‘OK.’
She ducked under the curtain again, but was back in a few seconds. Her breasts I noticed were small and empty and I saw the flicker of silvery stretch marks across her lower abdomen, the flesh puckered and grainy. She lit a cigarette as she stood over me, smoking it in short, angry bursts.
The curtain parted again and a man came in with a bottle that looked like the sort of sparkling wine Elaine might serve on special occasions, and two glasses on which I could see traces of finger marks. He was carrying a card machine which he thrust under my face. ‘One hundred and twenty-four pounds,’ he said.
I laughed. I could have laid waste to him with one punch but I guessed if I did it would be the woman’s fault, so I paid the absurd amount, my plastic skimming through the machine. The woman opened the bottle when he was gone, pouring out a glass which she handed to me.
‘Don’t you want one?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t drink.’
I sipped at the liquid and it was as warm and sweet and disgusting as I’d known it would be. I put the glass back down.
‘What you want?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ I answered.
She glanced at the curtain. ‘I can dance, suck or fuck, or all three.’
‘No, really.’ I wasn’t sure I was ever going to find my way out of this place. It felt possible that life as I knew it had ended and there was no way back.
‘You have to pay whatever,’ she said.
‘That’s fine. What do you get most for?’
She looked at me like I was simple. ‘All three.’
‘How much?’
‘Five hundred pounds.’
I knew she was lying, but I didn’t care. ‘I don’t have any cash.’
She shrugged. ‘OK, three hundred.’
‘How much do you get of that?’
‘Fifty. And twenty for every bottle of champagne.’
I tried to hold her flickering gaze. ‘Get him back. Say we want another bottle of champagne and all three.’
She smiled at that and I saw her front teeth were chipped. She ducked out again but was back even more quickly. The man returned with another bottle and the machine. I swiped away £424 and wondered what Elaine could do with that sort of money.
‘Sit down,’ I said when he’d gone.
She shook her head. ‘I dance for you.’ I opened my mouth to tell her no, but she had already started, her body contorting and gyrating. She raised her hands above her head and I could see the shaving rash in her armpits and round her groin. She turned and the tops of her thighs were pitted and uneven, a large yellow bruise winking in the crease of her knee, another mid-way down her calf. Her hands were on her own body, kneading her non-existent breasts, her mouth pouted in an ‘O’. She came towards me and straddled me, dipping her face against mine, her mouth nipping against my ear. Her body felt slimy and I thought I would have to burn the clothes I was wearing.
And then I thought I was going to be sick; I felt the sensation rushing through my body, contorting my insides. Because I knew if V could see me now she would never forgive me.
‘Get off,’ I said. But the woman kept up her demented thrusting against me. ‘Get off me,’ I shouted, the need to stop what was happening now so imperative I wanted to scream.
I stood, perhaps more forcefully than I meant, because the woman shot backwards, her body landing against the wall of the booth, her head jerking. She whimpered and for a ghastly moment I thought her arm looked broken.
I went to help her up but she batted away my attempts, struggling to her feet on her own. We looked at each other in the flashing, smoky half-light.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean … I asked you to stop.’ I felt a strange desperation for her to understand that I wasn’t like the other men she had to deal with night after night.
But her lip curled as she walked past me and held the curtain to one side. ‘Your time is up,’ she said.
I felt surprisingly all right when I woke the next morning. I went on my run and my legs moved smoothly beneath me.
I thought of Stacey while I ran, a girl whom I’d been in the home with and who was brought back by the police one night for soliciting, a word she educated us in whilst the social workers discussed her with the uniformed men downstairs. She was fourteen and told us she’d already turned tricks; I fully believed her at the time, but wonder now if it was really bravado. She called it the family business and told us how her mother used to bring men back to the bedsit they shared and how she’d have to wait in the corridor. She’d ended up in care because one of the men had asked her mother how much Stacey cost and her mother had stabbed him. Stacey said she needed the money for the train fare as she wasn’t allowed to visit her mother in prison. I hadn’t thought of Stacey for years. She must be in her mid-thirties, too old probably to be a woman like I’d seen the night before, although I doubted life had turned out well for her.
When I got to work George put his head round my door. ‘Didn’t see you leave last night. Bloody good time though.’
‘Yes,’ I lied, knowing it was the only possible response.
‘Got a rollicking off the missus,’ he said. ‘How did you fare?’
‘My girlfriend’s away. Does your wife know where you went then?’ The rules of the upper classes are so foreign to me I am always lost in their world.
But he laughed. ‘God no. Just that I got in late stinking of booze and fags. She always makes way too much of a fuss about stuff like that. You know what women are like.’
‘How old are your children?’ I asked.
‘Six and four.’
‘Girls or boys?’
‘One of each.’ He shifted his weight and I noticed how pale and clammy his skin looked. I let what we were both thinking hang in the air and looked back at my computer screen and started tapping away until he left. Kaitlyn waved at me on the way past my window at lunchtime and I felt myself blushing, ashamed at what she would think of my behaviour the night before.
At two o’clock a note flashed up on my screen: Your appointment with Dr Lucas Ellin is in one hour at 3 p.m. I groaned loudly, sure that there was a good excuse for me to cancel the appointment. But if there was an excuse it eluded me as I found myself waiting outside Dr Ellin’s office an hour later, my suit feeling a little tight and sweat breaking out across my palms.
It was I suppose a credit to Dr Ellin that I hadn’t known of his existence at Bartleby’s until the moment the chairman had mentioned him but somehow I found this disconcerting. His room was very different from all the other offices in the building: it was a pale blue and his desk was glass, so I could see his whole body stretched out on his chair. He only had one computer and it was pushed into a corner, as if it was a minor irrelevance. And the chair I was supposed to sit on was a plush wingback, with a cushion in its centre. There was a large fern in one corner and a bookcase stuffed with books and papers.
He stood as I entered and extended his hand to me across the desk, which I shook as firmly as I could.
‘Sit down, Mike,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you came.’
‘I didn’t realise it was optional,’ I said, sitting on the edge of the large chair.
Dr Ellin laughed as he too sat. I didn’t think he could be much older than me. ‘So, do you want to tell me what brought you here?’
‘The chairman.’
He laughed again, but I wasn’t sure why what I’d said was funny. ‘Yes, but I mean the incident.’
‘I shouted at one of our clients.’
Dr Ellin pulled his glasses down from the top of his head and consulted some notes in front of him. ‘I believe you called Daniel Palmer a fucking useless waste of space of a man who needed to get some balls.’
I felt my colour rising. ‘Yes, it was very rude of me. I don’t know what happened.’
‘Do you often find it hard to control your anger?’ Dr Ellin leant forward over his desk. His feet I noticed were crossed at the ankles. I had a sudden urge t
o punch him in the face, an answer if ever there was one. ‘What do you find amusing about my question?’
I drew down the smile I hadn’t realised was there. ‘Sorry, nothing. And of course I don’t.’
‘Our chairman, Lord Falls, has noticed that you have seemed distracted recently. Your performance at Schwarz was exceptional, but you haven’t got off to such a good start here, would you say?’
I thought it was probably a trick question. ‘Well, I closed the Hector deal and we’re close with Spectre.’
Dr Ellin nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re finding the adjustment of moving countries hard?’
‘No,’ I said, hearing my tone had risen. ‘London’s my home. I wanted to come back. If anything I found New York hard.’
‘How do you find making friends, Mike?’
I wanted to ask if I had to go on sitting here, but I knew I couldn’t. ‘Fine. In fact I was out with a few of the guys from here last night.’ I wondered what Dr Ellin would think if I told him about where we’d been. Probably he would laugh again and think nothing of it. I knew in this world I was the one who was considered strange for shouting, but George’s behaviour at the club would be considered rational. I thought of Kaitlyn suddenly and how she’d told me that we were both outsiders. I longed for V to explain it to me and help me understand.
‘It says in your notes that you were brought up in care,’ Dr Ellin said, placing the tips of his fingers together in front of his face.
‘How do you know that?’ A familiar streak of shame ran through me like a piece of glass.
‘We like to know who we employ at Bartleby’s. I’m not saying it as a judgement. Just trying to get a clearer picture of where you’re at, Mike. We just want our employees to be as happy as possible.’
I felt like I was looking at Dr Ellin from underwater. ‘I was with my mother until the age of ten, then in a home for a couple of years, then I went into permanent foster care until I went to university.’
‘That must have been hard.’
I was sure Dr Ellin had no idea what hard was. He had probably been to the same school as George and the chairman and half the bloody office. ‘Not really. I was lucky. My foster parents, Elaine and Barry, were great.’
‘Why were you taken into care?’
I looked over Dr Ellin’s shoulder to the window and told myself I could just turn and walk out. I could have walked out of the whole building. ‘My mother had a problem with alcohol.’
He didn’t say anything, waiting for me to give him more, but I stayed quiet. It was none of his business.
‘Did she ever get violent?’
It’s amazing that people like Lucas Ellin get paid to make such obvious connections. ‘No.’
‘And what about your foster parents? How was your relationship with them?’
‘It was and is great. I was there for Sunday lunch just a few weeks ago.’ I shifted in my chair. ‘Look, I’m not sure what relevance this has to anything. I mean, I lost my temper and I’m sorry; I know I behaved badly.’
Dr Ellin held me with his stare. ‘Have you ever spoken to anyone about your childhood?’
‘Only my girlfriend.’
His eyebrows raised slightly. ‘Oh, you have a girlfriend? Do you live together?’
‘Yes. At least, she’s not living with me at the moment.’
‘You’ve separated?’
‘No, not exactly.’ The chair felt lumpy, like a bad approximation of what it should be.
‘Do you know that how you spoke to Mr Palmer is unacceptable? That you can’t always just say what’s on your mind?’
It was my turn to laugh then. ‘Of course I know that. I was having a bad day and he irritated me, if you must know. A grown man sitting there blubbing.’
Dr Ellin’s fingers were tapping against each other. ‘A grown man who was losing a company he had created, a grown man who felt responsible for all the people who were about to lose their jobs. It’s interesting that you find that show of emotions irritating.’
This felt as close to hell as I ever want to get: sitting in a fake-friendly doctor’s office giving the wrong answers. I knew I needed to find the words that would make him shut up. ‘If you want to know the truth, it had nothing to do with Mr Palmer. My girlfriend had moved out the day before and I was in a bit of a mess. But I’m fine now. We’re fine.’
Dr Ellin relaxed at that. He would, after all, have something tangible to report back to the chairman. ‘And of course being left is particularly hard for you, isn’t it, Mike? I expect it stirs up feelings you would rather forget?’ I would have laughed in his stupid face if the need to get out of his office hadn’t become imperative. So I made do with looking down and nodding. ‘I think you might really benefit from us meeting regularly.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
‘There are also some pills I could prescribe you, to help you relax. Do you have trouble sleeping?’
‘No. And I don’t need pills.’
But Dr Ellin was already writing something on a pad. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Half the people in this building are on one type of pill or another.’ He waved the prescription at me and so I leant forward and took it, folding it into the inside pocket of my jacket. ‘And you know, because I am a private doctor this is a totally private meeting. What I mean is that none of this goes on your records, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
I couldn’t really understand what Dr Ellin was trying to say so I didn’t answer.
He looked down at his diary. ‘Shall we do same time next week?’
‘I’ll need to check and let you know.’ I knew I would have to change jobs if sitting with Dr Ellin once a week were to become something I was required to do. To have that moron poke about in my brain and jump to the wrong conclusions with psychology lessons any monkey could learn from a textbook. The only person I trusted in my mind was V. I stood with the impatience of a child, desperate to be anywhere other than where I was. But Dr Ellin was slow with his handshakes and goodbyes and by the time I left it felt like my blood was fizzing.
Kaitlyn happened to be leaving at exactly the same time as me that evening, which I was pretty sure wasn’t a coincidence. I had planned on picking V up, but I couldn’t think of a reason why I wasn’t going home, so fell into line with Kaitlyn. She chatted away on the Tube, about things I cared nothing for, and I stopped listening, instead watching only her mouth as it moved up and down. There were dark, bluey circles around her eyes and she almost looked as if someone had punched her.
‘I made way too much shepherd’s pie last night,’ she said as we emerged on to Clapham High Street. ‘Do you want to come and help finish it off? It is veggie mince though, just to warn you.’
I hesitated and in the moment I saw the sadness in Kaitlyn’s eyes and the desperation not to be rejected. And what was I going home to anyway? I didn’t think I had any food at all in the fridge. ‘OK, thanks,’ I said.
Kaitlyn lived in a flat in a large mansion block which overlooked the common. I could hear the yapping from inside before she’d even put her key in the lock and I thought her neighbours probably hated her. The dog flew at her as soon as the door opened, leaping into her arms and licking her all over her face, which I found disgusting. She pretended to turn away, but I could see she loved it really, even loved the tiny pink tongue flicking over her lips.
‘Sorry it’s a bit of a mess,’ she said incongruously as we went into the sitting room: the flat was as tidy as it could be. ‘Sit down, take off your jacket. I’ll get you a drink.’
Kaitlyn’s sitting room was almost as white as she was. It was also very sparse, so you got the impression that everything in it had been chosen with care and consideration. The only bit of colour, if you can call black a colour, were the calligraphed words stencilled above the couch. I twisted round so I could read them: Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.
‘Virginia Woolf,’ Kaitlyn said as she handed me a glass of wine.
<
br /> V hated any type of slogan and I took to buying them for her as jokes whenever I saw them on cards or embossed on fake metal signs. Her favourite four were:
Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die tomorrow.
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
No matter how long you have travelled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around.
We are punished by our sins, not for them.
Does anyone actually believe this crap, she’d say. I mean, do these random words put one in front of another by a moron make anyone feel better?
‘Who’s your favourite writer?’ Kaitlyn asked, sitting next to me. Snowdrop immediately leapt on to her lap and she began to pet him under the chin. I hoped she was planning on washing her hands before serving the food.
‘I don’t know. Verity likes Virginia Woolf though.’ I couldn’t remember the last time I’d read a book. V used to sometimes jokingly call me a philistine and I felt hot suddenly as I wondered if Angus liked to read. If they read to each other in bed.
‘You said you were on the verge of working things out,’ Kaitlyn said.
I looked over at her expectant face and wondered what it must be like to live in such an unattractive body. ‘We’re talking. I’m confident we can work it out.’
‘How long have you been together?’
I pretended to consider this. ‘Nine years.’
‘So you met at university?’
‘Yes.’ We both sipped at our wine. When you are asked a question you should reciprocate, V told me. ‘What about you? Any significant others?’
She laughed. ‘Well, maybe. Early days, you know.’
‘I’ve only ever lived with Verity,’ I said.
She turned back to me. ‘Yes, but that’s all you need isn’t it, one person?’ I smiled because of course I totally agreed. ‘Sometimes I wonder what it’s all for, all this making money, I mean. I could have bought a large family house with my bonus last year but I didn’t, because what would be the point, rattling round some big old thing, just me?’
Our Kind of Cruelty Page 13
