by Jessie Keane
When the money got really short, she did it; one night a stranger walked by and paused and asked how much for full sex. She thought of a figure, doubled it, and then she went into the alley with him and did the thing. It didn’t hurt, not like when Dad had done it the first time, and the stranger was worried he’d catch something off her so he wore a Johnny, so no worries about pregnancy and little dead bastards.
It was easy, really. She just took her mind off somewhere else while it happened, that was all. Easy. Or at least it was – until Gregor White, the tall man with the scar and the fancy shoes, came back.
‘My girls been watching you, bitch,’ he said, nudging her with his toe. His shoes were clearly expensive, with fancy metal toecaps beaten into the shape of two eagles. He was very flashy in his dress, doing well out of what his girls brought in. Girls! Most of them were old enough to be grandmothers. Dolly felt sorry for them, being at the mercy not only of punters but also this creep. Men? They were all arseholes and she detested them.
‘So?’ asked Dolly.
‘So you shove off now,’ he said, leaning into her.
‘Or what?’ asked Dolly.
The first punch knocked out one of her teeth. The second sent her sprawling sideways on to the pavement and she lay there, winded, shocked beyond words, as the fancy shoes with their metal tips battered her legs. She curled into a ball to try to protect herself, but he was in a fury and he kept kicking at her calves and thighs until she felt herself blacking out with the pain. The world faded, and that was good; that was a mercy.
34
‘She’ll be all right in a sec,’ a female voice was saying. ‘Gordon Bennett, poor little tart! Who’d do a thing like that? There’ll be a few scars to show for this on those legs. She’s only a kid.’
Dolly didn’t open her eyes. One eye hurt too much to do that, anyway. And she was frightened. Who knew what awaited her when she actually faced it? Coppers or something, wanting to take her straight home? Who knew? She couldn’t go back there. She wouldn’t.
‘How old you reckon she is then, Celia?’ asked another female voice.
‘God, I dunno. Twelve, thirteen? Poor mare.’
‘We’ll wait downstairs,’ said a male voice.
‘Thanks, Darren. You are a love.’
Dolly stiffened. Her face where he’d punched her felt like it was on fire, her legs hurt like a bastard and the slightest movement sent it all dancing around, jittering along her damaged nerve-endings, the pain, the anguish. She heard the door open and close. She was lying on a bed, she could feel it soft beneath her. Over the past weeks she’d got used to pavements. Stone-hard, cold, painful on the joints; she’d staggered about during the day like an old woman. She knew it would wreck her health eventually, sleeping out rough like that.
There was a gentle hand smoothing her brow, but she didn’t dare open her eyes, just in case she was mistaken and the man remained there, inside the room, in case it was a trick and the woman was in on it.
Mum had been in on it. Mum had let Dad hurt her. So why not this one?
No. Safer to keep her eyes closed, play possum. When she got her chance, she’d creep out, get away.
‘You awake there, girly?’ asked a voice. Female. Soft.
But she didn’t answer.
Safer that way.
But where would she go this time?
The answer to that was easy. Another street, another part of town. Keep out of the way of the prossies and their pimps. She was learning, and learning fast.
‘Girly? You there?’ The voice was light, teasing.
Dolly kept still. Safer.
When at last she was sure the woman was gone from the room, she opened her eyes. Or one of them, anyway. She lifted a hand to her face and felt the swelling there, the soreness. When she lifted her arm, it hurt. Everything hurt, but her legs were the worst. Groaning, she hauled herself up in the bed and looked down. There was a bandage around her left leg, on the calf, and a huge red-spotted plaster on her right thigh.
She was in a bedroom, in a double bed with lace on the pillowslips. There were pink cabbage roses on the walls, and some nice furniture. She could see herself reflected in the big triple mirrors on the dressing table, where there were brushes and combs, perfumes and make-up.
Jesus! She stared at herself. Her left eye was black and swollen shut. Her lip was split where the pimp had knocked her tooth out. She probed the gap with her tongue – it was quite far back in her mouth; it wouldn’t look too bad if she didn’t grin like a loon, and she had little reason to grin.
Then to her shock the door swung open. She flinched and strained back against the pillows, but it wasn’t a man. It was the dark-haired woman with the twinkling eyes and fancy fag holder, the one who had passed her so often out on the street. She was wearing a red wool skirt suit this time. She smiled to see Dolly sitting up.
‘All right then?’ she asked, and stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.
Dolly said nothing.
The woman walked over and stood beside the bed. ‘Blimey, you ain’t half been in the wars,’ she said. ‘What was it, then? One of them nasty bastards, them pimps?’
Dolly said nothing.
‘Beat you up bloody good, didn’t he. Was that it?’
Slowly, Dolly nodded. It hurt. She winced.
‘You know his name? Could you point him out?’ asked Celia.
But that might mean more trouble. Dolly kept quiet.
‘I’ll bring you up some aspirin in a second,’ said the woman. ‘I’m Celia. Celia Bailey. What’s your name then, girly?’
Dolly only stared at her.
‘You got a name?’ persisted the woman. ‘Come on, what’s up? Cat got your tongue?’
‘Dolly,’ said Dolly slowly. It hurt to speak.
The woman’s face lit in a smile. ‘Dolly! Well that’s nice. We thought we might have to cart you off to the hospital first off when I found you, but Darren carried you up here and I had a look at you and I think you’re going to be just fine. Nothing broken. Not too much damage. You might have a small scar or two on them pins, but I think you got off pretty light really.’
Dolly was going to be out of here the minute she could get on to her feet. You didn’t trust people, you couldn’t even trust family. She expected attack at any moment; she’d got used to that.
‘D’you know who did this? Can you give us a name? Describe this person?’
Gregor White with his eagle-tipped shoes.
But Dolly wasn’t going to tell. Telling would bring retribution, Dad had always told her that. So she shook her head, then winced because it hurt so much.
‘Never mind. But if you do think of anything, at any time, you tell me, OK?’
Dolly nodded again. She wouldn’t.
‘I bet you’d like a cup of char, wouldn’t you?’ asked Celia.
Slowly, painfully, Dolly nodded a third time.
‘I’ll bring you some cake and a cuppa, wash down the pills.’ Celia patted Dolly’s arm, very gently. ‘Don’t you worry. You’re safe now.’
It was all lies; Dolly knew it.
35
For a few days Dolly felt too ill to move, much less leave. So she stayed. And Celia breezed in and out of her room asking questions about where Dolly had come from, where were her parents? Dolly didn’t tell her in case Celia thought it would be a good idea to ship her back home. She missed quiet little Sar, dour prim Nigel and impetuous Dicky – even sickly Sandy. But she despised her mum for letting things happen to her, horrible things, and her dad? Whenever she thought of him, she wanted to puke.
‘Ah, when you’re ready,’ Celia would say, very relaxed, and then she would spoon-feed Dolly morsels of food just like she was a baby, dabbing her chin with a napkin when she was done, and Dolly would sleep and dream of nothing.
Only the noises disturbed her. The doorbell seemed to ring constantly, day and night. And there were always people coming up and down the stairs, bedroom doors closing, peop
le giggling and sighing and moaning, and the headboard in the next room kept thumping against the wall.
Cocooned under the covers while her cuts and bruises healed, Dolly decided to close her mind to it all. She could do that. It was better here than on the streets, that was for sure. Days turned into weeks, and she was able to get up, get dressed. Celia had seen to cleaning her clothes for her, and although the mirror in the bedroom told her that her face still looked a fright, all yellow and purple with bruising, she could open both eyes properly now. She brushed out her short mousy hair, which was straight as a yard of pump water, and went downstairs into the hall. She could hear voices.
Dolly went along the hall and opened the door at the end of it. The volume of the chatter shot up and she was confronted by a collection of girls – there was one boy among them – all sipping tea and smoking fags. The air in the room was blue, warm and fuggy. Conversation stopped short as Dolly appeared there.
‘Oh, hello, Dolly love,’ said Celia, getting to her feet. ‘Come and join our merry little band, eh? Tea, ducky?’
Dolly nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re looking a bit better now,’ said Celia, as she went and boiled up more water. Slapping the kettle on the hob, she turned to the room at large and said: ‘I told you, didn’t I? One of those bastard pimps beat her up, poor kid.’
There were murmurs and ‘Ohs’ all round the room.
‘Here’s a seat,’ said the handsome blond boy, standing up and grabbing another chair, pulling it into the table beside his own. ‘Come and sit down, lovey.’
So this was Celia’s family, thought Dolly. They seemed a nice bunch; friendly. She sat down beside the boy.
‘I’m Darren,’ he said, and held out a soft, slender hand. ‘Glad you’re better.’
‘Dolly,’ she said, and shook it.
‘This is Ellie,’ said Darren, pointing to a fattish brunette across the table.
‘She does the chubby chasers,’ said a hard-eyed blonde.
Ellie paused with her hand in the biscuit tin. Her face reddened. ‘Oh, very fucking funny,’ she said.
Dolly didn’t have a clue what a chubby chaser was.
‘And that’s Aretha.’ Darren indicated a gorgeous black dreadlocked woman at the far end of the table. ‘That’s Cindy . . .’ That was the hard-eyed blonde. ‘And that’s Tabs. Tabs was a vivid redhead.
Dolly nodded to all of them to be polite, but these couldn’t be Celia’s family, could they? Aretha was black. Tabs was red-haired. Darren himself was blond and so was Cindy. There was no family resemblance between Celia and any one of these people – not even Ellie, who at least shared the same hair colour. Dolly’s own family looked somewhat alike, with puggish noses, round faces, and blondish or mousy hair. They were none of them beauties, nor ever would be, but you could see at a glance that they were kin. These people clearly weren’t.
Well, she thought as Celia placed tea and biscuits in front of her, it was none of her business. And before long, she’d be out of here anyway, it wouldn’t matter. She’d be back on the streets. Then she thought of the pimp who’d beaten her up, and shuddered. She’d have to find another spot to work. That was all. Make sure she didn’t fall foul of him again.
‘Nice to see you up,’ said Celia, sitting down at the table and daintily tapping the ash off her cigarette into a glass ashtray with a Capstan logo on the side of it. Dolly watched her, fascinated. With her sharp suits, fully made-up face, scarlet fingernails and ivory fag holder, Celia certainly had style.
The front doorbell rang, and Tabs the redhead went to answer it. When Dolly heard a man’s voice out there, she thought of her dad. Maybe he was looking for her. She felt sick with fear. The kitchen door opened and she jumped as if she’d been shot. Aware of Celia watching her, she picked up her teacup with a shaking hand, and drank.
Tabs poked her head around the door. ‘Customer for Aretha,’ she said, and the beautiful black woman uncurled her six-foot length from her chair with a grin.
‘Some of us, we just so in demand,’ she purred, and headed out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Cindy.
Tabs sat back down.
Customer? thought Dolly. She heard people going up the stairs, heard a door open and close overhead. No one else seemed to be taking any notice. The chatter resumed. She picked up a biscuit and bit into it and let the warmth and the camaraderie in the kitchen wash over her. It was comforting, somehow. Not like home. Presently Darren stretched and said he’d better make tracks, and Cindy and Tabs said they were off to the shops. Celia said she was expecting Billy, so would Ellie see Dolly back up to her room?
There was another knock on the front door when Ellie and Dolly were out in the hall heading for the stairs. Ellie let in a vacant-looking man in a deerstalker hat, clutching a briefcase.
‘Hiya, Billy,’ she said, and he walked past her without a word.
‘You think you’ll be staying on?’ asked Ellie as they went up the stairs and stopped outside Dolly’s bedroom door.
‘Nah,’ said Dolly. She could hear a strange sound coming from the room next door to hers. Like someone being beaten or whipped, she thought. Only it couldn’t be. Could it? Surely Celia wouldn’t allow anything cruel to go on, not in her house? Maybe she’d been wrong about Celia, though. Maybe the streets would be safer after all.
‘That . . . noise,’ she said to Ellie.
‘Yeah? What about it?’
‘Do you think we ought to help . . . ?’
‘Help Aretha?’ Ellie laughed out loud. ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. Aretha can handle herself, no bother. It’s the client that’s in trouble, not her.’
‘What?’ Dolly stared in bewilderment. Aretha was beating someone up? But why?
Ellie rolled her eyes. ‘Jesus, you’re a little innocent, ain’t you? Look, Aretha’s a dominatrix. Do you know what that means?’
Dolly shook her head.
‘It means she beats the crap out of the customers because that’s what they want her to do. They love it.’
‘Customers?’
‘Yeah, customers.’ Ellie lightly tweaked Dolly’s nose. ‘This is a knocking shop.’
When Dolly still looked blank, Ellie raised her eyebrows and puffed out a sigh. ‘A fuck-shop. Full of whores. Got it now?’
36
Dolly’s first instinct was to run. Ellie’s words shocked her, but she understood them. She understood plenty now. Ellie meant that people were doing the man-and-woman thing right here, under this roof. Money was changing hands for services provided. And how long would it be before she got dragged into it, made to do it with some bastard she didn’t want?
She seriously thought about it, just upping and getting gone. But over the weeks that followed, Celia made no demands. She continued to be kind to her, and seemed perfectly willing to go on providing bed and board. And the place was happy. Despite all the comings and goings, despite what really went on here, the place was orderly, neat, run on a strictly businesslike footing.
No one hurt her. Celia took her up West, bought little bits and pieces for her, fussed over her in a way that Mum had never done. She’d missed that, and had never realized it until now. But Celia had a hard side to her too; she could be firm with the girls and tough with the punters. One day Dolly walked into the kitchen when Celia was sitting at the table having tea and biscuits with that bloke ‘Billy’, who looked like a dimwit in his deerstalker, his briefcase on his lap like a shield against the world.
Now she saw Celia’s tougher side. Celia’s face hardened when she saw Dolly standing there. She stubbed out her cigarette in the Capstan ashtray and hissed out a stream of smoke, while giving Dolly a look.
‘Give us a fucking mo, will you, Doll?’ she snapped. ‘Clear off for a second, OK? And stick the bloody wood in the hole.’
Surprised, Dolly backed out of the kitchen and closed the door. She went through to the empty front room. Her mother had a front room a bit like th
is, the best furnished room in the house but mostly unused.
Dolly sat on a plush sofa and thought of Mum. That fucking front room at home had never been used, to be honest. For years Mum hadn’t behaved as a true mother should. Mum had just sat in the kitchen and stared at the floor, and let Dolly be picked on by her dad. Her heart twisted with sadness as she thought of little Sand, and Nige and Dick, and quiet, obedient Sarah, and wondered what was happening with them these days.
Suddenly, the door opened and Celia stood there.
‘There you are! He’s gone now, you can come in the kitchen, all right?’
Celia led the way into the kitchen and Dolly followed. Celia started putting used cups in the sink and getting out fresh ones. She put the kettle on to boil. Then she turned and smiled at Dolly.
‘That was Billy,’ she said. ‘Sorry, did I snap at you? Only he’s very important, Billy.’
Dolly was bewildered by this statement. The long-faced git looked like an idiot, how could he be important?
While the kettle boiled, Celia leaned back against the worktop, folded her arms and looked at Dolly. ‘We pay up to the Delaneys, Dolly. Do you understand what that means?’
Dolly shook her head.
‘It means they take a slice off the top of what I bring into the house with my girls and Darren,’ said Celia. ‘And in return, they keep me and my lot safe.’
‘Billy works for them, does he?’ asked Dolly.
‘Billy? Nah.’ Celia spooned tea into the pot and poured the water on. ‘Billy works for the Carter boys, but Billy’s been coming round here ever since he was little and Billy don’t break his habits. Of course, there’s bad blood between the Carters and the Delaneys, and it’s getting worse all the time, but Tory Delaney says it’s OK, so everyone makes an exception for Billy. He’s a bit simple, poor duck. There but for the grace of God go all of us, that’s what I say.’