Dangerous

by Jessie Keane

  Hurrying, he snatched it and somehow got it on.

  ‘Bernie, you’re beautiful,’ he groaned as he hitched her skirt up.

  Sweet lies, thought Bernie. She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t even very attractive, she was too jittery, too nervy all the time. Clara, with her air of calm and control, with her black hair and her huge intense violet-blue eyes, she was the beautiful one. But Bernie relished his admiration, lifting her hips, encouraging him, draping her arms around his neck and pulling him down toward her.

  ‘Make love to me,’ she moaned, and he did; and it was all right. And it seemed to wipe it all away, if only for a little while: the horrors and the misery of the past. But there was no ecstasy for her, only for him. So it was true, what she’d always suspected about herself: she was sexually frigid. She endured it, but couldn’t enjoy it, sex with a man.

  Now she knew, for sure.

  But at least she didn’t die of it.

  ‘That man,’ she murmured as they lay there afterwards.

  ‘Hm?’ asked David sleepily.

  ‘Yasta Frate? He came into the studio again this morning, while you were out. Looking for you.’

  David stiffened and his eyes opened. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’

  ‘To speak to you, he said.’ Bernie propped herself up and looked at him. ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything to you? I mean, he didn’t . . . ?’

  ‘No! Nothing like that. He makes me feel uncomfortable, that’s all. Why does he keep coming round?’

  ‘Oh, just business. You know.’

  Bernie didn’t know.

  And about Yasta Frate?

  She didn’t want to know, either.

  43

  Clara realized, bitterly, that Toby had used her, just as she had used him. Now she understood why he favoured the company of men over his bride. Now she understood all those secret shared smiles and pats and pawings he’d got up to with his new male friends and with the handsome Italian waiters at the hotel.

  Next morning – the morning after their marriage had been ‘consummated’ – Clara crawled, wincing, horribly sore, from the marriage bed, alone once again. She looked at the sheets and found a small amount of blood on them. He’d ripped her, she discovered when she gingerly examined herself with trembling fingers in the bathroom.

  Shuddering, disgusted, she ran a bath and lay in it, dreading that he might come in; but he didn’t. Her aching body relaxed in the warm soothing water while her mind spun in turmoil.

  She forced herself to face facts. Her husband was what they called a bender. He enjoyed men, not women, and that was why he’d entered her from behind, that was why he’d been reluctant to get into bed with her. And the discomfort she was now suffering was her own fault, not his. If she hadn’t insisted, she felt sure that Toby would not have come near her for the whole week – or for the whole of their lifetime together.

  He’d used her while no doubt dreaming of one of those dusky-skinned Italian boys who served the hotel guests with drinks and food and probably much more besides. She felt insulted, hurt. But there was no denying the truth . . . she’d made use of him and he’d made use of her.

  Well, didn’t this just serve her right? She’d blundered along, looking for new ways to improve her family’s lot, until she’d hit on this marriage to Toby, a wealthy club-owner who could afford the best but who she had somehow always sensed had little real interest in women. If she stopped and thought about it – and now she did, rather too late – she had known, in her heart, what he was. But she had ignored her gut feelings. True to form, she had been like a steam train, running along a line, unstoppable. And now she was lying here in tears, her body stinging and aching, blood on the sheets and an undreamed-of future stretching out in front of her.

  He had used her.

  Toby’s marriage to her was nothing but a blind to stop any speculation about his night-time habits. If people thought he was homosexual they might also think he was something less of a man, something soft and not fit to run a tough business. She could see that Toby had made a decision; he would acquire a good-looking wife and the talk would stop.

  That good-looking wife was her.

  And now she stood up from the bath, water streaming off her skin, off her lovely, desirable, unloved and unwanted female body, and thought about it properly. She still had a husband. He was handsome and he was kind. She still had the lifestyle she had wished to create. The one thing she wouldn’t have – if she was sensible – was the pain of the invasion she had endured last night. She had instigated that. In future, she would be careful not to do that again.

  She smeared Vaseline on the place where he’d torn her, and felt a little easier. Gingerly she dressed and went downstairs to breakfast, finding him at their usual table. He looked up at her, her gorgeous husband, and stood up, his face pink, his eyes evasive.

  ‘Good morning, Toby.’ She smiled coolly.

  ‘Morning, my darling,’ he said, and resumed drinking his coffee.

  The waiter brought her coffee and toast, smiled at her, and at Toby. She sat down tentatively, aware of that sore place, wincing. He’d hurt her badly. Was it her imagination that she caught a glint of something, something more than she had previously been aware of, passing between her husband and the handsome young man who was serving them?

  No, it wasn’t her imagination. And she was going to have to get used to it, just soak it up. Because one thing was certain; there’d be a lifetime of that to come. And if she was clever, she could turn it to her advantage.

  ‘I can’t wait to get home,’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘Perhaps Venice was a bad choice.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She shrugged and buttered her toast, thinking that she would always hate this place now, beautiful and romantic though it was. She had discovered awkward truths and suffered pain here. But she would survive. She always did. ‘I really do want to help you in the business, Toby. When we get back home.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. Business interests me.’ Making money, expanding his wealth, yes, that did interest her. Very much. So long as her family thrived and her home was secure, those were her only concerns. ‘I’m happy to help in any way I can.’

  Toby’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know, things have been a little below expectations for a while. Perhaps a fresh eye . . . ?’

  ‘I’m here to help.’

  Toby still looked a bit shamefaced, but at the normality of her tone, he seemed to relax. He knew what he’d done last night had been wrong, that he should have talked to her, told her the truth instead; but it seemed he was forgiven and he was happy to forget it – now that they understood one another.

  ‘You know, Clara,’ said Toby. ‘When you are . . . like me, sometimes it’s difficult. People disapprove. They get the wrong idea. They think that having certain tastes means that a person might be . . . weak.’

  It was almost a confession. Clara leaned forward, interested. ‘And how do you get around that?’ she asked.

  ‘By being vicious,’ Toby smiled. ‘By setting booby-traps.’

  ‘What kind of booby-traps?’

  ‘Oh, loose stairs, tripwires, and some other things, very tricky and quite bloodthirsty things.’

  ‘Sounds bad,’ said Clara, intrigued.

  ‘Yeah. But necessary. I’ll show you. And of course I hire vicious men, to handle the rough stuff.’

  ‘Who are these vicious people you’ve hired then?’ asked Clara.

  ‘I’ve got an ex-boxer called Fulton Sears running the doors on all the clubs to keep out the riff-raff. He looks ferocious, I’m telling you. Quite scary.’

  ‘I think I’ve seen him.’ Once seen, never forgotten: Fulton Sears. ‘But you’re not scared of him?’

  ‘No . . . Well, perhaps a bit. I’m paying his wages, so I’m safe enough. Sometimes I think that having Sears about the place is like having a tiger by the tail. But I needed someone tough to do the job, and
Sears is as tough as they come.’

  The waiter returned to their table with the food.

  ‘That boy’s very good-looking,’ said Clara pointedly to her husband when he’d served them and departed.

  ‘What? Oh! God, yes,’ said Toby, eyeing the waiter’s rear as he sashayed away.

  Then Toby’s eyes met Clara’s. She felt they’d passed a difficult point, but she could see him almost visibly relaxing. Toby leaned in.

  ‘Straight, though, darling,’ he whispered. ‘One for you, not for me. I could fix it, you know. If you wanted me to.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Clara, and they exchanged a smile.

  44

  Marcus Redmayne was still expanding his empire throughout Soho but Jacko Sears, even all these years after his death during the club fight at the Blue Bird, was continuing to be a sharp pain in his arse.

  No doubting it, Sears had been a tough bastard. And now there was another Sears boy on the scene, Fulton Sears, who was apparently searching for his missing brother – and not having a lot of luck with it, either.

  Jacko was long gone. And Marcus’s plan was to get rid of this brother too, if he proved too much bother. He’d heard that Fulton had been put in charge of all the doors on Toby Cotton’s clubs. Meanwhile, he was wondering where Pete had got to. Days, he’d been missing. Sonya had been in, crying, saying Pistol Pete hadn’t been round hers lately, had he ditched her?

  But it wasn’t unheard of for Pete to go off on one, Marcus had reassured her. Sometimes he hit the bottle a bit too hard, there was nothing to get steamed up about. He’d be back.

  Sonya was not happy as she made her way home after going to see Marcus about Pete being missing. Bloody men, she thought as she walked back to her little flat. Well, it was Pete’s flat really, he paid the rent, but he kept her there, paid the bills, and she loved it.

  Fucking men.

  They never listened to you, never took you seriously. She was so worried that Pete had gone off somewhere, couldn’t sleep for worrying, and what did Marcus say? It’s nothing. Don’t worry. He’ll be back.

  Easy for him to say, but what about her? The sun was dazzling today, she pulled her sunglasses lower, shielding her blue eyes from the glare. Seething with frustration at her lowly place in the scheme of things, she kicked a can along the gutter. She was going to run out of cash soon, and what could she do then? She didn’t want to go back on the open market, back on the game.

  She liked being kept by one man, even if he wasn’t a head man, not like Marcus. His girl, Paulette, looked down her nose at Sonya, she knew it, put on such airs and graces, pretended she was better than her. What a laugh! Sonya was a one-man woman. She didn’t like orgies, and it had been Paulette – before her involvement with Marcus, of course – who had taken her along to one at a smart address in Mayfair.

  The shock that night had given her! Ministers and members of the aristocracy with their trousers around their ankles, copulating with tarts. Champagne and caviar on tap, servants wandering around naked except for their socks, and all the women completely undressed except for suspenders and stockings.

  No, she hated all that. She couldn’t go back to it. She couldn’t.

  As she passed the paper shop, ‘The Writing on the Wall’ was blaring out from the vendor’s radio, sung by Adam Wade. Well maybe this was the writing on the wall for her. Maybe Pete was tired of her, and this was his way of telling her so.

  ‘Mornin’, gorgeous,’ said a man, jumping down out of a lorry’s cab, grinning at her.

  Sonya gave him a freezing look, drew her chocolate-brown mink coat even more securely around her and walked on by, approaching her flat, her home, sanctuary.

  She loved Pete. She loved his dashing good looks and the fact that he kept her safe from all the vultures who roamed these Soho streets. With Pete at her side, no one bothered her. She liked that. Without him, what was she? Just another girl in a flat over a shop, touting for business.

  Ah, she hated the business.

  If I have to go back to that, I’ll kill myself, she thought. I really will.

  She came up to the flat door beside the sweet shop.

  ‘Sweets downstairs and sweets upstairs,’ Pete always said, making her laugh.

  Oh God, Pete, where are you . . . ?

  There was a brown cardboard box on the step, about eighteen inches high, eighteen inches wide. She looked around, surely the postman hadn’t brought it . . . ? Fishing out her key, she looked at the box. Couldn’t see an address on it. And the top of the box was open. She bent and pushed open one flap. Then the other.

  Then she looked inside.

  And then she started to scream.

  Marcus had expected trouble from Fulton Sears and sure enough here it was. Fulton was badmouthing Marcus around the streets, trying to take over some of his best-paying protection work and he couldn’t have that. So Marcus took a few of the boys with him to cotton’s Starlight club when he knew Sears was going to be in there, and kicked the crap out of the place. Taken by surprise, Sears found himself on the receiving end of a working-over from Marcus, who came in late and pulled him up from the floor, which was littered with bits of tables and chairs.

  The smoky air was frantic with the shouts and cries of patrons and hostesses. Marcus leaned in to Fulton Sears’s great ugly face and said: ‘We’ve done the Paradise too. And the Heart of Oak. And listen: if you persist in being a troublesome cunt, I’ll gut every one of Cotton’s clubs and then, Sears, believe me – I will gut you.’

  45

  Clara and Toby arrived home from Venice to a blissful English summer. Clara surveyed her new kingdom and was well pleased. Toby’s house was very grand, a spacious Kensington town house with an elegantly drooping wisteria blooming on its back wall and old cabbage roses growing in the grounds, all tended by gardeners. Living here, Toby might almost be a merchant banker or a wealthy entrepreneur, but he was a Soho nightclub owner. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.

  ‘Clara!’ Bernie was there to welcome her home, hugging her delightedly as she and Toby came in the door. ‘This place is wonderful. Did you have a lovely time?’

  ‘Yeah, terrific,’ lied Clara, smiling and embracing her sister.

  Toby only stopped to freshen up, then he was out again, checking up on business. Clara and Bernie sat in the drawing room overlooking the gardens while tea was brought in by a maid. Clara sat down gingerly. She was still sore. But she ignored the discomfort and looked around her. Her home. She had achieved this by her efforts. So she had suffered for it. But so what?

  ‘When I think of where we came from . . . ’ said Bernie, when the girl left the room. ‘When I think of the fleas and the cockroaches, and the mould on the walls . . . ’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Clara with a shudder. She looked at this beautiful place, her lovely home, and let out a sigh of contentment. ‘How are you, Bernie? Still caring for the great unwashed?’

  ‘Don’t talk about them like that!’ Bernie was half-smiling. ‘Yes, I still go down Houndsditch with David, and the soup kitchen’s doing very well.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s still “with David”,’ mocked Clara.

  Bernie went red in the face. ‘Of course! He’s such a nice man. So kind.’

  ‘So long as that’s all he is.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning the bloody obvious. The wife of a photographer can only look forward to a starvation diet and an impoverished old age.’

  ‘You’re such a cynic.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, it pays to be,’ Clara said, sharply enough to wipe Bernie’s smile away. ‘Seriously – don’t even think of getting involved with him, Bern. It won’t do.’

  ‘Perhaps it would do for me,’ said Bernie obstinately, gnawing her lips to ribbons. It would do for her. She didn’t like the sex part much, but she liked him. She loved him.

  Clara rolled her eyes and quickly dropped the subject. ‘So how’s Henry? Have you heard from him?’

  ‘Ah.’ Bernie looked
awkward, evasive.

  ‘Bernie?’

  ‘He phoned and said he’d had a gutful of boarding school.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He left, Clara. Just cleared out. No explanation, nothing.’

  ‘Well . . . where is he? Is he here?’ Truth be told – and she wasn’t proud of it – Clara didn’t honestly care where Henry was, so long as he was nowhere near her.

  Bernie shook her head. ‘He did phone though. He said he’s staying in town.’

  Clara was frowning. Would that boy never settle, never do as he was supposed to? Never be the brother he should be?

  ‘So, is he working in London then? Looking for a job?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  An hour after Bernie departed to do good deeds, Toby came back in. His face was white as milk.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Three of the clubs have been wrecked. Sears said it was Redmayne and his thugs.’

  ‘Wait a minute. I thought you hired Sears to stop things like that happening.’ Marcus Redmayne. Again. Sometimes, she felt like he was haunting her.

  ‘So did I. The Paradise and the Heart of Oak were hit, and I’m just off to the Starlight to see what the damage is there.’

  Clara stood up. ‘I’ll get my jacket,’ she said.

  46

  It was even worse than they’d thought: the Starlight was a wreck. Toby walked around, broken glass crunching beneath his feet.

  ‘Bloody vandals,’ said the manager, his eyes shifting away from Clara’s when she introduced herself as Mrs Cotton and asked him what the hell had happened. Toby went on up to the office while Clara surveyed the smashed tables, broken bottles, shattered chairs. All the mirrors behind the bar had been destroyed, only jagged shards remaining in the frames.

  That’s an awful lot of bad luck, she thought.

  A couple of the waiters in white aprons were languidly sweeping up the debris, chatting, cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths. They looked at her without interest.

  ‘When did this happen?’ she asked the manager.