‘What was the last thing you ate?’
‘Cut it out, Cathy.’
She watched in hurt surprise as Monty jumped off the fender and walked out of the room. When they got back to London, Cathy took Monty to lunch at a hearty, oak-panelled City carvery and gave her a cheque for five thousand pounds. Monty hugged her in guilty gratitude. She had not intended to ask Cathy for money, but now she and Cindy had debts and the gift would pay them off as well as buying them a substantial period of chemical peace-of-mind.
Monty became quite certain that Cindy herself had staged the ‘burglary’. She also realized that her room-mate was making money herself on their deals, and that the heroin she bought was far from being pharmaceutical grade; but these things no longer seemed important. Everything which had disturbed Monty now seemed gloriously unimportant. She was indifferent to the hostility of the band when she strolled into recording sessions an hour late or worse. Doing the publicity photographs was no cause for concern, although she used to feel absurd in the fetishist outfits which Sig ordered her to wear. Even though she had a crop of ugly pimples around her mouth, Monty faced the camera with no anxiety. She grew wonderfully thin.
Sig himself lost the power to scare her. She no longer launched herself into fucking with the desperate dread that if she did not please him she would be finished because he would dump her. She was just active enough to stop him getting suspicious. But Monty’s judgement was getting weak, and one night Sig suddenly rolled off her and sat up. He groped for his cigarettes and lit one with an angry gesture.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ His voice was quiet but not friendly.
‘Nothing. I just feel a bit weird tonight. I’ll be OK in the morning.’
‘No, you won’t. You’ll be sniffing and strung-out in the morning.’
‘No I won’t. I’ll be fine.’
‘Sit up,’ he ordered. She did so. In the darkness she did not see him raise his arm and the blow was a shock. He knocked her off the bed. Her mouth filled with blood; she had bitten her tongue.
‘Listen, you stupid bitch. I don’t care if you fucking slit your wrists. You can jump off the Empire State Building for all you mean to me. But we’ve got a contract, you and I, I’ve paid you money, and I want my album, and it pisses me off that you ain’t giving me an album because you’re smacked out all the time.’
‘We’ve nearly finished the album.’
‘No you ain’t. It’s crap, what you’ve done. I heard the tapes yesterday. You’ll have to start again.’
She crawled to the far side of the room swallowing the blood in her mouth. ‘That’s not true,’ she protested, wondering where her clothes were. She heard him get up, walk over to the door and lock it. Then the lights snapped on and she blinked. He stabbed a blunt accusing finger at her as he got back into the bed.
‘If I say it’s true, it’s true. Now come here. We’ve got unfinished business.’ She did not move. ‘I’m not coming to get you. I don’t give a fuck either way.’
She knew if she challenged him any further he would beat her up thoroughly. Hesitantly, she walked back to the bed and lay inert beside him. He killed his cigarette and pounced on her with furious violence, holding her to him like a doll. His penis was broad rather than long, and distended her delicate tissues painfully even when he was gentle. Sig was in no mood to be gentle now. Her weakness infuriated him because he knew it was her last hiding place. Open defiance he could fight, passive resistance he could not; he rammed at her brutally as if his rage could spark the fight in her.
He paused and she felt a finger probing clumsily at her anus.
‘No please, Sig, that hurts,’ she whispered.
‘It’ll hurt a lot more if you don’t get off the stuff,’ he answered. ‘Relax, stop fighting me. You’ll get into it.’ He flipped her over as easily as if she were an insect, pulled apart her buttocks and crammed himself into her body. With his weight pinning her down she was powerless and lay unresisting as the vicious strokes tore her flesh. In the end she decided the quickest way to end the agony was to make him come, so she began to respond, faking all the passion she could. He was not fooled. She raked his flesh with her nails, gasped, purred in pretended ecstasy, her hips eagerly grinding, but she could almost feel his sarcastic smile.
After that calculated violation, heroin became as much a way of taking revenge on Sig as anything else. The problem of the album took care of itself when Tony was offered two weeks with a big American producer in Los Angeles and found a loophole in his contract which meant that he could be released.
To Monty’s surprise, Tony came to see her before he left, with a bunch of white chrysanthemums and a bottle of wine. He was a slim, quiet, blond man with a self-effacing manner despite his honoured status in the music business, and Monty was even more surprised when he told her: ‘Don’t think we can’t see what’s happening with you and Sig, Monty. He’s trying to make you over into some punk sex-symbol, and that’s just not your style. I’ve always liked your songs – they come right from the gut, they’re honest, emotional. And you’ve got a fantastic gift for melody. Your music is grown-up music, not this gimmicky, get-rich-quick crap. Stas and Winston feel the same, we’ve all talked about it. You’re dead right about doing the clubs – those kids aren’t your audience at all.’
Monty looked at him uncertainly, flattered but anxious. ‘I don’t know. Sig’s very smart about marketing, all of that. I just don’t know any more.’
‘Well, I know.’ Tony refilled their glasses. ‘I’ve had twelve years playing with the best, and I’d rather play with you smacked-out than any other chick that’s supposed to be together. Or most other blokes, come to think of it. In your place I’d run out on this album, and get another label to buy out your contract. Go for a producer who’s into a really big slick sound, that’s what you need.’
It was good advice, but Monty was unable to act on it. She felt powerless, a piece of flotsam carried along by a flood of events. Her money ran out, and she made a deliberate attempt to play on Cathy’s sympathy and get more, but Cathy looked shamefaced and shook her head. ‘It’s a bad time, Monty. I’ve got a nasty few months ahead of me. You’ll have to stall the bills for a bit. I wish I could help you but right now I’m in a jam myself.’
Monty was so focused on her immediate problem of getting cash for drugs that she failed to notice an unaccustomed, haunted look in her sister’s eyes, and the fact that she drank more Scotch than usual, throwing down the liquor with a desperation that was quite unlike her characteristic serenity.
The rent was due, and the telephone bill came in. ‘It’s easy to get money if you know how,’ Cindy reassured Monty. ‘I’ll ask some of my friends.’ She reached for the telephone and called someone named Roger who worked in a stockbroking firm. To Monty’s amazement Cindy cajoled him into a dinner date, put on one of her alluring dresses and reappeared the next morning with a fistful of ten pound notes.
‘You can always get money from men like that,’ she told Monty. ‘Either they’re bent or their wives are frigid little straights obsessed with the children. They’re rich, and they’re quite happy to pay for a bit of glamour and a few thrills.’ Roger took Cindy to Frankfurt on a business trip the following week, and she returned with more money, but made it clear that she was not going to buy Monty’s drugs with her earnings, or pay Monty’s share of the rent and the bills which were mounting up.
‘If I can do it, you can,’ she told Monty. ‘You’re looking so beautiful, any man would get out his chequebook. All you have to do is a bit of the old voodoo – know what I mean?’
Monty knew exactly what she meant: the elaborate game of tease and make-believe which Lady Davina had taught Cathy, and which she herself had used on Sig in the days when she had kidded herself that she was using him, not the other way around. Monty now had a permanent sense of degradation which she partly relished. There was a perverse kick to be had out of abasing herself. It was the only pleasure which remained to her. T
he drug was no longer enjoyable; it just kept her from feeling vile.
‘They like double-dates,’ Cindy told her. ‘It’s less embarrassing for the blokes if they’ve got each other for company – means they don’t have to make the effort to talk to the women. I’ll see if Roger’s got a friend.’
Roger was short and thin, with sparse brown hair and very pale blue eyes. He wore the uniform Monty recognized from her voyages to the City with Cathy – a striped shirt, a diagonally-striped tie and a dark-blue suit. The tie was tightly knotted. His friend was a little fatter, a little fairer in colouring and a little more nervous. The four of them went to a very expensive restaurant in Mayfair.
‘Check it out,’ Cindy told her while they were in the ladies’ room. ‘Every woman in this place is on the game, except the owner.’ Monty looked around the restaurant as she went back to the table. It was full of sober-suited men, some of them famous politicians or film stars. Most of the women were past the first bloom of youth, dressed very discreetly in dull, good-taste silk pant-suits, with a lot of gold jewellery. There was about them a telltale air of disinterest; it was the only difference which Monty could detect between these women and any others.
‘Roger’s a real drag,’ Cindy had confided. ‘He just wants everything he’s ever read about in Harold Robbins. Let’s blow their minds, shall we?’
Blowing the guys’ minds meant going to a hotel around the corner and staging an elaborate pretence of lesbianism while the men sat awkwardly on the bed drinking vodka. Cindy kept the act going with a repertoire of outraged shrieks, protestations and compliments to Roger and his friend which flattered them so lavishly that Monty nearly spoiled everything by laughing. Roger gave them £150 in clean ten-pound notes and seemed highly satisfied.
‘You see?’ Cindy laughed in the cab home. They’re perfectly happy, so where’s the harm? They can tell all their mates about the two hot chicks who gave them a show last night, and feel like Genghis Khan – and we’ll be OK for another three days.’
Monty wondered uneasily about living beyond the three-day-limit and was both relieved and dismayed when the telephone rang the next day and Cindy announced, ‘Roger wants to see you again – you’re in business, kid.’
‘I don’t want to go, Cindy. You go instead, if you like.’
‘Don’t be stupid – where else are you going to get a hundred quid for practically nothing? And dinner.’
‘I feel I’m using them, Cindy, and I feel I’m being used, and I don’t like it.’
‘But that’s what it’s all about, honey – trying to have sex without using somebody is like trying to eat without chewing.’
‘Come on, Cindy, suppose it’s someone you love.’
‘Love? What’s that?’ She spoke as if she had seen a cockroach. ‘What’s love about, except people getting their needs met? You are a hopeless old hippy, Monty.’
‘OK, so I’m a hippy. Right on, peace and love – bury me in my tie-dyed T-shirt. I still don’t feel like fucking Roger or anyone else for money. The idea makes me want to throw up. Tell him I’m ill or something.’ Privately, Monty decided it was time to pull herself out of this dangerous situation. She would cut down on smack, maybe just do it at the weekends, and find herself a job. Swallow Lamotte’s company was still in business; maybe she could go back there. But cutting down made her feel ill – weak, tired, groggy and nauseous. Her gums ached and her eyes were sore.
She went to bed with a mug of sugary tea and tried to watch television to take her mind away from the craving for a hit. The doorbell rang and she did not answer it. Cindy was out, but she had her keys, Monty was sure of that. It might be someone coming to cut off the electricity. The bell rang incessantly, and someone began pounding the door.
‘Monty! I know you’re up there, I can hear the TV. Open up!’ It was Sig, and he was angry. Fear grabbed Monty’s guts. He can’t get in, she told herself, he can’t; the door is strong, he can’t break it.
Sig yelled again from the street. ‘I’ll get you, you slag. You owe me, don’t forget. You owe me and I’ll collect, if it fucking kills you.’ He was throwing stones, but could not throw high enough to reach their windows. Instead, Monty heard a tinkle as a window in the floor below broke.
Eventually Sig went away. Monty was bathed in sweat, her heart leaping in her chest with terror. When Cindy came back she begged her for some gear, but Cindy would not agree to find some for her until Monty had herself telephoned Roger and made a date. After all, Monty told herself, it can’t be worse than doing it with Sig. This turned out to be true. Roger was easily satisfied with a straight fuck which barely made the two-minute mark. The hardest part was laughing at his jokes.
‘Wowee!’ rejoiced Cindy a few days later. ‘Roger wants to take you to Paris with him. You’re a real hit!’
Not the sort of hit I ought to be, Monty mourned in silence. Cindy loaned her a chiffon dress – now Monty was thin enough to wear her friend’s clothes – and a suitably dull skirt and sweater. ‘You won’t have any trouble with the customs if you look straight,’ she advised. ‘Just hang on Roger’s arm and smile sweetly.’
She took a pretty Art Deco compact for loose powder and washed it. Into the reservoir she tipped Monty’s remaining packet of heroin, which was coarse enough to be held down by the small circle of stiff gauze which closed over it. She cut a circle of cellophane from a cigarette packet to fit inside the gauze. Then she dusted a green ostrich-feather puff with face-powder and put it on top.
‘Blow away as much of the powder as you can,’ she told Monty. ‘It’s so fine it’ll fly away easily and you’ll be left with the stuff underneath practically untouched.’ She snapped shut the blue enamel casing with a flourish. ‘Even if they do search you, which they won’t, so much powder will come out of the compact when they open it, they won’t bother examining it any further. You can buy some disposable syringes in a pharmacie.’
Monty waited at the airline check-in desk, hoping she would not meet anyone she knew, and wondered if anyone would recognize her now, thickly made-up in conventional tones, her hair tamed into balsam-conditioned curls, wearing a neat beige skirt and a simple angora sweater to match.
‘Hello, Roger. My, you look great. I’m longing to see Paris. You are a darling to take me,’ she gushed, wishing she could spiel out this nonsense as easily as Cindy could. ‘I can’t wait to get to the hotel,’ she breathed, pressing her thigh into his when they were seated.
‘Why wait?’ he asked. ‘Ever joined the mile-high club?’ They fastened their seatbelts.
‘You wicked man,’ she giggled, trying to forget that she and Rick used to watch airline passengers from the sanctuary of the VIP lounge, trying to pick out from the shuffling herds at the boarding gates those who looked so incurably banal that they would find it exciting to screw in an aircraft toilet.
I mustn’t think about all that, she told herself as she hurried up the aisle to the john. The days of private planes and being protected are finished forever. Rick really did love me, he just couldn’t let himself show it, she thought, as Roger squeezed through the folding door, unzipping his fly and breathing hard. Cindy had suggested that she should leave off her briefs, so there was nothing more to do than slide up the dismal skirt, find a way of propping one leg above the small wash-basin, throw back her head and moan, ‘Baby, baby, my God, it’s beautiful, Roger, darling Roger,’ until he had had enough.
Sex was becoming very uncomfortable. As Sig had predicted, she now had permanent constipation. It felt as if someone had poured cement into her intestines, and she was less inclined to eat than ever.
In Paris, she was careful not to utter one word of her excellent French, although it was very hard not to intervene when he mispronounced the name of their hotel so disastrously that the taxi-driver took them to the wrong side of the city. Luckily Roger had business meetings all the next day, so Monty took a very thorough bath and strolled around aimlessly. She felt alienated to the point of mental paralysis. She could
recognize that the city, leafless in the dead of winter, was beautiful, but the beauty could not touch her. It was just another irrelevance.
Monty had developed the drug-user’s sixth sense for recognizing others. She shadowed two girls she saw meet by the St Michel Métro and exchange a fold of paper for money. They separated and the one with the paper disappeared under the green cross sign of a pharmacie. Monty waited for an hour, then went into the shop to get her syringes. She was ready for Roger by the time he returned, and listened with a decent show of attention while he explained what wankers his French clients were. Although her mind was insulated by the smack, it exhausted her to be charming and acquiescent continuously, and she began to understand why call girls acquired that definable air of apathy. She recognized it again in one or two of the women in the restaurant to which they went for dinner. The aggressive stylishness of French women was blunted in them; why bother to be chic for a trick?
‘Your heart’s not really in this, is it?’ Roger sounded peevish. ‘Something on your mind? Worried about anything?’ He thinks I’m angling for more money, she thought. Cindy had explained that the way to turn a date into a trick was to go moody, tell him you were worried about a specific money problem like your telephone bill, then be deliciously grateful when he offered to take care of it.
‘There’s nothing on my mind, darling.’ She tried to smile and look seductive.
‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked her, indicating a spruce, dark man with heavy features sitting with an aristocratic-looking blonde in a peach silk shirtwaist dress.
‘Isn’t he some sort of financier?’
‘Some sort of financier? Isn’t she cute? Darling, that’s Giuseppe Ecole; he’s in the middle of the biggest bribery scandal in Europe in the last ten years. If he goes back to Italy they’ll clap him in jail the minute he gets off the plane.’
‘Heavens. Who’s the girl?’
‘Who knows – one of Madame Bernard’s whores, I suppose.’
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