Murder Most Fab (14 page)

‘Upset?
Me?’ My mother sounded incredulous. ‘Always look on the bright side, darling,
that’s what I do. Are you going to come home and live in the village? I could
put an advert in the post-office window advertising your services as a singing
telegram.’

‘Tempting,
but no. I want to stay in London for a while. I like it here. Maybe I can get
some bar work,’ I said.

‘Oh,
yes. That would be lovely. I’ll tell Grandma you’ve had a career change. Hostelry.
It’s all the rage. I’d better go because the bird table’s empty and Sandra
Sparrow isn’t looking too happy about it. God bless.’

And she
was gone.

Since
I’d left home my mother had been her bright and breezy self on the phone,
unruffled by my departure. She showed only a polite interest in my life and
couldn’t wait to fill me in on garden developments or village news. I think she
thought of me as a migrating swan that would return in time. Nature would take
its course. I was glad she didn’t appear lonely or depressed and I was only
slightly put out not to be missed, even vaguely. As usual with my mother, it
was style above content. Everything seemed fine, but I had no idea how she felt
about anything other than the local wildlife.

It was
only eight o’clock when I heard a familiar knock on my door. I opened the door,
puzzled. Catherine stood before me, her nurse’s hat crumpled in her
outstretched hand.

‘Goodbye
to Mr Pickering and his turds. I am, henceforth, an ex-nurse. Hello, world!’ She
sauntered into the room, tossing her hat into the bin, then throwing herself
backwards on to my bed and shouting, ‘Gin! Make it snappy!’

‘By an
uncanny coincidence,’ I said, pouring her a potent G and very little T, ‘I
myself am now an ex-musical-theatre student. I’ve been informed that my
services are no longer required.’

‘Well,
how’s that for synchronicity?’ said Catherine, chinking glasses with me. ‘This
is God’s way of telling us to get a life and to ask all those miserable cunts
to go fuck themselves.’

‘What
happened to you?’

‘It was
a fair cop, I suppose. I was caught red-handed in the drugs cupboard. You know
I’ve always considered the odd bottle of diazepam a perk of the job — well,
Sister didn’t agree. “Show me the barmaid who hasn’t helped herself to the odd
Malibu,” I said. “Find me a secretary who hasn’t got a cupboard at home full of
manila envelopes,” I said. But Hattie Jacques didn’t see it that way. Frogmarched
me off the ward like a common shop-lifter. Don’t tell me she got that fat
without eating the leftovers from the anorexics ward. So I’m out. I’m supposed
to be counting my blessings that no authorities were brought in. All for one
measly bottle of pills! And a few packets of tablets. And all the other stuff
they didn’t find out about. Oh, well. There is a bright side, though — I’ve got
enough to see us through to the millennium. What about you?’

‘Sacked
for failing to make up a set in a barn dance.’

‘Pathetic,
isn’t it? Mind you, there is your handicap in the C-sharp department.’

‘It’s a
wonder I wasn’t run out of town sooner.’

‘Let’s
forget them all, the whole dreary pack of them. I know what we need.’ She took
a bottle of pills from her handbag.

‘Valium.
Two milligrams or five, Cowboy? I think we deserve a five each for starters.
Here you go.’

She
tossed me a pill and we took our medicine with no fuss.

We
pushed my bed to the wall to make some space, put on an Alison Moyet record and
danced our troubles away, thrilled to be thrown together in adversity. What
would become of us? As the Valium washed over us, it dissolved our anxieties.
Our dancing became fluid and relaxed, and then it became more of a stagger to
the bed.

After
our fourth gin and tonic Catherine was a little less cheerful. ‘You know,
Cowboy, I love excitement and living on the edge and all that, but part of me
still craves a straight life, a normal life. I like the idea of being a nurse —
it’s the perfect occupation for a future surgeon’s wife living in Hazelmere.
And, what’s more, I’ve wasted the last six weeks making eyes at a skin
specialist. He’s called Alan, and he’s single.’

‘What a
waste. So you’ve lost your only claim to respectability and my career as a West
End Wendy is completely up the Swannee.’

‘And
there’s my wage, and your grant. They’ve gone too. What are we going to do for
money?’

We
looked at each other.

‘I’m
going to say out loud what we’re both thinking,’ said Catherine. ‘Fuck
respectability. Let’s do that when we’re old and decrepit. Right now we’re
young and gorgeous. Why don’t we go full-time on the game? At least for a
little while. If we do that, we can easily afford a bit of the good life for as
long as we want it.’

‘You’re
mad, Catherine,’ I said. It was all very well fooling about turning tricks now
and then — but a full-time prostitute? That wasn’t the future I’d dreamt of, to
say the least.

She
produced a copy of the
Evening Standard
and turned to the accommodation
pages. In less than a minute, she’d found an advertisement for a swish rented
flat in north London. ‘Look, we could move in somewhere like this. Kit
ourselves out, get expensive haircuts and pedicures. Start treating ourselves
like a proper business. Ooh, I can just see it! What do you think?’

We were
both sitting upright now, awakened by the startling vision of our future that
Catherine was conjuring up.

‘Well
… I don’t know …‘ I looked at the ad. The flat did sound lovely, and
although it was expensive we could easily afford it if we turned a reasonable
number of tricks each week.

‘That
flat’s winking at us, Cowboy. I don’t know why we’re living in a shit-hole like
this, anyway.’

She was
serious, I could see. ‘You’re way ahead of me,’ I said. It wouldn’t do to tell
her, but although I could imagine Catherine living the life of a full-time sex
worker, I couldn’t picture myself doing so.

‘I’ve
assessed our options,’ she said. ‘Yours as well as mine. The events of the day
have given us the push we needed. We can do this.’

She was
right. Apart from returning to my mother’s or finding some poorly paid menial
work, what else was there for me to do? I already had one foot in the door. I
was young and Catherine would make it fun. ‘Well, if it’s just for a while, to
see if we like it or not—yes.’

‘More
gin!’ said Catherine, by way of celebration.

‘No
more Sean, no more bedpans!’ I said. ‘That’s the way! You won’t regret it.’

When we woke up the next
morning, our heads pounding with gin hangovers, I had second thoughts. Did I
really want to trade full-time in sex? It was different for a girl. Catherine
just had to grease herself up and could lie there all day. I couldn’t. I had to
get an erection, perform, ejaculate. Young and virile as I was, I had my
limits.

But
Catherine had become even more convinced overnight that this was the way
forward, the perfect occupation for the two of us.

By the
time I’d got up, she was already phoning landlords and had alerted Madame to
our new availability. She exuded a steely determination, an absolute confidence
that we were doing the right thing. She was so firm about it that soon I’d put
aside my misgivings and joined in wholeheartedly. After all, I reasoned, why
not? It was time to live life on the wild side.

We
signed up for a number of credit cards and immediately went shopping for a
complete new wardrobe each.

‘It’s
an investment,’ said Catherine. ‘Some people might request a slapper who buys
his clothes at Deptford market, but not many. You need leather trousers, a
dress suit, summer casuals and a balaclava. Something for every occasion. I
need evening dresses and one of everything from Ann Summers. For the chic-but-still-a-bit-of-a-goer
look, I’m going for Jasper Conran. I also need makeup, self-tanning cream and
some expensive lotions. We’d
both
better get some condoms, flavoured,
ribbed, extra strong, extra small and extra large, a whole box of lube,
poppers, home-enema kits and some antiseptic wipes. It’s important to be
professional.’

‘Masks?’
I suggested. ‘Dildoes, silk scarves, ropes?’

‘Now
you’re talking! All of that stuff. Come on! Let’s go and spend some money and
have some fun.’

It was
one of the best days we ever had. We began in Selfridges’ luggage department,
where we selected two large, matching pony-skin suitcases on wheels. Then we
went to the designer fashion departments and filled them with our smarter
clothes, accessories and shoes. Later we caught a taxi to Soho where we breezed
through the grubby-beaded curtains of the sex shops and noisily perused their sex
toys, butt plugs and dildo selections, then asked if they had anything bigger.

We
bought all the equipment and tricks of the trade we could think of, and lots of
small, expensive luxuries for ourselves. We peaked in Bond Street where
Catherine declared we’d be considered half naked in our new jobs if we didn’t
have his and hers Rolex watches on our wrists. We finished the day drinking
champagne in Claridges, surrounded by our heaving suitcases and supplementary
bags of loot, toasting ourselves and our new lives.

We took
a flat in leafy Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, a spacious, Edwardian
conversion, with high ceilings, ornate fireplaces and a bidet. It was a big
leap from a bedsit in Lewisham, and we reinvented ourselves from the moment we
moved in, as if we were Russian spies assimilating ourselves into an alien
community. Play the part as we did, we couldn’t help pinching ourselves and
collapsing into giggles the moment our interior designer or Oriental-carpet
specialist left us alone.

‘This
is a new beginning,’ declared Catherine. ‘You have dumped your dreary
musical-theatre life and I have transferred my allegiance to a more hands-on
aspect of the caring profession. From now on, we look after ourselves.’

Catherine
was concerned from the start that our ‘work’ be secret. Our rule was ‘No trade
in the flat’. Landlord and neighbours were told we did promotional work. Even
with me she referred to escort work and ‘personal entertainment’. I didn’t
exactly lie to my mother when I told her I had a good job working for Help the
Aged.

From
the day we moved in we were determined to play the part to the hilt. It was
like being in a film, we decided. Everything must be done for effect, as if our
every waking hour was being watched and recorded. We drank champagne for
breakfast, caught taxis to Bond Street and staggered into wine bars weighed
down with designer purchases, always imagining we were the stars of our own
documentary. But after the excitement of the move and our unrestrained shopping
sprees, we had to get down to the serious business of finding the cash to pay
for it all.

Slowly
our earnings caught up with our expenditure. Catherine got plenty of work
through Madame, but as there was only the occasional call for boys among her
particular clientele I also advertised myself under the name ‘JD’ in gay
magazines. It meant that I strayed from the safer environments of hotel rooms
and private parties but in some ways it was better: as well as the transient
foreign businessman who might remember me the next time he was passing through,
there were the regular users of such services who booked me once a week or
fortnight. Regular punters gave me job security and made the whole thing a lot
less stressful — there was always the possibility of a nasty encounter every
time I met a strange man in an anonymous room, but I was lucky: nothing worse
than some stinging whipmarks ever blighted my working day.

I took
to life as a full-time prostitute much more quickly and easily than I’d
expected. Slowly but surely I gathered wisdom, experience and knowledge. I
learnt, for example, that a man’s mood might change after orgasm with alarming
swiftness: sleep is often the next thing on his agenda. The married man might
be overcome by guilt and in a hurry to pretend it had never happened. All this
was fine, as long as I had witnessed their ecstatic flash in the pan. That was
of ultimate importance to me. As long as they had experienced a moment of pure
delight, they couldn’t forget me, even if they wanted to.

As time
went by I realized I was special. This is no place for modesty — I was a
terrific fuck. Even gruff, dominant men couldn’t conceal their admiration of my
body and the delights it offered. Their eyes gave them away. More-expressive
punters went into raptures over my genitals. ‘I’ve heard of the Crown Jewels
but this is like winning the lottery!’ declared one, before diving in to enjoy
his prize.

My
beautiful face inspired others, who turned it to the light as if it was a piece
of crafted Viennese crystal.

I
prided myself on the pleasure I gave my punters, no matter what physical
attributes they brought to the party. The appearance of an employer didn’t
concern me: if he was pig ugly, it gave my performance greater value. A doctor
who resuscitates the dying gains greater professional kudos than the one who
cures a headache with junior aspirin.

Outside
work, I had no desire to enter into a relationship — in fact, I wasn’t capable
of it. I was still in love with Tim, who seemed to hover over me like some kind
of holy spirit.