Blood Ties (27 page)

Inside the silent, urine-marinated cubicle, Robert was relieved that at least he was out of the rain. His wet clothes and irregular breathing soon fogged up the glass. He picked up the sticky receiver in order to call directory inquiries but stopped suddenly when he saw half a dozen pink, red and black business cards pinned above the telephone.

Robert’s sight blurred as he read the grubby advertisements. Some of the cards had pictures of girls who didn’t look much older than Ruby. He randomly plucked one off the booth and his eyes filled with grit as he saw the over-made-up face of a woman, older than the others, advertising her body for sale. Her image morphed into Erin’s smiling fresh face on their wedding day.

‘Helena,’ he whispered, ‘will massage your troubles away in a private room.’ Despite the provocative pose and thick lines of theatrical make-up, Helena was an attractive woman with a shapely body and nipples that pointed at her telephone number.

Without knowing what he was doing, without any sense of reality remaining because it had all been washed away by the drink, Robert dialled Helena’s number. All he knew was that he needed someone,
anyone
, to provide answers and expunge him of his misery. Helena, he thought, could be the woman.

 

Robert found a cab and gave the driver Helena’s address. She’d sounded pleasant enough on the telephone and keen to have his business. Robert couldn’t wait to meet her although his reasons for their union were very different to Helena’s. She was out to make money; he was looking for explanations.

On the journey there, he pictured the woman stripping and slipping between satin sheets in her boudoir, spraying herself with vanilla and musk to tantalise his senses, preparing herself to satisfy her client’s needs – as Erin would have done hundreds of times. The only thing Robert had in common with Helena’s punters was desperation.

‘Thirteen quid, mate.’ The driver pulled up next to a row of terraced houses and opened the glass screen. Robert paid and stepped out into the rain. He tentatively walked up to Helena’s house and rang the bell. Already he felt dirty.

The front curtains of the house were closed even though it was the afternoon and the doorstep was strewn with litter and dog-ends. He’d sobered up a little during the cab ride but not enough to make him back out. He was prepared to find out about Erin any way he could.

Robert mussed his fingers through his damp hair and remembered his stubble. He knew he looked a mess but it hardly mattered. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. The door opened and he was greeted by a woman wearing a man’s navy towelling robe.

‘Robert Knight?’ she asked. Her voice was rough and deep. She held a cigarette down by her thigh. Robert nodded. ‘Better come in then.’ She wasn’t the woman in the photograph. She couldn’t be Helena.

He followed her upstairs, unable to see much of the surroundings because of the poor light but he could smell beer and heard a football match on the television downstairs. ‘In here,’ the woman said, allowing Robert to enter the bedroom first.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr Knight,’ she continued, grinning. ‘My name, as you know, is Helena.’ She closed the door and leaned against it, as if to indicate there was no escape.

But Robert didn’t want to escape from Helena, whatever she looked like. He wanted, no,
needed
her – perhaps even more than her usual clients—and was desperate to find out about and understand his wife’s secret life. But the thought of touching her body repulsed him. He had to find a way into her mind, to see what drove her. Simply to find out
why
.

‘Take a seat and make yourself comfortable.’ Helena indicated to the bed and slid a bolt home on the door.

Robert could see more clearly now even though the purple nylon curtains were closed. The room was small and lit by a single lamp. There was little else in there, apart from a chair holding a pile of clothes and a wooden coat stand behind the door. Robert shuddered when he saw that it was draped with whips and leather garments and several pairs of handcuffs. Helena noticed him looking.

‘Fancy a bit of that?’ She winked.

‘Not really my scene,’ he croaked. Helena approached the bed and sat down next to him.

‘What is your scene then, Mr Knight? What can Helena do for you this afternoon?’

He studied her before answering, trying to see behind her worn-out eyes and catch a shred of reason, to find out why she had turned to prostitution. Her skin was like waxed crêpe paper clinging to her cheekbones and her long hair was over-washed, over-bleached and badly needed styling. Even without seeing her naked, Robert could tell that Helena was very thin. The way her bony fingers pushed the cigarette into an ashtray, the way the collar of her robe swamped her scrawny neck, the way her forehead jutted above her face as if the rest of it had been eroded told Robert that she didn’t eat much.

‘Just, you know, perhaps we could talk.’ Robert swallowed, wondering why he felt so powerfully protective towards Helena’s over-used body. At that moment, he wanted to get to know her more than any other woman in the world and yet he found her as attractive as a dead rat. Was it that she represented Erin? Was she the next best thing?

Robert found himself being pushed gently back onto the pillow. Helena unbuttoned his shirt and attempted to remove his trousers but Robert stopped her with a hand firmly on hers.

Suddenly, the noise from the television downstairs grew louder and Helena scuttled to the door.

‘Turn it bloody well down, Josh!’ She returned to the bed and removed her robe, grinning at Robert as he lay perfectly still. He couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. She started to rub his chest, pulling his skin around in rough swirls. ‘Don’t look so scared, Mr Knight. I won’t hurt you.’ Helena coughed violently, layer upon layer of tar and phlegm working loose through her cigarette-deepened voice.

‘No!’ He sat up and stared at her body, unable to speak as an image of Erin’s perfect body transposed itself over Helena’s. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she really was Erin. He longed to brush his hand along the concave stomach which was made from fabric that had long since lost its stretch, just in case he met with the firmness of Erin’s skin.

But Erin disappeared and Robert stared at Helena’s breasts. Her huge nipples, hugging the lower portion of the flaccid sacks, looked as if they’d been dipped in melted chocolate.

Not taking no for an answer, Helena’s bamboo-like arms and hands pressed firmly into Robert’s upper body, lowering him back onto the bed, in what was undeniably a deep, relaxing massage. As she moved around him, he could feel her body warmth and he caught a whiff of her natural scent, the smell of soil after heavy rain mingled with old sweat.

‘That’s my son downstairs with the bloody telly too loud.’ Helena cackled as she worked on Robert. ‘Ready for a bit more now, love? You don’t seem quite so tense.’

‘Your son?’ Robert sat up again. It didn’t seem right.

‘Don’t worry. He’s used to it. How else am I going to afford the amount of food he puts away or get him through university? I’m a student myself, you know. I’ve gone back to school to learn something useful.’ Helena pushed Robert back onto the bed and dragged her fingers around the rim of his trousers.

‘What are you studying?’ Robert was incredulous.

‘I’m doing psychology and English A levels. Then I want to train as a counsellor. A women’s counsellor to help all them screwed-up bags out there.’ She laughed and coughed again. ‘Like me,’ she added when her throat was clear.

Then, in one nimble action, Helena brought her body down upon Robert’s. She lay on him like a thin leather hide and began to move provocatively.

Robert lay perfectly still, frozen by what he had learned about her. How desperate, how determined must she be to sell her body to strangers while her son watched television beneath her? As she reached for the button on his trousers again, apparently admiring what she had to work with, Robert swiftly drew up his legs and rolled to the side.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Not with your son and . . . everything.’

That was when Robert realised that everything was Erin; that everything was his life. That everything was what he wanted back and he would stop at nothing to get it.

‘And everything?’ Helena wasn’t angry; she seemed more amused by his withdrawal.

‘Stuff in my head.’ Robert reached for his shirt. ‘I didn’t come here wanting to have sex with you.’

‘I can cater for all tastes. Just the massage if you prefer.’ Helena’s low voice betrayed a tinge of desperation. ‘Or the whips. You can do it to me if you like.’

‘I’ll still pay you. It’s just that . . .’ Robert fingered his hair, ‘. . . I wanted to know more about how you work. About prostitutes.’ He didn’t like calling her that, labelling her with such a loaded title. He didn’t want to class this woman with his wife.

‘What is there to know?’ Helena put on her robe and sat on the end of the bed. ‘I do it because it makes me a living. Perhaps it’s desperation, I dunno. I don’t feel desperate though.’ She said that as an afterthought and reached into her robe pocket and fished out her cigarettes. She offered one to Robert, who accepted, and they both sat in a sphere of blue-grey smoke discussing how Helena first got into the game.

‘I don’t see nothing wrong with it. It pays my bills, keeps my son in education and a roof over my head. I provide a service to all you deprived men who might otherwise go preying on young girls.’ Robert cleared his throat in protest. ‘Present company excluded, of course.’ Helena winked. ‘I had to do it when my husband left. It started off casual down the pub. If someone came onto me, I’d make it quite clear from the start that they’d have to pay for it. If I met a builder in a pub and wanted an extension building, I wouldn’t expect him to do it for free.’

Robert decided not to mention the small issues of love and marriage, trust and respect. Instead, his mind filled with Erin striking a deal, stripping, having sex and hoarding her cash. Did she do it for Ruby? Did Ruby even know that her mother was a hooker? Silently, Robert buttoned his shirt and prepared to leave.

‘Why d’you want to know so much, anyhow?’

Robert stared directly at Helena, shuddering partly from his still damp shirt and partly because the image of Erin working like Helena was now firmly burned in his mind. ‘Someone I love once earned a living this way. I wanted to find out why.’ He breathed out heavily.

‘And have you?’

A gap of time, only seconds, but as Robert looked at Helena – her eyes open and honest, her body spent and used – he knew that, yes, he had gained a glimpse of Erin’s life before they met. He had coloured in a tiny corner of his paint-by-numbers wife. He didn’t like it one bit.

‘I think I have,’ he admitted. ‘She’s like you. Determined and a survivor.’ Robert leaned forward and kissed Helena hesitantly on the cheek before opening his wallet and removing fifty pounds. ‘Most expensive kiss I’ve ever had,’ he said flatly and gave her the money. She took it and stuffed it in her dressing-gown pocket.

‘Count yourself lucky, Mr Knight. I don’t normally do kissing.’

‘Thanks,’ Robert added, although thanking the woman for illuminating how his wife once lived seemed a contradiction. He felt worse than ever now about Erin’s past. A push-pull game of love and loss. ‘And good luck with your studies.’

‘Good luck yourself,’ Helena growled as she showed him out.

 

 

After Robert left Helena’s house, he was overwhelmed with need for his wife – to hold her and touch her and love her in all the ways that she would have done for hundreds of others. He fought hard to keep down the repulsion and begged himself to remember, when he was finally sober again, that his wife must have done it for a reason.

But when he arrived home, when he saw the remnants of life with Erin, when he saw her haphazard possessions, the drooping flowers, the jumbled laundry, the jacket hanging crookedly over the back of a chair, the notes stuck on the fridge to buy tamarind paste and flaked almonds, when he saw all these things with the memory of Helena ghosting his thoughts, he knew that before he’d met with Helena, forgiveness would have been as hard as having sex with a prostitute. Now it was merely a mountain he had to climb and with determination, he reckoned he could do it. If only she’d come home.

The house was empty – Louisa had left no trace of her earlier presence – and so Robert slept off the remains of the bourbon.

The telephone woke him the next morning although, when he answered it with a thin hope that it would be Erin, he believed he had only slept for a couple of hours. It was Louisa. She was calm and soothing and, after a gentle laugh at his sleepy state, she said that she had some interesting news.

I’m so silly. It’s not until I’m wrapped in a blanket sipping sweet tea beside a coal fire that I realise he has Ruby safe and he’s not going to kill me or nick what’s left of my money. I manage a smile as he perches on the arm of an old ripped chair, watching me, licking his lips.

‘Gonna get you looked at, sweetheart,’ he says and I wonder why because he doesn’t know me and didn’t have to pick me up off the ground. ‘I don’t think you’re very well and that’s a shame because you’re a pretty girl.’

‘Where’s my baby? What’s wrong with me?’ It hadn’t occurred to me that I was ill.

‘I ain’t no doctor, sweetheart, but Freda used to be a nurse. When she gets back, she’ll give you the once-over and get you some medicine.’

‘Freda?’ She must be his wife, I think, although he doesn’t look the marrying sort. I can see his shadow on the wall opposite, flickering in time with the flames. His nose sticks out like a shelf and his mouth joins straight down onto his neck. ‘I want to see my baby? Where is she?’