When You Disappeared

by John Marrs

  Its true purpose was revealed at the bar, where men of all ages were fussed over by attentive girls in varying states of undress.

  I’d sat at the counter, swirling ice cubes around my glass of Jim Beam, amused by the show. The girls’ acting abilities were faultless as they pretended to desire the customers and not the pesos in their pockets.

  ‘Can I introduce you to a young lady, señor?’ said the barman.

  ‘No, I’m just here for a drink,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s what all first-timers say,’ he laughed as he refilled my glass. ‘Are you European?’

  ‘Yes, British.’

  ‘You’re a long way from home. What brings you here?’

  ‘I’m seeing the world, and picking up a bit of work here and there.’

  ‘What kind of work?’ he asked, carefully stroking his goatee.

  ‘Carpentry, repairs, building work, decorating . . . that kind of thing.’

  ‘You ever hit a woman?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Do you do drugs?’

  ‘No.’ Well, not since I’d left San Francisco.

  ‘Do you like to fuck pretty girls?’

  ‘What?’ I laughed, stopping just short of snorting whiskey through my nostrils.

  ‘Do you like to fuck pretty girls?’

  ‘Sometimes! But like I said, I’m only in here for a drink.’

  He turned his head and shouted towards a room. ‘Madama! Oiga, madama! ’ A middle-aged niblet of a woman, with grey hair swept back into a ponytail, limped quickly towards us.

  ‘Cuál es el problema, Miguel?’

  ‘I’ve found your man. What’s your name, hombre?’

  ‘Simon,’ I replied.

  The woman scowled as she looked me up and down, muttering something under her breath. Then she grabbed my hand and bent my fingers backwards.

  ‘Ow!’ I winced and tried to pull them back. But her grip was remarkably strong.

  ‘Don’t drink my spirits, do the jobs you’re given properly and make sure the men don’t hurt the girls,’ she spat in an unidentifiable accent. ‘And don’t fuck the pretty ones.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I replied, snatching my hand back and nursing my throbbing fingers. She disappeared into a back room and I stared at Miguel, puzzled.

  ‘What just happened there?’ I asked.

  ‘Welcome to Madame Lola’s.’ He smiled, raising a shot glass. ‘You got yourself a job!’

  1 August

  I was accorded a peculiar mixture of respect and envy from the male townsfolk for working in a bordello. A walk into town to pick up supplies saw me ignored by patrons if accompanied by their wives, but I was acknowledged with a nod or a knowing smile when they were alone.

  I’d acclimatised quickly to my unusual surroundings. It became the norm to hear a leather riding crop beating the skin of a repressed businessman from behind a closed bedroom door. I didn’t think twice when a misplaced key meant I had to cut a naked police officer from a bedpost he’d handcuffed himself to. And I barely noticed the priest in women’s underwear being chased through the corridors by girls in French maid outfits, like a Mexican Benny Hill.

  The brothel had been standing there for as long as the village, a forty-five-minute drive away from Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-biggest city. While some men travelled miles for its courteous and discreet reputation and highly desirable girls, at least a quarter of the bordello’s clientele came from within a mile or two of its own doorstep. Some even slipped out of their marital beds once their wives were deep in sleep, and crept back home a couple of hours later with a smile on their face and a non-the-wiser partner.

  For me, it was a place of work and not play. Of course, I had urges, but the purpose of exiting San Francisco was to leave behind all that had been faulty in Darren and myself.

  However, the course of my life was to change yet again when I fell in love with a whore.

  23 October

  ‘You got it bad for her, don’t you, hombre?’

  I almost fell off my stepladder when Miguel crept up behind me.

  ‘She’s going to break your heart,’ he laughed. ‘Chicas like that always do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied, lying to the both of us. I replaced the lightbulb, folded my ladder up, returned it to the storeroom and left the girl alone.

  I headed towards the pickup truck to drive into town and buy new electrical cables. As I looked towards her bedroom window, her closed curtain moved ever so slightly. I longed to be behind them with her. The truth was, I was smitten.

  I decided as I drove that those who worked for Madame Lola believed themselves to be the fortunate ones. Skinny women, Oriental women, ageing women, tattooed women, European women, redheads, shaven heads, and one who tipped the scales at a quarter of a ton . . . all flavours and tastes were catered to on secure, clean premises.

  Other prostitutes weren’t so lucky. As I approached town I spotted them, barely clothed and standing by roadsides, or sitting on broken plastic chairs with their knees pulled apart to attract passing trade. Others hovered in fields like worn-out scarecrows.

  Most men visiting Madame Lola’s brothel behaved respectfully towards the girls, but the exceptions believed they’d also paid for the right to be heavy-handed if it heightened their sexual pleasure. And that’s when Miguel and I stepped in.

  I’d always deplored violence, especially towards women. My mother, Dougie’s mother . . . both of their lives had been destroyed by the unwarranted rage of a man.

  Beth had walked out on Dougie five years into their marriage. I’d arrived home to find him sharing dinner with my family, desperate to avoid returning to an empty house. When I wasn’t there to offer support, he’d bent Catherine’s ear instead. But I’m sure there was much he hadn’t told her.

  ‘I’ll never have what you have,’ he slurred one evening after she left him. He misjudged the distance between his empty can of lager and the kitchen table. Catherine was upstairs asleep and I longed to join her.

  ‘What do I have then?’ I sighed, opening myself up for a fresh wave of self-pity.

  ‘Someone who loves you. A family.’

  ‘You’ll find that. You just need to meet the right person.’

  ‘No, I won’t, because I’m just like my father. Sooner or later we all end up like our parents, no matter how hard we try and fight it. You will too.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. I’m nothing like Doreen and you’re nothing like your dad.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ He stopped and rubbed his eyes before he whispered, ‘I hit her.’

  ‘Who? Your mum?’

  ‘No, Beth.’

  ‘What?’ I hoped I’d heard misheard him. ‘Do you mean “hit her” as in you did it by accident, or as in on purpose?’

  ‘A lot.’ He hung his head in shame.

  I leaned against the back of my chair, astounded and disappointed. After witnessing all his mother had been subjected to, he’d still been inclined to repeat history. ‘Why would you do that?’ I asked, baffled.

  ‘I don’t know. I just get angry and frustrated all the time and then I lash out. I can’t help it.’

  ‘Of course you can help it! You don’t just hit your wife for no reason. Why?’

  He looked up at me slowly, his eyes channelling deep into mine. ‘If anyone should know, it’s you . . .’ His voice trailed off, and he picked up his jacket and stumbled out of the house.

  I had reluctantly followed him, propping him up with my arm around his waist, ready for a long walk on a short journey.

  Memories of that night left my head as I pulled the pickup truck over to the side of the road by the storefront. I wondered what the girl behind the curtain was doing right now. Did she ever notice me like I noticed her? I could only hope.

  11 February

  For months, I’d watched her lose herself in different books each day. She was loyal to the authors she chose – always works by Dickens, Huxley, Shakespeare and Hemingway. I pre
sumed they offered her an escape to somewhere far from the whorehouse she’d made her home.

  Wherever I was carrying out maintenance work around the bordello, she would stop me in my tracks through proximity alone. Of the thirty or so women who lived or worked in the brothel, she was the only one who ground my world to a halt just by being.

  It wasn’t the delicate shine of her shoulder-length auburn hair, her olive skin or her plump, rose-pink lips. It wasn’t the silk camisoles that clung to her hips and breasts, or the brown abyss of her eyes that intoxicated me.

  It was her air of complete indifference towards the world she found herself in. While other girls competed for a customer’s attention, she was aloof. And that made her an all-the-more-attractive purchase for those with deep pockets.

  Her colleagues took as many men as were willing, but she was discerning – accepting just one per day, and never at weekends. And her self-rationing put her in great demand. Her time between clients was spent in Madame Lola’s office or making herself invisible in her bedroom at the back of the building.

  We never spoke; we never made eye contact; and as far as she was aware, I did not exist. But it didn’t matter. I was obsessed with Luciana.

  Northampton, today

  5.05 p.m.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Kenneth Jagger?’ she began.

  He paused to reflect on his teenaged self’s decision to keep his biological father to himself. Then she listened closely as he revealed things about his life he’d kept hidden when they were a partnership.

  He explained why London had been his first destination after fleeing, and how he’d discovered the circumstances surrounding Doreen’s death. He spoke of meeting Kenneth, but neglected to mention what he’d whispered into his ear or why his biological father had branded his only son a monster.

  She’d never met Doreen and had only heard bits and bobs about her through the years. Naturally, she’d been curious about the mother of the man she loved and wanted to know more. But it was obvious he’d been hurt by his mother more than he’d ever admitted. She’d never even seen a photograph of Doreen, so she’d built a mental picture instead. To her, she looked like Dusty Springfield. She’d told him that once and he’d laughed.

  When he spoke of spending time by Doreen’s grave so she wouldn’t be alone, it reminded her of the sensitivity he was capable of. She would always be grateful to him for the four children he’d given her, but his subsequent actions had all but erased any of the good he’d done in the past.

  ‘I didn’t tell you about Kenneth because I didn’t want to acknowledge him as my father,’ he admitted. ‘I hated the man from the moment we met, and I didn’t want you to see in me what I saw in him.’

  ‘Yet he was exactly what you’ve become, if not worse.’ She knew it was a callous thing to say, but he hadn’t spared her feelings so she wasn’t going to pull her punches either.

  ‘Not now,’ he corrected, ‘but for a while, maybe, yes.’

  ‘So if you hated him that much, why go to the trouble of trying to find him?’

  ‘Closure.’

  ‘But it took you twenty-five years to offer me the same courtesy, didn’t it?’

  He said nothing.

  She was hurt that he hadn’t trusted her with such an important secret, but she was angry he hadn’t mentioned Dougie’s violent streak towards poor Beth. Although she and Beth hadn’t been as close as she, Paula and Baishali were, she was sure the three of them could have helped Beth. And that might have changed so much that followed.

  Meanwhile, he was glad it hadn’t worked out with her fancy man. He didn’t like the sound of him. No one was that perfect; she’d have found that out eventually. She should thank him for saving her the heartache.

  ‘Are you aware you’re dead?’ she asked out of the blue. ‘I mean, legally dead. You have to wait seven years before you can declare a missing person deceased. So on your seventh anniversary, I hired a solicitor, and a few months later I held your death certificate in my hand.’

  ‘But you knew I was alive?’ he replied, unsettled by her sudden deceit.

  ‘That’s true. But if you didn’t value your life with us, then why should it have mattered to me?’

  He understood her motives, yet her nonchalance made him uncomfortable. She enjoyed playing with him.

  ‘It wasn’t easy, either legally or morally,’ she continued, ‘and I had to keep up the pretence you were dead to the children and the authorities. Then I had to prove I’d exhausted all avenues in looking for you. But that was the easy part, because as Roger and our friends testified, I’d been very thorough. After a high court hearing, you weren’t just dead to us, but in the eyes of the law as well.’

  ‘Why go to all that effort? It sounds a little pointless.’

  ‘I don’t care what it sounds like to you. I did it because had you decided to rise like Lazarus – which you have – and I wasn’t going to make it easy for you. Plus, your insurance money helped to put Emily and Robbie through university, so the legalities of your death benefited us all.’

  She’d knocked a little of the wind from his sails, as he realised once again he’d underestimated her strength of character. And he wasn’t sure how her course of action made him feel.

  ‘Did I have a funeral?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Yes, but only for the kids’ sake. In fact, they were delighted to draw a line under you, because having a dad who vanished into thin air was a millstone around their necks. So it helped them move on. They rarely spoke about you as they got older, anyway.’

  That last part was untrue, but he didn’t need to know that. She’d actually learned to bite her tongue when they brought his name up, and particularly when they talked of him with longing.

  He also knew it was a lie, and remembered word for word what James had told that website.

  ‘Could you tell me a little about my funeral?’ he asked, still wounded by her frosty relish.

  ‘What else is there to say? You have an empty grave and a headstone in the village cemetery. I don’t really remember much about it other than it came as a relief.’

  Again, she was not being honest, and he saw through her inconsistencies.

  ‘You buried your husband and you don’t remember much about it? I don’t believe you.’

  ‘And what makes you think I care what you believe?’ She laughed as people do when talking about something that’s not actually funny.

  ‘Because if you cared so little, why did you bother with a gravestone?’

  ‘Like I said, for the kids’ sake.’

  ‘But you said they never spoke about me, so why would they want me to have a grave?’

  She looked away and didn’t reply. Every few months, one of the children still took flowers to the churchyard, and arranged them in a vase Emily had made in pottery class when she was eight. At Christmas, they all still made an annual pilgrimage there together – even her, to keep up appearances. It was the only time of year she allowed herself to think about him.

  He pleaded to her better nature. ‘Catherine, I promise you, after today, this will be the last you’ll see of me. So please. Let’s be honest with each other.’

  ‘What do you know about honesty, Simon?’ she replied flatly.

  ‘I’ve learned it’s what people need before they can move on. There is so much we should have said to each other back then. But I’m here to explain everything, even though a lot of it will hurt you.’

  You’re right there, she thought. He had hurt her many times already in the past few hours, and she had a gut feeling it might only be the tip of the iceberg. She inhaled sharply.

  ‘The kids begged me to organise a funeral because they felt robbed of a proper goodbye, as there was no body to bury,’ she explained reluctantly. ‘Is that what you want to hear? Everyone you’d ever known turned up for it. I even ordered a maple coffin – your favourite wood – for people to place reminders of you inside, like your pub beer tankard and football medals. And a
fter the service, we had a party at the house where they celebrated your life.’

  He listened intently and smiled, touched by the effort she’d gone to despite what she knew.

  ‘I didn’t do it for you,’ she added sharply. ‘I felt sick every second you forced me to play the grieving widow. You made me complicit in your lie, and I hated you for that. Still do. Had it been my choice, I’d have cremated everything you’d ever touched.’

  His eyes sank to the floor like a scolded dog’s.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SIMON

  Los Telaros, Mexico, twenty years earlier

  13 May

  No matter where in the world I went, death was sure to follow.

  It was commonplace for the sounds of grown men, bawling and shrieking from ecstasy and pain, to seep under bedroom doors and echo around the corridors of the bordello.

  But the screams I was hearing that afternoon were female and born out of distress, not pleasure. And noises rarely carried from Luciana’s room. I dropped my paint pot and brush and bolted up the staircase, across the corridor, and banged on her door with my fists.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I yelled anxiously. ‘Luciana!’

  Inside, a male voice shouted something as he suppressed her muffled cries. I turned the handle but it didn’t budge, so I panicked, raised my leg, and kicked and kicked at the door as the scuffle inside continued.

  Finally the door split from its frame and I ran inside, but before I could focus on anything or anyone, something weighty collided with the side of my head. My body hit the wall and I dropped to the floor like a bag of rocks. Disorientated, I began to lift myself up until the second blow stopped me in my tracks.

  This time my reaction was instinctive and I grabbed the bare ankle of my assailant and twisted it hard. Its owner was felled like a tree in a storm, but then he climbed atop me and unleashed a flurry of fists upon my head and neck. I tried to shelter myself as they rained down on me in a pounding, furious barrage, my head becoming increasingly numb to the pain. A lucky jab to his bare genitals left him curled to one side and temporarily disabled, and I almost reached my feet but he beat me to it and his fist broke my nose.