Reformatory Girls Ch. 16: Rebecca Lucie 03

Two female figures. They do not look as though they are there to buy her a drink.

"So - here again trying to steal our business," says the one on her left, who as she speaks thrusts her face uncomfortably close to Rebecca's. Rebecca gets a whiff of stale cigarettes: she sees heavy make-up, hard eyes and dyed-blond hair.

"Time she was taught a lesson," says the second woman: she's thin, thirty-something with a pinched face and green ear-rings.

"I didn't - I wouldn't - " Rebecca starts to protest.

"No?" says the first woman, her face pressed so close that Rebecca fears she is about to bite her. "You weren't in here last night and the night before? You didn't leave with tricks that didn't belong to you?"

"I didn't," says Rebecca again, still caught completely unawares.

"Name 'Mick' mean anything to you?" the woman continues.

"Mick? Yes - but look, I didn't steal him, I - "

"Little Miss Sweet and Innocent," says the thin woman. "You are going to fuck off out of here whilst you can still walk. You are going to fuck off out of this pub and out of this patch and you are not going to come back - understand? Because if we see you around here again you are going to get something very sharp and painful up your snatch."

"OK, OK," says Rebecca, thoroughly frightened. "I'll go - I'm sorry - I didn't realise."

"Well you know now," says the blonde woman. "But before you go, seeing as you've stolen our earnings, you can make good. Empty your bag."

"What?" says Rebecca. "No, you can't." she looks around her for an escape route, for someone to come to her assistance. At the bar the customers are talking and laughing, and the bartender is polishing wine glasses unconcernedly.

Suddenly there's a sharp pain between her legs: something claw-like is gripping her, squeezing the flesh over her mound through her knickers.

"Let go, you're hurting," she says squirming.

The grip only tightens, squeezing, pinching.

"Alright," says Rebecca panicking, pulling things rapidly out of her bag. "Just let me go."

The grip relaxes a fraction, but the hand of the thin woman remains in place.

Lip sticks, eye-liners, pots of shadow and make-up, manicure scissors, condoms, tampons: all are unpacked onto the table. Only one item holds any interest for the women: the purse. It contains - less what she has spent on her room and on shopping - everything Mick and the man in the alley have given her, plus everything left over from the two-hundred pounds George has given her for her 'fare'.

"This should cover it," says the thin-faced woman, folding all the banknotes into a pocket of her jacket.

"You can't take that!" Rebecca protests: "some of that's mine - I mean mine before I earned any - OW"

The claw has gripped again, digging ever deeper into Rebecca's sensitive parts.

"She's a slow learner," says the blonde woman.

"There," says the thin-faced woman, gesturing with her free hand towards the few coins that remain on the table. "That'll cover your bus fare out of here."

"This is robbery," says Rebecca, in a voice which she hopes will attract the attention of the bartender. But the bartender continues to dry glasses, holding them up to the light for inspection.

"Yeah," says the thin-faced woman, finally relaxing her grip. "Tell the Police about it."

Then, stopping only to quaff what remains of Rebecca's wine, they leave as swiftly as they arrived.

Back in her room Rebecca is shaking. Even with the door locked she doesn't feel safe. For a while she paces back and forth, not sure what to do. She's scared - but she's also so outraged at the loss of the money she's tempted to go to the Police. But too many questions will need to be answered, and not just about the source of the money. For all she knows the School may have put out some alert for her, and she may be on some wanted list.

Eventually she takes off her knickers and turns her attention to her snatch. There are some ugly marks on her vulva; she is sore - but at least the skin is not broken, and most of the marks are hidden beneath her pubic hair. She looks in her bag for something to use as a salve to rub on it, and comes up with a jar of moisturiser. It's cold, and probably does no good: but there is some comfort in smoothing the white cream between her legs, trying to ease away the violations inflicted by that hateful woman.

Reflecting on how she's been well and truly fucked-over, Rebecca, for the first time since she ran away, wonders if she wouldn't rather be back in the Dormitory at Windsor.

The next morning she leaves her room early, her one thought to get away from the area before the women or any of their associates spot her. She jumps on the first bus that arrives, and spends the last of her money on the fare, which takes her into the centre of the city.

There she sits on a stone bench in Trafalgar Square, watching the pigeons, taking stock. She has to find somewhere to stay; before she can do so she has to earn some money. She tries to make herself look available, hitching her dress up as high as she dare, smiling at men who walk part. But as the square fills up with tourists, with families and children and coach-loads of foreign visitors, it's clear she's in the wrong place. It's much the same in other tourist areas - throngs of people, but none of them looking for what she has to offer. She knows there must be areas where prostitutes work: but after her experience in the Dog and Gun she is very wary of invading somebody else's patch.

By now she is hungry: and so she peers through the windows of likely-looking café's until she spies a solitary male, drinking coffee and reading a paper. She goes inside, sits down opposite him, coughs politely and, when he lowers his newspaper, gives him her most winsome look and asks if he will buy her a cup of tea.

The Manageress is beside their table before he can fully reply.

"Out," she says.

"What do you mean?" protests Rebecca. "What have I done?"

"I know what you're trying to do," says the woman. "Now out, before I call the Police."

Bitch, thinks Rebecca, stalking out with as much dignity as she can muster.

Thinking that maybe cafes are too genteel she tries a pub. As she has no money she's obliged to abandon her usual tactic of sitting and waiting - instead she approaches a cluster of men on bar stools and asks if anyone will buy her a drink. There's laughter: then the bartender has emerged from behind his bar and is pointing towards the door:

"Out," he says.

She stands on the pavement, fuming. What is it round here? Is she that obvious? It's almost as though the girls at Windsor were right, and she does bear some recognisable Mark of the Whore.

Whatever: she's not going to go on being thrown out of cafes and pubs. After some thought, and with a sense of growing urgency, she decides to try an art gallery. Entry is free; it has a more welcoming aura; and she wanders through the airy rooms until she spots a painting of a naked girl, lying face down on a chaise longue. It's a very sensual painting: the girl's bottom is round and luscious - almost inviting the onlooker to take her from behind. Rebecca takes a seat at the back of the gallery and waits. Sure enough a solitary man positions himself before the painting and cocks his head on one side. Rebecca smiles to herself: he's clearly trying to indicate that he is scrutinising the painting for its aesthetic merits, rather than lusting after the girl. She gives him a minute, then sidles up to him, all the time focussing on the painting as though she was unaware of his presence.

"She's a beautiful girl," she observes.

The man seems willing to talk: in fact he talks at some length, about colour and tone and composition and the artist's standing in the history of art. Rebecca nods, as though drinking all this in: only when the man pauses does she interject:

"But art's no substitute for the real thing."

The man looks at her as though registering her for the first time: Rebecca feels her heart-rate increasing:

"I don't suppose you'd like to buy me a drink?" she says.

The man makes a show of consulting his watch:

"Sorry - I have a meeting," he replies.

She watches him disappear through the far end of the gallery and, disappointed, returns to her seat. A second man seems immune to her conversational charms, and before she can try a third time she notices that the Security Guard has been joined by a colleague, and that they are looking at her. She decides to bale out.

She has more luck in the cafeteria, at least with the leftovers from other people's meals, and manages to refuel on salads, half-eaten rolls, a pot of jam, cold coffee and lukewarm tea. No-one tries to pick her up, though: and having staved-off the pangs of hunger she decides to get out of the city centre.

She carries on walking: through the city and out beyond the perimeter, until her feet are aching and she feels she must rest. By now a sense of hopelessness has started to infect her: traffic thunders by remorselessly; the houses seem alien and forbidding, the pubs no longer places of opportunity but of threat. Ahead of her is a public park, and needing some respite she walks in, past the Park-keeper's Lodge, and plonks herself down on a bench overlooking an ornamental lake.

There she sits, watching the ducks, watching the children feeding the ducks, rueing that so much good bread is going to waste.

Four chimes ring out from a clock-tower. The park fills with children in school uniforms: for a while there is noise and bustle: then the bicycles and footballs disappear, and the ducks hold sway again.

The Park-keeper passes her, and answers her smile with a nod and a half-smile of his own. When she spies him returning she draws her feet up onto the edge of the bench, showing plenty of bare thigh and just a glimpse of her knickers. This time he nods at her without smiling. Couples pass, and women with prams, but few solitary men: those that do glance at her, maybe answer her smile: but none take a seat beside her.

It dawns on Rebecca that she may very well have to sleep rough. She is tired, her feet ache, she has been perspiring all day, and her snatch is still sore from the mauling it received from the thin-faced woman. She knows that later in the evening she will have a better chance of finding a customer: but the park is soothing, and sleeping on the park bench wouldn't be the worst option in the world. She'd be safe, at least: the nights are mild, and if she puts on all the layers of clothing she can she might be alright. If not, there's a chalet where ice-creams are sold: she might be able to break in and find something to eat.

The park closes at 8 p.m. She decides that she'll hide in the bushes before then, and emerge when it's all clear.

Inertia begins to steal over her. She almost hopes no-one will approach her, she's in no state to do justice to a paying customer. She's just deciding she must rouse herself and go and investigate the bushes when a tall man comes sauntering along the path towards her. He is young, casually dressed in jeans and trainers, clean-shaven with short fair hair. He looks around him, seemingly in no hurry to be anywhere. When he reaches Rebecca's bench he stops.

"Mind if I join you?" he asks.

She notices the quick glance the man gives to her bare legs, and instantly she's awake again.

"Please do," she says. She half-turns towards the man as he sits down, makes a play of pulling her dress down to cover her knees and giving up as it slides back up again.

"Peaceful here," the man says, stretching out his legs in the manner of someone at ease with himself.

"Yes," says Rebecca.

"Are you from round here?"

"Not really," says Rebecca.

"Just passing through?"

"Something like that," says Rebecca: "You?"

"I live round here," says the man. "I get to know most of the people who come in here. I didn't think I'd seen you before."

"No," says Rebecca, who much as she's happy to enter into the age-old preliminaries knows she needs to move things along. "Well: now you have seen me what do you think?"

"What I ask myself," says the man, "is why a pretty girl, a girl on her own, a girl who's not from round here, would want to spend so long on the same park bench. Of course, she could just be enjoying the peace and quiet. Or it could be she likes watching the ducks. It makes me curious, that's all."

"What if I was waiting to meet someone?" asks Rebecca.

"There's that too," says the man. "Are you waiting to meet someone?"

"Could be," says Rebecca. "Could be I've already met him."

"And if you had met him," says the man: "what would you say to him?"

"Oh, I'd probably say it was time to stop beating about the bush and talk straight."

"Straight?" says the man. "As in business?"

"That's the idea," says Rebecca.

"OK," says the man: "talk business."

Inwardly Rebecca takes a deep breath: using Mick as a benchmark she's been thinking of sixty as a reasonable price. But here she is, broke: she'll need maybe fifty for a room and more for food, and something about the man suggests to her that he's not short of a bob or two.

"It's a hundred for an hour," she says.

"A hundred," says the man, who doesn't seem put off. "And what do I get for a hundred?"

"For a hundred," says Rebecca, softening her voice and turning on him the full force of her come-to-bed eyes: "you can have anything you want."

To her delight the man reaches into the inside pocket of his sports jacket and pulls out a little leather wallet. Then he snaps the wallet open to reveal a photo identity card.

"I'm PC Warren of the Metropolitan Police and I'm arresting you under suspicion of Soliciting," he says.

Rebecca notices the Park-keeper, peering out from the gate of his lodge, as she is led away through the park gates.

The police car is parked in a side street. As they stop beside it she tries one last desperate gambit.

"PC Warren," she says imploringly. "Couldn't you just let me off with a warning? If I was very nice to you? As boyfriend and girlfriend I mean - no money, nothing like that."

She knows what he's going to say. She's read it in detective stories, seen and heard it in any number crime dramas on television. 'I'll pretend I haven't heard that.' 'I'll forget you said that.' Or maybe, if he's a total bastard: 'I'm charging you with trying to bribe a Police Officer.'

But PC Warren doesn't say anything. Instead he looks her up and down as though he can hardly believe she's for real. Finally he finds his voice:

"Just get in the car," he says.

She slumps in the back of the car. Her one consolation is that surely at the Police Station they'll give her a cup of tea and something to eat. The car pulls out into the traffic; the car radio crackles.

"Charlie?" she hears PC Warren say. "Toby here. The incident in the Hanover Park is closed. No further action. Repeat: no further action. What? Yes, just something and nothing. OK Charlie, I'm going off shift now. See you tomorrow. You too."

She's so grateful there are tears in her eyes.

"PC Warren," she says. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Just shut up," says PC Warren, glancing in the rear-view mirror. "Just shut up before I regret it. And it's Toby from now on."

"You won't regret it, Toby, I promise you," Rebecca can't resist saying.

Toby's flat is much the same size as George's, but there the similarity ends. A plasma screen the size of van occupies most of the living room wall. Instead of dark wood there is chrome and glass and stainless steel. Instead of photos of dead relatives there are sporting trophies and photos of Police Football and Athletics teams.

"You look like you could do with a shower," is the first thing Toby says to her. "In there."

She goes into the bathroom - more chrome and tubular fittings, all sleek and clean. She runs the shower, and has barely washed her hair when Toby comes in and unceremoniously takes off his clothes. For a tall, athletic man he has remarkably little body hair: his chest and stomach are almost smooth: even his pubic hair is light and sparse. He's hung like a donkey though.

He joins her in the shower, shakes his head around as the powerful jets cascade onto him, then takes the soap and begins to soap her. He soaps her shoulders and back, he soaps her breasts, he soaps her hips and buttocks, and the he soaps between her legs. When he has generated sufficient lather he lays down the soap in favour of his hands, large hands, which glide easily over her body. It's quite pleasant, feeling his hands glide soapily and frictionlessly between her legs: she might be able to get aroused if she wasn't so tired - and if she didn't feel twinges from the thin-faced woman's clawing. Several times she flinches: which he takes for signs of arousal.

"Pushing the right buttons am I?" he grins: but she can hardly hear him for the torrent of water.

He has a mighty erection which he looks down to admire. She takes the soap and makes to soap him, but he stops her, kills the water and steps out of the shower. He throws her a towel, dries hurriedly and gestures to her to do the same. Then he grabs her hand, pulls her into the bedroom and pushes her onto the bed. He has his own condoms, in a bedside drawer: he leans back, displaying him member, flexing it like a weightlifter flexing his biceps. Then he coats the tip of the condom with his own saliva and pushes his way inside her. She winces, feels her vaginal muscles parting, feels the full heft of him entering her. He has her legs back, her knees close to her ears, and bears down, working himself in circular motions as though to corkscrew his dick ever deeper inside her. Again he takes her cries for pleasure: grinning down both grimly and triumphantly he pounds away at her as though she is some machine he is working on at the gym. When he comes he head-buts the pillow and presses into her as though he is trying to bore through her and emerge the other side.

Oh my God yes," he says: "yes, yes, yes." Then he collapses on top of her.

"Wow," she says, with as much enthusiasm as she can affect. "Toby."

Whether Toby is taken in by that - whether he cares one way or another - she doesn't know. But he seems happy - if happy is the word. He rolls off her, looks through her with glazed eyes, and sinks into a half-sleep, one arm round her waist.

Rebecca lies there, patiently: presently she become aware of gurgling noises in her stomach. She wriggles as much as she dares, but the noises persist. Toby seems to be stirring: at the first sign that he is awake she speaks quietly into his ear:

"Toby: I don't want to disturb you - but I've hardly eaten today: please could I scrounge a bit of food?"

"Food," says Toby coming awake. "Yes - good idea. Look out a couple of ready meals from the freezer and stick them in the microwave."

She plants a kiss on his shoulder and trots off to the kitchen. The freezer is well-stocked: she finds a lasagne large enough for two, reads the instructions and puts it in the microwave. Then she looks in the fridge.

"Why don't I make us a salad as well?" she calls.

"Sure - whatever you like."

Her mouth waters as she chops tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber and chives. The microwave pings. With a queer sense that she is taking over the kitchen of someone she has barely met she finds plates and cutlery, then calls Toby, who comes lumbering naked from the bedroom. She can't suppress a giggle at the sight of the condom still on his dick.

"What?" he asks. "Oh."

He chucks the condom into the kitchen bin and washes his hands. Then they sit down, naked, at the kitchen table.

"So what am I supposed to call you?" Toby asks.

"Julia," says Rebecca between mouthfuls of food.

He nods, clearly sceptical, but doesn't challenge her. Instead he opens two bottles of beer and pushes one across the table to her.