Winona had a long nose - her mother had always said it was long enough to pick a winkle - well, that nose was quivering now, scenting trouble. She went to the crate and looked at it just as Heidi, the young maid, walked through the door.
‘There’s a Mr Blackley up top, wants to know where Ginelle is. Says he’d arranged to see her tonight.’
Winona turned, pulling herself up to her full height. ‘How many bloody times do I have to tell you, girl, knock before you enter a room!’
Heidi blinked rapidly, a nervous habit that drove Winona to distraction. ‘And for fuck’s sake, stop blinking blinking!’
Heidi, all of eleven and looking nine, blinked even harder. ‘Me mum says if you shout at me it won’t get any better, it’s me nerves like.’
Winona raised her eyes to the ceiling.
‘Tell Mr Blackley that Ginelle will be along shortly, then nip round her mother’s and see if she’s there. Since she became Briony’s blue-eyed girl, she’s really started pushing her bleeding luck! Well you tell her that she can get her arse round here, she still works in this house as a whore no matter what else she might be involved in, and I run this place for Briony Cavanagh. I am the head girl, and I ain’t putting up with tardiness!’
‘With what?’ Heidi’s voice was incredulous.
‘Just go and do what I say, will you!’ Winona made a conscious effort to keep her voice down, but this child really was the limit.
After that, Winona was called on to sort out more than one petty drama, so she didn’t open the crate until nine fifteen. It was an act she was to regret all her life.
Briony watched with shining eyes as Kerry came on stage. The lights were dimmed and Kerry looked much too pretty and much too young to be a real singer, but the audience were with her, Briony picked that much up from the atmosphere.
The first few bars were played by Evander Dorsey then Kerry began to sing.
As she began to sing the people who had still been chatting paused to look and listen properly. The whole club seemed to quieten and Kerry, feeling the reaction, put more and more emotion into the song.
As the last few bars were played, she was greeted with a standing ovation, drinks were raised and feet thumped on the wooden floors.
Briony laughed with delight. She had known this was going to happen, she had counted on it.
She was still clapping and smiling when Tommy came to the table and whispered in her ear.
Jonathan, clapping and smiling himself, was shocked to see Briony’s face drain of all colour. She got up from the table, smiled half-heartedly, said her goodbyes then immediately left the club.
Jonathan la Billière watched her leave. There was trouble brewing there, he would lay money on it. Well, he was seeing her next morning, and he was looking forward to that. He was looking forward to it immensely.
He turned his face back to the stage where Kerry had just started singing a lively number. He enjoyed the rest of the set. But the memory of Briony’s white face stayed with him.
Tommy and Briony arrived at the Mayfair house just after eleven. They walked into its pink warmth, slipping off their coats as they entered the front door. Heidi took the coats without a murmur, her eyes blinking in overtime now with the shock the house had had. Briony and Tommy went through to the office where Winona was sitting at her desk, her face grey, hands clutching a large glass of brandy.
‘She’s dead, Bri... But it’s Ginelle, all right.’
Tommy lifted the lid of the crate and stared into it. Ginelle, minus nose, ears and breasts stared up at them. Her hands were fingerless, bloody stumps crossed over her body in some grotesque parody of the funeral rite.
Briony felt first the burn of bile as it welled up inside her throat, then she felt rage, a white rage that there was no reasoning against. Ginelle was just eighteen years old. She kept her mother and her younger sisters on what she earned. She was a nice girl, a kind girl. Whoever did this had better start saying their prayers, because she, Briony Cavanagh, was going to have their balls on a plate!
‘Who knows, Winona? Who knows in the house?’ Briony’s voice was hard and brooked no nonsense.
‘Heidi knows. She came in just as I opened the crate. Denice knows and Lily. They’re keeping it quiet. I told them not to alert the rest of the girls.’
‘Good... good. You did the right thing.’
Briony looked at Ginelle again and then at Tommy. Her voice was shocked and disbelieving as she spoke.
‘Why would anyone do this, Tom? Why?’
It was the first time in years he had seen Briony shaken, and it saddened him.
‘I don’t know, Bri. But I have a feeling we’ll find out soon enough, love. This is a message of some sort. What we have to do is find out who sent it.’
She nodded and stared at Ginelle’s remains again, remembering the girl’s laughter of the week before, remembering when she had come to her for a job in her ragged dress and her mother’s shoes. Remembered her chatter, her unaffected pleasure in life, and felt rage once more for the destruction of a young life.
‘Yeah, Tom, we’ll find out who sent the message and then I’m gonna muller them. Me personally. No one, but no one, touches me or mine... So whoever sent this so-called message better start saying their prayers because, as Christ is my witness, they’ll need all the fucking prayers they can get!’
Chapter Eleven
Molly was brushing out Rosalee’s hair. Unlike years before, when it had been cropped to keep the lice at bay, Briony had insisted on having her sister’s hair left to grow. Now Rosalee sported a mass of thick blonde curls.
‘Would you keep still, Rosie darlin’!’ Rosalee was fidgeting, moving her head from side to side and making low guttural noises which annoyed the life out of Molly.
Eileen walked into the kitchen and Molly smiled, a real smile that encompassed the girl from head to foot.
At twenty-eight Eileen was much better. Her nerves were still bad, but she had stopped her wandering and the nonsensical conversations were long gone. She even had a beau of sorts, a friend of Abel’s who took her for long walks and listened avidly to all her chatter. He was a good deal older than Eileen, but Molly wasn’t against that. Eileen needed a man who was settled. A man who would look after her.
‘I’ve had a really good time, Mum. Joshua took me to Bow. We shopped in the little market and stopped for pie and mash. And I bought some material, I thought I might make meself a dress.’
Molly was amazed at those words. Although Eileen was clean, God knows she was forever washing, she still had that unkempt look about her. The shapeless garments she wore were such a part of her that the thought of her wearing anything even remotely nice was like music to her mother’s ears.
‘But Briony is always offering you money for clothes and you turn it down.’
Eileen faced her mother.
‘I don’t want anything from Briony thank you very much. I know she means well, but the thought of wearing anything bought with the money she makes...’
‘Oh, all right, Eileen love, leave it, leave it. You make yourself something nice if that’s what you want.’
Molly sighed heavily. It was still a sore point with Eileen about Briony, and Molly, who had once been her daughter’s most ardent opponent, was now her most ardent supporter. The girl had taken the bit of money from the Dumases and turned it into a small fortune. Also, Molly could deny no longer her own involvement in both her daughters’ downfall. Though the word ‘downfall’ was certainly not how she would describe Briony’s life.
‘Kerry’s not been then?’ Eileen tried to make amends.
‘To be honest, I don’t think she remembers where she lives!’
This was said with pride and without any malicious feeling against Eileen who didn’t work, let alone keep herself. It was this fact that galled Molly most about her eldest daughter. She balked at accepting Briony’s money but had no intention of going out and earning any for herself. Molly didn’t say this though, because now Eileen was back on her feet she didn’t want to rock the boat.
Bernadette came down the stairs and both women smiled at her. ‘Did our Kerry come home, Bernie?’
‘I ain’t her keeper, Mum, only her dresser. She probably stayed overnight with someone.’
She poured herself some tea and smiled craftily to herself. She knew who Kerry had stayed with all right, but she’d keep the knowledge to herself a while longer.
‘How did it go last night? Was it a success?’
‘Oh, yeah. Kerry went down a storm. Everyone was raving about her. But it’s funny, Mum, Briony was called away quick like. She looked rough I can tell you. I reckon there was hag at one of the houses.’
Molly put down the brush and went to the table to pick up her mug of tea. ‘What do you mean, trouble?’ Her face was clouded.
‘What kind of trouble do you normally get in those places?’
Eileen’s voice was low and Molly stopped herself from clouting her. Sometimes Eileen’s holy Joeing, as she called it to herself, really got on her nerves.
Bernie laughed.
‘Look, stop worrying, you know our Briony. If there’s trouble it will be sorted by now. It was a shame really because she missed most of the opening. Oh, Mum, you should have seen some of the people there! Really rich like, their clothes... Even the air in there smelt nice, with all the perfumes and that.’
Molly nodded, pleased. This was more like it, this was what she wanted to hear. ‘Were there any titles there?’
Bernie pushed her face close to her mother’s and smiled. ‘The place stunk of titles, Mum, it was really, really impressive. Our Briony is gonna make a bloody fortune.’
Molly sipped her tea and grinned.
That was more like it all right. She lived now in Briony’s shadow, loving her notoriety, enjoying the stir her daughter created. People spoke about her in tones of awe. She was both loved and feared, and that, as far as Molly was concerned, was exactly how it should be.
Evander looked down at the girl asleep in his bed and felt his heart constrict. What the hell had he done? She was no more than a child really, for all her body and her incredible voice. She was a white woman. He had spent the night with a white woman.
Now hold on, a voice whispered at the back of his mind. You ain’t in the States now.
But if certain people knew about them, it would be like the States all over again. There was something about a black man and a white woman that incensed people. Women as well as men. He had grown up under that cloud and had thought to die without ever knowing the pleasure of a clean white woman. Oh, he had slept with white women before, poor white trash who had gone to the bad and were thought diseased so sold their body only to the black boys.
All this talk about niggers over here... about how niggers could dance, niggers had natural rhythm. They liked your music and your soulful songs, they liked to be seen with the black musicians, it made them look very hip, but if they thought you were sleeping with one of their women they’d turn like a pack of bloodhounds. What was it that Shakespeare guy had said? There’s an old black ram, tupping your ewe? Well, that was exactly what Evander had done. And he had loved every second of it!
Kerry was worth anything they might throw at him, though. The smell of her, the feel of her silky black hair, was like nothing he had ever experienced before. And she had been a virgin, that was the most fantastic part! A virgin. In the darkness of the night before he had been too carried away with wanting her to think of the consequences. Now, as she lay asleep and the sun burned through the dirty windows, the thought made him feel physically faint though he was aroused again.
‘Evander, my love. Come back to bed.’
He looked at her face and saw her staring at his enlarged member with the same fascination as he had stared at her. He watched as her long thin white fingers caressed him, running down the length of him and caressing his genitals, and groaned out loud. He knelt beside the bed and caressed her large white breasts with their pink nipples, and knew he was lost then. Any sensible thoughts were gone now, completely overshadowed by the milky white skin and the wet pinkness between her legs.
Briony and Tommy were sitting down to lunch but Briony just pushed her food desultorily around her plate.
‘Last night was a resounding success anyway, Bri.’
She nodded.
‘Good. Kerry went down well.’
‘Look, Briony, worrying about it ain’t gonna make it. go away.’
She shook her head.
‘I tell you, Tommy, every time I think about Ginelle, I feel a rage in me. I can’t stand this hanging around, waiting for the next move. Suppose they touch one of the other girls?’
‘We’ve got them all watched. Fuck me, Bri, even King Street Charlie couldn’t get in one of the houses at the moment.’
‘I think we should tell the girls. They have a right to know.’
Tommy pushed his plate away in temper.
‘Oh, yeah? Start a general exodus, why don’t you? The less the brasses know the better. They’ve got mouths like the parish ovens. It’d be all over the smoke by tonight. “Briony and Tommy have got trouble. Big trouble.” Once word like that hits the pavements every little ponce with dreams of the big time will be out mob-handed. We’ve gotta play this one close to our chests, wait and see what develops. If it was a loony, say a bloke with a grudge, he wouldn’t have had her delivered to the house, would he? That was personal.’
‘Did it ever occur to you that it could be a customer? A bloke who’s got a grudge all right. It’s all right for you, ain’t it? You ain’t gotta go round and give Ginelle’s mother the bad news, have you? You ain’t gotta go round and tell her that her daughter’s died. I’ve got to make up a story that she had an accident or something. How can I tell the woman that her daughter, her main bread winner, was cut up like a fucking piece of meat on a butcher’s slab!’