroon and there were marigolds growing under the windows.

Rozzie opened the door to them. Her flowered nylon housecoat hardly buttoned up over her stomach. She was eight months’ pregnant and her two-year-old son, runny-nosed, peered out from the shelter of her skirt. She didn’t smile.

‘So you’re back, then?’

Mattie nodded. Her sister had every right to be sullen, and Mattie had been expecting it. Rozzie was nineteen, and she had had to marry her car mechanic boyfriend two and a half years ago. The enchantment with one another had worn off almost before the wedding, and now they were confined here together with their baby. Then, suddenly, they had found themselves responsible for Rozzie’s little sisters, as well. ‘Just to see that you’re all right.’ Mattie added awkwardly, ‘And to say I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’

There was a silence, and then Rozzie jerked her head. ‘Well, you’d better come in. Phil? Marilyn? Mat’s here.’

They had been in the garden at the back, and they came pelting through to leap on to Mattie. She hugged them fiercely, pulling them close and burying her face against them.

They were well, and they looked happy enough. That was something.

For half an hour, they took all of Mattie’s attention. Then suddenly they were off, taking the little boy and Ricky with them. Mattie and Rozzie sat in the kitchen, drinking more watery coffee. The house was bleak and under-furnished, but it was clean. Mattie suddenly thought of Felix’s flat, with its simple, definite style and the bright touches of pottery and exotic Soho vegetables. She had got away, after all, and Rozzie hadn’t. Guilt dropped around her, weighty and sour with familiarity.

‘Do you need money?’ she blurted out. ‘I can send you my wages.’

‘We always need money, Barry and me. But Ted’s giving us plenty for the girls. Guilt money, isn’t it?’ They both knew that it was, of course. It would last for as long as he could hold on to the job. ‘You keep your wages. Until your plans work out, that is.’ Rozzie was teasing her, and they both laughed.

It was the right time for Mattie to leave. She didn’t want to stay to say difficult goodbyes to the younger ones.

‘Give them a kiss for me,’ she said abruptly. ‘Tell them I’ll be back to see them as soon as I can.’

She left Rozzie lighting another cigarette. The Orioles, ‘Cryin’ in the Chapel’, was on the wireless.

Mattie walked quickly, with her head up. The old widower in the house on the corner was cutting his square of grass and the scent of it mixed with the faint smell of flowers from the gardens. She looked past him as he paraded carefully with his mower, and she saw a man coming round the corner.

It was her father, and he saw her in the same instant. Mattie whirled round, looking for somewhere to run to, and he saw that too. He came towards her, past the old man and the patchy gardens. He was carrying a white paper bag, and there was a bottle under his arm. It wasn’t whisky, she saw. It was Tizer. He was bringing pop and sweets, an offering for his children.

He came closer, never taking his eyes off her, and then he stopped. He was so close that his body almost touched hers. Mattie stood rigidly.

‘You were going to run off, without even speaking to me. I’m still your dad, you know.’

There it was, the old, cajoling mock-severity. But less sure of itself now. There was wariness in his face. He was afraid, but he was still greedy. Mattie knew, and she shrank from what she remembered. He was guilty, and too weak to stop himself from compounding the guilt.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she whispered.

‘Where to? You’re here, aren’t you? You set the welfare people on me, didn’t you?’

She tried to square up to him. ‘I couldn’t leave Marilyn and Phil with you.’

‘Mat, what do you think I am?’

She knew him so well. His anger fronting his pathetic desires.

‘I know what you are,’ she said quietly.

She felt a momentary, viciously physical hatred of all men. But it was gone as quickly as it had come.

‘I wanted to say I was sorry, but you haven’t given me the chance,’ he said.

The creases in her father’s face touched her, and the sight of his big hand, dirty from work, still gripping the pop bottle. She loved him too, and she was exhausted by the obligations of love that pinioned her here amongst the boxy houses.

‘I’ve got to go.’ She was shouting, and the old man on the corner peered towards them.

Ted stared at her, stupidly. ‘Go where? I thought you were back. We can’t manage the place without you. We …’

‘You’ll have to manage. All of you.’

I’m not giving myself to you. I’m not going to sink down like Rozzie. I won’t. I can’t. I deserve better than that. I’m free now, aren’t I? In her head she was already running, the words pounding with her. I’m free, aren’t I? Ted hadn’t touched her, but she felt as if she had to wrench herself out of his grasp.

‘I’ll come and see the kids when I can.’ Mattie was breathless with the effort.

‘What about me?’ Like a baby, his face puckering.

‘Nothing about you. Don’t you understand? Nothing.’

She broke past him then, and started to run. Her legs carried her around the corner and away. She ran as far as she could and then walked, not wanting to stop and wait for a bus, all the way to the station. She took the return ticket out of her pocket and held it in her clenched fist, the torn edge of it digging into her palm. The train came almost at once and she climbed into it and stumbled to a seat. The dust puffed out from the cushion behind her head.