by Martina Cole
She watched him sober immediately as he registered exactly what she had said.
‘You’re Briony Cavanagh’s sister?’ His voice was full of surprise. As she opened her mouth to answer, he grabbed her arm in a vice-like grip.
‘Where is she? Is she here? Answer me, girl, where is the bitch?’
Kerry pulled away from him, rubbing her arm.
‘You touch me again, mister, and I’ll scream the bleeding place down!’
As she spoke Tommy came into the room.
‘I think you’d better leave the young lady alone, sir. Come along, I’m sure we can find you someone more suitable.’
He took Henry’s arm firmly and led him from the room. Kerry watched them go and bit her lip. How did he get in here tonight? Surely Briony hadn’t invited him?
She looked at the pile of coins but the excitement had gone from her now. She leant against the table and absentmindedly rubbed her arm where he had touched her.
Henry was so deep in drink he didn’t care any more. He had arrived at the stage where a shock or a loud noise can cause one of two reactions, maudlin sadness or great rage. Unfortunately for him, he felt great rage. As he walked through the room he tried unsucessfully to shrug off the iron grip of the young man escorting him. He saw his friend John Dennings embracing a young woman in a blue gauze wrapper, her huge breasts spilling out from white silk corsets. It made him feel sick.
All this flesh around him! He could smell cheap scent and fresh sweat. He could see garishly painted lips and eyes. He could feel the sexual charge of the men around him as they feasted their eyes on a bevy of young girls. But not young enough for him. They were women in his eyes, with breasts that jutted from their clothes in a disgusting fashion, hair between their muscular thighs and under their arms.
Tommy dragged him into the hallway, trying to prevent the trouble he knew was imminent. Without thinking, he pushed Henry into Briony’s office and the two came face to face for the first time in eighteen months.
Briony stood up, shocked, and as they looked at one another, Henry seemed to grow before her eyes. He stood erect and stared into the sea green eyes that his son had inherited. He laughed, a deep bitter sound that cut into her.
‘So, the slut is working, is she?’
Tommy watched the two warily. It was as if an electrical charge had been placed between them and he stared, fascinated as Briony stalked around the desk.
‘If I’m a slut, Henry Dumas, what does that make you? I can’t think why you’re here tonight. After all, the men who come to houses like this function normally. I wonder what they would say if they knew you were fancying a little girl - the girl they all clapped and cheered, without a bad thought in their heads towards her? Eh? Well answer me, Henry. If I remember rightly, you used to have a lot to say, most of it filth!’
‘I’ll finish you, Briony Cavanagh.’
She laughed at him now, her fear of him suddenly gone as she saw him for the pathetic fool he really was.
Her laugh goaded him. She was the cause of all his trouble. The reason for his wife’s mutiny; for his father-in-law’s happiness, that must therefore be Henry’s apparent happiness. Here was the mother of the child he hated and despised because he had fathered it, because it had sprung from his loins and been birthed by the slut standing before him, laughing. Laughing at him. Well, he’d soon put a stop to that. He swung back his arm to strike her and she picked up one of the heavy inkwells.
‘I’ll split your head open without a second’s thought, Henry Dumas! You think long and hard before you ever threaten me because I don’t frighten so easily these days.’
Tommy grabbed at Henry and put his arm up behind his back.
‘Come on, you, out! I don’t think we want your sort in here.’
As he was pulled to the door, Henry faced Briony once more.
‘I’ll finish you, Briony Cavanagh. You and that bastard you saddled me with!’
She laughed again, louder this time, and it was as if the sound sent him into a frenzy. He threw Tommy from him and made to run at Briony. She stepped sideways and he hit the corner of the desk with all his weight behind him, sending him to his knees.
Grabbing his hair, Briony looked down into his face. ‘You get out of here, you hear me? You get out of here because you don’t know what I’m capable of where you’re concerned.’
She looked at Tommy and waved her hand at the man on his knees before her.
‘Take him away.’
Tommy did as she bade him. Dumas was quiet now. Tommy walked him out of the house and put him in his cab.
‘You’re not welcome here, keep that in mind. If I ever hear that you’ve tried to cause any trouble for her, or anyone to do with her, I’ll see you dead. As rich as you are, as influential as you are, don’t ever make an enemy of me, mate. You’ll regret it to your dying day.’
Later that night, Tommy tossed and turned in his lonely bed. He knew that Briony had needed to face Dumas, it was something that had to happen eventually, and now it was over and done with. The rest of the night had gone well; they had pulled in over two hundred pounds. He shook his head in the darkness as he thought about it. The place was a success. All they had to do now was save up enough money to open another.
Briony had a natural talent for figures which amazed him. She had taken over the ledgers and the financial side of the business. Kerry too had been offered a regular job, her innocent little act having gone down very well with the men.
He turned over in bed. By rights he should be out celebrating the success of his new venture, but he knew that the only person he wanted to celebrate with was Briony. He was nineteen years old, soon to be a man of real wealth and property. He had worked all his young life with these goals in mind and they had been put within his reach by a little girl called Briony Cavanagh. He knew now that he loved her, really loved her. He turned over in the bed again. The pillow felt as if it was stuffed with stones and he was too hot. As tired as he was, he couldn’t find it in him to sleep.
He had moved into Briony’s house a few months previously, because with all the preparations to be made, they could not be parted for any length of time. They had spent long evenings together discussing everything from the decor to the clientele. During this time he had consciously endeared himself to Mrs Horlock and Briony’s mother Molly. Cissy, he was aware, was half in love with him so she liked him no matter what he did. It was Briony he wanted, though. Briony with her outrageous hair and her deep green eyes. He had fallen asleep many times in the last few months with the picture of her milky naked body lying beside him, his large rough hands caressing the tiny breasts. He turned once more in the bed.
As he closed his eyes tightly and tried to sleep, he heard the creak of the door opening. He sat up in bed as Briony, in a white nightdress, her red hair unbound, crept into his room with a candle in her hand.
‘Are you asleep, Tommy?’
He was too astounded for speech.
Briony walked towards him and placed the candle on the night table. In the flickering light she smiled at him. He watched with fascination as she took the hem of her nightdress in both hands and pulled the garment over her head, revealing her body slowly and tantalisingly to him. She dropped the garment on to the floor and he pulled back the covers of his bed so she could slip in beside him.
He made love to her gently and firmly, taking in every part of her body with his hands and his tongue. It was like a dream come true to him. She had walked out of his mind and into his bed.
Briony for her part enjoyed the petting and the feel of him near her. She had needed someone after the events of the evening. She had needed strong arms around her and had got them the only way she knew how.
Tommy was not to realise that the feeling of closeness was the only part of sex that Briony enjoyed. So carried away was he in his own excitement he did not notice her mechanical responses. But that night, it didn’t matter anyway. It sealed their fates. The coupling of their bodies was ju
st an extension of their partnership.
At least, that was how Briony saw it.
BOOK TWO
1925
‘My sister and my sister’s child, Myself and children three’
- William Cowper, 1731-1800
‘Affection beaming in one eye,
Calculation shining out of the other’
- Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens
Chapter Ten
1925
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tommy, what the hell has got into you?’ Briony’s voice was hard and Tommy clenched his fists in an effort to keep his temper.
‘I don’t like it, Briony. For one thing it’s expensive, for another you can’t guarantee you’ll make any money out of it.’
Briony laughed out loud.
‘Oh, can’t I? Listen here, Tommy Lane. On the continent these pictures are all the rage, mate. The French are shipping them over here like they’re going out of fashion. Private viewings are bringing in a fucking fortune! I’ve more than looked into all this believe me. That “useless ponce”, as you call Rupert in your more friendlier moments, is the goose that’s going to lay us some golden eggs. Tomorrow I put up a quick grand, then we sit back and rake the money in. We can show the films in the houses, have our own private screenings. We can get in on the bottom of the market before it takes off. And quite frankly, Tommy, whether you come in with me or not, I’m having some of it. It’s the thing for the future, it’ll make us untold money, I guarantee that.’
Tommy looked at the girl opposite him. Her face was alight, as it always was when she was talking about money. In fairness to her, he knew she had really done the groundwork on the films, she was too astute not to, but the thought annoyed him. Inside himself, Tommy actually found the thought of filming couples having sexual relations distasteful. He voiced this.
‘I think it’s perverted.’
Briony really did laugh now. A contemptuous sound that grated on him.
‘Oh, Tommy, you’re priceless, do you know that? Of course it’s perverted! That’s what makes the films a guaranteed money-spinner! Think about it. There’ve always been dirty pictures, silly naughty postcards with half-dressed women, that sell for a small fortune. Our boys even took them off to war with them. Where’s the harm? In our houses we have paintings everywhere of couples having it off, they’re part and parcel of the fixtures and fittings, so it seems logical to me to take it one step further. Moving pictures are what people want. All it takes is some girl flashing her clout and some bloke enjoying himself, and we’re made. It’s no different to what we do already.’
Tommy could see the logic of her argument, he was honest enough to admit that. It was more the fact Rupert Charles had approached Briony direct, as opposed to himself, that was the bug bear. But whatever way he looked at it all, the pictures - well, they didn’t seem right.
Briony watched him battling it out with himself and felt the familiar annoyance. Every time they ventured into a new area it was the same unless: Tommy thought of it first, then she was expected just to nod and go along with whatever he decided. When she thought of something it was days of discussing the pros and cons, Tommy humming and hahing, working out the costs, the overheads, the benefit it would be to the business. She knew that at times she made him feel inferior. She didn’t mean to, but the fact would always remain that she was much quicker on the uptake than he. He would be the eternal heavy. She was the real brains behind them. Artfully, she tried a different tack.
‘Listen to this, Tommy.’ She picked up a newspaper beside her and began to read: “‘Josephine Baker, the sensational nineteen-year-old dancer of La Revue Nègre, is the talk of Paris. Her Charleston, slapping her buttocks in time to ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby!‘, and her bare-breasted mating dance, wearing nothing but strategic circles of coloured feathers, arouses audiences to frenzy. Colette calls her ‘a most beautiful panther‘, Picasso calls her ‘the Nefertiti of today‘, and Anita Loos speaks of her ‘witty rear end’. Poiret and Schiaparelli are designing clothes for her, painters are begging her to sit for them and the Folies Bergères are wooing her to join the show ...”’
Tommy interrupted her.
‘What’s she got to do with all this?’
‘On the continent they’re more relaxed about sex and anything to do with it. The sodding can-can was performed originally by women with no drawers on! This is 1925. People want more. They aren’t as shocked as they once were. We have a whole band of punters out there with money to spend and not enough to spend it on. They can either go to Paris for a bit of a thrill, or we can provide it for them here. Once this filming is off the ground, I’m going to open more houses. Places where people, men and women, can get exactly what they want. Fuck Paris, mate, we’ll have it all here in London! We’ve the contacts and the clientele. We can have private screenings of the films and then live entertainment. Live shows ...’
‘You’re deadly serious.’
Briony grinned.
‘Too right I am. Now, I’m doing this whether you come in or not. I mean it, Tommy. The filming first and the houses after. I want to own every decent house in London, and I will.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll get us some more coffee.’
She left the room, giving him time to think.
Tommy watched her leave. She was, as always, beautifully dressed. At twenty-two she was glorious. Thank God she hadn’t succumbed to the Eton crop which most women now sported. Her hair was still elaborately dressed with pins, but her clothes were up to the minute - up to the second, in fact. She wore the drop-waisted dresses with a jaunty air, showing wide expanses of milky white arms and legs. She plucked her eyebrows and drew them back on in wide, painted arches, and she wore deep red lipstick, painted on to her lips in a perfect Cupid’s bow. She was the epitome of the new modern woman and sometimes, like now, it broke his heart.
She was right in all she said, he conceded that. She was always right. Maybe that was why she annoyed him so much. Like the jazz club she had insisted on opening, this very night in fact. Now it was up and off the ground she wanted another project as quickly as possible. And the pictures and the new houses were to be those projects. Oh, he had no doubt she would make a success of them, she always did. But he wished sometimes they could lead a calmer, more normal life.
He smiled to himself at the thought. Nothing about Briony Cavanagh would ever be normal. She was a law unto herself, had been from a child and, if he knew her, would be ’til the day she died. In fact, at times she wore him out with her endless enthusiasm. It wasn’t natural to be driven like she was.
She wouldn’t marry him, she was adamant about that. He had stopped asking her. But she slept with him, she ate with him, she dressed with him. That was as far as it went. She wanted no more children, she had made that as plain as day. In fact, it was only her sporadic visits to see her son that revealed any kind of human warmth or feeling in her. Then he saw the girl he had known before, the child, the Briony with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love. Her son, her sisters and the girls who worked for them were her whole life now. She looked after them all like a mother hen.
He knew she loved him in her own way, cared about him deeply, but not in the same way he loved her. Even knowing this, he couldn’t leave her. He knew he would take whatever she offered him and be grateful, because he couldn’t live without her. Acknowledging this to himself, he knew his course was set.
Briony walked back into the room with the tray of coffee and smiled at him, her tiny hands holding the tray steady. Placing it on the desk between them, she picked up the coffee pot. ‘Shall I be mother?’
‘You can be mother. And yes, Bri, I’m in on the new deals.’
She slammed down the coffee pot and rushed around the desk to plonk herself none too gently in his lap.
She kissed him hard on his lips and laughed.
‘You won’t regret this, Tommy. We’ll rake the money in!’
He smiled and kissed her back.
‘I know we will, B
ri. We always do.’
He held her to him, feeling the smallness of her, the tiny waist, the firm breasts that poked through the thin material of her dress, and breathed in the scent of her. If only once he could spark some life into her sexually, he would be a happy man. He wanted to throw her to the floor and make love to her there and then, to make love to her and have her respond, just once, with the same passion he felt for her.
It was her total passivity that ensnared him, he knew. If he pushed her to the floor now, she would allow him to undress her, caress her body and make love to her as hard or as gently as he felt he wanted to. Then, when he was spent, she would get up, dress herself and smile at him, as she always did. He would not have touched her mind.
Instead he kissed her and petted her, the way he knew she liked, and held himself in check.
If she would only respond to him in bed ... but he knew she never would. Though every time he touched her, he lived in hope.
Briony walked into her club The Windjammer at two-thirty in the afternoon. She smiled at the people milling around, putting the finishing touches to the place. As she passed the hat check girl she was amazed to see her bob a small curtsy. It made Briony smile widely. She walked into the club itself and eyed the room, taking in everything from the fresh flowers to the newly laid carpets. Briony was pleased. In the dimness she saw Kerry and Bernie on the small stage, talking to the piano player and saxophonist. She saw the excitement on her sisters’ faces as they turned at the sound of her clattering heels on the wooden dance floor.
‘Hello, Bri. I’m just going over the final numbers one more time. Want to hear them?’ Kerry called.
Briony nodded and took a seat at one of the tables at the edge of the dance floor. She glanced around her as Kerry sorted through her music and was once more assailed with a feeling of happiness. She was more than satisfied with the place. The decor was brilliant: the walls painted a very pale gold and adorned with photographs, head and shoulders shots of the most beautiful women of the day. The largest was of Anna Pavlova, her eyes staring out across the room. Briony had also had musical scores framed and hung on the walls. The tables all had white cloths of pristine Irish linen and the glasses that sparkled behind the long carved wood bar were all good quality crystal.
