With this girl, Rita, he knew she liked him, and had liked what he did.
A bell rang, or rather hummed from the wall. This was a signal that there was a customer, and that Johnston was downstairs, and in control. She got up, pressed the bell, and said to Ben, ‘You’ve got to go now.’
‘Why?’ he said. He had not understood at all. He only knew she liked him.
‘Because I say so,’ she said, as if to a child, thinking that she could not remember talking to a customer like this before. ‘Go away.’ And then she added, ‘If you like, you can come again – in the morning, mind you.’ And she pushed him out of the room, and he went down her ugly stairs, zipping himself up, as men so often did on them.
On the pavement a tall rough-looking man took a good sharp look at him, and then looked again – people always looked again.
That was his first visit to Rita and next morning he had gone again. Meanwhile she had told Johnston about him. They were lying on her bed, smoking, very late, after all the minicab custom had ceased. He was her protector, and took a cut, but was not jealous, and was even good to her in a casual careless way. He had examined the bruised places on her neck: teeth marks were visible. He had heard a detailed account of the sex. This was because she wanted to talk about it, he was usually not interested. She had told him it hadn’t been like being with a man, more like an animal. ‘You know, like dogs.’
‘But you like him,’ Johnston had said, so that she should mark it and remember that he knew. He was feeling something he believed was not jealousy, more curiosity.
The second occasion was like the first. This time he did it once and she was disappointed, though she could hardly admit this to herself, since she was committed to the creed that her customers left her cold. That roaring triumphant grunt just above her head, the feeling of being helpless in those great hairy hands, the violence of the penetration – well, it thrilled her, but it was too short. She told him so. This was not like being told by that schoolgirl to lie face to face and then, kisses. He understood what she was saying, with his mind at least, and he let his trousers drop, and allowed her to manipulate him. Because this act was so soon after the first, he managed to keep going, and listened to her cries, with curiosity and surprise. But he was pleased, that he pleased her.
Meanwhile, he had no money. Literally, did not have the price of a meatburger, his favourite food. She gave him enough money to eat. It was summer and at night he found a bench or a hallway. She made him wash in her little bathroom. She cut his beard. This went on for about a month and then Johnston found out she was giving him money and said, ‘Now, that’s enough, Reet.’
She had become addicted to Ben and his animal ways and did not want to stop. She told a girlfriend, a whore in the next street, about Ben, and took Ben to that room, another poor dingy place, like Rita’s. This woman liked what Ben did, though he would have preferred to stay with Rita, and she gave him a couple of quid for his services. But her protector or boyfriend was not complacent, like Johnston, and when he found out told her Ben was not to come near her again. Johnston and he knew each other, and together they warned and threatened Ben.
And so Ben stopped going to Rita, and if he was in that street was careful to stay on the other side, and if he saw Rita, hurried away. It was not being beaten up he feared, for he was sure he could manage Johnston and the other one even if they both came at him together. It was being noticed, drawing attention to himself – that he mustn’t do.
A week after that he was seen by Mrs Biggs in the supermarket.
And now, because this was the other place in the world he could go to, and be welcomed with a smile, he made himself cross the tiny street, past Super Universal Cabs, and go up those stairs. The door was closed. He had learned about knocking, because she might have someone else there, but now he let out a shout, like a bull’s bellow, and at once the door opened and she pulled him in, slamming the door and locking it.
Rita had been angry with Johnston for sending Ben off. She had reminded him that their agreement was that she would please herself with her customers. The amounts of money she had given Ben were peanuts, nothing compared to what she earned in a day. If that ever happened again – then he should watch out. Johnston knew this was no useless threat. Johnston did not deal only in minicabs, and she knew what he got up to – or thought she did. One word from her to the police – the worst that could happen to her was a fine, and anyway, the police knew about her. She had customers among them. Johnston trusted her, had told her much more than was prudent. Rita, if not the proverbial tart with a heart of gold, was sensible, shrewd, affectionate, and gave him good advice.
Within a minute of arriving in Rita’s room, they were at it, and he was like a starved thing. Then, remembering her demands, at once did it again so that she could get her pleasure. And then she said, falling on the bed and pulling him down, ‘Where have you been, Ben?’
‘He said I shouldn’t come here.’
‘But I say you can. In the mornings.’
It all started again. He came every morning, and she gave him enough money to eat, and Johnston cross-examined her. ‘Why do you like him, Reet? I don’t get it.’
She didn’t get it either, though she thought enough about Ben. She was not an instructed young woman – or girl, for in fact she was not yet eighteen, Ben’s age – but the subject of his age had not come up. She thought he was probably about thirty-five: she liked older men, she knew.
One of the things they had in common, though they did not know it, was that both had had such a hard childhood. She had left school and run away to London from bad parents, had stolen money, been a thief for a while, and then talked the landlord of the building that housed the minicab firm and this tart’s room up the stairs into letting her have the room when the previous girl left. She was persuasive. She impressed. She had learned that she usually got her way with people. She had met many different kinds, but nothing like Ben. He was outside anything she had been told about, or seen on the television, or knew from experience. When she saw him naked for the first time, she thought, Wow! That’s not human. It was not so much the hairiness of him, but the way he stood, his big shoulders bent – that barrel chest – the dangling fists, the feet planted apart… She had never seen anything like him. And then there were the barking or grunting roars as he came, the whimpers in his sleep – yet if he wasn’t human, what was he? A human animal, she concluded, and then joked with herself, Well, aren’t we all?
Johnston did not interfere again, but he was waiting for some opportunity he could turn to his advantage. It came. Ben asked Rita to go with him ‘to the place where you get birth certificates’. Rita, familiar with the world of casual work, asked why didn’t he try ‘to work casual’ and the story of the building site came out. Her first reaction was that if anyone cheated Ben then Johnston could sort him out – but knew this would not happen. She asked where Ben had got it into his head he must have a birth certificate, heard about the old woman who said it would help get him unemployment benefit. ‘And then what?’ Rita asked, really curious about what unnecessarily lawful plans might be fermenting in that shaggy head.
Talking to Johnston, Rita mentioned that Ben wanted a birth certificate so that with it he could enter the world of proper work and unemployment benefit. Johnston saw his chance. He stopped Ben next time he emerged from Rita’s room, and said to him, ‘I want to talk to you,’ and as Ben crouched, his fists already clenched up, ‘No, I’m not warning you off Reet, I can help you get your papers.’
Now Johnston went back up the stairs to Rita’s, and for the first time the three of them were together in that room, Johnston and Rita sitting side by side on the bed, smoking,
