The Heartbreaker

by Susan Howatch

  “Weren’t you ever brought here when you did escort work?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “I never got the top punters. They went to the girls who spoke plummy.” She gulps some champagne before adding: “I got taken to the Strand Palace once.”

  The Strand Palace no doubt gets the thumbs-up approval it deserves in the AA Guide, but it’s hardly sharing a five-star rating with the Ritz.

  I don’t laugh. I don’t make some snotty remark. I just look polite and say nothing.

  “I always dreamed I’d get to the Ritz one day,” says Susanne. “I like dreams. It’s dreams that keep you going.”

  “Right. I dream of buying my own boat and sailing away into a golden sunset.”

  We don’t say much more, and finally we stream out, leaving behind a trail of open mouths, fractured conversations and an atmosphere humming with pushbutton lust. Outside we turn to look at each other and I know we’re sharing the same amusement.

  We giggle like a couple of schoolkids.

  Then we set off for the Savoy.

  Parking’s tough in that area at night as the Strand’s part of theatreland, so I decide to leave the car in the Savoy’s garage. I’m spending money like water, but I tell myself I shouldn’t grudge a penny of it. This girl’s got me out of a very tight corner.

  Into the hotel we glide and after the necessary visit to the cloakrooms we’re creaming our way through the huge lounge to the restaurant which overlooks the river. More heads swivel. More jowls quiver. More old men turn puce with the shock of unfamiliar erections. As I realise with astonishment that I’m enjoying myself I realise too that I’m having far more fun with trashy Susanne than I’ve ever had with upmarket Serena.

  The dancing hasn’t started so we have a quiet time to brood over our menus. Unfortunately Norah’s lessons on menu-French aren’t much use to Susanne here as the French is pretty impenetrable, even to someone like me who learned menu-French when growing up.

  “Why can’t they use English?” says Susanne crossly. “I mean, is this England or isn’t it?”

  I make a snap decision. Grandly I say: “We’ll get them to translate.”

  “Won’t they look down on us for not knowing?”

  “I’d like to see them try!” I declare, and in fact the waiters all fall over themselves to be helpful. I pick a salad followed by grilled Dover sole, no veg. Susanne picks some lobster concoction followed by dolled-up duck. Veg galore. She even orders potatoes although the bird comes with rice. I hardly know where to look when she pops this request, but the waiter beams at her and writes it all down with a hand which never falters. I’m still recovering from the thought of potatoes nestling against rice when the wine waiter arrives.

  “I want more champagne!” says Susanne, awash with greed, but I say firmly: “More fun to sample something else,” and select a vintage Chablis tart enough to encourage sipping instead of swilling. I also order a large bottle of water.

  “So what do you make of this place?” I ask her when we’re finally shorn of flunkeys. “Like it?”

  “I don’t mind.” She gazes avidly out of the long windows at the trees of the Embankment Gardens and the glittery ribbon of the river.

  I don’t ask her to explain what “I don’t mind” means in this context. I already know. “I don’t mind” is what socially deprived people say when they adore something but are terrified that if they admit it they’ll be mocked. Or it’s what they say when they’re seething with excitement but want to seem ultra-cool. It’s an infuriating response, but I know that beneath those three syllables she’s in ecstasy. We’re only a few yards now from the Strand Palace Hotel, the apex of her ill-starred career as an escort girl, but we might as well be in another galaxy.

  “Tell me about yourself,” I say to pass the time. “Got any family?”

  “Nah.”

  “Parents dead?”

  “Hope so.”

  “What happened to your mum?”

  “Dunno.”

  “What did she do for a living?”

  “Guess.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Didn’t have one.”

  “Who brought you up?”

  “Kiddie-home workers. Foster parents. Pervs.”

  “How old were you when you went on the streets?”

  “Thirteen. Then I was put in another home, but I met a pimp who helped me escape. Then I got to be sixteen so they couldn’t force me to go back.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The usual. Drugs. Beatings. Prison—I got done for theft. Had to steal because of the habit but in prison I got the chance to straighten out. There was this prison visitor, a middle-class cow with a face like a pudding. She says: ‘You’re a bright girl, I can tell. You’d enjoy learning things.’ And she says: ‘Once women are educated they get a better opinion of themselves and feel life should be more than slavery.’ I think of that lady sometimes. She made me feel special in spite of everything.”

  “So you quit drugs?”

  “Yeah. Went back on the streets, though. Well, how else was I going to live? Then my pimp got stamped on and I was grabbed by a new one who worked in a West End casino, and that’s when things began to look up because I saw escort girls living a better class of life. So I chatted one up and found she worked for Norah, and then a couple of days later my pimp disappeared, his body was never found but I reckon they topped him, he was into all kinds of shit. Well, that was my chance, wasn’t it, so before I could get grabbed by anyone else I went to Norah and . . . okay, I know that didn’t work out, but I got my big break when Elizabeth decided I had potential. Happy ending.”

  “That prison visitor . . . Was she religious?”

  “Dunno, don’t care. All I know is she gave me the will to get off drugs, the will to get a better life, the will to say in the end to Elizabeth: ‘What I want’s an education.’ And that’s when Elizabeth figured it was worth investing money in courses for me and training me to help run her businesses.”

  We’re silent for a while. The first course arrives and we chomp away until Susanne says: “I bet you had a nice home with parents in it. So how come you threw it all away?”

  “I didn’t. I couldn’t hang on to it, I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t measure up, so in the end I did my parents a favour by dropping out so that I wouldn’t upset them any more.”

  “Then what?”

  “Drink, drugs, casual jobs. But one day I was looking up something in the Yellow Pages and I saw the ads for escort agencies and I thought escort work was an easy way to make a buck. (Yeah—don’t laugh!) Well, I soon found I couldn’t face it unless I was stoned—thank God Elizabeth picked me up when I got fired! She was my equivalent of your prison visitor. She thought I was special and she gave me the will to get my act together.”

  Susanne says at once with fierce certainty: “There’s no way Elizabeth could ever be the equivalent of the Lady. The Lady would have looked at you and thought: he’s a bright boy, he deserves better. Elizabeth would have looked at you and thought: here’s a nice little earner, let’s exploit him.”

  “No, she cared about me right from the start, she really did—”

  But at that point I’m interrupted by a blast on the trumpet which makes us jump nearly out of our skins. We’ve been so busy reminiscing about our putrid pasts that we’ve failed to notice the band setting itself up on the other side of the room.

  “Dancing!” exclaims Susanne, black eyes shining like polished volcanic rock.

  It was Norah who taught us both ballroom dancing. She always insists her escorts are good dancers of the old school because many of the clients are wrinklies who were young in the days when it was a social necessity to know how to foxtrot.

  The band are still warming up when our main course is delivered. We shovel the food down, and the moment we’re finally free to fling ourselves around, the band starts to play that sexy classic the wrinklies love: “In the Mood.” Susanne and I look at each other. We
both know this one inside out. Norah used it for teaching. I can still remember it oomphing from her museum-piece record player in the corner of her living-room.

  I jump to my feet. “C’m’on!” I shout, and we’re off, we’re skimming onto the dance floor, we’re showing all those wrinklies that not everyone under thirty thinks dancing means jigging up and down while zonked.

  We swivel, we swoop, we sweat, we lunge, we twirl. We’re wonderful and everyone knows it. The other couples melt away. The blokes in the band are smiling. The waiters have stopped serving. The punters are goggle-eyed. There’s never been such a performance of “In the Mood,” never. It’s Saturday night at the Savoy, it’s Saturday night at one of the greatest hotels on earth, and Susanne and I are special, we count, we matter—and never more so than at this moment when we’re living out something that’s more than just our own truth. In an electrifying flash of understanding I know we’re proving that the human spirit can triumph over anything— anything—even the most soul-destroying abuse, and that the final word on such wasting lies not with the abusers but with the abused.

  “Encore!” comes a shout, and instantly more people bawl out: “Encore, encore!” Everyone’s clapping and cheering. We bow. I suddenly realise Susanne’s not looking like a tart any more. She’s looking like the last word in cosmopolitan chic. Her eyes are shining, her cheeks are pink, the breasts deserve an Oscar for special effects.

  As the band strikes up again to respond to the demands for an encore, I know what ecstasy is and it’s not a bloody pill. Ecstasy is me being not just myself but all of myself. My body, mind and spirit are finally working as one—but no, wait, it’s better than that because I see now my spirit’s not just one of a bunch of parts. It’s the force which permeates every cell that’s me and makes me more than just the sum of my parts. And the force isn’t just pushing me to be myself now—it’s pushing me to become the self I haven’t yet got around to being, the self I was designed to be—yeah, that’s it, designed, it’s as if there’s a blueprint situation going on and I’m a dream in the mind of the architect. He’s got me down on paper, all the dimensions dovetailing, and he’s breathed his spirit into his work the way creative people do, but the construction environment’s been so tough that the builders couldn’t cope so I’m still only a half-finished wreck. I need a big jolt to get the project back on course, and this is it, this is the big jolt, this is the architect grabbing the nearest blowtorch and turning on the power.

  I’m being brought to life. Real life, not the life I had before. Maybe I’ve even been dead for a while without knowing it. Yeah, of course, that’s it, I get it—I was dead but I’m being resurrected, like The Bloke. The Bloke’s here now, obviously, putting that thought into my head. He was one of those people who called “encore,” and suddenly I see he’s already been calling me to life—calling me through Richard, through Carta, through Nicholas, through all those St. Benet’s people who rose to their feet as I entered that room. Okay, I’m still lost, I’m still in a dark, dangerous place, but I’m going to be all right because The Bloke’s determined to bring me back from the dead, he’s determined to bring me home—and meanwhile he keeps sending people, like visions, to give me hope of better times to come. Even Susanne’s a vision, drawing me into the dance which has raised my consciousness to the stars.

  I understand about Carta now. She’s a vision of a world that’ll be waiting for me when I can finally come home. She’s not just female fodder to be shagged and chucked. She’s to be respected and valued, just as the St. Benet’s people respected and valued me. And why did they respect and value me? Because they tune in daily to The Bloke and he makes sure they see me not as filth but as a human being designed by God. Richard didn’t tune in to The Bloke, but he treated me as special because he loved me, and love’s all about treating people as special, isn’t it? “Love one another!” said The Bloke, and he knew what he was talking about. You can shag a thousand people but without love you’re nothing. That’s because the heart of the universe isn’t exploitation and abuse and lies and cheating and wickedness and downright bloody evil. The heart of the universe is love.

  “Gavin! Gavin! Wake up, pinhead! We’re stars!”

  I return to earth after my brief glide around eternity. The applause has exploded again and we bow some more but eventually the band drifts into an ancient waltz and other couples return to the floor. Leaving the wrinklies creaking, Susanne and I head for our table where the maître d’ offers us complimentary glasses of—oh God—champagne.

  The evening blazes on. The dessert cart cosies up to our table and I suddenly find I’m interested in eating (trifle with a spoonful of chocolate mousse). Later I order cheese, and with this final course I have a glass of port while Susanne has a farewell glass of champagne. But as the result of hitting the water bottles we’re still a long way from being legless. It would be criminal now, of course, to get trolleyed and ruin the golden impression we’ve created.

  We stay until the band packs it in, and we dance the last waltz not exactly cheek to cheek but definitely chest to bowling-balls. Despite all the water-doses I’m not too happy about driving, but we purr back to Pimlico without smashing anything. We don’t speak. We’re still cocooned by our euphoria, and it’s not until we reach Norah’s street that I say: “Do I get invited in? I mean, should I start looking for a parking space?”

  “I want to crash out.”

  “Ah. Okay, in that case—”

  “Stop! There’s a space!”

  I stamp on the brake pedal but fluff the parking manoeuvre and wind up a metre from the curb.

  “Not to worry,” says Susanne. “You won’t be staying long.”

  Switching off the engine, I kill the lights and we look at each other in the pale glow of the streetlamp. Unexpectedly Susanne says: “When I was in therapy after my breakdown I learned a thing or two. I learned what the word ‘co-dependent’ means. Ever heard of it?”

  “Sure.”

  She doesn’t believe me. “Alcoholics have them, for instance. Co-dependents are the people who help the alcoholic cover up his way of life in the belief that they’re doing him a favour. Co-dependents like to do favours because they themselves are hooked on being needed. Got it?”

  “Got it. But what’s all that to do with us?”

  “Everything. Because I’m never going to be a co-dependent, never going to have a relationship with someone who earns his living from vice. By pretending a normal relationship’s possible, I’d wind up going along with the Life, I’d wind up a co-dependent doing favours, and that’s a guaranteed way to get trashed. So forget it. No one’s ever, ever going to trash me again.”

  After a pause I say: “I’m getting out of the Life.”

  “Oh yeah.” She smiles at me cynically, not believing a word I say. She doesn’t even bother to inflect the words into a question. “Well, so long, it’s been great, I really enjoyed myself. Thanks.”

  I shoot out a hand and grab her. “What you’ve got to understand,” I say urgently, “is that Elizabeth truly cares about me, always has, and that’s why she gave me a home and a way of earning good money—okay, I know what I am, I’m not in denial, I’m a prostitute. But not for much longer. I’m just waiting till I’ve reached my financial target. Then Elizabeth’s going to retire and we’ll go away together and live respectably ever after.”

  Susanne just looks at me. Then she says abruptly: “You’d better come in for some coffee,” and seconds later I’m following her down the street to her flat.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” says Susanne, closing the front door behind us. “No shag of any kind, and if you start whingeing about being short-changed I’ll belt you. You drink your coffee without being a pain and when I tell you to go you go.”

  I don’t bother to reply. I just pad along behind her and sit down, good as gold, at the kitchen table. I can cope with Susanne being combative. That’s everyday stuff. What worries me is Susanne lecturing me earnestly in psycho-babble
and shouting me down with pregnant pauses.

  She makes coffee. Both of us opt to drink it black. When she finally sits down opposite me she wastes no more time but says in her flattest voice: “You realise, of course, that Elizabeth and Norah still fuck each other.”

  I’ve been expecting some anti-Elizabeth propaganda so I’m not too surprised by this remark. “No, they don’t,” I snap. “Elizabeth’s made herself very clear about that. Since their fling in the sixties they’ve been just good friends.”

  “She’s bullshitting you. Why do you think she’s over at Norah’s every weekend? Because when the girls are out on the town, she and Norah and those bloody chihuahuas are making it in the master bedroom!”

  I’m disgusted by the bitchiness of this lie. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  I feel nothing for three seconds. Then I want to fall off my chair. But I can’t. I’m frozen to it. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I say. When I worked for Norah I was dumped by a punter one Saturday evening and when I got back early I heard the noises. So I crept up the stairs and watched through the hinges of the bedroom door. They hadn’t even bothered to close it.”

  “Okay—okay, but this was before I arrived on the scene, right? I mean, maybe they got together once for old time’s sake but Elizabeth’s not a lesbian, there’s no way she could be seriously interested in—” I stop. I’ve suddenly realised I sound like Gil Tucker, refusing to believe I’m straight.

  Meanwhile Susanne’s saying: “Don’t be dumb, Elizabeth’s beyond all that, she’s not interested in being limited by any kind of sex category, she’d screw anything she fancied—oh, wake up, pinhead, wake up! This is a woman who has photos in her bathroom of people doing things with turds, for God’s sake—”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You want the truth? You big enough to take it? Or are you just going to go on bleating about how much Elizabeth cares for you?”

  “I—”

  “Okay, let me tell it like it is. Elizabeth’s psycho, Gavin. She’s not running around with an axe and a nutso look, like in films, and you could talk to her for a long time before you realised something was off, but once the penny drops it’s as if you see the word PSYCHO tattooed on her forehead. Know what I mean? No, you don’t, do you—I’ll have to spell it out. Basically she doesn’t relate to people—relate normally, I mean. She understands the way they work but she’s not emotionally into people, no way, she just uses them to make herself feel good. Elizabeth doesn’t get her best kicks from sex—sex for her is just a fun way of passing the time, like watching game shows on telly. What turns her on— really, really turns her on—is power. That’s why she’s into businesses where she can OD on domination—sex groups, psychic healing, bogus counselling—yeah, you notice that when I had my breakdown and she wanted to make sure I got my head together properly she didn’t attempt to treat me herself! Oh no! She wanted me up and running as soon as possible so that she could start a new line in domination by training me to be her PA. You name it, she’ll try and dominate it: escort girls, a pretty-boy prostitute, a slimeball locksmith, even an old friend like Norah, poor cow, who’s been in love with her for years—”