The Whiskerly Sisters (38 page)

The girls listened avidly to their friend’s story and somewhere in the middle, somewhere between the Drag Nights and Fee’s brother, a slender, blonde figure eased his way through the curtains, down the front of the stage to take Sly’s hand and listen quietly as his lover continued his amazing tale.

The Whiskerlies fell in love with Fee almost as quickly as Sly had done. For one thing, he returned Sly’s love with such wholeheartedness that the girls could only imagine, and secretly envy, the depth of their relationship. Furthermore, he was a good looking man with neat features and deep blue eyes. His long bright hair fell past his shoulders and he had a slender, almost girlish, frame. As for his voice, they found that they couldn’t get enough of his harsh, slightly hissing accent with its long drawn out vowels and barked consonants. They sat fascinated watching his quick, nimble fingers stitch and mend the fabulous costumes the actors wore on stage or easily turn blotchy, florid skins into creamy, lush complexions with deft, soft strokes of his brushes. He turned the agony of being a woman, with its endless round of eyebrow plucking, hair straightening and leg waxing, almost into a pleasure such was his skill.

As the cruise flowed seamlessly on through the calm seas of the Mediterranean, the sun a perfect yellow orb lighting the azure blue sky, the girls spent as much time with Sly and Fee as they could. They approached the Captain to ask permission for them to sit with them at dinner but, although he listened to their case sympathetically, rules were rules and the crew ate their meals out of sight and out of mind of the paying passengers. To no avail did Fresna storm, Tiffany sulk, Celia swear, Izza shrug and Jax reason. The Captain was adamant.

Until Charley changed his mind.

How she did it remained a secret, but Izza later told Callum that she must have promised him the mother of all blow jobs to pull off that particular stunt. Whether or not she delivered was never disclosed but, on their last day, the Captain himself came down to the departure lobby to kiss her hand romantically and whisper in her ear. To the rest of the girls watching, there seemed to be a glint of shared pleasure in his eye, but that could just have been the sunlight.

The Whiskerlies were ecstatic that Charley had pulled off the seeming impossible. Under Fee’s critical eye, the girls outshone themselves on the night of the planned dinner so that, once again, it was a head turning event when the girls finally entered the dining room and approached their table where Sly and Fee stood, resplendent in tie and tails. As the buzz in the large, oak-panelled room subsided, the girls settled into their seats. A fabulous dinner was served and the conversation ebbed and flowed easily amongst the group, centring on their holiday and the fleeting wonders of the Italian landmarks they had visited along the way – the famous, drunken campanile, torre di Pisa with its 294 steps, Michelangelo’s Florence with its profusion of sculptures and the famous Bobili Gardens, the choking bite of sulphur on the steady climb to the top of Mount Etna, the crowded dash through the ancient streets of Pompeii with its open pizza ovens and remarkable Luperina.

With dinner over and coffee served, the dining room began to empty as guests took themselves off in different directions, eager for entertainment. Lulled by the good food and ample amounts of alcohol, the Whiskerlies grew quiet. Celia again broke the spell, pushing her chair back noisily to stand up, champagne flute in hand.

“A toast,” she said simply, looking around the table and into the faces of each of her friends. Solemn now, each girl pushed back her chair and stood up to join Celia. The waiters watched from the edges of the room, slightly curious, but having seen almost everything before as the little band reached out to hold hands, heads bowed for a few seconds. Bex, breaking the contact, thrust one flat hand out towards the centre of the table and placed the other over her heart. The others followed in turn. Finally Bex removed the hand covering her heart and reached for her glass. She raised it and made the toast.

“To us,” she said quietly. “To the Whiskerly Sisters.”

“And a fucking fabulous adventure,” added Celia, raising her own glass.

“Yeah, don’t mess with us,” said Izza, smiling at her mother.

“Or you’ll be sorry,” added Sly with a grin.

The girls each drained the contents of their glasses. Tiffany turned to hug Fresna, which began a long round of group hugs, a few tears, a lot of laughter and fondly remembered adventures. Finally, the girls seemed satisfied and sat down. They were replete, almost drunk. They had taken on their persecutors and had kicked them to the kerb.

What else was there to do?

It was Sly who pointed them towards their next destination. He did it unintentionally towards the end of the cruise late one night in the emptiness of the theatre after his show when the little band of friends had gathered for a nightcap. Motivated by the ease of his disclosure to these compassionate women, he simply encouraged Fee to tell his story. Once begun, the girls would not let him leave until he had told them everything; once begun, Fee found himself quite unable to stop. The room grew quiet as the Whiskerlies drank in his every word, horrified by the brutality of his early years and impressed by his remarkable courage.

Fee could never actually remember a time when he wasn’t harassed or belittled by his brothers. The fact that he was built like his mother, slight and slender, did not help. Why he could not have been blessed with his father’s giant, bear-like frame as his brothers had been, he could not say, but for some reason, it irritated the other men in the household, who believed him to be cross-born.

The fact that he did not enjoy the physical pursuits of their outdoor lifestyle irked them even more. He trudged along half-heartedly when the men went fishing or hunting. To make things worse, he loathed the taste of beer and vodka. He much preferred curling up in front of the fire with whatever books he could find to interest him in the tiny, village library, or better still, online when Wi-Fi finally came to town. He also loved to paint and would often escape, for long hours, into the countryside to sketch the flora and fauna. He never brought his work home, choosing to destroy his art rather than risk making a difficult situation worse. He instinctively knew that his artistic nature would infuriate his brothers so kept it secret.

His father, proud and vast, made no secret of the fact that he regularly roared his indignation to the bleak, grey skies that his woman had given birth to a girl in a boy’s body. He refused to hide the fact that, in his grandfather’s day, this changeling, this offence to nature, would have been put out for the wolves before his mother could put him to her breast.

Fee had refused to join the thriving family business which, under the guise of a removals company, successfully smuggled illegal goods across the border, accompanied by a heavy blend of deceit and ill will. For this, he was often beaten and told he must not disgrace his family. His father held an important place in the village so honour was at stake. Grudgingly, Fee was forced to agree. Even so, he declined to carry arms and instead, at the age of thirteen, had become their watcher, blending effortlessly among the trees or standing, almost invisible, behind some rotting outhouse on the look-out for nosy neighbours or other unwelcome pests that might disturb the hurried exchanges between vehicles. He took on whatever paperwork came his way, carefully counting the crisp piles of currency they threw on the table, checking and re-checking in case they had somehow been defrauded, in which case a visit would be paid and blood spilled. When Fee was certain that everything was in order, he would hand the books and the money over to his father, who would dole it out to his family; sometimes sparingly, sometimes generously depending on his prevailing mood.

Fee hated it. He hated them. He hated the deceit, the lies and the greed. He hated the loud laughter and the heavy thumps on the back in front of the roaring log fire as they toasted their success along with their toes. Most of all, he hated his parents. His mother, tiny, cowed and withered, who had never fought for him or defended him, who let him be put down and beaten when it took his brothers’ fancy. His father, loud, moody and offensive, who treated him like dirt and would not allow his youngest son to be himself. He knew, from an early age, that he had to escape. He knew he would need to be very careful; he knew he would have to watch and wait for his opportunity to present itself.

It came unexpectedly just short of his nineteenth birthday when the driver of the van, in which the current stock of drugs was due to be transferred, became ill with a violent migraine and had to be hastily shoved into the back seat of his brother’s land rover to recover. They had travelled light, expecting no trouble on that dark and gloomy September evening. Madars, the middle brother, chewed his lip and stroked the trigger of his Ceska Phantom while he thought the matter through.

Finally, he came to a decision. There was no choice. He whistled softly towards the trees to call his brother to him. He told Fee to help him unload the van. When that was done, Madars instructed him to drive the van back to the city and return it to the Vilkssons, who would be waiting for their cut. Fee must pay them and then find somewhere to hole up for the night. His brother would organise for him to be picked up and returned home in the morning. Madars would phone him with the details. He gathered his brother into a big hug and wished him a gruff good luck. He told him to keep his wits about him and to keep himself as invisible as the ‘spoks’, which were rumoured to haunt the woods. Above all things, Fee must not get himself noticed.

Releasing him, Madars gave his brother a rough shake and told him fiercely not to let the family down. Turning his heel, he climbed into his vehicle and drove off into the night without a backward glance. Fee watched the tail-lights of the land rover disappear into the gloom, feeling sick at the huge responsibility that had just been placed onto his shoulders. Climbing into the large van, Fee took a deep breath before switching the engine on. He shakily steered it along the wet track and finally onto the main road, turning in the direction of the city. Concentrating hard on the task in hand, cursing the dubious honour of his family, Fee eventually pulled up outside an isolated shed on the fringes of the city and stopped the car. Two men immediately stepped out of the shadows and approached the driver’s window. Nervously, he opened the door and explained the situation to the doubting pair. A call was made and his story finally verified. Handing over the keys to one of the two dark strangers, he beat a hasty retreat. He kept walking until he eventually found himself in front of the Liepaja docks, staring at the ships anchored in the harbour.

Alone on the quayside, Fee realised that his time had come at last. He had safely delivered his cargo back to its point of origin and no one expected him to be anywhere until morning. Still unsure, he thought a while longer and then, at last, he came to his decision. Moving swiftly, and keeping in the shadows, he edged noiselessly towards the nearest vessel and stared up at it, contemplating the huge iron chains that held it moored against the dock. Buttoning his jacket, and discarding his mobile phone into the murky waters of the harbour, he flung himself at the nearest chain, catching it easily and allowing himself to swing to its rhythm as it gently bucked against his weight. As lithe as a cat, he hitched his way up its metal length, finally easing himself over the edge of the boat. He scanned the deck in front of him, relieved to find it deserted. Creeping along the railing, he eventually came to the relative safety of a lifeboat and crawled under its canopy. Lying as still as he could, he waited until, finally, he heard footsteps ringing the stairs to the deck, the muted exchange of conversation and the noise of routine. The big engines suddenly throbbed into life and, not much later, the ship began to slowly move away from the quayside and into deeper waters, bringing its stowaway a long twenty four hours later to Kapeliskar where he waited until after midnight to leave the ship the way he had entered it. He then stowed aboard a freight ferry bound for Rotterdam, finally arriving in Felixstowe on a container ship. He was dirty, hungry and thirsty, but, so far, he had survived.

He wandered around the North Suffolk town slowly, managing to clean himself up a little in the public toilets. He found a large supermarket from where he stole some bread and cheese, which he took to a park bench and ate ravenously. He slept rough for the next few days, eventually finding shelter in a broken down shed on a neglected allotment. He turned this into his temporary headquarters and, over time, managed to make it into a passable dwelling. Fortunately, the autumn weather remained unseasonably warm and dry. He was able to find occasional work in the local cafes and bars, washing up, fetching or carrying – whatever it took to earn a little cash with which to keep himself going.

After several weeks, and with winter beginning to bite, he found a way to bed down for the night in the warmth of the kitchen of one of the cafes in which he worked, always leaving well before dawn so that he was never discovered. He managed to survive like this throughout the dull, wet British winter until, one day, he decided he needed to move on. He never thought about the family he had left behind; he took things one day at a time and concentrated solely on his immediate future.

One day, in the middle of the following spring, he packed his meagre belongings and hitched a lift to London where he worked for several years as a machinist to an Indian clothes manufacturer in Ilford. It was through this kindly man that he finally met the seamstress with the brains to recognise the creative genius behind the humility of the young Eastern European and who offered him more lucrative employment, together with the promise of a real career. Once she had persuaded him to join her, she went on to support Fee’s UK Citizenship and to help him to improve his English. In what little spare time he had left, he enrolled at College and began to study the world of cosmetics. In the arty world in which he moved, it was not difficulty to befriend others of his sexual persuasion and he soon found himself at the heart of a group of men and boys with a passion for fashion and the theatre. The wheels of life had begun to turn in Fee’s favour and he began to find himself content with his world.