Ben

by Cody Young

  “Don’t say it.”

  But Ben said it. “I could talk to the social services.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  The boy scowled, and looked at Layla for reassurance.

  “It’s alright, Bradley, he won’t do it.”

  So Ben confirmed this. “As you wish.”

  The boy, Bradley, looked visibly relieved.

  Ben tried a different tack. “There are several agencies that can help.” He picked up two pamphlets that were lying ready on his desk. One about a ‘women’s collective’ that promised to help ex-prostitutes. Another from a women’s refuge. He handed them to Layla.

  “Those old biddies down there can’t help me,” she said. She flashed her big, grey eyes at him, almost angrily. “They can’t help anyone from the Rookeries. It’s a different world in there.”

  Ben nodded. “Yes. I’m beginning to believe it.”

  The girl looked down at the pamphlets as if the very sight of them offended her. Like they represented some kind of betrayal. When she looked back up at Ben, he saw that her lovely grey eyes were brimming with tears.

  Tears that affected him, deeply. “I’m sorry, Layla, I’m not sure what you expect me to do…”

  Suddenly the girl looked very sad and lonely. She put the pamphlets back on the corner of his desk.

  “Please take them with you,” Ben said, and handed the pamphlets back to her.

  But she shook her head and with tears starting to fall, she tore the pamphlets in two and dropped them into his waste paper bin. “I don’t understand. It seemed like you really wanted to help me on Monday.”

  He hesitated. Not sure what to reply. “Of course I want to help. I’m your doctor…”

  She looked very melancholy. “I think you can only delay what’s going to happen to me. But thank you, all the same.” She called to the baby. “Come on Jayden, we’re going home now.”

  Feeling like he’d failed, Ben picked up the baby for her, and caught sight of something moving in the fine, soft hair on the child’s fragile head. “The baby’s got head lice, I’m afraid.”

  “I know.”

  “You can get treatment for it from the chemist,” he said. “Without prescription.”

  “Yes. But it costs money. I’m doing my best with vinegar and washing-up liquid.”

  “I don’t think vinegar and washing-up liquid are all that effective.”

  She glanced up at him, defensively. “Well, that’s what I’ve got.”

  He was silent for a moment. There were so many things about her world that he didn’t understand. “I’m going to need to think about …your situation.”

  She nodded and got up to go. Then suddenly, she blurted, “Why did you do it? Why did you lie to protect me on Monday?”

  Inside, he panicked in search of better words. “It seemed like the right thing to do. And I felt very…concerned about you.”

  She looked at him, a direct, disconcerting look. “Do you like me, doctor?”

  He knew the answer to that. Yes, Layla, I like you. But he had to deny it. Lie to her, Ben. Lie to her. Seconds ticked past and he didn’t deny it, and perhaps that told her the truth. “Um. It’s essential that we keep this professional. Isn’t it?”

  There was no hero worship in her eyes when she left.

  He sat with his head in his hands in his empty consulting room. Minutes ticked past. Eventually there was a knock on the door and Ravi put his head into the room. “Are you alright, doctor?”

  “Of course I'm alright.”

  “Not used to the pace, yet, are you?”

  “It’s not the pace. It’s the people,” Ben said quietly. But that wasn’t true. None of the others made him feel like she did. She was unique.

  Ravi smiled. “You can do it. We’ve got to keep getting through them, that’s all. Diagnose and sign the script, those are the only two things you need to do, remember?”

  Yes. But they weren’t the only things he wanted to do.

  Phone Call

  In his lunch hour, Ben closed the door of the consulting room and phoned Barrymore, the doctor who went to Edinburgh. He’d spent eight years in this job. He must know how things tick.

  “I need a crash course in how things work at the Rookeries,” Ben explained.

  The Scottish doctor laughed. “You should have looked into that before you took the job, sonny.”

  “I thought I had. I wanted to work in a deprived area. I want to make a difference. But someone has come to see me with a problem I know nothing about.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “I think it’s a trafficking situation.”

  “Then it’s not your department, doctor. You deal with medical issues. Not social problems.”

  “Is that what you did. Ignored them?”

  “The social problems? Yes. I’d advise you to do the same.”

  “But, one of my patients.... well, she begged me to help her. Some thug who isn’t even related to her is demanding that I test her for diseases she hasn’t got, so that she can start working as a prostitute.”

  “And you felt sorry for this girl?” Barrymore said, with a hint of Scottish pity in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Pity is a luxury you can’t afford if you work with people from the Rookeries. If you can’t hack the job, doctor, then serve your time and apply for a transfer.”

  Ben sighed. “I’ve only just arrived. And I asked you to tell me how things work at the Rookeries. Please, can you do that?”

  Barrymore also made an impatient sound – but he seemed to realize that he wasn’t going to get Ben off the phone until he’d told him something. “The currency there isn’t money. It’s drugs and sex. And it’s accommodation, too. You can’t imagine how valuable a couch or a bed in central London could be to people who don’t have a salary like yours, doctor. The tenants at the Rookeries have few things to offer anybody, except their bodies, their souls, and a place to lie down and sleep off their excesses.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “I tried to advise her – within the limits of my professionalism, of course. I gave her a pamphlet.”

  “Aye. I’m sure she’ll find that very useful.”

  “She tore it up.”

  The Scottish doctor laughed. “I like her spirit.”

  “So did I.”

  “Young man, you’re getting in over your head. A girl like that, she can’t choose her protector. But if she’s left vulnerable for any length of time at the Rookeries, someone will choose her. They’ll take her and they’ll groom her, and they’ll sell her. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  “There has to be,” Ben breathed.

  “Am I sensing that your professionalism is slipping?”

  “No. No. I wouldn’t do anything unethical, of course.”

  “Good, good. Now go home and sleep on it. And try to be their doctor tomorrow – they already have plenty of social workers.”

  “I was told the social workers won’t go in there. Not into that estate.”

  “That could be true. My wife’s cooking herring for tea, son. I need to bid you goodbye.”

  Ben put the phone down with a heavy heart.

  * * *

  Layla cried all afternoon. Her brother Bradley was worried about her. Tried to comfort her. Made her a mug of tea with the teabag still in it. She thanked him and took it and said he was kind, and then she cried into the tea. She hardly noticed that the baby was crying, too. He was hungry and tired and she couldn’t find the energy to pick him up, even. Bradley went and got him – struggling with the heavy child in his arms. He brought the baby over to Layla and she looked at him, with her lids heavy and swollen from feeling so upset. Even the baby stared at her, curious about all the sobbing and the tears. He stretched out his chubby little arms and tried to touch her face.

  “It’s nothing, Jaydee. Nothing for you to worry about. It’s grown up stuff.”

  “I think he’s hun
gry,” said Bradley. “It’s past four o’clock and he ain’t had no lunch.”

  Layla felt terrible for neglecting him like that. The baby couldn’t speak. Couldn’t tell her what he needed or wanted. But he waved his arms very enthusiastically when she opened two little cans of baby food for him.

  She put the cans on the table with a clean spoon. Then she fastened a bib around the baby’s chubby neck. “Yes, it all seems so simple now. Eat, drink, sleep. But you wait a few years and you’ll find out. Things aren’t so nice once you get a bit older.”

  She sighed. Her eighteenth birthday was only days away. Just a few days left. And then…

  No. She wouldn’t think about it. She would try to hold things together as long as she could, and while she was holding on, she’d hope for a miracle.

  “Well, Jayden. What have we got here?” She looked at the labels on the baby food. “Oh, you lucky boy. On the menu today is ‘hearty beef stew’ and ‘apricots and custard’. But I have to tell you they’re both the same colour. Bright 1970s orange. Try them and tell me which is which.”

  Then she started spooning the food into the child. He was a messy eater – half of it seemed to fall out of his mouth after every spoonful, and she had to stop and clean him up with his bib every few minutes. At first, concentrating on someone else’s needs took her mind off her troubles. Put the spoon in the food. Put the spoon in the baby’s mouth, baby spits out the food, mop him up and start again. And as she fell into the rhythm of it the tears began to fall once more.

  The doctor. He’d seemed like a bright ray of hope to her on Monday. She’d gone to bed that night with a crazy lightness in her heart. He’d shown so clearly that he was on her side. He’d seen through Ray. He’d come up with that brilliant plan to get more time with her. And all for what – to give her a couple of pamphlets and a lecture about head lice. He was as bad as all the rest of them – although unlike the rest of them, he looked like an Italian statue. But like an Italian statue, he was made of stone. Or cold, heartless marble. And even though he’d spent half the interview gazing at the place where he’d put his stethoscope last time, he had no intention of crossing any kind of boundary to actually say something real, or do something real.

  And she had made the mistake of thinking that he would – and why? No sane reason. There was no reason why he should help her. She’d only dreamed he would because he was her last hope.

  Her brother came in, and saw her crying. Again. “Come on, sis. Why are you so sad?”

  “I had an impossible dream, Bradley. You’re too young to understand.”

  “Oh. That stupid doctor, right? You wanted him to ask you out.”

  Decision

  Ben went home to his flat in Richmond, where he had lived alone for almost a year.

  He found a bottle of Scotch with a modest amount left in it. He poured himself a glass of whisky – neat – no ice. And drank it in one go. He poured another. Drank that. Poured a third. Until all the whisky in the bottle was gone.

  When there wasn’t any left, he threw his empty whisky glass against the wall. And then, feeling worried that the cleaner would think badly of him, he looked for the dustpan and brush and attempted to clean it up. Not easy, in a state of inebriation. He was careless and ended up with a small sliver of glass in his finger. He had to stop and pull it out – feeling not much pain but quite a lot of irritation. He washed the blood off under the kitchen tap and watched as it swirled away with the water. He applied a very small plaster with almost surgical precision and then finished clearing up the broken glass.

  He went into his bedroom, and found a shoebox in the back of his wardrobe. He took it over to the bed, lay down and emptied it out. Old ID cards from med school, old letters and glowing school reports, a bear wearing a mortar board that he’d been given when he graduated. That kind of thing. Then he found what he was looking for. A photograph. Of Becky. The girl he thought he’d been in love with, a long time ago. She’d appealed for help too, and he hadn’t known what to do then, either. He’d trained for ten years to help people, but when it came to the people he wanted to care about, he was useless. Utterly useless. He blinked hot tears out of his eyes and felt very sorry for himself.

  That’s when it hit him. He’d found her. Oh, hell yeah, he’d found her. Another Becky. A girl in trouble. A damsel in distress. And the rules hadn’t changed – not in the slightest. If he chose to help her, he would be putting everything he had ever worked for at risk. If he chose not to help her, he would have to live with the regrets, like he had done with Becky. For five long years he’d lived with his mistakes. He’d watched Becky fall for another man – the man who had risked everything to help her. He’d witnessed their happiness. He’d watched her get married, the girl who should have been his. Hell, he’d even done a reading at their wedding. And it had cost him, emotionally. Driven him crazy – to see her give herself to a man he was obliged to call his friend.

  But this time it would be worse. Layla - turned into a common prostitute. Layla’s beautiful pale skin, marred by men who used her, beat her, raped her. Layla, living a life like that. A life of debauchery and pain, with only alcohol and drugs to soften it for her. Oh, no, he couldn’t watch that.

  He’d found her, or she had found him.

  And this time, it would be different. He put the photograph in his wallet where he used to carry it, years ago, when he was obsessed by Becky. It was like a talisman, a reminder. He put the other stuff back in the shoebox and closed the lid. He got up. Drank water and took some aspirin. Stripped off his clothes and had a shower. He ought to be sleeping, but there was work to do. The Rookeries came alive at night. He’d go there and find out how things ticked. He knew that any action he took to help Layla made him vulnerable to all kinds of accusations. But that couldn’t be helped. Because this time, he wasn’t going to be sensible. This time, he was going to throw caution to the wind.

  * * *

  Ben walked into the Fizz Club and bought himself a drink at the bar. He’d been there less than ten minutes before a young woman in a skimpy halter-neck top offered to show him a good time. He shook his head and she waved her arm to someone standing in the shadows behind the sound system. Thirty seconds later a slender young man, also in a halter-neck top, made a very similar offer. Ben sighed, and shook his head. The man pouted as if he’d said something rude.

  Ben stayed close to the bar as if he could leap over and hide on the other side if it got any worse. He tried to look preoccupied with his rum and coke, stabbing the ice to make it melt quicker. He thought he’d die if anyone from the medical centre saw him in a place like this.

  "Hello, doctor.”

  The words came from a man so black that at first he seemed to be a set of disembodied white teeth coming towards Ben in the darkness. The barman, polishing a wineglass on a cloth as white as his teeth, nodded politely as he came nearer. When the blue light coming from the dance floor caught the angles of his ebony face, Ben recognised him. He’d come into the clinic today. For epilepsy medication. The man smiled – showing the impressive glow-in-the-dark teeth. “I didn’t expect to see you here"

  Ben sighed. “I’m not supposed to talk to my patients.”

  “I know,” said the barman. He finished buffing the glass and reached up to hang it with the others in a rack above his head. “But some rules are meant to be broken. This morning, I consulted you in a professional capacity, and this evening, I am the consultant and you are the client. So, what do you need? What’s your poison?”

  “I’ve got a drink, thanks,” Ben swirled the remains of his rum and coke.

  “Yes. But that’s not what you came in for, is it?”

  “No.”

  “And Mandy and Sandy didn’t tempt you,” said the barman.

  Ben glanced at the girl in the halter-neck top, who was now wrapped around a fat, bald man as if she wanted to be his boa constrictor. He rolled his eyes.

  “So what are you looking for, doctor?”

  Ther
e was a pause. Ben knew it would be dangerous to venture further into the murky waters of self-disclosure. “Nothing, really.”

  “Are you looking for something sweet?” said the barman, watching Ben’s face closely. “I have a nice bottle of Cointreau up here.”

  “Tempting, but not tonight, thanks.”

  “Maybe you’d like something even sweeter?” The barman smiled, pleasantly. “A gentleman like you only comes into a place like this if he’s looking for something.”

  Ben frowned. The questions were getting a bit close to home.

  The barman leaned forward. “Look, doctor. How can I help you if you won’t tell me what your problem is? You’re not a cop. You’re not a debt-collector. And you don’t look like a drug addict. Tell me your symptoms and I’ll fetch you some medicine.”

  Ben sighed. And gave up. “Do you know a girl called Layla?”

  “Layla – like the song?” the barman said, slowly. He reached for another glass to polish.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Beautiful name. I’m sure I’d remember a name like that.”

  “Well, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No. No Layla here.”

  Not yet. Ben shifted his focus, slightly. “Do you know a man called Ray Leach?”

  The barman looked as if he was thinking for a moment and then shook his head. “No, that name means nothing to me, either.”

  “You see, I’m here because I was told he was a friend of Mr Birch.”

  Now that name got a reaction. Mr Birch. The whites of the barman’s eyes flared wide, and he glanced uneasily towards the door, like Mr. Birch might be standing there now. “Mr Birch has a great many friends. Ray may be one of them.”

  “I should imagine he’s got a few enemies, too,” said Ben. “Mr Birch.”

  “Yes.” The barman was cagey now. Cautious. “Tell me doctor, would you consider yourself to be one of Mr. Birch’s friends, or one of his enemies?”