by Ellis Major
“Rowena.” Charlie did his best to make eye contact but she was staring at the grass. “I gave my word to Mary. I have money and it’s not tainted. For her sake, please, if things get any worse, call me. I may be a bit of an arsehole, but I really do mean it when I say I’m sorry and I want to help.”
“Noted,” she told him flatly. “Bye now, Charlie. Enjoy the rest of your life and try not to catch AIDS when you break in the girls.”
“God, Rowena, whatever you think of me, I’m not like that.”
“Of course you aren’t Charlie. That’s why you’re setting up a brothel.”
They had driven no more than fifty yards when Charlie began to bang his head against the headrest in front of him.
Lance had made himself very useful, fixing broken furniture and cupboards as well as the frayed wiring on one or two appliances but he’d received no acknowledgement. Rowena had walked into the house and simply told Lance that Charlie was headed for the car. Lance didn’t need to hear any more.
“Don’t be too hard on the guy,” he murmured on his way past her. “He’s done some good things recently. He was due for a disaster. And he got pushed into this against his better judgement.”
She flicked a glance in his direction. “I’d hardly expect you to say anything else. Now get out will you.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Charlie moaned.
Charlie sounded close to tears. Lance frowned. “We knew she’d say no, didn’t we,” he consoled Charlie. “She cut up rough did she?”
“No, that’s the problem,” Charlie told him. “She didn’t.”
“Oh, I see, or rather I don’t.”
“Sod the Academy and all that. Who cares about a whorehouse! We never expected her to say yes. But now she won’t take any help from me at all. Look at the place, Lance, look at it! She hasn’t got a bean and she’s looking after that madman. I’ve completely screwed up! Mary is never going to forgive me either!”
“You’ve got more in common with her than you think, then, looking after a madman, although at least you have a bean or two.” Lance’s attempts to lighten the mood had little impact.
“Think, think,” Charlie was muttering. “Stop a minute Lance. We have to think. There must be something we can do. We both promised Mary.”
Lance brought the car to a halt. “Ok, Charlie, you’re right. I’m as much to blame as you. I should have stopped you rather than thinking up smartarse suggestions. Yeah, let’s think, and let’s think hard.”
Chapter 8 - The Academy (Year 1 – August)
Barbara Reading knew a lot of people, and not just in the Biblical sense.
Once the funding for the Academy was in place, she became a whirlwind of efficiency. She took on her younger sister– a slightly rounder version of herself – as assistant manager, and between them they had the place ready to open within a few weeks.
Whilst Barbara dealt with various government bodies, her sister, with never a cross word, juggled about five different building companies, all staffed by rather rough looking men from East London. The designers were even persuaded to prance and preen around without clashing handbags too often, although it became clear it was inadvisable to have more than three on site at a time. All this competent project management meant that the different floors took shape at a speed normally unimaginable to anyone who has ever had to deal with local government or a builder in London.
Whilst Barbara and her sister worked on the venue, Barbara had everyone else spreading the word to any and all membership prospects to tickle their fancies. After she had a few (planning) sessions with Slick Willy, the pair of them hatched a scheme whereby applications for the club would be in the form of sealed bids. The Party line was that membership numbers were limited, the aim being to drum up desire for the scarce slots. The idea was that every applicant could be vetted and excluded, without causing offence, if the owners, particularly Barbara, deemed them undesirable.
“I ain’t,” Barbara, said forcefully. “Lettin’ any bleedin’ Tom, Dick or ‘Arry in ‘ere. We all ‘ave a veto an’ I’m askin’ arahnd in the trade so ter speak. We’re ‘avin’ no bleedin’ pervs in my club. We can jus’ tell ‘em they didn’ bid enuff.”
A further benefit of the sealed bids scheme was that everyone paid far more than they needed to for fear of missing out - not a bad trick at all. Babs forced every member to sign a confidentiality agreement, one of the penalties for breach of which was death (most people, even if they bothered to read it, thought that was a joke so they happily signed up regardless). As part of her privacy drive she arranged for a special entrance to be constructed in the gated Mews at the back of the building. Any member could therefore enter or leave in a car without being seen by the dreaded paparazzi. On the catering front, she hired a phenomenal young chef who had yet to make his name but was bursting with new ideas. As he was also from East London, one of his principal innovations was that people should never leave his restaurant hungry.
And she did all that without telling more than a few applicants that above the club was a brothel! She knew that word would spread in the ‘right’ circles and, for what she had planned on the exclusivity front, she hardly needed people breaking down the doors.
When not cracking the whip over the contractors, the growing support workforce or the owners, she spent her time in Charlie’s flat ensconced individually with her ‘top four’, intensively training them in the finer arts of their new profession.
Charlie kept well out of the way during these sessions and ensured that Lance was always in close attendance. He was never quite sure whether Babs was joking when she leered at him and said she might need a live model for demonstration purposes. He felt there was safety in numbers and was confident that even Babs wouldn’t make an attempt on his person if Lance forbade it. Charlie could sometimes be quite old fashioned, and acting as a test dummy hardly fitted in with his romantic notions, particularly after Rowena’s cutting words.
Notwithstanding the distance he and Lance kept from the room, they could still hear giggles and the occasional unmistakable cackle from Babs.
Charlie would cower lower in his seat whilst Lance would remind him that it was all in a good cause.
“Well I won’t be sorry to see the end of this and feel safe in my own flat,” Charlie declared. “I dread to think what it is Babs is carrying in that big old bag of hers.”
“Close your mind to it, Charlie,” Lance advised. “Although it’s probably worse than you imagine.”
Charlie had been the only one downcast by the outcome of his recruitment drive, apart from Lance, of course. Charlie bitterly regretted ever having approached Rowena and was even starting to feel guilty at having mentioned the place to Evie. No one else was worried by his failure to win over the prickly Ms Hepple – they’d never expected it to happen in the first place. Evie was a bonus – and quite a large one. Babs had been delighted.
Such was the success of the sealed bids scheme that it generated enough cash for the owners to be in a position pay off all of the loan finance, even before the club opened. Slick Willy was astonished, and had to admit that he’d not anticipated such a scenario. As a consequence, he’d not included a provision in the paperwork for the loan to be repaid in less than twelve months.
“I didn’t think to arrange it as bridging finance,” he explained rather sheepishly.
Charlie secretly found it amusing that Willy wasn’t quite as slick as he thought he was, although he wasn’t brave enough to pipe up to that effect. He feared he might be felled by a brainwave, a tsunami of intelligence crushing all lesser life forms before it.
Slick Willy attempted to explain. “The Lender needs to get a slug of interest. They were expecting a longer term loan at this quite high coupon, so they’ll be a bit tee’d off even when it’s paid off after just twelve months. I don’t see it as a problem, though. I’ll just have to come up with another scheme to keep them sweet.” Nobody gave a hoot, even if they happened to understand what he was saying.<
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“Never mind, luv, we’ll stick it in the Bank an’ wait,” Barbara told him. “Nice problem to ‘ave ain’t it. Let’s ‘ope they’re all like that.”
Barbara very wisely wouldn’t let any of her co-owners near the property until it was complete, knowing full well that someone might come up with a bright idea for changing something and screw up the timetable. They all got their tour the night before the first grand opening, the girls having been round earlier in the day. Their identities were still unknown to each other.
Barbara was insistent that each respected the others’ privacy until, if ever, they wanted to reveal themselves to their ‘colleagues’. She’d designed a sort of shawl with a veil that concealed face and hair completely. She insisted that the girls only ever used cabs from a company known to her, so that they could don or remove the shawl at an appropriate point en route to or from the club. She could vouch for the discretion of the drivers and the cabs had tinted glass.
Her extreme care and attention to detail showed in the state of the club when she gave her grand tour. It was beyond criticism, constructive or otherwise and she was flattered by the praise heaped upon her.
“Cum orn, cut it aht,” she cackled cheerfully. “Yer’ll turn a girl’s bleedin’ ead, yer will.”
“Babs, you’ve performed a series of miracles,” Geoff declared. “Those four rooms are about as different as it’s possible for them to be, the restaurant is romantically discreet, the acoustics in the bar sound just right and this first floor, well sleazy or what? Did the girls like their rooms?”
“I’ve ‘ad no complaints from ‘em. They all seemed ‘appy enuff,” Babs confirmed.
Charlie did begin to partially recover from his painful encounter with Rowena. He knew that he would never forget his shame and the sense of utter stupidity at upsetting a girl who actually appeared to be very much more likeable than before, was extraordinarily lovely, and had even given some indication that she could more than tolerate his company. In the quiet of his room, he sometimes sat with his head in his hands – before promptly banishing the mad dream of what might have been. No matter what he did, though, he wasn’t able to banish the image of such beauty amid such squalor. More than anything, it was the picture of her and the decay and her rough, repetitive father that kept him awake.
To complete the foursome in the absence of Rowena, a blonde bimbo had been discovered and was going through an intense series of elocution lessons to match her accent with the desired image.
One other thing that assisted Charlie in overcoming his upset was Babs expressing a desire to recruit Lance as a security consultant. Charlie had mentioned Lance’s background and touched on his ‘difficulties’. Babs had nodded and understood immediately that Lance needed to find himself a niche where he was useful.
Lance was chuffed to be offered a role, especially as he liked Babs and her irrepressible cheerfulness. Babs wasn’t fussed by Lance’s strange expression – she thought it would be an advantage in a security consultant. Lance was even persuaded to speak to his parents and give them the news. They were cautiously pleased.
Their tour complete, the troupe made for the bar and Charlie gave the piano a run for its money whilst the bar staff showed off their skill with the cocktail shakers.
“So, Babs, how are you going to fill your day now it’s all ready to roll?” Roddy asked her. “You won’t know what to do with yourself.”
“Doan you wurry my lad. I’ll be only too ‘appy to take it a bit easier. I doan wanner work like that again but it’s gonna need keepin’ an eye on til it settles dahn.” She waved her glass in Charlie’s general direction. “Take the music, fer example. Gotta see wot works and wot doan. Charlie can fit in with a mood an’ ‘e plays wot suits the mood – all his misspent youf I expect – yer doan reelly need to say anyfink to ‘im or tell ‘im but they ain’t all like that.”
“Lucky Charlie’s going to play the first few nights, then” Roddy commented.
Barbara cackled. “Luck’s got nuffink to do wiv it, young Roddy; ‘e’s ‘ad ‘is orders.”
~~~
Orders they were, and ones that Charlie was content to obey. He could lose himself in the music, at least. Charlie was therefore at his varied and adaptable best during each of the four opening nights. Babs had four opening nights because the place would have been too packed otherwise.
It all worked a treat. The top four were in every night of the launch with a client each and couldn’t quite believe that it could all work exactly as Barbara had foretold.
The members were delighted with their outlay because they all thought that the right kind of people had got in and bragged like nobody’s business.
Everyone was happy. Barbara’s plan to drive prices up through scarcity worked a treat. The ‘top four’ could be as choosy as they liked, whilst the private rooms on the first floor became busy with less discerning (or wealthy) clients and were scenes of quite wild depravity at times.
They were quite a little family. Charlie got used to popping in for a natter and used to say hello to the girls if they were in. Again, it helped to lift his mood somewhat. They were four very distinct characters who started to develop their own little fan clubs…..
~~~
With everything seemingly running smoothly Charlie had every cause to be overconfident; he was anything but.
“Things seem to have kicked off well,” he confided to Lance. “As you’ve seen, the bar and the restaurant are busy. They’re going though champagne on the first floor like water and they’ve had to reinforce the fittings for a couple of the poles because of the use they’re getting. What’s nagging at me, then?”
Lance shared his caution. “It’s all fine, Charlie. It’s great the club is popular - being able to repay its borrowing is unusual at this stage I’d have thought. Shareholders like you haven’t seen a penny yet, though, and there are bound to be a few bumps on the road ahead. We just have to watch out for them and react fast.”
“Yes, I know,” Charlie replied. “It must be me, Lance, although you seem to feel the same. Something doesn’t feel right, somehow.”
But what use was it for Lance to say ‘Yeah, of course, Charlie. You gave your word to Mary and you’re worrying about the kid in Norfolk every time you get half a chance. The guilt’s written all over your face you poor sod.’
Chapter 9 – Daddy’s Cool? (Year 1 – August/September)
Notwithstanding the concerns of Charlie and Lance, the Academy then ran smoothly on its way for a few more weeks before Fate took an interest. This was about six or seven weeks after opening. If Fate has a personality, and is a psychopath (quite probable in the context of the phrase Fate – worse than death), he had put down the hairpin with which he had been toying. It was time that he stopped teasing at Charlie and others with the odd pinprick and got on to more serious stuff. He turned to his bench full of unpleasant tools and implements and picked up the chainsaw. It fired up immediately, and sounded terrifying.
It was a Wednesday night and the club was gently humming without being too busy. Charlie had just finished a little stint on the piano and had sauntered into the office. All seemed right with the Academy. He’d received a smattering of applause and thanks from those who were already becoming established as regulars, and had almost enjoyed himself - he was humming a tune under his breath at least. As he entered the office he encountered a panic-stricken Geoff, who’d just that second slammed down the phone.
“Jesus, Geoff, you look as if you’ve just seen a ghost,” he called. “Is it the ghost of Christmas past, is it the ghost of Christmas yet...”
“Where is everyone?” Geoff demanded, urgently, his pallid face beginning to bead with perspiration.
“I’m here,” Charlie told him.
Geoff started to snarl, his incipient jowls shivering.
“Roddy is out somewhere giving Cynthia the old heave ho,” Charlie told him hastily. “He seems all wrapped up in that new Lithuanian girl, you know the platinum blon
de with the big wide mouth He told me that she...”
“Charlie!” Geoff cried almost as if in pain.
“Why? Don’t you want to know?”
“I do, but not right now. Where’s everyone else? Quick!”
“I’ve not a clue where Slick Willy is. He said something about a business trip as I recall. Going into the wild wastes beyond the edges of W1.”
“I know,” Geoff groaned.
“Well why ask me, then?” Charlie frowned.
“He just called,” Geoff told him.
“Willy?”
“Yes, his father is on the way.”
“That’s good. He will be pleased I should think.” Charlie smiled cynically at the thought of the proud father being shown around his son’s smart new club and whorehouse. It should make any father proud that his son should achieve so much in such a short time.
“No, Charlie, very bad.” Geoff shattered Charlie’s happy reverie.
“Why’s that?” Geoff’s agitation was starting to infect Charlie. Was this the bad moment he and Lance had feared was due?
“Lance, there you are,” gasped Geoff. Lance was on duty that night and had been prowling.
“Willy’s father is on the way here in a cab,” Geoff blurted.
“That is bad news,” Lance murmured. “I must have a word with Babs, then I propose we meet at the entrance to greet Willy’s dad.”
“Lance, I...” Charlie started, but Lance had already disappeared.
“I haven’t seen him move that fast before,” Charlie muttered.
“He must know about him. It’s a nightmare,” Geoff wailed.
“Geoff,” Charlie spluttered. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”
Geoff started to usher Charlie down towards the club’s main entrance. “Thing is, Charlie,” he began. “Willy’s dad is a bit of a puritan. Willy needed to get hold of the dosh for this place fairly fast as you recall. When he made that phone call from your flat, he was calling his dad in Bermuda. His dad made the loan from a Charitable Trust he’s set up. Willy’s dad hates London, thinks it’s a den of sin. Never comes here, so Willy thought it would be fine. His dad was prepared to make the loan on commercial terms, even to a London-based organisation, given the bullshit he was fed by Willy.”