The Business

by Martina Cole

  She chose to work in this place because, like little fatty here, it was convenient for her. She was not like the other girls, she saw what she did from a purely monetary level. As far as she was concerned, a punter was a punter, she did not care either way.

  But the girl’s question had caused her to question the logic of her situation. After all, she was a very good-looking girl, and she knew that was true without a shred of vanity. She knew she was really good-looking, beautiful even.

  Her looks meant nothing to her on a personal level, and she knew that sometimes when she took on certain punters they were amazed at the fact that she was willing to fuck them at all. Let alone for a measly twenty quid, or thirty quid if she felt so inclined.

  Imelda found that she was suddenly mulling over the girl’s query, was straight enough this night to see the logic of what was being said to her. Deep inside herself, she knew that she was worth much more than this, had the means to make real dough from her looks.

  Smiling widely, she said to Caroline, ‘I think you’re right, you know. I should get meself into a club of some sort. But I hate the idea of hostessing, all that energy you have to expend, and you still don’t know if the cunt will weigh out for a fuck at the end of it all, and you can sit there for three hours for nothing more than a fucking hostess fee. Do you know of anywhere else that’s a guaranteed earner?’

  Jacqueline was nervous of talking to Imelda on a one-to-one basis, but tonight she seemed so nice and so friendly that she said timidly, ‘Have you tried Basil’s cabs in Soho?’

  ‘Who’s this Basil then?’ Imelda sounded intrigued, but also she sounded bored, disinterested; it was how she communicated with other females. She didn’t know how to be genuine with women, she had no real rapport with them. She only knew how to connect with men. Males. Punters.

  Jacqueline laughed in abject disbelief. ‘You telling me you never met Basil? He runs loads of women, but he does his real earners out of his cab office. He would fucking love you, girl, and I ain’t just saying that either. He can be a nasty bastard, but he lets you earn, you know. I know a girl who works for him, she is really young and really pretty and he sort of handles her personally. He has a good few of his own personal earners, girls he takes a special interest in, until they lose the first flush of youth that is.’ She was obviously speaking from her own bitter experience.

  ‘Is he a pimp then, by any chance?’

  Jackie and Caroline nodded their heads, completely unaware of the sarcasm directed towards them both. They nodded in a sad and defeated unison, trying to help her in their own way, even though they could not help themselves.

  ‘But that’s the strange thing with Basil, you don’t have to go with him sexually in any way, he is happy enough to get a cut from your wedge. He supplies the punter, and the cabs.’

  Imelda nodded, finally interested in what they were telling her. ‘I like the cabs, I like that whole fucking set-up. I was really fucking stupid, I only went and picked a fight with Jimmy Bailey. I was on a real good earn with him and all. But he is a right fucking tart. He didn’t have to fucking out me from the workplace, but he did. The piece of shit. But I like the sound of this Basil, he sounds more like my cup of tea. Do you have a phone number for him or anything?’

  They gave her his address and his numbers happily, both relieved to think that she was not going to be competition for them in the future.

  ‘Just be careful how you treat him, he comes across as a pussy cat, but he can be a ruthless bastard if the fancy takes him.’

  As Jacqueline finished speaking, a young man came into the room and he smiled widely at Imelda, as they all knew he would. He had what was commonly referred to in East London society as a mouth full of dog ends. His teeth were literally rotting in his head. He had acne and he was sour smelling from his job on the dustbins and the fact that he was loath to jump in the shower, or submerge his skinny frame in a bath. He was the pinnacle of their clientele, and he stood before them like a dilapidated gladiator. He was sure of a warm welcome, after all, that was what he was paying for.

  Imelda stood up then, and she stretched lazily, she was advertising herself, knew that she was the best merchandise he was going to ever get his grimy hands on. She saw the hope and desire in his eyes then, smiling broadly at the two girls she said gaily, ‘It’s all yours, ladies. I think I need to have a chat with this Basil person, don’t you?’

  As she left the room she heard the young bloke say peevishly, ‘Now Cinderella’s gone to the fucking ball, which one of you two ugly sisters wants to do the business on my knob?’

  She could not help laughing as she heard Jacqueline’s voice as she answered him loudly and with deep indignation, ‘Oh, fucking charmed, I’m sure!’

  Basil Payne was thirty-five years old, and he looked it. He was glad about that, because he looked fucking great for his age anyway, as far as he was concerned.

  He was a big man, black enough for his needs, with a full head of dreadlocks that would put most real born and bred Jamaicans to shame, and a set of white teeth that made the Osmonds look almost poor.

  He had a white mother named Nancy, and his father was, by all accounts, an African prince from the Gambia named, of all things, Gideon. Fucking Gideon. Those fucking Catholic missionaries had a lot to answer for, if you asked him. And, as for the African prince part of the equation, Basil was what was classed as seriously sceptical as to the truth of that. It was a recurring story that he had heard once too often from boys just like him. Boys in his position, half-breeds, with the same guarded disbelief as him. He had come out of his speculations on the subject with a deep sorrow for his mother, and also a deep anger at her eagerness to believe such utter shite. His father had bullshitted a child into the world, at least that was what Basil believed anyway. After all, he was that child.

  Gideon had met up with his mother for one week, and one week only, after promising the sixteen-year-old girl that he would marry her. He had loved her, and she had let him, believing that this was the man who was going to look after her for ever. But unfortunately, as often happened in these cases, he had done a bunk one morning, leaving Basil’s poor old mum with a bellyful of arms and legs, and the unenviable task of telling her ex-army sergeant father that she was not only in the family way, but the culprit was as black as Nookie’s knockers. She had finally told her father about the baby, but she had left the rest of the story until after the actual birth. One look at his grandson, however, and the need to explain had not been necessary after all.

  Her mother had nearly dropped down dead with what she had called shame. Her father had never spoken to her again, and all her belongings were left at the hospital with a note saying that she was now dead in their eyes.

  She had a ten-day lying-in, then she picked up her little boy and, just two months shy of her seventeenth birthday, she had somehow created a life for them both. She had stood by him at a time when having a black child was deemed so desperately bad, so wantonly brazen, most girls would have happily given their child up just to keep the peace where their families were concerned. Basil knew how hard it had been for his mum, his loving, kind and, at times, bewildered mum, because he had experienced the inbred racism of most of the people around him at first-hand on more than one occasion.

  Consequently he loved his mum like he loved no other woman. He knew now that had she let him get taken away, she would have been welcomed back home with open arms. Would have been welcomed back into the fold that was her father’s world. A world of bullying and of doing the right thing. Without him to care for, she might have been in with a chance with her parents.

  But, as she had always said to him, how could she have walked away from her son, her own flesh and blood? The love of her life. Her only real family.

  Basil knew better than anyone what she had gone through because of his colour and his illegitimacy. But his mum had weathered it, and he had been determined all his life to make sure that she would have a bit of a rest up, a bit of love and
caring to repay her for every slight she had been given, for every insult she had endured. He knew that she had gone through hell to give him what she saw as a chance at life.

  And he had succeeded in guaranteeing her a bit of the old rest and recuperation, had made sure she got the best that life could offer. He was as rich as Croesus, and he loved to see his old mum, who actually wasn’t that old really, living the high life at his expense. She deserved it.

  He was a pimp, but only by accident; he had a lot of fingers and he made sure that they were all buried right up to the knuckles in a lot of very lucrative and oftentimes very dodgy pies. But, like most over-achievers, he had been determined to make a name for himself so he could stamp out the labels pinned on him from early childhood.

  As he sat in his office and monitored the calls coming in, he saw to it that his girls were well looked after, and looked smart. He insisted on that, he liked to think that he was delivering a service of sorts, and as the majority of the men who used him were quite well-to-do, and not frightened to weigh out a few quid for what they wanted, he made sure that the girls he provided were pretty, well dressed and immaculately presented. That included make-up, nails, etc. Once they had lost the first flush of youth, started to look like they were on the bash, he saw to it that they were relegated. Like West Ham, his home team, he loved them, but he knew they were not going to win any prizes.

  Basil’s main girls were big earners and, as such, he expected them to look the part. He believed that you got what you paid for, and he saw to it that his girls were paid very well.

  He walked all the new girls through their first steps personally; he told them how to sit, how to smile, and how to get the cash first. After all, as well-to-do as the men might be, they were not above welshing on the deal once the dirty deed had been performed. Money upfront was a requisite for any brass worth her salt.

  Basil also explained that if they ever got ambitious for the punters’ watches, or had a terrible urge to get their pieces of shit, lowlife boyfriends round any houses they had visited to rob the men concerned, as was the norm for some of the women on the game, he assured them that, should that ever happen, he would burn their faces off with acid, and that he would then personally cripple the ugly fuckers they were trumping.

  The threat was enough for the girls he employed. He already had his reputation as a person who held grudges, who paid out righteous retribution for any wrongs he saw against him, and he knew that was enough to guarantee their cooperation.

  It was shit really, but the girls believed it, and he knew that there was now a little story that went the rounds about him burning a girl’s face off many years ago.

  As if. He knew that the story was embellished and told over and over again to every new girl he employed. It was a fucking joke; if he had done something like that it would not have been whispered about. The truth never was.

  But it had made the girls in his employ wary of him, and the men that lived off them even warier. They were all terrified of him turning up at their houses with a bottle of acid, and a baseball bat. So he had learnt to live with it.

  But he was not a bad bloke really, most of the girls liked him, and he played fair by them and, even though some of the women were now basically his property, he saw that as no more than an occupational hazard. Most of the toms in his employ were not happy unless they had a pimp they could turn to in times of trouble, and he was now that pimp. Unlike most men in his profession, he did not sleep with his employees. He would rather shag a table; who would want someone who had been bagged more times than a Hoover?

  The girls were quite happy to go out and earn, but they were even happier that he was seen as their protector, and that was enough for the most of them. It ensured that no other pimp was about to come on the scene and take the girls as their own or, if he was being really pedantic, what he saw as his property. Not that he would ever say that out loud of course. But he knew that the inference was there. His girls needed to feel he was protection against other men. He was prepared to do that much for them.

  Basil was sitting in his nice comfy chair, in his nice comfy world, when Imelda Dooley breezed into his office and, as he looked her over carefully, he knew before she had even opened her trap that he had just been the lucky recipient of a major earner. He knew who she was, as well, and even that knowledge didn’t put him off.

  ‘You’re Basil I take it?’

  Basil grinned then, and his large white teeth made him look much more genial than he actually was. ‘You can take what you like, darling.’

  Imelda knew when she had scored a hit, and she also knew with her inbred gut instinct that this man was capable of giving her a really good earn. And that, as often happened, he was bowled over by her looks, by her body, and by her absolute disinterest in him as a man, even as a man who could further her career.

  An hour later, after a short chat, and the unearthing of a mutual respect that astounded the both of them, Imelda was immediately on her way to a guaranteed hundred quid and, one hour and forty-five minutes after that, she was on her way to another hundred quid.

  She was thrilled; Imelda liked money, she liked to be in possession of it, and she liked to know that she could score any time she felt like it. She knew that she was now in the real earning saddle, and she also knew that Bailey would be fucking gutted that she had gone on to bigger and better things than his poxy little penny arcade. She knew he would be fuming at her defection. At least, she hoped that he would, anyway.

  Basil’s set-up made Jimmy Bailey’s cab rank look like fucking amateur night. Basil had the brains to make sure that the girls he used for his big-spending clients were all clean and well dressed. They could be mistaken for office workers, or as businesswomen in their own right. When they walked into a flat in Belgravia, or a large house in Kensington, they did not look out of place. They were primed by Basil to make sure they wore very good and very expensive underclothes. Imelda loved it, she loved the smart dressing and the nice surroundings, she loved the money she was earning and the ease with which it could be removed from the pockets of her very wealthy clients. She offered extras that the men involved had only ever dreamt of before she had come into their lives; she made their basest desires suddenly seem like no more than a reasonable request.

  Imelda also liked Basil and his easy-going ways, and she liked that he was not impressed with Jimmy Bailey’s set-up.

  She was shrewd enough to know from the off that he was well aware of who she was, and she was also aware that he had since asked around and knew that Bailey had attempted to blackball her. She had eventually told him the truth of what had happened, and he had laughed with her at what he had called Bailey’s provincial fucking mindset.

  She knew that Basil watched her and that, like most men, he saw her as eminently fuckable. That had been her cross to bear all her life, and she had seen fit to use it for her own benefit when necessary. She also knew that as a brass he would see her as beneath him socially, and that suited her fine as well. She didn’t want to marry the cunt, just earn off him.

  Imelda wanted regular amounts of dough, and her gear as and when she desired it. Unlike most people, she was actually very happy with her life on the bash, it suited her, and she had no real ambition for anything different. She knew better than anyone that with her looks she could have married money, could have guaranteed herself an easy life. But she had no desire to be married to anyone, she liked her own company and her chosen lifestyle. It suited her, and she was happy as she was. She just lived for the chemical highs that she created for herself on a regular basis.

  But Basil had great plans for her; she was unaware of them as yet, but he knew that once he explained his ideas to her she would be receptive.

  He saw her as someone delicate, feminine, so it was a shock to actually hear her talk. She still looked like a young girl, and yet he knew she was the mother of two children, and that she was the proud possessor of a temper that was by all accounts on a par with Vesuvius when it
had erupted and decided to destroy Pompeii. Basil liked her, she had a strange honesty about her, and he also knew that she was not a fool in any way.

  She knew how to pass herself off in good company. And she was his main earner within weeks. She was requested over and over again by his biggest clients, his wealthiest punters, and Basil knew that she was more than aware of her popularity. He wanted to expand his business, and he felt that she was the perfect person to help him to do just that. And, if it fucked off Jimmy Bailey in the meantime, then all the better. He wouldn’t trust Imelda as far as he could throw her, but he knew that if he played fair by her, she would be more than willing to reciprocate.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jordanna was laughing loudly at her brother’s antics, and as they chased each other around the garden, Mary found herself laughing with them. If only life was always this simple how much easier it would all be. The sun was shining, the breeze was cool and the kids were genuinely relaxed for once. They were so happy with her, they had almost forgotten their mother’s lunacy, her completely fucked-up existence. If only their mother was as interested in their welfare as she was, life would be much more pleasant for all involved. But she wasn’t, all she saw was the next few hours, her next score, her next adventure. As she lit herself a cigarette, Mary pondered on this latest development in her family unit. A unit that was destroyed now, was devoid of anything even resembling care and affection.