Centre Stage

by Judy Nunn

  Maddy hadn’t intended to make the doctor feel guilty at all. Although she hadn’t liked his cold cash approach from their very first meeting, she’d made no moral judgments about him. He was supplying a demand and presumably doing it well. She was, however, aware of his discomfort as she sat in the chair opposite him, serene and confident in her decision. She knew he was faking his sudden interest in his files and, although she felt no vindictiveness, she simply couldn’t be bothered attempting to put him at his ease.

  It wasn’t all downhill after that. Alex’s attentiveness was seductive and difficult to resist. But she managed. She had been deeply hurt by his subsequent fling with Susannah—which a fellow student had been only too quick to report to Maddy. But it also helped her make that final break.

  And then, of course, it was all worthwhile: then there was Jenny. And Maddy was glad, so glad, that she’d found the strength to resist Alex.

  ‘Goodbye, darling, I’ll see you Sunday.’ Only a couple of days away, Maddy thought, as she hugged her daughter. She didn’t want to leave, but a Friday and Saturday at Danny’s were too good to knock back; she could earn a full week’s tour wages on those two nights alone.

  ‘Bye, Mummy. Chookas.’

  Although she was vague about it, Maddy always allowed Jenny to believe she was performing somewhere, a one-off radio drama or a charity concert. Who needed a Soho nightclub hostess for a mother?

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Frances.’ Alma put a protective arm around the child but it wasn’t threatening and Maddy didn’t mind. The woman was worth her weight in gold.

  ‘Do you know what train you’ll be on?’ The avenging angel was standing beside Alma.

  ‘No, I don’t, Dad. I’ll give you a ring.’

  She started down the hill, then turned and waved at the three of them standing on the front step. She’d insisted on walking, as she always did when the weather was fine, and her father had protested as he always did. And as always she turned back to see the familiar sight: the three of them, looking like a family. Robert with his proprietorial air. Alma with her arm around Jenny.

  Maddy had a sneaking suspicion that, although she was unaware of it, Alma was actually in love with Robert McLaughlan. With the exception of sharing his bed, she certainly fulfilled all other wifely duties. She not only looked after the child and the running of the house, she also cooked, washed and cleaned. And whenever Robert suggested hiring a maid she wouldn’t hear of it. ‘What on earth for, Mr McLaughlan?’ she’d say in her pleasant, no-nonsense voice with its trace of a Midlands accent, ‘A waste of money it’d be.’ Alma was fifty years old and childless, and an excellent housekeeper and nanny: firm, capable, and always pleasant. But she belonged to a breed previously unknown to Maddy—in fact, to the best of Maddy’s knowledge, a breed unknown to Australians in general. Alma was born a servant. Her parents and her parents’ parents had all been servants. They saw no shame in it and they trained their children to follow in their footsteps.

  At a quarter to nine Maddy walked out of Leicester Square tube station and started up Wardour Street. Only two nights at Danny’s, she thought gratefully.

  At nine o’clock she seated herself at the bar along with the other five hostesses in their cocktail dresses. Maddy only owned two cocktail dresses, one black and one red, but she varied them with an array of costume jewellery or home-made corsages.

  The bar was lined up with opened bottles of dummy champagne and the hostesses sipped apple cider until a client asked the girl of his choice to join him, at which point the champagne became the real thing. Although it was cheap and nasty bubbly, the management charged the earth for it and the girls were on commission—three pounds for each bottle of champagne a client bought them. Maddy ended up quite drunk the first night she worked at Danny’s and it looked as if it could become an occupational hazard until Kath, the thirty-five year old cockney ‘den mother’ with the silicone breasts and bright red hair, taught her the routine disposal methods.

  ‘You offer it round for starters, dear—the barman, the other girls, the piano player. That gets rid of a bottle and the clients understand it’s the done thing. After that you go to the Ladies and tip it down the lav, and of course you always try and get a chair near one of the pot plants. If the worst comes to the worst you sneak it under the tablecloth and tip it onto the carpet.’ It certainly explained to Maddy why the pot plants were in such a shabby condition and the carpet always smelled sour.

  Surprisingly, the food at Danny’s was good. It was just as well. Maddy often had to eat a second meal with a second client if the first one, disappointed at her knock-back, left to chat up one of the girls who ‘did’.

  It had taken Maddy quite a while to realise that she was the only girl who ‘didn’t’. She’d been introduced to the job by another struggling actress she’d met during a repertory season at Crewe and it came as quite a shock when the girl, who obviously didn’t adhere to the champagne disposal routine, whispered drunkenly to her one night. ‘I only do it with them when I’m pissed.’

  Maddy had been further shocked to discover that the talented cabaret performer who played piano and sang torch songs on Fridays and Saturdays was also on the game. Strangely enough, when she thought about it, the prostitutes were really being the more honest ones, weren’t they? They were selling a commodity while she was just conning people.

  Maddy had been on the verge of leaving but Kath, who by that time had well and truly taken her under her maternal wing, dissuaded her. ‘Where are you going to make money like this for your little girl, dear?’ Kath had two daughters of her own, aged six and eight, who lived with their grandmother in the house Kath had bought in Canterbury. She lived a completely double life, exemplary widow-mother five days a week in the country and hostess-whore two nights a week at Danny’s Downstairs. Not that the girls slept with their clients on the premises, of course. Danny’s was a legitimate nightclub and no girl was allowed to leave work until the place closed at three, but the assignations were made there and Kath had a very comfortable little flat in Frith Street.

  ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong in what you’re doing, dear,’ Kath insisted when Maddy told her of her misgivings. ‘You don’t have to go on the game to provide a service. These are lonely men. You’ve talked to them, you know that. They’re out-of-towners, they want someone pretty to talk to, someone who’ll make them feel attractive, wanted. What’s wrong with that?’

  Maddy was about to interrupt but Kath countered her. ‘And everybody knows the nightclub set-up, dear. Everybody knows they have to pay big bucks for cheap champagne. God, you think Danny’s is a rip-off, you should try the top spots!’ Kath rolled her eyes in mock horror and flicked her mercurochrome hair over one shoulder. ‘I started out nine years ago at the Mayfair. The poor buggers who go there are fleeced by everyone from the doorman and barman to the bouncer and lavatory attendant.’

  Maddy smiled. Kath’s life-preserving ability to justify was either very simple or very clever. It was actually a persuasive mixture of both. Maddy not only stayed on at Danny’s but allowed Kath to include her in several lucrative after-hour jobs which, although shady, were harmless enough. She double-dated as a dance partner for a friend of one of Kath’s clients when they all went to Tramps; she lunched several times on a private yacht with Kath and friends who looked suspiciously like mafiosi; and she helped make up the female numbers required for a party of Arabs who had centre court tickets at Wimbledon. Kath always accepted the money and paid her the next time they saw each other at Danny’s. One time Maddy even agreed to be an ‘onlooker’.

  ‘Sure proof of my trust in Kath,’ Maddy thought as she watched the man’s buttocks pounding up and down and listened to Kath’s murmurs of encouragement.

  ‘He’s a regular, dear,’ Kath had explained. ‘He always books two girls and he thinks he’s going to get off with them both but he never does. His eyes are bigger than his tummy, silly thing, and there’s two hundred quid in it for you.’

  T
wo hundred quid! ‘OK,’ Maddy had said warily.

  But what if this time his eyes aren’t bigger than his tummy? she thought, feeling very silly sitting there in a miniskirt and knee-high boots drinking a pretend martini.

  Then, as the man’s breathing became laboured, Kath started making signs at Maddy over his shoulder. Oh yes, Maddy remembered, now I’m supposed to put the kettle on.

  Ten minutes later they were sitting around drinking English Breakfast and eating chocolate digestive biscuits. The main topic of conversation was their respective children and it was all so strangely comfortable that Maddy inwardly chastised herself for not feeling remotely guilty. What on earth was happening to her morals!

  ‘Hello, Madeleine.’

  ‘Oh. Hello, Jack.’ She’d been mentally going through her lines for Androgyne and hadn’t noticed the arrival of one of her several ‘regulars’.

  Jack was from Manchester and he was a large man. Not tall and not fat, but square. Everything about Jack was square, his build, his face, his hands. And his smile. It was a very nice, broad, square smile. You’d never know to look at Jack that he was rich. He dressed plainly and simply, despite the fact that he was a director of one of the largest haberdashery companies in Manchester. He came to London once a month for conferences with the big city buyers and always sought Maddy’s company at Danny’s Downstairs.

  She joined him at a corner table by the largest pot plant and nodded to the waiter. She was pleased. Jack was always good for three bottles of champagne, a meal and a hefty tip.

  ‘How’s the acting business coming along?’ Jack asked, sipping his pint of beer and watching the waiter pour Maddy’s champagne. ‘Thank you.’ He slipped the waiter a pound note and settled back to listen as Maddy excitedly recounted the latest turn of events.

  Maddy knew that Jack was a little bit in love with her but he never came on heavy and she assumed that it really was only the company he was after. Then, one night, when she’d been returning from a quick visit to the Ladies to tip her third glass of champagne down the lavatory, she’d caught him in a brief exchange with one of the girls. An agreement had obviously been made and he leapt aside guiltily as he saw Maddy approaching. She said nothing but she felt sad that he couldn’t quite meet her eyes for the rest of that evening. Why on earth should he feel guilty? He was a lonely, divorced man with a daughter her age and every right to seek female company, sexual as well as emotional, wherever he could find it. Surely she was the one who should feel guilty—for not providing the full service he was obviously seeking.

  When she saw Jack coming into the club the following month, she pretended not to notice him and signalled Kath to join her in the loo.

  ‘Send one of the other girls to him, Kath.’

  ‘But he only ever wants you, dear.’

  ‘No. Last time I saw him lining up a trick with one of the girls so it’s only fair—’

  Kath laughed at Maddy’s naiveté. ‘He lines up a trick with one of the girls every time, silly, but it’s you he wants to talk to. The girls don’t mind, they understand.’ Which only made Maddy feel worse.

  ‘Very interesting,’ Jack was saying. ‘Androgyne. I didn’t even know there was such a word.’ For once she didn’t seem to have his full attention. ‘But it sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you,’ he added hastily when he saw her querying look.

  ‘Is everything all right, Jack?’

  ‘Sure. Fine, fine.’ And, although the champagne bottle was nearly full, he signalled for another one. ‘Take that to the girls at the bar,’ he told the waiter, ‘and I’ll have a large Scotch.’ Something was definitely wrong, Maddy thought. She’d never seen Jack drink anything but beer.

  An hour before closing time, with six double Scotches and six beer chasers under his belt, Jack was very drunk and prepared to tell her. ‘Lost my job, didn’t I? Retrenched. “No hard feelings”, they said. No hard bloody feelings!’ He drained the last of his Scotch and signalled the waiter. ‘The bastards know bloody well how hard it is to get another job when you’re fifty-three.’

  ‘But how could they sack you? You’re a director of the company.’ Maddy was mystified. Jack never got drunk and never swore and his accent was twice as strong as it normally was.

  His laugh was hollow. ‘I’m a salesman, love.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And I’m not divorced and I don’t have a daughter your age. I’ve never even been married.’

  ‘But why—?’

  ‘Oh, who the hell knows? Who the hell cares?’

  ‘Another champagne too, sir?’ The waiter held the nearly empty bottle aloft as he took Jack’s glass. It was a rhetorical question—the waiter was already turning to go. This would make the third bottle and Jack always bought three. Jack nodded automatically but Maddy called the waiter back.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, thank you.’ The waiter stared at her, astonished. ‘I said, we don’t want any more champagne, thank you.’

  The waiter backed off to the bar and whispered to the barman-manager as Jack continued, apparently oblivious to the exchange.

  ‘So this is a sort of farewell visit. I shan’t be working South any more. I’ll stick to finding what I can around Manchester.’

  ‘Jack, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know …’ Maddy felt utterly wretched.

  ‘Well, how could you? It only happened last week.’

  ‘No, I mean …’ How could she tell him she was sorry about everything? She was sorry about the monthly savings she’d conned from him, she was sorry about the fact that she hadn’t given him honest value and slept with him, she was sorry that he was a bit in love with her, she was sorry …

  ‘Madeleine, can I have a word with you please?’ It was Mick, the barman-manager who also happened to be ‘Danny’s’ younger brother.

  As soon as they were safely out of earshot, he hissed, ‘What the hell do you mean by knocking back the champagne?’

  ‘He’s broke—he’s lost his job.’

  ‘Well, you want to watch it, love, or you’ll go the same way. Now get your butt back to that table and order another bottle.’

  Maddy was weary with self-loathing. She couldn’t be bothered retaliating. Mick was a spiv, a crook and a con man, which made him pretty much on par with herself, after all. ‘No, I’m sick of the stuff,’ she said. ‘I’m going to talk to my friend.’

  As she turned away, Mick snarled, ‘Don’t bother coming back tomorrow.’ Then he returned to the bar. He knew better than to cause a scene with one of the girls when there were clients about. Besides, it was closing time in a few minutes.

  ‘We’re in the same boat, Jack,’ she said as she joined him. ‘I just got the sack.’

  Jack was jolted out of his drunken fog and he looked at her for what seemed quite a long time. ‘That’s good.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t belong in a place like this.’

  Maddy felt the prickle of tears but Jack didn’t notice as he stared back at his drink and drifted back into his fog.

  ‘Stay there, Jack. I’ll only be a few minutes and I’ll get you a cab.’

  No sooner had she closed the door to the Ladies and started checking her eye make-up than Kath appeared. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. Maddy told her. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said sympathetically. ‘You want me to have a word with Mick for you?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ There was no way Maddy could tell Kath the utter relief she felt at leaving the place. ‘I start work on the film next week anyway.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ve got a good one for you to go out on, though.’ Kath winked. ‘Little Tommy Tucker’s picking me up at closing.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Like in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Little Tommy Tucker was the nickname Kath gave to the man with ‘eyes too big for his tummy’ who always double-booked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she continued. ‘He’s got a porn movie and he wants two girls to look at it with him before he does it. ’Course he’ll only end up doing it with one. You want to be in it?’

 
; ‘I don’t think so, Kath, thanks all the same.’

  ‘Oh, come on, dear, don’t look so down.’ Kath put a comforting arm around Maddy. ‘I tell you this bloke’s nothing like your Jack. He’s as rich as Croesus and he wants a fun night, you’ll be doing him a favour, and there’s three hundred quid in it for you.’

  Maddy couldn’t help laughing. She nodded. What the hell, this was her swan song. Everybody had their price, after all. She’d watch the dirty movie with the poor rich bloke, make three hundred quid and tomorrow she’d wake up with a clean slate and forget that she’d ever allowed herself to sink so low. ‘Sink so low?’ She scolded herself for being a drama queen as she left to gather up Jack and put him in a cab.

  A very attractive pair of naked male buttocks filled the screen. The camera panned around to a side angle shot of a groin and the biggest erect penis Maddy had ever seen. Then the camera zoomed in closer and closer, moving slowly up the shaft of the penis to linger lovingly on a close-up of the glistening glans. The titles started to roll in bold black letters: THE ROD in VENUS REVEALED.

  The camera eased back to a wide shot of the man, who was standing frozen in a formal mini-Versailles garden alongside several naked women also pretending to be statues. Slowly the man came to life, turning his head towards the camera. Maddy gasped out loud just before the name appeared on the screen: Starring Rodney Baines.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me!’ Maddy screamed at Phil. It was Sunday morning and Maddy never phoned him at home but this was one time she thought she had ample reason.

  ‘OK, OK. So he does hard porn—but only expensive, quality stuff, and he’s the most famous blue movie star in the UK.’