The track on total repeat till tears formed in her eyes, her heart near burnt from tenderness for her ‘shirtless ones’. Till a passer-by shouted: ‘Put a bloody sock in it!’
It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that, at odd times, her voice carried to the Umpire, and eased the dreams of carnage he’d envisaged. Reluctantly, like a sad Peronist, she shut Evita down and considered her situation. If she told Roberts about Brant and Mrs Roberts, she was in deep shit. If she didn’t tell him and he found out, she was in deeper mire. If she said nowt to nobody, she’d probably survive. It stuck in her gut like the benign cowardice it was. Falls could vividly remember the day her friends ran up to her in the street saying: ‘Come quick, look at the man on the common.’
When she got there, her heart sank. The object of their curiosity was her dad. Staggering home from the pub after a day’s drinking. She tried to help him. She was four years old. As long as she could remember, her life had been overshadowed by his drinking. He was never violent, but it cast a huge cloud over the family. She felt she was born onto a battlefield. His booze destroyed the family. With it came with the four horsemen: Poverty, Fear, Frustration, Despair.
Dad was anaesthetised from all that. There was never money for schoolbooks or food. Nights were spent trying to block out her parents’ raised voices. Or curled up, too terrified to sleep because her father hadn’t come home. Wishing he was dead and praying he wasn’t. Never inviting her friends home as her father’s moods were unpredictable. Most of her childhood spent covering up for his drinking. Once, asking him: ‘Can I have two shillings for an English book?’
‘Sure, don’t you speak it already?’
Whispering, lest his sleep be disturbed. All of this destroyed her mother. Being of Jamaican descent, she developed the ‘tyrant syndrome’, and tried to enlist young Falls on her side. Early she learned to ‘run with the hare and savage with the hound’. Oh yes! Then she became convinced that mass would help. If she went to church enough, he’d stop.
He didn’t.
She stopped church. Slowly, she realised the terrible dilemma for such a child as she. They have to recover from the alcoholic parent they had, and suffer for the one they didn’t have. When she was nineteen she had a choice: go mad or get a career. Thus she’d joined the police and often felt it was indeed a mobile madness.
‘Love makes the world go round’
Falls, looking in the mirror, said: ‘I am gorgeous.’ She sure felt it. Eddie told her all the time, and wow, she never got tired of it. For no reason at all, he’d touched her cheek, saying: ‘I can’t believe I found you.’ Jesus!
A woman dreams her whole life of such a man. If all his lines were just lines, so what? It was magic. She was sprinkled in Stardust. True, she’d tried the cliches, the mush on toast of trying out his name to see how it fit: ‘Susan Dillon.’
Mmm. How about Susan Falls Dillon?
Needed work.
Eddie Dillon rolled off Falls, lay on his back and exhaled. ‘The Irishman’s Dream.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘To fuck a policeman.’
After the dance, she’d asked him for a drink. He’d had her. In the hall, the kitchen, the sitting room and finally, panting, he’d said: ‘I give up — where have you hidden the bed?’
As they lay on the floor, knackered, the age-old divide between the sexes was full frontal. She wanted him to hold her and tell her he loved her, to luxuriate in the afterglow. He wanted to sleep. But new-mannish educated as he partly was, he compromised. Held her hand and dozed. She had to bite her tongue not to say ‘I love you.’ Then he stirred, said: ‘I’ve a thirst on me to tempt the Pope. I’ll give you a fiver to spit in me mouth.’
She laughed and, victim of the new emancipation, rose and got him a pint of water. After he’d drunk deep, he gave a huge burp, rested the glass on his chest, said: ‘Jaysus, a man could love a woman like you.’
Ah! The perennial bait, the never-fail, tantalising lure of the big one. Her heart pounding, she knew she was in the relationship minefield. One foot wrong and boom, back to Tesco’s pre-frozen for one. She said: ‘I hope you were careful.’ He tilted the glass slightly, said: ‘Oh yes, I didn’t spill a drop.’
When finally they went to bed, he slept immediately. Falls hated how much she wanted to be held. Later, she was woken by him thrashing and screaming, and then he sat bolt upright. She said: ‘Oh God, are you OK?’
‘Man, the flashbacks.’
‘What?’
‘Isn’t that what the guys always say in the movies?’
‘Oh.’
‘Jesus, it was some movie.’
As Falls settled back to uneasy sleep, she ran Tony Braxton’s song in her head — ‘Unbreak My Heart’.
Eddie had all the moves. After he’d spent a night at her flat, next day she’d discover little notes, tucked in the fridge, under the pillow, the pocket of her coat. All of the ilk: ‘I miss you already’, or ‘You are the light in my darkness’, And other gems. Mills and Boon would have battled for him. Walking together, he’d say: ‘Can I take yer hand, it makes me feel total warmth.’
A God.
And what a kisser. Finally, a man born to lip service. She could have come with kissing alone and did often.
‘If your dead father comes to you in a dream, he comes with bad news. If your dead mother comes, she brings good news.’
Rosie couldn’t decide which coffee. She and Falls had met at one of the new specialty coffee cafes. The menu contained over thirty types of brew. Falls said: ‘Good Lord, I suppose instant is out of the question.’
‘Shh, don’t think such heresy, the windows will crack in protest.’
Falls took another pan of the list, then said: ‘OK, I’ll have the double latte.’
‘What?’
‘I know the names from the movies.’
‘Mmm, sounds weak. I’ll have the Seattle Slam.’ They laughed.
Rosie said: ‘So, girl. Tell all, can you?’
Falls giggled, said: ‘If I tell you he kisses the neck…
‘Uh-huh.’
‘… right below the hairline.’
‘Oh God, a prince.’
‘And holds you after.’
‘He is unique, beyond prince.’
The coffee came and Falls sampled it, said: ‘Yeah, it’s instant with froth.’ Then she leaned closer, added: ‘You know why I did, like, on the first date?’
‘’Cos you’re a wanton cow.’
‘That too. But when we came out of the dance, I felt faint.’
‘Lust, girl.’
‘And I sat on the pavement.’
Rosie made a face as she tasted her drink, telling Falls to continue.
‘Before I could, he whipped off his jacket and laid it on the path.’
‘So you sat on it and later you sat on his face.’
They roared, shamefully delighted, warmly scandalised. Rosie said: ‘Taste this,’ and pushed the slam across. Falls did, said: ‘It’s got booze in there, check the menu.’
Sure enough, in the small print, near illegible, was: ‘Pure Colombian beans, double hit of espresso, hint of Cointreau.’ Falls said: ‘I know what the Cointreau’s hinting.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Get bladdered. Did I tell you I dreamed of my dad?’
Later, wired on slammers, hopping on espresso, Falls showed her Eddie Dillon’s poem.
‘He wrote a poem for you?’
‘Yes.’ (shyly)
‘Is it any good?’
‘Who cares? ’Cos it’s for me, it’s brilliant.’
‘Give it here, girl!’
She did.
Benediction