Dangerous

by Jessie Keane

  Fuck, he thought. It was her again. Clara bloody Hatton. She drove him mad with her ripe luscious body and her cold-as-ice ways. He watched her for long moments; she was wearing a plunging red silk gown and those looked like real diamonds in that necklace she wore. There was a white fox fur stole over her shoulders. She was fucking beautiful. And cold as Christmas.

  ‘His girlfriend, I suppose,’ he said, looking away. He picked up his whisky and drank it in one hit.

  What he wanted . . . what he wanted was to go over there and slip his hand inside that low-necked dress and squeeze one of those fabulous tits of hers until she shrieked. He wanted to fuck her until she could barely walk. He wanted everything with her, to see her exhausted and wrung out in his bed. But she was like ice; untouchable. A couple of times their paths had crossed since Frank had fallen off the twig, Marcus had come on to her – and she had knocked him straight back, hard.

  ‘But I thought he . . . ?’ Paulette was still staring at Toby and Clara.

  ‘Look, who gives a fuck?’ snapped Marcus, and Paulette fell sulkily silent. He clicked his fingers for another drink, and the hostess hurried over.

  ‘Isn’t that Marcus Redmayne over there? He’s staring at you, darling,’ said Toby.

  ‘Is he?’ Clara looked vaguely around. Her eyes settled on Marcus. ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ she lied, because the minute they’d entered the building she’d been aware that this was his place, that he might be here, that she might see him.

  He wanted her. She knew that. He’d made it clear. But she wasn’t ever going to risk losing control, and with him she knew she would. No, she liked wonderful, laugh-a-minute Toby.

  ‘I’m not surprised he’s staring, you look gorgeous,’ said Toby, leaning over and kissing her cheek. Then he sat back and smiled. ‘We’ve been getting on so well, haven’t we,’ he said.

  ‘We have,’ smiled Clara. No wild excitement, no maddening crazy impulses, not with Toby. Toby was safe. And safety, wealth, the cocoon of luxury, all that was what he could provide, and she loved him for it.

  Toby reached into his pocket and extracted a black velvet box. He held it out to Clara.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, her smile broadening as she took it. Toby was always giving her gifts. She opened the box. There was a gold ring set with a large dark sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds inside it. ‘God, that’s gorgeous,’ she said, and looked up at Toby with a laugh.

  ‘It’s an engagement ring, darling. I would like you to marry me,’ said Toby. ‘Will you?’

  Clara was shaking her head in disbelief, still smiling. She took out the ring and slipped it onto her finger. ‘It’s a perfect fit,’ she said.

  ‘Like us,’ said Toby.

  Clara’s eyes met his. ‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ she said, and Toby called for champagne to celebrate.

  34

  Clara was dismayed that house prices were falling again. But she was comforted by the sapphire engagement ring she now wore, comforted by the extent of Toby cotton’s wealth, if not entirely happy about the business he was in. Clubs in Soho! It wasn’t what she might have wished for. But it was obviously a rich, thriving business; the new music scene was something Toby was enthusiastic about and keen to promote at three of his venues, while the other three were gaming and drinking clubs. She couldn’t wait to get gorgeous, flamboyant Toby up the aisle and take a proper look at the business situation.

  Toby escorted her around all the clubs, and they hugely enjoyed each other’s company. He gave her extravagant gifts of silken blonde furs and dazzling white diamonds, treated her to lunch at the best places.

  At the Savoy he had the waiters bring vintage Dom Perignon to celebrate their engagement, and Clara said: ‘But, Toby – my sister Bernie and my brother Henry, you do understand that they come with me, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, dear heart.’ He smiled his wonderful crinkleeyed smile and they clinked glasses and drank to a happy life together.

  Being so pleased with her new engagement, Clara was puzzled by Bernie’s fixation with the slums they’d crawled out of, the slums she had pulled them out of by the skin of her teeth. She had worked hard to make sure they could leave all that behind them; but now here was Bernie, coming home late again, exhausted but flushed with inexplicable good cheer, having spent yet another day in that pest-hole.

  ‘The soup kitchen’s doing well,’ Bernie enthused.

  ‘Really?’ Clara didn’t want to hear about it. She was reading the papers, flicking through the news. The GPO were going to build a 507-foot tower that would be the tallest building in Britain, and there was still fighting going on in the Congo and Angola.

  ‘We can hardly keep up with demand.’

  Clara was exasperated. Poor stupid soft-hearted Bernie. If you were ill, Bernie was right there at your bedside. If you were a loser? Ditto. She’d be there with the tea and sympathy, every time. Bernie was so sweet. Shame Henry didn’t have half her feeling, half her heart and compassion; then he might yet be salvageable. Maybe that ridiculously expensive boarding school would do the trick. Maybe he was even happy there. He never came home in the holidays – she never invited him, either – so how would she know?

  ‘Who is this “we”?’ asked Clara. She supposed she ought to take some interest, if only to please Bernie.

  ‘Other women with some time and money to spare, and the vicar donates all he can too. And there’s a photographer who’s helping us out – David Bennett. He takes pictures of the slum dwellers. Actually, he’s quite poor himself. He’s a wedding and portrait photographer mostly.’

  ‘Oh.’ No surprise then that he was half-starving and happiest among the poor. In her experience, photographers rarely made any real money.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’m going to start helping him out in his studio,’ said Bernie.

  ‘Is he going to pay you?’

  ‘Well, no. Not at first.’

  Not at all, thought Clara, closing the papers with a brisk rustle.

  Bernie irritated her to death sometimes. Clara stared hard at her sister. Why didn’t Bernie make more of herself? Attract someone with prospects for a change? Her longsleeved drab clothes, bitten nails and lack of make-up all added to her plain-Jane aura, when really she was quite pretty – if only she’d show it.

  ‘He can’t afford an assistant yet, but he will, one day. I’m going to help him with paperwork, doing up the proofs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘When you’re not trailing after him around the slums.’

  ‘Don’t be horrible, Clara. We can’t all be like you, engaged to a wealthy, interesting man like Toby. He’s so handsome too. And so nice. You’re lucky.’

  Clara knew she was lucky. Toby was an absolute find: chatty and sweet, and he loved to fuss over her. He wasn’t very demonstrative physically, he was not a passionate kisser or forever groping her tits, but after marriage to Frank, that didn’t bother her in the least.

  ‘David says that people should see this,’ Bernie was droning on. ‘People should know the conditions these poor souls live in. He’s going to get his pictures into the national newspapers one day.’ Bernie started to sit down at the dinner table.

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Clara was dubious about this. It seemed to her that pigs might fly first. Toby had told her that some of the newspapers were conducting campaigns against the clubs in Soho, claiming that they were hotbeds of drug-taking and prostitution and other terrible perversions. The newspapers were no friends of Toby, and so they were no friends of hers, or of Bernie’s either. Clara wrinkled her nose. ‘Bernie, can you wash first please? And get those clothes off. They smell.’

  Bernie rolled her eyes at her sister. ‘You lived there once,’ she said.

  ‘I know that. You don’t have to remind me. It’s a flea-infested rat-hole – and please don’t ever ask me to help out in your soup kitchen, because I would brain you with the fucking ladle if you did.’

  35

  Fulton was almost annoyed when one of Jacko’
s old drinking mates showed up after having been abroad for a couple of years and said that he might know where Jamesy was. Anything that distracted Fulton from his long-running fascination with Clara Hatton irritated him, but he supposed he’d better show willing. The old mate said Jamesy was at his sister’s, so Fulton went there to see what was happening with him, and if he could shed any light on Jacko’s whereabouts.

  Fulton thought about it on the drive over. For fun, he’d nicked a Morris off a garage forecourt and had Ian Bresslaw – who was scared shitless of him after Stevey Tyler got glassed – fit a set of fake plates to it for him.

  Of course, Fulton reasoned that it was perfectly possible his brother had simply gone off somewhere, to the costas maybe, and that was fine, who gave a shit? But that far-distant fight in the Blue Bird being the last-known sighting of Jacko gave him pause. Had something happened to Jacko that night, something fatal maybe? Either way, Ivan would expect him to make the effort to find out, if he could, and maybe Jamesy could supply some answers.

  ‘Well, you can try,’ said Jamesy’s sister when he got to her door. She was a worn-looking middle-aged yellow-blonde with varicose veins, a fag smouldering in her hand and a network of lines on her face that British Rail would be proud of.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Fulton.

  ‘Come through and you’ll see,’ she said, and led the way down a gloomy hall to a sitting room. It was very hot in there, and smelled stale and shitty.

  Jamesy was there, and straight away Fulton could see he’d had a wasted journey. Jamesy was sitting in an armchair, his head bent over, his eyes vacant, a string of drool sliming its way down his chin.

  Fulton had seen all sorts but he was shocked. He had seen Jamesy once on a visit down here – and this wasn’t anything like the Jamesy he remembered. Those days, Jamesy had been upright, short, bald and bow-legged as Popeye, with a big grin and a quicksilver way about him. Now, all his previous vigour was gone. He looked like he’d left planet Earth and forgotten to die first.

  Fulton looked at the sister. She took a long pull at her fag and stared straight back at him.

  ‘See?’ she asked.

  Fulton saw all right. On top of Jamesy’s bald head there was a half-moon scar about four inches long, coloured angry red.

  ‘The doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Someone fractured his skull in a fight, knocked bits of bone into his brain and left him like this. I thought of a home, but I didn’t want to do that.’ She sniffed and blinked back a tear. ‘Not at them prices, anyway. He was a lovely boy, but look at him now.’

  Fulton sat down in a chair opposite Jamesy and stared at him. Jamesy didn’t look up.

  ‘Does he speak?’ asked Fulton.

  ‘Nah. Well, sometimes. Rarely. Don’t even seem to know I’m here most of the time. He takes food and I see to him, bath him, get him to the bog or he’d mess himself right there in that chair.’

  Fuck it.

  Fulton stood up. ‘Sorry to take up your time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ She walked him out of Jamesy’s presence, and down the hall to the front door. ‘What was it you wanted to ask him, anyway?’

  ‘The fight when he got injured – just wanted to know if he’d seen anything of my brother, Jacko Sears, since then.’

  The sister dropped her fag-end on the dirt-speckled lino at her feet and stubbed it out with a slippered foot. ‘Well, no. He was laid up in hospital for weeks after the brain op.’

  ‘Right. OK.’ She opened the door and Fulton stepped out into the black drizzling day.

  ‘But I was there with him that night at the Blue Bird when the fight happened, if it helps,’ she said.

  36

  Clara was coming out of one of Toby’s music clubs a week before the wedding. She’d lost her comb somewhere and was rummaging in her bag, hoping to find it, not looking where she was going. She bumped straight into a tall man with hair as black as her own and deep, dark eyes. It was like walking into a wall. She stumbled, and he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  ‘Clara Hatton, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  Fuck. It was him again. Marcus Redmayne. She hadn’t seen him to talk to much since Frank’s funeral. She had seen him around town, of course, in the clubs, and she knew that if she ever gave him the slightest encouragement, engaged or not, he would pounce on her like a starving lion on a gazelle, but she wasn’t about to do that. Just a couple of moments in his company on the day she’d buried Frank, and she had soon been hungering for more. That wasn’t like her. She hated feeling that her emotions were beyond her control. She had her future carefully mapped out – and he wasn’t part of it.

  The truth was, whenever she clapped eyes on Marcus Redmayne she felt something shift inside her; a sort of softening, weakening sensation. She didn’t like that. She had a purpose in life and that purpose was to become rich. So rich that no one could ever take it away from her. She didn’t want to muddle any of that up with sex. Feelings of the romantic variety for a man – any man – did not fit with her plans at all.

  ‘Yes. Hello,’ she said coldly. ‘Have we met?’

  That half-smile, teasing. She could see he was remembering her triumphant little dance in the kitchen after Frank’s funeral. ‘Yes. We have. I’m Marcus Redmayne. We met on the day of your late husband’s funeral. And we’ve met a couple of times since.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. Bastard, smirking at her like that.

  ‘I asked if there was anything I could do to help you.’ He paused, his eyes on her face and then dropping to her left hand where the large sapphire glinted darkly. His eyes returned to her face. ‘But you seem to be managing pretty well on your own. About to get married again.’

  Something about the way he spoke made Clara bristle with anger. He was implying she was a gold-digger. Well, she was. If not for her, her family would still be in the gutter, and there was no way she was having that. So she wasn’t about to apologize for using her looks to attain a certain standard of living. There were worse ways to pay the bills, that was for sure.

  But you sent Henry away, whispered a voice in her head. Yes, she had. Boarding school might yet knock all the kinks out of him. She hoped so. His form tutors had sent her so-so reports of him. She hoped she had done the right thing. She hoped that he might come out of that place normal, that they’d turn him back into her sweet little brother Henry.

  ‘I am getting married. Next Saturday,’ she confirmed.

  ‘To Toby Cotton, I hear,’ he said.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘He’s a pretty rich man,’ said Marcus, pulling her to one side of the door so that they shouldn’t get in the way of other pedestrians. She wished he wouldn’t keep touching her. She stepped back, kept a distance between them.

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ she shrugged.

  ‘Oh, you’ve heard right. He is.’ He indicated the pillar-box-red club door. There were posters up on either side of it, trumpeting new bands performing there. ‘This is one of – what, five . . . ?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘I thought you’d nail the exact number,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t like your tone,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ Now he was smiling. ‘Well, I like yours. You’re some act, Mrs Hatton. Bold as brass, aren’t you, with your peachy arse and your chainsaw brain. That’s a dangerous combination. Look, I’ve got an idea.’

  Clara stared at him with hostile eyes. What had he just said? ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve got money too. More than Toby – whose fortunes may be about to turn.’ His eyes were moving up and down her body, taking in the Russian blue fox coat she wore – a gift from Toby – which didn’t hide the luscious curves of her breasts and hips, the tiny indentation of her waist. ‘How about it, Mrs Hatton?’

  He was playing with her, making it obvious that he had seen straight through to her very soul. That was rubbish, what he said about Toby’s fortunes, too; she’d seen the book
s, the whole thing looked sound. And what was Marcus offering? It certainly wasn’t anything respectable.

  He knew she was a woman on the make, and was treating her accordingly. She felt hot furious colour rush into her cheeks. She hated him. She felt found out, invaded, offended. What the hell did he know about what it was like for a woman trying to get ahead in this dog-eat-dog man’s world? Yes, things were changing, but not that much, and far too slowly. You could get the Pill now, to stop you getting pregnant, and some girls even talked about sexual equality – but that, as far as Clara could see, was the same tired old joke it ever was. Only money made a woman a man’s equal – and having learned that lesson she was now clawing her way ever-upward, back to where she belonged, at the top of the pile.

  ‘You bastard,’ she snapped.

  ‘Oh, that’s better. Although the language don’t quite match the furs and the finery. That’s the genuine Clara Hatton, right there.’

  ‘Get out of my way.’

  He stepped aside. ‘Of course.’

  Clara sent him one last seething glance and stormed off along the pavement, losing herself among the crowds.

  ‘The offer still stands, Mrs Hatton!’ he shouted after her.

  She didn’t answer.

  Marcus watched her go. There was something about her, something strong and downright ruthless, that he could only admire. Then he turned, still half-smiling to himself, thinking that one way or another he had to get her into his bed.

  He went to Paulette’s flat and there she was, pacing the carpet in her skin-tight jodhpurs. Times had certainly changed, where she was concerned. As his own standing had grown, so had Paulette’s upkeep. She was so glossy now, perfectly turned out, her fingernails painted, her skin massaged to a rosy glow, her hair coiffed and gleaming.

  Yeah, and I paid for it all, thought Marcus. Which was fair enough; if you had an expensive mistress it made you look good around town, gave you a certain air.

  Paulette was just back from her late-morning ride on the Arab mare that had also cost him an arm and a leg, and she was cursing her agent and whining that he was letting her down.