by Janet Tanner
From the moment she had realised the hostesses were the lowest order in club life Debbie had made up her mind to better herself. She was not statuesque enough for a show girl, she knew, but there was no reason why she should not be a dancer. She had a good sense of rhythm and as far as she could see the routines performed by the girls at Benny’s were scarcely demanding. Once the rent and her share of the electricity and telephone bills were paid Debbie put every penny she could save towards dancing classes and a modelling course, which had been Grace’s idea.
‘You’d be wonderful in glamour,’ she had said. ‘You’ve got just the right face – and shape. But you need a portfolio to get going. I can give you the name of a marvellous photographer if you like. He’s a doll, and he loves women – that’s why he photographs them so well.’ She grinned. ‘He might even break your ice-maiden’s heart!’
Debbie said nothing. She knew that good photographs could be a horrendous expense even if she avoided the rip-off merchants but if Grace was implying ‘her’ photographer would do the job cheaply, or even free, in exchange for a tumble in the dark room, then tough! The photographs would just have to wait until she had saved up enough to get them done legitimately.
As for having her heart broken – Debbie was quite determined that should not happen. Perhaps one of these days she was going to have to loosen up a little for the sake of ambition if nothing else. But just at the moment she could not imagine what the circumstances would be. She was not going to prostitute herself and she was not going to fall headlong in love with the wrong man. It would be far too distracting, she decided.
And then she met Louis Langlois and overnight everything changed – her values, her resolutions, her plans. She met Louis Langlois and fell in love and knew that nothing in her life would ever be the same again.
What was it about Louis, she sometimes wondered in later years, that had had such a devastating effect? He was handsome, yes, heart-stoppingly so, especially dressed as he had been the night she had met him, in DJ and black tie, his frilly-fronted shirt somehow only accentuating the absolute maleness of him. But plenty of the men who came to Benny’s were handsome – film stars and pop singers, peacocks every one – and the Arab prince had possibly been more handsome than any of them. Louis was obviously well off – the cut of his suit and the solid gold cuff links and rings he wore announced serious money, even if Debbie was not yet experienced enough to recognise a Carrier watch or handmade shoes. But again this was no novelty. Every man who came to Benny’s had money to spend – if he had not he would not be there. No, it was something else, something quite indefinable and quite devastating, charm and power and the most potent brand of animal sex appeal all rolled into one and spiced with something else. For a long time Debbie could never make out what that something was. Only years afterwards did she come to realise. It was evil.
The night she met Louis had been a trying one. Debbie had been assigned to a visiting Swiss businessman who spoke little English, and since she had lied to Benny about her linguistic ability the man had been led to believe, quite wrongly, that she spoke – or at least understood – both French and German. Luckily for Debbie the man liked the sound of his own voice and Debbie had been able to keep her side of the conversation to the occasional ‘oui’ and ‘non’, smiling sweetly all the while, but by the time the second cabaret show was over he was beginning to want to do more than talk, pressing his leg against hers under the table and brushing her breast with the back of his hand.
Debbie thought she could handle him but it had to be done diplomatically. Benny hated scenes. He felt, and rightly so, that they were degrading and damaged the good name of the club. There were always a couple of ‘heavies’ on hand in case a customer became troublesome, but they were intended to blend into the background and Benny was always furious when they had to break cover. Two men – a client and a jealous ex-fiancé – had almost come to blows over one of the girls last week but although the heavies had escorted them off the premises with the utmost discretion the girl had been fired on the spot.
‘Another drink?’ the Swiss asked.
Debbie nodded, thinking gratefully of the extra commission every round he bought would bring her, then, as he turned away to signal to a waitress she surreptitiously poured the remains of her current Bucks Fizz into the enormous cheese plant conveniently positioned near the table.
A waitress brought fresh drinks. Beneath the table the man’s thigh pressed against Debbie’s more insistently and his hand hovered over her knee.
‘We go now?’ he asked in French when he had demolished his drink.
‘Non,’ Debbie smiled brightly. ‘It’s early yet. I am enjoying myself.’
The man was beginning to look inebriated, his face flushed, beads of perspiration standing out on his bald head. His hand, also hot and sweaty, closed over her bare arm.
‘I enjoy myself too but it will be better when we are alone. My hotel room is very nice, you will like it.’ He moved closer, brushing her ear with his thick rubbery whisky-smelling lips and sliding his hand right inside the boned bodice of her dress to squeeze her breast.
His touch sparked something in Debbie. For a moment she was back in the kitchen in Plymouth with Barry groping for her beneath her cotton wrap. Without a thought for the consequences she reacted against the memory, kicking the Swiss sharply on the shin. He let out a yell and withdrew his hand, glaring at her in pained outrage.
‘You are not supposed to do that,’ she hissed.
‘Mais j’ai acheté les boissons tout le soirée …’
‘But you have not bought me. Je ne suis pas une … oh what’s the word?’
‘You are nothing but a little tease! I have been cheated!’ The Swiss started to his feet. To her horror Debbie realised people were beginning to stare.
‘Please … sit down!’ she begged.
‘Can I be of help?’ The voice was smooth, baritone, upper crust.
Debbie looked up, desperately trying to regain her composure.
‘It’s all right, really …’
‘It sounded to me as if you were having trouble.’
‘I’m just trying to explain that I don’t come free with the drinks but I don’t speak much French and he doesn’t speak much English.’
‘Leave it to me.’ He spoke to the Swiss in rapid French, scribbled something on a business card and handed it to the man. To her intense relief Debbie saw his expression begin to lighten and he rose, actually kissing her hand and bowing slightly before leaving the table and making his way towards the exit.
She turned to her saviour, realising, now that the moment of danger was over, just how attractive he was. A few inches taller than she, slimly built yet somehow powerful, the fairness of his skin and hair complimented bythe stark black and white of his dinner suit.
‘Thank you so much. I could have lost my job if he had turned awkward. What did you say to him?’
‘I explained you were not the sort of girl he thought – and gave him an address where he can find someone who is. Now – can I buy you a drink?’
Debbie hesitated. This was against all the rules. But in her relief at being rid of the awful Swiss and faced with the devastating charm of the man who had rescued her she found it difficult to care.
‘Thank you. I’d like that.’
He signalled to the waitress. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Bucks Fizz.’
Amusement sparked in his light blue eyes. ‘ I’ll rephrase that. What would you like to drink as opposed to what it is you are pouring into those poor tipsy pot plants?’
She giggled – he actually knew the fate of those endless free drinks!
‘We’re only allowed to order champagne or Bucks Fizz.’
‘But if you could choose …?’
‘I’d have a lovely long glass of orange squash. It’s so hot in here and I never dare have more than a few sips of any alcohol.’
‘Orange squash it is then.’
‘No – I
can’t I tell you!’
‘A very long orange squash,’ he said to the waitress. ‘And if there is any query about that you can tell Benny it’s for Louis Langlois.’
She was in love and it was wonderful. She was in love and suddenly everything was changed. He was the most incredible man she had ever met and unbelievably he seemed to want her too.
Two weeks after first meeting they became lovers and Debbie revised all her ideas about physical contact with a man. She actually wanted Louis to touch her, loved the feel and the smell of him, felt her body respond to his lightest caress, ached with the need to have him in her. To taste his flesh and experience delight, not revulsion, was a wonderful revelation to her, to lie in his arms was like finding the home she had never known, safe and warm and utterly satisfying.
Not that she was completely sure of him. When she was not with him she suffered agonies of uncertainty, for she could not believe that she could be anything but a passing fancy to a man like him. He called her Kitten and she liked that – it made her feel small and cuddly and playful and loved – but she also wondered if it meant that she was just a toy to him. Each time the moment came to leave him she held her breath wondering if he was going to suggest seeing her again or if this time would be the last. But less than a month after that first meeting Louis suggested she should move in with him, and thrilled beyond words at this evidence of her permanence in his life she agreed without hesitation.
Louis owned a fully modernised town house near the river in the east end of London. At first Debbie was quite shocked to learn he lived ‘south of the river’ – to her Wapping and Bermondsey, Catford and Peckham were not much better than the poor area of Plymouth where she had hailed from. But when she saw his home for the first time, she was impressed as well as surprised.
Louis had anticipated the trend that would soon make the docklands fashionable and his house with its stuccoed walls stood out against the crumbling grey stone like flowers clinging to a cliff face. To step through the elegant dove grey front door was to enter a world that bore no resemblance to the slum dwelling the house had once been – everywhere was stark minimal design, but minimalism that smacked of money.
Since coming to London Louis had made a great deal of money from gambling – he was both lucky and daring at the tables – and he also dabbled in property. Some men who got rich quick as he had done elected for obvious Regency-style luxury epitomised by Adam fireplaces and ceilings, William Morris wallpaper, French furniture, Old Masters and silk drapes. Not Louis. He had had enough of that sort of thing at home and it stifled him, just as his father with his courteous olde-worlde ideas of running a hotel business stifled him. When he and Bernard had fallen out and Louis had left Jersey for the wider – and more cutthroat – world in London he had also left – for ever, he hoped – the trappings that reminded him of home. He had furnished his dockland home with stark ebony and sparkling crystal, with gleaming stainless steel and wall-to-wall carpeting in soft dove grey the exact same shade as his front door. The enormous picture windows were fitted with dove grey Venetian blinds but left uncurtained, a starkly simple ebony table held nothing but a glass ashtray in the shape of a large but slightly twisted cube. The only flowers were Dartington glass – Louis had an aversion to real ones, another throwback perhaps to his youth when his Jersey home had been filled with freesias and lilies, carnations and Christmas roses in season.
It was the bedroom however which Debbie found especially intriguing. It was furnished in the same colour scheme as the rest of the house, black white and grey, the vast futon-style bed covered with black and white striped silk and scattered with cushions and pillows in geometric designs. But the ceiling was mirrored and so were three of the walls and if the scene they reflected had not been so aggressively modern, they would have seemed better suited to the bordello than to Japanese minimalism.
At first Debbie found it unnerving to continually catch sight of herself from every conceivable angle. But as she grew more used to the experience she began to like it especially since she was usually such a pretty sight. Debbie was not vain in the accepted sense but she did enjoy her own good looks and since her appearance was the principal tool of her trade, it was useful to be able to see at a glance that her hair was not flattened at the back nor her skirt creased.
Debbie was aware that the mirrors were not there for the purposes of her grooming, of course, but she did not mind that. After all it was not as though Louis was like Barry, with his bull neck, dirty singlet and beer gut. Louis’s body was beautiful, smooth and lithe with muscles that rippled across his shoulders and bunched strongly at the back of his thighs. The mirrors enabled her to see them when they were making love and she found it exciting. This, she supposed, was what Grace went on and on about, this wonderful intoxicating feeling, this impulsion to repeat the experience again and again and again. But Grace seemed able to capture it with almost anyone. She could find it only with Louis.
When Louis asked her to move in with him Debbie wondered if he would want her to give up working at Benny’s, but he did not. He was quite happy for her to continue just as long as she came home by taxi when he was not there to collect her in person, and he positively encouraged her to continue with her dancing and modelling classes. To these he added – and paid for – elocution lessons to eliminate the last traces of her West Country accent. Debbie scarcely needed them. A born mimic, she was already hanging on his every word and copying the way he spoke. Heavens, hadn’t she already begun to pick up Grace’s West Indian-inspired drawl? Imitating Louis’s clipped accent and open vowels came much more naturally.
Besides the classes there were shopping sprees. The cheap chain store dresses she had chosen with such delight only a few short weeks ago were parcelled up for Oxfam, and Louis dressed her from head to toe in Mary Quant and Biba, young, zingy and highly fashionable. No woman of his was going to be seen wearing C & A or Richard Shops. Debbie might not be able to tell the difference – he certainly could. For shoes he took her to Annello and Davide, known principally for stage shoes; her hair was styled at Vidal Sassoon. Benny was furious when one day she arrived for work with her blonde hair shorn into a sleek bob – to him the shoulder-length and wavy Barbie-doll curtain epitomised everything a hostess should be. And when he saw the jewellery she was wearing he was almost alarmed. Gold chains, a solid gold slave-girl bangle, sapphire ear-rings, a Carrier watch.
‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ he grumbled to Louis one day. ‘ I hope you are well insured, letting her wear that stuff. Because I certainly do not have cover for my girls in the sum of thousands of pounds for personal effects.’
‘Don’t worry about it, old son. There’s plenty more where that came from,’ Louis said with a smile.
He was enjoying himself, enjoying playing Santa Claus to his Kitten. He was only twenty-five years old yet he seemed to have everything – a ready supply of money from the gaming tables, a nice home, good looks and a girl so beautiful and young and luscious she made men’s mouths water – considerably younger than she admitted to, in his opinion. Louis was very glad now that he had fallen out with his father and decided to leave Jersey. His father was a stick-in-the-mud and Jersey was such a staid and boring place, bogged down by carefully invested wealth and self-importance. He was far better off here – for the time being anyway – making money hand over fist and having a good time into the bargain. Perhaps one day when his father began to lose his touch he’d go back, like the young lion looking to lead the pride when he knows the old one can no longer fight. But for the moment he was happy enough where he was.
And Debbie was happy too.
‘Haven’t you got any family, Kitten?’ Louis asked Debbie one night.
They were lying on the futon, carelessly wrapped in the black and white silk sheets after having made love. Debbie nestled her head against his shoulder, squinting up at their reflection in the huge mirrors above the bed and wondering how much she dare tell him. Not about Barry, that was f
or sure. She was still so ashamed about the things he had done to her, she knew she would never share them with anyone. They were her secret – she would take them to her grave with her. She was also still irrationally afraid that if Louis knew the truth about her background he would no longer want her but tonight she wished she could tell him, reach out for him on an emotional level as well as a physical one. If he knew everything and still wanted her she would feel completely safe; she would have nothing else to fear.
‘There’s only my mother,’ she said hesitantly.
‘Don’t you ever go to see her?’
‘No. She wouldn’t want me to. She was really glad to see me go. I’ve never been anything but a nuisance to her.’
Louis laughed. In his experience mothers weren’t like that at all. His own mother certainly had always been fierce in his defence; he knew he had caused endless friction between her and his father and had quite enjoyed the sense of power it gave him. The idea that Debbie’s mother simply should not want her seemed like fantasy to him. It was Debbie’s excuse to herself, he decided, to square her conscience for having ducked out of the family scene.
‘Come on, Debs,’ he said lightly, ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
He felt her draw away from him slightly.
‘What would you know about it?’
‘Well I don’t, I suppose, but …’
‘I was nothing but a nuisance to her from the day I was born,’ Debbie said, the urge to tell him suddenly very strong. ‘I’m not making it up, Louis, she really truly didn’t want me. Not as a baby – well, I suppose I can understand that in a way, babies are a bit of a nuisance, aren’t they? – and not as a child either. I was always being shunted from pillar to post. I was taken into care once because she used to go out and leave me alone. It was really scary. One night I thought a burglar had broken in and I ran out into the street screaming. The neighbours told the police then that I was often by myself all night and the social workers came and took me away.’