The Pleasure Quartet (20 page)

The air was damp and dusty. Ideal breeding ground for mice. Or rats. I had an innate repugnance for rodents of all kind; even possums used to scare me to high heaven when I was a child. I dared
not ask Clarissa if there was a chance of coming across any. I took Gwillam by the hand and held on to him tight. His palms were sweaty.

The wavering light of Clarissa’s electric torch bounced between the walls and ceiling like a flitting will-o’-the-wisp.

We squeezed our way through a teetering maze of raised panels, old sets and separations, painted backdrops, and uneven piles of long redundant props: tables, sofas, curtains, framed
reproductions of paintings, old clocks that had never functioned, vases. We had moved on from the horror movie to Ali Baba’s cave. Everything was piled high, festooned with cobwebs that I
guessed were genuine and anything but theatrical, while motes of dust danced through the air as we disturbed the accumulated layers carpeting the stone floor of the forgotten storage area. Clarissa
stopped.

‘If only we knew what to look out for . . .’ she said with exasperation.

‘I haven’t a clue,’ I indicated.

Gwillam’s hot breath breezed against my cheek.

‘What would Sherlock Holmes do?’ I asked him. His hand tightened around mine and I knew he was smiling.

‘If she had to leave her clothes behind, I reckon they wouldn’t be around lying loose. They’d be in a suitcase or something, surely?’ I ventured.

‘Good point,’ Clarissa said.

We continued our search.

We were no better off a half hour later, and even though none of us wanted to be the first to admit defeat, we all knew how close we were to giving up. The whole exercise felt futile.

There was a corner of the basement where the ceiling curved and to venture into it would require us bending uncomfortably. The recess was full of wooden pallets loaded with moth-eaten, rugged
squares of thick material, like an old Arabian rug that had been torn apart and reshaped into asymmetrical squares and was now piled high, an irregular hill of detritus that would never see the
light of a stage ever again.

I sighed, my gaze already moving away from the worthless rubbish stored in the corner. As my head moved, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a dark shape peering out from under the
lengths of rotting carpets. It was brown. Angular.

I stepped nearer and extended my hand.

Hard to the touch. Leather.

I disturbed the layers of material under which it was partly buried and the sharp corner of a large trunk revealed itself.

I wiped the surface clean with the back of my hand, diverting a thick cloud of dust that lingered briefly before floating down in slow motion towards the basement’s floor.

Scratched gold letters engraved in the burnished leather of the trunk, carved into its geographical centre.

Two letters: J.N.

Joan Nutting.

I excitedly called out to Gwillam and Clarissa.

‘I’ve found it!’

They came rushing, their torches blinding me briefly as they waved them in my direction.

‘The trunk . . .’ I said. ‘It can only be hers. It’s what we were looking for . . .’

‘Well, what are the chances of that?’ Clarissa said.

‘Allow me.’ Gwillam moved to my side and leaned over to reach the trunk’s loose strap and pulled it towards us. More dust was freed. All three of us were overcome by it and
began coughing.

Once he had cleared his throat, Gwillam remarked, ‘It’s incredibly light. The trunk is so large I thought it might be rather heavy, but that’s not the case. Not much inside
it.’

Clarissa’s voice was rough, the dust still bothering her throat. ‘In that case, Gwillam, let’s just carry the damn thing out of here and return to civilisation,’ she
suggested. ‘I’ve had enough of dark places for a lifetime!’ I doubted that was true. Clarissa seemed to me the sort of person who thrived in darkness, but I kept that thought to
myself.

Five minutes later we had fully retraced our steps, and exited the theatre by the stage door in the alley. Gwillam pulled the trunk out behind him and Clarissa locked the door.

The rain was now sparser, the weather more clement, but still bothersome enough for us not to linger outside.

‘So what now?’ I asked the others.

‘It’s up to you,’ Gwillam said. ‘You wanted help in finding it. Only fair that you should open it first and see what it contains.’

I looked up at Clarissa.

‘Your call,’ she shrugged. ‘I’ve never been a big fan of mysteries, anyway . . .’

It was agreed that I would take care of the trunk and transport it to my bedsit and let them know at a later stage what I came across inside: old clothes, priceless jewellery – which we
knew was totally unlikely – baubles, anything of interest.

Clarissa hailed a black cab on the corner of Charing Cross Road. Gwillam kissed me on the cheek and took off home on his bike.

The trunk was not locked, just secured by a pair of straps that it was easy to loosen.

There were very few clothes inside: a couple of corsets, a nightgown that had seen better days, a moth-eaten summer dress and a pair of shoes that had probably been old-fashioned already a
quarter of a century ago, and that I could not imagine someone like Joan having worn.

A meagre booty.

And underneath the thin layer of Joan’s abandoned belongings, wrapped inside a single flesh-coloured stocking and secured with a wide red rubber band, a small book and thick envelope.

I opened the envelope first, pulled out a dozen handwritten pages. The ink, once purple, was beginning to fade but I recognised Joan’s handwriting immediately.

As I pondered whether I should read the pages or was invading her privacy, I held out the small book and saw it was actually a diary. Page after page, in the same scrawl.

Would these pages answer my questions? Help bring Iris back to me?

I began with the letter.

I read it slowly.

Several times.

It was a letter to a lover. I felt like a terrible intruder, spying on someone else’s deepest secrets. But by the time I came to its end, my mind was frantically piecing together the
information in the letter with fragments of my own childhood memories, the childhood that I had shared with Iris. The way that she was so different from her parents, and how we often joked that she
must have been adopted. Her mother’s strange distance, the way that tension lingered in the air like a fog in her home. Her father’s arms on the steering wheel of his beloved Valiant,
stiff as two boards as he drove us to visit Iris’s grandmother.

I noted the date on the letter. Did the maths.

Could it be true?

Was Iris actually Joan’s daughter, and not her granddaughter as we had initially believed.

I found it both difficult and painful to wrap my head around the notion.

It changed so many things.

What should I do? Contact and inform her? Would she hate me for doing so?

I needed time to think.

I would read the diaries later.

I wasn’t ready for further revelations.

May 25th, 1928

I have been thrown out of my lodgings again, and this time I am entirely innocent – it transpires that I have been living in a brothel these past six months.

You must think me a fool, diary, for never having noticed the multitudes of strange men traipsing up and down the corridors, their tread hurried on the way in and jubilant on the way out.
Perhaps I have become morally bankrupt, or think too well of my fellow humankind, since none of the women who roomed here ever struck me as anything but good and kind, and all of the men who
visited seemed to me gentlemen.

I narrowly avoided arrest, having arrived home from the bakers at Spitalfield’s market with a fresh loaf of bread for my breakfast, just as the police were storming the building. June
Cooper, who occupied the room opposite mine and until today I had mistakenly believed was a Sunday school teacher (!) popped out from behind the shadow of a drinking fountain by the Vallance Road
recreation grounds and warned me. She had been working at the time and run from the house in her night dress, if you could call it that, a tiny flesh-coloured slip of a thing that exposed her ample
bosom entirely, and only just covered her backside, revealing the plump expanse of her dimpled thighs.

I gave her my coat as she told me everything (though I confess that I continued to picture her without it), cursing all the while about her client who had grabbed his hat and bolted the
moment the first cry had been heard, without paying her fee.

For now, I am bedding down in the basement of the Princess Empire. I dare not let on about my troubles to my employer, lest he think that I might bring disrepute on the theatre, and I lose my
job in the chorus line as well. I managed to sneak into Hughes Mansions after dark and collected just what I could carry in one case – a few clothes, my small book collection – but I
dare not return again. My vase had been broken and flowers scattered, my mattress overturned, and the little purse of savings I kept there gone. All that I have in the world, and taken by the
police I have no doubt. It’s a topsy-turvy world when the whores show kindness and the authorities are thieves, but that is human nature for you.

Who knows how long I may stay here. Half of the city is still in ruins after the flood, thousands homeless and landlords being mostly a scurrilous lot, the rents have gone up outrageously. I
have copied a key from the bunch the security guard keeps on his person – it was so easy to lift them from where they hung on his belt as I passed him in the corridor that I reckon I might
have a career as a pickpocket if dancing ever fails me.

October 19th, 1930

Again, my wages have been cut. These are not good times and the management have decreed that we women in the chorus line should be both fewer and less-remunerated. I agreed to the new terms.
I enjoy the dancing and the gaiety it provides my life with, and the companionship of my fellow dancers, and cannot think of any other occupation which, though badly rewarded financially, I am now
suited to. I just cannot see myself happy with the life of a cleaning maid, a shop assistant or working in a factory. It would be like a living death, I feel, being away from the music, the lights,
the effervescence of working in theatrical shows.

However, I just see no way I can continue to afford my Hammersmith lodgings, modest as they are, with my pay at the theatre and must endeavour to find another source of revenue to
supplement.

The devil whispers in my ear and I am tempted . . .

June 19th, 1932

I would never have guessed the life of a prostitute to be so tiring.

Today I pleasured two prominent political figures – who shall go unnamed, even to you, diary, for a whore’s discretion is her valour – and a bootmaker who could only afford
one quick rut but offered to resole my shoes in return for a second go, and a short rest in between. I hope he brings my shoes back, else I shall have to track him down in my slippers.

The bootmaker was as short and round as a beer barrel, he had a beautiful cock, long and thick, and thank the gods, clean, for I had to sneak him into the back of the Empire without any
chance to repair to a bathroom. I had him wear one of the costumes from ‘Pirates’ and pretend that I was a fair maiden, kidnapped and plundered along with a ship full of booty. He tied
me to the railings and had me over the stair well, and oh, diary, how I loved the cut of the ropes that pinched against my skin. I almost offered to fuck him next for free.

September 25th, 1933

Today a woman paid me to make love to her for the first time. We did it in the back of her car, a sleek red and black affair with cream leather interior and silver fittings. Her driver
watched us in the rear view mirror, smoking a cigarette all the while as if he were bored as hell.

‘It’s my husband’s car,’ she told me as I frigged her. That only made me frig her harder. I made her tell me about him while I rode her. We had nothing with us, no
dildos, just our fingers and tongues and bodies so I had her lie back and I got her nice and wet then ground down against her until she came, still talking about her Gerald. I wonder if, miles
away, in his spacious office, his ears were burning.

December 15th, 1934

Winter has come again. Somehow it feels colder this year.

I am afraid.

Not for my soul, no – I gave that up a long time ago. And not for my material possessions, precious few that I have.

The work goes well, mostly. The fervour I felt when I began has waned, and truth be told I sometimes miss my job on the chorus line although I still call the Empire home, and flit between the
basement and the rafters. Should the theatre ever need an understudy, I know the lines to every play in production. But of course I can’t let on that I am here.

There is a rumour that the place is haunted. I overheard the prop boys complaining. Shirts going missing and then reappearing, cleaned and ironed. Hats hanging from one branch of the hat tree
popping up on another branch. Shoes polished in the night. Cufflinks put away in a drawer and now found on the countertop. Piles of rigging rope moved. Strange noises after dark. Grunting,
groaning, a woman wailing. Well of course it is me, and the longer they go on believing that I am a phantom, the better, because they are all too afraid now to take the stairs any lower and
discover my little cubby hole. My only home since the Hammersmith digs I was evicted from when my secondary profession was discovered since a travelling salesman who also lodged there recognised me
exercising my other skills in a place of ill repute and took offence when I refused his entreaties to service him for free. I must just make sure that my noisy clients be still, or if they must cry
out, cry out like spectres, for fear one of the staff suspects a ghost with rather more human appetites!