Thongs

by Alexander Trocchi

  John Gault seldom looked at them. If he did, he looked at them with a pure male look, his gaze traveling from their haunches to their bunched breasts and then up to the flushed face on which fearful consent was already written. Sometimes he would pause and shamelessly run his hand up between a woman's thighs under her skirt. If the woman pleased him, he would go with her to her room. If not, he would burst into loud laughter, thrust his finger into her cruelly and hurl her whimpering aside.

  No woman was ashamed to go with Razor King. It was a mark of caste. A girl took on an air from being a victim of his lust.

  But he had brought Hazel home. And that was different. My father would mark her, a small cross cut with a razor on the soft inner surface of her left thigh, his cattle.

  Hazel told me afterwards that she was slightly drunk when he picked her up. She was on her way back from a dance hall with another girl when Razor King barged out of a pub onto the pavement in front of them. The other girl screamed, not loudly, and he stood staring at them with his red-rimmed eyes. His glance soon left the other girl and fixed itself on Hazel. She said that when he smiled it was as though she already felt his hands on her naked flesh. She was weak at the knees. He beckoned her to him. She hesitated. A little crowd had formed nearby. Men stood in the pub door. The organ grinder had stopped playing. She flashed a look at the men and then back at Razor King. A young man stepped between her and him. He didn't have time to say whatever it was he was going to say. A moment later he was stumbling backwards into the gutter, his ruined mouth hanging on his throat and a small gusher of blood squirting high above his shocked face. Razor King beckoned to her again, this time with the bloody razor. She said it was as though she had lost all power of will. She went up to him like a lamb. Without a word he took her arm and walked her past the crowd along the street, leaving his victim bleeding, perhaps to death, in the gutter.

  When she realized where he was taking her, she had been afraid. Everyone knew about the mark. Fourteen women in the Gorbals had been cut already. Normally my father kept the woman for about two months afterwards. Then they were free to go. The men of the Gorbals fought each other to marry a marked woman. It showed deference to the King. It was sure protection.

  Hazel said she hadn't slept. After he had fucked her, she had lain awake for the rest of the night thinking about the mark. She couldn't sleep. And her head ached from too much drinking. She couldn't believe she was in bed with him, she said. And she was thinking that tomorrow her father would know and she was wondering what he would do. Time had never passed more slowly. When dawn came, the gray light filtering across the room, across the basin of stagnant washing water on the table, she was in a cold sweat and her shoulder ached with the weight of my father's head.

  Johnnie hadn't come in. Hazel didn't know that and Razor King hadn't noticed, but I had, because Johnnie had mentioned her name a week before. He said he had big eyes for her. A real hot piece of stuff. He might even marry her. And I was wondering how he would take it when he came in and saw her in bed with our father. She couldn't have been more than a year older than Johnnie, who was nearing twenty. Johnnie would be mad. I knew that.

  I got up and walked quietly over to the bed. I was right. Hazel was awake. She looked at me without saying anything. She didn't know me then. I was his daughter, that was all she knew.

  My father was snoring heavily. Hazel was trying to cover her breasts. It was as though she was ashamed to let me see them. I noticed that she had been bitten in a number of places by the bugs. Here and there on the smooth alabaster skin of her upper torso was an ugly red spot. It was almost impossible to keep the bedbugs at bay in the old Gorbals' tenements. We used paraffin for everything, for light, and the men used it for hair oil, and we used it to fight the bugs with. We smeared it on the walls.

  I smiled at her, trying to tell her not to be afraid. She didn't smile back. She was too scared. Her lovely round breasts rose and fell next to the rough gray blanket. I would have liked to touch them but instead I turned away and began the day's work.

  I raked out the fire and lit a new one, took the basin out to the stair head lavatory and emptied it, and then I sat down on the pan to pee. There was a used condom, its neck tied with a knot near my right foot. I slipped my foot out of my shoe and touched the little rubber sack with my bare toes. I was cold but it made me feel sexy being as I was with my naked bottom on the wooden seat. I wondered who'd been in the lavatory the night before. It was used often for that. Greta Smith told me she'd let a boy do it to her there. Against the wall where the dirty drawings were. They made me feel sexy too. Sometimes I masturbated there, looking at them. When I lifted up the condom I found it was quite heavy. It was a bit sticky and the dust had collected on it. I wrapped it up in a bit of newspaper and put it in the pocket of my skirt. The thought of its being there, the real stuff, so close to my cunt, made me feel really good. I was going to begin rubbing myself when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I knew at once it was Johnnie. I called out to him.

  "That you, Sis?"

  "Aye, just a minute, Johnnie. Ah'm comin' out."

  He was waiting for me. He had a smirk on his face and looked pleased with himself.

  "Where were you all night?" I said.

  "That'd be tellin'!" he said with a wink.

  I knew all right where he'd been. He'd stayed the night in a brothel with a whore. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so pleased with himself. He was earning money now with a coal lorry.

  "Is faither angry?"

  I told him then about Hazel.

  "Faither didn't notice ye wisnie there."

  Johnnie had gone white.

  "So he's taken Hazel Cooper has he? Ah'll get the auld bastard fer that yet!" he said between his teeth.

  -3-

  When I had finished tidying the room, I put a kettle on to boil and went out to buy milk and the Sunday morning papers. I left Johnnie huddled over the fire, staring at it.

  When we had gone in together, Johnnie had taken one look at Hazel who was still lying beside my father with her naked breasts exposed. Then, without a word, he had turned his back and sat down by the fire.

  I went out and downstairs.

  There were no men in the street. The men of the district usually had a long lie-in on Sunday mornings. But the women were already moving about, in and out of the dairy and the newsagent's.

  Old Mrs. MacBride caught me as I came out with the milk from the dairy. She wanted to know if it was true my father had taken Hazel Cooper. She said she had heard talk. Someone had told her that Henry Cooper, Hazel's father, who worked as a night watchman in a warehouse, had been looking for a gun. He said he was going to blow out John Gault's bloody brains.

  "Aye, there's them before that tried!" I replied, and once again for it wasn't the first time, I felt proud at having Gault for a father.

  But I was worried abut Johnnie so I evaded the others who tried to talk to me and hurried back to the single end.

  Johnnie hadn't moved.

  I lifted the boiling kettle off the flame.

  At that moment Razor King woke up. He shook his head with a grunt and ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. Hazel, nervous, and as if to appease him, leaned across him and kissed him softly on the lips.

  He blinked at her angrily.

  "Lay aff of it, ye sexy little sewer!" he snarled. "Fur Christ's sake has that bliddy erse o'yours no had enough of it!"

  She cowered away from him into the dark corner of the alcove. He didn't pay any further attention to her. He sat at the edge of the bed, naked from the waist downwards. His feet were filthy and the skin of his legs under the thick growth of blue-black hairs was gray. At that moment he caught sight of the two bottles of beer Johnnie had brought home with him. He lurched off the bed, screwed off the top of one of the bottles, and drank a deep draught. The liquid spilled around his mouth and ran down over the beating vein of his neck onto his dirty undershirt, which he seldom took off. Before he drank again, he wiped his mo
uth with the back of his hand and rubbed away the trickle at his chest. He drank again, this time emptying the bottle. The alcohol had an immediate effect upon him. His humor changed. He screwed the top off the second bottle, took one or two small gulps from it and turned to Hazel, offering it to her. She watched him like a rabbit watches a snake. She shook her head. He shrugged his shoulders and walked on his hard-soled feet to the sink where, drinking again, he began to urinate. He allowed the tap to run for a moment afterwards. Still at the sink and gazing out of the grimy window, he drank the rest of the beer. He put down the bottle, turned on the tap again, blew his nose into the sink, and sluiced his face with cold water. He came away rubbing his face with a towel.

  As he stepped into his trousers, he asked me if breakfast was ready.

  I said it would be in a minute and dropped two slices of bacon into the frying pan. They began to sizzle immediately.

  At that moment Razor King caught sight of Johnnie.

  He looked at him suspiciously. Johnnie still stared into the fire.

  "Whit's wrang wi you?"

  "The King's up. No peace noo," Johnnie said laconically.

  "You mind yer bliddy lip or ah'll show ye who's King!"

  "Aw fer Christ's sake, can ye no leave a man alane!"

  Johnnie stood up.

  "There's only one man in thise hoose," Razor King said with a laugh, and then, pleased with himself, he added: "How d'ye like the tert, Johnnie?" He nodded towards Hazel who was now sitting up with the blankets pulled up to her chin.

  Johnnie turned and looked at Hazel for the first time. His expression became disdainful.

  "Is she no a bit skinny?" he said.

  "Skinny?" the King said. "Show him ye're no skinny, hen!"

  Hazel didn't move.

  Razor King strode across to her, whipped off the bedclothes, and scooped Hazel out of bed. She tumbled on the floor.

  "Get up," he said.

  Slowly, one stocking still trailing round her ankle, Hazel got up. She was stark naked. Her pubic hairs looked damp. They curled in little black wisps.

  "Ah thought her hair wis red?" Johnnie said. But he was looking at her in a different way. He was fighting to control himself.

  "Aye, she's a wee smasher!" my father said, pride of possession in his voice.

  Hazel turned away angrily. She was beginning to notice that she had been bitten by bugs during the night. She climbed on to the bed and began to examine her spots one by one.

  Johnnie was fascinated by her. He couldn't keep his eyes off her now. Her movements were soft. Her flesh had quivered enticingly as she had climbed on to the bed. The skin of her buttocks was smooth, like the surface of mercury.

  "Ye got yer eye filt?" Razor King said to Johnnie with a sneer.

  "Aw, shut yer fuckin mouth!" Johnnie said, turning on him.

  For a moment it looked as though my father was about to strike him, but Razor King's anger left him almost at once. He decided to take it as a compliment. He laughed again and said he could understand Johnnie's jealousy. Then he walked over to the bed and with two fingers began to play with Hazel's cunt. She stiffened and shot a glance over Razor King's shoulder at Johnnie. Razor King was making the sound one makes to a cat, teasing her pubic hairs.

  A moment later, with obvious effort, Johnnie turned on his heel and went out. As the door closed, my father bellowed with laughter, slapped Hazel playfully on the belly, and turned to me and asked for his breakfast.

  "This is Gertie," he said.

  -4-

  "Gertie'll stay."

  Breakfast was over.

  My father was sharpening one of his razors on a leather strop. Hazel, with my coat across her shoulders, was smoking a cigarette and trying to appear calm. But I knew she wasn't. I knew she couldn't be.

  I asked her if she wanted another cup of tea to give her time, but she said she didn't.

  "Clear the table," my father said.

  I did so. At the same time I brought the iodine and the bandage. It was a ritual. I had officiated before. Seven women I had seen spread-eagled naked on this table, the operating table. And always the same smell. The female sweat. For they all sweated as they first sat and then lay back across the hard wood. Some more than others. It stood out like little needle points on their muddy white skin. Almost an execution. And the faint smell of rum. My father always gave them a swig of rum before he began. I remembered the last woman, Sadie Bell. A big-arsed woman with big breasts. She couldn't control herself. Even before the first cut she began to piss. Razor King beat her up for that. She had welts all over her when she lay down again in her own mess to be cut. I was hoping nothing like that would happen with Hazel. I wondered what I would do myself if I had been in her place. But I knew I never would be. Only Razor King marked his women. No one else would have dared.

  Hazel had put on lipstick. There was a dark red smear on the end of her cigarette. Her mouth was sullen and yet relaxed. Her almond-shaped green eyes – greener because of the striking redness of her hair – expressed nothing.

  Did she know? Was it possible she hadn't heard? I didn't think so. Everyone knew, everyone in the Gorbals anyway, that no woman came to Razor King's house without receiving his mark. It was an unwritten law. I had often heard women discussing it. And sometimes in a dim-lit doorway, groups of girls would get together with a lipstick and play at "marking" a little vermilion cross on the left thigh, three inches from the cunt. I had painted one on myself often although I was perhaps the only girl in the Gorbals who could never carry the authentic one.

  Razor King was pouring some rum into a glass. He poured it liberally, about the size of two doubles.

  He carried it across to her.

  She looked up at him questioningly.

  "Drink that," he said. His voice was almost gentle.

  She accepted it meekly and drank.

  "Take yer time, hen," he said. "We've all day."

  She nodded.

  "When ye're ready," he said, "just lie doon across the table. On yer back."

  At that moment Johnnie came in again. He took in the situation with a glance. He knew what was going on.

  "Branding day," he said sarcastically.

  "Get awa oot o'here!" Razor King said.

  Johnnie ignored his father.

  "Yer faither's doonstairs," he said to Hazel.

  Hazel's eyes flashed.

  Razor King glanced at her and then back at Johnnie.

  "Get awa doon an tell him to go on hame!"

  "He won't listen to me," Johnnie said.

  I could see Johnnie was enjoying himself. He was looking derisively at Hazel, who pulled my coat tighter around her naked body.

  "Hey there, John Gault! Come on doon here tae the street like a man!"

  The voice came from the street, two stories below.

  Razor King swore.

  "It's auld Cooper. Her faither," Johnnie said with a grin.

  Razor King reached for his cap.

  "Wait, Razor King!"

  Hazel ran over to the window and opened it.

  "Away hame, faither! A came here o ma own free will! Away on hame!"

  "Ye bliddy wee whore!" the voice come back. "If ye're no doon here in two meenutes ah'm comin up fur ye!"

  "Ah'll kill the auld bastard!" Razor King snarled, but before he reached the door, Hazel had thrown herself naked on to his arm.

  "It's no him ye'll mark, Razor King!"

  She was trembling; the slick white slats of her flesh pressed against his raggedly clothed body.

  Johnnie had stepped into the room and was standing beside the fire warming his hands.

  Razor King put one arm round the panting woman and lifted her bodily into his arms. He carried her across to the table.

  "Lock the door, Gertie," he said to me. "An' you see that no one comes in here!" he said to Johnnie who nodded, pretending to be uninterested.

  Hazel was breathing heavily. She was spread-eagled like a starfish on top of the wooden table, the lowe
r part of her legs, which were bent at the knees, hanging down over its edge. With each hand she grasped one edge of the table as though to brace herself against shock. The back of her neck fitted at the fourth edge. In that position the middle part of her young and ripe torso, radiating in every muscle and hair a living shudder, was bared to her executioner. I returned from the door and stood over her, looking down. Gently I placed my hand on her lean belly just above the strong and hairy torque of her mound. She smelled of sweat like the others. It was at the armpits, at the navel, under my hand, and at the warm pit between her trembling thighs. I wondered what she was feeling. She had closed her eyes. In my other hand I held a piece of cotton soaked in iodine, ready to swab the wound. With his left hand my father gripped her just above the left knee. Like a strong clamp. And then, his eyes narrowed, and still wearing his cap, which he hadn't bothered to remove, he leaned down, his face over her thigh, and with his right hand he touched the blade of the gleaming razor to the taut skin. It broke apart almost magically in a thin red line. Hazel's torso shuddered under my hand. I laid my left forearm across her chest just above her coral-tipped breasts to prevent her from rising. She appeared to derive comfort from this movement. She exhaled her breath, her nostrils quivering, and seemed, in spite of the pain she must have felt, to give herself over entirely to the cutting razor.

  My father worked swiftly, cutting two minute triangles of flesh from the thigh. The blood was flowing like a small tide when he finally wiped his razor on his sleeve.

  Hazel uttered a sharp gasp of pain as I applied the iodine-soaked cotton to the wound. The tears were running down her face. As I bandaged her thigh I heard Johnnie laughing. Razor King was looking at him. Dumb. Like a wolf. But Johnnie laughed. He went on laughing.

  -5-

  Night fell early in the Glasgow slum. At half past four in the afternoon I lit the oil lamp and sat down with the News of the World in front of the fire.