In My Skin (28 page)

‘I really can’t, Paul,’ I said.

And he never saw me again.

I’d thought the regs at Mood Indigo were companionable; here, somehow—perhaps it was due to my own growing sense of security and relaxation—it was easier to appreciate them as individuals. There was still the variety, and still the annoying ones to tire me; but at Il Fiore I felt more settled. The rooms were so plush and Helen worked hard to make the place respectable and impressive. We all took our duties seriously.

Helen put ads in the newspaper, and she singled out particular women to promote week by week. After a few months I appeared several times:
Lucy, vivacious slim brunette. Bust DD.
These ads brought the clients in.

‘She’s not a double-D,’ one man remarked on seeing me in the flesh.

‘She certainly is,’ snapped Bernadette, and when he was persuaded to a room I showed him my bra label. ‘We don’t do false advertising,’ I said, and was
vivacious
all over him.

The receptionists were monitored as much as we were. Helen had closed-circuit cameras trained not only on the front door but on the reception desk and in the gentlemen’s lounge. Later, she had them put in upstairs, so she could observe how often we ducked out to go to the toilet, or took a cigarette break in the powder room while loitering over our make-up. The cameras also fed to a monitor in Helen’s home. She wasn’t above ringing up at 3 a.m. to chastise the receptionist for allowing a girl to run ten minutes late out of a booking. Some nights Bernadette was very terse with us.

Bernadette worked most of my nights, and we soon made an alliance. She had a wonderful dry wit. Her frequent appeals to heaven always made us all giggle, including her.

‘For the love of Baby Jesus,’ she’d say. ‘Just when I think my jaw’s on the floor from the hopeless types tonight, this young idiot just asked me if
I
was working. You can imagine! I just looked straight at him and said,
young man, what would your mother think?
’

I adored Bernadette; her toughness and her affection made a shift more bearable. But other times I wanted to kill her. She played favourites; and sometimes that was me, and sometimes it wasn’t. She’d pick on everything, then. ‘Lucy, that dress really doesn’t suit you. Lucy, you were five minutes late out. Lucy, I was just saying to Shelley here, how some really good girls never talk about their clients. What’s that stink? Is that what you’re eating, Lucy?’

Aside from Bernadette, the other night receptionist was Maude, a mild middle-aged Irish woman who was mumsy and trustworthy; she folded the towels meditatively, and patted us on the shoulder as she passed by. Her soft accent soothed us.

I was impressed that Helen, in addition to running the place and doing all the bookwork, still worked behind the counter. She knew what was happening, who was coming in, how the girls worked. She’d sit in the lounge with us at quiet moments just like the other receptionists and chat freely. But we’d be rather more circumspect in our conversation when Helen was on—she had odd moments of over-sensitivity, when she’d walk in the door as a conversation came to a natural hush, and demand that we tell her what we’d been saying. ‘Don’t hide it from me, I know you girls,’ she’d say, glaring, while we protested that we’d only been discussing the television guide. She could be very intimidating, in her tiny stature and her iron stare; we knew that she could have us out on our ear in a trice.

Natasha the Russian girl and Helen had an argument one night, after I’d been there a few months. We could hear voices shouting in a far room; then Natasha swept through with a bright smile and started packing up her locker with leisurely insolence. Helen slammed in and just stood there, watching, with her arms crossed; Bernadette sat nervously on the couch, grimacing. When Natasha was done, Helen said, ‘I’ll call you a taxi.’ Natasha walked out with a careless wave and a pretty ‘Goodbye, everyone’. I remembered my own departure from Indigo.

‘She was trouble, that one,’ Helen said. ‘I don’t like trouble. Consider yourselves all warned.’ She stomped out in her high heels.

Conservative ideas about what was feminine prevailed here; if I mused aloud on a feminist interpretation of prostitution I received an alarmed glare. Things were always to be kept ‘nice’. Unlike most of the other girls, I was still curious about the running of a brothel and often asked questions. Sometimes Helen silenced me with a defensive hauteur. Obliviously, I went on asking or making suggestions for doing things differently.

‘But if we have to pay a coffee fee, surely that should be waived if a girl doesn’t drink coffee—’

‘I said, leave it, Lucy.’

‘I don’t know if you’re aware, but it’s actually not legal to—’

‘
Lucy.
’

Conscientious, I would stay behind with the receptionist while she did the books, so she didn’t have to leave the premises alone; I spent extra minutes at the end of shift checking the rubbish bins were empty and the sink wiped. It wasn’t so much a love of housekeeping as a feeling, retained from my bookshop days, that an employee was also part of a team; that we were all colleagues and the house was as much my pride as Helen’s. I didn’t hear the smugness in my own voice as I complained about the other women’s slackness.

It was easy to camouflage gossip as chat. I was surprised at myself—especially after the claustrophobia of Mood Indigo’s hate sessions about Stella and others—to be still so easily seduced into indiscretions about others. It didn’t feel good, when I went home; but at the time, part of a group, trusted and initiated, and with something to offer, it was intoxicating. At least here there was no Stella. It was a happier crew.

Siobhan appeared one night. When I saw her sitting on the couch, I was apprehensive. We hadn’t parted well after the fiasco of my last night at Indigo. She smiled at me, but kept herself a little distant. I sat with Coral and Jessie, talking about nailpolish.

‘So, tell me about Siobhan,’ said Bernadette as we shared a quick smoke in the powder room upstairs.

‘Oh, she’s lovely,’ I said. ‘I’m really glad she’s here. But,’ I daubed more powder on my nose, ‘I think she used to use. She’s great, a really good person to have, but—’

‘Ah.’

And Siobhan wasn’t there the next night.

What was going on in my head? As with the loan to Sarah, my self-protectiveness about drugs had become the most repellent hypocrisy. Under the guise of allegiance to the business, I maligned an old friend. Disposed of a rival. Reaffirmed my own security. Created another thing to anguish about as I fell asleep. But at that time, it all felt more like a kind of decency.

WE HAD A CALENDAR IN the kitchen. It marked the full moon cycle: something I’d become aware of having a potent effect. Periodically we’d have a weird night, full of drifters and skittish men we’d never seen before; even trustworthy regulars were suddenly rowdy, drunk, obnoxious.

‘What’s going on?’ someone would ask. ‘I mean,
what the hell?
’

‘Check the calendar.’

The mood would rise into a kind of besieged hilarity. Bernadette was especially good value on those nights. Desiree and I egged her on. ‘What’s this one like then?’ we asked, perking our hair and bosoms before we went out to intro.

‘You just wouldn’t credit it, he’s got a toupée like a dead cat on his head and, I’ll tell you girls, the stinkiest feet I’ve smelt in a long time. No wonder he has to pay for it. God have mercy.’

We unperked our boobs a little.

Jessie and I got to share one character on a particularly challenging full-moon Friday night. Stuart was small, old, with a halo of unruly white curls and a spirit full of pep.

‘Now, you’re a lovely,’ he cooed over me in the lounge. He sprawled back offensively on the couch and stroked his own thigh, eyeing my breasts. ‘Tell me, do you like a nice stiff cock up you?’

‘Gosh, I love it,’ I said.

‘I think I’ll have a go at you,’ he said, ‘but I like that gorgeous blonde one too.’ He gestured. He leered. I strode back to Bernadette in our lounge. She rolled her eyes and went to take his money.

‘He’s all mine, I think,’ I said to the other girls. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ They sat back on the couch in relief.

‘You charmer, Lucy,’ said Coral. She was filing her nails. Jessie came bustling out from the kitchen with a bowl of noodles. Dinner had just arrived. We always ate late.

‘And you!’ I said. Her face fell.

‘But I’m
starving!
’

‘Just think how good those noodles will be after you’ve sucked his dick for an hour,’ Coral said. Whether she was really relieved not to be booked was hard to tell. For all the rustle of men coming in through the door, as they usually did on a Friday, this night was thin on stayers. Any booking would be good, so long as it wasn’t an actual lunatic.

Stuart was a lunatic. When Jessie and I got to the room he was naked, turning slowly in circles and the room was tangy with air freshener. There was water all over the carpet outside the shower and talcum powder thickly clotted on the side of the bed. We strained humouring smiles at him.

‘Hi, beautiful!’

He turned. We looked. Fitted tightly around his skinny cock were three gleaming silver cock-rings. One was okay; it merely helped a man stay erect. I’d never seen a man use more than one.

‘Ah you’re here!’ he said. ‘Come to daddy!’

When Jessie, graciously going first, lowered herself onto him, she grimaced. ‘That’s some interesting equipment you have there, darling,’ she said. Stuart grinned up at her.

‘You like a big hard dick, don’t you, gorgeous?’

‘Of course I do! It’s just that—’ and she looked to me for support with her clear blue eyes, ‘—this is a bit
unusual
.’

I found out what she meant when it was my turn. The rings were spaced up the length of his feeble old penis; in between them the flesh bulged. It looked incredibly painful for him, but what I cared about was the discomfort it caused me. Each ring popped into me past the ring of muscle and made a hard nudging shape inside; when I pulled upwards, the rings clocked out again. Each time left me bruised. Jessie gobbled at Stuart’s nipples with the relief of one who had done her duty.

But it took forever, it seemed, for him to come—because of the rings. They held back his orgasm and gave him the control to keep inflicting his accessories on us. Jessie and I took turns, one fucking, the other coaxing him with kisses and tickling fingers behind his balls and increasingly hard twists to his nipples. Finally he relented and slipped the rings off so he could blow. Jessie and I were both looking a bit harassed.

‘He was just the nastiest old man,’ said Jessie when we were back in the lounge. ‘Three rings!’ The other girls sucked in their breath.

‘Some men have just never ever been sexy in their lives,’ Bernadette put in. She herself was no maiden, but she had a gilded, well-preserved allure that made young men blush.

‘What’s the weirdest guy you’ve ever had, Coral?’ someone asked.

‘I had this one the other night—do you remember that really shy, drunk young guy in the big coat?’

I recalled him. Bloodshot eyes, corporate haircut, miserable pleading expression hunched inside a big expensive coat.

‘He wanted a vibrator, so I got mine out and put it in him. Then he asks if I can smack him a bit. So I give him a bit of a slap on the arse, you know, with one hand while the other’s busy jamming the thing up him. He says,
Harder
, so I smack him harder.’ She mimes. ‘Then he screams out
No!
So I stop.’ We were agog. ‘He goes,
No,
keep going.
So I’m whacking at him and he goes
No!
again.’ She paused. ‘And then he goes,
No, mummy, no, no!
’

Our laughter was cruel.

A lean, intense man booked me one night. We went into room six, downstairs; one of the larger rooms, it was painted pale gold and had a gentle atmosphere and a big bed. I always liked being in that room. The man, who said his name was Chris, made little conversation as I pulled back the coverlet and spread towels over the sheet.

When we lay down together, he writhed on top of me almost immediately.

‘Don’t you want a massage—’ I started to say, but he knotted his fingers into my hair and yanked my head sideways. He grappled his legs on top of mine. He was lying on me full length, pinning me down.

‘Shut up,’ he said, and jammed his tongue into my mouth. It wasn’t a kiss, it was a gag.

I couldn’t move at all; my head was pulled right to one side and his fingers had me clamped almost to the scalp. I lay very still. He didn’t move his tongue; he didn’t remove his mouth. I felt a surge of adrenalin right down through my body.

Then he began to growl. A low, menacing, relentless growling in his throat; I could feel the vibrations of it in my own skull. Against the tension of my reactions, I let my body go pliant.

Don’t resist
, I thought.
Don’t struggle; don’t show him your fear. The
panic button is on the other side of the room. Wait. Wait.

I tried to calm my beating heart. I didn’t want him to feel it against his own chest, where it pressed upon me. I opened my eyes; he was staring into my face; I closed them again. We had another twenty minutes to go, I estimated. I could just hear the faint sound of Maude’s voice at the reception desk. I thought,
I could scream
—if I could get my mouth ungagged—
but he’ll be on me while she gets here.
Then I remembered I’d put the latch on. We had latches on the inside of the doors, to prevent drunken clients bumbling into the wrong room.