On second thought, he’ll go round the back. Ginger dislikes using a back door, but in this case he’d rather enter unnoticed by the crowd that turns like one queasy beast every time someone walks in — never mind the floozie on piano, who smells like a sick baby. I should quit this job — see if I can get on at the steel plant. But Ginger knows there’s no work to be had there or anywhere else. Not even for white men.
It’s like a blow to his stomach when Ginger walks into the cold storage room and sees the Girl Guide uniform filthy and strewn across the empty kegs, stockings, beret, the little pouch. He looks about instinctively for the nude body — this is what happens to little girls who aren’t looked after, I should have found out who she was, I should have given her a drive…. He calms down a little when he doesn’t see her. But that’s not to say she hasn’t been dragged outside by one of Jameel’s drunks and raped. Ginger is suddenly enraged — to be working for a man like Jameel, to be helping keep a place like this going in the very neighbourhood where his own daughters are growing up. Ginger pounds on the door. Boutros opens it and says, “Pa’s over there.”
Ginger shoves his way through the crowd with his crate, past the tart on piano — “‘Jeepers creepers, where’d ya get those peepers”’ — and finds Jameel. “Jameel, what happened to that little girl with the Guide uniform?”
“That’s Mr Jameel to you, boy.”
Ginger drops the crate and grabs Jameel by the collar.
“Where is she, you devil?”
A cold pain on the back of Ginger’s neck and he’s looking at Boutros’s shoes. Jameel is laughing down at him. “He wants it ba-ad!”
A cold drop splashes onto Ginger’s forehead. He looks up. The prostitute in the orange wig is chug-a-lugging a bottle of ginger beer. He can see the white underside of her chin and her grime collar.
“She’s right here, Leo b’y,” smirks Jameel. “Help yourself. Cash only.”
She looks down at Ginger with serious green-brown eyes. Golden froth trickles out the corner of her smeary red mouth. He covers his eyes with his hands.
“I’m quitting, I’m not driving any more,” is all Adelaide can get out of him twenty minutes later.
He needs a good cry so let him. “You’ve been working too hard, let’s throttle back a bit, eh b’y?”
All he can do is nod and sob against her until he falls asleep.
Adelaide hugs him and counts five weeks since that last New York run. Something’s not right.
In the morning it all seems like a bad dream. He tells Adelaide, “Jameel’s got a little girl hustling there.” Adelaide listens. “And it made me think of our own girls and what would happen if —”
“I know, honey.” He’s too sensitive. “Why don’t you take it easy today?”
“I’m all right, Addy, I feel fine.”
And he climbs into his truck.
He drives away and realizes he forgot to tell Adelaide the whole point of the story — that the child prostitute is the little Girl Guide who came into their yard that day, and that he’s seen her on the road and in the side mirror of his dream. But he forgot. And what was it Adelaide said about the Girl Guide that day? “That’s not a Girl Guide.” Well obviously not a real one, he knows that now.
I’ll tell Adelaide tonight, he thinks, and turns onto the Shore Road.
Harem Scarem
At first, Frances wondered when Teresa was going to get back from her holiday or her illness or whatever it was. But this afternoon, as she walks the Shore Road to New Waterford, a horrible thought occurs to her. What if Teresa has been fired? What if Mahmoud pinned the thefts on her? He’d be crazy to — why, just yesterday Frances helped herself to a Royal Doulton shepherdess and a Chinese fisherman from the piano, and Teresa had been gone three days by then.
In his truck, Ginger realizes that he’s been searching the Shore Road for the Girl Guide. He wants to talk to her, that’s all, but not at the speak. He wants to find out who her father is, where her people are, if she has any. And if she doesn’t, maybe he and Adelaide can help.
Frances doesn’t look or stop walking when she hears the truck braking on the soft shoulder behind her.
“Hey there.”
She stops but does not turn.
“Excuse me, little miss.”
She turns and looks up at him leaning out the window of his cab. I was right, thinks Ginger, twelve at the most. She walks to the truck, steps up on the running-board and gets in beside him. She has already pegged him for a nice man … this may take some time.
“What’s your name, dear, who’s your father?” as he pulls back onto the road.
“My name is Frances Euphrasia Piper. My father is James Hiram Piper, my grandfather is Ibrahim Mahmoud. I don’t know his middle name.”
Ginger doesn’t take his eyes off the road. He is shocked, can’t think what to say.
“Is that right?” he says. “I knew your sister Kathleen.”
“I know.”
He glances at her. She’s looking him.
“I used to drive her, you know, I’m Leo Taylor.”
“I know.”
Ginger sees a tree go by on his left. Then a rock. Another rock. He says the normal thing and feels as if he’s lying even though he isn’t. “It was a real shame her passing away like that so young, she was a really pretty gal.”
“I know. I saw her.”
“I guess you seen photographs, eh?”
“I remember her perfectly well.”
“But you wouldn’t’ve even been born yet.” He chuckles, which really is a lie.
“I was going on six,” she says. “I remember everything.”
Ginger brakes and pulls over, pebble by pebble.
“What’s the matter?”
“I thought you were a child.”
“You’re Teresa’s brother, eh?”
“Yeah.” He feels a bit dizzy. It’s the driving, I can’t drive any more.
“How come she’s not at my grandfather’s any more?”
“She got fired. He said she stole but she didn’t.”
“He’ll be sorry.”
He sits up. “Look you, does your daddy know what you’re doing, and why are you doing it anyway when you got a good home and a family?”
“Because I’m bad.”
He looks at her. “No you’re not.”
“How do you know?”
Ginger takes a breath. His eyes water and he says, “I can tell by looking. In your eyes. You’re not bad … you’re just lost.”
“I know exactly where I am.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not lost.”
He reaches out and cradles the side of her face in his hand. She’s got wise eyes. They make him feel so deep dry sad that something must be done. “I want you to come home with me and talk to my wife, she’s a good woman.”
“Do you want to be my friend?”
“I’d like to help you, honey.”
“Then take me with you where you’re driving.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You did it for my sister.”
“I never took your sister halfway ’cross the continent.”
“Where did you take her?”
“School and back, what do you think?”
“Little Ginger Man…. I need someone to look after me. I’m full-grown, but I’m just a little girl inside. I want you to find me ’cause I’m lost, I’m lost in a deep dark place, please, please, please, oh you smell nice.”
He takes her hand away and pushes her, not roughly, to the far end of the seat. “Where do you want me to drop you?”
“The Empire.”
He guns into New Waterford and Frances hops down in front of the picture-house. It’s a talkie today, but Frances buys a ticket anyhow. She has some thinking to do. She knows now what it is she must accomplish for Lily. There remains, however, one piece of unfinished business.