Eight Pieces on Prostitution (12 page)

‘Bernie here,' the voice said on the other end. ‘I'm coming over,' he added without pausing for breath.

Sue phoned Camilla, who'd gone to the hairdressers. She said she'd be there as soon as she could.

‘I'd locked up at the front,' Bernie told them. ‘I'd turned off all the lights except for the outside ones.'

‘Where was your truck?' Camilla asked.

For once he'd parked it in Grimwade Street, not in the carpark they all shared. It wasn't something Bernie would have done at a busy time, take up parking space in a street that might be filled by customers.

He told them he'd been doing his accounts, not needing to explain why he was tackling this task at the beginning of January. Sue knew, from earlier conversations - always brief, never going into detail - that Bernie was separated from his wife and that he'd lost the battle to have his children stay with him over Christmas.

‘I saw you carry something out and put it in the car. Something big and heavy.'

‘No,' Camilla said.

‘I'm not going to ask what happened, or if you're protecting someone else.' Bernie glanced at Laura, who so far hadn't spoken. ‘I've always liked you girls.'

After Bernie had left, Sue and Camilla agreed to share him. Laura sat in silence and fiddled with her hands.

It was still raining, very dark for a summer afternoon. The rain gave the girls' room a feeling of containment, if not safety. Sue thought of the fire stairs and that any claims she might make on architecture had now to be set aside. She asked herself for what seemed like the millionth time how they could have been so stupid, why they hadn't thought it through.

When Bernie came back a couple of hours later, Sue took the first turn. She undressed with her back to him; the tension in her spine felt painful, as though her vertebrae were about to seize up.

Bernie stood behind her in his fawn cargo pants and pale green shirt, the pants wrinkled and concertinaed over the tops of his shoes. Sue bent over with her elbows on the bed, thankful that it was high enough for her to do so comfortably. She heard every layer of his breath.

Sue shut her eyes, hoping that Bernie would let her stay like that, with her back to him, fearing the expression in his eyes.

He climaxed quickly, and for this she was grateful.

The room felt different afterwards, walls angular and transparent as plate glass. With her newly hollowed out insides, Sue imagined herself flat against the walls, then disappearing, passing to the other side.

Blackmail was a word that could be stretched and stretched. It could be flattened, then let slip. If a blackmailer wanted money, then money could run out. But her body and Camilla's? That was attrition of a different kind. Sue could only hope that Bernie would get tired of it. Events might move too fast for all of them; she did not know whether or not it was wrong to hope for that.

Bernie had told her he'd be visiting every other day. Sue thought of offering him money, but knew that, were she to suggest this, he would laugh; he would laugh and ask for Laura, knowing this was what she and Camilla wanted to avoid. He might insist on Laura anyway. Before that happened, they must work out what to do.

‘How are you feeling Laur?' Sue asked.

‘So-so,' Laura said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?'

Laura complained of a headache. ‘Thank God that rain has stopped.'

‘I liked it. We needed it,' Sue said.

‘Good evening, ladies.' Sergeant Saunders' manner was confident, polite.

Constable McLaren smiled. It was a squash in the girls' room, but Sue wasn't going to talk to the police in either of the bedrooms unless they insisted.

‘Where's the other girl?'

‘She's not feeling well.'

‘Business a bit slow is it?' A smile flickered around Constable McLaren's mouth.

‘It's January,' Sue said, with a warning glance in Camilla's direction, knowing that the constable's intention was to mock them and to make them careless.

Sue knew the type, bossy behind her uniform and lipstick, attractive enough with her olive skin and wavy hair, her lumpy body men might go for who didn't like them skinny. Constable McLaren liked to exercise authority, liked the feel of power. Sue had met her type before. Women like this one had held power over her and enjoyed the use of it.

Sue took out a cigarette and lit it. When Constable McLaren moved closer to the window, Sue nodded to herself, recalling a young woman arresting her in Sydney once, marching her, right arm twisted up her back, down a steep flight of stairs, dislocating her elbow so that later, in the cell, it ached and ached. Sue saw a similar cruelty beneath Constable McLaren's fresh red mouth. That policewoman would have been about the age Constable McLaren was now, but of course she herself had been much younger, a child still in the eyes of some.

‘Tell us what happened,' Sergeant Saunders said.

‘How many times do we have to say it? The joker never came here.'

‘Which one of you did him?'

‘So what if he wrote down our phone number?' Camilla's voice was harsh. ‘He must have gone somewhere else.'

‘Would it surprise you to know that the deceased had a bad heart?'

‘Why should that surprise us?'

Sergeant Saunders said that they'd be back again, ‘this time with a search warrant.'

Camilla shut the door on them and turned to Sue, her black hair tangled, her face red and angry. ‘What if they wrote our number on the back of that receipt themselves?'

Sue did not think this worth replying to. ‘We'll scrub out Laura's room,' she said. ‘We'll throw away the chair he left his clothes on. And what about what Laura was wearing?'

‘She wasn't wearing anything,' Camilla said.

‘What did the police want?' Bernie asked.

‘Which police?'

‘The ones who came to question you guys,' Bernie said in a pleasant voice.

Sue said, ‘I'm not worried about the police.'

‘Good for you,' said Bernie.

He'd arrived a little out of breath, and was now just short of panting. When Sue reminded him that they'd agreed on every second day, he said this was an exception. Sue knew it was the arrival of the police that had excited him.

She turned away and began to take her clothes off, thinking to cut short further questions. She braced herself with her elbows on the bed, thankful for the hardness of the mattress. She thought of it as posting a letter – no, a bulky parcel – and smiled with the relief of knowing that Bernie couldn't see her face.

As before, he was quick and efficient. He took care of the condom and she had the feeling she could trust him in this not so small a thing. Bernie wouldn't worry about disease, but neither would he take unnecessary risks. Sue watched him button his green shirt right up to the neck, then tuck it carefully into his jeans, which were again too loose and long, bunching on his running shoes.

‘I can let myself out.'

But Sue needed to close the door, make sure it was locked.

After she had done so, she went back to the bedroom and sat down on the bed.

What did she have to look forward to, after she'd rewarded herself with a smoke? Sue wondered if Bernie had always nursed this other man, this ready opportunist, inside the neighbour she'd felt sorry for. She'd felt sorry that his wife wouldn't let him have the kids for Christmas. Now she felt a fool.

It made her sick to think how punters and their motives used to interest her, how she'd amused herself constructing lives for them.

She wondered if there was anything she could use to blackmail Bernie, and how she might discover what it was. She remembered asking him about the lawnmower business; Bernie had replied that it was steady enough. Her question had been put after their own business had begun to slide. Sue had said she supposed that people always needed lawnmowers, even in a drought, hastening to add that she lived in a block of units, in case he thought she took her custom somewhere else.

Sue pulled the sheets off the bed and made a bundle of them.

She announced to Camilla, who'd been cleaning Laura's room, ‘I'm losing weight. Look.' She held out the waistband of her jeans.

‘Good for you,' Camilla said.

Sue sat on the couch in the girls' room and thought about the word availeth. Other words came back to her from Sunday school. She thought about the phrase ‘availeth nought', and felt pleased by the newly firm outlines of her bum against the sofa, and her insides hollowed out, alert. She knew it was a foolish kind of readiness, and ‘availeth nought' appropriate, but she could not help feeling pleased.

When Camilla came in, Sue asked where Laura was.

‘Gone to the bakery.'

‘I don't think we should let her go out on her own.'

‘It's just to the corner and back.'

‘She might run into Bernie.'

‘Horrible little prick,' Camilla said.

They'd long ago decided to divide the money three ways. Laura had made most, and had been generous with it. Now Sue thought of all that was
not
money: how to divide that? The pooling of responsibility was like the pooling of summer rain on concrete, rain thick with the smell of waiting too long for it to arrive.

Away from Camilla, back home in her flat, standing at the window smoking, the holes in their reasoning rushed up to meet Sue, and she felt as though she was standing, not on the first floor of a concrete building, but on a cliff above the ocean with the tide coming in.

Camilla had said they should stand up to Bernie, and that, if they did not do this, his demands would escalate until they became impossible. Camilla had said that Bernie might end up dobbing them in anyway. The cops might turn up while he was there, and the temptation be too great. All it would take would be a word, and the cops would be onto it, that DS with the beer gut and that chubby bitch just waiting for her chance.

Impossible was a big word, Sue thought. It was a word that had risen up to meet her before; she'd faced it down, those other times.

Camilla had said they should at least make Bernie stick to the original bargain – every second day. She had not talked about what it was like with Bernie in the room and, when Sue had given her an opportunity to do so, she'd ignored it.

Once Bernie got his hooks into Laura, there was no telling what would happen, Camilla said. Sue agreed that this must be avoided. She would have liked to tell Camilla how she felt, with Bernie panting, in his too-big shirt, behind her.

They were tied to Laura by a fraying rope. What if she broke it? Snap! Sue thought of what she called Laura's flakiness, and became aware that some of her hatred for Bernie was attaching itself to Laura in a chain of consequence, of cause and effect.

Sometimes Sue felt as though she wanted to strangle Laura; at others, her feeling of protectiveness was so fierce she knew she would take the blows on own body if the need arose.

It seemed to her that all she'd ever fought for, as regards their business, was summed up in this feeling. Sue thought of the pretty, smiling girl Laura had been when she'd come to them, knocking on the door with a bright, winning smile, as if to say, I'm the one you've been waiting for, you'll see. Laura had been graceful, unspoilt, good for business, marvellous for business.

Sue saw grace as a broken bracelet, then a long, glittering line tumbling down the fire stairs. She would do what Camilla said, or at least she would try to. They would wait and see.

Sue woke early, grateful that she'd been able to sleep. The sky was yellow-grey and milky and the air was cool. She woke remembering Bernie, and the constriction of responsibility tightened round her heart. She stumbled, rubbing her eyes, out to the kitchen. Her fridge was practically empty. She needed to shop, and knew the simple task would help.

She toasted some stale bread for breakfast. The day was already hot and heavy by the time she went outside. Clouds moved along the horizon. They came no closer, but tantalised by being there. The park across the road and its adjacent playing fields were as empty as though no child had ever graced them.

Constable McLaren sat at the table in the girls' room and took out a tape recorder, while Sergeant Saunders supervised the search. They were going over the mattresses with special lights.

Constable McLaren spoke to them politely. She said that they were there to talk about what had happened on the night of Thursday, January 6. The constable suggested, though her voice remained polite, that the police were done with lies, that it was time to talk.

Sue said, taking out her smokes and lighting one, ‘It was just an ordinary evening.'

Laura said, ‘We were all at work that night.'

‘From when till when?'

Camilla looked at Sue, who said, ‘I arrived shortly after three, with Laura.'

‘And you?' Constable McLaren asked Camilla, who said, ‘We've been over this before.'

‘Just answer the question please.'

‘Later in the evening.'

‘A quiet one, was it?' When there was no answer to this, Constable McLaren said, ‘Were you hoping business would pick up when the Summernats hit town?'

‘I don't understand why that's important,' Sue said.

‘How many clients last Thursday?'

‘Three,' Camilla said.

Sue knew that, if she looked up through the window, she would see the wedge of yellow paddock. It reminded her of the waiting camels. She kept her eyes fixed on the tape recorder.

‘What time did you leave?'

Laura said, ‘We all left together.'

‘What time was that?'

‘Around one.'

‘Where did you spend the rest of the night?'

‘We went home.'

‘Would you like to change your statements, or add anything to them?'

‘Why would we do that?'

Sure of her ground, or perhaps sure only of nettling them further, Constable McLaren said, ‘Maybe you've remembered something.'