Chapter Two-2
1916 Words
“You’re firm,” he commented. Fingers probed, delved the supple flesh. My fanny moistened. He succeeded in strumming my s*x strings. There lay a lesson. It wasn’t what one was endowed with, it was what a person did that mattered. And for a few minutes there, Ray was gentle and thoughtful, and appropriately passionate.
I didn’t stop him when his hand descended, leaving a tingling lava trail in its wake. And when he loitered there, fingertip so close to my s*x lips, I nearly fainted with expectation.
“I’ll bet yer ten bob yer as dry as the Sahara Desert, eh Dulce?”
“I could do with ten bob,” I admitted just wanting him to go there.
Two fingers parted me, his hard desperate to escape its confines. My breath escaped, ragged and noisy. But he toyed, heightening my agony further. They retreated, swam the length of my vaginal slit, my knees nearly giving. I shook, trembled, shivered uncontrollably, but my temperature soared, sweat gleaning on my forehead. A slick dampened the skin beneath my breasts. Had he decided to f**k me there and then, I would have let him. The dirtier it was the better.
Instead he withdrew, slipping his damp fingers between his lips instead. “Mmmm,” he hummed with approval. “Guess I owe you ten bob, Dulce.” He smiled. “Get dressed girl. I’ll be in touch.”
What impression I left I know not. What he wanted I also had no idea. Nearly at the gates and he retreated. What did that tell a girl? He was boss? Was that it?
He opened the door and said with a smile. “Get lost.”
For me I was left high and wet. I could have screamed for it as I left his place. Men’s trousers and crotches intoxicated me on the walk home, until that is the heavens opened and the subsequent soaking calmed the tide.
That evening I met my fellow roommates socially. We had bumped into one another, said little and generally been polite, but conversation had not happened. Monique worked at some store five and a half days a week, and shut herself away the rest of the time with books. Lil said she was studying. The couple had only eyes for each other and both worked. In fact I was the odd one out. I’d been to the labour exchange and asked in every shop along the high street. I looked in Lil’s weekly local paper, but even with certificates and no cocky, I still could not get work. Looking back I think everything is destined, and I was down for a life of chop and change, do this and that, and make a buck where I could. But on the upside I would lead a pretty free and interesting existence.
I handed Lil the ten bob before I spent any of it. She curled an eyebrow, but said nothing. At least the rent was paid and I could eat for a couple more days.
Perhaps vibes in cramped conditions like that were easy to pick up. Monique it seemed did just that, or perhaps it was Lil’s expression. She nudged me and offering a Kensitas nodded at the back door. I was out of fags and readily accepted. It was still light in the yard, Monique lighting both fags and giving me one. “You like it here?” she inquired, her accent cutely Francais, quite sexy.
“It will do,” I replied checking the big woman wasn’t listening. I had worn her fingerprints for two days after she spanked me.
“You don’t work, no?”
I shook my head. “Not for want of trying.”
“You’d think with all what has to be done, there would be something, wouldn’t you?”
I dragged deep and held the smoke, my head going dizzy. I felt curiously attracted to the woman, something that wasn’t totally alien to me, but still greatly disturbing. Yes, she was pretty, and as I said, very French. She had Frankish blue eyes and yellow hair. Those eyes sparkled, a deep seated joy within. I felt I should chat, though I really wasn’t the talkative kind.
“Sorry about your parents, “I tendered, thinking she probably wouldn’t thank me for the reminder.
“Long enough now,” she said quietly, her eyes on the setting sun. “The pain gets less as the years go by.”
“You have parents?”
I shrugged. “Maybe still. Somewhere.”
She seemed shocked. “How can you not know?”
I grinned, my cheeky cow smile. “I sacked them when I was twelve.”
Her face punched the question.
“Just cos someone’s a parent, it doesn’t mean they’re good, or nice people. I wanted to learn. And I did learn. But they would have dragged me down. I can do that on my own. I don’t need help.”
I stubbed the cigarette out under my heel as I blew the last smoke into a beautiful May evening. “I chose council care over being beaten, and more than likely worse as I got older. I chose childhood over premature adulthood and the gutter. I remain happy with my choice.”
Monique pulled her cardigan tight. “Taken, surrendered, we are in the same boat, eh? No parents.”
She lit another two cigarettes and as before handed one to me.
“I have none to give back,” I protested.
“They are bad for me. You are helping me out.” Wrapped in that chunky knit she leaned against the outhouse wall. “I see you give eight shillings to Lil.”
“Rent,” I told her.
“You had none before, and you don’t work.”
“And I don’t have to explain myself to you either,” I snapped, tempted to throw the fag in her face.
“Sorry. Not what I mean. I didn’t want to upset you. That’s the last thing. It is just that I need money, and I wondered where you earned yours. That is all. Honest.”
“You have a job,” I said bluntly, probably too curt.
“Had. I had a job.”
“Ah,” I grunted, half guessing by her tone.
“I am not a criminal. And I do not steal. But they found some sweets and cigarettes in my bag and say I stole them.”
Poor Monique. She struck me as miss honesty. “Didn’t you have the receipt?” I asked, not stupidly, more can you tell me a bit more.
“I didn’t put them there. Two of the women that work there did it.”
“So why didn’t you tell the manager that?” I felt for her, but I was a hard cow back then, and wasn’t really the agony aunt type.
Tears in her eyes she told me. “The manager is new. He is related to one of the women and she wanted my job for her daughter. So I get blamed and sacked, and the girl gets my job.”
Yeah, I did feel for her.
“Also, the manager gave me the choice, either he call the police, or he deals with me himself.”
“Deals or dealt?”
“Tomorrow. When the shop is shutting.”
“And?”
“I’m terrified.”
It was like getting blood from a stone. “Of what? What’s he going to do?”
“Beat me. Have me.” She held her hands apart. “He didn’t say exactly. He just suggested, sort of.”
“Seems this geezer wants his cake and a good bit more, don’t it?”
“What shall I do?”
“Let him call the police. They have to prove it.”
She shrugged. “Ce la guerre. It will soon be over. How to pay Lil is my problem now.”
“You wouldn’t want to earn it the way I did.”
“You? You wouldn’t do anything bad.”
“I stripped for a geezer for those few shillings. Completely. Naked.”
“For the Academy you mean?”
“Nope. For some bat ugly bastard with a volcanic skin and black stumps. Oh yeah. He had a feel too. Ten bob, Monique. Tough life ain’t it, darling.” I didn’t tell her I enjoyed it.
“Tougher not paying Lil, and being on the streets.”
“You’d do it?”
She smiled. “I like you am a survivor.”
I hadn’t told her the whole truth and I felt guilty about that. But there again I didn’t actually know the whole truth. Raymondo wouldn’t pay her ten bob for that, but he would if she gave him twenty percent of what she got for something else. Trouble was I didn’t know what something else was. Fact was, I couldn’t help her. Except with a bit of advice that is.
“Get something back from this git tomorrow, Monique.”
“How?”
“He wants to, what was it?”
“He had a whippy thin stick. That is what he showed me. And when he hit his padded chair with it, the force was ferocious.” She winced at the memory.
“Tell him you want what you’ve earned. Any money to date. Holiday pay. Anything he kept in arrears. You tell him he pays up, and you will let him. He can’t tell the police, and to call them will be to lose his edge. You see, Monique, he’s a degenerate, and he’s trying to make this all look like justice. It ain’t his money, but he’ll pocket it if you don’t get it. So tell him. You’ll bend over if he coughs.”
“You think so?”
“I know so, darling.” The darling I took from Raymondo, and it sort of stuck, like a bit of class I thought in my naïveté. “Just don’t back down,” I told her.
Raymond found me the next morning. He sidled up close like we had something going and slipping me a pack of fags whispered conspiratorially. “I got some’at for you Dulce,” he opened with. “A bird that likes a bit of hanky spanky. She likes the sound of you. But she’s got some business on, so won’t be able to entertain you ‘til early next week.”
“S’okay,” I said perching my bum on a low wall. “Do you undertake any business?” I asked thoughtful, a bit of a notion forming.
“If there’s a few quid in it and I don’t have to work up a sweat, then yeah, it’s probably got my name on it.”
“How do you fancy a bit of blackmail?”
He nearly choked on his smoke. “f**k you, Dulce. Where you coming from? What happened to Miss innocent?”
“It’s a geezer that needs a seeing to, Ray. A nasty little f**k who’s got it coming. You interested?”
“What’s the? f**k this. Let’s get a cuppa.”
“Now what you got cooking, darling?” he finally asked, ciggie in one hand, tea in the other.
I told him about Monique.
“Yeah. So the geezer’s got his own itinerary. He’s working a flanker. He’s no worse than me.”
“He’s a sleaze ball. And he’s ripe for the taking,” I told Ray refusing to back down. “What he is doing is f*****g illegal and a f*****g liberty. You only have to show up at the right moment and tell him Monique’s your bird, and he’ll sink without a trace. He’s got a job he wants to keep and probably a wife cosseted in a cosy home. He’ll pay, and you and Monique win. Well she comes out a bit better off than she would otherwise.”
“What’s to stop this geezer beating the s**t out of me?”
“Me. A witness. Your sister.”
“Okay.” He stared at the smoke spiralling from the fag end. “How thankful is this French bird going to be?”
“She needs work, or more, money. She’s pretty, got a nice figure and no doubt will earn you a fair bit of commission in the future.”
“So, you’re saying she’ll work for me. Sort of?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Make sure she understands that, and I’ll sort this geezer for her.”
“Cheers, Ray,” I offered with a cheery smile.
“And you. You work for me too from now on. And I don’t want you around when I do me knight bit.”
“Well I ain’t f*****g no one. And you’d look good in a suit of armour, complete with helmet and visor.”
“How could I look good if you can’t f*****g see me?”
I shrugged, lips turning as I fought down the giggles.
- Writer
