Dolly came out of her room and stood on the landing.
‘No! For fuck’s sake, what are you-’
Darren came out of his room, quickly pulling on a robe. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘It’s Ellie,’ Dolly said, and Darren stepped forward and knocked on Ellie’s closed bedroom door.
‘Ellie? You all right in there?’
No answer came back.
Darren went to the banister, leaned over and shouted: ‘Celia!’ Then he went back to Ellie’s door and tried the handle. The door was locked. They could hear Ellie crying.
‘Shit!’ said Darren, kicking the door. Then he hammered on it again. ‘Open this bloody door!’ he shouted.
Celia was standing on the bottom stair. ‘What’s up?’ she called.
‘Ellie’s got trouble,’ said Darren. ‘The door’s locked, I can’t get in.’
Celia said nothing, just went to the phone on the hall stand and dialled quickly. Dolly didn’t hear what she said, but no sooner had she spoken to someone than she put the phone down again and hared up the stairs. She banged on Ellie’s door.
‘Ellie? You all right in there? Come on, unlock the bloody door.’
‘I can’t!’ came back Ellie’s shaking voice.
‘Why can’t you, for God’s sake?’
‘He won’t let me.’
‘Well, he’d better bloody let you or there’s going to be trouble. You all right?’
‘He hit me.’
There was a muttering of a male voice from behind the door.
‘Oi!’ yelled Celia. ‘You! Arsehole! You want to go beating girls up, do you? Come out here and try it on one who can take it then!’
‘Fuck off!’ yelled the punter.
‘You shit, you get out here. This is my house!’ returned Celia.
‘I said fuck off!’
From down below came the sound of a key turning in the front door and a gust of cold night air came in; with it came two red-haired men built like barn doors. Dolly had never seen the Delaneys before. Celia always spoke about them in hushed tones, like they were gods or something, set apart from the rest of shambling humanity. Now, as Dolly saw them come running up the stairs toward her, she thought they were just bloody terrifying.
‘What’s going on?’ asked the one in front, who had the air of being in charge.
‘Mr Delaney, one of my girls is having trouble. The door’s locked,’ said Celia.
‘Pat, get it open,’ he said, and they all stood back as Pat, massive and mean-eyed, took a kick at the door lock. It instantly juddered open, and he pulled a tyre iron out from under his mac and charged in, his brother following.
‘What the fuck’s this-’ started the man sitting on the bed, who was in shirt and Y-fronts.
Ellie was sitting on the other side of the bed nursing her jaw, her face wet with tears.
‘I’ll show you what the feck it is,’ said Pat Delaney, and yanked the man up and smashed a fist into his nose. Blood spattered out of it as he staggered away, then the one in charge caught him and held him as Pat started whacking his middle with the tyre iron.
Once the man sagged and all the fight left him, the one in charge flung him to the floor, and Pat waded in again, thwacking the iron down again and again, landing blow after blow to the man’s face until all Dolly, peeping in from the hallway, could see was a wet bloody mask.
Finally, the Delaneys hefted him up, grabbed his trousers and jacket, and bundled him and his belongings down the stairs and out the front door. Celia, who had followed them down, closed the door softly behind them. The house was quiet again, but for Ellie’s soft sobbing.
Celia came back up the stairs and looked at the bloodied carpet in Ellie’s room.
‘Get some soap and water and take care of that, will you, Doll?’ she said to Dolly, then she and Darren went in and sat either side of Ellie on the bed.
‘You all right then, Ells?’ asked Darren, putting an arm around her.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He kept on about having a French polish, and I told him I don’t do that, I’ve told him a dozen times before, and tonight he just went bloody mad and wouldn’t listen.’
‘Never mind, Ellie, it’s over now. Tory and Pat Delaney have sorted him out good and proper. He won’t come back again,’ said Celia, patting her shoulder.
‘What’s a French polish?’ Dolly asked Darren later, when they were just turning in for the night and peace was restored.
‘A blow job,’ said Darren.
‘Oh.’ Dolly knew about blow jobs. She could understand Ellie’s aversion.
‘Night then, Doll,’ he said, and went back to his room.
Dolly went to bed. She lay there in the dark thinking about the man who’d had his face smashed in because he wanted a French polish, and the Delaneys that Celia paid protection money to. Now she could see why. They’d worked that bloke over like they were tenderizing a piece of meat. It had taken her some while and a lot of elbow grease to get the blood stains out of the carpet.
She had always thought that men worked against you – the exception being Darren, who was too interested in his own sex to ever bother the girls. But tonight had taught her a lesson; sometimes men could work in your favour, too. She turned over, plumped up her pillows, and slept more soundly than she had in a long, long while.
She caught Celia alone in the kitchen next day.
Celia looked up at her young worker through a haze of ciggie smoke. She was turning the pages of the Daily Mail, reading about all the bookshops selling out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover on publication day. ‘What?’ she queried.
Dolly sat down at the table. ‘I’ve remembered his name, that pimp who duffed me over.’
Dolly closed up the paper and took another deep drag on her ivory holder. ‘That’s good. What’s he look like?’ she asked.
‘He’s tall and thin. Bony. Dark-skinned. There’s a big scar here.’ Dolly ran a finger down her left cheek. ‘And he wears these flashy shoes with silver eagles on the toecaps.’
Dolly would never forget the eagles. One of them had been imprinted on her thigh for days after the beating he’d given her. You could make out the beak and even the feathers, he’d kicked her that hard.
‘Is that right?’ Celia exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘And his name?’
‘I’ll start on the bedrooms,’ said Dolly, standing up. ‘It’s Gregor White.’
‘Right you are,’ said Celia, and went back to her paper.
44
Gregor White knew the trouble with brasses. The trouble was, you had to be on their backs day and night. Keep them on their backs, too. Fail to do that, and the lazy cows would slope off to the Lyons Corner House or the coffee shop or the local Wimpy and stuff their faces with cakes and burgers and get a big arse on them and turn the punters off and then where would you be? Fucked, that’s where.