Shape of Snakes

Her mouth thinned immediately. 'It never happened. Who was going to give it to him? Sharon? He'd have thumped her first. He was a nasty piece of work that Michael ... a bad influence on all the kids 'round here. He was the one got my lad into trouble, never the other way 'round.'

I wondered if Sharon saw it that way, or if she cared. 'I watched a man hurl him head first into a brick wall once,' I said idly. 'It all happened very quickly and I was too far away to stop it. The wretched child was only fourteen-and he wasn't very big for his age-so he went down like a sack of potatoes.'

'Serves him right,' said Maureen balefully. 'He almost killed somebody not so long ago ... got eleven years for his troubles. That should tell you the sort of boy he was. It makes me sick the way we got dumped on all the time, when it was him and his tart of a mother caused all the problems in the street.' A sly expression crept into her eyes. 'Annie had their measure all right. She called Sharon a 'whore' and Michael a 'son of a bitch.' '

'Did she call her 'white trash'?'

'Nn-nn. 'Whore' ... 'ho' ... 'cunt.' Annie'd get going at the top of her voice every time she was with a client. It was pretty funny.'

There was a time, I remembered, when she and Sharon had been thick as thieves, and I wondered what had happened to make them fall out. Something to do with money, I guessed, as it was the single passion they both shared. 'So it was just the Slaters who were 'white trash'?' I murmured.

Maureen studied the end of her cigarette. 'Think what you like,' she said.

'Do you know who the man was who knocked Michael down?' I asked her.

She gave an indifferent shrug.

'It was your husband,' I told her. 'He was fighting drunk and caught Alan and Michael trying car doors to see if any of them were unlocked. Alan took to his heels but Michael stood his ground and ended up with a bloody face. I wanted to report Derek, but Michael said he'd take his anger out on you if we grassed him up. 'Mr. Slater's a right bastard,' he told me. 'He beats up on his missus every time his kids get the better of him.' ' I watched her for a reaction, but there was none. 'So I let Derek get away with it, and took Michael to my house instead of a police station. It was three hours before his nose stopped bleeding.'

She stubbed out her cigarette, refusing to meet my eyes. 'You can't blame me for that. Most of the time I didn't even know where Derek was, let alone what he was doing.'

It sounded like the beginnings of a defense. 'I'm not blaming you.'

'Sure you are. You're like everyone else. It's Maureen's fault her kids were out of control. Maureen's fault she married a lousy husband. Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. But who the fuck ever cared about me? Tell me that.'

'The vicar and his wife?'

Anger sparked briefly in her eyes. 'They were more interested in the nigger than they were in me.'

I looked away to hide my anger, recalling what Wendy Stanhope had said. The poor woman was always taking refuge with us... 'I understood they took you in whenever Derek became violent.'

'Only out of charity, never out of liking.'

It was something she resented, I thought.

'The vicar knocked next door once a week. He never did that for me. I had to go looking for help.'

'Perhaps he felt Annie had more to put up with.'

'No more than we did. You should have heard her cursing and swearing at us through the wall.'

'You said she only did it when you made a noise.'

'Not always. Sometimes it was hard to say which came first ... her or us. She had a mouth like a sewer. When it wasn't 'white trash,' it was 'honkies' or 'scum.' It used to rile us up something rotten.'

'She couldn't help herself,' I said. 'She suffered from a neuropsychiatric disorder called Tourette's syndrome. Sometimes it manifests itself as coprolalia, which is a compulsion to utter obscenities. Her mother was far more prone to it than Annie, but maybe Annie resorted to it when she was stressed.'

'Then she should have been in a loony bin.'

Does she believe that? I wondered. Or was it something she repeated like a mantra to excuse what she did? 'A more sensible solution would have been for the council to rehouse you and your family somewhere else,' I suggested. 'To be honest, I never understood why they didn't. You lived entirely on benefit, had more social workers allocated to you than anyone else in the street, yet for some reason the pressure was always on Annie to move and never on you. That always seemed grossly unfair to me when she was a householder, paying rates, and you were paying nothing.'

'That wasn't our fault. Derek was out of work. Would you have liked it better if we'd starved?'

I refused to be sidetracked. 'Why did the council take your side against Annie's, Maureen? It must have been clear to them that she wasn't getting on with her neighbors.'

'Why would it? She never complained.'

'She called you 'white trash.' What's that if it's not a complaint?'

She lit another cigarette and shook her head at my stupidity. 'I meant she didn't complain to the council.'

I had to make a conscious effort to stop my mouth dropping open. I had imagined any number of conspiracy theories to account for why the Slaters and the Percys had been allowed to wage a terror campaign against Annie, but it had never entered my head that the explanation was so simple. 'Are you saying that, despite all the complaints you and Sharon made against her, she never once retaliated?'

Maureen nodded.

'Why not?'