paying for it

by Stuart Mark

STUART MARK lives beside the Forth bridges at South Queensferry with his wife and two very vocal sons. He has written a number of short stories and will soon complete his first (decent) novel, ‘Paying for It’. Stuart has had articles published in IT Week magazine but has yet to see any of his fiction in print. A fully paid up member of the oppressed IT workers’ community, Stuart’s writing ambitions are simple; to be prolific, preferably outside the confines of his own house.
Contact Stuart

Part One

One

Monday 3rd December 1988

Driving a manual transmission car with one hand was a skill that had become almost second nature to Martin Paton. He extended his leg into the clutch pedal and quickly chicaned the gear stick from third to second in time to return his left hand to the steering wheel and pull his vehicle ninety degrees around the corner of a sleek glass and granite office building from Douglas Street to Cadogan Street, loosening his grip on the vinyl covered wheel to bring the car back to a natural straight course.

Martin's other hand rested on his crotch, kneading his genitals in a methodical churning to maintain his partial erection. He left the car in second to give himself sufficient time to leer at the women on the pavement, each surrounded by an apparent exclusion zone into which their colleagues and competitors seemed reluctant to stray.

A girl with short, bleached hair nodded twice at him but he broke eye contact quickly. She was wearing a pair of leggings and a blouse and, although her profession and availability were obvious, Martin preferred his tarts to be dressed like tarts; denier thigh, cleavage like the Grand Canyon and stiletto heels that you could kebab pork with; the way all women should dress. He despised females who paraded about like lesbians, in trousers and the like and he truly loathed the bastard who'd invented tights. What use were they to any red blooded man? He liked his women to be dressed for hang-gliding, not vacuum-packed for freshness.

On his last circuit of these few Glasgow streets that were Scotland's unofficial, but most successful, Enterprise Zone, he had spotted one red haired whore who conformed to his stringent acceptance criteria and, considering the lack of other suitable candidates, he made a quick decision that she would be tonight's lucky recipient of his twenty quid. He turned another corner onto West Campbell Street and grinned when he saw that, in his absence, she hadn't been picked up by some dirty pervert.

"Oh no, you're all mine tonight, darlin'," he whispered and guided the car towards the pavement where she stood, lifting his crotch hand to push the illuminated electric window button with a fat, sweaty finger.

"HO! BABY!" he shouted when her head did not dip enthusiastically at him.

"Not just now, pal," she said without lowering her gaze from the building opposite. He scanned her body from the large, full breasts filling the lacy cups of a tight red basque to the black, bovine legs supported by unfeasibly spindly ankles on impossibly thin stiletto heels and felt his heart quicken at the anticipation of the sexual act with a stranger, the imminence of power.

"C'mon darlin', what's the score here? I've got money!" Clear saliva escaped from his mouth in a molten stalactite that dripped from the end of his fat chin onto the tarmac beside the car.

"I'm not workin'. Find somebody else," the strumpet said and pulled up the zip of her thin black jerkin by means of a coarse punctuation.

"You're joking!" he whined in honest disbelief. "Give us a shag, eh? C'mon, you're a good lookin' hoor. How about it, eh? I really need this," he said while his right hand fiddled with his now straining erection.

For the first time in the conversation, the girl looked down at him and smiled a practiced, inclement smile.

"Listen. If you don't fuck off right now, I'm going to get my pimp to kick seven shades of shite out of you. Okay?" she said calmly and returned her gaze to somewhere above his vehicle. Martin swallowed and immediately felt his wonderful erection begin to deflate. The mention of violence, especially violence inflicted by one of these street scum, finally got the girl's aversion through to him. He only wanted a hump for God's sake. There was no need to start making threats.

He considered making this point to the finicky bitch but feared that this might just prompt her to turn the threat into a personal crusade so, using both hands, he put the car into first and pulled back into the slow stream of traffic.

Nathalie watched him go and cursed the piece of rich, fat scum in the flash car under her breath. Pricks like him were the worst, the ones who thought they could own you for twenty-five notes. Some of the other girls, she thought of Betsy and Myra, loved fares like that when they could sit in plush velour interiors and pretend they were fixtures in these arseholes' lives before milking them for as much as they could with the old, purposely ambiguous promise of something 'a bit special'.

Nathalie was selling her body but not her self-respect. That was the only part of her that was as yet unspoiled and she was determined to keep it that way. Many would have argued that her present circumstances were testimony to its loss but Nathalie wasn't a stupid bitch, feeding a drug habit or trick-baby and she certainly wasn't kidding herself with dreams of a real life 'Pretty Woman' encounter.

She sighed at the thought of some girls she knew on the street who were actually working to pay for their boyfriends' habits and who were either too stupid or too scared to bother with such frivolities as self respect or personal liberation.

Nathalie had sex with men for money. It was that simple. She had a flat and was never short of dosh to buy clothes or food and she reckoned that her job security was pretty much guaranteed, barring a mass outbreak of homosexuality or literal monogamy. For Nathalie, prostitution was freedom, not prison and, as such, she was able to perform her job responsibilities with a honed detachment. She didn't torture herself with immaculate notions of her virginity being the most sacred and wonderful of feminine possessions, nor had she mourned its passing. Such sentimentality was for those who used it as emotional sustenance, the Mills and Boon brigade who preferred to prostitute their minds instead of their bodies.

The larger hand on the clock opposite fell into line with the VI digit and she looked away from its white face in order to scan the street, being careful not to make eye contact with any of the creeping metal shells whose panting, mollusk inhabitants would be peering at her from the shadows behind their steering wheels and tinted glass. In these dark nights, she was rarely able to see into the vehicles but her imagination invented slimy creatures with swaying tentacles that constantly searched for the female form, longing to smear their needs over naked bodies and unable to free their minds from physical thralldom.

But hey, the customer is always right!

Nathalie worked with a companion, Liz and they looked out for each other. When one was with a gonk, the other would wait for her safe return allowing no longer than twenty minutes and at the end of the night, they would split the takings, fifty-fifty. It was an arrangement that worked well.

She glanced at the clock again and calculated just over ten minutes left for Liz while lowering her hands to the backs of her legs in order to pull up her stockings as inconspicuously as she could. The attire didn't bestow any sublime feelings of feminine sensuality upon her. She dressed this way because she knew that's what her target market preferred. It gave her an edge on the competition and that meant more money.

In business, demographics are everything.

The irregular click-clack of stiletto heels approached and she looked both ways along the street, like in her old green-cross-code days, unable to discern the real sound from the urban echo.

The 'look left' revealed the figure of Liz flitting along the pavement towards her, all legs and lips.

"Your turn to spread 'em, Nat." Liz was grimacing. "He was a right minger. Think I've caught something."

Nathalie looked up at her partner's thin, angular face.

"I'm calling it a night," she said and waited for the protestation.

"Oh come on, hen. It's only," Liz glanced at her cheap plastic watch, "half ten. I've got the meter and the phone due this month. I need some decent pay packets."

"I'm sorry." Nathalie tried to soften her features but years on the street made it difficult. "I promise we'll do a full stretch tomorrow and the day after. There's just something I need to do tonight."

Liz pouted and folded her arms. "I suppose you're going to see her?" Her manner was infantile even though she was fifteen years Nathalie's senior.

"Christ, you're not jealous are you?"

Liz sniggered condescendingly but said nothing.

Nathalie sighed. "I'm worried about her. She's been acting strange lately. I just want to go and spend some time with her, make sure she's not sickening or anything."

"You worry about that lassie too much. She can take care of herself,"

"She's my mate."

"More like a daughter, the way you carry on," said Liz with a disapproving twist of her mouth. Nathalie shot her an acid glance. "OK, away you go if you must. Maybe I'll just stay here and work on."

"That's your shout. There'll be no one looking out for you, remember."

"Is someone looking out for me now?" asked Liz.

"Oh, don't be like that. Of course there is. I'll always be here for you but.."

"But what?"

"You don't own me. I have my own life as well."

Liz looked at her and slowly blossomed her old sly grin.

"I think I'll head home then. See what's on the telly."

Nathalie nodded approval and the women parted with the efficiency of many years acquaintance. Liz walked towards Central Station and Nathalie hailed a taxi, the driver of which she instructed to take her to Barlanark via the nearest chippy.

The driver must have been in his late fifties and he was one of the quiet ones, for which Nathalie was grateful. All the drivers knew when they picked up a tart and, many times, Nathalie had received every conceivable hint for payment in kind, a practice favoured by other girls who had used up the last of their night's earnings on a desperate fix of ‘H’.

Nathalie always had her taxi fare.

When they reached Bernie's street she paid the driver and trotted up the stone steps of the close, fishing a key out of her bag as she went.

On the second floor, she locked the door behind her and called her friend's name as she moved further into the flat. There was no response and she assumed that Bernie was out. Slight disappointment but not the end of the world.

First task was to warm the fish suppers and she headed through the door at the end of the hall into the kitchen. She slid the box of matches from the horrible lime green bowl that Bernie had bought from a tinker at the Barras, opened the ancient oven and squatted down in front of it with a match in one hand and the box in the other. Her short skirt rose up above the stocking line but her attention was taken by the gaping beast in front of her. With the match hand she twisted the grimy oven knob then quickly struck the match against the box and thrust it towards the hiss at the rear of the gloomy oven. There was a soft POOM to which Nathalie jerked her hand out of the appliance and waved the match dead as she stood. She adjusted the knob to a low setting, placed the Evening Times parcel onto the top grill and closed the oven door.

Looking across the tiny room, Nathalie noticed an unwashed plate and two pots in the sink. She frowned but didn’t know why, a nameless niggle.

Bernie had been complaining about her hairbrush and Nathalie pulled a replacement from her bag and took it out of its cardboard and cellophane box. She turned it in her hands, admiring the aesthetic beauty of such a functional item. Each plastic bristle stood in perfect alignment, white with a tiny spherical head, the same shade of purple as the main body of the brush. Someone designed this, she thought. What attention to detail.

She smiled absently but it was quickly beaten back by the frown, that gnawing feeling that something wasn't right. She scanned the kitchen but found no basis for concern. At first, the hall also seemed ordinarily set but as she looked and looked, something did eventually catch her eye. She needn't have looked hard, for it had been in full view since her entrance but had remained hidden from her awareness, camouflaged in her mind. Now that its position was manifest, its presence screamed at her.

It was Bernie's coat, the one she'd bought with the proceeds of her first night on the job. She loved that coat and never went out without it. Even when the weather was nice, she'd carry it over her arm like a medieval shield. It lay over the back of the single wooden chair, black as the night.

Again, Nathalie called Bernadette's name. She followed the silence slowly into the living room and stopped just inside the door. Her heart pestled the bones of her chest and her mouth turned arid.

Time slowed.

Her first emotion was anger; anger at herself for being so stupid. Prudence had warned against building friendships with products of the street but she had ignored it, thinking that this time would be different. What a fool. How could she have been so short sighted, so fucking stupid?

She approached Bernadette with teeth clenched tight, her respiration fast and shallow.

She should have known better than to expect this to work. There was no way. Something like this had been bound to happen sooner or later. The criticality of hindsight scolded her.

"Bernie?" she grated.

Her friend lay in a macabre cameo on the floor, limbs in static, tragic animation, head the centrepiece of the black bloodstain on the carpet and her face and body textured with the deep purples and reds of assault.

Nathalie said, "For fuck's sake, Bernie," in a faltering whine, her anger purged by the sudden impact of shock. The awful tableau blurred and Nathalie wiped at her eyes as she knelt on the floor.

She still clenched the purple brush in her hand.

"I got you a present, hen," she said and pulled the brush through Bernie's matted hair.

The pull turned the girl's face towards Nathalie. It was deep purple, puffy and held a terrible grimace, as if still in unspeakable pain. Nathalie looked away and saw furniture strewn around the room, couch on its back, table upturned, television smashed. Bernie's bag lay on the floor and Nathalie pulled it towards her. She stuck her hand in and absently grabbed at the first things she felt, a Rimmel lipstick and a Stanley knife, both tools of their trade. She put the knife in her pocket and opened the lipstick.

"I'll just touch you up a wee bit, gorgeous," she whispered, applying the red to Nathalie's twisted lips. Then she resumed brushing.

"How could you do this to me? How could you leave me like this? I thought we were mates."

Nathalie pulled her hand away, leaving the brush entangled in the girl's hair and surrendered to her grief. She took her friend's cold hand and held it in her lap while she cried. Occasionally, she would reach up to her own ear and absently touch the plated silver earring with trembling fingers.

For one hour and eight minutes she cried and then she left the flat, stopping only once at the first phone box to call the police.

She didn't leave her name.

* * * * * *

The glamour of death exists only where death itself does not.

It took the sight of the body to bring this grisly fact home to Samuel Dillon and its realisation gouged deep furrows in his brow.

The woman lying before him didn't look as if she was sleeping, as he had expected. Her face, instead of reflecting the peace of slumber, was completely expressionless. It was the first literally deadpan face that he'd ever seen.

Blackness encroached on their surroundings so that Sam was only aware of the thin body and his own meticulously controlled breathing. His senses were willing to accept no other detail from outside the immediate scene.

He was surprised and somewhat perplexed by his lack of emotion and by the fine, black dust of calm that had settled on his composure. He'd expected more from this moment somehow, as if his body should acknowledge the sight that met its eyes with some sort of sweat or nervous trembling or even a gratifying nausea.

Okay, so death wasn't glamorous at all. The front of the woman's head, he could no longer refer to it as a face, both disturbed and fascinated him. Even the best poker player in the world wears a facial expression. Be it skillfully blank, it is still an expression. This collection of features was now incapable of transmitting any feeling or mood but could, with a chilling bluntness, brandish death at all who would look.

Countenance had proven itself a possession of the living, its departure impossible to mimic. The body lying before Sam was so completely void of life, he found himself wondering how an actress merely holding her breath on a television cop show is ever able to fool anyone.

The woman's eyes and mouth were closed, the latter curled into a sickly crescent with corners pointed down, away from its companion features. Sam considered touching her but quickly rejected the notion. It wasn't a good idea.

His earlier sense of emotional emptiness changed slightly. A wisp of some terrible, ambiguous feeling made him shiver, not guilt exactly but an intense uneasiness all the same. He forced his now wandering eyes to look again on the woman's face and felt a niggling culpability but didn't understand why.

How could this have been allowed to happen? Was fate at work here or was it just the puppet of some terrible wrong?

Had his recent actions contributed to this loss?

He considered leaving and the idea immediately became intent. He sighed, took a final look at the woman's face and tensed to step backwards, away from the body.

A hand touched the top of Sam's arm and he started. It closed over his shoulder, preventing his withdrawal and he stopped, surrendering to its grip.

His body sagged and, slowly, he turned to look at the person standing next to him.

* * * * * *

Kathleen Dillon looked across the room at the young girl and tried to decide what to say. She was curious but she was having trouble keeping her euphoria under control long enough to formulate a question.

The silence was just so wonderful.

The girl smiled a relaxed, dreamy smile and Kathleen reciprocated. Neither spoke, they just smiled at each other as if recalling some wonderful, shared experience, too good for words.

The girl looked around the room and sighed contentment. Again, Kathleen considered breaking the peace but she couldn't bring herself to interrupt the girl's obvious pleasure. She understood just how the young lass was feeling; this was the most deeply satisfying place that she had ever known. It was more than she had hoped for by an infinite factor, love where only friendship had been expected, escape where mere reprieve had been the goal.

The girl had begun to walk in a tight circle in the centre of the room. Arms outstretched and head thrown back, she began to laugh, a stranger to humiliation in this place.

Kathleen decided that silence would suffice just as the girl decided to break it.

"This is the best hit I've ever had, straight up!"

Kathleen frowned good-naturedly. The girl stopped and pointed down at her, grinning.

"Perfect. No, consummate! Absolutely fucking consummate!"

Kathleen's smile rippled slightly and suddenly she found it easy to speak.

"Isn't it wonderful here?"

The girl shrugged. "Ask me when I come down. Under the Kingston Bridge at Christmas would be ‘wonderful’ the way I'm feeling the now."

"Come down from where?" asked Kathleen.

The girl slumped on the bed and kicked off her shoes from feet held high. Kathleen noticed the shortness of her skirt and the stocking tops revealed by her pose fired a vague curiosity.

The girl chuckled at her.

"Are you going to bed or have you just got up?"

Kathleen looked down at her quilted cotton dressing-gown, speckled with dark brown burn marks where cigarettes had been carelessly drooped onto the fabric over the years. Beneath she wore a long cotton nightdress, pattern long faded and the material similarly damaged. Even her pink slippers were burnt but, looking at them, she realised that she didn't want a cigarette.

"This is what I was wearing," she said with bare honesty. "Just like you, I imagine."

Now it was the girl's turn to frown.

"You're ‘strange and amusing’, missus."

"My name's Kathleen."

Kathleen widened her eyes in anticipation. She looked at the girl and nodded. The girl raised an eyebrow. Kathleen nodded again. The girl looked away and then back at Kathleen as if trying to find a reason elsewhere in the room for her strange motions. Kathleen smiled a sigh and discarded subtleties.

"What's your name?"

The girl paused. Then, "Suzy."

"That's a nice....."

"Bernadette," said the girl. "Bernie."

"That's a lot of names."

"I know, I....." She faltered and looked at the floor. "My name's Bernadette. Bernie," her eyes shone confusion, "but you can't know that. I shouldn't have told you."

"Told me what?"

"My name! I should have told you my name was Suzy but......."

"You can't lie here, Bernie."

Bernie looked at her, eyes pleading. "You can't know what my name is," she hissed.

"Why not?"

"I don't know you from Adam. I have to protect myself!"

"From who? No one's going to harm you here!"

"Never trust anyone." Bernie's eyes darted around the room. "Trust will kill you."

Kathleen looked at Bernie with a dark urgency. "What do you mean?"

"Nathalie told me, trust will kill you." Bernie stood and walked to the corner of the room, hugging herself against the panic. Kathleen sat forward in her seat.

"Who's Nathalie?"

Bernie began to fidget, as if trying to scrape the answer from her own forearms. It took minutes for one to come.

"Somebody I trust."

"You don't know what's happened to you," said Kathleen in response to her tense.

"Nothing's happened to me."

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Bernie looked at the ceiling and poked the tip of her tongue through her lips. "I remember……..soreness and then feeling so tired and then being here."

"My last memory," said Kathleen, "is of John sitting beside the bed, holding my hand. It was so peaceful. I just wish my son could have been there but he's away in London."

Bernie stood in front of Kathleen, hands on hips. "What are you trying to say, missus?"

Kathleen's diluted euphoria evaporated and she fought a mild sense of irritation.

"We're dead, you and me. We've both gone. I've left John and Sam and you've left your family and your friend, Nathalie was it?"

"Is this a joke or something? What do you mean we're dead?"

"Stop and think. You'll know it's true. I suppose this must be the afterlife. Not really what I expected."

Bernie scanned the room again, slower this time.

"I know this place," she said, quietly. "I've been here before."

"It's lovely," said Kathleen dubiously. The furnishings, while functionally comfortable, weren’t exactly to her taste. "Very, ehm, cosy. Did you live here?"

Bernie shook her head.

"This is a bad place, I think. I can't really remember but I know I've been here." Her chuckle was devoid of humour. "Before I died of course. Maybe we should be rattling chains or moaning or something, like proper ghosts!"

"Try to calm down, Bernie." Kathleen's tone was hard, impatient. She stood and watched Bernie trot to every door in the room and rattle each one in turn.

"They're all locked."

Kathleen sat on the bed and patted a space beside her as she would a naughty dog. "Come and sit."

"No way," said Bernie who had returned to her defensive position in the middle of the room.

"Well you certainly can't stand there forever and, to be honest, you're making me uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable? Can you not see what's in front of your face? Are your eyes opaque? All the fuckin' doors are locked!"

"So what?" said Kathleen. "It doesn't matter. Where would you go if you could leave here?"

"I…….I don't know. I can't remember. Where I lived. Who I was."

"Maybe it'll all come back to you in a while."

Bernie chewed a nail and said, "Did I have friends?"

"Wasn't Nathalie your friend?" sighed Kathleen.

"Nathalie, yeah," repeated Bernie through her vacant stare. "Maybe I will just stay here for a while. Just five minutes mind." The grimy white digital clock on the mantelpiece glowed 16:48, green through the dust.

"Well, that's something, at least. Why don't you come and sit?"

Bernie walked away from the bed and sat on the edge of the chair. She looked in Kathleen's direction, eyes full of distrust.

"Do you think anyone will miss us?" she asked.

Kathleen lowered her gaze and whispered, "I hope so."

 

Two

Nathalie sat on the steps of an office building, knees drawn up, arms folded tight across her lap and head held in a motionless stare at nothing on the other side of the street.

Cars slowed as they passed but she was oblivious. She saw Bernie, had been seeing her ever since she left the flat, on the street outside, in the phone box, in the taxi back into the city centre, sitting here in a trance of shock.

Other girls glanced at her from the kerbsides but no-one approached. She was just another junkie slag as far as they were concerned. Some of them were probably even jealous of her apparent hit.

She trembled and tensed as successive waves of realisation tore through her. She felt the implications of Bernie's death penetrate her like the gusts of a December wind. Her friend was gone forever. This was no bad dream, no close escape. Bernie was dead and there was nothing that Nathalie or the police or the do-gooders at the drop-in centre or anyone could do about it.

Her grief was absolute but controlled. She was still on the street, not a place for emotion.

Across the junction, a girl she didn't know bent to negotiate with the driver of a dirty white Peugeot, brake lights spilling red into the puddles of recent rainfall in the gutter. Nathalie watched the scene but, in her mind, she saw Bernie offering herself to the driver, surrendering her safety to whatever mood lay poised inside his head.

She remembered Bernie's absolute conviction that she was safe on the streets, the years spent without a roof over her head had honed her intuition for danger but had also inflated her self confidence. Paradoxically, this aplomb served to dilute her natural instinct for self preservation, a perversion of common sense that had tonight proved unforgiving in its brutality.

Nathalie had tried, in vain, to instill an uncompromising suspicion in her. It was by Nathalie's hand, after all, that she had gone on the game but each attempt had been met with Bernie's good-natured reassurance and a wave of her trusty Stanley knife and, despite herself, Nathalie had regularly capitulated to the younger girl's judgment.

They were both victims of a kind of streetwise naiveté. Trust had betrayed Nat and killed Bernie.

Almost without conscious decision, Nathalie stood and walked towards the white car. The girl was still bent to the open passenger window when Nathalie reached the driver's side and punched her knuckles against the glass. The girl straightened in a sharp convulsion, assuming police intervention but her expression of panic changed to indignant rage when she saw Nathalie attending her prospective client.

The occupant of the car rolled down the window and stared at Nathalie's breasts.

"Sale on tonight, honey," she pouted. "Anything you want for a five-spot."

"Hey, what the fuck do you think your doin', by the way?" snarled the girl across the roof of the Peugeot.

"Are we on?" asked Nathalie.

The girl advanced around the front of the car.

"You fuckin' wee cunt! I'm going to fuckin' blade your fanny if you don't gettofuck right-fuckin'-now."

The object of attention in the car winced at the fuck-girl's eloquence and then nodded at Nathalie. As the girl approached, he rolled up his window and seemed to shrink slightly as she passed. Nathalie strode quickly around the rear of the car with the girl in hot pursuit, firing salvos of expletive across her bows.

She reached the passenger door and slid quickly into the seat, pulling the door home behind her, but was unable to close the window in time to prevent the girl's punch connecting with the side of her head.

"Jesus!" said the driver over the girl's crazed shrieks.

"Go," said Nathalie through teeth clenched against the sudden pain.

The driver shook the stick into first gear and lurched the car away from the kerb. The girl pushed her hand back through the window and grabbed Nathalie's hair. She screamed as her head was jerked towards the window by the girl's grip and the driver responded to the sound by committing himself to the full, unconditional release of the clutch. The girl refused to relinquish her grip and stumbled over the kerb as she was pulled onto the road by the car's departure. Nathalie's head was slammed against the upper edge of the window glass protruding from the door as the girl fell, losing contact with Nathalie but wrenching a clump of hair from her scalp in the process.

Nathalie laid her head against the headrest with a wince and closed the window, blocking out the rabid threats being screeched at her from the gutter behind them.

"Christ!" said the driver.

"I've done her a favour," muttered Nathalie.

"Are you all right," asked the driver.

"No more than I deserve."

The driver glanced at her but she was locked in a distant, humourless smile.

The car slipped into the gloom between the concrete pillars supporting the Anderston Centre and emerged back into the halogen glare at the road's junction with Argyle Street.

"Where do you want to go?" The driver’s voice was too upbeat, as if he feared she might cancel their ‘date’.

Nathalie sighed. Her smile was gone.

"Right," she said without looking at him. The driver embraced his steering wheel to check the road was clear and pulled out from the junction. He passed under the M8 motorway where Argyle Street turns into the Clydeside Expressway only to be directed off the carriageway by another flat command from Nathalie as they approached the SECC exit.

The slip road dropped to the junction with Finnieston Street and they turned left, passing between the exhibition centre on the right and the car showrooms and commercial units on the left. At the mini-roundabout, Nathalie directed them left again onto the Broomielaw and then another left into Elliot Street.

"Park here."

The driver obeyed and switched off the engine. They sat in a silence textured by the subdued traffic drone from the Expressway and M8. Nathalie could feel the young driver's expectant eyes on her and sensed his mounting excitement but she said nothing.

Her client fidgeted in his seat and then, in what was obviously intended as a nonchalant commencement to proceedings, laid his hand on her thigh, just below the hem of her short, black skirt.

For the first time since entering the vehicle, Nathalie interrupted her straight-ahead stare and looked down at her lap.

The boy twisted in his seat and brought his right hand up to her breast. Nathalie made no effort to stop him. She raised her head and looked straight into his wide eyes.

"What's your name?"

The boy froze, holding her like an incompetent dancing partner.

"Andy."

"Hi Andy. I'm Nathalie." Her smile was back, inviting and erotic. "Are you married?" she asked, almost breathless.

"Not yet."

"Engaged?"

He paused and then allowed impatience to answer in truth.

"Aye. But there's no date set." He moved his face closer to hers.

"How about we get payment out of the way first, eh?"

Andy stopped and then nodded vigorously, eager to oblige. He removed his hand from her breast to fumble in the pocket of his Kappa tracksuit trousers. His left hand held on to Nathalie's thigh as though he suspected she might make a run for it.

"And while you're doing that, I'll just get something special for us."

Nathalie stuck her hand into her leather bag. Andy pulled out a ten and a five, separated them in his hand and crunched the ten back into his pocket. He watched Nathalie rummage for a condom and wondered if she had run out. He considered offering the one he kept in his wallet when she said, "Here it is. I knew I had one."

She withdrew her hand. In it was Bernie's Stanley knife. She held it up in front of her face and thumbed the blade three notches out.

"Fuck's sake!" said Andy. Nathalie turned the knife in her fingers, holding it in a number of positions.

"What's the Hampden-roar?" he asked, a little panicky.

Nathalie looked again at her lap.

"Get. Your. Fuckin'. Hand. Off. My. Leg."

The boy recoiled himself against the driver's door.

"Do you think I'm a bad person?" she asked.

"I don't even know who you are." His voice betrayed a tremble.

"But do you think I'm bad for what I do?"

"I don't...."

"Do you want to hurt me? Do I deserve a beating?"

"No! I don't hit women," The tremble was now a vibrato of fear.

"I am bad, though. I'm evil."

"Please will you not hurt me? Please?"

Nathalie smiled and shook her head slowly. She pulled the hem of her skirt back with her free hand and plucked the black band of her stocking away from her skin. She placed the knife daintily against the nylon and made a slit from the stockingtop to the knee.

"I should be dead. All these years I've been shagging wankers like you."

"I should be getting up the road."

"Not as much fun as you expected? I'm sorry about that. I forget that all this is just leisure pursuit to folk like you. I spend so much time trying to stop myself getting done-in and seeing girls getting battered or stabbed or," she took a deep breath, "or even murdered. You don't worry about that but why should you, eh? We're just an amenity to you."

"Look," said Andy, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I'll give you money if you want."

"Thing is, I don't have any right to put someone in danger. Who am I to put a person's life at risk? Just because I've survived, doesn't mean to say it's safe out here. Fuck, you could do anything to me. You could be any sort of bammer but I still get in the car with you and let you take me somewhere like this. Quiet. Secluded. Dangerous."

"You're the one with the fuckin' knife!"

Nathalie changed her grip to psycho-style, blade pointing down.

"I swear to you Andy, I'm going to find out what happened to my pal. Everyone who helped her die is going to be punished."

The boy unclipped his seatbelt and tried to wriggle out of it as he spoke. "I don't know what you're talking about or what happened but it wasn't me. I didn't have anything to do with it!"

"Everyone will be punished and it starts here."

"C'mon, cool your jets Hen!" screeched Andy as Nathalie lifted the knife above her head, hitting the roof of the car.

"FUCKING BASTARDS," she screamed.

"Jesus! Not my nob!!" The boy pawed at the door latch.

Nathalie brought the knife down fast into her upper thigh with a grunt of pain and for one, absurd moment she was reminded of piercing a sausage before it goes under the grill.

"Jesus fuckin' fuck!" Andy appeared to be hyperventilating.

Nathalie bared her teeth and pushed the knife towards her knee.

"Fuckin' give it a by, will you!" he said. His door was open now thanks to the surreptitious use of his elbow but he had surrendered any notion of escape.

Nathalie only managed two searing inches before the agony of the action forced her to yank the knife away from her flesh. Blood coursed from her wound painting her milky thigh a deep crimson and darkening the car seat.

"Ouch," Nathalie decided.

"Christ! What the fuck's wrong with you?"

"I've got a nasty cut on my leg."

"Ha ha. You know what I mean. Why the fuck did you do that?"

"Told you," said Nathalie between gasps. "The punishment starts here."

"You're a fuckin' psycho, hen!"

"Maybe." Nathalie fished a cotton handkerchief from her bag, wiped the triangle of blade and then held the cloth against the flow of blood. She retracted the blade and dropped it back into her bag. "Any chance you could drop me at the Western?"

"No fuckin' way. I want you out of this car, sharpo."

Nathalie smiled at his choice of word and then nodded in resignation. She wasn't overly surprised at the boy's reaction. She tugged the door latch and pushed the door open, swung both legs onto the road and stood, unsteadily, on one. She left a pool of blood on the seat and was gratified to see that the carpet in the footwell was also nicely stained.

"Explain that to your fiancée," she leered as Andy started the engine. He obviously considered leaning over to pull the passenger door shut but was unwilling to negotiate the red moat that separated them. He jumped out of the car and trotted round to close it from the outside.

"You should be locked up," he said as he creaked the door closed.

"Not punishment enough," answered Nathalie quietly. She watched him screech away without switching his lights on and then started limping to the nearest phone box.

* * * * * *

The glamour of death.........

Samuel looked at his father but the gesture was not returned. John Dillon stared into the coffin but released his grip on Sam's shoulder by way of an acknowledgement. Sam looked to his left and found Jennifer standing there, her eyes fixed on him. He managed the briefest smile at his girlfriend and she took his hand. He wanted so much to hold her, smell her beautiful gilded alabaster hair but the solemnity of the surroundings warned against such abandon and he felt his regard being directed away from her.

He looked again at the woman's face, his mother's face.

Pneumonia was the official cause of death but it didn't sit well with Sam. Middle aged people who lived in council flats with the heating always on didn't die of pneumonia. Not just out of the blue like this. Sam suspected the diagnosis to be merely a matter of cause and effect, proof of her real illness.

He heard his father sobbing quietly to his right and felt Jennifer's hand squeezing his left. They stood in a line gazing at Kathleen as if they were waiting for her to do something. Sam was surprised at how bad she looked and then distressed at having such an idiotic thought. Of course she looked bad, she was dead. But he remembered from somewhere, hearing about the skill of the undertaker and about how a good one could make a body look presentable for its funeral, a kind of cadaver makeover. He supposed being 'presentable' for a night on the town and 'presentable' as the focus of grief were opposing contexts of the word. He had a vision of old women gazing lovingly at his mother and commenting, the way old women always have to pass comment, no matter what the situation, on 'how peaceful she looks'. Again he pondered the notion that he'd expected her to appear as if she was sleeping and realised how impossible a feat that was.

Let down to the very end. Even the undertaker couldn't give her some fucking dignity.

After receiving the phone call, Sam had locked himself in Rod's bathroom for two hours and tried to make sense of what he had just been told. Then he forced Rod to go to the pub and watch him find reasons at the bottom of a pint glass. The next morning he borrowed Rod's car and drove to Oakness, the place of his birth, from London through the haze of a hangover to spend two days helping his father organise the cremation. It was strange to be required to discuss logistical and fiscal arrangements for a function that has arisen out of your mother's death but it gave them both a splattering of purpose and they approached each appointment with manic efficiency.

It all seemed so fast. Alive and drinking on Sunday morning and laid out in a presentation box on Wednesday afternoon, cask matured, 48-Year-Old Mater.

Again he considered touching his mother but he couldn't bring himself to the task. He felt numb, not grief stricken, not even sad really, just distracted, unable to concentrate for any useful length of time.

When the time came, they left Kathleen Dillon and traveled to the crematorium in the undertaker's ceremonial car. The other mourners were already there, gathered outside in little clumps.

As Sam left the car, a ghost of a man approached him. Uncle Jack. Sam smiled the brave funeral smile and waited for Jack's condolences but, instead, he felt an urgent grip on his arm.

"This was a long time coming, boy. Justice at last." Sam recoiled from his glare and the stench of alcohol and watched him shuffle back to the black suits.

They walked into the crematorium chapel with some trepidation and Sam sat on the front row, between his father and his maternal Grandmother. Other members of the family filled this and two rows behind and Sam contemplated them, not as normal people but as a group of clan caricatures; Emily, the perfect piano playing, university attending cousin; Frank, the loner, unmarried uncle who never smiled; Roz, the divorced auntie who was always very friendly to him; Buntie, the great-aunt with the great big dog and Jack. Uncle Jack, his father's closest brother who never let anything get in the way of a good time. Wife, daughters, job, money, sobriety, all sacrificed for an afternoon alternating between the pub and the bookie's whenever he felt like it. Jack was a bit of a role model for Sam. He carried a memory with him, like a little laminated reminder card, of finding Jack slumped outside Ladbrokes one Saturday afternoon trying to sell passers-by his shoes for a fiver. Jack was Sam's example of how not to live your life and he had so many reasons to be miserable but here he was, it seemed, inexplicably happy about Sam’s mother's death.

Sam turned to locate Jen but instead watched the professionally sad carry the coffin to the front of the chapel and lay it on the automatic altar.

The Minister followed religious protocol with grace, calling sombre hymns, saying the appropriate prayers and giving a kind, 'one-size-fits-all' epitaph. This was going through the ecclesiastical motions, buying the ticket for the trip to heaven and Sam wondered if there was really any point in all of it. Who was it really for, her or us?

His father's tears had been mopped by a silent, dignified bravery but Sam picked up subdued sobs from locations behind him, the most prominent of which emanated from one of his cousins in the row directly behind, Linda, the rich wife of a Yorkshire businessman, who had rendered herself inconsolable. This surprised Sam who couldn't remember the last time she and Kathleen had been in the same room.

He sat impassively, listening to the holy man's words and darting his gaze between the plain wooden cross on the wall and his mother's coffin. As he looked, the suddenness of her death played on his mind. There had to be something more to this, something he'd missed. Again he looked for reasons. It wasn't good enough just to say she died. He needed something more, an explanation for her wasted life.

He thought again of Uncle Jack, haggard and spent but so full of hatred for his mother. He couldn't shake Jack's cryptic, vitriolic comment from his mind. A sudden urge to talk this over with his father came upon him and he made a promise to himself that he would honour it when this was all over.

They stood to sing the second hymn and as the first bars of 'The Lord's My Shepherd' brought the gathering into song, a black curtain swung silently across the front of the coffin.

Sam watched the coffin disappear but saw, for the first time, his mother leave him, leave him forever.

Memories ambushed him, of glasses of milk and slices of buttered toast in front of the telly, him sitting on the floor while she stroked his hair from the armchair, keeping each other company while his father subsidised their income with buckshee decorating jobs; caravan holidays in Morecambe and Whitley Bay; her jumping in to a vicious dogfight in the middle of their street one summer to separate their mongrel pet from a malevolent black labrador while he screamed from the safety of the pavement; waking every morning to find a bowl of Frosties and a mug of tea by his bed; Christmas's passed in a blur of contentment.

He realised that this was it. His mother was dead.

Don't go, Mum, he thought. Please don't go.

His sudden grief was made tangible with a fusillade of tears. His tiny Grandmother gripped his hand.

"It's alright Sammy, you let it all out, Son. Let it out."

Sam sat with his grandmother as the hymn reached its lugubrious conclusion. She continued to issue resolute succours to her grandson, the way old women are always able to say just the right thing at the right time.

Sam put his head on his grandmother's shoulder and cried for his mother.

* * * * * *

"My head's swimming," said Bernie. "Little flashes of stuff. Recollections I suppose."

"You can't remember what happened to you? Before you came here, I mean?" asked Kathleen.

"I told you, didn't I?"

Kathleen's mouth curled, disapprovingly. "I could probably guess," she sneered.

"What do you mean?"

Kathleen looked away but nodded in Bernie's direction. "Well, look at the way you're dressed for a start."

Bernie exploded incredulity. "Me? What about you? You look like a fire damaged join-the-dots."

"Maybe, but at least I keep myself decent. I don't flaunt myself. Did you actually go outside dressed like that?"

Bernie thought for a while and then remembered. "Only when I was working,"

Kathleen's eyes widened.

"That's right," said Bernie, "’a woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money’. A shitload of money as well."

"That is disgusting."

"Well, I've met a ton of men who would disagree with you, missus. They didn't seem that disgusted when they were giving it to me."

"Oh, stop it for goodness sake. I don't want to hear about your sordid life. There are no men here now so can we keep the conversation on a respectable level or else let's not talk at all."

"Decent. Decorous! I can do that, no bother."

But Kathleen couldn't let it go. "You're just a child. How could you do something like that?"

"I'm fifteen. Anyway, thought you didn't want talk about my 'sordid life'?"

Kathleen folded her arms. "I worry about this world, sometimes. Young girls like you selling themselves, drugs, single mothers. It's as if nobody's got any sense of decency any more.

"I suppose you never did anything indecent in your life. Nice husband, family, everything easy."

"I did have a husband and a son but everything in my life has been far from easy, I can assure you."

"Oh, sure! Not getting his tea ready on time, running out of soap powder, that kind of thing?"

"You know," said Kathleen coldly, "I always wanted a daughter but, listening to you, I'm almost glad I didn't."

"Why didn't you? Too busy baking cakes?"

"Actually, I had a miscarriage."

Bernie's belligerence faltered slightly. "So? Women have them all the time, don't they?"

Kathleen conceded a slow nod. "Yes," she said quietly. "Sounds so easy until it happens to you. But it's a lot worse than the nice neat name suggests. A lot more," she remembered the death of her child, "a lot more graphic."

"When did it happen?"

"Ninteen seventy. Eighteen years ago."

"Well, I suppose if we’re going to be stuck here, you might as well tell me about it," said Bernie.

Kathleen nodded, curled her legs underneath her body and relayed the past.

Sam loved the butcher's shop. To a three year old the sawdust that covered the concrete floor was as much a draw as the beach at Blackpool. Kathleen waited in the queue of women that curled around the glass-fronted display counters, watching her son, crouched and busy on the floor. Every so often she would break him out of his play with a stern call to move when he got in a customer's way or when his game drifted too close to the door. Her tone came not from any real sense of annoyance, rather it was a choleric manifestation of the persistent twinges in her abdomen. She regretted her impatience and many of the women in the queue alternated their smiles at Sam with reproachful glances at Kathleen. Some of them even tutted.

She waited patiently while young wives and daughters dressed in bright midis and blouses and older women in more neutral colours procured mince and chops, brisket and stewing steak. Shopping bags of vinyl and string received the paper-wrapped produce and the queue moved on under the direction of the blood stained proprietor.

When it came to Kathleen's turn, she called Sam to her side. The butcher leaned over the counter and handed him a slice of dark, fruit dumpling, which he accepted after some impatient cajoling from his mother.

"What do you say?" prompted Kathleen.

Sam interrupted his intense examination of the dumpling with a timid programmed, "Thank you." Despite her impatience, Kathleen was glad of his reserve, even in front of this relatively familiar man. It meant that her constant warnings about strangers were working. The memory of the 'moors' was still strong in many, including her. She wished those two had hung and cursed their luck, getting convicted just after Callaghan's daft experiment began. The five year stay of execution from which they, and many more, benefited should have finished this year but the Home Secretary had decided to make his abolition of hanging permanent last year. The act saddened her.

"What is it today, ma darlin’?" asked the butcher.

Kathleen got as far as, "A half pound of tripe," when the pain began to twist her abdomen, wringing the life out of her. She screamed, short and sharp and, when the invisible hand that held her baby did not release its grip, she fell to her knees. She knew what was happening immediately, the culmination of inevitability. The butcher embarked on an emergency mission to the customer side of the counter while other women in the shop reacted with hands to mouths or by pulling their children to their side in protection against this unknown. Kathleen reached out, trying to do the same but Sam was rooted and staring just out of reach, the same height as her now. Many calls were made to God but he didn't come. Instead, the butcher arrived and knelt beside Kathleen.

"C'mon hen, let's get you laid down." He put a hand behind her neck and laid her flat on the sawdust. The women gathered close, eager, and one knelt and took one of her hands. A monochromatically dressed lady picked Sam up and told him everything was alright. He started to cry, not because of his mother but due to his proximity to this stranger. The woman assumed the former and held him tight.

Kathleen screamed again, feeling her baby go and wanting Sam by her side and then the young apprentice butcher shouted, "Aw Jesus, look at the blood!" The butcher looked through the gasps at the crimson sawdust and rocked back onto his feet, stood and backed away.

"Phone an ambulance," he shouted to his assistant.

The women stepped back just far enough to preserve the polish of their shoes as Kathleen looked between her knees at the red alluvion, already reaching the base of the counter, and began to think that maybe this was more than a miscarriage. Although she'd known something was wrong despite her aloof doctor's casual reassurances earlier in the week, she hadn't expected a miscarriage to bring all this blood, hadn't realised that it would be so violent. She shouted, "Don't let him see this!" but the lady had already removed Sam to the back of the crowd. Someone said, "He's alright, hen, don't you worry," but Kathleen had already taken ownership of the worst case scenario and was thinking contingencies; how would John cope without her, who would help him look after Sam, where were the insurance policies?

The butcher turned his back on the gush of human blood and began to herd his customers out of the shop. Their reluctance was manifest in the snatched glances and impatient concern. The old lady took Sam to the back shop while the butcher blindly threw more sawdust over the red stains on the floor as if he had just slaughtered a cow. The last remaining customer stayed with Kathleen, chanting a mantra of reassurance until the two ambulancemen, officious in peaked hats and dark ties, arrived. They spoke in loud tones as they cleaned her up and plonked her onto a stretcher.

"Don't worry, it's only a wee miscarriage. It just wasn't your time for a baby," one of them bawled.

Sam's temporary carer brought him into the ambulance and accompanied Kathleen to the hospital, still a stranger, while she held his hand and smiled bravely. He gazed at the medical paraphernalia surrounding them and asked her why she was strapped into the little bunk. Her eyes filled with tears and she let the stranger answer.

At the hospital, she was processed and then examined by a youngster in a white coat and stethoscope.

"There’s a lot of blood," he said to the nurse standing behind him.

"Perhaps Mr Duncan should take a look?" she said. The doctor stood and smiled at Kathleen, freed from the responsibilities of her care by his nurse’s suggestion.

"We’ll be back in just a moment," he said.

Kathleen allowed fatigue to tug at her eyelids while she waited, thinking of her children and what might have been. After an immeasurable period of soporific contemplation, an older man in a half-moon spectacles and a three-piece suit entered the cubicle, tailed by the nurse and then the young doctor. He bent over and began his examination without any introduction other than the brisk donning of rubber gloves and Kathleen felt him inside her while the doctor said, "This is Mr Duncan, the consultant."

Kathleen wondered with a weary submission whether this was what they meant by an invasive procedure.

Eventually, he stood up and removed the red gloves. "Now then, Mrs Dillon, you've had a miscarriage. That means that you are no longer going to have a baby, okay?"

Kathleen nodded and, although she was aware of the implications of her miscarriage, fought back tears again, scared that the doctor might shout at her for somehow causing this.

"Now, I don't like the look of your insides so we’re going to carry out an operation, to stop all this bleeding."

"An operation?"

"Yes, there may still be some tissue inside you and we need to get it out. There might also be some degree of infection."

"Alright, if you’re sure," said Kathleen, voice slurry now.

The doctor's voice rose very slightly. "Mrs. Dillon, there is a chance that your womb may be damaged. If that is the case, we’ll have to remove it," he said with slow deliberation. "Do you understand?"

"Remove my womb? But what about more children?"

"Well, you won’t have any without a womb," he replied with a mildly derisory smile. "You have a little boy I believe."

Kathleen wondered if his posh patients also received this polite contempt. She nodded, surrendering to his superior status.

"Well, that's not so bad then, is it? One's better than none at all."

Again, Kathleen nodded obediently.

"Let’s see what we discover in the operation first, shall we?" said the doctor, checking his watch. He looked back at her and Kathleen wondered if he'd realised her shock.

"You’ll only take out my womb if there’s no other option?" she asked.

"Chin up for your husband, now," he said. "You'll still be able to be a good wife, whatever the outcome. Just worry about him and your little boy and leave this nasty business to us, alright?" He turned to leave the examination cubicle. "We'll let you know when it's time for theatre," he called over his shoulder and disappeared through the white curtain.

The doctor smiled at her and followed the consultant, leaving Kathleen to be prepared for theatre by the nurse. She felt like a side of meat in the butchers as her clothes were efficiently exchanged for a gown without her slightest involvement. She battled with the implications of what she had been told.

No more womb; no more children. That was it then. One wife, slightly soiled.

She felt a compulsion to hold her son but dreaded the arrival of her husband.

Copyright© 2003 Stuart Mark

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