Daughter of Mine. Anne Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ come out anyway. ‘Lizzie finished with him yesterday,’ he said.

      Neil, who’d come down to see who the nocturnal visitor was, gave a hoot of laughter at that. ‘Oh, I bet that dented the big bugger’s ego,’ he said in delight. ‘The boot’s always been on the other foot. Love ‘em and leave ‘em has been that sod’s rule.’

      ‘Will you shut up!’ Flo cried. ‘Your brother’s in jail and might be up on a charge. Have you no sympathy?’

      ‘Not a jot,’ Neil said. ‘I hope they throw the book at him, and now I know I’m off back to bed. Night, all.’

      Mike, watching Neil go, knew the boy had a point, for Steve had scattered broken hearts willy-nilly over the neighbourhood and never lost any sleep over it. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said. ‘I just called in to tell you, like.’

      ‘Will you not stay for a cup of tea?’ Flo asked, as she moved to put the kettle on above the fire, which she poked into life.

      ‘No, thanks all the same,’ Mike said. ‘I need my bed.’

      ‘What about work in the morning?’ Rodney asked. ‘What shall we say, for we can’t tell the truth—the lad will be out on his ear and jobs are like gold dust?’

      Mike knew that. The unemployment rate was now touching two million and Steve couldn’t afford to lose his job. ‘What d’you want to say?’

      ‘We’ll say his stomach is upset.’

      ‘They’ll think he’s had a skinful.’

      ‘Then they’ll be right, but they won’t know it all and maybe they’ll not need to.’ Rodney glanced across at Flo and said, ‘You go along to the police station tomorrow and see what’s what. Just so we know where we stand an’ all.’

      Flo nodded. She knew she’d have to. There was no one else and she knew she could expect little help from Neil.

      But Flo didn’t follow her husband to bed after Mike had left. Thoughts of her boy in a prison cell would keep sleep at bay and she knew who was to blame. The same girl that had caused a row each time she was here. And now for that piece to throw her son over! She had no desire to lose Steve to any woman, but for one to indicate he wasn’t good enough! That wasn’t to be borne at all.

      What else did Lizzie want in a man? Flo thought. True, he had a temper at times and a liking for the beer, but in that he was like a great many other men; and as for the women…Well, he was a normal man, after all, and the women usually chased him. You couldn’t blame a man for taking what was on offer.

      Everything that had happened to her son that night was down to Lizzie Clooney, and Flo knew she’d never forgive her for as long as she lived.

      Steve felt panicky when he came to the next morning and realised where he was. He couldn’t bear being cooped up and he had the desire to hammer on the door, but when he tried to stand, nausea caused him to vomit into the bucket by his bed.

      The breakfast they brought him he couldn’t face, but he was grateful for the cup of tea. By lunchtime he’d not been sick for some time, but the headache continued to bother him and he was in no mood for the grinning face that appeared at the hatch.

      ‘Ready?’ the policeman asked, unlocking the door.

      ‘Ready? For what?’ So far no one had told him anything.

      ‘You’re before the magistrate, mate, so on your feet.’

      Steve got to his feet gingerly. His head felt as if it were on fire and his red-rimmed eyes burned. The young policeman laughed. ‘You look a pretty sight, I don’t think.’

      Steve shut his eyes for a moment against the pain. God, how he wanted to send the young copper’s teeth down his throat, but now he was sober he knew better and he was in no fit state anyway. But what was he talking about, before the magistrate? Just for getting drunk? He thought they’d tell him off and let him go. ‘What have I got to go before the magistrate for?’

      ‘Ooh, now let’s see. Little string of offences we have. Drunk and disorderly, causing an affray, assaulting a police officer.’

      ‘Assaulting a police officer?’ Steve said incredulously.

      ‘No recollection of it, mate?’ the policeman said with a grin. ‘Well, that won’t save you. Come on, let’s get going.’

      Flo could have wept when she saw her son. His face was grey and his eyes were bloodshot and had black pouches beneath them. His hair stood on end and his Sunday suit was crumpled and stained.

      Steve was fastidious about his appearance. His suits were regularly cleaned and returned to the wardrobe under a plastic cover and he was fussy about his shirts, which had to be pristine white and ironed just so, and on Sundays his tie always matched the handkerchief poking from his pocket.

      But in the dock, Steve had no tie and no sign of the handkerchief either. He looked a beaten, crestfallen man and it tore at Flo’s heart.

      When the police officer read out the charges against him, Flo saw him shake his head from side to side, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, and she knew he could remember little or nothing of what had happened. That didn’t seem to matter and the magistrate tore into him. ‘Assaulting a police officer is a serious offence and one that can carry a custodial sentence,’ he told Steve. ‘But as you’ve told the court you’re in steady employment we don’t think it would be in the country’s best interests to lock you up.’

      Steve let his breath out in a sigh of relief. He’d never even thought of a jail sentence.

      ‘But, we don’t want to be considered as treating this as a trivial matter,’ the man went on. ‘No indeed, and if you come before me again there will be no doubt about the custodial sentence. This time, however, you are fined seventy-five pounds.’

      Seventy-five pounds! The sum reverberated in Steve’s head. How in God’s name was he going to find that sort of money? Christ! The image of Lizzie staring out at him from the window of the hotel suddenly floated before him, and he knew just who was to blame for the state he was in. He’d never forget it for as long as he lived.

      Steve and Flo weren’t the only ones blaming Lizzie, for she already did an adequate job of this herself. She thought she’d never get over the sight of Steve hauled into the van, handcuffs holding his hands behind his back, especially as she still thought it was her fault, at least in part. She certainly didn’t want to come across him, not for a while anyway, so when Tressa met Mike in her free periods, Lizzie would sit in her room and hem the sheets and blankets she had picked up cheap in the Bull Ring.

      ‘Come out with us,’ Pat urged. ‘We go to the flicks, or dancing at Tony’s Ballroom up the West End.’

      But Lizzie would shake her head, thinking that at the moment it was best to lie low. Tressa worried about her, and in the end Mike reluctantly agreed she could come out with them a time or two, but she wouldn’t do that either. ‘She’s frightened of bumping into Steve,’ Tressa said, ‘and making things worse for him.’

      Nothing could make things worse, Mike thought, for Lizzie’s decision had upset the man totally. He was paralytic each night, not tipsy or merry but fallingdown drunk, and before he got to that state he’d tell any who would СКАЧАТЬ