‘Well, honey, you just give me the twenty dollars, then slip off your trousers and get ready to visit paradise.’
Belle wanted to laugh, for Betty knew she was there watching, and it seemed like that last line was straight out of a whore’s instruction manual.
The man gave her the money, Betty opened the door and handed it over to Cissie, then closed the door, leaned back on it and smiled seductively at her man.
‘Let’s see what you’ve got for me then,’ she said.
He had his shoes, trousers and underpants off in the blink of an eye, and Belle could see his penis was already erect as it was pushing his shirt out in front of him.
‘A lovely big one,’ Betty said, and she nudged him down on to the bed, pulled his shirt up and took hold of his penis, squeezing it and looking at it closely.
Only the day before the girls had been talking about checking for pox while they were drinking coffee in the kitchen. They spoke of looking for ‘gleet’, a yellowish pus, and any sores or lesions around the genitals. If there was any evidence of infection they turned the man away.
After Betty had examined her man she took a cloth from a bowl of water and disinfectant and washed him vigorously, but all the time making ribald remarks about his manhood and how much she was looking forward to having him inside her.
She got the man to unfasten her gown once she’d finished washing him, and tossed it and her petticoat aside on to the chair, leaving herself wearing only a lace-trimmed chemise which exposed her breasts and ended at her bottom. Belle had been told that in other sporting houses the girls only ever wore lingerie, some danced with their men when they were almost naked. But Martha liked to maintain an illusion of purity in her house, so although the girls’ necklines were low and they wore no drawers, they were dressed while in the public rooms.
The young man was growing more and more excited as Betty stripped off her clothes, and as she climbed up on to the bed and knelt beside him, she lifted her chemise to show him her private parts. Belle could see she had a very luxuriant mound of dark curly hair there, and as the young man reached out to touch it, Betty groaned and arched her back, inviting him to take liberties with her.
It was the oddest thing to Belle. She had imagined that she would feel revulsion at witnessing such things, and indeed reminders of what she’d been through in Paris, but instead she felt a curious excitement, and a warm sensation in her own private parts.
The man’s fingers had disappeared right into Betty and she was undulating her body as if loving it, making little low moaning sounds.
‘Umm, that sure feels good, honey,’ she said. ‘You’re getting me good and ready for riding your big cock.’
Belle looked at the man’s face and saw his eyes were feasting on Betty’s breasts, and the excitement he was feeling as he touched her was evident in his high colour and the stiffness of his penis.
‘Ride me now!’ he said suddenly, and Betty moved quickly to straddle him, slowly moving down until he was right inside her. She leaned forward, supporting herself on her hands, and the man played with her breasts as she rode up and down on him.
He was almost delirious in his pleasure, his head tossing this way and that on the pillow, his hands moving down over Betty’s curvy body with evident delight. And Betty seemed to be controlling the act, rising almost off him, then sinking down again while his gasps and groans of pleasure got louder and louder.
Then all at once it was done. The man let out a kind of frenzied roar and then he was still, reaching up to cup Betty’s face tenderly.
Betty wasn’t sharp with the man but she wasted no time in slipping off him, washing his penis and handing him his underpants and trousers. As he was putting on his shoes, she was washing herself, and by the time he was ready to leave, she was at the door waiting to stand on tiptoe to kiss his cheek to say goodbye.
‘Bye, sugar,’ she said. ‘You come back to me real quick now.’
There had been no kissing at all until that one brief goodbye, and as Betty closed the door on her man, Belle came out from behind the screen rather sheepishly.
‘See, there ain’t nothin’ to it,’ Betty laughed. ‘You gets ’em all excited even before you gets to the bed and they is a marshmallow in your hands. You know I’d do it with that young man for free, he’s nice and I reckon he’d pleasure me all night if I asked him to.’
Belle helped Betty back into her dress and fastened up the hooks and eyes. ‘Why didn’t you kiss him?’ she asked.
‘ ’Cos that’s what sweethearts do, honey,’ Betty said. ‘Kissin’ gets you goin’, but it’s for making love, not turning a trick. You save that for the man you love. You understand?’
Belle did understand, far better than she’d expected to. She couldn’t claim that she was eager to take her place as one of the girls, but she was far less reluctant now, and she even thought if she got a young man like that one, it wouldn’t be too bad at all.
During the next week Belle watched each of the girls with a client, and one evening she watched Anna-Maria and Polly with just one man.
‘I make ’em pay a great deal more for this,’ Martha explained. ‘It’s usually the old, rich ones that want it, but you’ll see the girls don’t mind it at all; the hardest thing for them is not to laugh.’
Belle had already found that laughter was a plentiful commodity in Martha’s house. During the afternoons the girls loved to sit out in the small shady back yard sipping iced tea or lemonade and discussing the previous night’s highlights. They held little back, descriptions were vivid and graphic, and mostly very funny, especially those given by Betty and Suzanne. Sometimes the girls laughed so much they complained of getting a stitch.
At first Belle just sat back and listened, but gradually she had been coerced into telling the girls about her experiences in Paris. Yet those nightmare scenes which she had tried so hard to forget became almost comedy when she relayed them to her new friends. She found herself exaggerating the fatness of one man or the great age of another, that way it hurt less. Maybe her voice did crack and her eyes fill with tears on occasions, but the girls would take her hand and squeeze it, and make some comment that not only showed they understood what she’d been through, but often turned her tears to laughter.
‘If you can laugh about the pathetic old devils who can only get it up with someone young and frightened, then you’ve scored over them,’ Suzanne said, with a touch of bitterness that suggested she knew what she was talking about. ‘Don’t you let them ruin your life, Belle. One day you’ll meet a man who will show you sex can be beautiful. But while you’re here we’ll show you it can be fun, and very profitable.’
Suzanne’s words proved true when Belle watched the girls performing with the client. Both of them, raven-haired Anna-Maria and blonde Polly, were completely naked, their young, firm bodies and lovely faces in strong contrast to the big, boastful Texan with the ruddy face and huge, flabby belly. His penis was very small, but when Anna-Maria knelt with her knees either side of his neck and let him watch her at close quarters as she stroked herself, it leapt to attention. Polly jumped on to it, leaning back to play with his balls as she moved on him, then Anna-Maria moved forward so the man could lick at her.
Belle could hardly believe what she was seeing, for it was quite clear that the girls had the upper hand, not the man. She watched their faces. Polly was trying hard not to laugh, yet at the same time stroking him and gyrating her hips to make it as erotic as possible so he would ejaculate quickly. Anna-Maria did in fact seem to be really enjoying being licked by the man; she was telling him it was thrilling and sexy and that she was coming. She certainly looked as if it was for real, her face was flushed, eyes half closed and mouth partially open.
The Texan bellowed like a bull when he came, and Polly put her hand over her mouth to stop herself laughing. Anna-Maria was still undulating against the man’s big tongue; she caught hold of his head at the point when she said she was coming, and sweat was glistening on her for
ehead and running down her breasts.
Belle sat back in her chair as the two girls said their goodbyes to their client. He was grinning from ear to ear, insisting they’d taken him to the ends of the world and back.
‘I sure would like you two little fire crackers in my bed every night at home,’ he said, putting his arms around them both and squeezing them hard. ‘I reckon I’ll be taking my cock in hand every night and thinking of you both.’
After they’d let the man out and closed the door, Belle came out from behind the screen. Polly started to giggle. ‘How was that, sugar? You like it?’
Anna-Maria was sitting on the edge of the bed, struggling to put her chemise back on. She looked a bit stunned.
‘That sounded as though you really liked it,’ Belle said to her.
‘I did,’ she said in her faint French accent, and she giggled and blushed. ‘That ees the first time that ever happened to me, I really did come.’
Belle had heard that expression many times since arriving at Martha’s. She understood it in the male sense, but she hadn’t until now known it could happen for women too. However, it obviously struck a chord with Polly as she went off into a fit of giggles. ‘Imagine him cock in hand thinking of us,’ she chortled.
Belle went off up to her room to let the other two girls get washed and dressed again. She sat on her bed and realized she was confused. Not about what she’d just seen, but all the things life had thrown at her, for surely there had to be some plan behind it, if she could just work it out.
She’d grown up in a brothel but hadn’t known what that meant. She’d seen a girl murdered and her mother had lied about who did it. Then there was her abduction and the horrible events in Paris. But then she met Etienne, by whom she’d been terrified at first, only to get to like him, maybe even love him a little. She ought to have been horrified at being brought here to be a whore, yet she wasn’t. She ought to be appalled by New Orleans, yet she liked it. She didn’t feel even the slightest resentment that Martha was going to push her into the work she’d bought her for.
Was this because she was born to be a whore? Was it possible you could inherit the disposition for such a job in the same way you inherited your mother’s nose or colouring?
Part of her believed that it was bad for any woman to sell her body, yet the other part denied it. She’d seen the delight on that man’s face tonight, the girls had made him happy, so how could it really be bad?
But there were other things which puzzled her too. She missed Mog, and would always have a special place for her in her heart, but she felt more at home here with Martha and her girls than she had back in London. Why was that? Didn’t that make her disloyal?
If Etienne had tried to have his way with her she suspected she wouldn’t have resisted him. That was surely further proof of a loose nature. In fact it seemed to her that she couldn’t define what was good or bad any more, for everything had become mixed up and blurred around the edges.
A soft rap on her door startled Belle, and she was even more surprised when Martha put her head around it.
‘Can I come in, honey?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ Belle said, feeling awkward at being caught out. ‘I was just going to come downstairs again. I’m sorry.’
‘Pay no mind to that,’ Martha said, sitting herself down on the narrow bed. ‘You needed to gather yourself, I understand.’
Belle had noticed the older woman seemed to understand almost everything people did. She hadn’t heard her raise her voice in anger once.
‘I dare say what you saw tonight was a little surprising?’ Martha went on.
Belle would’ve expected her to use the word shocking rather than surprising, yet in fact her word was exactly how it was.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Belle whispered, dropping her eyes.
‘You didn’t expect the girls to have so much fun, or the gentleman to be so pleased?’
Belle nodded.
Martha sighed deeply. ‘Respectable, church-going folks don’t tend to see that we were made to enjoy sex. It ain’t just about gettin’ babies, honey. Lovin’ one another in the physical way is good for all of us, it’s the glue that can hold a marriage together and make it a happy one. If the wives of the men we service here were to let themselves go and learn to love fuckin’, there’d be no need for places like mine.’
Belle blushed. Martha and all her girls used that word a great deal, and she found it disconcerting.
Martha tilted up Belle’s chin with one finger. ‘Look at you blushing! That’s what it is, honey chile, might as well learn to say the word and be done with being bashful. Once you knows how good it can feel to be loved by a man, you’ll see things clearer. I reckon I ought to have suggested that Etienne stayed the first night with you here. He’s the kind to awaken any woman.’
‘He was married,’ Belle said indignantly.
Martha laughed. ‘Now, honey, do you think I worry about married men coming in this house?’
Belle smirked, for she guessed that more than half the men who came here were married. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Etienne had, how shall I say?’ Martha paused to choose the right word. ‘Charisma! I doubt he’s ever paid for a woman.’
‘He was very proper with me,’ Belle retorted.
‘And that makes a woman even more inclined to be improper,’ Martha chuckled. ‘But honey, I think it’s time I got you awakened.’
Belle had the most vivid, disturbing dream that night. She was naked, lying on a big bed surrounded by men who were all reaching out to touch her. They weren’t grabbing at her roughly, just gentle strokes that made her feel like she was on fire. She woke from it to find she was dripping with sweat, her nightdress up around her armpits, and she was fairly certain she had been stroking her private parts in just the way she’d seen Anna-Maria do earlier in the evening.
Chapter Seventeen
Jimmy dodged behind a pile of flower boxes in the market as the man stopped to speak to someone. He waited a second, then peeped out round the edge of the boxes to see what they were doing.
He was absolutely certain the man was Kent. He’d spent hours over the last few weeks watching his office building, at all different times of the day, gradually eliminating the men who worked in the printer’s on the ground and first floor as they went in or out. There was never a light up in Kent’s office, and Jimmy had begun to think he’d given up using the place, when suddenly today he appeared.
There was something about the way the well-dressed man walked up Long Acre, purposeful, self-assured, which made Jimmy stiffen even before the man got close enough for him to see that he had the prominent nose, the thick, military-style moustache, and the wide, muscular shoulders which fitted the description he’d been given of Kent.
When he went into the building, this confirmed it was him, but it also put Jimmy in a quandary. It was just after ten in the morning, he’d already been out for over an hour, and he knew he must get back to the pub. But his need to know more about this man was greater than his fear of his uncle. He decided to wait for another hour and see if he came out again and where he went. To his delight, Kent reappeared after only ten minutes.
Jimmy followed him down through the flower market towards the Strand, but before he got there, Kent turned right into Maiden Lane. Jimmy kept well back, only too aware that his red hair, even though it was covered by a cap, was memorable. Like most of the old lanes in the area, Maiden Lane was narrow and squalid, with old buildings like rabbit warrens on both sides. There were also the back doors of two theatres in the Strand, and when Kent suddenly disappeared, Jimmy thought at first that he’d slipped into the Vaudeville. But as he reached the theatre door he found it was locked. The door next to it was slightly ajar though, and it seemed very likely that was where he’d gone.
Jimmy hesitated. Above the door was a hand-painted sign of a woman’s face half concealed by a fan. There was no name, nothing to say what the business inside was, but he was fairly su
re it was some kind of drinking club, probably with dancing girls. Maybe Belle had been brought here if Kent owned the place.
His heart was hammering with nerves, but he pushed the door open a little further and went in. Aware that if he was caught prowling he’d be in big trouble, he decided the only way to behave was as if he had real business there. So he walked boldly down the narrow corridor and up the bare wooden stairs as all the doors on the ground floor had padlocks on them.
At the top of the flight of stairs was another door with a small pane of glass in it. He peeped through and saw the room inside was more or less as he’d expected, large, dingy and windowless and furnished with tables and chairs. The floor was just rough boards. The bar was on the right-hand side, a small stage and a piano on the left. It would have been in total darkness but for an open door at the far end, and Jimmy could hear men talking in there.
He opened the door a crack and the smell hit him like being slapped round the face with a stinking floor cloth. It was a gut-wrenching mixture of stale beer, tobacco, dirt and mildew. He asked himself then whether he was really brave enough to go in, for if he was stopped he couldn’t claim to have a valid reason for being there. But scared as he was, he felt compelled to hear what the men were talking about and see what the room they were in was like.
With a hammering heart, he crept round the edge of the room, staying close to the wall and ready to duck down under a table if anyone came out. All the time his ears were straining to hear what was being said.
‘They said they want two more, but I can’t get the kind they want,’ one of the men said. He was well spoken, so Jimmy thought it was probably Kent.
‘Surely Sly can come up with a couple?’ a man with a rougher London voice answered.
‘No. He’s gone yellow-bellied on me since that other one. There’s a cove over in Bermondsey who I hear can do it, but I don’t know if I can trust him.’
Jimmy crept closer, right up to the door, and peeped through the crack on the hinges side. It was an office, with a big window which looked out on to the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. Kent was standing facing the window, and the other man was sitting in a chair behind a desk. He looked very like the pictures of King Edward, big, bald, with a bushy beard, but he had a vicious-looking scar on his cheek, and he wore a red waistcoat under his jacket and a gold watch chain.
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