by Jessie Keane
61
‘Someone was asking for you earlier,’ said Fulton Sears, who was standing at the Starlight’s front door when Clara went there a week later.
She paused. ‘Oh? Who?’
‘Bloke called Bennett. In a bit of a state. Said he was going to call back tonight, see if you were in. You want to see him, do you?’
No. She really didn’t. Clara stared up at Sears’s face. God, he was ugly. And right now, after all that had happened, he was hanging on to this job by the skin of his teeth. ‘Yeah, let him in when he comes,’ she said, and walked on, into the club, aware of the goon staring after her. Great lummox, she thought.
It was only ten but it was already busy, the atmosphere thick with cigarette and cigar smoke, the lighting low and intimate. All the hostesses were circulating, chatting up the punters, drinking overpriced booze with them at the long red-lit bar and at the tables. Clara was pleased to see the regulation uniform on each and every one of the girls, the plain black satin evening dress, the neatly groomed hair, an aura of cleanliness and friendliness about them.
Up on the tiny half-moon stage, a brunette in emerald green was crooning ‘Where the Boys Are’ under the spotlight. Clara moved over to the bar and ordered a G & T. She perched up on a bar stool and sat listening to the girl singing about a man who was there, with the boys, waiting for her.
God, was that all everyone thought about? Love?
Toby was in love with Jasper, he was always talking about him, obsessing over him. Toby had his love. Whereas she . . .
An image of Marcus Redmayne, dark-haired and dangerous, drifted into her brain and she kicked it straight back out.
Love didn’t last. Look at her dad, running out on Mum when she most needed him. And in her own life, oh yes, there had been husbands. For security, for making sure the family got by. But love? She had only ever tolerated Frank Hatton. In her way, of course, she loved Toby. They’d become friends, companions; they understood each other, valued each other’s input. But love, the true love they sang about in songs, the heart-wrenching, gut-clenching love that drove people to madness or despair . . . she didn’t know about that. And she didn’t want to, either.
The girl finished her song and the punters clapped loudly. Then Clara saw David, face set in grim lines, weaving his way through the packed tables toward the bar. He looked a bit unsteady, like he’d been on the drink. She braced herself.
‘So you’re in then,’ he said when he reached her.
‘Yep, I’m in,’ said Clara.
The girl on the stage was bowing, then turning to the piano-player and nodding. He played the opening bars of ‘When the Boy in Your Arms’ and she was off again. Really, she was very good. They’d have to see to a little pay-rise for her, or someone would poach her to sing in their clubs, instead.
‘I tried to catch you at home, but you’re never bloody there. Always out around the clubs. Counting the takings, I suppose,’ he said bitterly. The barman came up. ‘Whisky,’ said David.
Clara nodded and the barman went to the optics.
‘So what can I do for you?’ she asked David.
He stared at her face. He hitched himself up onto the stool a little; yes, he’d been drinking already. He was unsteady, swaying. Finally he let out a caustic laugh.
‘What a piece of work you are,’ he said, as the barman came back with his whisky. David lifted the glass to his lips, threw back his head and drained it in one hit. Then he slammed it back down onto the bar.
‘Go easy,’ warned Clara.
‘Get me another,’ said David to the barman.
‘No. Don’t,’ said Clara, and the barman moved away. She looked at David. ‘Say what you’ve got to say, then.’
‘You absolute bloody bitch. It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘You planted those fucking pictures in the chair. I told you she sat there every time she came, and she found them just as you intended she would.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘And the fucking studio stamp. You didn’t miss a trick did you? Coming over all faint so I’d leave you alone long enough for you to stamp those pictures. Well, you got your wish. She never wants to see me again.’
Clara looked at him straight-faced, but her heart was thumping. ‘Sal showed me the prints. Weeks ago. They were disgusting.’
He stared at her. ‘How did you know? Come on. Tell me. How did you know?’
‘What?’ Clara looked back at him blankly.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ He leaned both elbows on the bar, dragged his hands through his hair, then turned to face her. ‘How could you know I’d taken those bloody things? Or . . . ’ Now he was staring at her face. ‘Oh Christ. You didn’t, did you? You were just going to fit me up with them, put Bernie off me. You didn’t know that I’d actually taken them!’
62
‘What did you just say?’ Clara was staring at him in shock. David Bennett, friend of all mankind, had taken that stuff which it had nearly choked her to look at? The children, the cringing women, Sal’s unhappy face while her body was being abused by that huge bull-like man . . .
‘Christ,’ he muttered, realizing he’d said far too much. ‘Oh, Christ . . . ’
‘No. I didn’t know,’ said Clara, her lip curling in distaste. ‘But now I do? I’m glad I did what I did. If only to keep Bernie away from you. What were you thinking, getting involved in filth like that?’
Now he was laughing without mirth, staring at her, his eyes full of hatred. ‘Well, sadly we can’t all be so fucking choosy as you, can we? I’ll tell you why I did that shoot, those shoots – there were quite a few of them and they turned my stomach, but I did them because do you know how much a Leica camera costs? Or a Hasselblad? Or the lenses or a decent tripod or proper studio lights? Even a bloody cable release? No? Well, it all costs a fortune. I told Bernie I took out a loan to buy the cameras – all right, I lied to her, but I couldn’t get a loan, the interest would have crippled me, it was too much. So when someone asked me to take a few porno pictures, I said yes.’
‘I see,’ said Clara.
Now he was shaking his head, smiling sourly. ‘You never thought I was good enough for her.’
‘You got that spot-on. I didn’t. I thought she’d have a miserable life with you.’
‘We’re in love.’
‘Oh, please. That wouldn’t feed my sister, or a family.’
He was staring at her, mouth half-open, looking at her as if she was something from an alien species. ‘I helped you,’ he said. ‘I fucking-well helped you, you cow! I don’t know what the hell you were doing there—’
‘I told you. Visiting a friend.’
‘That’s bullshit, isn’t it? But still. Maybe I’ll find out.’
‘Keep your nose out of my business.’
‘I’ll be glad to. I don’t think I’d have the stomach for looking into anything much to do with you, Clara. Christ, what a cold-blooded cunt you are. You’re nothing like your sister.’
‘Don’t bring Bernie into this. And I think you lost the moral high ground when you decided to take photos of people fiddling around with women who looked like they were being raped at gunpoint, and with innocent kids. Bernie’s better off without you.’
‘Oh, you think so? What would you know? You only marry for money, don’t you. You don’t know the meaning of the word “love”. All you do is count the cash – am I right or am I right?’
‘You’re right,’ said Clara flatly. ‘I’ve never had any interest in marrying for anything else. I don’t want to live that way – the way that you would have inflicted on my sister, given half the chance. I’m pleased to say that she’s escaped all that, and soon she’ll find someone with a bit of substance to them and a bit more of a conscience too.’
‘Someone with big fat wads of money, you mean.’
‘Yes, that. Why not? And then she’ll forget all this stupid business and she’ll be happy.’
‘Like you a
re? Are you happy, Clara? Or Black Clara, as they call you? Oh, you’re black all right. Black-hearted. Black to the core. Rotten to it.’
Clara froze as he hurled the words at her like stones. Was she happy? She was . . . content, she supposed. She’d done well, she’d single-handedly pulled the family out of the poverty their father had left them in. She’d made a success of her life, despite all the struggles, all the sacrifice. But . . . happy?
The brunette was doing a snappier number now: ‘Up a Lazy River’, made famous by Bobby Darin.
‘What do you know about Sal Dryden?’ asked Clara, changing the subject.
His eyes widened. ‘Who?’
‘Oh, come off it! Sal. The tall white blonde in the pictures, the one that bastard was fucking. What was his name? Sal told me.’
‘Frate,’ said David. ‘It was Yasta Frate.’
‘Oh! Selective memory. You know him, but not her?’
‘All right. I know the girl you mean. And I heard she’d been found dead, it was in the papers and on the news. What has that got to do with me?’
‘I don’t know. But the funny thing? You were right there, outside her flat.’
‘That’s who you were visiting then? Sal? Christ, did you find the body? Was it you?’ David was nodding now. ‘It was you. That’s why you looked so shaken up, wasn’t it? You were sitting on the bottom step looking like you were about to hurl up your breakfast. And that’s why.’
Clara ignored him. ‘So who did you sell that filth to, to raise the money so you could play with your expensive cameras?’
David shrugged and leaned his elbows on the bar. ‘A couple of club owners. A few doormen.’
‘My guess is you didn’t take those into Boots to get them printed off,’ said Clara sourly.
‘No. I printed them myself. I’ve got a darkroom – they’re black and white, not colour, it’s easy enough.’
‘And these random people, they can order more prints from you? You’ve got the negatives?’
His head swivelled round and his angry eyes met hers. ‘What is this, twenty fucking questions? Sure, I kept the negatives. And people can re-order if they want.’
‘Bet you do a brisk trade,’ sniffed Clara.
His gaze froze. ‘We all do things for money, Clara. You can’t talk.’
‘Oh, fuck off, David,’ she snapped in irritation. ‘Whatever I do, it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Keep your nose out in future or I’ll have someone cut the thing off, do you get me?’
He leaned in closer and the scent of liquor hit her in a wave. ‘You cold bitch. Married to an old man and then a bender! Does the money keep you warm at night, Clara? Does it?’
‘I said fuck off,’ said Clara sharply, drawing back. ‘You’d be well advised to do that before I have one of the boys on the door toss your drunken arse into the street.’
He stood up. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. I’m going.’
He walked away, weaving unsteadily through the tables, then up the stairs to the club’s entrance.
Sticks and stones, thought Clara, as the brunette on the stage let out a last exuberant trill of sound. The audience clapped enthusiastically. Clara clapped, too. But inside, she felt unnerved, and his words echoed in her head.
Does the money keep you warm at night?
She knew the answer to that. It didn’t. But what else was there? The brunette left the stage to a round of applause. Clara ordered another G & T, and drank it down. She shuddered at the memory of those photos. So Saint David was no saint after all.
63
It was a shame about Sal, a real crying shame, but what the hell. Shit happened – Henry thought he was living proof of that, after all that had come crashing down on his head since he was a small boy in short trousers – but what could you do?
In her line of work, it was inevitable that sooner or later Sal would come to grief, and now she had. Not so shocking, really. Certainly not surprising. And him? He was all right. Life went on. De Gaulle was in town for talks with Macmillan, and the Immigration Bill was causing fights in Westminster, and here on the streets there were fights too and births, and deaths. After what happened to Sal . . . well, happened . . . and he was sorry as hell about it but there you go, that was life, he’d had to go get himself some other digs.
And not a moment too soon, as it turned out. Since then he’d learned that the Bill had pulled in a photographer called Bennett for questioning two or three times, and there was a black club owner called Frate who had been implicated in the porno stuff involving Sal – but everyone knew that Yasta Frate had the cops in his pocket, so nobody could make even a teaspoon of shit stick to that slippery bastard.
Henry was grateful to Sal for all she’d done for him – for letting him stay with her in her ratty, disgusting, leak-ridden flat. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the streets. And he was grateful to her for slipping him in the back door to see Fulton Sears, who was overseer of the doors on all the Cotton clubs and who also was getting a pretty impressive protection racket going among the businesses around Soho.
Of course there was the connection, the family connection. But was he even a part of that any more? Clara – big sis – had married Toby Cotton, signed up for a life of ease and privilege. But Henry was a long way down the pecking order from big sis, their paths need never so much as cross if he put his mind to it, and he would. He didn’t relish door work anyway, it was boring. No, he liked doing the milk round, collecting the cash payments from the traders. He was bulky now, muscular, he frightened the fuck out of the poor bastards.
Pay up and there’ll be no trouble, he told them.
He admired the way the Triads over in Chinatown went about their business; it was stylish, he thought; they worked the streets – Lisle, Newport, the south side of Shaftesbury Avenue, Wardour, Gerrard and Macclesfield – demanding protection money, and getting it too. They called it ‘tea money’, a tribute; violence was only applied when a certain series of steps had been observed. If a restaurant owner didn’t pay on the first approach, a negotiator was sent in to take tea with the proprietor in a private room at a hotel. If he still refused to play ball, a knife wrapped in a Chinese newspaper would be presented as a final warning. After that, if the man continued to object, a ‘chopping’ would take place. He would be cut with a fourteen-inch beef knife.
And after that?
He would be killed.
Yeah, thought Henry. That was style.
64
After David’s departure, Clara did what she always did in the clubs: checked and rechecked that everything was running as it should. And it was; the manager of the Starlight was doing a good job. She caught up with the singer Babs Morley in her dressing room, praised her performance and gave her a pay rise.
She knew that David would calm down, and eventually he would move on. He’d been drunk, making empty threats and swearing at her to ease his bruised feelings. Always playing the do-gooder, the friend of humanity, he’d been scorched with embarrassment to be found doing something most decent people would find disgusting. He’d had to lash out at something, and she was the obvious target. So be it. All the rest was empty posturing, nothing more.
It was after two in the morning when she finally left the club and headed home.
On the way there, a fire engine, lights flashing, sirens wailing, shot past her taxi.
‘Phew, someone’s got trouble,’ said the driver.
‘Yeah,’ said Clara, uninterested, tired. Exhausted, actually. And . . . David had rattled her.
The truth hurts . . .
Yeah, it did. It hurt a lot.
She was a cold, heartless woman, marrying for money, caring nothing for love.
Love . . .
Marcus Redmayne . . .
Jesus! How could she even think about love for a man who’d hounded her, trashed three of her and Toby’s clubs, caused her nothing but trouble?
Another engine roared past, and another, all heading in the same direction. As the
taxi moved on, Clara became aware of a glow lighting the sky up ahead. The fire was close and it was big. There was still traffic about – in London, there was always traffic about – and as another huge red Dennis came past, lights blazing, sirens letting out a deafening din, the taxi driver and the other drivers coming up behind him were nudging their cars into the pavement, giving the engine space to get by.
The closer they got to Clara’s road, to her home, the more her guts clenched in anxiety. The fire was very close. And . . . fuck, she could see flames now, huge gouts of flame shooting up into the night sky, and . . . there were the engines, parked all ways across the road, across her road, barring any further progress, and the firemen were unravelling the hoses, sending mighty arcing jets of water up into the flames and . . .
‘You live right here,’ said the driver. ‘Don’t you?’
Clara couldn’t speak. Her house – her beautiful, fabulous house, the one she and Toby had bought treasures for, had decorated together, had debated over colour schemes for and had such fun with – was on fire.
She couldn’t think straight. Somehow she remembered to peel off some notes and thrust them at the driver, then she was out of the black cab and running.
Out in the street, all was chaos. Immediately the smoke choked her. The wind was strong and blowing thick black curls of smoke and burning cinders and ash downward so that everything at street level was grey and hazy. Clara coughed and held a hand in front of her mouth. Her eyes stung and started streaming. She could barely breathe. There were people coming out from their houses on the other side of the road to gawp at the spectacle. There were parked police cars, blue lights flashing, and there was shouting and manic activity at the front of the house.
There were only two thoughts in her head as she dashed toward the burning building.
Toby.
Bernie.
She was running for the front door, which was blackened, all the paint peeling away, and there was such thick awful oily smoke, enveloping everything, choking her. Mindless with terror, she was stumbling toward the door, she had to get to Toby, to Bernie, she had to get in there.
