by Dan Kavanagh
The enigma kept Duffy happy all day. What’s more, he knew that tonight it wasn’t going to be following Tan to the Malaysian disco in Hayes, thank you very much. After work he rang Carol to check if he could call by; no, he didn’t need her car. What he did need was the brown envelope he’d left with her. He didn’t reckon that Gentlemen Relaxed for peanuts. He also reckoned that they didn’t relax in green suede blousons with big plastic zips up the front and polo-neck sweaters and jeans. Part of Duffy thought, Stuff it, I’m paying, why shouldn’t I dress as I please? The more sensible part thought, don’t stand out any more than you have to. He dug into the very back of his wardrobe and came up with a real copper’s suit, a delicate mud colour with tight trouser-bottoms and lapels as narrow as the triangles on a backgammon board. He pulled it on and didn’t like the feeling around his waist; he undid the two elasticated button-fastenings at the sides, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. Just filling out with maturity, he said to himself; but the other voice whispered, Getting fat, Duffy, getting fat.
He found a tie as thin as a runner bean and pulled it round his neck. As he was doing it up he felt like a suicide; Christ, fat neck too. Then he examined himself in the mirror. He looked ridiculous. He looked like a member of a 1960s band which had modelled itself on Gerry and the Pacemakers and got nowhere; he twiddled some drumsticks to himself. The last thing he looked like was a Gentleman about to Relax. Should he take the stud out of his ear? Should he change his desert boots? Hell, no – he’d compromised enough already. Wait till they saw the colour of his extremely used one-pound notes: then they’d know who they were dealing with.
When Carol saw him she burst out laughing.
‘Where you going, Duffy? Revival disco?’
‘That bad, is it? I thought I looked quite smart.’
‘Duffy, you look chronic.’ And she kissed him on the lips in sheer delight at how awful he looked. His waistband was cutting into him and made him want to pee. When he returned, Carol said,
‘Oh, I checked out those names for you. Sorry it took so long, but I didn’t want to take any risks.’
‘Sure. Thanks, love. What did you find?’
She handed him a piece of paper. He read it quickly. Exactly as Hendrick had said. And Hendrick himself was clean. Still, he’d better be grateful.
‘That’s very useful, love. That’s just what I needed.’
‘How’s it going?’ She hadn’t asked any more what ‘it’ was, because she didn’t really want to know. But she worried about Duffy’s career in a general way.
‘Not very well. Slow job. Still, it’s paying.’
‘That’s the main thing.’ She went and fetched his brown envelope. He took out the money and stuffed it in his pocket. As he left the flat – Carol was suppressing a giggle at the sight of his flat-cut jacket bottom, like something out of an old gangster film – he began to feel like a man of means. He could very well pass for a Gentleman, in the dark with the light behind him.
He parked in Great Marlborough Street and walked away from the car with a pair of flapping hands inside his stomach. He made his way down to Dude’s, which was new since he had left the patch. What would it be like? Would it be posh? Would it be dirty? Whatever it was, it would beat sitting in a rusty Mini at Rayners Lane.
The double glass doors said Dude’s on them. The custom-built doormat said Dude’s on it. The inner double glass doors said Dude’s on them. They were certainly good at letting you know where you were. Inside, it seemed very dark to Duffy at first. On his left was a cloakroom opening with a girl standing in it. He might have stopped anyway, but he definitely stopped now. Her breasts were completely bare, and very nice too, he thought.
‘Your hat, sir,’ she said.
‘I don’t have a hat.’
‘No; your hat, sir.’
He moved closer towards her. Was he being very stupid? Was it O.K. to look at her breasts?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘this is my first time here.’
‘That’s quite all right, sir,’ she replied with a toothpaste smile. ‘You will be taking one of the girls downstairs, of course.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘Twenty pounds, please, sir.’
‘Oh, of course.’
He slowly counted out two-fifths of his bundle and wondered what he was paying for. Wondered who he was paying for as much as anything. Where was downstairs? And where were the girls?
He needn’t have worried. As he turned away from the hat-check girl he saw them. To his right was the long curved bar pictured outside, though it seemed smaller and less luxuriously appointed than in its photograph. There were about fifteen girls variously clustered round the bar, five or so of them attending to a fat man at the far end. There were, he noticed, many different types of girl here, including a token black girl and a token Chinese (or perhaps a token Malaysian), but they all had one thing in common: their breasts were bare. Except for one, that is, who wore a leotard. As Duffy walked across towards the bar this girl mechanically lowered the top of her leotard so that he could see her breasts; they swung slightly from the movement of the undressing.
The eight or ten girls at his end of the bar made way for him, guiding him to a barstool merely by breaking ranks. The extremely large barman instructed him to have a drink, and he couldn’t have agreed more. He ordered a whisky.
‘Four pounds, sir.’ You didn’t argue with that voice; if anything you felt like saying, Is that all, can’t you make it a bit more, here, have seven pounds. It was an extremely small whisky. He was now almost half-way through his roll.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can afford to stand you all a round,’ he said apologetically to the girls around him. He had never seen so many different-sized and different-breasted girls at the same time in his life. It made him feel funny. It didn’t make him feel particularly dirty; it made him feel a bit as if he were in a zoo.
‘That’s all right,’ said the girl on his right. ‘Ours are on the house.’ They were mostly drinking orange juice. He took a sip of his whisky. He felt the conversation was beginning to die.
‘So, what do you all do?’ he said nervously, as if he were at a party. It was probably the least necessary question he asked in his whole life. The girls giggled.
‘And what do you do?’ countered the one on his left, a dark girl with a northern accent and breasts which seemed about half-way between the two extremes on offer.
‘I’m a … I’m a … ’ One or two of them began to giggle already. Presumably the men always lied, that was one of the rules, and the girls always knew it. Finally he said, ‘I’m a … couturier.’
They howled at that one, and a girl on the fringes of the fat man detached herself and moved across to Duffy’s group. Conversation languished again. He was nearly at the end of the whisky.
‘Right,’ said the girl on his left. ‘That’s enough browsing. Which of us are you taking downstairs? The suspense is killing.’
‘Oh.’ Duffy reached for his whisky and gulped the final teaspoonful down. He felt shy about examining them all in front of one another, even if he had paid his twenty pounds. He ducked his head and said, ‘Oh, well, you I suppose,’ to the girl on his left.
They stood up, and as they did so the girl in the leotard pulled up her shoulder-straps and tucked her tits back into place. They’d stay there till the next customer. He followed the girl he’d chosen across the room towards the stairs. She was, he noted, wearing black velvet pants which finished at mid-calf level, so that he seemed to be following the legs of a gondolier; and below them, gold-strapped sandals with high heels.
As they walked downstairs, it seemed to get even darker. There was a strong smell of incense. They reached the other room pictured outside, the one with the separate booths and the slatted swing doors. After a little peering around, the girl found an empty booth and they settled in. She pressed a bell and said,
‘What’s your name, love?’
‘Nick. What’s yours?’
‘Delia. Terrible name, innit? Call me something else if you want to. Most people do.’
‘No, that’s fine, it’s … perfectly all right.’ He didn’t reckon he’d have much cause to use her name; there wouldn’t be much shouting across crowded rooms during this encounter. A waiter appeared with two glasses and a quarter-bottle of champagne; it wasn’t so much on ice as on melted water.
‘Ten,’ the girl whispered to him, and he counted out some more of Gleeson’s money.
The girl poured two glasses and clinked with him. He drank from his; she put hers down on the table.
‘Where j’ get the clothes then?’
‘D’you like them?’
‘Yeah, I think they’re really nice. They’re really Fifties, aren’t they?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Where j’ get them?’
‘Oh, this little shop I know. Does Fifties revival clothing.’
The girl smiled at him, almost a normal smile, he thought.
‘Why the smell of mothballs, then?’
‘That’s just my cologne. That’s coming back too. Haven’t you heard of it – mothball cologne?’
‘Yer kidding.’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘Yer funny.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You can hold me tits if you like.’
‘Oh.’
‘You paid for them, after all. That’s why they’re out. They’re not for looking at.’
‘Of course not.’ It was, he supposed, marginally more exciting than being asked to hold a bag of caster sugar; she certainly knew how to drain the invitation of eroticism. He stretched out his hand and curled it round her right breast. She seemed almost relieved, as if the proprieties of the occasion were at last being observed.
He looked at the table. Apart from the champagne there were three things on it: a lighted candle; a bunch of exotic-looking flowers which he guessed were plastic; and a puffing joss-stick.
‘They’re real,’ she said. She probably wasn’t still talking about her tits.
‘Are they?’
‘Yeah – have a sniff.’
He would. He considered the logistics of it and realised he couldn’t lean as far as the flowers without first removing his hand from Delia’s breast; as it was he’d been sipping his champagne left-handed and getting in a tangle of arms every time. He released his grasp on her breast and bent his head towards the flowers. As he did so he caught a quick movement out of the corner of his left eye. He sniffed them; they smelled vaguely lush, though with the overlay of joss-stick it was hard to be precise.
He straightened up and returned his hand to her breast: again the right one, which was nearer; it seemed over-familiar, or complaining, to reach across for the far one.
‘What sort are they?’
‘Dunno. They’re fresh. Fresh every day. Mr Dalby has them flown in every day. Flown in from abroad. Fresh flowers for my little flowers, he says.’
‘Why did you throw your champagne away when I was smelling them?’
‘Oh, to get rid of it and order another bottle. Actually, I don’t really like the taste any more. I’ve gone right off it since I started working here. Would you like me to toss you off?’
‘Er, not just now, I think.’
‘It’s ten if you’re worried about the price. Look, quick, better order another bottle, here comes Mr Dalby.’ She pressed the bell in the wall and Duffy took his hand off her breast to reach for his money. A man had come out of an office up a few stairs at the far end of the room, and was slowly walking along between the booths. He was being discreet, looking out of the corner of his eye, but his soft-footed presence made the girls leap to their bells and order more champagne.
‘I’ll drink yours as well this time, if you don’t mind.’
‘All right, but don’t dawdle over it, you’ll have to drink it as quick as if we was both drinking it.’
‘All right.’
Mr Dalby was almost level with their booth. He walked a bit like an old man, but maybe that was because he was trying not to scare the customers. In fact he was about forty, with a round face and little round glasses and a pink complexion and a chalk-striped suit. Duffy looked away, and it wasn’t punter’s guilt that made him do so. Mr Dalby was the man in the drawer.
5
‘IS THAT THE BOSS?’
‘Yeah, that’s Mr Dalby.’
The second quarter-bottle of champagne arrived, leaving Duffy with six of Gleeson’s pounds left.
‘You been dahn the dogs?’
‘What?’
‘The dogs – that where you got all them pound notes?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘Hardy Amies always pays me like this.’ She giggled. He quite liked her. No, that was an exaggeration. He didn’t mind her. He placed his hand, damp from the champagne bottle, back on her. right breast. Were you allowed to rub, he suddenly thought, or was that extra? Not that he particularly wanted to.
‘What’s he like, Mr Dalby?’
‘He’s all right. He sticks by the rules. If you don’t like the rules you don’t have to work here, so that’s fair enough.’
‘Do you have to go to bed with him?’
‘Yeah, course. Not very often. And he always pays you. You can say No if you like as well, that’s one of the rules. Not that anyone would, of course.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And anyway he doesn’t really like it much, so that makes it better for you.’
‘He doesn’t like it?’
‘No, not really. He does it a lot, but he doesn’t seem to like it. He’s the sort of fellow always puts two tonkies on first cause he’s scared of catching something, know what I mean?’
‘Mmm.’
‘And then it’s stick it in, pull it out, wipe it off and straight into a bath.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No. Straight up. He’s got a little flat up there – office, bedroom, bathroom. He always runs the bath first, it’s all part of his routine, so he can jump straight in afterwards.’
‘What else does he do?’ Did Mrs Boseley know all this, he wondered.
‘Well, sometimes he sniffs some stuff before doing it.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘Well, there’s two sorts. There’s some stuff in a little capsule which he keeps by the bedside, and then just after he takes his socks off he sort of breaks it under his nose and sniffs it. And sometimes he gets some powder and sniffs that instead. But it doesn’t seem to make him enjoy it anymore.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘I just lie there waiting for him to get on with it. I mean, it’s all preparations and then washing as far as he’s concerned. Not that I’m complaining – I wouldn’t mind if all my gentlemen were like that.’
Duffy was feeling very pleased with himself. He was beginning to feel glimmerings of understanding. After nights in Carol’s cramped Mini, this was his reward. He felt good. Now, if he put some of his own money with the rest of Gleeson’s …
‘How much did you say you charged?’
Delia smiled at him in a puzzled way.
‘Ten, love,’ and her hand landed on his thigh in a commercial caress. Six of Gleeson’s oncers, a fiver of his own, take back one of Gleeson’s … he put it on the table. When she saw the blue five pound note she chuckled.
‘Hey, Mister Big Spender.’ Weren’t men odd? You never could tell what they’d get off on. Here he was, all friendly enough to talk to but not exactly the grope of the month, and then tell him about fucking Mr Dalby and all of a sudden he’s finding he’s got deeper pockets than he knew.
Apart from anything else, Duffy was glad to get the waistband of his trousers undone; it had been killing him. He unzipped his fly and let her dig out his cock for him. Quickly and diligently, she milked him out on to the carpet.
Duffy thought, no wonder they need so many joss-sticks, what with the stuff that gets dumped on this carpet; first the champagne, then the spunk. Maybe they hav
e carpet tiles down there, where it was too dark to see, and change them once a week. The candle was burning down. The unnamable flowers looked just as fresh, though he still couldn’t smell them. Duffy wondered, just wondered, who freighted the joss-sticks.
The exhilaration of the previous evening had already ebbed away by the time Duffy got Hendrick’s call.
‘Been wondering how you’ve been getting along.’
‘Oh, fine, Mr Hendrick, fine. Bit of this and that, lots of surveillance.’ (They liked that word, even if most of them couldn’t pronounce it.) ‘Lots of sitting around in cars, you know what the job’s like.’
‘Yes. But have you been getting anywhere?’
‘Well, I’m a lot more clued up than when I started.’
‘It’s quite expensive, hiring you, Mr Duffy.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And you haven’t caught my thief.’
‘No.’
‘And there haven’t been any more thefts since you arrived.’
‘Now, Mr Hendrick, you wouldn’t want there to be, would you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So maybe my presence there is putting them off.’ Duffy felt this was a wonky line as he produced it.
‘Yes, but if you’re putting them off, then they aren’t stealing anything and you aren’t catching them, are you?’
‘No.’ Hendrick was clearly all logicked up at this time of the morning. It wasn’t fair. Duffy was still on his first cup of coffee.
‘You see, I can’t afford to pay you just to be there to see that they don’t steal things.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I mean, that would be even more expensive than just letting them help themselves once a month to whatever they fancied.’
Duffy grunted.
‘And you have been there almost a month, haven’t you?’
‘Well, it must be coming up for their time again, then.’