by Jessie Keane
‘You all right?’ asked Gina, staring at her face. ‘It’s not too tight?’
‘It’s fine,’ said Claire. ‘Um. Sylvester, the owner. He don’t seem the type for this.’
‘Well, he ain’t. Not really. His dad started the club, not him. I was there when the old man ran it and I was sure when Sylvester – the club was named after him by his dad – well I was sure that when he took over the whole thing would hit the skids. But it didn’t.’ Gina was looking at Claire’s waist. ‘You know, you could stand to lose a few pounds.’
‘Yeah. OK,’ said Claire, thinking it was impossible. The weight was going on, no matter how little she ate.
The money, she thought. Just keep thinking of the money.
This place paid so much better than any of the other waitressing jobs she’d had. ‘So . . . you’re going to teach me this Bunny dip?’
‘You’ll get it in no time,’ said Gina, and cracked a smile.
37
Claire found her new job to be a piece of piss. Dead easy. All her anxieties about wearing a skimpy costume had gone within about a week of starting work at Sylvester’s because the place was run on very strict lines. No touching from the punters, that wasn’t allowed. The girls were treated with respect. If they weren’t, there were bouncers on the door who would throw any chancers out on to the sidewalk and never let them back in again.
Gina, the den mother and manageress, gruff though she was, became a friend. And the other girls were friendly too. Good workers were welcomed in the club, and Claire was a very good worker indeed, shipping trays of drinks around the place, smiling, always giving her best even when she felt like shit, which she did, often. She thought she was doing fine, all things considered, until one day Sylvester called her into his office up on the first floor.
‘Claire? Yeah, come in, sit down,’ he said, standing up, eyes darting to her face and then away, hands nervously jangling the keys in his pockets, knocking over a pot of pens and then scrambling around picking them up.
Claire sat. He slapped the pot of pens back on the desk and then closed the door behind her. She felt a panicky twinge. But this was Sylvester. It was OK. ‘Tiger Feet’ by Mud was thrumming up through the floor.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked anxiously.
Yes, the job was good, but her relentless weight gain was not. Claire was sure this summons was about that. Sylvester would – in his very nice way – tell her that she had to lay off the doughnuts. But Gina had already been on her case about that – and she wasn’t eating much. The seamstress who altered all the girls’ costumes had been in a couple of times, letting her outfit out at the seams. But it seemed like a battle she couldn’t win. She wasn’t comforteating and in fact sometimes she felt too sick to eat at all. But in her heart of hearts she was still shattered by all that had happened to her back in England. Her dream of a perfect world had been an illusion, cruelly ripped apart in one horrible night, and it haunted her. The loss of her old life tormented her, too; that perfect Romany life, free of constraint, free of care. She missed it every day, missed Eva and Pally and Trace, but knew she mustn’t get in touch, couldn’t let them know anything about where she was or what she was doing. She had to keep them safe.
And Josh! Would she ever get over the loss of him?
‘No, nothing wrong. Not at all.’ He shuffled a few papers and then sat back, smiling at her. ‘Gina’s been telling me great things about you,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘Says you’re a fantastic asset,’ he said.
‘Well . . . that’s kind of her.’ Claire could hear a but coming.
‘Kind, shmind.’ Sylvester made a dismissive movement with one long-fingered hand. ‘She knows a good worker when she sees one. Says you’re real efficient. Got a good head for figures and the clients like you.’
‘So . . . ?’ Claire hadn’t a clue where this was going.
‘So how about taking on a new role? Assistant to Gina. More backroom stuff than out front with the clients, how about that?’
Claire felt her innards shrivel with shame. He’d noticed how fat she was getting. Gina certainly had, she’d called in the seamstress and stood boot-faced and disapproving while the woman fussed over Claire with the tape measure. God, she’d tried so hard not to stuff her face, tried to eat sensibly. She really had. But her body seemed to be ballooning out of control. And now she saw it in Sylvester’s face. The awkward sideways glances, the nervous paper-shuffling. He knew, all right. And this was his kind way of handling it. Pushing her to one side, out of sight of the paying customers.
Sylvester cleared his throat. ‘Gina will be retiring next year, so this is a real good step up for you. What do you think?’
Claire’s cheeks were burning with embarrassment. But . . . this would work better for her. She couldn’t entirely shake her self-consciousness in the skimpy costume, and her nervousness around the male customers. She would be happier in a backroom position. There, she could hide from the world.
‘I’d like that,’ she said.
Sylvester let out a breath that seemed very like relief. ‘Good, good!’
Yeah, of course he’s relieved – now he won’t have to watch me expand ever outward until one day I pop right out of the bloody costume and he has to fire my arse.
‘Thank you,’ she said humbly, grateful. She was damaged goods, after all. And now she was an embarrassment to her boss.
‘No thanks necessary,’ said Sylvester, and quickly ushered her out of the office.
38
Claire loved working behind the scenes at the club and gradually she was taking over more and more of the everyday running of the place. Being in the background suited her very well, because she knew damned well she was ill. Actually, she was dying. Her periods had stopped, which for certain meant that she was terribly sick, and she was still getting fatter all the time. Living on Waldorf salads didn’t count for shit. There was something in her stomach, a disease, tumour, and it was killing her inch by inch.
Free of that damned costume at last, she swathed herself in big pinafore dresses and voluminous poncho tops, and beavered away in the smaller back office beside Sylvester’s own. And, bumbling though he was, laughably clumsy and inept as a man, she grew fond of him. Sylvester was odd, but he was also a gentleman, considerate and kind. And it hurt her when she discovered that his health too was poor. Being in closer proximity to him, she was aware that he often slipped tiny pills under his tongue.
‘It’s angina,’ Gina told her when she asked.
‘Oh the poor thing,’ said Claire. Always one to fuss over sick animals and lame ducks, this news touched Claire’s tender heart. She liked Sylvester and was sad he was unwell.
‘It’s under control.’ Gina gave Claire a sharp look. ‘You know he’s sweet on you, I suppose?’
Claire stared at Gina in surprise. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Well – don’t take advantage.’
‘No. Really, I would never—’
‘Plenty would.’
‘Gina.’ Claire was getting annoyed. ‘I’m not interested, OK? Not in Sylvester and not in anyone else.’
Claire was always hunched over her desk – Gina’s desk, really, which they now shared – sorting invoices, phoning wholesalers, chatting to accountants on the phone, keeping the whole thing rolling along.
Working helped her stop thinking about the thing that was slowly killing her. Bad things had happened to her and this was the culmination of all that badness. She was on her way out. She was dying, thousands of miles from all that she had known, all that she had ever cared about. She would never see Josh again.
Then one day Sylvester called her into his office again.
Oh Jesus, thought Claire, sitting down, expecting to be fired, expecting disaster.
‘You OK?’ asked Sylvester, his eyes on her face.
‘Fine, fine,’ said Claire. ‘Problem?’
‘No, not at all.’ Again he was shuffling papers, looking
awkward. This time he managed not to drop anything, though. ‘Listen. There’s a room upstairs, you know that, right? We keep a stack of the old files up there.’
‘Yes. Sure I know.’ Where was this going?
‘We could clear it out. It’d be better for you to be here, on the spot, rather than schlepping in from Brooklyn day in day out. You could move in. Would you like that?’
Claire stared at him. She thought of her apartment in that shitty rundown old building across town, where she had to pull the furniture across the door to feel safe at night. And even then, she didn’t.
‘Yeah,’ she said, wondering why he would do that for her. ‘I would like that. But . . . Gina doesn’t live in.’
‘She has family. You don’t though – right?’
Claire shook her head. Not only that, her visa had lapsed and now she was an illegal.
‘Better for me to have you on the spot,’ he said. ‘If I have a query, I can get hold of you straight away. You know I’m thinking of expansion. Another club like this one, just across town. So I’m busy, and I need someone here, someone reliable.’
‘OK,’ said Claire. The journey to and from work was exhausting for her. So to live over the club would be wonderful, so much easier.
Sylvester beamed with pleasure. ‘That’s good. I’ll get the boys up there tomorrow, we’ll make it nice for you.’
Claire looked at him in wonderment. ‘You’ve been so kind,’ she said.
‘Hey, we got to all help each other, ain’t we?’ His eyes lowered to her swollen belly. ‘You poor kid. Father’s long gone, I guess?’
‘What?’ Claire stared at him, yanking her cardigan over the tell-tale bulge of her illness.
‘The father.’
‘The what?’ Claire was clutching at her stomach. At the tumour. At this mound of death.
Sylvester held up his hands in a soothing gesture. ‘Hey, I’m not judging anybody, don’t think that. Well, I would judge the father for sure, the rotten bastard clearing off and leaving you like this. So come on, honey, tell me – when is the baby due?’
39
Gina and Sylvester had been unbelievably kind. True to his word, Sylvester set the doormen to work, emptying out the room on the second floor. Until now it had acted as a junk room for old files and assorted bits of crap, broken chairs and old light fittings from the club down below. Now it was cleared out, repainted, and Gina made the arrangements for Claire’s few thrift-shop possessions to be moved over from her Brooklyn place and installed. Within a month, the room was homely and habitable.
When Sylvester had spoken the word ‘baby’ to Claire, she had felt her whole being twist in anguish. Now at night she lay in bed over the club and looked down at the mound of her belly and thought, You bastard thing, I hate you!
She was carrying a child.
Those awful scum had done this to her, put this dreadful thing inside her. A tumour would have been better. An end to it all. But this wasn’t an end, this was a whole new beginning, and the thought of that destroyed her.
‘It’ll all work out,’ Gina told her. ‘You’re not the first unmarried mother in the world. And you’re among friends here.’
Claire nodded in agreement, but secretly she seethed. How the fuck could Gina know what she’d been through, all that she’d suffered? Gina had a marriage to a good man, and two daughters. She hadn’t been raped. She would retire and live a happy life with her family. But what did Claire have?
Nothing.
Nothing except this thing that was invading her body, sapping her strength.
And now it kicked.
Claire lay in the darkness and felt the thing kick inside her. She caught her breath. Remembered them. The child, the thing, would look like them. Dark. Repulsive. She turned on to her side, buried her face in the pillow and sobbed.
A tumour would have been better.
Better by far.
She was sitting at her desk one day, checking invoices, when she was aware – quite suddenly – of warm wetness underneath her. Surprised, she half-rose from her seat and looked at it. Then she reached out an unsteady hand and touched it: yes, wet. Suddenly she felt a deep, gnawing pain in her back and then something worse, like a giant hand clutching at her middle and squeezing hard.
‘Jesus!’ She gripped the desk as it went on and on.
Finally, it subsided. Trembling, Claire made her way around her desk and over to the door. Without calling for Sylvester, who was in the next office, she went up the stairs alone and into her room on the second floor. The next contraction hit her hard and she stumbled over to the bed, face creased in pain, and lay down there, clawing at the mattress, flooded with horror at what was happening to her.
She should have been married and happy with Josh, living in their brand-new trailer as contented as a pair of lovebirds, and having Josh’s baby. Instead, she was going to give birth to a Cleaver monster that had been foisted on her by rape.
‘Noooo,’ she screamed, crying, doubled over in agony.
‘Claire? Claire!’ It was Sylvester. He was standing in the open doorway. She recoiled in shame. He looked at her lying there and his eyes went out on stalks. He said: ‘Don’t worry, honey. It’s OK. I’ll fetch Gina, right? Hang on!’
It seemed to go on forever. All the rest of that day and into the night, the contractions kept coming and Claire felt that she was going to die, that this thing was going to kill her.
‘I’m gonna call an ambulance, get you over to the hospital,’ said Sylvester two or three times, but each time Claire shook her head: no.
This was bad enough, having this happen to her here, among friends. In a cold impersonal hospital, with strangers poking and pushing at her? She couldn’t bear the thought of it.
‘She don’t want that, Sylvester, so let it go,’ said Gina sharply, as Claire clutched at her hand and screamed the place down. ‘Go on now, I’ll see to her. I had my own two at home and Cyrus cut the cord himself, I know what’s to be done.’
Sylvester retreated, left the two women alone in the room. Sweating, straining, Claire gasped out ‘Thanks’ to Gina, and then the contraction eased. She looked up at that hatchet face and said: ‘I’m scared.’
Gina’s expression softened. She squeezed Claire’s hand. ‘Don’t be scared. This is a natural thing, animals do it all the time. You just breathe between the contractions, and pretty soon this baby’ll get itself born.’
‘Oh – Christ,’ gasped Claire as another one hit.
‘Go with it, babe,’ said Gina, dabbing at her brow with a cool cloth. ‘You gonna tell the daddy about this?’ she asked when the pain had subsided once again.
Claire shook her head.
‘He don’t want to know, uh?’
Claire screwed her eyes up and tears spilled out. The pain was awful, far worse than she had supposed it could be, and it was building again, slowly, creeping up on her without remorse, like a tiger in the night. She felt suddenly that she had to push.
‘Jesus! Look, I can see the baby’s head now,’ said Gina. She turned eyes alight with excitement on Claire.
Claire pushed, groaning with effort, needing to get this thing out of her right now.
‘Again! Come on, Claire!’ Gina shouted. ‘Come the fuck on!’
Claire felt as if she was turning inside out as she pushed and pushed and . . .
There was a feeling of release and then a blood-soaked thing spiralled out from between her legs. It started crying immediately, and Gina scooped it up, wrapped it in a blanket.
‘It’s a girl,’ she said, beaming from ear to ear. She placed the blanketed infant on Claire’s stomach. ‘Look, babe, isn’t this wonderful? You got a little girl.’
Claire looked. The thing didn’t have the dark hair and glaring eyes she had expected. Instead there was just light blonde fluff above a red, puckered face. But even so, she recoiled.
‘Get it away from me,’ she said at once. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘Oh come on . . .’ Gin
a looked startled.
‘I said get it away from me!’ yelled Claire.
40
‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Gina to Sylvester as they sat in his office days later. ‘I know some women go through a hard time and they find it hard to tolerate the child. But this . . .’
Sylvester looked glumly over at the baby, which was for now slumbering peacefully in the cot they’d made for her out of the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. She was a pretty little thing, and snug in there, and safe. Gina had nipped out and got the kid some formula, because Claire refused to feed the baby herself. She wouldn’t even look at the poor little thing.
‘Well, I don’t know much about babies,’ he said. Or women, come to that. He was useless with women, didn’t really know how to approach them or speak to them. But he liked sweet-natured Claire more than any woman he’d ever met, and it pained him to see her suffering like this.
‘I’ve tried to take the baby up there, time and again, but she won’t have it. She gets hysterical. In fact . . .’ Gina chewed her lip, her expression troubled.
‘What?’ prompted Sylvester.
‘I think I’d be scared to leave the kid with her. I don’t know.’ Gina wiped her hand tiredly across her face and fastened her eyes on the baby. ‘I think . . . she might try to harm it. Or herself.’
‘Who, Claire?’ Sylvester was shaking his head. Claire was the gentlest woman he knew. The nicest. Everyone loved her. She would never harm a child.
Gina looked bleakly at Sylvester. ‘We have to do something. And . . . Christ, I don’t want to, but I think it’ll be best for the poor kid.’
‘You’ve thought of something?’
‘I have,’ said Gina sadly.
Gina gave it one last try with Claire, but Claire just cried and turned her face to the wall. It was no good. So when Cyrus collected Gina from work a few days later, she took the baby with her. He drove over to Clinton Hill and parked up outside the place.