by Paul O'Grady
It was at a small cocktail party in St John’s Wood that I met Amy, a strikingly beautiful young woman who told me that she worked as an escort for an exclusive agency off Park Lane, as indeed did all the other female guests at the party. I’d sort of guessed that they were on the bash, sensing that the incentive driving these beauties to act as if their corpulent Saudi Arabian companions were the most fascinating men on earth could only have been monetary.
‘Do you have a fairly decent suit?’ Amy asked me in the kitchen as I dragged more bottles of champagne out of the fridge to satisfy a never-ending thirst for booze brought on by the absence of the prohibitive laws of the gentlemen’s own country. ‘You see, sometimes we get a lot of hassle from doormen and security in certain hotels,’ she said, lighting an ultra-slim cigarette. ‘They are under the misapprehension that just because we are unaccompanied we must obviously be prostitutes.’ She smiled slyly and winked, responding to my quizzical look by adding, ‘I’m not a prostitute, I’m an escort. Prostitutes come down from the north on cheap day returns and give five-pound blow jobs behind King’s Cross Station. I escort wealthy and powerful men to fabulous restaurants and night clubs and if they choose to repay my attentiveness with a gift of money or a nice piece of jewellery, well, it would be bad manners to refuse.’
‘Yeah, but you’re still flogging the same thing when all’s said and done.’
‘Different shop front, darling, and a more select clientele. Do I get the impression that you disapprove?’
A line of a song sprang to mind – ‘Is it wrong if a girl takes pay for something she would do anyway?’ – and I sang it to her to show I was far from disapproving.
‘Look, love,’ she laughed, sitting on the edge of the table, making herself comfy with a drink and her fag. ‘This time last year I was living – no, barely existing – in a flat in Camberwell that the council were threatening to evict me from because I couldn’t afford to pay the rent. My pig of a husband had walked out on me leaving me on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood and up to my ears in debt with two little boys to support.’ Swigging her champagne back defiantly she slammed her glass down on the table and shuddered violently for a moment, whether from the shock of slugging back the champagne so speedily or from the memory of life back in Camberwell I could only guess.
‘Look at me now,’ she said, waving her empty glass at me for a top-up. ‘Mine isn’t a sad story. I live in a beautiful little house in Barnes, my two boys are being educated at one of the best schools in the country and I have a wardrobe of designer clothes – a mink coat for Christ’s sake! – and, for the first time in my life, money in the bank, and lots of it. Let my detractors look down on me and call me a common prostitute. I prefer to see myself as a self-employed, highly successful businesswoman.’
She raised her glass, saluting the air before draining it in one, only this time without the shudder. So it must have been the Camberwell memory then that had caused it, I thought as I tried to visualize this sophisticated beauty standing in a mean little kitchen spreading the last thin scrape from a tub of margarine on to a slice of cheap white bread, failing to hold back tears of frustration at finding herself in hopeless circumstances that rendered her unable to provide a decent meal for her kids. I admired her refusal to accept her lot. Instead of spending her days in a Valium-induced stupor watching daytime telly and getting plastered on supermarket lager she’d chosen instead an enterprise that had turned out to be not only highly profitable but one that obviously suited her.
‘What is marriage for some women anyway?’ she asked defensively. ‘Nothing more than a way of being kept in return for services of a sexual and domestic nature. Not for me, darling, not any more.’
I had to disagree with her on this, recalling my own parents’ long and happy marriage.
‘Then your parents were very lucky,’ she sighed. ‘Unfortunately for me I married a wife-beating drunk. Now let’s get back to business. It’s easier for a working girl to get into a hotel if she has a male companion with her, so how do fancy making yourself available to walk a few girls in? You’ll make lots of money.’
‘Wouldn’t that make me a pimp?’ I asked her in all honesty.
She laughed so hard she spilled her drink. ‘Heavens no. Pimps are the scum of the earth. They’re violent parasites who force their women on to the streets to work and then take all their earnings off them, frequently beating them up if they fail to bring home the bacon. No, you’ll be a walker, an escort’s escort if you like. Beats washing glasses and serving drinks. It’s only a suggestion, but do think about it.’
I didn’t need to think about it and wrote down my phone number for her. Wait till I get home and tell Vera about this.
CHAPTER 11
On the Bash
ON DAYS WHEN NEITHER OF US HAD ANYTHING TO DO AND not much money to do it with Vera and I would play games to amuse ourselves. Sometimes we’d be the women who help out at funerals, neighbours usually, the type who volunteer to make the tea and sandwiches for the recently bereaved on their return from burying their loved one, a pair of busybodies relishing their roles as indispensable citizens, waiting anxiously behind the net curtains for the funeral cars to return, the first glimpse of a chrome headlamp sending them hurtling into the kitchen to ‘get that kettle on’ or rushing to ‘take those damp tea towels off the sarnies’ in the parlour.
Vera and I would act out extremely lengthy and complicated scenes with the intensity and concentration of children at play, pottering anxiously about preparing for our pretend party of funeral-goers to return, re-enacting the rituals we’d witnessed when we were growing up that went on between ‘the ladies who made the tea’. We’d peer out of the window waiting for the imaginary mourners to pull up in imaginary Co-op funeral cars, rushing to put the kettle on and standing in wait at the open door to offer a solicitous arm for the grieving widow to lean on, greeting her with a sympathetic ‘Are you all right, girl? Get yourself sat down and I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea and a little drop of whisky’, enquiring further of the poor woman if she thought she would be able to ‘get a little boiled ham sarnie down her’? It was all very funny and extremely well observed. Mike Leigh would’ve loved us, and no doubt if such behaviour were carried out in a theatre workshop or comedy club it might be considered ‘improv’. We simply thought of it as ‘playing’, two daft young queens indulging themselves with a camp couple of hours’ worth of re-enacting a Liverpool working-class funeral seen through the eyes of two old women.
Another game we enjoyed was factories. Based on Vera’s extensive knowledge of factory life gleaned from his time employed as a machinist making pillow cases we’d rearrange the front room, putting two tables and chairs one in front of the other with Alma and Anne’s sewing machines on them. Winding some of Angela’s scarves round our heads we became factory girls, competing with the noise of the sewing machines and a transistor radio, blaring away on top of the sideboard as a touch of authenticity, to have a conversation. Vera once worked for a firm but fair supervisor called Joyce Forshaw, whom we resurrected to keep us in check. The imaginary Joyce would examine our work and tell us when to go for our break, which we’d spend in the kitchen, putting the factory to rights over a sausage roll and a mug of tea, discussing nonsense such as the finer details of Vera’s daughter’s forthcoming nuptials and whom we considered the prime suspect in the theft of the Christmas Club money.
When we weren’t shouting out of the window for imaginary kids to ‘go to the shop for a few messages for us’ we could be found leaping out of it playing The Avengers. I leaped with such gusto that I badly twisted my ankle, resulting in a trip to the Royal Northern Hospital and a week spent unable to put any weight on my foot. It never happened to Tara King.
We even had an imaginary friend, Kitty, a highly inquisitive old lady, the type they call in Liverpool an ‘owld arse’, who trailed round behind us, dropping in for a visit at the most inconvenient of moments. It got to the stage where Vera was paying for
Kitty’s fare on the bus and buying her drinks in pubs. When Vera got a tax rebate we made our way up the Seven Sisters Road stopping in every pub on the way for a large whisky for me, a ditto of vodka for Vera and as always a little something to keep Kitty lubricated. By the time we got to Finsbury Park we could barely stand, but as there was a fair on it seemed a shame not to go on any of the rides and we elected to throw ourselves with gay abandon on the mercy of the Rotor, a ride you very rarely see any more. It was basically a human spin dryer, a drum that revolved at great speed, sticking you to the wall with centrifugal force whilst the floor retracted from under you. Vera’s shopping was scattered to the four winds together with his specs as we spun round and round screaming our heads off, much to the amusement of those looking down on us, Kitty no doubt amongst them, from the observation gallery above.
Kitty’s still around today, still refusing to wear her false teeth and not as active as she once was, but then she’s getting on now, two hip replacements and a little problem with her bladder, but she still manages to drop in now and then for old times’ sake …
*
Amy rang me a week later. ‘Get your Sunday best on, the boss wants to meet you,’ she said, giving me the address of the agency off Park Lane.
I jumped into a tepid bath while Vera pressed the cream suit using a crusty tea towel that had been on active service for over a month, infusing my suit with a faint whiff of scorched bacon. There certainly appeared nothing sleazy or tacky about the escort agency selling its wares from a suite of rooms on the top floor of a smart mansion block. I pushed the buzzer marked ‘Rowena Switzer’ and was told to ‘come up’ by a friendly voice. I half hoped that it would be an emporium lit by beaded Tiffany lamps, with a pianist in a tux bashing out ‘Hard Hearted Hannah’ on a honky-tonk piano in the corner, the elegant madam leaning against it fanning herself languidly with a pearl-handled ostrich-feather fan while her girls, in a state of semi-undress, posed provocatively on shawl-draped chaises longues placed casually around the room. Getting out of the lift I could see that regrettably the agency’s decor owed more to a provincial branch of a building society than to my vision of a New Orleans cathouse. Amy was there to meet me, looking every inch the society hostess in a black crêpe evening dress and diamonds.
‘I’ve got a booking,’ she said, giving me a kiss, ‘so I must dash, but I’ll introduce you to Rowena first.’
Rowena turned out to be as unremarkable as her premises, failing to live up to my idea of a brothel madam, and memorable only for an eccentric hairpiece, five shades of red lighter than her own, hanging perilously from the back of her head. She gave me the once-over and in the full glare of the extremely bright lighting of her office I became painfully aware that the cream suit possibly could’ve done with a bit of intensive care in the dry cleaner’s before I came out in it. Feeling provincial and awkward, I tried to position myself so she couldn’t see the large stain I’d just noticed on my sleeve as I politely listened to her telling me that since I came highly recommended by Amy, whom she considered to be one of her best girls and trusted with her life, she was prepared to offer me the job of escorting her girls into difficult hotels.
‘All my girls are high class,’ she said, raising her eyebrows and putting me in mind of Mrs Dickie for a moment, ‘and I expect them to be treated as such.’
And that was it. Another addition to my ever-expanding CV – I was a prostitutes’ walker. Hang on a minute, what had Rowena said? Sorry, I was no common or garden walker, I was a high-class walker for high-class prostitutes, thank you very much.
I started work almost immediately. My first assignment was to get Shirley, a plump little peroxide blonde from Birmingham who made me question Rowena’s definition of the term ‘high class’, into the Hilton Hotel for an assignation with a very important client.
‘’Ang on, will ya?’ she shouted, teetering behind me as we made our way slowly down Park Lane. ‘Slow down, you’re like a fookin’ whippet.’
Shirley had forced her fat little trotters into a pair of cripplingly high stilettos which had reduced her mobility to nothing more than a painful shuffle. We stopped just round the corner from the hotel so she could have a fag and force a finger down the side of her shoe in an attempt to take the pressure off her swollen insteps, which were rising rapidly like a pair of Yorkshire puddings.
‘Ooh, these fookin’ shoes,’ she moaned, slowly lifting her foot off the pavement in the hope of providing temporary respite from the pain.
‘Why don’t you take them off for a moment then?’ I asked her, more for something to say than out of concern.
‘Why? Because I’d never get the boogers back on again, that’s why,’ she replied, taking one long last drag of her ciggy before flicking it into the street. ‘Just be glad you don’t have to wear high heels for a living, duck. Now c’mon, let’s get a move on. This won’t get the baby fed.’
I managed to manoeuvre Miss Saltley Gas Works 1962 past the doorman without any bother, as fortunately he was preoccupied getting some guests and their luggage out of a taxi. I marched briskly ahead with Shirley shuffling behind me as awkward as a cow on ice, her full-length leather coat trimmed in a fur of dubious origin flapping behind her. She would’ve been more at home with a Cherry B and cider on a hen night in a Blackpool Wetherspoons than with champagne in a Park Lane hotel.
We made it safely past the reception and slipped in behind a small group of elderly Americans waiting for the lift.
‘He’s a prince, this one, y’know,’ Shirley confided in a voice that could’ve been heard across Hyde Park. ‘Not that it’s a big deal, of course – they’re two a penny over there. There’s a prince on every street corner.’ The Americans pretended not to hear as Shirley explained her version of the House of Saud to me.
‘They believe in big families, see, hundreds of wives with hundreds of kids. Must be a bloody nightmare at Christmas, not that I think they go in for it.’
Thankfully the lift arrived and we all piled in. As we ascended Shirley leaned towards me. ‘D’ya know what the nice thing about Arab clients is?’ she bellowed, breaking the silence.
‘They’re very handsome?’ I offered, fully aware that the Americans were all ears.
‘No,’ she answered, matter of factly. ‘They come quickly.’ Someone coughed and one of the American women hastily asked her group if anyone knew what time they were meeting in the lobby in the morning. Shirley yawned, unaware or perhaps just not caring that she’d caused a minor sensation amongst our companions. I stuck my hand in my trouser pocket and self-mutilated my leg, willing the lift to hurry up.
The corridor that led to the prince’s suite seemed never-ending. Shirley’s incessant chatter and her indiscretion in the lift had started to get on my nerves. I’m just going to dump her at the door and get the hell out of here, I told myself as I waited for her to catch up. The realization of just how sordid the situation actually was crept over me as I watched her waddling down the hall in her stupid shoes, a piece of mutton on its way to the slaughter, and my annoyance turned to pity and concern.
Before knocking on the door Shirley took a little mirror from her handbag and picked at her hair. ‘Well, it’ll have to do,’ she said eventually, putting the mirror back up and tapping on the door.
‘You look lovely,’ I lied. ‘Good luck.’
She squeezed my arm in response but as I tried to leave she pulled me back, muttering, ‘Don’t go. Not yet.’
We were ushered in by two armed bodyguards, gorillas in suits, who led us into the bedroom, where a large, swarthy man wearing a dressing gown over a white djellaba lay watching TV on a bed the size of a badminton court.
‘Prince Abdul,’ Shirley shrieked, showing a vast expanse of thigh as she leaped on the bed and showered him with kisses. ‘How I’ve missed you.’
Prince Abdul seemed equally pleased to see Shirley, grinning like the Cheshire cat over her shoulder at me as he patted her ample backside affectionately.
�
�This is Paul,’ she said, getting off the bed and smoothing down her dress, the Brummie accent, previously as thick as a pan of chip shop mushy peas, replaced as if by magic by tones that sounded more Mayfair than Bullring. ‘He very kindly escorted me here from the office,’ she trilled, winking at me. ‘Wasn’t that kind of him?’
Her transformation from pint of northern mild to sparkling Park Lane cocktail was as instantaneous as it was startling. The metamorphosis from the whining lump of suet to the beautiful minx now curled up coquettishly in the armchair seductively toying with a bunch of grapes astonished me. This was no clumsy slapper, this was a seasoned pro, one who obviously reserved the act until she was on the main stage.
The prince slowly and with great dignity slid off the bed, fastening his dressing gown and holding his hand out to thank me. I wondered if Prince Philip would’ve been quite so charming if a complete stranger had marched into his bedroom and caught him in his nightie, but this prince didn’t seem bothered in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact. Gesturing towards a table laden with food he encouraged me to eat something with cries of ‘Please, please’. I quite fancied a butty but Shirley, throwing me a look from the chair that even I could recognize as a signal that translated as ‘Get lost, I’m keen to get down to business’, piped up and told the prince that I’d better not as I had to get back to the office.
The prince thanked me again and then said something in Arabic to one of the bodyguards, who showed me out, putting ten crisp twenty-pound notes in my hand as a thank you as I left. Good old Shirley. That’s why she wanted me to hang around and made such a fuss of me. She wanted to make sure I got a hefty tip. My mother had been wrong all along. The wages of sin weren’t death, after all. Sin was extremely well paid.
