‘A girl’ was what he wanted; he might have expected his order to be wheeled in on a trolly.
She took him up to the reception room on the first floor, and rang for Ada to send in Elsie the Leamington teacher, Edwina a recent acquisition fresh from her finishing in Switzerland, and, as a gamble, Bridie from Cork, Ireland. The girls looked bleary and disgruntled in the morning light. (Edwina might easily give notice and retire to Belgravia.) There was a, blue vein almost palpitating in the customer’s left temple. Elsie from Leamington did not please, Edwina might not have been there, but Bridie seemed to score.
They went along together to her room. Holding their breath, Mrs Trist and Ada dared congratulate each other; when after a few seconds they heard what sounded like the rubbery, athletic steps of the visitor returning.
He looked very grave, very neat, in his grey sideburns and greyflannel double-breasted. He was wearing a club tie the bawd was too distracted to recognise. Overall, he appeared embarrassed.
Mrs Trist looked to Ada to leave them.
‘Wasn’t Bridie to your taste?’ she asked.
‘I’d better tell you straight,’ he confessed., ‘I came here, Mrs Trist, hoping to spend a few hours with the owner of the house.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’d be delighted to get to know you, if that’s what you mean. I’ll ask them to bring up coffee. Do you take it black? With cream? Or perhaps you’d rather something stronger?’
He was looking at her, by now giving her his deepest attention; in other circumstances she might have been drawn to the sideburns, attracted by eyes of a cold grey, not unlike Gravenor’s, set in a less noble, but perhaps more revealing face. ‘What I meant was, I’d hoped to sleep with you,’ he said.
‘Morning makes it sordid, don’t you feel?’ from a flicker of his face, a visual image of Bridie’s room must have been passing through, ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘I’m not in the habit of sleeping with my clients.’
‘Lovers, then?’
She glanced down at the blotches on her withering hands, ‘Not even lovers. No longer. I’ve learnt to suspect love, as you, apparently, suspect me.’
She really must manage her trembling.
‘I don’t suspect you.’ He produced his card. ‘We all know you’re running a house of a pretty corrupt kind. How corrupt, Mrs Trist, we’re not yet sure. You yourself might give the lie to our suspicions by being more frank about your own life.’
She smiled back, wondering if the bow of her lips looked too taut, and whether its magenta was flaking. ‘Do you think a brothel will corrupt those who’re already corrupted — or who’ll corrupt themselves somewhere else — in their own homes — in a dark street — if overtaken by lust, in a parked car, or corner of a public park? All of us — even those you consider corrupt — I’d like to think of as human beings.’
In spite of her height, her presence, and the romantic sumptuousness of the dress she was wearing, her trembling hands were letting her down; while the Midlands three-quarter back was determined to break through her defences.
‘Whatever you may think of me professionally,’ she said, ‘surely my personal life is my own concern?’
Always smiling back, he replied, ‘I’ve been watching you long enough, Mrs Trist, to admire you as a woman. That’s why I’d like to go to bed with you.’
‘Oh,’ she sighed, gasped, ‘age apart, athletics aren’t in my line. As for yourself, men often fancy what is withheld — and are less disappointed by going without.’
Her mouth, she felt, had dwindled to a rudimentary hole in her face. Her extravagant dress could only be doing her a disservice, the appliqué on its skirt grown garish, and where one of her hands rested, unstitched. From a window the normally benign light off the river was glaring at her so ferociously she found herself longing for the night lights of childhood, dipping and swimming in their chipped saucers on the borderline between sleep and waking.
How to extricate herself she could not think, when she heard a key in the lock, and footsteps approaching briskly over parquet before being subdued by carpet.
A visible melting had started in her inquisitor. ‘Good to see you, Rod, after all this time.’
Gravenor measured out his words. ‘And in a brothel, Hugh. Makes it an extra special occasion.’
Hugh might have invoked the officialdom of which Roderick knew him to be part, but didn’t seem to know how to go about it. He laughed somewhat frenetically, exposing large, grooved teeth, and left after the least possible exchange of routine masculine geniality.
Eadith Trist might have wanted to reward her protector for his timely appearance in her house, but was stricken by such gaucherie she waited instead for him to leave; which he did on seeing she was suffering from too many incursions in one morning.
Whether the role Gravenor played in her life was that of saviour or evil genius, Eadith hadn’t yet been able to decide. She both dreaded and counted the hours to their planned meetings. What appeared to be chance encounters she had sometimes induced, like dreams, by an effort of will, then if they proved to any degree requiting, she would panic and break free before consummation of her desires.
On her blackest days she willed him out of existence. Perhaps he never had existed, except as a figment; only she had his letters, his signature on business documents, and in a silver frame, his photograph illegibly inscribed. Most tangible proof were her recollections of the squamous skin, pronounced finger-joints, stone lips fleshing out whenever her mouth consented.
He had told her once, while holding her knees between his, under the table at which they were dining, ‘I’ve known you all my life, Eadith, but still have to teach you that you exist.’
She would have had to admit she had not existed in any of her several lives, unless in relationship with innocents, often only servants of ignoble masters, or for those who believed themselves her parents or lovers. She was accepted as real, or so it appeared, by the girls she farmed out for love, and who, if she were to be honest, amounted to fragments of a single image. Yet whatever form she took, or whatever the illusion temporarily possessing her, the reality of love, which is the core of reality itself, had eluded her, and perhaps always would.
Disentangling herself from the pressure of his knees, she said to her companion, ‘Don’t let me spoil your dinner, my dear, but I’ve an inkling I’m needed. Though Ada’s thoroughly competent, you can’t run a house and escape from the responsibilities.’
She got up, and had them call her a cab. She looked back and saw Gravenor concentrated on what he was eating, delicious enough in its sauce of mussels and lobster-coral and cream. The light had sharpened the bridge of his nose while softening the rest of his face. His lips as they moved unconcernedly appeared the blander for the cream anointing them. The coquettish little pink lampshades acknowledging their own reflexions on the surface of the water were made to appear more frivolous, ephemeral, by the river’s black, oily current.
She moved off, gathering her extravagant clothes round her, the whore-mistress diners were staring at. Or were they? Perhaps they did not recognise her existence any more than they suspected her desire to be recognised: this woman looking in her bag to see whether she had the change to spend a penny or tip the taxi — or simply look for reassurance as she crossed a desert plain.
For some time after, she did not see her protector, nor rustle up the courage or effrontery to make an advance; she was too ashamed of the musty smell her plumes exuded, a hint of verdigris in the settings of her jewels, and other more personal signs of decay — or was it the vapours rising from a river at low tide?
It was downright absurd to imagine she was less the woman they recognised: hair still kempt and naturally black except for a faint frosting of silver above the forehead; beneath the drifts of mauve powder, a bone structure time would probably never erode; lips immaculate, except when a stray camel-hair had remained stuck to the impasto. As she prospered, her jewels had become increasingly elaborate, tortuous, inspiring amazed gasps rather than passive admiration. Like her clothes, they delighted those who enjoy a touch of the bizarre in the uniform present. If she remained a joke for children, and affronted or frightened a majority puzzled by what they had not seen before and could never have envisaged, she was inured to the scorn of these comparatively simple souls, and worse, the hatred of others for what might not have been fully revealed.