The downside of Kitty, though, was she never knew when to shut her mouth. She opened it without ever once thinking about what she was saying. In his world, women were rarely afforded that luxury and she had put a lot of backs up with her outspokenness. When she had a drink she got very loud, and she also had a problem with any other women around her. It had not taken her long to see that it was her involvement with him that allowed her to say more or less what she liked. But he knew he was going to have to put the hard word on her soon and he was dreading it.
Kitty was capable of having a knock-down, drag-out fight, and afterwards giving him the most amazing, mind-blowing sex he had ever had in his life.
He lay back on the sofa as he listened to Sade. He had a dry mouth and his heart was beating fast, the sound of it loud in his ears, and he knew he was getting the rushes from the amphetamines he had snorted earlier.
He felt sixteen again and he loved it. The feeling of being completely free was like a drug in itself. He snorted, he smoked dope and he listened to music that until Kitty had turned him on to drugs had sounded like shit. He had been an Elvis fan, had loved Sinatra. Now he was listening to 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' and actually liking the stuff.
The drugs had been a revelation to him, he had not been turned on or tuned out in the sixties. He had been a fifties man, a man who saw alcohol as his only vice. He had loved his wife, who he now saw as nothing more than a brick gradually helping him sink into his old age. Maddie was a decent woman, and he respected her. But all his married life she had been respectable, he had never had a decent shag or a decent conversation in thirty-four years. His generation had stayed married whatever. They had consciously looked for decent women who they knew would take care of the home and any kids they might accrue. They had married their mothers and felt honoured to be doing so.
Now, though, he wanted excitement, he felt the sap rising inside him and he knew that Maddie, God love her, would never be enough, had never been enough. Even before the kid, when she had been well stacked and had a face like a movie star, she had been cold. He knew that people from their background believed that women who enjoyed sex were wanton, were untrustworthy, and he felt cheated because of it.
Freddie Senior had spent the best part of his life looking for what this girl gave him, belief in himself as a man. Not as a giver of children or a provider. Kitty lay back and let him take her. She would howl her enjoyment out and he got off just watching her as she came.
She passed him the joint now and he toked on it deeply. The speed was making his heart beat erratically and he wanted to come down a bit.
As Kitty got up and slipped her dressing gown back on, he heard a knock on the front door. It was the middle of the night and Kitty, being Kitty, did not even think it was unusual. He jumped up and pulled on his trousers and shirt.
'Who the fuck could that be?'
Kitty laughed at him. 'Probably a mate, Fred. Relax, for fuck's sake.'
Kitty was used to people coming round at all hours. She had a flat and she had gear, so it was a natural occurrence for her.
She opened the front door a few minutes later and Freddie Senior was surprised to see his son walk into the room.
'All right, Dad.'
Freddie was smiling, the picture of friendliness and camaraderie. He heard a child crying and the low voice of Kitty as she went in and hushed it. As he looked around the room he was surprised at how nice it was and this showed on his face.
'She keeps this place lovely.' Freddie Senior was explaining himself away and they both knew it. 'So, what brings you here?'
Freddie could hear the nervousness in his father's voice, he knew the fact he had come here would throw him.
'Jackie had a boy tonight.'
Freddie saw the smile on his father's face, the genuine pleasure he was feeling for him, and he grinned back.
'Handsome fucker he is, built like the proverbial, a Jackson through and through.'
Freddie Senior shook his son's hand and hugged him tightly. 'Sit down and I'll get you a beer.'
Freddie sat on the sofa, observing the room. In spite of himself he was impressed. He would not have put Kitty and this flat together in a million years, and she had certainly gone up in his estimation. He clocked the speed that was lying in neat lines on the smoked glass coffee table and the half-smoked joint in the ashtray.
His father came back with a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. 'Let's have a proper drink.'
Freddie accepted his whisky and downed it in one gulp, then he knelt on the floor and snorted a line of amphetamine quickly. Sniffing loudly, he held his forefinger to his nose for maximum effect. The speed was good and it hit his brain in seconds.
'Might as well have a party, eh.'
His father laughed and poured them out more Scotch.
Kitty came back in. She had put on a pair of jeans and a cheesecloth shirt. She looked very young and very pretty. Freddie Senior was grateful to her for getting dressed, it seemed wrong somehow for her to be in a state of undress in front of his son. She sat on the sofa and poured herself a glass of wine.
'Nice little drum.'
She smiled at Freddie then, and he saw why his father was like a dog with three lampposts.
'So you've got a boy, then?'
He grinned again, and Kitty was reminded of how good looking he was. She felt she was looking at his father at the same age – the resemblance was uncanny.
Freddie stood up and said gaily, 'Yeah, me son and heir. Can I get a refill?'
She nodded happily. The fact he was here said that he accepted the relationship with his father. To her this was progress indeed.
Freddie picked up the bottle of wine that Kitty had placed by the whisky, and turned and slammed it with all his might over his father's head. He then stabbed at him with the broken bottle five times, leaving the man a bloody mess.
Kitty saw the blood everywhere, spurting all over her new cream carpet and spraying her walls. Stoned, she was unable to move from the chair. She just stared at the seeping blood in morbid fascination wondering if this could really be happening.
Freddie Senior was lying there, the skin on his face open in gaping flaps. He was literally trying to hold his face together with his hands.
'You cunt! You'd treat my mother like she's nothing? She ain't got a fucking pot to piss in and you're here with your fucking slag?'
He started to punch his father in the head then, heavy, thudding punches that left his hands covered in his own father's blood.
Kitty started to shake, the shock of what had happened was finally kicking in and she tasted the bile as vomit filled her mouth. She swallowed it down and she shouted in horror, 'What the fuck are you doing? I have got kids in there!' Her voice sounded to her as if it was coming from miles away.
'Fuck you, you ugly fucking cunt, and fuck your fucking kids. You ever talk directly to me again and I'll ram that dope up your box and then use you like a fucking bong!'
Freddie turned back to his father.
The children were crying now, loud sobbing cries that told their mother they were frightened. The noise had woken them up. Kitty ran from the room in terror, worried now for the safety of her kids. Neighbours were banging on the walls but she knew they would not phone Old Bill. They just wanted the noise to stop.
'My fucking mother ain't got a fucking bean, you useless cunt.' He watched his father groaning in pain without any kind of compassion. 'You fucking ever treat my mum like that again and I will fucking kill you.'
Freddie Senior, who in his day had been classed as one of the hardest men around, who had worked with the Krays and who was still revered for his past reputation as a bareknuckle boxer, looked at his son and saw the future of their world.