The whores were cruising up and down Station Road like ships with overcrowded canvas. Normally Boy pretended not to notice them, though for weeks after he had run their gauntlet he would torment himself with the enigma their presence represented. Today he dared to look each briefly in the eye. They were like circus people—accustomed to the mildly curious indifference of passers-by. Try! Buy! their faces said for half a second; then they would quench the come-all-you and fix their gaze on a neutral distance, quick as you care.
“Is she one of these?” Boy mumbled.
“Lordy no! Better than this carrion.”
Better! Boy knew she would intimidate him. Even these painted galleons made him feel awkward and clumpish.
“Did you tell your mothers afore you come out?” one of the women asked.
Boy blushed furiously and looked away. But Nick laughed and shouted back over his shoulder, “She’d take the scouring soap to you, so be thankful we didn’t!”
“I’d need it after you, and all,” she shouted back, also laughing.
Boy envied Nick his easy way with them. Of course, Nick was older, but that wasn’t the full explanation. The truth was that Nick didn’t really care. For him this was exactly what he had called it: fun. But for Boy it was going to be one of the great and memorable days of his life—he just knew it. No explorer in Africa, no climber of unscaled mountains, no seeker after uncharted sea passages, could feel half so tense and excited as he now felt. Somewhere very near him there was a woman he didn’t know and had never seen, and he was going to give her this hot, heavy half-crown, and she was going to lie down naked and let him do anything. All those blanks in his fantasies—he could fill them now. It was an amazing day in an amazing world.
Near the end of Station Road, Nick darted into a doorway and pulled Boy swiftly in behind him. “Phew!” he said. “I hate the last few steps before the doorway. I always nearly funk it.”
Boy looked at him in grateful astonishment—astonished that such a fearless man of the world should feel that way, too, and grateful that he confessed it. “I’m in a funk still,” Boy said.
“I mean I get this strange feeling that everyone else in the street knows me and is writing down my name. I’m sure it’s all rubbish, of course.”
“Of course,” Boy said, disappointed that the fear was so parochial. Then the thought hit him like a leaden weight: She was very close now—actually in this house! What was she like? Could he run? He doubted he had strength for that.
“Upstairs,” Nick said.
On the first landing a door opened at the sound of their approach. It framed a dazzlingly pretty girl of their own age—about eighteen, certainly no more than twenty. She was not at all like the fireships outside. Anywhere else you’d have taken her for a modest, charming, lovely young gentlewoman.
Not her, Boy prayed, unable to take his eyes off her, smitten by her beauty. He could never put something so vile as himself against such loveliness.
“’Ello!” she said, smiling. “Two cherries?”
“Cherry ripe!” Nick said, as if it were a very witty reply.
“I’m still ’ere tomorra,” the girl said gently, directly to Boy. She knew exactly the effect she was having on him.
He scurried wordlessly after Nick, his scalp on fire.
“This is the door,” Nick said when they reached the next landing. He gave a knock.
A tall woman in her thirties answered. She saw Nick and grinned. “I only half-believed you,” she said.
Boy felt that her pleasure was more than commercial. She found it somehow flattering that Nick had kept his promise.
“And your friend!” she said. “Hello, Charley.”
Boy held out his hand awkwardly. Surprised, she took it and gave a limp shake. “A gent,” she said, and laughed.
“You should be used to that,” Nick said. “You told me you only go with gents.”
“And so I do!” She was suddenly belligerent, as if she resented Nick’s words. “And gents who pay more’n a dollar, too. So let’s be quick about it!”
She dipped a sponge in soapy water and went to Nick first. Incongruously modest, he turned his back on Boy and dropped his trousers. She washed him and gave him a towel. “That’s a sharp ’un,” she said. “Mind you don’t pierce a hole of your own!” They both laughed. She brought the sponge to Boy.
His stomach fell free. All night he had barely been able to contain his lust. Now it drained from him like water through hot sand. The woman, with her open, pleasant, plain, careworn face, was no more and no less appetizing than ten thousand others seen daily in shops or on errands in the street. No mysterious, dusky, half-Indian maiden, she! The woman might as well have been a new servant inquiring if he wanted a change of clothing.
“Ever been with a lass before?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She wrinkled her nose. “You’ll love it. You’ve got everything it needs.” She stood and turned again to Nick. “Now—something for me old age.”
Nick gave her his half-crown. Boy did likewise. She went to the door, seemingly to bolt it; but before she could do so it burst open and Caspar came swiftly in. He shut it behind him and leaned defiantly against it. “I’m going to watch you,” he said.
“Caspar!” Boy exploded. “Why aren’t you at the station?”
“Well, it’s the whole of Dame School!” the woman said.
Caspar ignored her. He spoke to the other two. “You thought you were so innocent—asking for money like that,” he taunted. “I knew straight off you were up to something like this, especially where he’s concerned.” He laughed and pointed at Nick.
“This wasn’t our bargain,” the woman reproached Nick.
“No.” Nick agreed with her and turned to Caspar. “Piss off, Steamer. There’s a good Indian.”
But Caspar only laughed, even more pugnaciously. “Not while it’s my cash pays for your tickle!” He looked at the woman. “They had to borrow off me to pay you,” he explained.
“I don’t care if they pinched it off of the Queen of Sheba, I didn’t bargain on no voyers. You may bugger off.”
“Give me my money back and I will. Come on, Nick—get the money back off of her. There’s tons of pross hereabouts will let you two do it and me watch for a dollar.”
“Oh, very well,” Nick grumbled lightly, as if he didn’t care what woman he had (which was, indeed, the case); and he bent to pull up his trousers.
There was something menacingly assured and aloof about Caspar. No one, least of all the woman doubted he meant every word.
“Very well,” she said, surprisingly chirpy. “You may stay.” She began to undress.
She would not remove her stays, though. “You can’t expect more for five bob,” she said reasonably. Boy’s heart sank. Even from where he was he could see how stained and worn they were.
She flopped diagonally across the bed, her head toward Boy, her business end pointing at Nick. “You first!” she called.
Nick leaped upon her and at once began laughing and thrusting like a madman. Within moments he was finished, lying flaked out upon her in apparent exhaustion, gasping Oh! and Ooooh! in a delight he had not seemed to deserve.
“I know you youngsters,” the woman said. “I bet you could start all over again.”
In answer Nick began to jigagig, but she threw him off with a laugh. “No you don’t!” she said, and did an athletic flip that put her on the opposite diagonal across the bed. “Now you, love,” she said to Boy.
But he was staring in horror at the thing his fantasy had never been able to picture. He had thought of it vaguely as an infolding of skin—ordinary skin. Something like the folds of the little finger at the bottom of a clenched fist. Or perhaps a simple dent like a baby’s. Or the pencil line rude boys drew on statues. But…this! A hairy gape, all folded and curtainy, like
bungled surgery—a silent, freak snout. He could not go near her.
“No!” he cried out and buried his head in his hands. “Never!”
“You, then,” the woman said to Caspar, not wanting the boys to have any case for a refund. She was completely unmoved by Boy’s rejection of her.
Caspar needed no second invitation. He climbed upon her and began to make a slower and altogether more gourmet job of it than Nick had.
Consumed with double shame, Boy pulled up his trousers and crossed the room to the window, wishing himself already outside, at the station. He looked at the station.
“Christ!” he called out to the other two. “There’s a ten-wheeler there in Great Western livery!”
Nick ran to the window. “Lordy!” he said. “Rothwell’s double-bogey. That’s the pater. Quick, Steamer, squirt and get off!”
But Caspar was already doing up his buttons. All three boys were now in a blind panic to get out, to get away, to get anywhere before they should be found here. They forgot the woman entirely. And it occurred to none of them how unlikely it was that the pater, or “Uncle” Walter, would make a beeline for this one room and stage a ponderous discovery scene.
Outside the door they faced a further dilemma: They could not go down into the street. He was somewhere there—perhaps. They dared not take the chance.
“The back way,” Boy said. “Did you see a back door downstairs?”
“There must be one,” Nick said.
“Suppose they blocked it off to make an extra room?” Caspar asked.
They all looked down hesitantly at the window on the back half-landing. Nick was the first to run to it. He threw it open and looked out, both ways. “There’s a brick ledge,” he called back, “and then a sort of low roof next door.”
Caspar looked at Boy. “What d’you think? Feel up to it?”
Boy, unable to face further humiliation, said, “Of course!” and walked briskly to the window. Nick was already climbing out.
“Try not to look down,” Caspar said.
“Shut up!” Boy snapped at him.
Anxiously, Caspar watched him climb out and begin to inch his way along the ledge. He saw that Boy was not breathing. “You still owe me that one and six,” he told his brother belligerently.
Boy breathed vehemently. “I do not!” he almost shouted. He froze to the ledge.
“Move on, damn you. I want to come out,” Caspar said less fiercely. “And I say you do. You had the chance with her and you didn’t take it.” He was on the ledge now, and beginning to crowd Boy, making him move faster.
“But you did,” Boy complained, astonished at Caspar’s effrontery. “So you had that instead of the money.”
“If you didn’t want me to be your guest, you should have shouted out before I began.” They were almost at the next-door roof. “Anyway, I didn’t get the chance to finish, so it doesn’t count.”
Boy stopped. His mouth hung open in disbelief.
“Go on!” Caspar shouted.
“You had a good eighteen-pence-worth from what I saw,” Boy said.
“But my bargain was with you. Anything that happened between that pross and me was irrelevant.”
“Jesus! If you two could just hear yourselves!” Nick said. “And here’s a mess, too. There’s no way off this roof.” He helped Boy down onto the low retaining wall. Caspar vaulted down almost simultaneously.
“Except through that room,” Caspar said, nodding toward a window that let onto the side of the roof where they stood.
“Idiot,” Nick said. “That’s the house we’ve just come out of.”
“It isn’t,” Caspar replied. “It’s next door.”
Nick hit the brick wall beside the window with the palm of his hand. “That, dear boy, is the house we just came from.”
“Whatever it is,” Caspar said, “it’s our only way down from here. Is there anyone in there?” He shaded the glass and tried to peer into the room. “Looks empty.”
Nick joined him and tried the window sash. It lifted.
“That’s burglary,” Boy said.
“It’s not,” Nick told him. “Burglary has to be after dark.”
He and Caspar climbed into the room. It was a whore’s room, like the one they had just left: bed, washstand, several mirrors, lace trimmings in abundance, an open cupboard full of sheets and towels, a screen near the window, a selection of dainty clothing hanging upon it.
They looked around, licking their lips, committing it to memory. Boy, perforce, joined them. “Come on,” he urged. “The sooner we’re out, the safer we’ll be.”
They tiptoed to the door and listened.
“Someone’s coming upstairs,” Caspar said. “Better let them go by.”
“Better hope they are going by,” Nick corrected.
They waited.
A man was speaking. Nick turned pale. “Howl!” he whispered heavily. “That’s the pater!”
“You were right,” Boy said in anguish. “Someone did watch us go in. Someone told him, that’s what.”
Nick rounded on Caspar. “You!” he said. “They must have seen you.”
Caspar did not try to argue. “Let them go up,” he said. “We’ll have to try to slip down then.”
“Let’s go back onto the roof,” Boy said. “I still think this is burglary.”
They were halfway back to the window when the door opened. And there stood Walter with a girl on each arm. One of them was the very pretty girl they had passed on the first landing, about five centuries ago.
“I told you!” Nick exploded to Caspar. Then he turned to face his father.
But Walter was staring at the three of them in open disbelief—from one to the other to the other, in a ceaseless round, as if he thought they might vanish if he could switch his eyes fast enough.
“We were out there on the roof,” Nick said in the unthinking hope that the least comprehensible part of the truth might divert his father from his obvious wrath.
Walter turned to the pretty girl, on his left. “Are you party to this?” he thundered.
The girl came back hotly. “That I am not!” she said. “These cherries went up to old Maggie not twenty minutes back—yon two, anyway. That’s the first and last I saw of them.”
A slow smile of understanding dawned on Walter’s face. By the time he turned back to the three lads it had grown broad enough to split his face. “So! You’ve been playing with my toys,” he said with a chuckle.
They all relaxed and laughed then. Indeed, the laughter threatened to become a little hysterical. Walter prevented that by dropping the two girls and crossing the room to the boys.
“Come now,” he said and, grasping the scruff of Nick’s and Caspar’s jackets, he used them as pushers to sweep Boy to the door and out over the threshold. He dusted the other two out as well. “Wait on me at the buffet,” he said. “We have some talking to do.”
Soaping his hands, he turned back to the two girls. Horselike, he kicked the door shut behind him. The last thing they saw was the pretty girl holding her unpinned bonnet above her head while her hair tumbled down—an image to make them sweat for weeks.
“The old dog!” Nick gasped in admiration as he strained to hear what was happening the other side of the door. “I never thought he had it in him!”
***
“I’ll wager you’ve never once suspected it of me,” Walter was saying to Nick.
It was small brandies all round, now that they were men together. Nick shook his head.
“Truly?” Walter asked, as if he hardly dared believe it.
“Honestly, Pater.”
His father radiated delight. “You see!” he included all three boys. “That’s how circumspect we have to be in these times. It was not always so, and honest days may yet come again. Who knows? But we of eighteen fifty-nine…
” He mimed a cloak-and-dagger secrecy that made them laugh. “Our society is managed by women—by the ladies. And that is right and proper. But it means that all our social arrangements are geared to the needs of women, not of us poor fellows.” He stretched luxuriously in his chair. “Yes,” he sighed. “I daresay there never was an age, nor ever will be again, in which it was so wonderful to be a woman.”
“Are they so different, Uncle?” Caspar asked.
Walter stared at him, seeking strong words. “Absolutely,” he said. “Utterly. Different species, in my view, like horses and asses. It’s a wonder our offspring are fertile. Men, you see, are made in God’s Image. Each of us is like a mirror of God’s entire universe—which, as you know, is an eternal battleground between good and evil. You and I are small corners of that battleground. We contain all the contradictions of the universe within ourselves—its highest aspirations and its lowest leanings. Love and hate. Command and subordination. We are the makers of a new world in every generation, yet we also man the armies that destroy it. We can fly higher and sink far lower than any woman is capable of.”
He smiled benignly around. “Women are either–or creatures, more limited than we. Their natural state is pure and noble and refined. But once they slip from it there can be no possible return. Once degraded, they are as a broken vessel; the mender’s rivets will always show. That is why”—he held up a monitory finger and solemnly lowered his voice—“you must never, never, never degrade a girl of good standing—any girl received in Society, or, indeed, any respectable girl, even one in humble circumstances. I would draw the line even at servant girls. I did not always do so, but I am ashamed of it now.” His words, however, conveyed more of the glow of reminiscence than of shame. “No! Stick to your widows, your married ladies, and”—he jerked a thumb at the window—“of course, to our coneys out there.” He chortled. “There’s enough of ’em to go around.”
“Enough for two apiece, even,” Nick said, greatly daring.
Walter hung his head, pretending to accept reproof.
“But I say, Pater, it do seem a bit rum, don’t you know. Mater fighting to mend ’em, and us breaking ’em every chance we get!”
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