A Room With No Natural Light

by Douglas Lindsay

  She stopped at the bottom of the farmhouse track and looked either way along the narrow country road. One way led into the small village, where she would take the bus. The other way she did not know. She had never walked in that direction. She stood with her small bag on her back, wondering what would become of her if she just walked off along that road. Was there a fate that could befall her that would be any worse than what she would experience that evening?

  A few yards away, across the road, away from the territory of the vineyard, a thrush sat on top of the hedgerow. It whistled, and she turned to look at the bird. It occurred to Ju that she did not often see birds in England and she wondered why.

  The hedge was alive with life. Birds rustled around inside, insects buzzed, immaculate cobwebs sparkled in the light of the sun. Ju stood and watched the thrush for a second, aware of every living thing that existed in the confines of the shrubbery. Then the bird flew off and Ju was alone. The noise and life of the hedge seemed to leave with it.

  She looked back along the road, the way of unknown freedom, and then her head dropped and she started to walk slowly in the direction of the village; the road she took each Saturday afternoon. It always felt more appropriate when it was cloudy and grim, or the rain was falling. Lovely, warm, sleepy afternoons were wrong for what she was about to do.

  The town was small, the market square close to the end from where Ju arrived. They were clearing away the weekly market, the poles clanging as the stalls and tents were taken down. Cheeses and meats, fresh fish, bread and cakes, vegetables and fruit, home made pies and relishes, all that had not been sold being packed away for another market in another small town the following morning.

  Eighteenth-century buildings down one side of the square, more modern and more unattractive on the other. A road leading down through town at the far end, at the top the old remnants of a castle wall with a couple of shops built into it. Ju knew every brick by heart already, so slowly would she walk this last leg to the bus. Savouring the last few minutes of normal life before the inexorable journey would begin.

  She had more time today, as she had left the house earlier, and so she lingered a little longer at each shop window, casting an eye over the merchandise on the stalls which had not yet been packed away. She hesitated to leave the market square, one of the few places which reminded her of home, which reminded her in some small way of the bustle of the weekly market, where her grandmother had had the spice stall.

  Eventually, the time for the bus to arrive approached, and she walked the last few yards to the stop. She stood with four others, waiting. A sullen young boy, who seemed so overcome by despondency that he could have been on the same errand as Ju, and three teenage girls, already dressed for their night out; short skirts and lip gloss and high heels and breasts and Ju could not bring herself to look at them.

  The bus arrived. Ju got in, found a seat near the middle. The bus, unusually busy, moved off into the middle of the road and headed south on its way to Bristol.

  Sitting in his car fifty yards further up the road, Pitt had been relieved to see Ju arrive at the bus stop.

  *

  The comfortable warmth seemed to disappear the closer Ju got to the city. The bus was hot, and the air conditioning either did not work or had not been there in the first place. A few windows were open, but that just allowed in the noise and the smell of the traffic.

  She wept for her family and for the life she had come to, but now the tears did not roll down her face, as if they had evaporated on her skin in the stifling heat of the bus.

  She had long since lost sight of the life that her father had planned for her for all those years. Even though she had not long been in Britain, she could imagine nothing but what she already knew. She was at the beginning of a very long road, and when she was no longer attractive enough to be of use on a Saturday evening, she did not imagine that she would be allowed to leave, to live the exciting and cosmopolitan life in the city that her father had imagined. She would be put to use doing something else, and, if there was nothing else at which she was considered useful, she would be disposed of.

  She rested her head against the window of the bus as the country turned into suburbs and the suburbs turned into inner city. The smell of summer had gone. She could see marks on the window where previously people had leant their head in the same forlorn position. I could clean the bus, she thought.

  Perhaps that was the limit of her imagination, or merely an illustration of her desperation to do anything other than what she was doing.

  She had not travelled so far and so dangerously to clean buses. Or to chop vegetables. And, most definitely, she had not come this far to have sex with middle-aged men who treated her like an animal.

  *

  She had lost her virginity at sixteen, and, although she had never had a regular lover before leaving Hangzhou, she had slept with several of the older boys and young men from her commune. Sometimes it had been fumbling, sometimes tender, occasionally erotic. But it had never been brutal. She had never felt used.

  These men, these white men who paid Chen Yun for her services, raped her horribly. They didn’t beat her or hit her or cut her, but what they did was not making love or even, in her mind, having sex. They fucked her in a barbaric way, in the way an animal would brutally take advantage of another of its kind.

  Every Saturday Ju was met off the bus at the station on Colston Street. She would be led by the arm, as if they suspected she would run away, to a waiting car. The car was black; the windows had been blacked out. What could not be seen from the outside was that the windows were not meant to be seen through from inside either.

  Sometimes, one or two of the other girls were there. They did not speak to each other. Ju had nothing to say to them, but did not think that she would be allowed to speak in any case. One of Chen Yun’s men sat with them.

  Sometimes, the others would be Chinese, but there were also Thai and Malaysian and Eastern Europeans whose nationality Ju did not recognise.

  They would not talk, but, within an hour, if demanded, they would be lying naked together, their tongues working in tandem, their limbs entangled, lips on lips, moaning and crying out in unison.

  When they got out of the car at the other end, Ju had no idea where they were. They were not blindfolded as they were led into the house, but they were in such a faceless suburban street, a scene repeated a million times in the UK, it would have been impossible for Ju to find it again. The streets all looked the same, blending into one another in featureless monotony.

  It was a semi-detached house built some time between the wars. Most of the other houses in the street had been separated into flats, rooms rented out, or had workshops set up in garages. Chen Yun owned the whole of number fifty-nine, although it had once been split into three, and number fifty-seven.

  The girls arrived in ones and twos, walking with heads bowed. The other residents of the street might have had some idea of what was going on, but no one really cared. It was the kind of street where everyone had something to hide. Chen Yun dreamed of a large country house, with a better class of clientele; but business was a little too slow for that, and the prices of large houses in the country had not fallen as much as he’d hoped in the recession. Chen Yun’s chances of further success were all based on cost cutting and even greater brutality.

  The room where Ju and the other women worked was large, several beds spaced out. Armchairs at the side. If there were windows, they had been covered up, but this was not a place that would ever be blessed with natural light. A wall had been knocked through to create one large den. A few side lamps and that was all. Just enough light so that she could always see what was coming.

  There were two other rooms that his clients could use if they were willing to pay a little more, but it did not happen often. The main selling point of his operation was the orgiastic nature of the evening; that’s what appealed to his clients, the massed frenzy of sex. It was so much more barbaric than taking a girl or
two off to a room on their own, a much greater air of hedonism and debauchery. That was what they paid for. To have sex themselves with more than one woman, to watch others do the same, to feast and drink, to pop pills as necessary to keep going, to take any other drugs that were on offer and would not spoil the evening, to down the constant supply of alcohol, and to delight in the squalor.

  The women, sometimes five or six in number, sometimes as many as ten, were a commodity, just like the drugs and the drink and the dark and soiled room itself.

  *

  The first night had been horrible, but, in later weeks, Ju came to realise that it had been a test. To see what she could take, to see whether she was suitable. She had no idea what would have happened to her if she had not been.

  Subsequent nights were worse. She would be raped by more than ten men in an evening, she would be expected to take more than one at a time. She was expected to look like she was enjoying it.

  Chen Yun told her that when she had worked off the remainder of the cost of her passage to the UK he would let her know.

  29

  This evening, there were eight girls. Three Thai, a Slovak, a Ukrainian, a Russian, a Nigerian and Ju. She recognised a couple of the Eastern Europeans, but not the others. They exchanged glances, but they were largely united in their shame and so no words were ever spoken, no common bond acknowledged.

  They sat on the beds and waited for the men to arrive. A brutish woman in her forties, white, with a strong Bristol accent, walked amongst them making sure they were clean, sending them to have a shower if she thought they were not prepared. The way she checked them was rough and indecent and degrading. The women would be charged for using the shower facilities. The Russian and one of the Thais were judged humiliatingly to have not been clean enough. They went off to wash.

  While they were out the room, the first client arrived. The initial customers were always greedy, always wanting to make the most of having the women to themselves. He was forty-five and spoke softly. Ju recognised him as one of the most treacherous. Softly spoken was a trait she had linked with danger since she was a young girl. These people seemed to meet perfectly every preconception she had of men and their perversions and outrageous desires.

  He said that he only wanted the Asian women. Ju and the two Thais undressed. They were all slim, small breasted. He licked his lips, a literal, vile movement of his tongue.

  The other Thai returned and he smiled horribly, gesturing for her to undress and join the others.

  *

  At last, Pitt knew what it was that saddened Yuan Ju.

  He had followed the bus to Bristol. The driver had spotted him, had watched how he slowed and pulled in to the side of the road every time the bus did the same, but the driver was unconcerned with the lives of others. He was only doing his job.

  Pitt had then followed the black car with the dark windows on its way through Bristol. He had been a little more circumspect with the car, and had been more prepared to take the chance of losing it along the way.

  He’d had a few ideas on what it might be that Ju did with herself on a Saturday night. The people who had met her and the car into which she had been placed confirmed one of Pitt’s suspicions. She was not meeting friends; she was not innocently spending time with the Chinese community. He did not want to lose her, as he needed to find out where she was going, but at least he had a firm idea of what she was doing.

  As it was, he had followed the car all the way without too much trouble, and now he sat in a small café a little way down the road, drinking endless cups of coffee, and he knew what was being done to Ju at that moment. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it.

  He could not go in there himself; protestations on her behalf would not release her from her bond, and these were never going to be the kind of people with whom one could deal or negotiate. He could not call the police, as she would be arrested too and likely deported.

  He sat and drank coffee, turning off his mobile phone so that he did not have to listen to Daisy calling him every half hour, and waited.

  *

  The low point of Ju’s evening came just before eleven, when the men finally seemed to be exhausted. She was generally surprised at how many women these men could take, but that was because she did not know about the nature of some of the drugs they took. However, at last, as with every other evening, they finally seemed to be fatigued, and were mostly rounding their evening out with alcohol. Ju, still numb, had not started hurting yet, but she had been degraded beyond the point of return. She had begun to wonder if she would ever be back.

  What could they do to her, if she walked away from this life? Would they kill her? Would she care if they did? Would not death be preferable to this awful humiliation that was heaped upon her once a week?

  She lay exhausted on a stained bed, her naked body covered up. The other women sat or lay around her, except the Russian girl who was still servicing a client. She was one who did not seem to mind, who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for her work. Ju did not understand.

  Two late clients arrived just as Ju had begun to feel the pain of the evening. They were gratefully received by Chen Yun. They were young and brash and wanted all the women. The sated, crapulent oafs around the room looked on with disinterest. Their sex was over for the night, the remainder of their pleasure to be had from drugs and alcohol. Perhaps one or two of them didn’t mind having something to watch.

  A sharp double clap.

  ‘You must clean yourselves up,’ said Chen Yun abruptly. ‘You have more guests.’

  None of the women spoke. With the exception of Ju and the Russian, they got up off the bed and walked slowly out of the room. Sometimes work lasted until midnight. Sometimes until four or five in the morning; yet, it had not been too much to hope that it would be finished by not long after eleven.

  Ju stayed on the bed, although she sat up, drawing the sheets around her. Chen Yun did not like to verbally abuse his women when there were clients in the room. However, with Ju, he did not have to spare anyone else’s embarrassment.

  ‘Clean yourself up,’ he snapped in Mandarin.

  ‘I cannot,’ she responded, although she deferred to Chen by not speaking English. She did not look at him. ‘I am in pain.’

  Chen Yun took a moment and then walked closer to the bed. He lowered his voice, and while he continued to talk in Mandarin, his tone was friendly and completely at odds with his words.

  ‘If you do not do as you are told, you will suffer. You are here to work, Yuan Ju.’

  ‘I cannot suffer anymore,’ she said. In the dim light of the room with no windows, the others could not see the true rage of Chen Yun’s face. Given the horror that had been visited upon Ju by these men in the preceding few hours, it was unlikely that any of them would be uncomfortable with Chen Yun’s anger at Ju, yet he wanted to conceal it.

  ‘You may not mind if you suffer, Ju,’ said Chen Yun, ‘for you suffer already. But you have a job to do, and if you do not do it, you must remember that we know where your people live. We know your mother and father. We know your grandmother. If you do not do as you are requested, then they too will suffer.’

  Ju did not look him in the eye. It was all she needed to hear, for she did not doubt Chen’s threat and the range of Chen’s influence. Neither raising her eyes, nor bowing her head lower, Ju let the sheet fall around her and eased herself off the bed. She caught the eye of one of the two new arrivals as she walked past him. He leered at her, over a long glass of vodka, his eyes running over her body. In the dim light, he could not see the bruises.

  30

  She walked out of the house on unsteady legs, in the company of two other women, a little after two in the morning. The car was waiting to return her to the bus station. After all, Chen Yun liked to take care of his girls.

  Pitt had sat along the road from the house all this time. He had drunk coffee until the café had closed for the evening at eight o’clock. Since then he had been sitti
ng in his car. He was not distracted; indeed, he barely blinked. He watched the men go in, and come back out again much later.

  He watched the late arrivals with no emotion. He had no idea what time Ju might finish, and was prepared for it to be all night. He tried to remember the earliest he had seen her on a Sunday morning, but was only aware that Sundays were slightly later days than others. Perhaps Ju never slept. Perhaps she had to wait until the first bus of the day before coming home.

  Assuming that the car would be returning to the bus station, he did not immediately follow as it left. It would have been far too obvious at that time of night.

  He waited a minute, and then drove back to the centre of Bristol. The streets were busy, which was a surprise to Pitt. Pitt had no concept of city streets early on a Sunday morning. There were a lot of drunks, there were a lot of fights; teenage girls in short skirts, bare-chested men showing off tattoos.

  The evening curled around Pitt’s stomach; the kind of evening that made him yearn for somewhere far away, somewhere without people.

  He drove slowly through the streets, watching and listening to the crowds. There were a lot of police officers. He did not witness much respect.

  When he arrived at the bus stop, he did not immediately see Ju. He parked and looked across at the stop where she had alighted nine hours previously. There was no immediate sign of her.

  He turned off the engine and sat once more in silence, in the dark of his car, as he had been doing for the previous few hours. However, the city centre was busier than the quiet suburb that had been his stopping place, and his car did not cut out the general hubbub from outside

  He waited a short while and then got out, locked the door and walked slowly towards the station waiting room. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking, and whether or not he minded being seen by Ju. Did he intend watching her from a distance until her bus came, and then following her home? He knew where she had been and where she would be going, why not go home himself now? What was he looking for?