501

  Molly, Our Lady (we never called her madam, that’s for films and books) used to say to me, ‘You’ve got a real enthusiasm for this job.’

  She sits, plump flesh spilling out of her corset-tight dress, dyed black hair piled high on her head and her features buried beneath scarlet lipstick, mascara and face-powder. She sits on her stool behind the counter whilst the punter, dusted with snow, slaps his hat in his hands. Our Lady, our Madonna of the brothel, warm and generous, smiling like the Cheshire Cat, greets him.

  ‘And what’ll it be?’ It’s like she’s serving drinks, not offering a contact of tender flesh for hard cash.

  ‘What have you got?’

  Our Lady opens the album on the counter, flicks through the pictures of her girls: us girls. (When I left I cut mine out, sliced that part, that page of my life, from the album. I’ve still got it, still look at it some nights and wonder what happened to me, what happened to my dreams. It’s a good picture, me posing on a white rug with only a smoking cigarette for a prop. Mind, we’re so made-up that even our mothers, or our fathers, wouldn’t recognise us.) But anyway the Punter makes his choice, pays his money, takes his chance, and Our Lady rings her little bell and Maddy the maid leads him up the stairs.

  ‘Not seen you here before, sir,’ she says.

  He grunts something like, ‘In town on business.’

  Maddy shows him a door. ‘The business is in there, sir.’

  The Punter had asked for a no-frills hour, a girl tucked up in bed in a darkened room, with a no name, no talking, rule.

  So he gets Loraine who never says much anyway; in fact she hardly talks at all.

  It’s a quiet night, it’s been snowing heavily, and the rest of us girls are in the salon warming our toes by the fire. We’re just sitting, having a chat, swapping stories of the pervs, when there’s a God-almighty scream from Loraine’s room.

  We spill out in the hallway as Our Lady, brandishing a wooden mallet, bounds up the stairs, armed and ready for action. But the Punter is already outside the room. He’s trying to pull his trousers on and button up his shirt at the same time. Loraine’s at the door and she’s screaming and crying in a hysterical mess of noise.

  The Punter is apologising to her. He keeps saying, ‘I’m sorry, Lorraine. I’m so sorry.’ His voice keeps breaking and he’s almost in tears.

  We’re all wondering what – because we’ve seen, and done, just about everything – what he could possibly have done to her.

  Our Lady is waving the mallet about, looking for something to hit. I think she’s lining up the Punter’s skull when Loraine says, ‘How could you, Dad. How could you?’

  The mallet stops a foot from the Punter’s head and Our Lady roars, ‘Dad? You’re her fucking dad?’

  We’re all agog on the hallway as the Punter, still struggling into his clothes,

  shouts back at her, ‘It was dark in there. I didn’t know. I didn’t know!’

  Then the thought strikes him. ‘What’s she doing here? Why’s she in this place?’

  Gemma, behind me, laughs. ‘I think he knows why now.’

  Anyway the drama’s over; the Punter goes out into the snowy night; Loraine goes back to her room and slams the door; we go to the warmth of the salon. There we do what we always do; we make light of it.

  Llama reckons what happened was common practice in Wales. Teasy says the old boy should have got a refund; Petra reckons he should have paid a bit more because it’s got to be an extra; Maddy reckons he was a tight sod cos he didn’t even leave a tip.

  Loraine comes and sits with us a bit later. Her eyes are red but she’s perked up a bit. Our Lady has made her the largest gin and tonic I’ve ever seen, a tumbler of spirit and quinine. She’s seems to be getting over the shock of it and we give her the seat closest to the fire. Petra lights up a fag and passes it to her.

  We pull in our company, close ranks, close to the warmth of coal and wood while outside the snow piles up in the streets. We sit in our uniforms of desire: short nighties, smooth stockings and basques, sweating rubber and damp leather. We’re pink skin, brown skin, red hair, fair hair, black hair. We’re big, little, short, tall, but we’ve all got one thing in common; we’re whores, we’re tarts. We’re on the game. We sell our minges for money.

  Anyway, we sit around the fire waiting for Our Lady’s bell to tinkle, and then for Maddy to poke her head through the door and call one of us out; mind, trade is slow tonight. In the meantime we’re trying to cheer up Loraine. Well, at least we were until Gemma, bit tipsy now, speaks up.

  ‘Was he any good then?’ she says to Loraine.

  For about two seconds there’s total silence and then Loraine starts to snigger, and then to laugh.

  ‘Good?’ she says. ‘Good? He was fucking hopeless. No wonder Mum left him.’

  She throws down the rest of her drink and lights up a cigarette. The rest of us look at each other and then, like ripples in water, Teasy laughs, Petra laughs, I laugh. We all laugh.

  But you know what? After this all of us make sure we get a good look at our clients before anything starts. We don’t want to make a mistake like Loraine.

  At least the others don’t, but my mistake – why do I call it my mistake? – happened years before.

  Och, it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t. It was my dad’s. That’s who everyone would blame, but it takes two to tango.

  That’s all I’m going to say because I don’t want to go down the low road now.

  Today the papers are full of court cases, and the bookshops have shelves of misery memoirs all trying to outdo each other.

  ‘Buy me’ – ‘my father started coming into my room when I was twelve.’

  ‘Buy me’ – ‘my father used to come into my room and my mother knew what was going on.’

  ‘Buy me’ – ‘my father started coming into my room when I was thirteen. But it’s all right because he wasn’t superstitious.’

  I do this, turn the memory into a joke, turn the cliché into humour, push those dark remembrances back into the cellar with Hans Fritzel. (There, I’ve done it again.)

  I’m last to arrive at the George, and Danny is chomping at the bit.

  ‘You’d be late for your own funeral; important game this,’ he says to me.

  ‘I’ll just a have swift one then. Whisky and water.’

  Danny scowls and hits the optics. ‘They’ll all here, you know.’

  ‘Cheer up,’ I say. ‘You’re still favourite.’

  ‘Favourite?’

  ‘Odds on for the ugly contest, Danny.’

  ‘Ha fucking ha,’ he says.

  Tonight we’re playing the Queen’s Head and they’re not the sort of women you’d expect in a darts’ team. There’re a couple of teachers, a manager, a social worker, a P.A. and the owner of Alwyn’s Antiques. They keep a bit of distance, not exactly stand-offish, but not exactly friendly like the other teams. You know the sort: talk nice and have their little in-jokes with their in-crowd

  Irish whispers, ‘Queen’s Head? Couldn’t imagine any of that lot giving head. The only thing you’d find in their mouth is a fucking silver spoon.’

  Now, for the first time in weeks, Katy laughs. She laughs properly. And she looks better. She’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and she’s knocking back the drinks like she used to.

  Lena says, ‘Looks like someone’s getting fed again.’

  Pegs isn’t laughing; she glances away, fixes her dark eyes on the dartboard, fumbles for her drink. She still hasn’t said anything; we’re still none the wiser about what happened, or didn’t happen, to her on that wet night.

  We don’t see Big Dave Trinder in here anymore and Pegs is volunteering nothing.

  We take the points on the team game; Maggie checks out on double sixteen and Irish – she can’t help herself – calls out, ‘Jolly well done,’ in a cut-glass accent that’s politely ignored by the Queen’s Head.

  The Maggie of tonight seems tired, listless. There’re black circles under her eyes and
she yawns her way through the conversation.

  ‘Ken keeps getting up,’ she says. ‘One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock. I hear him go around the house, turn on the taps, open the fridge, slam the doors.’

  ‘When do you sleep?’ asks Katy.

  ‘When Ken does,’ says Maggie.

  But by the state of her it must be hardly at all.

  Pegs is all over the place. She’s playing the Social Worker, who’s a patronising cow. Every time Pegs fluffs a shot the Social Worker, who’s dressed more like a new-age traveller, says, ‘Hard luck, Peggy. Oh hard luck, that was close,’ when it was nothing of the sort. Pegs is useless tonight and, what’s more, halfway through the game she stops caring. When the Social Worker shoots out on double sixteen she does in an apologetic way, almost as though she doesn’t deserve to win. ‘Bad luck, Peggy,’ she says again. ‘Bad luck. That was close.’

  Pegs still wants two hundred so where she got close from I don’t know. And another thing, after the game, when Pegs buys her a drink, she talks earnestly to Pegs; you know that close in-yer-face talk.

  I can’t hear what they’re saying but Pegs is shaking her head and she turns and walks away while the Social Worker is still talking.

  Bit rude, that, and not a bit like Pegs.

  They’re not a bad team though, this Queen’s Head lot. They’re steady players, nothing too flash, nothing too loud. They plug away at the game and Irish, for all her tactics of pausing for a drink, stopping for a chat, can’t distract her opponent. She loses without a throw at the double and, with bad grace, buys her victor a Diet Coke.

  ‘Thought she’d be drinking champagne,’ she mutters to me.

  The rest of the games are close-run but we scrape through, thanks to Lena playing a blinder – well, there’re no interesting men about tonight so she concentrates on her darts.

  She shoots out on the twenties.

  ‘I always go for the big one,’ she says and winks at me.

  I ask if that’s why she’s with Dandy and she says that would be telling.

  Anyway, we’ve won again, and Danny brings out a plate of sarnies for us as Katy ‘Let me get my heroes a drink’ celebrates our win. ‘One step closer,’ she says. ‘Soon that cup’ll be on my mantelpiece.’ Then she laughs, ‘That’s if I still had a mantelpiece.’

  Irish whispers to me, ‘It’ll be on Johnny James’s mantelpiece, along with her knickers.’

  Danny sets out sarnies and then comes back with a big bowl of chips. ‘There you are, girls, tuck in.’

  Lena pouts. ‘You’ll spoil my figure, Danny.’

  Danny says, ‘I wouldn’t mind, Lena.’

  I say, ‘You two make me want to puke.’

  Irish says, ‘Try and miss the chips, Scottie Dog.’

  Pegs says nothing but she’s watching the door as though she’s expecting someone to come through: Big Dave Trinder, I would think.

  Maggie says, ‘I’ve got to go early. You know. Ken.’

  Katy says, ‘I’m going for a fag.’

  She’s already got her phone out and I bet there’s a message halfway to Johnny James before she’s through the door.

  At the table next to us the Motley Crew have homed in on the Queen’s Head and are helping them with their food. Paddy, mouth full of bread and chips, is telling Alwyn’s Antiques that if he were ‘ten years younger I’d be after knocking on your door’.

  Pikey Pete reckons thirty years would be nearer the mark as he takes a full hand of chips from the bowl. He offers some to the Social Worker who is trying, politely and gently, to leave. The teachers and the P.A. are sidling towards the door, shadowed by Jilted John, and Alwyn’s Antiques is pulling slowly away from the table. Old Bob is in the bog, rattling the Johnny machine. (As if he’s got any chance. I bet it’s not raised its head in years.) Pikey Pete sprinkles salt and shakes vinegar into his chips – still in his hand – in a distraction lengthy enough for the Social Worker to make her escape. As she passes our table she calls goodbye to Pegs, but Pegs is looking down at the table and doesn’t answer.

  We sit out the rest of the evening, a couple more drinks, a few more tunes on the jukebox while Pikey Pete grazes our leftovers. Katy goes for a fag every half hour and gets a text every five minutes.

  ‘It must be love,’ says Lena.

  ‘It must be lust,’ says Irish.

  ‘It must be time to go home,’ says Maggie, and I’m thinking, ‘How does she keep going. She looks shattered,’ Aloud I say, ‘Anytime you want to pop round for a cup of tea, feel free.’

  ‘I would,’ she says, ‘but you know… Ken.’

  ‘Bring him as well.’

  ‘I’ll see, Scottie. I’ll see.’

  Maggie yawns her way out of the pub and Lena says, ‘I suppose I better go.’

  Irish says, ‘You on a promise?’

  ‘I wish.’ Lena laughs.

  I tell Pegs I’m going now and she says her Dad’ll drop me back if I want, but I want to walk tonight, stretch my old – well, aging – bones. So I leave Katy to her texts and tobacco, Irish to her ‘One for the road’, and Pegs to Pikey Pete, who’s trying to get up-close to her quicker than she can back away. Danny calls out, ‘Mind how you go, Scottie Dog. It’s a full moon and there’s a werewolf about.’

  I say, ‘He wouldn’t frighten me.’

  Danny says, ‘I was more concerned for the werewolf,’ and he laughs himself silly at his little joke.

  Danny was right; it is a full moon, and it hovers above the houses on my walk home. There’re dark shadows and black, dustbinned alleyways, and I’m thinking that I can only see the moon because someone’s been shooting out the streetlights. This town is becoming more like the Wild West every day. Anyway, I’m soon at my house and I go through to the kitchen to let my Beauties in. Now usually they’re waiting, milling around and ready to come in for their comfy beds.

  But when I open the door, call into the night, there’re no cats. No Posh and Becks, no Elvis, no Wallace, no Doris. No one. There’s an emptiness in my overgrown garden. No rustling in the undergrowth. No mewings of welcome.

  ‘Puss,’ I call. ‘Puss, Puss, Puss.’

  Then, louder and louder, calling under the bright moon with my head thrown back like a mad woman. Me full of whisky and cider and Danny’s sandwiches, crying into the night,

  ‘Puss, Puss, Puss.’

  I’m still standing in the light of the doorway on the patio, still calling for my Beauties, my Babies, when Lady Gaga crawls into my sight. She drags herself to my feet. She’s meowing quietly, pitifully.

  And when I pick her up, she is bleeding from her mouth, from her nose, from her arse. Poison. Fucking poison.

  And, right under my nose, are the slices of white meat – sliced and laced on my patio: a deadly supper for my sleepy cats.

  She dies, Lady Gaga, she dies in my arms. She twitches twice, a shudder runs through her little body, her mouth opens wide, and the light in her eyes fades away. It’s almost as though she’s waited for me to come home, as though she couldn’t die until I was holding her. You know I haven’t cried for years, but I cry now. I cry for all of them; for my company of cats. I sit at the kitchen table and I cry for my babies.

  I can see them, fussing, cleaning, pacing, twisting, turning; tails erect and twining together, ears pricked and listening for me. But then, from over the wall, comes a shower of tender chicken, a cascade of evil intent; an irresistible meal for the hungry horde.

  By the light of that bright cold moon I dig a grave for my Lady Gaga. I dig it deep and wide, I don’t want her to be cramped, and I wrap her in my favourite jumper so she’ll be nice and warm. I say a Catholic prayer from my childhood and I fill the hole with regrets, and sorrow, and anger as I Hail Mary with Grace. Then, after a minute’s silence, I shout, scream at the top of my voice.

  ‘You’re bastards. You’re all fucking bastards. Bastards. Bastards. Bastards.’

  I shout a whole lot more until my neighbours’ bedroom lights come on, a
window crashes up and Ed Edwards shouts out, ‘Shut the fuck up. It’s two o’clock in the morning. I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Call who you fucking like; you bastards murdered my cats.’

  He says, to someone behind him, ‘The old cow reckons we murdered her cats.’

  Now there’re two fat slobs framed in the open window.

  ‘We murdered your cats?’ Molly Edwards screeches. ‘That’s libel, that is. We’ll have you in court.’

  The window crashes down.

  I sit on my patio all night on a kitchen chair, cloaked in a blanket and sipping Jameson from the bottle and, when it’s light enough, I search the garden.

  I find four more of my babies under the hedge where they have crawled away to die. Doris, Shirley, and Posh and Becks. Posh and Becks are touching in death, cuddled up together. That’s all I find for now but a week later there’s a putrid smell from under the shed and I hook out Elvis. Like his namesake he’s not composing, he’s decomposing.

  I never find Bruce or Wallace; I just hope someone kind found them and gave them a decent burial.

  Anyway, whisky and tiredness send me to bed and I sleep the day away. But as I sleep, I dream. And after all these years I dream of my father.

  He’s holding me, kissing me with that love I thought was all mine. I can taste his aftershave on my lips. I can feel the tender strength of his arms. I can feel the stirring in my body and then...

  And then I’m awake and I’m lying on my bed, and I’m cold and hungry. And lonely: lonelier than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m thinking of an upstairs flat in Old Dundee. I’m thinking of my father. I’m thinking of Aubrey. I’m thinking that he’s over fifty years old now and he might have grown-up children. I’m thinking that I could be a grandmother.

  And then I’m thinking that they all could be fucking dead and I wouldn’t know.

  So I’ll make myself a meal, force myself to eat, and then I’ll go down the George, have a drink with Danny, a few more with the Motley Crew, and then I’ll come home to this empty house. I’ll put the music on full blast and shake the shit out of those bastards next door.