Pearls

by Celia Brayfield

  Acquiring financial sophistication from a starting point of almost total ignorance, Ayeshah developed a natural fascination with all the ways of money. For the first month, afraid that her new-made riches would go the same way as the money she had hidden in her pillow, she carried it in the lining of her handbag. She grew increasingly fearful of theft and wondered where she could hide the money. Where did Susie keep hers? Susie could not advise her – most of her earnings were sent to Shanghai, to the parents who had sold her to a pimp five years earlier.

  Ayeshah dared not ask the treacherous Anna Maria, but she knew she must secrete her rent money somewhere. One week Ayeshah paid Anna Maria a month’s rent in advance, then woke early and watched her landlady all day through the crack of her door until she saw her lock her own rooms and prepare to go out. Ayeshah followed Anna Maria, in her distinctive black-and-white frock, through the crowded streets to Orchard Road, where she went into a modern building with heavy, wooden doors. A few moments later she came out and returned to her house.

  The building, Ayeshah discovered, was a bank. Inside, a clerk, a clean and prosperous-looking Chinese boy, explained that banks would store her money for her and even pay her to do it. It seemed too good to be true. At Miss Chatterbox’s, Ayeshah asked the other girls, who were scornful and said banks were for Europeans and could not be trusted.

  ‘Stupid women, what do you know?’ sneered Ali, the Malay waiter. ‘Banks are safe even in war, I know. In my village the district officer went to the planters’club when the Japanese came and took all the whisky and put it in the bank. When the Japanese left it was all there, and he sold the batch for a much higher price.’

  ‘But all the banks are Chinese?’ Ayeshah was unable to believe in the trustworthiness of such a mercantile race.

  ‘Not all, we have Malay banks too, Bank Bumiputra is very big, as big as the Chinese banks.’

  And so Ayeshah, with relief, emptied the notes from her handbag lining on to the counter of the Bumiputra Bank and opened an account. Because she did not read very well, Ali, the waiter, helped her with the forms. Figures, however, gave her no trouble, and she read and re-read her first bank statement like a holy man reading the Koran.

  Two years later Ali arrived at Miss Chatterbox Rendez-Vous at 4 pm to open up, and found the owner, Hong Seung’s brother, in bloody joints all over the room. He had been ritually murdered by members of a rival tong, another victim of the endless trade vendettas between the Chinese secret societies. Ali had barely mopped up the blood by the time the first Tommies sauntered through the Shanghai doors. There were more of them than ever now, and on the mainland the Communists were waging a full-scale war.

  Ayeshah anticipated that Hong Seung would take over his brother’s business, but she returned to Anna Maria’s to find her landlady’s room stoutly locked and a fat Sikh sprawled on the chair before her desk.

  ‘May I introduce myself?’ he spoke elaborately formal English. ‘Anna Maria is taking a holiday in Hong Kong and you will pay your rent to me while she is away.’

  Ayeshah nodded noncommittally. ‘Is there news of her friend Hong Seung?’ she asked. ‘On holiday’ undoubtedly meant that whatever business had got the brother into trouble had also given Anna Maria a fright, and would certainly implicate Hong Seung too.

  ‘He also visits with his family.’ The Sikh smiled broadly beneath his crisp, white turban, implying that the evil ways of the Chinese always brought them their just deserts in the end.

  From habit, Ayeshah and Susie went to Miss Chatterbox’s as usual the next day, and found bamboo scaffolding outside and a band of coolies hacking at the walls. On the opposite pavement, a tall, slender man in a spotless white suit was examining a large plan with a European man. When he saw the girls he quickly crushed the sheet of paper into the white man’s arms and called to them.

  ‘Mesdemoiselles! Over here, please!’ He shook their hands in turn. ‘I am Philippe Thoc and this is now my club. How do you do.’ His English had a strong accent they did not recognize, but from his name they guessed him to be at least half Vietnamese.

  He bought them tea in a shop across the road. ‘Unhappily it will be two or three weeks, I think, before we can re-open again, but I hope you will consider it worth your while to wait.’ He offered fat French cigarettes, in a gold case, which they took out of politeness and smoked cautiously. ‘When we open the club it will be quite different. My plan is to have a club for officers – no more smelly soldiers, getting drunk and making trouble.’ His eyes sparkled enthusiastically under long, ivory lids, and Ayeshah and Susie felt themselves drawn into his vision without really understanding it. ‘No more taxi-dance – it’s not chic. My plan is for a real nightclub with hostesses, a nice little band, a nice bar. We will serve only champagne. All I need is pretty girls like you, with good English, a little charm. And clean.’ He lolled back on his chair and watched the girls smile guardedly back at him.

  The Eurasian one – and now that Ayeshah’s nocturnal way of life had removed her from day-long sunlight it was not possible to say with certainty that she was a Malay – was ideal, he thought. Pretty cat-face, intelligent, you could see it in the eyes, but not tough. Nothing special about the Chinese, but girls had their little attachments and it was wise to respect them.

  For two weeks Philippe paid six of the girls half wages to be sure of having a skeleton staff. He hired two more waiters, and a Filipino jazz combo. The outside of the club was painted vivid pink, with the window and door frames in shiny black, and a black canopy over the door and the pavement. A pink neon sign proclaimed simply ‘Club’. Philippe lectured the girls for hours on their duties as hostesses, and posted a long list of rules for them in the newly constructed office above the bar. No talking except in English, no powdering their noses at the tables, no girl to wear laddered stockings or clothes which needed mending. Evening dress to be worn all the time. Girls must smile. Girls must be polite.

  ‘He’s mad,’ said Susie flatly. ‘Where he think we will get money to buy dresses that he wants?’ Ayeshah shrugged, pausing as she tried a new eyebrow pencil.

  ‘He’s been paying us to do nothing for a fortnight, don’t forget. I don’t think he’s so crazy; he told me he ran a club like this in Saigon and made a lot of money.’ Philippe talked a lot about his club in Saigon, and about Paris, the place where he had been born. Ayeshah had no idea where Paris was, but he made it sound as if the streets were paved with gold. She was impatient to find out what reality lay behind the talk of elegance, wealth and high society.

  Crossly, Susie stubbed out her cigarette. Philippe wore a heavy gold watch and gold cufflinks. His clothes were of a quality neither of them had ever seen. It seemed likely that he had recently made a lot of money. ‘If he do so well in Saigon, why he leave?’

  ‘Who can say? I suppose there was some trouble. It isn’t our business.’ Ayeshah kept her eyes on her reflection in Susie’s pink mirror. ‘Take my old, red dress if you like. I’ll buy a new one.’

  What she did not tell Susie was that Philippe had twice taken her for a cocktail at Raffles Hotel. He had shown her the immense ballroom with a polished floor gleaming like a lake, and the swimming pool and the terrace shaded by the fanshaped traveller’s palms. Talking non-stop in his curious accent, he opened her mind to the world beyond the island of Singapore, and hinted that, if she threw her lot in with him, she would have a passport to wealth and enterprise beyond her dreams.

  Philippe had three reasons for doing this. One was that he sensed that the other girls admired her, and that they would do what she said. The second was that he saw exactly how her sensual appeal could be marketed. The third was that she appealed to him sexually. There was something else, of which even this experienced pedlar of flesh was unaware. The wider the vistas he painted for her and the better Ayeshah understood what he could do for her, the more uneasy she became about their relationship. She did not want a man to have power over her, any kind of power, physical or financial.

&nbs
p; ‘See that boy?’ he asked her, pointing with his cigarette at the Raffles maítre d’hótel, who was showing a party of Europeans to seats on the terrace. ‘How would you like to do what he does?’

  Ayeshah was puzzled. ‘Just that?’

  ‘Maybe a few other things. Look after the other girls. Help me in the office, perhaps. It’s an easy job – all you have to do is remember the customers, smile at them, keep them happy.’

  She pursed her lips doubtfully, a mannerism which she had observed that Western men found very attractive. Philippe responded with the leap of interest she recognized. Then he asked her to dance. He moved with a pleasing, confident grace but his hands held her with a faint tremor, like rushes shivering in the breeze. Ayeshah dipped her eyelids, then again caught his glance, and smiled.

  Later he took her back to Anna Maria’s and disappeared into the noisy Singapore night. Ayeshah pondered. It gave her no trouble at all to open her legs for the Tommies and take dollars in exchange; but this was an involvement, bound up with the possibility of much bigger money, an entrée into a more prosperous world, perhaps a new life far away from this tawdry city. She sensed something in Philippe which was beyond the thrall of physical attachment, beyond the reason of business. Some part of him was beyond control, and that was what she didn’t like. She did like his neat head, covered in close curls that brilliantine could not flatten, his mobile face and flat, ivory-skinned body.

  When the club opened, Ayeshah, in a new, black brocade cheongsam with frangipani flowers pinned in her chignon, welcomed the customers and seated them as Philippe prompted. The soft, mysterious allure she projected intensified as her confidence grew. Philippe congratulated himself on his judgement and ached to hold the rounded body which the tight dress simultaneously displayed and concealed. She evaded him with a show of flower-like modesty which whipped his senses.

  She was eager to learn how to cash up the till at the end of the evening, and so was able to evaluate the club’s success. The first week, in which Philippe bought his friends drinks all night, was bad. The second week was worse, because few people came to the club. Then one or two friends of friends returned, and a regular clientele was established. Ayeshah was impressed. They were men with gold watches and gold cigarette cases, some in uniforms decorated with gold braid. They spent lavishly. They wore silk socks. They invited the girls to private parties in luxurious mansions, and sent their chauffeurs to collect them.

  Ayeshah decided that Philippe’s hints of glamour and prosperity had a basis in fact, and calculated that he was an opportunity she could not allow to pass. She relaxed the barrier of reserve she had put up against him. At the end of the club’s sixth week, they worked out the accounts together, in the dead of night. When the final figure, a profit well above his projections, was written down Philippe threw aside his pencil and embraced her with joy. Instantly they were kissing, something she had not done for years, because she never kissed the Tommies. The feeling was sweet but the memories were painful; Ayeshah stamped them down and let physical sensations swell up to numb her mind. He picked her up and carried her slowly upstairs to his apartment.

  Philippe was a delicate, elaborate lover, an erotic gourmet who delighted in finding new sensations for her to try. In his bedroom on the top floor, he nuzzled and nibbled her body with his pearly teeth, laughing with delight. Ayeshah found it relaxing to do nothing and have no concern over the progress of their lovemaking, no need to finish and get on to more business. It was also curious to have thrilling sensations aroused in her body while her mind was detached. Her deadened senses came to life with feelings that were close to physical pain, as if scarred limbs were bending across their wounds.

  It was almost midday before they came downstairs, to Ali’s knowing smiles and Susie’s black sulk. Next day Philippe gave Susie the sack and hired in her place an angular Goanese girl with inch-long fingernails.

  Philippe had no idea that the captivatingly primitive beauty whom he intended to transform into his ideal companion was already anticipating the day when he would have outlived his usefulness. He was not much concerned that her sexual response to him was muted, since in his experience a young whore who had detached herself from her body in this way could easily be reawakened by a patient, skilful lover.

  He was momentarily concerned when he entered the club one evening and found her in a state of great agitation, squabbling with Ali, the barman, and rushing around the small, dark room like a furious cat, too disturbed to register his arrival.

  ‘A man came to see her today, that’s what’s upset her,’ Ali told him. ‘Tall, thin European with glasses – I’ve seen him before. Always the same reaction, Ayeshah’s like a witch for hours afterwards.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  Ali shrugged. Philippe assumed that her visitor was an old protector. He judged that the situation required instant action, and, catching her by the elbow, hustled her upstairs.

  ‘I don’t care for you entertaining your lovers while I’m out,’ he told her, shoving her into their room and twisting her arm painfully.

  ‘I have no lover, you’re crazy,’ she told him, struggling with all her strength.

  He slapped her face hard, but carefully, so she would not be marked. ‘It’s of no interest to me who he is, but if he comes here again he can take you with him. I shall throw you out on the street, just like that. You belong to me and I won’t have you making a fool of me. Understand?’

  She stopped twisting in his grasp and, although she was shaking with anger he saw to his surprise a flash of intense calculation in her eyes.

  ‘The man who came today was not my lover. I had a lover once, but not this man. He only brings me news of my village, my family, that’s all.’ There was a hint of desperation in her voice as she continued. ‘If you think I’m lying, I will make sure when he comes again that you are here. But I need to see him– don’t you understand, Philippe? How else will I know how my – my family is?’

  Philippe was startled. He had expected screams, rage, an attack with her fingernails, in short a classic jealous fight, a struggle over the demarcation lines of their relationship in which he would assert his strength and Ayeshah would capitulate after a routine display of temperament.

  ‘You little whore!’ He hit her again, less carefully. ‘Don’t lie to me – do you think I’m stupid, eh?’ He raged on, fighting his own sense of bewilderment as much as Ayeshah, who did not resist him and barely responded. Eventually he tired of the one-sided drama and half threw her down the narrow staircase, commanding her to continue her work.

  Philippe rapidly forgot the incident. He forgot many things of significance. Soon Ayeshah identified the section of his soul which was out of her grasp; every night Philippe smoked opium at an expensive parlour uptown. He traded the drug, and others, to wealthy Europeans. The discovery pleased her – now she knew she could destroy Philippe when the time was right.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘That young lady will be a countess before the end of the season.’

  In the cacophonous bustle of her dance, Cathy’s sharp ears picked out the conversation between her mother and a distant Bourton relation. There was no doubt they were talking about her. Everyone was talking about her and Charlie Coseley. The previous week, William Hickey had named her ‘Deb of the Year’, printing the picture taken by Tim Studd and a caption mentioning that she was ‘escorted everywhere by Charles Coseley, 29, Britain’s most eligible Earl and the heir to the Marquess of Shrewton. Friends expect a wedding announcement soon.’

  Bettina looked more relaxed than Cathy had seen her for months. She was not drunk; she was conspicuously sipping only orange juice, but that in itself meant nothing. Cathy could tell that her mother was sober because the self-pitying mood and vicious tone into which she fell when intoxicated were absent, and instead her behaviour was grimly reserved.

  ‘I’m quite sure Cathy will play her cards right – no doubt about that. She’s always known exactly how to get her way,’ she hea
rd Bettina answer with complacent spite.

  ‘She has certainly made the Coseley boy come to heel,’ the other woman continued. ‘No more Chelsea tarts and nightclubs, so they tell me. His parents must be delighted, after all this time. The only son, of course.’

  Cathy moved out of earshot, hurrying to the kitchen to check that the caterers were coping with the antiquated equipment. They had imported a battery of portable ovens powered by bottled gas to be sure of getting five hundred portions of quail stuffed with grapes to the tables at an acceptable temperature. The old kitchen, fitted out by Lady Davina in the twenties with the latest thing in solid oak cabinets, was as hot and crowded as hell and, she realized, no place for a girl who wanted to keep her blue Laura Ashley gown in milkmaid-fresh condition.

  ‘Darling, where have you been? They’re playing “Pretty Flamingo” and I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Stop being the perfect hostess and take care of me.’ Charlie swirled her into his arms and started nuzzling her neck in the way he knew made ordinary girls go limp in his grasp and start begging for sex. He caressed Cathy without any expectation that she would do this. In three months of intensive courtship she had often gone limp in his arms, but steadfastly refused to have sex. The defence of Cathy’s virginity had been conducted according to rules of battle which, had either of them realized it, were as time-honoured as any principles of military strategy. They followed the pattern of relationships of young men and women which had changed very little in 2000 years of history.

  Charlie at first had no greater interest in Cathy than in any other pretty, attainable girl. He expected to seduce her within a few weeks and forget her just as quickly. He had taken her to dinner and on to Annabel’s twice, frightened her a little by driving his E-Type Jaguar at 100 mph along Chelsea Embankment, kissed her very thoroughly at his pad, cursed the invention of pantyhose and said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’