Captured Shadows (9 page)

"Don't be coy, you've got about as much virtue as me." She took my offered arm, but instead of walking with me to the door she led me up four flights of narrow stairs to a dark little room in the attic. "I've got gin," she said on the way, "and you've got something on your mind. Let's combine them and see what happens."

"Aren't you working?"

She gave me a half-amused sideways look as we turned onto the final staircase. "Ain't you memorised this train's timetable yet? The gents desperate enough to rent a girl who's bleeding ain't the type I want anywhere near me, thanks."

The gin was deadly, strong enough to make me cough half of my first mouthful into my nose, and plentiful enough that before half an hour had passed we were lying side by side on our backs across the old bed and I was telling Sally about all that had happened with Archie; the confusing, the wonderful, the terrible, neatly in that order.

"Percival's made him despise me," I complained, and she laughed softly and took the bottle from me to drink from its neck, twisting onto her side so as not to spill any.

"Don't sound like you done much about it, though. Pretended you didn't care. Told him you wouldn't miss him if he went. You ain't handling this no better than he is, you know."

"Yes, but..." I couldn't think of a decent enough argument and my words faded away into a groan, muffled when I flung both arms about my face. "Why did I say I'd do more pictures? I'm such an idiot. I'll have to go back on my word now and say I won't do them and then Archie's going to gloat and—"

"Shut up, Jim," Sally said amiably and passed the gin bottle back to me.

Another half an hour passed, and my mood changed again as though it had its own minute hand sweeping around and clearing the old debris of emotion; I became quieter, lost inside my thoughts, and when Sally pressed me with a few gentle questions I fumbled the words as though they were foreign to me.

"I suppose I thought I could do what Whitlock's asking and it would be so wonderful Archie would remember all the things we said before and realise what an idiot Percival is and really all he wants is for everything to go back to the way it was before but I expect I'll be as terrible at that as I am at everything else I try to do and he'll just run to Percival and they'll laugh at me together for the rest of their lives."

"Lord, ain't you drunk!" Sally said, flushed from the gin herself and terribly unsubtle in her efforts not to laugh at me despite having only just heard my fears about how much Archie and Percival would. "Shall I fetch Sid? I'll make sure he shows you properly this time, I promise."

"Could
you
show me?" I asked suddenly, without realising I was going to ask such a thing. She went very still beside me, then breathed out slowly and turned onto her side, looking at me carefully with blue eyes turned dark by the gathering twilight at the windows.

"Think what you're saying, Jim."

"I have thought." The drink made me reckless and hasty, and seemed to inflame my hatred for Percival tenfold. An insidious and evil sense of justice seemed to take hold of me, convincing me somehow that doing this with Sally was no different to Archie doing it with Percival. I had only enough time to half-form a comment in my head about gin being to blame for so many of my decisions lately; and then it had begun.

By then the light was fading faster; it seemed to make things easier. Sally lit a few stubs of candles on the window ledge and began to undress in their flickering yellow light, facing the wall so the first I saw of her flesh was the back of her shoulder; I was startled by how strange and intimate this glimpse of smooth white skin seemed, even after having seen parts of her that I doubt many of her punters cared to look at.

She seemed almost shy as she half-turned and looked at me over her shoulder, saying softly, "You don't have to take everything off, but I'd recommend your trousers."

"Of course," I muttered stupidly, pawing at the fastenings of my clothes with hands that felt as though they were made up of only thumbs. I managed to bare myself from the waist down and then felt rather foolish still wearing a jacket, then after that was gone it seemed silly to keep only my waistcoat and shirt so I removed those as well and stood there naked and exposed in the twilight shadows while Sally looked me all over in a way I had never noticed her doing in the studio, until she dragged her dress over her head and was hidden in the yards of old jade silk.

Her corset was a simple cloth one, nothing like the absurdly ornamental things she sometimes wore for Mr Everett; beneath it her body was pressed with wrinkled red lines from the folds of fabric and lightly scarred in places, narrow purple furrows of shiny skin amongst the red and white. She made a noise when I touched her there, a quick astonished little intake of breath, and covered my hand with her own as I moved it down her side to rest on the petticoats at her hip.

"I don't believe I've ever seen you entirely without clothes before."

She smiled sadly up at me as she put her arms around my neck. "Ain't it a mess?"

"You're lovely."

"You don't have to sweet talk me, Jim, I don't need talking into it."

"I'm not. You are."

"Do you want to kiss me?"

"Not particularly."

She laughed at that and somehow I found myself smiling too; it all seemed strange and surreal. It was something I had never expected or planned for, but once it was happening there was something oddly sweet and comforting about it, the gentleness of her touch and the feeling that whatever happened between us would be as close to friends and equals as it possibly could, not a cold and heartless trade of money and services.

"Let me kiss you then, and pay attention cos it's important." For a brief moment I thought she meant to kiss my lips, but she sat on the edge of the mattress, illuminated by the soft golden candlelight to her left, and drew me closer with her hands on my legs so she could take my prick into her mouth, coaxing me harder with the pull of her lips and her warm wet tongue. I made a strangled sound in my throat, muffling it against the back of my hand, and she glanced up through her spit-blacked eyelashes with her mouth full of me; I thought of Archie then and felt an overwhelming regret for what I was doing, yet still the dread of acting out Whitlock's wishes in front of Mr Everett was stronger. If we had to do it – and we did; in a small part of my mind I knew there was nothing in the world that would make me give up what appeared to be my only chance of touching him again – then I wanted it to be over quickly. The thought of this terrible virgin fumbling, not knowing how to place our limbs or mouths or pricks, taking place for the first time in front of a camera and Mr Everett's professional impatience was so dreadful to me that I felt sick with it. If only we weren't quarrelling I would have spoken of it to Archie, I think – I would have told him my fears, for I imagined he shared them even in his anger, and we could have practiced all this together in private – but that evening in the Dials moved by so quickly and everything seemed to happen before my mind had caught up enough to object; I merely tried to breathe.

Sally's hair was so long that it fell down her bare back and pooled on the bed behind her, like curtains that were too long for the window. As she sucked me I allowed myself to touch it and she made an encouraging little sound, leaning into my palm as I gathered up a handful of dark curls and let them slip through my fingers.

She was as breathless as I when she took her mouth from me, a long line of spit snapping between her lips and my prick. "I ain't pretending it won't hurt but you can make it hurt less. Butter's nice if you can get it but spit ain't bad." Then she cursed quietly as if remembering her predicament and went to the dish of water in the corner of the room to wash herself beneath her petticoats with a rag. "It's a shambles down here, you must be desperate."

I didn't see much sense in being disgusted by that, considering where I was about to touch her, and I reached for her hand to urge her back onto the bed; gin and absurd revenge and the sudden need to understand all whirled in me like an inferno and I became stubborn in my refusal to change my mind, following determinedly after Sally as she shuffled backwards up the wide mattress to make room for me, moving her from side to side trying to find the knots in all the drawstrings and leaving the petticoats scattered across the floorboards in dirty white heaps. I remember she told me once that she never wore drawers as they only became soiled by men's spendings and torn in their haste; it was easier simply to replace the bottommost petticoat when it was stained, and this way on laundry days when the girls all washed their clothes there was no fighting over which underthings belonged to whom and they agreed to share the skirts.

Beneath her clothing she was pale, blue veins showing through the translucent skin inside her thighs. Both knees were dirty and marked with old scars. For a moment I could see the pink place between her legs, nestled within dark hair, where she liked to touch herself before being mounted by one of the men in the studio; then she turned onto her front, knees spread wide and drawn up beneath her body.

"Spit," she said, "if you're ready. Get him wet. Put your finger in him –
slowly
," she added, when I sucked my finger and tried to press it inside her. She was balancing on her elbows, and she twisted back to look at me; her cheeks were as red as mine felt. "Spit more."

I could barely swallow. "My mouth's too dry."

"Give me your hand." She sucked two of my fingers deep into her mouth when I held my hand out to her, working her lips and tongue to wet them thoroughly, and when I withdrew them she spat into my palm. "You don't have to put them all the way in, just... it hurts worse if you don't do it at all. Make it wet then go slow and it ain't so bad."

I had only the vaguest knowledge of how this worked – I couldn't imagine how this could possibly be enjoyable for the person being fucked – but I had seen plenty of men and women together in the traditional way in my time with Mr Everett, I remembered how it looked when Bert and Donald withdrew to move to a different position for the camera and their pricks were wet from sliding about inside the girls. I wet her as much as I could, managing a bit of foaming spit from my own parched mouth to add to what she gave me, smearing what was left all across my prick and guiding it with my hand to where she was spread wide. I pressed an inch inside her and she made a stifled noise so I stopped, trembling with the sudden urgent pleasure of it and the effort it took not to plunge farther in.

But she said, "It's alright, Jimmy, don't stop," so I carried on, as slowly as I could. She was warm within and so tight around me until I felt a curious shifting in her flesh and I stopped again, sweat on my forehead, lips bitten raw to hold back a groan.

"Sally?"

Breathless, she said, "Tell Archie to bear down, as if he's having a shit. It don't hurt so much then. It don't feel natural but if he tightens up he won't be able to walk straight after. Might be nice for you though, hey?" I could feel her pulse and contract around me again and this time the groan broke free and I slid forward into her heat. I was mindful of hurting her, but the thought seemed hazy and hidden as though my head were filled with fog; perhaps it was a good thing that the sensations and my anxious determination to get it over with made me spend inside her after only a minute or two. Beneath me Sally was moving awkwardly, rubbing her fingertips hard between her legs and breathing heavily into the pillows; as I withdrew from her I could feel her begin to spasm and some unholy curiosity made me press my fingers to her, slipping easily inside so she cried my name in a stuttering sort of moan as her cunt rippled and drew around me.

A minute later, in my arms with her long black hair falling over us both, Sally regained enough breath to speak. "You surprised me, you horrible boy. I weren't expecting that."

"Did you mind?"

"Did it feel like I minded?" I felt her shaking and realised she was laughing quietly, mouth pressed into my shoulder, then she reached over the edge of the bed for one of her petticoats so she could wipe my hand dry. "You look like you've cut your fingers, though."

I tried not to let my distaste show, settling back against the soft warmth of her body. "I suppose you did warn me."

"It's much nicer for girls, putting it in there. You ain't got much choice with lads, though."

"Once he..." Briefly I hesitated, wondering whether it was too personal to tell, then continued; there was something so strange and secret about this embrace, something so curiously sweet, and I felt a love for her that I had never felt for a girl before – not quite as a sister, considering what we had just done, but as a dear friend. "He was pressing against me when we were kissing on my bed and he turned me over and slipped it between my legs, and held me around the hip to stroke me in the front as he, you know, acted it out as though he were inside. It wasn't the same, but it... I don't know what I'm saying." I was blushing furiously even now, even lying naked together on the bed as we were. "It
felt
real, although it was pantomime."

"If it feels real I reckon it is. None of the gents I lie with feel real no more so it don't upset me no more like it used to. It's a job. It's like them ladies helping ladies try on gloves in shops. It's business. Not with you," she added quickly, kissing my shoulder again as though she thought she might have offended me. She hadn't, of course, but I felt dreadful all the same and rather ashamed of myself, although she hadn't seemed to mind the request for a lesson. I felt I ought to apologise somehow, but I couldn't think of a way to say it so I just carried on stroking my fingers through her hair, feeling how it made her smile where her lips were still touching my skin.