Ivory (7 page)

She stood back
up and wrapped an arm around him and squeezed him. “Honey, it’s
great. I mean it’s only a photograph of your work but it looks
great. Your form and style is back, but it seems fresh. There’s an
invigorated fervour to it.” She gestured at the picture with her
hand, but then it wavered, reflecting the uncertainty in her voice.
“The actual content is… very different for you.”

Martin’s body
stiffened and Jenny’s arm shifted at sensing it, he quickly draped
his arm around her and kept her close to him. “You’re holding back.
Don’t hold back,” he scowled over a smile.

“
It’s marvellous as a surreal work, it’s just –
the eyes
… I find them a
little chilling – but I was unsure if that was your intention.”
Martin released her and folded his arms as he studied the painting
through Jenny’s eyes. “It’s a great painting… Honestly,” she added
and gave him another squeeze of a hug.

He had
struggled to wrestle Ivory’s details from his memory and had taken
an impressionistic approach to capture the motion-blur of her
dashing in front of his car and raising her arms defensively.
“Obviously it’s an artistic interpretation, but essentially that is
what she looked like.”

“
Yes, but not the skin colour and the eyes, surely…” Jenny
goaded, an uncertain grin stretched tight across her face, not
willing to be made a fool of. “Who is she?”

She was right.
The contrasting details of her features were fantastical. “Who?
She’s a student,” he said it so genuinely and spontaneously the lie
surprised him.

“
That explains it,” she expressed. “Goth? Dodgy contact lenses
thick black make-up and an aversion to sunlight? Oh, to be eighteen
again.” She rolled her eyes and gave a playful slap to his rear as
she returned to her chores.

It was only
easier for Martin to reconcile himself with her unusual appearance
as he had seen her in the flesh and blood and she was undeniably
real and her appearance genuine. Part of his motive to paint her
was to be able to set his eyes upon her again and marvel at her
uniqueness and her beauty. The sketching, the painting, the whole
creative process had been exhausting but also rewarding. The
portrait marked a return of his art but his joy had been
short-lived for it lacked the quality of life, the accuracy and
realism that could anchor Ivory’s features into being accepted. He
still hadn’t exorcised her from his mind, and his memories of Ivory
were becoming fleeting wraiths with phantom details that circled
his mind and taunted him with their presence. Fading memories were
of no use to him if he were to successfully recreate her in acrylic
or oils.

Chapter Five

For a moment
Candy forgot herself and pulled her coat around her against the
cold as she stood her ground on Arven Road. She allowed her jacket
to gape so it didn’t obscure her breasts. She didn’t want to cover
those babies up. After all, they were her store front windows. You
wouldn’t keep the curtains closed on the John Lewis Christmas
display. She enjoyed her job but for the autumn and winter months.
She had never been one of those girls who bared their legs for a
night out no matter the weather, she prized the warmth! As soon as
there was a chill the jeans or leggings would be out. Except when
she was in street mode, they weren’t practical for the street. She
didn’t even bother with underwear. In the cramped confines of a car
it just complicated things. She glanced back down the street into
the dark and could make out the soft lighting within King’s first
floor flat. It would be warm in there.

The older girls had told her it used to better before the
clean up at King’s Cross, you could stand out on the main road and
feel safer for it. In the early hours of the morning the roads
around the station would be as busy as Oxford Street in the day
with punters crawling by on the prowl. You could make a nights wage
in a couple of hours and because there was so much passing trade
you could afford to be fussy about who you went off with. You had
the toilets at the station to freshen up between jobs, café’s to
keep warm in and get a cup of tea, plenty of sleazy B&B’s where
you could book a room for an hour if you were lucky enough to find
a punter that would pay for it, and a taxi rank with licensed cabs
ready to take you home. Door to door commuting. Candy had only ever
known Arven Road. The trade had been forced into back streets and
cul-de-sacs. This road had been due to be demolished around the
time St Pancras and the surrounding area had been redeveloped, but
for some reason it had been left as it was and didn’t even exist
on
A to Z
maps
anymore. It was a road that led from the residential areas into the
industrial units and was crossed by an iron bridge carrying the
King’s Cross rail line. No cosy amenities here.

Candy had
blagged quite a few easy nights in King’s flat, drinking King’s
vodka smoking his weed, posing for his dirty pictures and letting
him have his way with her. He hadn’t called her in from the street
for some time now though. He had found himself a new playmate. He
saw her quite often, more than Candy, or any of the other girls.
Fucking bitch; sitting up there in the warm, enjoying the spoils
and only having to take one dick for the night, and a nice one too.
Then being paid with the cut that King took from all of the girl’s
wages. She had seen him pay her and the roll of cash had looked
fatter than he gave any of the others for such a night.

She wished she
had the balls to gate-crash but King didn’t like it when people
interrupted him when he had company, and she had always done her
best to never get on the wrong side of King. He was a psycho. She
had heard about girls being slapped and punched for calling on him
unnecessarily. Normally the only time King was called upon was for
public relations issues; paying off a pushy copper with money or
with a free ‘lunch’ courtesy of one of his girls, or sorting out
disputes over prices or non-payments, and that usually resulted in
the customer in A&E with busted ribs or a new facial feature.
She had also seen King’s eyes when he was with that girl and she
didn’t like it; they were mad eyes. Despite that bitch being up
there and getting paid with Candy’s cut it wasn’t worth the hassle.
She worked the street because it was easy money and she would suck
it up and make do with the cold. Occupational hazard.

Candy shielded
her eyes against the headlights of an oncoming car as it turned
into the street and parked up. The lights stung her eyes and lit up
the whole street. “Fucking newbie,” she cursed under her breath
while keeping a smile on her face as she squinted in the cars
direction. King paid little shits to pull down the security lights
of the houses at the end of the street where people still lived,
and shimmy up the lampposts and smash the streetlights. Keeping the
road dark meant there were more places to work a punter.

This guy was a
newbie that was for sure. Looking for sex that he never had and
would never get from any wife he might have stashed away somewhere.
She strutted down to his side window but stood with a foot angled
to her side to expose the inner aspect of her leg and cause the hem
of her skirt to ride up a little. He stared at her and then looked
away, licked his thick bearded lips then looked back, his eyes
flitting from place to place. He appeared shifty and nervous. He
didn’t wind down his window. Rude.

She knocked on
the glass. The overweight man looked uncertain then looked back
towards the road, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to
acknowledge her, then he lowered the window a couple of inches. He
must have realised how ridiculous the gesture was and lowered it
further. The glass had already started to steam up in his car from
the humidity of his anxious breaths. She imagined that his body
would be as slick with moisture as the glass was. He was pale with
terror, or disgust, either a loathing for her or for himself, She
could tell that he would be the anguished type that would have to
be talked through every step until he got going, and then he would
gorge himself on the experience and be finished shortly after
starting. His kind made her want to shower before during and after
and they also frightened her a little. She worried where that
loathing could lead to. It reminded her of the danger involved with
what she did, and that she wasn’t a good-time girl and that her
life wasn’t the easy-going care-free existence she presented to the
close friends and boyfriend that knew how she made her money. She
preferred the experienced punters because their hang-ups didn’t
come out and they both had a mutual understanding of what they were
there for. It would just be sex for him. Money for her. Done. Have
a nice night. Please cum again.

Still, it
wasn’t good business to get a reputation as being picky and choosy.
She figured that the majority of the punters were there because
they normally got rejected by the women they approached and they
didn’t want to take the risk of being rejected by a prostitute.
Equal opportunities was everywhere.

“
You wanna turn off your headlights? The girls down there are
trying to work and all that light will put off their customers.
Some of them girls don’t look that great under strong light. Like
those weird looking fish you find at the bottom of the oceans. They
can’t all be blessed with my fine looks.”

Martin fumbled
for the controls for the headlights and caught a glimpse of the
spray of powdered glass on the road, lit up like diamonds in his
car’s beams, a gritty reminder from the scene of the accident. He
switched the headlights off and the dark rushed in. Most of the
streetlights were out and the majority of houses this end of the
street were boarded shadowy husks. The dark hazel girl, no more
that twenty years old, wavered in the window and her heels clicked
and scraped the pavement as she bobbed from one foot to the other
in the bitter cold. He didn’t know what to say to her.

As if reading his uncertainty the girl’s full lips, made-up
to be vivid purple to match her skirt and top, broke over her milky
white teeth in a broad and disarming smile. “Hello, I’m Candy. how
can I –
help you?
” her voice was slow, seductive and suggestive of euphemism
and descended into a throaty coquettish giggle.

Martin was
unsure how to answer.

“
What do you want?” her lips pursed into a tighter sweeter
smile.

The question startled him from his daze.
What did he want?
He had gone out in
the Focus
under the pretence of needing to
put petrol in her and driven like an automaton to this place. “I’m
looking for a girl.”

The dark girl
tossed her head back in a laugh that started deep and then
mellowed. She shook her head and her mop of springy raven and died
blonde curls quivered around her face. Her arms crossed and she
yanked the hem of her tight fitting tee shirt up to her chin. Her
bare round breasts bounced and jiggled as she laughed, “What do you
think these are; testicles?”

Martin tried
to ignore them and smiled against his discomfort, feeling his
cheeks burn. “No. No – I mean I’m looking for a specific girl.”

Candy’s face
dropped into a measuring and untrusting wariness. She shoved her
breasts roughly back into her top with one hand as if she was
stuffing fruit into a bag. She cursed venomously as if she couldn’t
believe her poor luck. “You’re a copper aren’t you?”

“
No, no.” He shook his head roughly. “I was involved in a
crash here last night. I hit a girl, and I’m looking for
her.”

She
straightened up, disinterested, her eyes had hardened into glassy
marbles and she rested her free hand on her hip. She pouted on a
cigarette, lit it and took a deep drag. “You are looking for Ivory
then.”

Martin
experienced an arc of energy in his gut that could have launched
him from the car at the mention of her name.

She looked
down at him took another drag and huffed a sulky smile. Smoke
drifted from her bitter lips as if at the mouth of a volcano. “The
look you have on your face. I’ve seen it before you know; you
aren’t the first.” The smile snapped from her lips like the slack
cracked from a whip. “She isn’t working tonight. Not the streets
anyway. King has her at his flat.”

“
Who’s King?”

“
Jeez, you are new to Arven!” She paused in consideration of
whether to trust him. “He’s her pimp.”

“
Not Ebony?”

“
Who?”

“
Nothing.” The blind black man was Ivory’s ward after all. Did
he then know of Ivory’s lifestyle? “Would you be able to get hold
of her? Tonight.”

Candy looked
Martin over. “Yeah,” a look descended on her face that Martin
didn’t understand, as though she knew something he didn’t or that
there was a joke he wasn’t aware of. “I think we can arrange it.
Come on, honey.”

Martin
followed her from the car to the alley. It was the alley that Ivory
had run from only the night before. What had she been fleeing?

The mouth to
the alley was dark, and was only lit further down by a dim outside
light above a front door. The door was fully glazed with a heavily
textured glass. Its wood surround was battered and looked soft with
damp, its once lurid blue paint rotting and flaking away. From what
he could see the whole building, with its blown rendering and
graffiti, looked as neglected as the other houses in the area.
Candy gave the doorbell a protracted ring and him a broad smile and
a wink.

Martin stood and waited with the girl. ‘What am I doing?’ he
screamed at himself inside. Yet that
need
to see Ivory kept his feet
planted on the spot, and denied his instinct to run back to the car
and screech away into the night, back to his neighbourhood and his
wife. A large dark silhouette suddenly undulated across the rippled
glass as someone came to the door.