A Partisan's Daughter

by Louis de Bernières

  “ ‘Pretty big,’ he replied, and he was looking at me suspiciously.

  “I said, ‘Lots of places for a boat to land?’

  “He said, ‘No. Absolutely not. We’ll just have to get into port and sort out the mess from there. We can find a consul or something.’

  “I was looking at him, horrified, and he said, ‘And that’s that.’

  “I said, ‘I thought you loved me.’

  “He looked a bit like I’d hit him with a pan, and there was a very long silence while we just stared at each other, and he was wondering what on earth to say, and then finally he came up with: ‘You should wait for it to be said.’

  “I was looking at him very hard, and I said, ‘You’ve been fucking me like you loved me,’ and he replied, ‘You should still wait for it to be said.’

  “ ‘Why?’

  “ ‘Because if you push it, it rolls over the edge and it gets broken.’

  “I got angry. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t know what else to do, and I could see all my plans going down the toilet, and all my hopes messed up. I got so angry I started kicking the cabin door, and I was shouting, ‘Bloody English! Bloody English! Bloody fucking English!’ and then I did some shouting in Serbo-Croat, and I got a cooking knife and I stuck it into the wood, and I went and I started looking for things to throw in the sea, and I threw in a plate and the kettle, but then he came and held onto my wrists, and he was very strong, much stronger than I expected, and I kept kicking him in the legs but he wouldn’t move, and he just held my wrists until I ran out of energy, and I started crying again. We could see the white cliffs, and I remembered my daddy saying he’d always wanted to see them, and I was thinking that he never would, and that just made me cry even more. I was leaning over the guard rail and thinking about jumping in the sea and giving up on this stupid world.

  “Francis let the sails go slack, so the boat was just tossing and crashing about on the water. I always hated it when he did that. He came up to me and said, ‘Look, it isn’t that I don’t want to break the law. It’s that I don’t want to get caught. Personally, I think people like you ought to be recruited, not kept out. But if I get caught, I’ve got a criminal record, and I don’t know what the penalty is.’

  “I said, ‘OK, take me to France and leave me somewhere. I don’t care any more.’

  “He tightened up the sails again, and we started going quite fast. We went past the North Foreland, and I was wondering what was going to happen to me. There were lots of big ships to avoid, because it was the Thames Estuary coming up. I said, ‘Are you going to take me to London?’ and he said, ‘You must be fucking joking.’

  It turned out that he’d decided to go home by the usual route, because that wasn’t suspicious. It was just a question of talking to the usual people on the radio and doing the normal things.

  “Just past Felixstowe we dropped anchor and waited for the tide to come in, because there were sandbanks that kept moving about, and he told me what the plan was. I packed up my things, and then I looked at the boat and all the familiar things about it, and I began to feel nostalgic already. All the nice shiny brass and wooden things. I thought, ‘OK, one day I’m going to marry Francis and I’ll be a British citizen, and then I’ll come back to this boat and we’ll go off to the sea again.’ I thought, ‘OK, so I don’t love him too much, the way I loved Alex, but I like him anyway, and the sex is bloody good, and we get on like friends, so why not? I bet he’d be a good father.’

  “We were coming down the Orwell Estuary, and he sailed very close to one bank, just using the engines, you know? We stopped and he dropped the anchor, and we lowered down the little dinghy, and it was going up and down and scraping against the side of the Sweet Olivia Bunbury, so that I was worried about the varnish.

  “He went down the little ladder, and then he held on while I climbed down. He said, ‘Have you any idea how bloody stupid this is?’ as I stepped into the dinghy. He had a rope tied up to the Sweet Olivia, and as we rowed to the shore he just let it coil out of the boat. It was only forty metres but it seemed a very long way.

  “We landed on a concrete slope covered with that slippery green weed that’s like silk. There was a little yard of derelict boats in a patch of woods. There was a great big iron hull, upside down, and it was rusted through, and it was up on blocks. Francis said, ‘If it rains while you’re waiting, just nip under there.’ It must have been a very elegant boat in its great days.

  “He gave me a little kiss on the cheek, and he hauled himself back to the Sweet Olivia Bunbury. I watched him climb up on deck, raise the anchor and press the starter. He gave me a little wave, and off he went to Ipswich.

  “I waited there for two hours. I had all the usual panics: ‘Maybe he’s just abandoned me, maybe he had a heart attack, maybe he crashed, maybe he went to the police.’ I sat in the woods by the river, with all those abandoned boats rotting around me, and I thought about how everything falls to bits in the end. Anyway, Francis did finally come in his car and pick me up. He’d cleared customs and put the boat to bed. That’s what he called it, ‘putting the boat to bed.’ When he walked down into the wood I was so pleased to see him that I cried.”

  Chris listened to what I said and then asked, “So where did you go?”

  “Oh, Francis had a house near Ipswich. It was a nice house in a village called Bentley. There was a pub called The Case Is Altered. I always remembered that. It was such a funny name. The village was OK. I sort of liked it, but it wasn’t very exciting. It was a place for being peaceful. I stayed with Francis for two years.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was me. My own stupid fucking fault as usual. I got fed up.”

  “Fed up?”

  “You know, being in the same place, sleeping with the same man that I didn’t love too much, too much trouble to get into Ipswich on the bloody bus and back again, no bloody job, always eating the same meals and saying the same things. I was a shithead, like always.”

  “At least you know you’re a shithead,” said Chris. “I am, but I don’t know it yet. Not Know with a big K. I get a lot of hints that I ignore.”

  “It was a good time for Francis, though. You know, he loved me, and it made him write good bubblegum. The next year we went out in the boat again, for three months, and I got out and back in the same way. We laughed about it and it didn’t bother us. Really it was all good adventures.”

  “But you finished it?”

  “I finished it. I wanted more interesting things. You know, London, Buckingham Palace, British Museum, intellectuals talking about big things, the Underground, the theatre, rich people in nice cars, a big affair with someone fantastic, like Mick Jagger, maybe Prince Charles. Francis didn’t want me to go, and he cried a lot and he even begged me, and he told me he loved me and he wanted to marry me. But, you know me, I was full of shit and I didn’t realise till it was too late. I couldn’t get it out of my mind for years, how I fucked it all up and hurt him, and how I had stupid ideas about love. You know, he even helped me find a room in London, and he paid the deposit, and he gave me six hundred pounds just to get me started. He did that even though I kicked him in the belly.”

  Chris said, “But wouldn’t he have had you back?”

  “Maybe, but when I finally got back in touch with him he’d got married, and he was happy anyway. He said, ‘Roza, I really loved you.’ If I’d got in touch a year before, maybe everything would have worked out, but I didn’t think he’d want me. I didn’t feel good enough to ask. I was just a piece of crap by then. That’s what I thought, after what happened. I wouldn’t be able to accept anyone who was stupid enough to accept me. I could have just telephoned, but every time I went to a telephone box, I just picked up the receiver and then put it back down again, and thought, ‘Maybe I’ll call tomorrow,’ and sometimes I went in and out of the box, lifting the receiver and putting it down again, and then someone else would come and want to use the phone, and I’d go away and wait another day.
”

  “I’ve often done things like that,” said Chris. Then he asked, “So why weren’t you good enough?”

  “Well, you know what I did. Why would he want me? I was a bloody prostitute.”

  Chris said, “He never would have found out if you didn’t tell him.”

  Chris and I sat there in silence for a while, and then I said, “You know what? When we were driving from the place where I landed, I saw the most beautiful bridge over the river. It was all white and graceful like a swan, and it made me happy just to see it. You know how green everything is in England? And all the foreigners say, ‘Oh, England is so green.’ But what I noticed was the white bridge over the river.”

  “That must be the Orwell Bridge,” said Chris.

  “I’d love to see it again one day,” I said. “When I saw it the first time, it made me think that England must be a great country to live in.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Bergonzi’s Pussycat Hostess Paradise

  You get some right dodgy sods around here.

  Chris came back a couple of weeks later, standing on the doorstep and rubbing his hands, saying, “Well, well, that’s the end of an era, eh?”

  “What is?”

  “Oh, you know, Muhammad Ali packing it in. He’s retiring. And I remember when he beat Sonny Liston. Isn’t it incredible how the time goes?”

  “Boxing is stupid,” I said.

  “All the same, he’s the most famous person in the world.”

  “No one’s more famous than the Queen,” I said, “and she’s not packing it in.”

  “She’ll be there forever, unless the IRA get her first. Anyway, am I allowed in?”

  We went down in the basement, and I made him some tea. He was drinking it Continental-style by now, because I said that putting milk in it was a stupid British custom that no one in the rest of the world could see the sense of, and if you didn’t make it so strong you wouldn’t have to put anything in it, unless you liked lemon. Anyway, he tried it, and said it wasn’t bad, and after that he became converted, so I thought maybe the British aren’t doomed to bad gastronomy forever. Chris said that the Irish drink it even stronger and milkier than the British. I saw an Irish cookbook once, and it was about three millimetres thick.

  I knew it was going to be awkward today because we’d got to the point of talking about the hostess club. I was sure we were about to become lovers, and I didn’t want to put him off, but it was too late to change the story now because I’d already mentioned too many details already.

  The Bob Dylan Upstairs was learning The Deer Hunter, and you could hear the tune coming down the staircase, along with all the mistakes and the places where he stopped. He was learning the version for classical guitar, like in the film, because he said it was better than the electric version that was the latest hit. I was getting to like him quite a lot. We were doing a lot of talking just as I did with Chris. I was doing so much talking that I wondered if I’d ever stop. I wondered if it was a kind of sickness in me. I wondered why people didn’t get bored with me. I thought, “One day I’ve got to stop talking, and start living.” I was thinking all the time that I wanted to be with Chris, even if I was only a mistress. It wouldn’t have bothered me. I never met his wife, but it was obvious that there was nothing to be jealous of. He called her “The Great White Loaf,” which was cruel, but funny. I would have liked all the time to myself that you get if you’re a mistress. I wanted him around me, that’s all. When we were talking, I kept having this urge to get up and give him a hug, and kiss him on the neck. I didn’t though. Now I think that I should have.

  “So what’s next?” he asked, when we were sitting down, even though he knew perfectly well what was next.

  “Bergonzi’s Pussycat Hostess Paradise,” I said.

  “Is that what it was called? The brothel?”

  I was offended. “It wasn’t a brothel, it was a hostess club.”

  “Never been to one,” said Chris. “I don’t really know what they are.”

  “I didn’t either. But I got a job working in a bar. It was a pub really. It’s difficult to get decent work when you’re illegal. You end up in bars and cafés, and businesses belonging to Pakistanis and Greek Cypriots and people like that who don’t give a damn about the law. Or rich people who want a nice girl to look after the children and do some cleaning, that’s another one.

  “Anyway, I was in the pub in Clapham behind the bar, and a man started talking to me when I was in between getting drinks. He was nice. He had a gold tiepin and a big gold ring on his finger. He said, ‘A good-looking girl like you’s wasting her time in a place like this. I bet you don’t earn much, do you, darling?’ I said it wasn’t too bad, and he said, ‘Well, you could be earning a couple of hundred a night, and that’s without doing anything, almost.’

  “I said, ‘What’s that then?’ and he said, ‘Hostess club. Mate of mine runs one. What the girls earn in there, well, you just wouldn’t believe it. All you got to do is be nice to the blokes who turn up looking for a break from their old ladies.’

  “I got the wrong idea straight away, and I said, ‘You think I want to be a prostitute? If you think I want to be a prossie you can just piss off.’ I was picking up the London way of talking, see?

  “Anyway, he laughed at me, and he said, ‘No, no, no. What happens is, they come in and you chat to them, right? You take an interest in them, right? Then they buy champagne. That’s your job. You get them to buy champagne, right? And you get commission on each bottle. Those geezers cough up a fuckin’ fortune for each bottle, excuse my French, and you get a percentage, and you get paid right before you go home, on the nail. You wouldn’t believe it, but some blokes don’t mind paying hundreds for a bottle of bubbly.’

  “ ‘They must be stupid,’ I said, and he said, ‘Nah, not really, they’re just stinking rich or bleedin’ lonely, and usually both.’

  “He ordered another pint, and said, ‘Are you interested, then?’

  “I said, ‘It’s not one of those places where they get men to come in and then give them lots of drinks, and then give them a huge bill at the end? I heard about how they catch foreigners like that. People who don’t understand pounds.’

  “ ‘No, love, that’s a clip joint. This is a hostess club. It’s different. There is one drawback, though.’

  “ ‘Oh, yes?’ I said. ‘So what’s that?’ and he replied, ‘You’ve got to dress up like a bleedin’ pussycat.’

  “ ‘A pussycat?’

  “ ‘Yeah, a bleedin’ pussycat. You know, tail and ears and whiskers, and all that, and black fishnet stockings and stilettos.’

  “I said, ‘Do cats wear stilettos and stockings, then?’ and he said, ‘London ones do, darling. You mean you ’aven’t noticed?’

  “Anyway, he gave me an address in Soho, and he put a little message with it, and he said, ‘Don’t bother going before five o’clock.’ I thought, ‘What the hell, there’s no harm in taking a look.’

  “Anyway, Bergonzi’s Pussycat Hostess Paradise Club was up some stairs from the street, and it was pretty bad to look at until you turned down the ordinary lights and put on the coloured ones. It was almost like this house, but not so bad. Everything dirty and old. But with red lights it looked like luxury. It was just a big bar, really, with little low glass-topped tables and lots of sofas and armchairs, and red carpet and sheepskins that weren’t really sheep, but something fake that you could put in the washing machine. It smelled stale because no one ever opened the windows.

  “When I got there, I went up the stairs and at the top there was a door with a grille in it, and I knocked, and this man looked through at me and said, ‘Sod off.’

  “I said, ‘I’ve come to see Bergonzi. Bob sent me.’

  “So he let me in, and he turned out to be a giant man in a bow tie who looked like a gorilla, and that’s what everyone called him, and he didn’t even mind. They just said, ‘Hi, Grill, how are you, Grill?’ and he was all right really. He never said much, h
e just got rid of shitty customers. I never had much to do with him. He had a hobby collecting exotic empty cigarette packets that got left by foreign customers. Everyone said his flat was full of them. Anyway, Grill let me in when I said I’d come to see Bergonzi. That’s when I saw how depressing the place was with the ordinary lights on. Even so, it had a little pool with a fountain in the middle, and lots of plastic plants, and big bits of velvety cloth draped all over the place.

  “Bergonzi was all right. He was Italian cockney. That’s what he said, anyway. He looked like a bloody mafioso—you know, white shoes, black shirt and trousers, big suntan, sunglasses like you don’t need indoors, nice white teeth.

  “Bergonzi looked at me and said, ‘Well, doll, you’re tasty.’ I gave him the little note from Bob, and he read it and said, ‘Good old Bob. Trouble is, if I take you on, it means I owe ’im a monkey.’

  “I couldn’t believe it. ‘A monkey?’

  “ ‘Commission. Don’t know the lingo, eh?’ he said, and then, ‘Do you know how this place runs? Cos if you don’t know, and then you don’t like it, we’ll all have been wasting our time, won’t we?’ ”

  I asked Chris, “Do you want to see my imitation of Bergonzi? All the girls had one.” Chris said, “OK,” so I got myself ready. I stood up and puffed out my chest a bit, and kept pushing the imaginary sunglasses up on my nose. Then I began:

  “ ‘Right, doll, it’s like this, it’s dead simple, like fallin’ off a log. We gotta lotta rich geezers comin’ in ’ere wiv more dosh than common sense. All yer gotta do is be nice to ’em, right? Chat ’em up, use your powers, get ’em to buy champagne. Cos that’s the secret. A bottle a champagne costs the punters ninety quid a throw, and I pay you thirty quid for each bottle the punter knocks back, right? So you’re my little salesman.

  “ ‘Here’s the club rules. Number one, admission by membership only, annual membership five hundred quid, but you can join for one night for fifty if you’re that stupid and that loaded.