High society (11 page)

A DROP-IN CENTRE, KING’S CROSS

A
h always ask them if it’s OK to have the radio on when Ah go with them in their cars. Heart FM or Capital Gold, that’s what Ah like. Classic stuff. Before Ah went to live in hell Ah didnae like granny music at all, Ah was intae house and techno and rap, but now Ah like nice tunes…Particularly if Francois’ been slightly less of a stingy bastard and Ah’m on a decent high. When the puntas are on top o’ me Ah always try and float above maseF, like astral flying if ye follow me, an’ music helps. Ah just melt through the roof of the cars and levitate up and up until all of London lies miles beneath me, a million twinkling lights. And somewhere down there, some other wee girl is crammed into the back of a Ford Mondeo being fucked by a man who smells of beer and cigarettes. Some other girl is leaning across the front seats, gear stick stuck in her stomach, trying to put a condom onto some stinkin’ bastard’s dick with her mouth.

‘Sometimes they don’t let me have my music. They say it puts them off, distracts them. Sometimes they say they want to hear me, but Ah’ve never been much chop at doing any moaning and groaning for them. Ma teeth are always too gritted. Besides, if ye’re paying thirty quid for a streetwalking smackhead you cannae expect an Oscar-winning performance, can ye? It’s funny the moments that stay with ye. Most of the time it’s all just a blur tae me, but for instance I remember the other night, hearing about Tommy Hanson getting his Brit Awards. Ah’m thinking, God, it’s March already, how long have I been daeing this? I know the Brits are in March. Ah used to love my music, you see. Four Brits, I think he got, didn’t he? Or five? And there he was, on the radio, thanking his fans, an’ Ah was in the back of some car desperately trying tae hang on tae what was left of the smack in my veins to get through the trick that was on top of me. Francois’ getting meaner and meaner with his drugs, see, so sometimes Ah have taste shag ‘em almost straight. It’s not that he gives us bad gear or anything. Nothing too badly cut. He doesn’t want us dead, he just wants us dead tae the world, being screwed ten or fifteen times a night and handing over four hundred quid when the sun comes up. Anyways, so there Ah am, sitting on ma rapidly diminishing cloud over London, trying to stay aloft, looking down while Tommy Hanson’s on the radio with the single of the year, ‘Heaven Ain’t High Enough’…That was a Christmas number one, ye know, and Ah started to think about Christmas and what it had been like before ma da’ had left and the other man came, and how there had been some good times and Ah always got a load of presents, and Ah wondered where ma dolls were now. Ah had aboot twenty Barbies when Ah was a wee girl. Ah used to run a dolls’ disco, all girls. Then far below me the girl in the car, who was also listening to the music, started crying, but it was OK because the fellah who was on top of her liked that. So Tommy sang about heaven and Ah hung there in the sky with hell below me, and the girl in the car cried and cried and cried.’

While Jessie had been speaking to the volunteer worker an important-looking party had entered the centre accompanied by a small group of media. The group, headed by Peter Paget, approached Jessie.

‘I’m so sorry to interrupt you. My name is Peter Paget and I’m a Member of Parliament.’

‘Oh, right. Ah’m Jessie.’

‘And you have a drugs problem?’

‘Too right, darlin’. Mah problem is Ah havenae got any at the moment. Can ye help me out?’

‘Would you mind if I had my picture taken with you?’

Ten quid.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’

‘Oh, come on, mate, gi’ us fifteen and Ah’ll gi’ ye a blowjob as well.’

‘I’ll stand you a cup of tea if you like.’

‘OK.’

Peter turned to the little group of reporters who were with him and pointed out that a girl like Jessie was beyond society’s ability to help because she existed on the wrong side of the law. His voice shook with emotion as once more he outlined the absurdities of a law that criminalized its victims.

‘I have two teenaged daughters. Young Jessie here could easily be one of their numerous boisterous friends. But no. Instead, this young girl, utterly alone, lives outside a civilized society that is happy to forget about her. It is plainly obvious that this vulnerable girl needs protection from the law, not persecution, and yet society considers her lifestyle almost exclusively criminal. Disraeli’s famous phrase Two Nations is as relevant today as in that other age when child prostitutes shamed the streets of London and every tenement contained a Fagin’s den…Is it not…Is it not…Oh, for God’s sake! Look at this poor girl. She’s our fault. We have to help her!’

Suddenly Peter’s eloquence deserted him. He had had his presentation all prepared. There had been plenty more Dickensian references to come, but looking at Jessie, this sad, dirty but still beautiful little junkie with whom he was sharing tea, his composure had deserted him. Supposing his own beloved daughters were so unfortunate as to fall beneath society’s net? What would become of them’} Any teenager in the country could become like Jessie if fate were first to set them on that path. Because once they fell, the law would be ranged against them.

Peter found himself struggling not to cry. This was ridiculous. He was a professional politician. He had a job to do. He was a stern and practical man. To Peter’s surprise it was Jessie who decided to help him out of his embarrassment by speaking up herself. ‘You’re very right, Peter. As far as the police are concerned, Ah’m a criminal. They don’t want tae know about me and Ah don’t want tae know about them. If mah pimp gi’s me a kickin’ the best Ah can hope for from society is a Band Aid offa casualty.’

The assembled media nodded thoughtfully. It was an uncommon feeling for all concerned to be involved in an issue and a debate so entirely real and immediate. Public affairs had descended so deeply into trivia and gossip over recent years that it was indeed refreshing to find everyone, politicians and journalists alike, focusing on something truly meaningful and utterly urgent.

Every writer in the country was grateful to Peter Paget. By no means all of them agreed with him, but they were all grateful that he had galvanized the opinion-forming classes into finally having to form some opinions of their own.

Jessie had her tea and agreed to be photographed. Peter Paget pulled himself together and was genuine and solicitous towards her; even the assembled journalists were touched.

Samantha thought Peter had done wonderfully. Magnificent. So sincere and caring, so emotional, so beautiful. A proper man in a world of silly boys. As they left the drop-in centre she thrust some important-looking papers under his nose. Peter glanced down. Amongst them was a note that read, J want to take you in my mouth. Now.

Never mind two nations. Peter was two men. The one who had entered the drop-in centre and spoken to Jessie — a deeply committed conviction politician and family man. And the one who left the centre, a quivering mass of agonizing sexual desire. A man happy, indeed eager, to risk everything he loved and everything he believed if he could just get his penis into the mouth of the gorgeous, bewitching, giggling, worshipping girl/woman whose bottom swayed before him as she led the party from the room.

BANGKOK WOMEN’S PRISON

M
oi mum’s written to the King. Yeah. She reckons once the King hears about me being a good girl underneath I’ll be all roight.’

The room Sonia had been moved to held forty-five women. There was not space for everyone to lie down at the same time and some slept sitting up or draped across each other. The woman to whom Sonia was speaking did not understand her and in fact probably did not even hear her. She had to all intents and purposes lost her mind, and spent the nights swaying angrily and picking imaginary objects from her prison dress. The woman on Sonia’s other side masturbated all the time she was awake, her filthy garment perpetually drawn up around her waist. Clearly she took no pleasure from this automatic activity. She rubbed herself for no other reason than that there was nothing else to do.

Not everyone in the overcrowded cell was mad. Most had come from tough backgrounds and had the mental resilience to retain some semblance of sanity in the midst of such bedlam. But some succumbed to the desperate escape route that insanity offered, and those around Sonia had certainly done so. Perhaps that was why these women did not object to Sonia’s endless monologues delivered in her foreign tongue. The other women, the sane women, had soon become bored with Sonia’s dull bleating and had chased her away. Increasingly, Sonia found common ground with the lunatics.

‘I’m gonna get out, I am, just as soon as moi mum’s talked to the King an’ told ‘im I’m not supposed to be ‘ere. Now way. Royal pardon, that’s what I’m gonna get, ‘cos I’m British.’

SAMANTHA’S FLAT, ISLINGTON

S
he raised her head and looked up at him, past his unzipped fly, his untucked shirt, his skewed tie, and up at his strangely grim and unsmiling face. She’d noticed that men often looked like that when they came. They might at least try and look as if they were enjoying it. Peter’s back was against the front door; Samantha was on her knees on the mat. She got to her feet, raising her face to his, her lips clamped closely together. Then, with great deliberation, she gulped.

Peter sighed. Angela rarely swallowed. Even in the days when they had bothered with such exotic activities as oral sex, she had never liked to swallow. Peter did not know why it felt so intensely satisfying that Samantha chose to do so, but it did, and for a moment his satiated loins spun and crackled with one final roar of sheer pleasure. And then, almost as instantly, came the guilt.

To be indulging in such intimacy…with a girl half his age. If Angela and his daughters knew…He always felt the same after Samantha and he had finished.

He bad to get out of this.

And yet…to give it up, to give up such an entirely exhilarating sexual adventure. How could he forgive himself? Man is a sexual animal, or at least that’s how he started out; the social side came later. That surely was when all the trouble began. One day Peter would be old and grey and facing the imminence of death. How could he look back upon his younger self and say…‘You gave it up? You denied yourself the opportunity to satiate yourself utterly on a young female of the species in her prime, for guiltl Do lions feel guilt? Do tigers? No! And nor should you. You are a man! A male of the species. You have a right to sex.’

Peter often went through this argument with himself and it would invigorate him briefly before once more the certainty descended upon him. He had to get out of this.

Although Peter was due back at Parliament for his confrontation with his Party Chairman, he allowed Samantha to persuade him not to rush straight off now that the frenzied, orgasmic moment had passed.

Hers was a romantic soul and she was anxious for a moment of calm and affection. As she explained, she was not normally the type of girl to drop to her knees when scarcely inside her flat and administer oral sex to her boyfriend on the doormat. In fact, she told him, in the past her boyfriends had been fortunate if they had got any oral sex at all. This rather surprised Peter, as he had come to view Samantha as such a highly charged and vigorous sexual animal that it had not occurred to him that she might have her reserved side.

‘I’m only mad for it with you,’ she assured him as they lay together in each other’s arms, and then, after a long, thoughtful silence, she added, ‘Do you think it’s because I lost my father when I was little that you’re so attractive to me, Peter?’ Not, perhaps, the most flattering suggestion to make to one’s older lover.

‘No, I imagine it’s because of my ravishing good looks and awesome sexual powers.’

‘That too, of course. That goes without saying.’

‘In politics nothing goes without saying and saying many many times.’

‘This isn’t politics, Peter. It’s our life together.’

Once more the burning light of sexual power and professional good fortune that had lit the path of Peter’s inner man since he had almost simultaneously begun his political and sexual rebirth flickered a little. Life together? Not a comfortable phrase.

‘We should be beginning to think about making a move,’ he said. ‘I’m due in the house.’

But Samantha did not seem to wish to move. ‘I was eleven when he died.’

‘Ah. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been.’ What else could one say?

‘It was cancer, but he and Mummy managed to keep it from me until nearly the end. Do you know that for five years afterwards, until I was nearly sixteen, I wrote a poem to him every single day? Every day I would wake up early, thinking about him, and I would set about my poem, eleven lines it had to be, one for each of the years he was in my life.’

Peter glanced at his watch. It was not that he wasn’t interested in Samantha’s life, but an appointment with the Party Chairman was not something to be taken lightly. If Samantha was aware of Peter’s impatience she ignored it.

‘Sometimes it made me late for school. I’m sure all the poems must have been very similar. How could they not be? But I always tried, each time, to feel his love and his passing in a new and immediate way. It didn’t matter, anyway, because each morning at eleven o’clock I’d destroy my poem. I’d leave class, or whatever I was doing, hide away and burn it and blow kisses to the face that I saw in the flames. I thought that the smoke carried my love and my sorrow up to heaven where Daddy would read what I’d written in the air.’

This was the first time that Peter had seen Samantha cry.

‘Eventually my mother made me see a psychiatrist. She had no choice, I’d become an obsessive. I hadn’t even begun to let go. The woman I saw was very good and really helped me. Slowly but surely we broke up my cycle of dependence on Daddy’s memory. I stopped writing my poems every day and even began to talk to boys, but every now and then, ever since, once a week or perhaps once a fortnight, I still do my old thing — not necessarily eleven lines or at eleven o’clock, my shrink cured me of that — but nonetheless I still write to Daddy and send my thoughts in smoke to heaven…’

The tears were really rolling now and Peter felt moved to cry too.

And then Samantha’s face changed. Despite the still wet tears a radiant smile lit it up. ‘Except not now, Peter. Since the day I met you I haven’t written him a single word.’

Samantha kissed Peter gently on the lips. Her hand stole down inside his trousers. Her warm lips were at his neck. But Peter Paget did not feel like sex any more, and it was no longer the lateness of the hour that was distracting him. It was the intensity of Samantha’s emotions. What a shock, what an extreme shock to get into bed with a happy-go-lucky young sexpot and then find oneself in the arms of a complex and damaged individual. Samantha had exploded into his life naked and unencumbered. Now, it seemed, her baggage had arrived.