Faces by Martina Cole Page B

know that his bulk was his greatest asset. Like many a man before him, he would earn a living off his wits and his muscles. Even the priest gave him his due, which alone told him more of his son’s rise in the world than anything else.
    As Big Dan sipped his tea he looked down at himself, at the wasted leg that dragged behind him, and the knuckles that were scarred from trying to stop the crowbars as they had rained down onto his prostrate form. He looked around the kitchen, saw the dramatic difference that was echoed through the flat and wondered at a boy who was so single-minded he could achieve all this just to prove a point.
    His wife Ange was a bundle of nerves. She sat at the small table and sipped at her tea, her usually open face grey with worry. But he had no sympathy for her, the boy had been ruined by her from the moment he had entered the world. Aching all over, and lighting a cigarette, he smoked and drank the last dregs of his cold tea. The noise grated on his wife’s nerves as it had since her first visit to his mother’s house and the realisation that he had no manners at all, and had been brought up in a filthy hole by a woman who could barely string a sentence together.
    Big Danny had always remembered that look on her face, could still feel the flush of shame as he looked around him, and the first stirrings of his colossal anger. An anger this little woman could inflame with a look or a word.
    Now he was dependent on her, but he was getting better all the time. Eventually he would be more mobile, the doctor had assured him of that. It was what he was living for, then this scum would be out of his life once and for all.
    Danny Boy walked back into the kitchen and, studiously ignoring his father, buttoned up his shirt, slowly. Every movement was calculated to irritate the man who had sired him. Then, tucking it into his trousers, he stretched languidly. Taking a wad of money from his back pocket he peeled off ten five-pound notes and threw them into his mother’s lap, hushing her protestations that she had plenty by giving her a hug and a kiss. ‘If you need anything else, you let me know, there’s plenty more where that came from.’
    His father was staring at the floor so Danny forced his head up and, looking into his eyes, said quietly, ‘By the way, the Murrays send their regards.’
    Jonjo was watching the little play from the doorway, his sister quiet for once as she drank in the drama of it all. Annuncia thrived on any kind of excitement, and now her eyes were bright as she surveyed her father’s humiliation.
    ‘Get yourself off now, son.’ His mother would have pushed him out of the front door if she could have got away with it, and they all knew it. When Danny finally left, the whole family breathed a collective silent sigh of relief.
     
    Frankie Daggart was sitting in his car outside Upney Station, listening to the radio and watching the girls as they walked by. The young men today didn’t know how lucky they were, the birds were all half-naked and up for a bit of a lark. In his day you had to know where to go to bag a sort, and even then it wasn’t a guarantee you’d get your leg over. That was only guaranteed with certain paper money or coins of the realm, plus copious amounts of alcohol. But he’d prided himself on never, ever paying for it outright, no matter what the occasion.
    As he pictured a series of pornographic scenarios with various young girls, he was broken out of his reverie by Danny Boy Cadogan opening the passenger door and bringing a blast of arctic air inside with him.
    ‘All right, son?’
    ‘Yeah, you?’
    Frankie was disconcerted by being caught with his metaphorical pants round his ankles and, starting up the car, he drove them to the nearby Railway Tavern.
    Once inside the doorway Danny watched in awe as Frankie was greeted by each and every person, offered drinks on the house, and finally seated nearest the fire. A place where they could talk in peace, where