by Jeremy Welch
“I loved it,” Pepper confirmed.
“I thought I had lost it.”
“Oh, I don’t think you ever would. It was on top of your bag last night. When we got you to bed Salt saw it and started to read it to me. You don’t mind, do you?”
He took the book and stroked it with his fingers. “It’s the first draft, it was done years ago.”
“Come back to bed and tell us how the final draft ends. Does the story end differently now?”
There was an innocence about her request, a companionability about it. It was warm, almost hot lying between them, a protective and comforting heat. He thought of the last time he was this hot and a slight shiver ran down his spine as he thought of Irena and the new girls at the start of their working day.
“Jane changes her mind about the marriage. One of his comments changes her mind. At the dinner when they are arguing about presents on Valentine’s Day, if you remember he had given her two tickets to his favourite band. Well he ends the argument by saying, ‘You do very well by me.’”
The three of them were staring at the ceiling.
“I knew that would happen! He was always an asshole to her.” Salt sounded triumphant. “I can’t believe she ever hoped he was going to change. He spent his whole time putting her down, subjecting her to degrading mental torture, asshole.”
Almost childlike, hoping for the story to end like a fairy tale, Pepper turned to look at him. Her nose almost touching his cheek and her breath warm in his ear she whispered, “Make Jane happy, Sebastian. You can make her meet someone, someone that makes her happy. You’re the writer so you can do that, can’t you?”
Sebastian knew the power of a writer, the ability to give or take life, make happiness or sadness, the total power of dictating someone’s life; the controller of destiny. Nothing happened that he could not control.
“She will be happy. I’m not going to tell you how but she will be, that I can guarantee.”
Pepper kissed him on the cheek and rolled onto her back smiling.
“I knew you would.”
He hadn’t heard a knock or a door opening. All he heard was an urgent voice almost imploring, “Sebastian? Sebastian?” The slight patois-infused voice of Rosie.
He heard the door of the toilet being opened and closed, the footsteps quick towards the bedroom door. He pulled the sheet up to his chin. Salt and Pepper looked at him, not with concern but looking for an explanation.
Rosie opened the bedroom door. She didn’t look at Salt or Pepper; her tear-stained red eyes pleaded to Sebastian alone.
“It’s Irena. You have to come.”
“What is it? What’s happened?” he asked as he leapt from under the bedcover. “Has she been moved? Have they moved her? For Christ’s sake, Rosie, answer me.”
Rosie stood still watching him push his feet into his shoes. Her head moved from side to side, the tears silently falling down her cheeks. She raised her arms to reach out for him.
“I’m so sorry, Sebastian, there was nothing we could do.”
He felt the warmth of her arms and the chilled dampness of her cheek as she hugged him close; it was a motherly hug offering protection. He tried to pull away from her but her hug was too strong.
“Come,” she said as she released him.
Holding his hand they walked towards a police car, the blue light fighting the sun as it flashed silently. An ambulance with its doors open had reversed towards the four cells. Around the police car a small audience of onlookers crowded around held back by uniformed officers. Between the audience and the building a plain clothes police officer, raincoat over his arm, was talking to some uniformed officers. The officers were underemployed and wandered from ambulance to police car. The imminent danger had passed, the excitement for them, over.
“Stay here, Sebastian.” She kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Sebastian stood on the periphery of the onlookers, listening to the murmurings and whispered questions being asked. Some for information: “Is it a murder?”
Some stating facts. A voice with conviction informed everyone in the small crowd, “One of them got mugged and is in a bad state.”
Sebastian stopped listening and looked towards Rosie. He knew Irena was dead. All he could hear was a radio from an unseen open kitchen window; it was all he wanted to concentrate on, anything to displace where he was now. The radio was playing Mungo Jerry’s song, ‘In the Summertime’. The music hopeful and happy.
Rosie walked towards the police perimeter and called out to the plain clothes officer.
“Inspector Bloogard.”
He looked towards his name and nodded to the officers to let her through.
“Hello Rosie.” He looked tired as if he had run a distance too far. “I’m sorry, I really am.” His hand squeezed her shoulder. “Is she one of yours?”
“I know her but no she’s not one of mine. I tried to get her to come to the meetings.”
He nodded.
“Know anyone we should contact?”
Rosie looked around her, at the buildings, the canal and the crowd. She looked at Sebastian.
“She has a friend. She will still be asleep, she works late. Let me tell her, please?”
He nodded again.
“Rosie, I need you to talk to those two girls.”
Sebastian followed Inspector Bloogard’s finger. He pointed to two female uniformed officers, notebook in hand talking to two crying girls. The girls, despite the warmth of the sun, were shivering and holding each other around their necks. The two were in their early twenties, heavily made-up with dark eyeliner and green mascara bleeding onto their cheeks. One dressed in jeans and a strap top with no bra wailed in a language Sebastian didn’t understand. As she raised her arms pleading heavenward Sebastian saw the tattoo. Fresh vibrant colours, the horse’s head the fawn colour of a palomino with a blond mane, the whole tattoo framed in red bruising. It was newly done, recent and still raw.
“I can’t do anything for them unless they talk to me. Rosie, you’re the only one who can persuade them to talk to us. Try.”
She walked over to the two girls.
“Don’t ever give up, Rosie, we need your help if we are ever to get on top of this.” Inspector Bloogard spoke to her back. He knew they wouldn’t talk and he knew he would never get on top of the situation.
He turned to the policeman on the perimeter and gruffly instructed, “Get rid of them. It’s not a bloody peepshow!”
The crowd departed in twos and threes speculating on what had happened.
“And that one,” Inspector Bloogard barked as he pointed at Sebastian.
“He’s with me,” Rosie spoke over her shoulder, her arms encasing the two weeping girls.
Sebastian didn’t move. He watched as a policeman slipped out from behind the curtain of Irena’s cell. He carried a small plastic bag containing a syringe, the plunger pushed down, the needle bent and a small residue of coffee-coloured liquid in the barrel.
A cyclist stopped and asked a policeman what had happened.
“Oh, just some hooker OD’ed.”
Sebastian opened his mouth to say something but the words were spoken by the inspector.
“Get over here, Du Toit.” The uniformed man walked slowly over to his boss. In tones whispered but whipping Bloogard spoke Sebastian’s words. “She’s not just a hooker. She’s someone’s child. She’s a father’s daughter, a mother’s daughter, Christ, she’s the same age as my daughter. She loves. She was loved. She is loved. She will always be loved.” He paused, he transferred his coat from one arm to the other, looked at the young officer. “Get out of my sight.”
Rosie came over to Sebastian and put her arms around him.
“I’m sorry.”
Sebastian remained static; he couldn’t return the hug.
; “You ready now?” A muffled voice spoke through a white mask. The curtain of Irena’s cell was pulled back. The stretcher was lifted by two officers; the contours of her body under the white sheet outlined her young body. Her silhouette looked almost pristine as if a sculpture being moved to a final position. As they lifted the stretcher into the ambulance her arm slipped from its white covering, her hand white, fingers splayed open, and between the second and third finger a pinprick of blood glistened against the dull surrounding of blue bruising.
That’s when the hot silent tears fell down his cheeks. Sebastian didn’t shake or try to wipe the tears away. He just stood and watched the doors of the ambulance close.
Who would find her parents? Who would tell them? The proud father who pushed her away to a better future, a sacrifice for him but worth it for her. The mother would only remember the crucifix she had given her, the last look as the car drove away, the smiling face through the rear screen window. Who would tell them their daughter died of an overdose as a whore in Amsterdam?
The ambulance drove away in silence. The policemen got into their car and drove away. Despite the warmth of the day Inspector Bloogard put his raincoat on and walked slowly towards the police station off Dam Square. There was no evidence that Irena had ever existed, that she had once lived. Rosie and Sebastian turned to walk away too. He could see Salt and Pepper standing next to the Tulp, their arms folded across their chest and heads downcast. He turned to look at the cell where Irena had worked; a black woman holding a steaming bucket and mop was slopping the floor. The two mascara-smeared girls holding onto one another were being guided away by a man talking on his phone. The man on the phone stopped to crush his finished cigarette with his foot; his white gym shoe ground the butt end into a gap between two cobblestones.
“For fuck’s sake, shut up!” He pushed the duo in the back. “Move it,” he said to the two girls.
Chapter 17
1
It hadn’t taken long for the world to move on from her suicide. About twenty minutes by Sebastian’s calculation. After the police departed, the streets started to repopulate. The tourists arrived to see the red light district in the safety of daylight. The smell of dope and beer filled the entrance to cafés and bars. The office workers from Rokin and Spuistraat cut across the canals on the bridges of Oudekennissteeg and Karte Niezel to the north and south of Oude Kerk to collect Chinese takeaways for lunch. Their office gossip and laughter was audible to Sebastian as he sat at his desk staring at his computer and coffee-ring-stained book. He could still hear the radio playing from the open kitchen window across the canal, the songs occasionally interrupted by the noise of nails being struck by a hammer, the radio noisy and building site loud.
He looked at the three mugs: two coffee and one tea. The solace of all Brits: the offer of tea and sympathy. Salt and Pepper had asked for coffee. The cups still full and the liquid cold now with a slick of stale milk discolouring the contents. They had murmured their mutual expressions of sadness and left to apply their makeup for the evening’s performance. He had been at his table unmoved for the whole of the afternoon. The arrival of dusk had made him active; the shadows being cast by the setting sun moved around the sitting room making him uncomfortable, as if they were the shadows of someone unseen.
Sebastian was undecided as to where to go. He had only met Irena in three places and none of these offered any comforting memories. Her cell workplace, the Vondel Park and the desolate district of Bijlmer. As he wandered around his room in frustration he thought about Irena; the more he thought about her the less he knew. He knew her name, her job, that was it. He didn’t know anything else about her: her surname, where she came from, her favourite colour, what made her laugh, her age. He did know that her life had been hopeless and happiness had eluded her – a wasted one.
He left the Tulp and headed away from the harsh commercial lights of bars and porn cabine cinemas. Darkness seemed to offer some comfort; no one could see the wounds of the day on his face. He glanced around at his fellow beings with a feeling of isolation and a desire to be part of them, not alone anymore that day. The doors of Oude Kerk were open and a soft glow shone through the entrance.
He entered and wandered down the nave towards the altar, welcoming with its flickering candlelight. Underneath his feet he felt the slimy smoothness of gravestones worn by time and footfall. The names were invisible, the dates also worn away. The deceased over time forgotten by most and only alive to the small group of interested historians and charcoal stone rubbers. He sat in one of the many empty pews at the transept and stared on the altar candle lights. The air around him was thick with scent as if incense had been burnt at a High Mass. He knew from the leaflet at the entrance that Oude Kerk, a pre-Reformation construction, had been Catholic but was now Calvinist welcoming worshippers of all faiths. What little he knew of Calvinism he didn’t think incense burning was part of the worship.
He looked around the dim interior, the invasion of neon from outside casting feeble stained glass reflections off the walls. There were two side chapels, one on either side of the transept. One had no one in it and only two candles burning weakly as the wax expired. The north side chapel had a votive candle rack burning brightly; each point on the rack had a new six-inch votive candle burning, fierce in its desire to be noticed. This side chapel was fully occupied, all available room on the pews full, a population of about twenty. The placing of the votive candle rack at the front of this side chapel made that congregation dim and blurred. A family remembrance perhaps.
He heard the leopard-padding footsteps of the minister patrolling the pews. His soft footfall interrupted by the hard clacking of heels moving slowly to his left. The congregation of the side chapel leaving now. He turned to look at them. The flames of the candles hesitated as they passed the candle rack before re-establishing their collective glow. The scent grew stronger as the congregation passed, the smell a diffusion of different perfumes, not the smell of incense. Some dressed in jeans, sweatshirts and trainers, almost too casual for a church. Others, unusually for the summer, with coats on and collars high and tight around their necks as if dressed for an autumn Sunday service, their stockinged feet raised on heels. All of them women, all of them young. Some held hands for mutual comfort, others cast their heads down. None looked back as they left the side chapel.
The last to leave he recognised. The candlelight made her skin glow as if a purple-green. She did look back at the chapel, crossed herself and followed the others.
“Rosie! Rosie!” Sebastian hissed at her.
She didn’t seem surprised to see him.
“I’ll be back in a second.” She smiled at him.
He watched her walk away towards the entrance. Sebastian stood up and walked to the side chapel. Illuminated by the candlelight there was a notice in a simple unvarnished wooden frame attached to the open grill gates:
The Chapel of St Bridget
St Bridget is regarded as the patroness of fallen women, not because she was at any time of her life unchaste, but from the fact that the English King Henry VIII’s palace of Bridewell in London, located beside the well of St Bride or Bridget, was converted into a House of Correction for refractory females. She is represented in Christian iconography with a lamp in one hand, typical of heavenly light and wisdom and a cross in the other, as the foundress of the first community of religious women in Ireland, or, indeed, in the Western World. Her long white veil is such a one as was always worn by early converts. The oak which appears in the background is in allusion to her cell among the grove of oaks at Kildare, literally ‘the cell or place of the oak’.
Picking up an unlit candle he reached into his pocket and dropped a euro coin into the slot of the collection box. He lit the candle off one of the already flaming ones but couldn’t find a place to put it on the candle holder; all the spikes were occupied. He sat in the front pew candle in hand and looked towards the small altar to St
Bridget. There was nothing much to see; a white cloth covered the altar, a picture dimly lit of what he assumed was St Bridget but could have been any one of the innumerable pictures of saints appointed by the Church to offer focal points of prayer. The confused smell of the departed women still hung in the confines of the chapel. He felt a surge of belonging for the arbitrariness of the circumstances. Nothing to do with the Church or St Bridget but the assembled togetherness in this particular space, at one with the departed women in the need for a retreat from recent events.
He didn’t see her but felt the comfort of her thigh pressing against his as Rosie slipped in beside him.
“I thought it would be nice to get them together for a moment or two to think about her. Well remember her really.” Her voice betrayed the futility of it all. “Some of them aren’t working tonight. It’s nice to see those that are coming over for a few minutes.”
Sebastian remained silent. He was trying to reconcile the thought that those who were working that evening had left their workplace temporarily, their scant work clothes hidden beneath coats, to remember one of their own, now dead. They had remembered her, fleetingly, lengthily or perhaps not at all as some of them may have pondered their own predicament rather than Irena’s. Those thoughts, like Irena herself, in the past now as they lay on their backs staring at the ceiling to the grunts of a stranger.
“I didn’t see Sacha. How is she?”
“Quiet. Her life has been burning up one day at a time, but she has never cried about it before. Now she’s just silent. Can you be more silent than silent? If you can that’s her, more silent than silent now that she has lost one of the last things that mattered.”
“Tell me she’s not working tonight. Please?” he implored.
“Not tonight.” She squeezed his hand to offer comfort for what she was about to say. “She’s replacing Irena looking after the new ones on the morning shift.”