'You just got yourself a job, Lil.'
'Have I?'
'You can start in the Baron's Room on Monday.'
Lenny was busy putting himself away and tidying up.
'Will I use the same office as I always did? Has anything changed?'
He turned to face her once more. His legs still felt weak and he could feel the contempt for him in her voice and he hated her for the effect she had on him.
'You won't need an office, Lil, not for what you'll be doing anyway.'
She knew then that she had lowered herself for nothing. She swallowed back the anger and the hot tears of humiliation. Instead, she stood up and said, with as much dignity as she could muster, 'Then you can stick your job up your arse.'
She took a gulp of her brandy and, swilling it around her mouth noisily, she spat the lot back into the glass.
As she picked up her coat and started to put it on he felt the pull of her once more.
'Come on, Lil, can't you take a joke?'
She stared into his face once more and he saw the deep grey of her eyes and the fine bone structure that made her look like a sculpture and gave her the edge when men looked her way.
'I haven't had a lot to joke about lately, have I, if you remember rightly.'
He was on her then and as he kissed her he could taste his own semen mixed with the brandy and the urgency inside was once more overtaking everything else. This time he took her properly. He took his time with her; laid her on the leather sofa in his office, undressed her and aroused her in every way he knew until eventually she opened her legs for him with the same urgency and excitement as he was feeling himself. As she moaned with enjoyment he knew that he would never feel like this again about any woman. She was wet and hot; she wanted him all right. As Lenny gazed down at her, Lil knew she had him. She didn't know for how long but she knew that she had crossed the line and used the only thing she had going for her. How long it would last, she didn't know, and what would happen when he finished with her was anyone's guess, but she had the job she wanted. She had also found out that she could perform the sex act with him and even fake enjoyment in it as long she pretended he was her Patrick. As long as she closed her eyes and pretended to herself that it was Patrick touching and kissing her. Lil had fooled Lenny as she would fool many men in the years to come.
That night, as Lil lay in her cold bed, she prayed that the kids would be all right and that their life wouldn't be too hard from now on. Then she finally let go of the tears she had been holding back for so long.
Lenny Brewster was settled in as the new and improved overseer of the Smoke. He had taken out all the wild cards, and brought Spider in as his ally; south London was somewhere he knew he would have trouble controlling.
Lil started working in the club she had once owned and sleeping with a man who now owned her. The irony was not lost on any of them.
The seventies was the decade that saw the explosion of recreational drug use, the second generation of West Indians were now making their mark and the country was recovering from another recession and yet another ineffectual government. It was the era of punk rock and dole queues. It was the time for the new generation to make their mark and show their disdain for the shambles they had inherited from their parents.
Lenny Brewster and his ilk milked this for all it was worth. They made fortunes on the generation growing up and on the relaxing of most people's moral codes. It was boom-time in the criminal fraternities and everyone was happy with their lot.
For Lil Brodie and for her children, it heralded the end of her life as she knew it. The death of Patrick Brodie would shape his children's lives and not in the way he would have wanted.
Book Two
The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge
– (Ezekiel 18:2)
'I don't want him,' said Rabbit. 'But it's always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don't.'
– A. A. Milne, 1882-1956 (The House at Pooh Corner)
Chapter Nineteen
'Well, I am sorry you feel like that, Mrs Brodie, but your son is being expelled for fighting. If you can't see anything wrong with that kind of behaviour then this is a pointless conversation.'
Lily Brodie gritted her teeth in suppressed anger. 'My Shamus is not a hooligan, Mr Benton, and you know it. He's only ten and the boy he was fighting with is nearly fifteen.'
Mr Benton felt sorry for this woman. She was a handsome-looking piece, no man could fail to notice that much, and her life had been hard and so had her children's. She had produced two children in the last ten years and he was not relishing their arrival at his school in the future. The Brodie's were a byword for trouble in these parts and he was sick of them all.
'The boy Shamus was fighting with was trying to stop your son from bullying his little brother; the fact that Shamus hammered him speaks volumes. Shamus is a big lad, a strong lad and he is a lot of things, Mrs Brodie, but a victim is not one of them.'
'His eldest brother is home now and he'll watch out for him. After all, that's what older brothers do, isn't it, according to you?'
The man laughed then and the laugh was genuine.
'Oh well, that's all right then. His brother is home from prison at last and is going to put young Shamus on the straight and narrow. What a wonderful role model he'll make. This is Patrick you are talking about, the same Patrick who was the bane of my life.'
The man's sarcasm was not lost on Lil, but she knew it was pointless arguing any longer. Shamus was out, simple as that. And this sanctimonious old bastard was getting on her nerves.
'Shamus was defending his brother too. They were taunting him about my Pat. He came home from nick this week, as you know, and they were teasing him over it. He just retaliated, that's all. The older boy should have known better than to try and interfere in his brother's dispute anyway. How the hell will that child ever learn right from wrong if his brother bails him out all the time? He needs to learn when to shut his trap and my Shamus did what any other boy would do in his shoes; he defended his family. But my family don't matter, do they? They don't count. Their father was murdered in front of them and no one allows for that, do they? Oh no, you only care that some shite has been bullied. Well the boy had better get used to it because his brother won't be there to protect him for ever.'
Mr Benton shook his head in utter disbelief at her words. He heard this kind of talk over and over again from parents who saw school as nothing more than a necessary evil, not a place of learning. Their idea of valuable information was not dates and facts, figures and problem-solving techniques; it was the law of the pavements. That this woman believed her son's tormentor deserved a serious beating was in itself more proof of the running battle he faced on a daily basis. Just trying to instil a modicum of decency in these children was impossible. Mr Benton sighed in annoyance. 'Well, it's all academic now, isn't it? I would appreciate it, Mrs Brodie, if you don't allow Shamus to hang around the school gates or wander into the playgrounds. He is no longer welcome here in any capacity whatsoever.'
Lil sat back in the chair and surveyed the little man opposite her, and he was little, in every way. From his puny body and his bony little hands, to his small-mindedness. He was the bane of people like her and he was too stupid to see that. He lived in a parallel universe, in a place where people talked nicely to one another and washed their cars every Saturday afternoon. A world where shirts were worn to work and carpets were vacuumed daily. A world where people like her and hers were seen as failures and beneath them; because they had to fight to exist on a daily basis and this man couldn't fight if his life depended on it. He wouldn't last five minutes on their estate and it was because of this mindset that he couldn't interest any of these children in what he had to offer them, in what he had to say.