Tiffany

I had worked for Mr. Maxwell since leaving school, and though it mightn’t suit everyone, I’d enjoyed the last twenty years. I like living where I was born, and small-town Scotland still places commerce a rung above the more recently-invented professions. I was already as good as manager of Mr. Maxwell’s shop, with a smooth path to succeeding him on his retirement, and in most ways life was good. I fished and shot, sailed, studied local history and took pictures, but never joined the clubs. I composed the local newspaper crossword, too, although very few people knew that. I had nothing to go away on holiday for, and I had never known serious illness. What sort of shop? A jeweller’s, and that’s part of the story.

I wasn’t quite a virgin. There had been a couple of farm-girls I’d known from school – after we’d left, of course - with the ruddy-faced simplicity a man tires of, then a couple of ‘serious’ girlfriends, till I realised it was lifestyle and status they were serious about. One was religious, while the other threw out hints of delights to come, and used the word ‘reliable’ a lot. Was there ever such a depressing word as that? Well, Iam the reliable type, or could be, but I decided they weren’t the type I wanted to be reliable for. Their relatives gossiped and Mr. Maxwell fretted, so as I’m obsessive about privacy, I decided I’d be like the fox who never touches the chickens close to home. They both have haggard-looking husbands by now, but I doubt if they’re haggard from the right thing, and it has become all too plain how artfully-maintained had been the girls’ grip upon good looks. They went for what they wanted, I suppose, and once it was security, but now it was food. I’ve come to understand how many a human female emulates the common cucumber, by being delicious in the virginal state, but bitter once pollinated.

Then there were the prostitutes, around the Anderston bus station in Glasgow. But that was a glimpse into a bleak, unwashed world of social misfits and falseness, which couldn’t have held my interest long, even if my first sight of needle tracks hadn’t killed it on the spot. I can understand the compulsive philanderer, but there’s no more challenge in prostitution than in fishing for trained professional fish. I’d have been perfectly glad to exercise moderation in the matter of philandering, but by the age of 37 the problem was getting to exercise anything at all. The odd thing was, I thought I’d ended up detesting those girls until I knew I’d never use them again, but after that my heart went out to them, for their awful predicament.

Not long ago, considering, I answered an ad in a photographic magazine:

LOCAL CONTACTS! Penfriends, models, romance, fun relationships in all areas. Hundreds of photographs. Send for approval copy ofyour local edition now.

I don’t know what I expected, exactly, but nothing like what I got. There were hundreds of photographs, all right, although small and badly printed, and mostly fit for ‘Amateur Gynaecologist’, if such a thing exists. I’ve never even been a top-shelf magazine person, much, and some of their pictures would be beautiful if they were anywhere else.

What got to me, though, was the variety of the ads. A small minority, with ordinary snapshots, were from British and foreign teenagers seeking penpals, and others from ordinary women, obviously seeking Mr. Right. ‘Badly hurt in the past’ is another phrase I find ominous, and if they’d ever seen the magazine, they had chosen an unlikely way of doing better. I didn’t think it was right to let them in for the replies they must have been getting. Not surprisingly a lot were males, some with a strip of white tape blotting out strategic areas. Why some and not others? You could judge by the angle.

That left a lot that intrigued me. Attractive bored housewives, desperate for uncomplicated sex? Ah well, one hears of such things… But their numbers seemed improbable, especially when I had always assumed that like Rolls-Royce, they Do Not Advertise. What could they be? Masquerading homosexuals? People driven by some morbid compulsion? Burglars doing research? HIV victims who believe a trouble shared is a trouble halved? Anything seemed possible, and not much of it good. Then there were the couples, more than half of them looking for other couples, a lot for bisexual females, and a sprinkling for single men. They didn’t, I noticed, claim the bored housewives’ preponderance of DD cup bra sizes. I had always thought that to be a rarity, and I still think it.

It was cheap enough to try on an off-chance, so I paid for a six-month subscription, and the forwarding fee for letters to a wide selection of advertisers. Jewellers are cautious, so I used postal orders and my first Christian name, which I hadn’t used locally since deciding I preferred James to Matthew J.

To most I got no reply, unless you count a rash of junk mail for pornographic videos and sexual aids. What I found annoying, after paying £2 a time for forwarding, were the photocopied ‘personal’ letters from females, offering a set of photographs to advance our relationship, if I would just send £10 cash for help with printing and postage. Just one was handwritten and seemed perfect, until she started explaining how irrelevant it was that she’d been born a boy. The person who agreed might find her beyond price, I thought, but it was relevant to me.

Only from the couples I nearly always got polite apologies, saying they’d heard from more single men than they could ever meet. Looking at the magazine again, I had a better eye for deviousness, but I thought I saw an air of normality and decency about the couples, which most of the others didn’t have.

The biggest shock came from an ad I never answered at all. Not many people would have recognised the procurator-fiscal and his wife, Scotland’s equivalent of a district attorney, who lived just fifteen miles away. I had known Gwendolyn at primary school, before I was frightened off by the beginnings of her legendary bosom. Phillip was a much older boy, of the sort who would have appealed to her family, around the time they put her into quarantine from those with nothing but mongrel vigour to offer. They were well-known for ‘county’ parties which I never attended, and others, thought to be professional reunions, which only strangers ever did. If they had not disguised their identities under Pip and Gwennie, their childhood nicknames, as well as the domino masks, I would never have recognised them.

This I wanted. I became absorbed by thoughts of once-unattainable portions of Gwendolyn, and I envisaged Phillip, who had worn less well than I had, becoming aware of certain comparisons. But there they were, with an ad which stated ‘no single males’. Part of a couple was obviously the thing to be. That, however, brought me back to square one.

I badly needed a girl you don’t take home to mother. I don’t think I’m immoral, or even amoral in the all-round sort of way, but in that situation, I believe, a young man’s fancy turns to duplicity. It came to me in a flash one evening, with what kind of girl a man was justified in being a predator. One who was an active predator herself, of course. The ideas flooded in on me, but it was typical, I suppose, that I started out in the area I knew best.

I had to travel up to Glasgow to make some purchases from Greenbergs the tool and fittings suppliers. After the firm’s goods, I bought two nine carat ring castings, one white and one yellow, and two synthetic cubic zirconias. The jewellery chainstores’ staff would need a thermal conductivity tester to tell those from exceptionally good 2½ carat diamonds, and while I can tell by the refraction, it would take good light. I paid for those personally, saying I had to copy an acquaintance’s ring for security purposes. They laughed at me for forgetting both the colour and my personal chequebook. But the idea was to pay cash. Nobody should ever check my bank statements over this plan, but if they did, they wouldn’t find any transaction with Greenbergs.

I made up those rings myself, and removed the castings manufacturer’s hallmark. I do a nice job, and you don’t often see claw-work that good on cubic zirconia. If you ever buy jewellery retail, you probably don’t want to know how little they cost. It’s funny that I never thought of using them the way randy jewellers traditionally do. We all have our standards, I suppose. As for what I planned, the prisons would be overflowing if that was a crime.

The next stop was Dumfries, and the loft where the local newspaper keep a century and a half of back issues. I’d consulted those before, and nobody knew I wasn’t looking for local history this time. I spent two evenings there, compiling a list of girls under twenty who had been convicted of minor offences in the last year. The age was not my preference, specially, but to increase the chances of their being single and childless. I excluded anything suggesting drugs, alcoholism, a man, motherhood or irrational aggression, and I checked the old school photographs for appearance. There wasn’t, unless I’d missed something, any prostitution in Dumfries. Back home again, I started searching the U.K.-Info Disk computer programme, which is a database of the complete U.K. electoral register.

At last I had Tiffany Blair, Charlene Iredale and Melanie-Jayne McGrure, all convicted of petty theft, all with previous convictions and all on the phone. Tiffany, aged nineteen, seemed the best, for she lived alone, Charlene with two unrelated females, and Melanie-Jayne with a male and female McGrure, of whom the former was born in 1948. Tiffany, it was true, had struck a store detective while fourteen Wonderbras cascaded from her false pregnancy, but that hardly proved a violent disposition. The names grated a bit, since I can find no record of my family using anything but the four evangelists and a few Old Testament females. I hoped I wouldn’t end up with anybody named Melanie-Jayne.

I made the first call in Ayr, from a callbox outside the security camera zone.

‘Hello. Is that Tiffany?’

‘Aye. Wha’s that?’ I almost panicked and hung up, but I knew all was lost if I let that show.

‘Oh, somebody you don’t know. But you’re the person I need for a job.’

‘What kind of job?’ She sounded suspicious but not afraid, which was about right.

‘The kind that makes a lot of money. But it’s safe – ’

‘No’ on the phone. I’ll meet you an’ talk, if you like. Baith alone, in the open.’

‘All right, how about the Whitesands in Dumfries?’

This was working out better than I thought.

Tiffany was taller than I had expected, at about 5’9”, and just a little short of frail in build, but the subtle swell of her turquoise tank-top suited my taste very well. Her hair, which was drawn together with a clasp, was a deep auburn, and she had a curiously long, slightly toothy face, which mightn’t sound pretty or delicate, but was both. They were exceptionally good teeth, and anthropologists would fight over that skull. Her skin wasn’t quite what it might be, but that would be diet. The skin-tight white satin knee-breeches, with a trace of what I later learned was called a pantie-line, suited her if they suited anybody. There might be a touch of vanity there, if she wore those to a meeting she should want to be inconspicuous, but I still thought she was better-looking than she knew. She moved well too, in long, swinging strides, which I’ve always liked. Little was said until we reached a quiet riverside walk, and sat a chaste distance apart on a bench.

‘So tell me what you’ve got in mind.’

‘Well, I’ve contacts in a jewellery business, up the Ayrshire coast. They know most of the local people with valuable jewellery. There’s a family we’ll call Hammond, whose jewellery they usually store in the safe. Most of the time Mrs. Hammond wears copies, very much like this.’

I handed her one of my zirconia rings. You learn a lot by seeing how a person reacts to jewellery, and Tiffany was exactly right – impressed, but not in a feeding frenzy. If she’d been a customer I’d have taken out my Moe gauge, and shown her how to estimate the carat size, which always impresses. But I didn’t want to shout ‘in the trade’ just yet.

The story I told was a work of art. I needed a girl to help me get close to them, during one of the periods when they would have the real diamond. Tiffany was no fool, pointing out at once that age and accent made us an improbable couple. I passed her the contact magazine, and I watched a fascinating mixture of shock, calculation and humour crossing her face. But she turned a lot of pages. The down on the back of her neck was a gleaming halo in the sun, and her tank-top had been washed until the label faded. Thirty-four.

‘Oh, I get it,’ she said at last. ‘Swingers.’

‘You know about that?’

‘I’ve heard a bit.’

‘Well, I think they are. At least, some close friends of theirs are in there.’

Tiffany leant her chin on her clasped hands, stared across the river for quite a while, then looked at me.

‘Well, I bet we wouldnae be the oddest couple around, then. But see if you think I’m some sort o’ high-class prostitute? I told the girls in the nick, I did…’

It occurred to me that although her costume would have been unexceptional around that Glasgow bus-station, I had run into a distinction that mattered to her.

‘We’d be partners. If it works, we make a lot of money nobody wants to give us, but if it doesn’t, we don’t. You’d Be on shares, not paid. I can’t see any prostitution there.’

‘Maybe not. Just what’ve we got to do?’

‘First we’ll need a photograph of us together, like these.’

‘One leg over here, an’ one leg over there? No way, it’s got to be a real elegant photo, like Page Three, or Greek statues. No’ like her in the bodice, even. The trick is to get it real tight around the ribs, then a wee bit looser higher up. Absolute ruin, if you want to make an impression, are squashed-flat - ’

‘Yes, yes, it’ll be a nice photo. That picture gets us into one or two small parties…’

‘Swinging parties? Well, nae false modesty, I can handle that, so I can. When I was younger, I did things that made me bloody relieved I was HIV negative, when I got tested in the nick. Girls are different since your young days, lots of ’em. Mind you, I got abused, see, incestuous, when I was thirteen, then later in the special school, an’ it’s mighty rare a girl turns oot normal after that. I did what’s the smart thing for a pilot after a plane crash, if I’d but known it - get back up there afore your nerve goes, and you’ll come right. So I come right, an’ I think I did bloody well to. That in the nick was only your situational homosexuality.’

‘Ah well… Putting up a good show there gets us introductions, and into the Hammonds’ big party. I don’t suppose I’ll be the only man with a partner he can’t trace later. Your name will make Mrs. Hammond think of jewellery… It’s the name of a famous jeweller’s, you see.’

‘What, Blair?’

‘No, Tiffany. She’ll undoubtedly remark on your ring –’

‘Eh? Have you gone bloody mental? Shesees I’ve got a copy, then somebody sneaks intae their bedroom to make the substitution, an’ it sure as hell doesnae sound like that’ll be you - ’

‘Nobody sneaks anywhere. Mrs. Hammond will see your ring well into the evening, not at the beginning. She’ll be half-convinced, afterwards, that yours was white gold, and hers is yellow. If she asks to try it on, better and better, for it’ll go, but she’ll notice it’s tighter than her own. If she gets suspicious at the time, she’ll only make a quick trip for a look at her jewel-box, which lets you off the hook. But I hope she won’t. The idea is just to create doubt later.’

‘But if we dinnae get the ring…?’

‘We don’t have to.’

I handed her the yellow copy. Why should I feel ashamed because her understanding was so quick? Taking advantage of stupidity should be worse, if anything. Ashamed I was, though, just for a moment. She swallowed the big lie without having to be told it, but that seemed just the opposite of an excuse, when I imagined myself pleading it as such.

‘In the jeweller’s! You’ll switch the rings in the jeweller’s, an’ it’ll maybe be years till they find out.’

‘It’s a lot more than just one ring.’

‘They’ll never know if it was the jeweller, or at one of their parties ages before. Aye, andif it was there, they’ll no’ be sure whether it was a lass they or you cannae trace, wi’ a ring that might’ve been yellow or white, that they think was never alone in their bedroom.’

‘Even if they did trace you, you’d have your yellow ring, still.’

‘Aye, and if your man in the jewellers is smart, he’ll be the one discovers the switch, an’ he’ll say “It’s my fault, no’ warning you when I heard the stories folk tell…” That’s his polite way o’ saying “Report me, and you report the party.”’

‘Parties. And they’re people who can’t report that. They’ll also know that robbery under trust isn’t covered by their insurance, and quite possibly not by the jeweller’s, especially if they can’t prove where it happened. I dare say they’ll invent a different kind of robbery altogether, to claim for. Since they can’t do that without the jeweller suspecting, and he wants a chance of replacing it at insurance rates, they and he have equally good reasons to keep quiet.’

‘ Oh, you crafty bugger! I love a man that can make plans, like.’

I was glad of that.

‘Mind you, if I’ve to do nothin’ illegal,’ she added, ‘you’ll maybe feel bad payin’ me my half.’

‘Not half,’ I said, trying to sound secretive. ‘Our man in the jeweller’s will cost money. You’ll get a third of what’s left after that. It could be nothing, if anything goes wrong. If he also gets to replace it, we’ll get a third of his profit, and split it the same way.’

My motives were only partly erotic, and not at all larcenous, although she would never believe me unless I bargained. I had decided I didn’t like the Hamilton-Hammond set, for you would be amazed how little protection the profession that had enriched them gives to shopkeepers. Even Tiffany, who was easily bright enough to be employable, had taken nothing but harm from the ease of sliding into crime. Well, she was the hawk I would fly at them. Not that I planned to hurt them, exactly. Let me mix metaphors a little. I once knew a naval reserve officer who had torpedoed H.M.S. Tiger. Oh, only on exercise, with a rating behind him to shout ‘whoosh’, but it was the principle of the thing. Well, they might never know they had been torpedoed amidships, a point on which I hadn’t yet made up my mind. But I would know.

‘A third, maybe of nothing. Done. Oh, and one ither thing. Are you and me an item, like?’

‘H’m, well… You’re very attractive, and it seems silly not to. I think we’d both have to do it with somebody, at the parties, but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be with each other. So if you feel we should keep this to a business relationship,’ (I offered up a sacrifice), ‘we could just pretend.’

‘Ha!’ exclaimed Tiffany, with a smile my respectable girlfriends could have killed for, if they’d known smiles mattered. I swear I saw her ears move. ‘You look like a spaniel that’s got your sausages unner the table, but kens you’ll hear him if he starts chewing. You’ve got a point though, I’d never work wi’ the young blokes I had it off wi’ before. Sometimes I’d swear they ejaculated brain-cells. Tell you what, we’ll compromise. Business relationship for now, but at the first party we’ll gie them a show that’ll make ’em crack their bridgework. You’ll no’ have a limp willie in public, will you?’

‘No… I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t either. Now, when do we do these photos?

‘Well, I’ll have to come back another day, with my camera… ’

‘Is an Instamatic any good? D’ye know, I felt bloody washed-up this time yesterday, but being on the hunt changes everything. Tell you another thing, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is. I like you.’