Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 (24 page)

‘How do you mean?'

‘After that I went home and I gave a massage to my chick. And to my kids. It changed the atmosphere in the house. I didn't see Ren for a while after that. It was like a goodbye present, she gave me the massage to take away with me. The next time I saw Ren it was different. She had a girlfriend around, know what I mean. I didn't know there were dykes like Ren.'

Alex glanced at the large wooden clock hanging on the wall of the pub lounge. ‘Duane, look at the time. You wanted to leave early.'

‘I feel I am glued to this stool. Perhaps my chick has left home already and taken the kids. She's funny about her birthday. The more she goes on, “I don't care where you go, I don't care what you do the night before, but please be back on my birthday. In the morning. Ten o'clock. I need you.” She doesn't often say that any more. Only about her birthday. But the more she goes on, the more I cannot stir. I'll only have one more lager.'

Alex sipped her gin and tonic. ‘It's your call,' she said. ‘Your chick, your responsibility. You're a grown man.'

‘Meeting Ren,' Duane went on, ‘It was like the whole reason of my knowing her was just building up to her giving me that massage. After that, there were certain things I didn't do no more. I have done things all my life, see, that I have not been proud of. I started young. You're a well brought up woman. You probably wouldn't ever imagine them things. Do you want to hear?'

‘If you want to tell me.'

‘It is good to get things off my chest. You are the kind of person I can tell things to. Like you can understand.

‘I started when I was a teenager. My cousin Leon and I used to go down the West End. We used to hang around in an amusement arcade in Leicester Square, waiting for a poofter to try to pick us up. We'd stand separate, and whichever one the guy came up to, we'd get him to go round the back. There was a dark alley. Then we'd say “It's gonna cost you £10, up front.” Then when the poof hands over the cash, run for it. The other one would follow round the back and hang about a little way away to make sure everything went OK. That the poof didn't cut up nasty, right. Then we'd leg it together, split the cash. Good money. We used to laugh.

‘They'd never go to the police, see, or they'd get nicked themselves. It was in the 1950s, see. Those days being queer was illegal.'

Alex rested her forehead in her hand and shook her head. ‘Why would you want to do crap like that?'

‘Let me put it this way. At the time, it was easy. Ready cash. That was a lot of money those days. And there was not a lot at home. It was do or be done.'

‘You never got caught?'

‘No, but we stopped doing it. One time, some punter came up to Leon. City-type gent with a briefcase. They walked out of the arcade together. But when I followed and went round the back a little bit later, they weren't there. I waited. I thought, “He's maybe round the side, he'll be here in a minute.” I thought maybe he'd come running round the building like usual in his shades and his striped T-shirt. But he never showed. I went back to the Grove, but he never came home that night. Next day he turned up, cleaned himself up a bit, and he went out again. He didn't want to talk to me.

‘He'd gone with the geezer with the briefcase. And that's what he did from then on. Had sex with the punters. He said the money was even better. He was making new friends. He didn't hang out with me no more after that. I lost him up West.'

‘Did you ever go that way?'

‘Not with blokes, no. That is not my scene. Taking money for sex, no, to me that is lowering yourself. To me, I see it like a gift.

‘But years later, after the kids were born, my mate Winston spoke to me. Said would I be interested in going to parties where there was all the alcohol and women you could want. There for the asking. “Sure,” I go, “what kind of party is this?” “More like an orgy,” he goes. “Sounds interesting,” I go, “tell me more.” It turns out he knows this guy who is a producer at the BBC. He writes the address on a piece of paper. “This Saturday, turn up eight o'clock. Don't be late, you'll miss the action.”

‘That night I have a good bath at home. The kids were little at the time and when she takes them up to bed I set off. It was a big semi-detached house in Richmond. Lights on in every window. Jaguars parked on the gravel. When I go in I find my mate and a few other black guys there. The rest are all white people dressed smart. Suits, party dresses. They offer us drinks, doubles every time, and we get chatting to the women. They have little things to eat on trays, like small sausage rolls except they didn't have sausage in them. I'm talking to this mousy-looking woman in a grey dress with sequins on, and this geezer with a red tie is watching. The husband. I am wondering, does he have an objection if I am chatting to his wife, but then I remember what my friend told me about how it works.

‘After a while, the guy with the red tie sort of sidles up to me and says in one of those voices like he is reading the news: “Isobel would like to get to know you better,” and he takes us both up to one of the bedrooms. “Get undressed, dear,” he goes to her, and she takes off her little shoes and her sequin dress. She puts it neatly over a chair and lies on the bed in her petticoat.

‘“And your undies,” he goes. She hesitates for a moment, then she takes her petticoat off, and her tights, very careful not to ladder them, and lays them over the back of the chair.

‘“Get on with it, then,” he says to me. I feel a bit awkward, right, undressing with him there, but my friend had told me the score. “Let's see if it's true what they say, that you've got a big one,” he goes as I take my trousers off. I don't say nothing and I get started.

‘But he didn't leave it at that. He keeps interrupting.

‘“Not like that,” he goes. “Isobel doesn't like it like that. You need to lick her nipples.”

‘I'm thinking, “If he knows so much about how she likes it, how come he's getting me to do it for him?”

‘Anyway, after a while I start to forget he's there and I think she does too. I don't think she'd had it for a while. She was shy at first, you know what I'm saying, but they're often the ones enjoy it most in the end. Afterwards she gives me a little smile, right, then she wraps herself up again all proper and gets a bit embarrassed and she won't even look at her husband. He didn't seem well pleased, he won't look at me neither when we go downstairs.

‘After that everybody moved around and next time I got a real fox in a black dress, made up to the nines with eyelashes like forks, and from the start she tries to wind me and her husband up at the same time, making sarcastic comments. We go up to one of the other rooms and …'

‘Stop,' said Alex. ‘I can't hear any more, I feel sick.'

‘Yeah,' said Duane, ‘Afterwards it made me feel that all women are dirty.'

‘Women?' Alex exploded, ‘Women dirty? Women!! What about the men who set the whole thing up?'

‘They were that type of white class men who decide what goes down,' said Duane. ‘They have us all on a string. They think because they have a job of a certain sort that they are better than other people. But what's the use if you cannot make love to your own wife?'

Alex did not reply. Her eyes rested on a noisy group of young men at the next table. She frowned, then looked back at Duane and said: ‘You know something? I don't believe what you say.'

‘You think them orgies don't happen?'

‘It's not that. I don't believe what you say about yourself. Something Harold Pinter said came back to me. He said speech is a strategy to cover our nakedness. You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything about yourself. On that, you're silent. You know you were abusing yourself as well as those women in that situation. Why do that stuff? You're not being honest. I've had enough of this. I need another drink.' She stood up.

Duane stared at his glass. ‘It carried on for a few years. They would happen, you know, every three months or so. But after Ren's massage I gave it all up.'

Alex sat down again. ‘How come?'

‘It was like the massage planted a seed inside me and that seed grew. Like God held out a hand to me in spite of everything I'd done. He knew I wasn't perfect. Sometimes I'd do things and tell him about them and he says “Well, I would rather you hadn't done that.” But he never stopped being my friend, see. And with the massage it was like Ren opened a door and you can picture a big bright light on the other side and a hand reaches in and it takes my hand and it can pull me through to where it is all golden. And I'm a bit heavy, you know, and it's like there's a wind blowing in from outside and it's beating me back all the time, but that hand is helping me slowly one inch by the next inch to get through that door and out into that place outside where there is nothing but light.'

‘Like you could do with a hand to get you out of this pub door to get home for your wife's birthday.'

‘It would take a miracle to get me off this stool.'

‘Let's hope for a miracle, then,' said Alex. ‘Anyway, there's no big golden glow out there, only a few Christmas lights. And it's freezing cold.'

They looked at the door which was being held open as a large group of women poured in, taking off hats and gloves. One woman reached into a bag and pulled out a pile of papers and passed them round to the others. Then the women surged forward into the pub handing out small sheets of paper at each table. A young woman with short green hair gave Duane and Alex a copy each. ‘Don't drink here!' she said, ‘Do you want to support a place like this?'

After she had gone, they read the leaflet. It was headed, ‘IN THIS PUB THE BARMAN BITES THE BARMAIDS' BUTTOCKS,' with a paragraph below saying that a number of women working there had been sexually harassed by management. The small print told the story of how a young woman had been taken on at the pub, and was told by the Manager: ‘If you break three glasses, I'll bite your bum.' She thought it was a misplaced attempt at humour and ignored it, but four weeks later after she had broken two wine glasses and a beer glass, she was standing on a stool refilling one of the high bottles when he came up and bit her on the buttock.

‘“Hard enough to hurt,”' Alex read aloud, adding to Duane, ‘Though even if it didn't hurt does that make it any better? When she complained he threatened to fire her. What a pig. Come on, this is your cue.'

Duane pushed his stool back slightly but didn't stand up.

The group of young men at the next table were reading the leaflet and laughing, making comments to the leafletters. ‘Here, Ginger, I'll bite yours if you like,' one of them called to a plump fortyish woman with frizzy red hair. ‘That could be difficult with your mouth up your arse,' she replied. As she swept past she tripped over the leg of Duane's stool, colliding with the young mens' table and scattering their drinks on the floor with a sound of breaking glass. As she went down she knocked into a young man in a Gap T-shirt who had his chair balanced on the two back legs. He crashed to the floor beside her. The young men stopped laughing.

‘Good shot,' said Alex. She and Duane helped the woman to her feet and walked with her out of the pub. ‘You all right?'

On the pavement the woman was shaking beer and cigarette ash off her coat. ‘This always has to happen to me,' she told Alex.

‘Break a few glasses. Serve them right,' said Alex. ‘At least you shut those blokes up.'

Duane gave Alex a soft peck on the cheek, ‘You know, I appreciate meeting you.' To the woman with red hair he said ‘What you did in there saved my life. You are an angel sent by God.' Then he turned and walked off down the street with a swagger.

The woman looked at Alex blankly.

Alex shrugged: ‘It's a long story.' She flashed her smile and crossed the road.

The plump woman stood for a minute on her own, then walked off in the other direction, a few last peanuts falling off her coat. She took a left turn. She handed in one of her carrier bags at a dry cleaners, then went into a newsagents; she came out holding a bar of Kit-Kat and a copy of
The Independent
. She dropped the Kit-Kat and picked it up again. Then she turned down a side street and stopped at a neat terraced house with a pampas grass in the front garden. The stripped pine door had a bell marked ‘Natural Health Centre'. A voice came over the speaker, ‘Hi, Anthea, push the door.'

Coming from the second floor landing into the small room in her glittery socks, Anthea edged past the dark aspidistra leaves, took off her coat, dropped it on the floor, and settled herself into the wicker armchair. ‘Thank you for giving me a session again so soon. And an extra long one, too.' She paused then burst out: ‘A man just called me an angel from heaven!'

Ren pressed the button to start the tape-recorder and smiled at her from the other wicker chair. ‘You sound surprised.'

‘I am! I was! I'd never set eyes on him before. I fell over his chair in the pub. I sent a whole table of glasses flying. It was embarrassing. An accident.' She leant forward excitedly across the red and purple striped cotton rug. ‘Do you think chance words from strangers are important? Some people do. Something like this happened to me before. Have you heard of
Kledonas
?'

‘
Kledonas
?' Ren shook her head.

‘It's a custom from ancient Greece. Chance words. They used it for divination. They would formulate a question and go out into the street. The first words they heard spoken by a passing stranger, that was the answer to the question. The numinousness of the random. They still do a variation of it in Greece, in some places. On the Feast of St. John, near the summer solstice.

‘I did it once, ages ago. Here in England. I didn't mean to. But it was what started everything: the archaeology, the tombs, the bones…. ' She fell silent and slumped in her chair as if she had run out of steam.