but was hardly going to pack them in now. Somebody else had obviously had the same idea because when I met her she was ‘resting’ as she put it. Anyway, let me tell you the whole story.
One of the places I did was called the ‘Fitzroy Hotel’ but it was more like a doss house really. The glass sign outside was broken so you could see the bulbs inside and the lino cracked up like baked custard. There were never many people there and I can’t see how the place stayed open. I wouldn’t have passed water there let alone the night. The owner was a miserable old git who always tried to knock down my price and said that he’d do it himself if it wasn’t for his back and that I was taking advantage of him. I took this a couple of times and then I told him to stuff the job up his Jacksie, which put our relationship on a more professional footing. After that he never gave any trouble but just wandered round making sure no one had left a light on and that I knew he was watching me to see that I didn’t nick anything.
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when I first met Sonia. I didn’t expect anybody to be around then and I got a bit of a shock when this pile of bedclothes suddenly springs up and flashes a couple of tits at me. It’s worse for her because I’ve woken her up and she glares at me and pulls the sheet up to her chin.
She’s about thirty. I suppose; boney, sallow, hollow-cheeked, lank-haired; her tits are small but they droop like foxgloves which gives them shape. There’s a beat-up, world-used scruffiness about her which I feel at home with. Any bird that sleeps starkers always interest me and she looks better than a lot I’ve seen considering she’s just woken up. Elizabeth has never let me see her naked yet. She always wears a nightdress and though I’m allowed to mess about underneath it, it stays on, come hell or high water. I think it’s because she secretly thinks what we are doing is sinful and feels a bit better about it if she is wearing something.
The bird in the bed is saying something but I can’t hear what it is so I pull the top window down a bit and manage to drop my squeegee into the room. Then I find the bottom window is jammed so I have to indicate that I need assistance. The bint raises her eyes to the ceiling in a ‘you prick’ gesture and swings out of bed wrapping the sheet around herself but not quickly enough to stop me seeing that they’re the same colour as the hairs on her head. She stalks across to the window, picks up the squeegee and hands it to me over the top.
“Haven’t you got a hanky?” she says.
At first I don’t know what she means and I’m wondering if there’s a large bogeyman hanging out of one of my nostrils. Then I cotton on that she’s talking about dropping handkerchiefs.
“Hurrah,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“I could see your mind working. You got there in the end, didn’t you?”
“I usually do.”
“What do you mean by coming and waking me up?”
“Somebody had to do it. Do you know what the time is?”
“About eleven?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I know what the time is, then, don’t I?”
I’m still standing on the window ledge and I am beginning to feel that this may be a position in which I have difficulty doing myself justice.
The bird obviously agrees with me because she shakes her head and wanders over to the door where there is a dressing gown hanging up. In one quick movement she drops the sheet and has the dressing gown round her shoulders. It’s a man’s dressing gown and it’s far too big for her. She feels in the pocket, pulls out a fag packet and sticks a dog end in her mouth. No matches. She points to her fag and looks at me and I nod. I don’t smoke but I always carry a box of matches for just such moments. It’s like boy scouts carry around those penknives with bits on them to get stones out of horses’ hooves. She shrugs her shoulders and with a feat of strength that impresses me almost as much as the view down the front of her dressing gown she pulls up the window.
“If we’re going to go on handing things backwards and forwards to each other you’d better come in. You’re not going to rape me, are you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Pity. I feel like being raped this morning. Do you ever get feelings like that?”
“Sometimes. Only it’s different for me.”
“Of course. You’ve got to do the raping, haven’t you? I wonder what happens when somebody who wants to be raped meets somebody who wants to rape someone. It can’t be rape, can it?”
“No. I suppose it’s normal.”
“Or passion – yes. I think it’s probably passion.”
She sits down on the bed and crosses one leg over the other, which is something she does very well. I light her cigarette and start wiping over the inside of the windows.
“What’s that thing called?”
“It’s a squeegee.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of those. I always thought it was some kind of mop.”
“I think it’s that, too.”
“Well, I’m glad we thrashed that out, you learn something new every day, don’t you? Do you want a cup of fabulous, taste-bud tickling Nescafé while you’re here?”
“Yes, ta.”
She has an accent which is a mixture of posh and working class so you can’t quite tell what it is but the vaguely piss-taking way she talks has a definite style to it.
She puts the kettle on and washes out a couple of mugs in the washbasin.
“The milk’s off. Do you mind it black?”
“No, that’s fine. What are you doing here?”
“You mean what’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? Well, I’m resting, dahling.”
She makes her voice go all husky.
“I’m a theatrical you see and at the moment no one wants to know about me.”
“But why here?”
“Well, I usually stay at the Ritz but when I heard the Aga Khan was staying there I thought it would be more diplomatic if I dossed down somewhere else. We were lovers for years, you know.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“No, well you wouldn’t would you? It was a terribly well kept secret. I used to have a couple of fantail pigeons which carried messages backwards and forwards between us – “Be by the bandstand on Clapham Common at eight o’clock on Thursday. My private plane will collect you” – that kind of thing. Then we’d be off to Biarritz or Budleigh Salterton or wherever his exotic fancy took him, making mad passionate love until it was time for him to go off and be weighed in jewels or something. He was a slave to Islam you know.”
I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about but I’m impressed.
“You’re
