by Ray Connolly
She stared bleakly down the road in the direction of the park for some three or four minutes before turning back into the room. Perhaps he would come back she told herself at first, but deep inside she knew he would not; and deeper inside she prayed he would not. It was better this way. She couldn’t afford the luxury of being in love. She had no time for such complications. It was better for Charlie, too.
She finished her drink — his was still half-full as he had left it. Going into the bathroom she turned on the bathtaps and stared into the steam of the scalding water. The expression on Charlie’s face as she had told him of herself tormented her mind. It had not, as she might have expected, been an expression of moral disgust, or even one of anger that he had been so completely misled. That would have been easier to bear. It was just a crumpled expression of bewilderment.
He had come shyly, tentatively into her home, a giant among the tiny expensive ornaments, looking as though he were walking on eggs. But when he had left it had seemed that he had virtually to drag that heavy, suddenly tired body away from the glistening penthouse.
‘Try to forgive me,’ she has said as his face had dissolved into an ache of confusion.
But he had just sat there and stared at her, making no sound. Then at last with an awkward shuffling of his shoes and a swinging down of his arms he had stuffed his hands into his pockets. And, hardly looking at her, he had pulled himself to his feet, and, with his fingers frozen in cramped white knots, he had dragged himself back towards the door.
‘These holiday things …’ he had said, still without looking at her, ‘… just gigs really, aren’t they? I suppose I ought to know that at my age.’
But even as he had said his last line, his voice had broken in mid-sentence, and the words had been gulped inside himself as he had nodded a goodbye, and tried a baleful little smile. Then with a theatrical movement of the wrist which was meant to imply a fatalism she knew he was not feeling he had turned and walked out of the flat.
The bath water was hot as Kate stepped into it, but she didn’t care. She lay back and pushed her head under the water until it seemed that her ears and her brain were blocked from the world about her. For a long while she stayed this way, eyes closed, her body stretched out, long and slim and brown against the powder blue of the bath enamel.
At last she pulled her head from the burning water and sat up. Her skin was inflamed from the heat of the water. She looked down at herself without affection, rather as another woman might regard a familiar piece of clothing. She had grown up to know that she was beautiful, that her looks set her apart from other girls, and that her body made her a special object of desire. She thought again of Charlie: putty-faced Charlie who had made her laugh and demanded nothing in return. She has not been lying when she said she loved him, although she knew that he would never believe her. Why should he?
At six o’clock she was startled out of her contemplations by two sudden sharp taps on the door. She knew from the sound and weight of the knocker falling on its bronze plate who to expect. Climbing without haste from the water she pulled a long towelling hooded gown around herself and padded out into the hall.
Before she reached the front door there was a second impatient tapping. She undid the lock.
‘Don’t hurry yourself, will you?’ A broad, fair-haired man with a nose flattened at the bridge and upturning at the end walked past her and into the flat. If Charlie had been there he would have recognized him from Taormina. Kate knew him as Daley the messenger, Daley the minder. He was accompanied by two other men. They went everywhere with him: they were Keith and Big Willie.
The three men walked uninvited into the living-room while Kate closed the door behind them.
‘Hello! What’s this then?’ Daley had noticed at once the two glasses standing on the glass-topped table. ‘Been moonlighting a bit, have we? A bit on the side?’ He looked towards her for an answer, but she returned his gaze without expression. He was not deterred. Suddenly he left the room and she heard him opening the doors to the bedroom and then the bathroom. Keith and Big Willie smirked at each other. Kate had never heard them speak.
After a moment Daley was back: ‘All right, girl, who was he then?’
‘It doesn’t concern you.’
‘Don’t be silly. Who was he, and what did you get out of it? You might as well tell me because you know I’ll find out sooner or later.’
Kate looked at him. He was probably right. The hall porter would be able to give a very good description of Charlie, who Daley would no doubt be able to find eventually. After all, Charlie had found her. She considered Daley’s face before she answered. Easy living had made it pudgy and bloated, but he was still an athletic and strong man. He frightened her. But she had to protect Charlie. The best way was the most straightforward.
‘That man in Taormina …’ she said. ‘You told me you didn’t hurt him.’
‘Has he been here? We should have done his knee caps, too, shouldn’t we, lads?’
His assistants smiled their agreement.
‘You told me you hadn’t touched him. You promised me.’
‘And you promised Sarah that you’d keep that lily-white expensive little body of yours to yourself.’
‘I kept my promise. You didn’t,’ she said.
Daley gazed at her for a few seconds as though trying to weigh up the truth of what she was saying: ‘You know, I do believe she’s being straight,’ he said, addressing his audience. ‘Isn’t that nice?’
‘You know I’m telling the truth. Why did you have to hurt him?’
Daley ignored the question: ‘What did he want?’ he asked.
She answered obliquely: ‘He won’t come again.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure. He won’t ever want to see me again.’
‘You told him?’
Kate nodded.
Daley smiled, showing large gold fillings at the back of his mouth: ‘Oh, I see. Put him off the goods, did you? Didn’t fancy you when he found out that you weren’t the princess he thought you were. Well, I can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t fancy you either knowing all the dirty, greasy little buggers who’ve been up you.’
He looked at Keith and Big Willie to see how much his vulgarity was appreciated. They didn’t disappoint him.
Kate didn’t reply. She had learned early that being insulted by men like Daley was part of the job. She could live with it.
She watched as he walked to the cocktail cabinet, opened it, and helped himself to a large vodka and tomato juice. He did not offer her or the other two men a drink. They knew their place.
‘Why did you have to hurt him?’ she repeated her question.
‘Let’s say Keith and Big Willie thought he needed a warning. Right, lads?’
The other two nodded a grimacing assent.
‘You helped?’ asked Kate.
‘Oh, come on, now, you know I don’t like violence!’ Again the smile, and again the gold shone in the back of Daley’s mouth. ‘Anyway, seems like we could have left the warning to you, doesn’t it? Never mind. No harm done. Keeps the boys in shape. You needed the practice, didn’t you, Keith?’ Suddenly he guffawed as though he had made a joke.
She turned away from him: ‘Why did you come?’ she asked at last when he had stopped laughing.
‘Ah, business! It’s about your friend Asid.’
She waited for him to get to the point.
‘You’re doing very nicely there, girl, very nicely indeed. It’s the blonde hair, you know. They all go for a bit of peroxide round the tunnel of love …’
This time Daley had gone too far. With a slashing wave of her arm Kate knocked the drink out of his hand so that it fell down across his suit. Keith and Big Willie stared in astonishment but neither of them moved.
‘For Christ’s sake, look what you’ve done, you stupid cow.’ Daley pulled a silk handkerchief from the pocket of his sharp, Shaftesbury Avenue suit.
‘Tell me what you came for and get out.�
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Daley was now busy, prissily mopping up the tomato stain marks from his trousers. His face was bright with anger. She knew he would never dare touch her without instructions, but that he was angry enough to kill her.
‘Sarah wants you to take him to the Cheltenham,’ he muttered. ‘She’s doing someone a favour. They need the business. And she wants you to make sure that it’s good business.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Kate raised a sardonic eyebrow. Sarah never did anyone any favours. If she was helping launch this new gambling casino, in a London already overflowing with casinos and oil rich gamblers, then there could be no doubt that the Cheltenham would be doing Sarah very big favours in return. ‘You can tell her we’ll be there,’ said Kate watching Daley derisively as he continued fussily to mop at his trousers. She was well-used to Daley’s visits and leering comments, but this had been the first time that she had hit back at him. It was untypical and it was dangerous. Charlie had obviously got to her.
‘Bleeding hooligan …’ muttered Daley, scrubbing away at the stain.
‘Now if that is all you came round for I suggest you leave before you get into any more trouble.’
Daley looked at her in amazement. None of the girls had ever spoken to him like that before. ‘Are you threatening me?’ he asked.
‘I don’t have to. You know that. Messenger boys should be very careful about what they say and what they do.’
For a long moment he looked at her, weighing up the strength of what she had said. Finally he made a little butch shrug of his overdeveloped shoulders and pushed out his pigeon chest in an attitude of toughness and defiance. Keith and Big Willie, identical in their saddle-stitched suits, made similar gestures. But they said nothing.
‘You can tell Sarah we’ll be at the Cheltenham all evening,’ said Kate. And walking through into the hall she opened the front door to let Daley and his boys out.
Chapter Nine
At first Charlie drifted in a state of mental turmoil. He didn’t know what he should think, or even how he should formulate his thoughts. ‘A whore, an exquisite whore, that’s what she was …’ he told himself. But he never got any further. ‘Whore …’ the word played over in his mind repeatedly, but somehow its meaning was now lost to him.
His first reaction had been to get out of that flat and away from her. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t that he was passing any moral judgement. It wasn’t that at all. He had just suddenly felt out of his depth.
For some reason he did not want to go straight home. Perhaps he was half-afraid that Florence might come breezing in with scones or scoldings, or that Marty or Colin would ring up and suggest a drink and a game of darts. He knew that he could face none of them.
On a whim he took a number 27 bus from Notting Hill Gate out towards Kew. Crossing Kew Bridge he entered the Royal Botanical Gardens, where he mused silently between the soaring banks of roses which crowded the senses and anaesthetized the imagination.
It was a damp evening but that did not seem to matter. And when at eight the Gardens were closed to the public he made his way without any discernible purpose along the Riverside Walk, where he watched without interest the various Thames yachtsmen as they tacked up and down in the light summer drizzle.
Now that he knew about her everything that had happened in Taormina suddenly made sense. He had unwittingly tampered with a very expensive piece of womanhood, and her employers, or keepers, had come out to Sicily to reclaim her. Presumably the oily little night-porter had been given a present to divulge the number of Charlie’s room and ignore Charlie’s ringing for help. He was, remembered Charlie, eminently bribeable.
It made a kind of sense, except that everything seemed to be in excess. Charlie didn’t know much about whores — he had never even been with one — but he did know that a great deal of money and energy had been spent getting Kate back to England after she had ignored the telegram and telephone call. But then Kate was something special. He knew that, too.
He decided to walk home because he needed to prolong this moment, this sensation of mental statelessness which he was feeling. The rain had stopped and his suit was drying on him.
It was insanely ironic really, he thought. He had called her a Sunday kind of woman and had been pleased that she was not an easy lay, believing that her reluctance to make love had intimated a finer and more sensitive disposition than that usually displayed by the other women he had met. And like the hypocrite he knew he was, he had given her a spiritual ovation for seemingly being possessed of such self-pride. But really nothing could have been further from the truth. It wasn’t that she prided her body as an untouchable priceless object. Her body was touchable and had a very definite price. He had put her on a pedestal, but for the wrong reasons. Now he wondered whether he felt bitter towards her.
At Shepherd’s Bush island the traffic was too heavy to risk making a dash across the road, so he took the subway. It was badly lit and graffiti-smeared. It was empty other than for himself, and as he crossed under the busy roundabout he was aware of the clatter his leather-soled shoes were making on the tiled floor.
As he was about to leave the subway he noticed a young woman standing in tight white jeans and a T-shirt at the top of the steps. Something was written on the T-shirt, but he could not make out the message. At first she was looking in the direction of the Kensington Hilton, but when she saw him she turned. He climbed the steps towards her. He knew that she was staring at him. As he reached her she smiled, and taking out a packet of cigarettes she stuck one into her mouth, between lips heavy and exaggerated with make-up.
‘You got a light?’ she asked, still smiling into his eyes.
He shook his head: ‘I’m sorry. I don’t smoke.’
She shrugged and pushing her hand into her handbag took out a small Zippo lighter. She lit her cigarette. ‘You haven’t got a car either, have you?’ she said, blowing out the smoke into the night air.
He shook his head. He had stopped walking now and was standing watching her.
She smiled at him: ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a room … about five minutes away.’
He nodded. She was quite a pretty girl. Her hair was badly bleached blonde so that the roots showed, and her mouth a little on the small side, but she had a lithesome figure and a cocky aggressive smile. He guessed that she was about twenty.
‘It’s twenty pounds for an hour … fifty for the night,’ she said.
‘An hour,’ he replied.
‘Okay,’ she said, and pushing an arm through his she began to walk him back down the underpass towards the back streets of Shepherd’s Bush.
Her room was cosy. It was on the ground door of a small Edwardian house off the Goldhawk Road – a nice house actually, not a bit like the brothel Charlie might have imagined. The girl noticed Charlie’s surprise as she led him down the neat hall with its inexpensive but well-swept strip of cord carpet and patterned wallpaper.
‘I’m a lodger here,’ she said. ‘My friend’s husband left her with the kids and the house. They’re upstairs. I help pay the rent. She works in a biscuit factory.’
She was so matter of fact about everything, thought Charlie. So businesslike. Could Kate be like this?
Very quietly he entered her room and closed the door on the rest of the house and its sleeping children.
‘Some music?’ asked the girl, putting on a light, the lamp of which was shrouded with a red scarf giving the room a warm glow.
‘Whatever you like,’ said Charlie. He was standing by the door. He didn’t know what to say or how to behave. He couldn’t really understand how he had come to be in such a situation. It was completely out of character.
The girl chose a record by Maria Muldaur, a trembling, throaty, sexy sound: ‘Midnight at the oasis,’ went the song. It was not one of Charlie’s favourites.
‘It’s ten to twelve,’ she said. ‘And it’s twenty pounds.’
Charlie took out his wallet and handed four five pound notes across to the girl, which she stuf
fed into her handbag. Then sitting down on the low bed she hoisted her arms above her head and pulled off her T-shirt.
Charlie looked around the room. It could have been the room of any student. On the walls were the usual posters of rock stars, and the shelves bore collections of paperback books, piles of records, a half-empty bottle of red wine, a radio and a couple of glasses. A door in one corner presumably led to the kitchen.
By now the girl was sitting in her pants, tiny black cotton triangles joined at the hips by thin strips of the same material. He looked at her without desire.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You don’t look very enthusiastic.’ She was watching him carefully.
It occurred to him that she might in fact be a little less sure of herself now.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, and slipped off his jacket. His shirt was still wet. The girl noticed.
‘Rotten summer, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I’m off to the Algarve in September. I only stay here in July and August because of the tourist trade. You’re not a tourist, are you?’
‘You’re going on holiday in September?’ he said. His voice, he knew, must have sounded incredulous.
‘Albufeira. It gets quiet there that time of year. My friend comes with me. We leave the kids with her mum. You should hang your shirt up … put it over there on that coat hanger by the wardrobe. It’ll dry out all right by the time we’ve finished.’
Charlie began unbuttoning his shirt. He had already taken off his shoes. The girl, seeing that he was now getting more into the spirit of things, put her hands to her waist and slipped off those tiny black pants, and dropped them casually on to a bedside chair. She then lay back, lit another cigarette and waited.