by Fiona Mozley
For Precious, the situation has become tedious. She was grateful for the support at first, but she doesn’t like having to justify her existence and pretty much all of her life choices to several people every day. Precious isn’t oblivious to these competing views, but she tries to ignore them. For her, it is just a job. She does it for the money. She doesn’t much like it or enjoy it, but she didn’t much enjoy her previous employment either, and at least in her current occupation she has no boss, she keeps all the money she earns, she can take days off whenever she likes, and she has no commute.
Precious thinks her life is okay. She doesn’t mind the work. It’s only sex, for fuck’s sake. She doesn’t get what the big deal is. She never has. It is a thing you do with bits of your body. It sometimes feels good. It sometimes feels a bit uncomfortable.
When she worked in the beauty parlor in Highgate, she once accidentally dripped a tiny amount of hot wax onto the leg of an important customer and, despite admitting her mistake, and apologizing, the client slapped her across the face. She complained to her boss but the boss sided with the client and docked her a week’s pay. In her current line of work, when a punter gets aggy, Tabitha phones downstairs and the bouncers come and take the man away and kick the shit out of him.
Precious knows this set-up is unusual, and she is unique within the brothel for having only experienced this arrangement. Tabitha has lived in different circumstances. Before coming to Soho and retiring from sex, she worked in every type of horrible situation. She used to live in Chapeltown, a district of Leeds. She was pimped, she walked the streets, she was passed between venues, she slept rough, she lost a friend to the Yorkshire Ripper, and another to a man who’d beaten a couple of prostitutes to death but not so many of them as to become a household name. Precious can’t bear to think of the things her friend has been through. It’s a million miles from her own experience.
About a week after they received the eviction notice in the summer, the residents of the brothel gathered in the Aphra Behn to discuss progress. Some of the customers recognized them but pretended not to. The women returned the favor. Other customers recognized them but were unfazed and greeted them as friends.
Tabitha bought a round of drinks. Precious waited patiently for everyone to arrive, for the preliminary gossip to be told and heard, for handbags to be placed on the floor and jackets to be slung over the backs of chairs.
She began, “We are gathered here today.”
“In the sight of god.”
Laughter.
Precious ignored the heckling. “We’re here today to discuss some very important things. We are here to work out how we are going to protect both our homes and our livelihoods. Because both are right now under attack. If we cannot remain here in Soho, what will we do?”
“No fucking pimps. That’s the main point.”
“So it is, Scarlet. Thank you.”
“So far we have sought some legal advice and through the lawyers written some letters to the landlords. But we have also been complying with the changes.”
“Temporarily.”
“Most of us have been paying the increased rent rates in the hope that it’ll be refunded if we win the legal proceedings.”
“But I can’t afford it anymore. I’m not making enough money to get by. I may as well go get myself a job in Tesco,” says Young Scarlet.
There was a murmur of assent.
“What would you have to offer Tesco?” another woman asked. “A blow-job counter?”
There was more laughter.
The woman continued, “Pick up your eggs and bacon and go round the back of the pasta aisle for a quickie.”
More laughter.
Another woman joined in. “You’d be all right with the cold meats section, eh? Salami specialist, eh, eh?”
This prompted less laughter.
“Anyway,” interrupted Precious. “We need to have a rethink. We all agree that we can no longer afford the rates, and none of us want a protracted legal battle.”
“Too right,” said another woman.
“So what’s to be done?”
There was silence. The women all looked around at each other but nobody spoke.
Then one woman said, “I’ve got a john who’s an MP. I could ask him what to do.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What?”
“Love, I don’t think he’s going to want to get involved, do you?”
She shrugged.
“What, raise the issue in Parliament? ’Ere, your honors, my hooker’s in a bit of bother, let’s get the army in.”
“Maybe. Not the army, but something.”
“Are you joking? No, love, we’re on our own. It’s not a glamorous cause. We’re hardly going to get Bob Geldof and Bono fighting our corner.”
“Look, stop,” said Precious. “Let’s be serious for just a minute.”
“Sorry, Precious.”
“Sorry, Precious.”
“I had a think. And also, I was sort of approached by someone—a journalist. A photojournalist, really. And she wants to do a piece about us. Why our job is better than what other women have, and that. And she wanted to print it in a big newspaper. I don’t know, I guess because she’ll be on our side, it might do us some favors. She reckons her piece about rogue landlords in Glasgow made a bunch of them back off. It might be all we need.”
“I don’t know, Precious.”
“Yeah, and I don’t really want to be in the paper, to be honest. Not all my family know what I’m doing over here in London.”
“No, of course. I said that to this woman—Mona is her name—and she said she expected that, and was happy for us to have our faces concealed. And that the photos would be really good. Tasteful, but also capture us as our true selves.”
“Might actually be good for business. Free advertising.”
“Well, possibly,” said Precious. “Look, I’m not saying I’m totally behind it, but I think it’s an option we could explore.”
There were some murmurs of agreement and murmurs of dissent, but in the end what all the other women did agree on was that if Precious thought it was a good idea then she should do it.
The photographer is going to come along to the protest today. This is another reason why Precious is anxious. She and the others will be wearing masks—for their safety as much as anything else—but she is still nervous about having her photo taken and put in the public domain. The photographer is going to come up to the flat and talk to her and Tabitha, and take some photos of where they live. Precious wants to show people that they’re no different from anyone else.
Precious arrives at the flat. There’s a back entrance for personal use, so the women don’t have to go through the front door and bump into customers. It is accessed through the alley the local restaurants use to store their bins. When the chefs forget to lock the lids at night, tramps and foxes fish through the black plastic bags looking for leftover food. The result is messy. A box of a dozen eggs has been dropped, and split yolks and whites have created a network of sticky fjords. There are cabbage leaves and potato peelings. A couple of snails are crawling over the rim of one of the large containers and wasps are swarming around a discarded lemon tart.
Precious pushes open the back door, which should, by rights, be a fire escape. It is heavy and blue. Someone has scrawled their initials on it in black marker, and someone else has crossed them out and added their own. Inside, there is a dark vestibule and a damp flight of concrete stairs with a rusted iron bannister fitted to the wall with iron pegs. Precious takes the first flight of stairs two at a time, then slows for the rest of the ascent.
She heaves her bags through the door and sees Tabitha in the sitting room with her feet up, reading the newspaper. When Precious left earlier this morning, Tabitha was cleaning.
“Oh good,” Tabitha says when she sees Precious. “I was just about to get up and pop the kettle on, but now you can do it.”
“Charming.”
Pre
cious goes through to the kitchen with her bags. She unpacks the items, first onto the counter and then into the cupboard and the fridge, setting aside the ingredients for the curry. She puts the kettle on, takes Tabitha’s favorite cup from the cupboard, and throws in a black teabag.
“Do you want to help me cook?” Precious calls from the kitchen.
“Not really,” replies Tabitha, but soon afterwards she pops her head around the door, then comes in and leans against the countertop.
Precious is peeling the pineapple. The handle of a squat knife rests in her hand. The blade teases apart the spines and thick, woody rind from the golden flesh, and juice oozes all along the knife, onto her hand, onto the chopping board below.
“You know they eat you as you eat them?”
“Excuse me?”
“Pineapples digest you as you digest them. Only more slowly, so you win. When you put a piece of pineapple in your mouth it starts to digest your tongue and cheeks and gums. It’ll even take the enamel off your teeth. It’s got some sort of chemical or enzyme in or something. And then when it’s in your stomach it starts to digest your stomach too, only the acid in your stomach is stronger so works faster than the pineapple does. And you win.”
Precious does not look up. “A sobering tale.”
Precious and Tabitha eat their lunch at the table in the kitchen, while watching a daytime cookery competition on the small television fitted to the wall. They argue about which of them would do better if they were contestants on the show.
“I hate to say it, Tab, but your presentation would let you down. I love your food, you know that. You’re a great cook, but on this show you need to be all fancy.”
“No, no,” replies Tabitha. “All the fancy stuff develops gradually. At first I’d wow them with big, bold flavors and then I’d later learn how to do all the fiddly bits. They’d love me. You, on the other hand, you’re too inconsistent. No offense. I mean, sometimes your food is absolute knock-out—loads better than mine. Then at other times, I don’t know, you just lose concentration or something and bam, you’ve overcooked the veg and burnt the fish. Now don’t argue with me—you know what I mean.”
“Oh really? Enjoying your lunch, are you?”
“It’s absolutely delicious. Thank you very much for making it.”
Precious flutters her eyelashes and tucks into her rice.
After a while Precious hears a scuffling sound coming from the bathroom. “Is someone in there?” she asks Tabitha. She gets up to go and look.
“Now, Precious, love, before you get angry …”
“Oh, it’s not …”
“Well, it might be.”
“Oh, you didn’t!”
“I might have.”
Precious swings open the bathroom door.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” she says.
Inside, there is a man on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floor with a bright blue toothbrush. He stops work when Precious opens the door and he looks up, eagerly, hungrily.
“Miles!” Precious exclaims, exasperated.
“I’m sorry,” says Miles from his position on the floor. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, love. It’s this one who should be sorry.” Precious waves an arm in Tabitha’s direction.
“He was begging me to let him,” Tabitha explains. “And, well, it needed doing so I thought, why not? It allowed me to get on with some other stuff.”
Miles is still on his hands and knees, apologizing, spraying detergent, scrubbing the bathroom tiles with the toothbrush.
“If you’re worried it’s exploitative, I’ve asked around and everyone I spoke to said if it’s what he wants then there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It’s not that,” Precious replies. “I couldn’t care less if we’re exploiting him, it’s just it’s my day off.”
“But that’s the beauty of it, you see. You don’t have to do anything at all. You can just sit around and Miles is paying us and the flat is getting cleaned at the same time.”
“But I can’t relax knowing there’s a client …”
“But he’s not a client, though.”
“But there’s still some bloke through there doing god knows what.”
“He’s just cleaning,” says Tabitha.
“Yeah but if he gets off on it, what else is he doing?”
“I’ve told him: any hanky-panky and he can fuck off.”
“I bet he loved that.”
“He did actually.”
In Disguise
Lorenzo returns home from the audition to find Robert sitting on the step that marks the entrance to their block of flats. Robert holds his head in his hands, which are marked with uneven cuts, thick with clotted blood and mild infection. There are two empty cans of lager next to him. One is crumpled and partially ripped, exposing a sharp metallic edge. The other holds its shape but lies on its side and slides back and forth as the breeze funnels inside it and pulls it this way and that.
“Where the hell have you been?” Lorenzo asks Robert. “I’ve not seen you in weeks.”
Robert looks up at his friend then returns his head to his hands.
“Jesus Christ,” says Lorenzo. He looks at the empty cans again. “You’ve started early,” he observes.
Lorenzo leans down and takes hold of Robert’s upper arms and tries to ease him into a standing position. Robert is a much bigger man than he is, and he is unable to lift him.
“I’ll get up if you take me to the pub,” says Robert.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. How about we go up to mine and have a cup of tea. I’ll make you a bacon sandwich.”
“Nope,” says Robert. “I’d rather stay here. Pub or nothing.”
Lorenzo checks his watch. The Aphra Behn will only just be open. He knows it”s not the best plan, but he hates it when busybodies withhold alcohol from drunks just because they are drunk. What”s more, Lorenzo also fancies a pint.
“Fine,” Lorenzo says. “But you can get yourself up, you swine.”
Robert lifts himself with a rasping groan and shakes his body like a dog out of water. Lorenzo smells the beer on his clothes, and something harder on his breath. The two men walk together down the street, then take a cut-through filled with stacked wooden crates and uncollected refuse. The pub is on the corner. Apart from the staff, they are the first to arrive. Lorenzo steers Robert away from their usual seats at the bar towards a table in the corner of the room which has two armed oak chairs set against it and a stack of cardboard brewery coasters on top. Lorenzo goes to the bar and orders two pints. The thought of not buying an alcoholic drink for Robert, after having chosen the pub as a venue, does occur to him, but only briefly.
Lorenzo carries over the beers and sits. “What’s up?”
Robert wipes his face with his sleeve as if he’s wiping away tears, but there are no tears, nor have there ever been tears. “Nothing,” he says. “I’m right as rain.” Robert takes hold of one of the pint glasses with his cut hand and pulls it towards his mouth. Froth remains on his upper lip after he drinks, and he takes his sleeve up to wipe his face again.
“Well there’s obviously something wrong. I’ve not seen you for weeks. That’s an unprecedented amount of time for you to be away from the pub. So what is it?”
Robert says nothing. He looks at his friend then down at his pint glass then back to his friend.
“I’ll rephrase the question,” says Lorenzo. “What have you been doing? Where have you been?”
Robert’s clever enough to recognize that this is still a question about his feelings, but in disguise. “I’m fine,” he says. “Honestly, I’m fine.”
Robert has another sip of beer and sits up straight in his chair, so that Lorenzo feels suddenly, fleetingly diminished. He sees himself as a child, and Robert as a grown man, and a brute. He thinks, what am I doing being friends with this man? What the hell am I, a Sri Lankan Catholic faggot, doing sitting here drinking a beer with this thu
g? What do I know about him, really? What things has he done in his life? What things has he seen? In a different world, or not even that different, just a different era, a different decade, a few years ago, he might have stabbed me in the street, or punched my face in, or set me on fire.
The feeling is fleeting, and as soon as he looks again, he sees a friend, and feels at ease. He waits for an answer. He hopes the silence will encourage Robert to speak.
“Bugger it,” says Robert. He rubs his face with his hands. “I’m a bad man, Lorenzo. I’ve done bad things. Have you heard of a man called Donald Howard?”
“Of course,” Lorenzo replies.
“I used to work for him.”
“In what capacity?”
Robert doesn’t answer, but Lorenzo thinks he can probably guess. Donald Howard was infamous in these parts. Lorenzo’s mum and aunt used to speak about him and his gang in hushed tones, even though he was dead years before Lorenzo heard the stories. He owned flats in the same building as theirs and they remembered his men going around collecting rents. Later, someone at school told Lorenzo that when Donald Howard’s gang executed someone they would make a death mask of his face. As a child, Lorenzo had a vivid imagination and this story gave him nightmares for months.
“Do you know how I got this?” Robert asks, moving on. He points to a scar on his forehead, between his eyebrows.
Lorenzo indicates that he doesn’t know.
“I had a tattoo there I got removed,” explains Robert. “Do you know what the tattoo was?”
Lorenzo shakes his head.
“It was a swastika,” says Robert. “I had a swastika tattooed to my forehead.”
Lorenzo looks at his friend but says nothing. Then Robert asks directly, “What do you say to that?”
“Please don’t ask me to respond directly to that, Robert. Obviously I had my suspicions but now that I know for certain, please don’t ask me to pass comment. Let’s just …”