And – oh God – the expression on Sarah’s face. That haunted Dolly. Made her wake in the night, moaning in terror for her little sis. Sometimes, she succeeded in blanking it from her mind, but it always crept in, always came back and tormented her.
Supposing what happened to me happens to little Sar?
The baby came into her brain again, the dead baby with Dad’s face.
No. She couldn’t allow it. She couldn’t let Sarah go through the same horror. She wouldn’t.
So one morning when Celia was alone in the kitchen, having her ‘elevenses’, Dolly went in there, closed the door behind her and said to Celia: ‘I have to talk to you.’
Celia was making tea, squinting past the thin spiral of smoke coming up from her posh ciggie holder. ‘All right, Doll. You want a cuppa?’
Dolly shook her head and sat down at the table. She’d barely kept down her breakfast; she couldn’t face tea, not right now.
‘What’s up then?’ Celia asked with a brisk smile, coming to the table with her cup and saucer and sitting down.
Dolly took a breath. She didn’t know how to start.
Celia looked at Dolly’s face. ‘In your own time, lovey,’ she said more gently. ‘What is it then?’
Still, Dolly could barely form the words. She felt like they would choke her.
‘What is it, you want to come off the game?’ Celia sipped her tea. ‘That don’t matter, Doll. Don’t you fret. You can dust around, get the bloody Hoover out, it ain’t the end of the world. You’re one of the family now, we won’t turn you out.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Dolly, but she was touched.
‘Then what? Come on, I won’t bite.’
‘Celia… when we first met, when I was out on the streets…’
‘Yeah. Go on then.’
‘I was on the streets because I couldn’t stay at home any longer.’
‘Right.’
Dolly bit her lip, looked down at the table. She felt a hot wash of shame sweep over her; whenever she thought of being back there, she felt again the humiliation of it, the embarrassment, the awful guilt.
‘Take your time,’ said Celia, watching Dolly’s face with concern. ‘Whatever you got to say, you won’t shock me, Doll. And I won’t judge. You must know that by now.’
‘It started when I was nine, nearly ten,’ said Dolly, her mouth dry while she could feel sweat breaking out on her brow.
‘What did?’
Dolly took a big breath and began to speak. As she spoke, Celia’s forgotten fag burned down to nothing in its ivory holder, the ash dropping unheeded on to the table. Dolly spoke for almost a quarter of an hour, and when she was finished she looked like someone had whipped all the life out of her.
‘Holy Christ,’ said Celia when silence fell at last. ‘You poor little cow. I always wondered what had gone on with you, Doll, but I didn’t think of that. The rotten bastard.’
‘There’s worse,’ said Dolly.
‘What the fuck could be worse?’
‘He’s doing it to my little sis now. To Sarah.’
‘How do you know that, Doll? You been back there?’
‘I stood down the street…’ Dolly hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘I saw him, how he was with her. And I saw her face. I know it’s happening, Celia. And it’s got to stop.’
Celia noticed her fag had gone out. She scooped the ash up, put it in her Capstan ashtray, shook out another cigarette from the packet, stuck it in the ivory holder and lit it. ‘Fucking hell, Doll, what a shocker.’
‘Celia.’ Dolly’s chest was tight with tension; she felt she was going to be sick, having to tell all this; it was like living it all over again. ‘We got to get the Delaneys involved with this.’
‘Yeah.’ Celia nodded. ‘Sure we can do that. They can give the old cunt a shot across the bows, make sure it don’t happen any more.’
Dolly’s face was hard all of a sudden. ‘No. That’s not good enough. Not nearly good enough.’
‘Doll…’
‘He has to die,’ said Dolly.
49
It happened when the railway workers were taking a carriage needing repairs into one of the far sidings. Arthur Biggs was at the controls of the big steam engine, backing it up, his mate the fireman on the footplate with him. Further back, the senior guard, the signalman, the porter and a pointsman were chatting to the shunter, Sam Farrell, who was directing operations in his usual Big-I-Am manner, sending hand signals up to the driver, saying all was well.
Sam was relaxed and in charge. He loved being in charge, and he was blankly astonished when the senior guard, one of his oldest work pals, grabbed his arm and kicked him behind the knee, taking his legs from under him.
‘What the fuck you doin’, boy?’ he demanded, falling on to the track, grazing his hands and knees.
Wincing with the pain in his leg – Jesus, that kick had been hard – Sam knelt there and looked around. None of the others were shouting a protest, they weren’t saying to the guard, ‘Hey, what’s up with you?’ They were just watching, and their faces were grim. What the hell was going on?
Sam scrabbled back to his feet, ready to come out swinging at the senior guard. And then he saw that the engine, belching steam and chugging hard like the deafening breath of an ancient monster, hadn’t slowed down.
‘What the f-’ Sam started.
He knew – everyone knew – that once the driver couldn’t see the shunter’s hand signals, that was the safety feature, that was when Arthur was supposed to shut her off, slap on the brakes. But Arthur hadn’t done that. The engine was still backing up; it was coming straight for Sam.
He screamed as he saw clearly what was about to happen. And then the engine’s massive weight smashed into him, flattening his chest and stomach, shattering his ribcage, whipping the air out of Sam in an instant, sending blood spurting out of his mouth in a torrent. His scream was cut short as his heart was squeezed to nothing and stopped beating.
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ said the senior guard, going pale as Sam’s blood spattered thickly down on to the tracks.
Arthur slammed on the brake and then him and the fireman came running back. They stopped short as they saw Sam Farrell pinned there, his head tipped forward on to his caved-in, blood-soaked chest. A ghastly odour was rising from Sam, the open-drain odour of a burst stomach and mangled intestines. The driver turned away from the sight, gagging at the smell, and heaved up his breakfast on to the platform.
The senior guard looked at the fireman. Then he glanced around at the other men there.
‘We’re all straight on what we say?’ said the guard. ‘He slipped, and by the time he got back up it was too late, the engine crushed him. It was an accident. All right?’
The fireman spat on the ground. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ he said.
The train driver couldn’t speak. He staggered away and sat down on the hard concrete. He couldn’t believe they’d done it, but they had.