She seemed pleased with me.
"Ye're no half bad, hen," she said. "Razor King's daughter, eh?"
"Whit difference does that make?" I felt it was an attack on me.
"It makes a difference all right. Don't you worry!"
When I didn't reply, she said: "Ye can thank yer bliddy stars!" Her tone became confidential. "Listen, Gertie," she said, "ye don't want tae stay in the Gorbals all yer life, do ye?"
I shook my head. We all hoped that some miracle would happen, that some Prince Charming would come along and take us away. But it never happened. Deep down we all knew we were condemned. Did Hazel know a way out? Then why was she with Razor King? I looked at her mistrustfully.
"Come here an ah'll show ye something, hen."
I went slowly up to the bed.
"Now this is between you an me," Hazel said. "You breathe a word tae yer father or that precious brither o yours an we're finished. Ye can rot where ye belong, right here in the Gorbals."
I nodded breathlessly.
She opened her handbag and from out of the lining she took a small rectangular book.
"D'ye know whit that is?"
I shook my head.
"It's a bank book," Hazel said. "It tells how much money ah've got in the bank." She opened it. "Look there," she said. Her finger pointed. The deposits amounted to two hundred and fifty-three pounds.
— 6-
That night I couldn't sleep. For a long time I lay listening to the grunting animal movements of the Razor King as he made drunken love to Hazel. I lay in the darkness with the nipple of the condom in my mouth. Johnnie hadn't come in. I knew he wouldn't come back that night. When I felt they were asleep, I slipped quietly out of bed, dressed quickly, and let myself out of the flat. On the stairs I hesitated. Where was I going at this time of night? It must have been after eleven. The streets would be deserted. But something dragged me on. I couldn't sleep. My whole body cried out to be taken. Hesitantly I descended the gas lit stairs past the lavatory on the floor below. Although it seemed deathly quiet, I sensed that there was someone inside. I waited long enough to hear a man whisper and a woman answer softly, urgently. Then I went on down into the close. I walked quickly through it to the street. Without paying much attention to where I was going, I walked along toward the first intersection. It was cold and everything was very dark. I walked quickly. Somewhere ahead of me I saw a man wearing a cap move into a lane. He moved furtively, as though he was afraid. I walked quietly until I came to it. Flats above formed a tunnel over the entrance to the lane. Beyond the tunnel, in the open, a single gaslight bracketed to the brick wall burned. I could see no movement. Nervously I entered the tunnel. I was scared and yet I was throbbing deep between my legs. And then, as I moved hesitantly out of the other side of the tunnel, I ran into him. He was just out of sight from the street in such a position that the gaslight illumined him for himself only, and for me, for I was within a yard of him. He looked up startled at my approach, and then his gaze fell downwards to what was in his hands.
His cock was long and stiff, like a mast, the foreskin pulled well back over the glans penis. All of it was out, the testicles as well. He had pulled them through the slit in his underpants. He said nothing. He looked from me down to his rampant cock and then back to me again, and when I said nothing but stood there gazing first at him and then down at his glistening cock, a slight leer appeared on his face. Still without a word, but leaning towards me almost confidentially, he took the thick pink member near its root and made it quiver between his fingers. It grew even bigger and seemed to be beckoning to me obscenely. He was smiling now, first at me and then at his cock. He turned towards me. I could smell his breath. He had been drinking. Slowly I reached forward and took it in my fingers. He quivered at my touch. And then suddenly, I felt myself grasped at the scruff of the neck and pulled close to him. He was laughing softly.
He had forced me against the wall so that we were both out of sight from the road.
"Kneel down!" he whispered urgently.
I found myself kneeling in front of him with my bare knees on the cold cobbles of the lane. His cock was dancing against my face. It smelled unwashed, of sweat. He gripped my hair in both hands and forced my face against it.
"Get it in, ye fuckin slut!"
With one hand he guided it against my lips and moving his belly forwards, rammed it in.
I almost choked. His hard knob was rammed right into my rising gorge. I closed my eyes and gave way to his will, making my mouth a soft receiving hole for his lust. All resistance was gone from me and when he sensed that, his hands tightened on the hairs of my head more cruelly and a stream of obscenities came from his mouth. In the midst of my delirium, the knowledge came to me that I was in fact suffering pain. His violent movements caused my knees to be scraped on the stones. My scalp was afire under his clawing fingers. My throat was almost in convulsion. And yet there I was, eagerly lending myself to this brutal treatment. That was perhaps the first realization of the destiny that was in store for me.
Who this man was I never knew. I felt the spurting hot semen in my mouth. I sucked avidly, draining him to the dregs. Suddenly I felt myself hurled away from him. His open hand struck me painfully on the side of the face. The force of the blow sent me sprawling on the ground. I heard his heavy breathing and his curses. I was lying face downwards in the middle of the lane, my fists clenched, my eyes tightly closed, my whole torso quivering with pain and pleasure. A moment later, I felt my skirt being ripped away at the back and the cold night struck my naked buttocks. I groaned with pleasure, uncertain of what was to come. And suddenly a red hot poker seemed to be laid across my thighs. I found myself screaming and even in the middle of the scream, I realized that the pleasure was there, like a healing blanket over all pain. Through the mists of hot sensation I heard the noise of his fleeing boots and I realized that my scream had scared him. When I finally I pulled myself to my feet, painful all over but with a slow electric current of joy burning within me, I found myself alone in the cold dark lane. I shuddered, seized suddenly by shame. What kind of love was this of which I had been the willing victim? What strange desires lurked in my breast? Razor King's daughter? Did my blood mark me even more terribly than the sweating women who were victims of his bed?
My skirt was torn. I wrapped my coat tightly about me and walked as quickly as I could back toward the tenement. As I climbed the stairs, I heard a woman's groan issue from the privy on the landing. But it bore no resemblance to my scream in the lane. It was a soft groan, husky, as though a man had set his member between her thighs.
— 7-
My father was waiting for me. The lights were on. He was sitting at the table with a whiskey-bottle in front of him. He had obviously been drinking heavily. Hazel was reading a comic, sitting up in bed. My father looked up at me with dull red eyes as I came in.
"Where the bliddy hell have you been!" he said quietly and menacingly.
I was shaking with fright. I knew I couldn't take off my coat without him seeing that my skirt was torn away at the back. And just before I entered, I had touched my fingers to the weal across my buttocks. I suppose he used a belt. It would be red.
My father was looking me up and down, at my shoes, at my bleeding knees, at my face.
"Ye filthy little whore!" he snarled. "D'ye no think ah know where ye've been?" He poured himself another glass of whiskey.
"Take yer bliddy coat off!" he said.
There was nothing else for it. I did so, trembling. At once his eyes alighted on my naked thighs.