Two Women (38 page)

How anyone could be beaten or abused for money was a mystery to her. She had given out a few good whacks for a certain price over the years, indeed she still had a couple of regulars she saw occasionally, but to be the object of someone’s hatred seemed to her a mug’s game.

The whore should be the one who exploited, not the other way around. If she used her brains anyway. Barry saw her watching them and moved away from Marianne. The girl walked past her and smiled smugly.

Roselle knew her type all right, she had seen them come and go over the years. She wouldn’t last long because Roselle was going to give her the bad news soon, tell her she wasn’t what the club was looking for. That should take the spring out of the bitch’s step.

Catriona, a large-boned African girl, was on reception. She smiled knowingly at Roselle and nodded at the door. Ivan was leaving and Roselle was annoyed, she had wanted to talk to him. As he pulled on his coat there was a commotion from inside the club, a scream and then a heavy thud. Turning back Roselle went in, followed closely by Barry.

Marianne was on her knees trying to disentangle her hair from the long red talons of a black hostess called Lucille. She was the designated hard nut among the girls, renowned for knocking out a bouncer in Dean Street with one hefty punch. Her pretty face was criss-crossed with scars from fighting. She had a girlfriend called Lizzy who did as she was told, gave her case money to Lucille and rolled her joints for her.

Lizzy stood watching the fight now with bright eyes. The other hostesses were also watching, but warily.

Roselle saw Barry wade in to intervene between the two women. Picking Lucille up by her hair, he half dragged and half pulled her off the screaming Marianne. But clumps of the hostess’s hair were coming out in the process.

‘All right, all right, calm down, ladies.’

Barry’s voice was jovial. But he was straining to keep a hold on the big black woman.

‘You fucking fuck me, girl, me take you out of here and kill you. You hear what me saying to you?’

As Lucille screamed the words out she was kicking at the woman on the floor. Her high heels were hitting the mark each time and Marianne, bloody and bleeding, lay there, arms over her head to protect herself from more blows.

‘What on earth is going on here?’

Roselle looked at the dozen women standing around the bar.

‘What’s she supposed to have done?’

As she spoke she saw two customers requesting their bills and sighed.

‘Whoever is with them two geeks get your arses over there or you’ll be looking for another fucking club tonight. The rest of you better get yourselves sorted and back on the meat seats in case we have any more customers. Only that is why you’re all here, isn’t it?’

Her voice brooked no argument. Even Lucille realised she had gone far enough. She liked Roselle who gave everyone a fair crack at the punters and had no favourites. As the girls drifted back to their seats and tried to calm irate punters Lucille pulled herself free from Barry’s grasp.

‘She been dealing in here. Bad stuff - you know, H, skag, whatever you want to call it. He giving it to her to sell. Now, Barry boy, don’t you try ’n’ deny it because the little whore tell me herself. Any dealing here is
my
territory and then it be only amphetamines or barbs. Stimulants. Plus a bit of puff now and again, to mellow them out.’ She looked at Roselle, eyes wide in outrage. ‘Now they all highballing - heroin and speed mixed. That be dangerous stuff. You telling me you want that in here, Roselle?’

Barry was quiet and that told her all she needed to know.

She poked a bleeding Marianne with one foot.

‘You get your stuff and disappear. You too, Barry. You’re both out.’

He thought he was hearing things.

Roselle already knew he did a sideline in puff. What was her problem?

Lucille laughed then, a deep man-like sound, seeing the expression on Barry’s face. Marianne was pulling herself up from the floor. She looked very young and very bloodied.

‘If I hear of you in any of the clubs in Soho, I’ll be forced to tell them why I let you go,’ Roselle told her sweetly. ‘So if I was you, dear, I would find myself an alternative city and a new ID.’

Her voice was smug. She knew she could see to it the girl was blacklisted. No clubs wanted skag on the premises. Heroin was for street girls and club hostesses were supposed to be a step up from them. Though once they tried H they usually ended up on the streets. It was poison. It destroyed the girls and also the clubs themselves. People on heroin became users, thieves and liars. These girls were no angels to start with. Couldn’t afford to be in their line of work. But heroin addiction gave them an added edge because the need for it became so strong. They would go case for as little as ten pounds and their lives became an endless round of fucking and scoring. Roselle had seen it so many times before.

So she had right on her side as well as a certain amount of vindictive joy at getting her own back on two people who’d thought they could get one over on her. Well, so far as she was concerned, the man or the woman had not been born who could pull a fast one on Roselle Digby.

She made her way up to her office. She had just poured herself a large brandy when Barry burst through the door. She had been expecting him. With her back turned, she allowed herself a half smile, before she swung round.

‘And what can I do you for?’

It was a joking expression they had between them, a hostess expression that made them both laugh normally. Barry was seriously upset. She could see him trying to come up with an explanation for what he had done. Trying to justify himself and his actions.

She felt sorry for him. He had not even taken the time to come up with an excuse before he burst into her room. She knew he cared about her deeply and that people like Barry saw caring as ownership. She also knew he needed constant reassurance of his power over women. His power to fuck them and use them. It was part of him, an intrinsic part of him.

Roselle sat at the desk and sipped her drink, looking every bit the dispassionate observer. She knew this was what was bothering him most.

‘She meant nothing to me . . .’

Roselle interrupted him.

‘I should think not, Barry. If she did it says a lot for me, doesn’t it? But, you see, what you failed to understand is that I will tolerate no outside dalliances. I don’t care who they’re with. I accept you might give your wife one now and again, but apart from that you were supposed to be mine. I don’t sleep with Ivan any more, even if I have his child.’

She watched the colour drain from Barry’s face.

‘What you talking about?’

Roselle laughed, enjoying the power she had over this mindless, violent but, oh, so handsome thug. She moistened her lips with her pink tongue.

‘Ivan is my son’s father. He and I had a thing going for a long time. Why else do you think I have the position I do in this club? I assumed you were astute enough to suss that one out for yourself.’

He was flabbergasted.

‘You mean, you and Ivan . . .’

She nodded, smiling happily.

‘I was a prostitute, remember, Barry. It was my job. Ivan offered me an alternative and I grabbed it with both hands. In more ways than one.’

She laughed raunchily.

‘He can’t raise a smile these days, bless him, but we still have our child in common and our business interests. You see, unlike Susan I like to be in control of my life and my work. Even when I was whoring I always made a point of being in control. I kept a little bit of me back and that’s what saw me through. It was just a means to an end with me and sleeping with Ivan, who was a nice man and a wealthy one, was certainly preferable to humping strangers day in and day out. Surely you can see the logic in that?’

Barry was staring at her with a mixture of disgust and grudging respect. He did understand what she was saying, but that did not mean he had to like it.

‘I was faithful to you, Barry. I expected you to be the same to me.’

She picked up some papers from her desk in a gesture of dismissal. Scanning them as if they were the most interesting things she had ever seen in her life. Barry stood before her, a hangdog expression on his face and no idea how to get himself back into her good books.

Roselle looked up, her expression puzzled.

‘Still here?’

He stared into her smiling face and felt the first stirrings of rage. Turning from her, he marched from the room.

She called out gently, ‘You may as well finish the week out, I have to find a replacement and discuss it with Ivan.’

Barry’s macho half wanted to tell her to get stuffed. The part of him that loved Roselle, and what she could give him, hoped this reprieve would give him a chance to sort it out with her. A few more days to get into her good books. He couldn’t go home to Sue, he just couldn’t. She would know what had happened as soon as he walked in.

As he shut the door carefully behind him Roselle allowed herself a little giggle. She would make him sing for his supper, and enjoy doing it. What he did out of her sight was his business, but to do it with one of her hostesses was a real piss take. She could not let it go. If she did she would be giving him licence to do it again, a red flag saying anything he did was acceptable.

And as she had said to him, she was most definitely
not
Susan.

A sheepish Barry returned home to his wife that night. As soon as Susan heard the key in the front door she knew it was him. Two minutes later he was standing in the bedroom doorway looking at her and the three kids in bed together.

The new baby was nearly due and Susan was heavy with the child. Her ripe body was bloated even more than usual and her face and hands seemed to have swollen.

‘All right, Bal?’

He shook his head, sorry for himself. Little Barry opened one eye, saw his father and cuddled closer into his mother, uninterested in the new visitor.

‘He ain’t getting in here, is he?’

Susan laughed.

‘He couldn’t fit in, son. I’m amazed we all do.’

Even Barry laughed.

‘Put the kettle on, Bal, I’ll come down.’

He went back downstairs and Susan moved all the kids gently and slipped from the bed. Shoving her swollen feet into an old pair of slippers, she dragged on a stained dressing gown and quietly stole from the bedroom. At the door she looked the kids over once more to see they were well covered then made her way downstairs.

She was yawning as she walked into the kitchen, her hair a bird’s nest of tangles and her belly practically down to her knees.

‘Fuck me, girl, you look rough.’ Barry’s voice was kind.

She patted her belly happily.

‘Once this one makes an appearance I’ll be all right. But this baby is killing me, Bal. Taking everything from me. I’m so fucking tired all the time.’

He nodded sympathetically. As he poured out the tea Susan lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply. Barry always made her crave the rush of nicotine, it was how he affected her.

‘So what brings you home at this time of night? I wasn’t expecting you.’

She had picked up a hairbrush from the table and was pulling it through her hair, the fag perched precariously in the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were screwed up against the smoke, her cheeks red and rough from the late-winter weather.

Barry thought of Roselle in the silk dressing gown with the red embroidery that she had bought in Portugal. Her graceful feminine ways. Very different from Susan who was more in the class of Yootha Joyce than Ursula Andress, Ursula being his all-time erotic fantasy.

Susan sipped her tea noisily and gratefully.

‘I just needed that. So come on, Bal, answer me. What brings you home then?’

He started rolling a joint on the table.

‘Have you fallen out with Roselle?’ Her voice was harsh now and he didn’t answer her. Telling her all she needed to know.

‘Oh, Bal, are you stupid or what? You will never, ever get another girl like her.’

Barry was concentrating, getting the roach in nice and tight. He finished what he was doing and lit the joint, taking a deep puff of it.

‘I fucked meself, Sue. You know what I’m like.’

Susan sighed heavily, annoyed with him. Now she was expected to take him back and she didn’t want to.

‘Do you want me to talk to her like, see what I can do?’

He looked at her with a strange, disgusted expression.

‘You telling me you want shot then, is that it? I thought you’d be pleased.’

Susan forgot herself then and snapped, ‘Well, you thought wrong then, didn’t you?’

Barry shook his head in amazement.

‘Fucking real, ain’t it? Me old woman don’t want me back. I pay all the bills, keep you all clothed and fed, make sure everything is hunky-dory - and now you’ve got the cheek to tell me I’m an inconvenience.’

Susan shook her head, distressed at the change in him. Like this he was dangerous.

‘I never said any of that and you know I never. You was happy with Roselle, that’s all, you was a good team, you two. I liked seeing you happy, Bal. As hard as that may be to believe she made you into a better person. She could give you what I never could in a million years.’

‘And what was that then, smart arse? Other than decent conversation, a nice face to look at and the best sex I ever had.’

Susan hitched her belly up to get more comfortable and give herself time to think.

‘She gave you peace of mind and a reason to work. Me and the kids never gave you that. You’ve always seen us as a millstone hanging round your neck. With Roselle you was content, happy, and if you’ve ballsed it all up, it’s hardly my fault, is it? Don’t take it out on me. I think the world of her.’

Barry started laughing then.

‘You’re a fucking case, you are, but you don’t fool me, Susan Dalston. You live the life of Riley, you. A few quid and the kids, that’s all you want from life, ain’t it? I provided you with all that: kids, money, a nice drum. And what have I got in return?’