Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [71]
Very quickly our life settled into a routine. I tried desperately to be the ‘good wife’, keeping the flat spick and span and making sure there was a meal on the table when Peter came in. Unfortunately, Granny had only let me help in the kitchen occasionally on a Sunday, so I had very little cooking ability. But I was willing to learn. Anything for my man.
Sometimes I worked at the doss-house, sometimes I didn’t. For a while I got a job as a silver service waitress at the Metropole – a proper hotel. Even when I wasn’t busy, contact with the Rising Sun guys fizzled out. Peter didn’t exactly tell me not to see them anymore. He just used to find other things for us to do instead. After a while, I realized we hadn’t been to the Hungry Years in weeks.
Funnily enough, I didn’t miss them. Not at first. I’d look around our lovely flat and think how lucky I was, especially when I’d remember the places some of those other guys lived. In the past, a group of us would go back to someone’s house or flat and even when I was caught up in the whirl of being a biker chick, I didn’t like the way they lived. Every place would stink, usually of damp, and there would be empty cans and fag ends everywhere. I’d come from a world of linen napkins and domestic order. Now I was entering a world where clothes were strewn over the floor, table tops served as ashtrays and last week’s curry remains littered every surface – and nobody seemed to notice but me. They treated their homes like they were squats, whether they were or not. Although they were great fun to be out and about with, that wasn’t the life I wanted to lead.
Yet another reason, then, to be grateful for Peter.
As the group faded from our lives, another figure – somewhat grey, lean and stooped – emerged. John was one of the residents at the doss-house. He was old, about seventy, and was always shuffling around in his crepe-soled shoes. But from the way he and Peter talked, it was clear they shared years of history. They were both from the same part of Scotland, I think, although how they ended up together in Brighton was a mystery. Although he’d been a newcomer to the Hungry Years, Peter told me he’d been in Brighton for ages because of his previous marriage. In fact, he said, his stillborn daughter from that relationship was buried in a local cemetery and he’d already bought the plot next to hers for himself. It was such a tragic story, I never had the heart to ask for more information.
He’ll tell me when he’s ready.
I’d often see John and Peter walking up and down the streets together or going for a drink or watching the world from a bench.
It’s only looking back – there’s that hindsight again – that I realize it must have been Peter’s idea that we put a bit of distance between the bikers and us. Eventually I figured out that he’d been a pretty transient character, not really that close to any of them and not, I didn’t realize till later, even a member of the Rising Sun gang. I, on the other hand, had been at the centre of that community for a couple of years. I’d done my growing up with them. I knew everyone and they knew me. Only a paranoiac would ever think that their partner was actively trying to steer them away from seeing their friends, so obviously that thought never crossed my mind. But that is exactly what he was doing.
Peter’s greatest skill was manipulation. As I mentioned, he never told me to stop seeing the gang. Sometimes he put obstacles in the way – like arranging for us to go somewhere else on a weekend or giving me a few hours’ work. Other times, if he could see I was wavering about going, he’d just let slip a few snide remarks one of them had said about me.
‘You know he thinks you’re cheap, don’t you?’ he said about one guy I’d known for years.
I fell for it.
‘What do you mean, cheap?’
‘It’s not fair for me