Tiffany

I wished she hadn’t said that.

I phoned her a few days after I posted her set of prints, though I didn’t tell her just then that I’d used them to place an ad, and answer a few. They really were just as tasteful as she could have wished, taken by the soft, directional light at that window. It left most of that hideous little council flat out of the picture, too. I had a couple of prints in the phone-box, and I wondered if she guessed I was looking at her pink little nipples just grazing my chest, that curiously vertical scalplock of warm-coloured pubic hair, and her long, cool fingers, which encircled my swelling shaft. Actually it hadn’t swollen quite as quickly as I might have wished, but nothing to worry about. She had proven just as untouchable as she’d said, although I was afraid to do more than drop a hint or two. Patience is a virtue.

She was clever enough to mind her words on the phone, and we talked vaguely for a while. She was better-spoken than before, I thought, her accent less strong. At last she said something that made my heart sink, and yet was a relief:

‘James, I’ve changed my mind.’

‘What? You mean it’s off? But…’

‘It’s on, an’ I’ll tell you what’s changed. You said you live alone, and the area code’s no secret. I like you a lot, and if we’re to be partners, you’ve got to trust me. You’ll tell me your full name and phone number, I’ll get on a bus and come to your place –your place, not a hotel – an’ you’ll give me a good night’s healthy exercise. Tonight. Are you in or out?’

The moment of truth. It would be a thin sort of blackmail at the worst, as there would be no crime. But reputation means a lot in the jewellery trade, and I could imagine the effect on Maxwells, if it got into theNews of the World. I didn’t think she seemed the type - but then, did I seem the type for seduction by deception? I swore I would straighten all this out, if I could find a way to stay on speaking terms, even. But how could I do that?

‘Well, h’m, if you think – ’

‘Hey, I could’ve said worse,’ she said brightly, for all the world like a mischievous child. ‘I could’ve said shagging.’

I’ve never been convinced that the surest way a man can have his way with a woman is by making her laugh. The laughter part is something I never had much trouble with, but a lot of good it ever did me. It works the other way round, though.

‘Come and say it, then. I’m in. Have you got a pen?’

‘And a bus timetable.’

I’ve said we’re cautious in the trade, and although my flat is a comfortable one, above a building society, there is nothing in the street but a plain stainless steel door. I saw only her face on the security screen, and after I pressed the button for the inner door, I kept watching the foyer until I heard her knock. She swept in smartly, and it seemed natural to kiss her.

I was not ready for the change in her. The girl with the tank-top and satin was now smartly business-suited, and might have passed unnoticed an hour earlier, among the office girls going home from work. Her manner was more sedate, somehow, her speech more measured, and it came to me that she loved playing a role.

‘You’ve changed.’

‘Sort of. The suit cost a bit, but I’m working afternoons and Saturdays in a video shop now, and I never had anything real nice…really nice. I mean ladylike, see, ’cause I got plenty that goes for your hormones, as well you know. Besides, you don’t want us looking odd together, not here. Know why I wore that outfit the first time? You learn a lot about a man, when you see how he looks at your centre seam. Some girls tighten up that seam with a bit of elastic, or so I’ve heard.’

‘But I did look! I couldn’t help it.’

‘I should damned well hope not, but you nearly got a squint doing it tactful. Hey, have you got any food in the place? I’m starving. Only I don’t touch chips now. Got to make the best of myself.’

I’m a good cook, within a limited repertoire, and I had a bottle of Syrah which went well with the curry. It was a curiously normal evening, considering, but we ended up on the sofa together, most amazingly like anybody else. Tiffany’s kind of figure managed very well without a bra, and she actually seemed shy about the blouse buttons. Only when I brought my thigh up between her legs, her movements became rhythmic and her breath harder. I still wonder if I succumbed to telepathy in doing that, for I had chanced on something that would always serve her well. But I faltered when I saw an ugly bruise on her shoulder.

‘Tiffany, what did that?’

‘You don’t know the way some people live, do you? I never said I was any angel. But don’t worry, it was nothing illegal, and nothing sexual. In fact, it was getting out of it. An ex-boyfriend from before the nick, but he won’t be back. Gave better than I got, didn’t I? God knows why everybody thinks girls are defenceless, when anybody with dangly bits has a worse liability. Achilles didn’t know when he was well off, in my opinion.’

‘A girl shouldn’t have to…’ I began, feeling oddly protective, for a man who might be doing worse.

‘I know, I know, but I’m mixing with a better sort of person now, aren’t I? Oh, just go on doing that! Now something’s starting to happen, but don’t worry, there’s going to be plenty more when it’s your turn. Oh yes, more like that! More!OH GOD!’

‘Should we use condoms?’ I asked in sudden panic. I had some, but they have expiry dates.

‘I’ve done nothing since I was tested,’ she said, still gasping for breath, ‘and I’m safe tonight.’

‘What about me, though?’

‘Didn’t you notice you were tested in Dumfries, sort of? Tested my way. We’ll use condoms withthem, mind, but I’ll start on the pill for our business conferences.’

A jeweller is good with fastenings, and the rest of her clothes came away easily. Her wetness was perfect, and I slid between those neat little lips, which the scalplock did not quite reach. Then I came to a stop.

‘Oh bloody hell, I never expected trouble, after… Nowplease don’t push, ’cause I really will feel so much nicer if I’m not pushed at. Just rub gently up and down for a moment… Oh yes, there, but a little moreup…’

It worked, and at the next pressure she took me in just as easily as any woman on earth. Something told me to keep my movements slow and long, but already Tiffany’s breath was shortening again.

I awoke to find her stark naked at the bedside, hair moist from the shower, with coffee and cereal.

‘Wouldn’t you know it? The moment he opens his eyes, and he’s got ’em on my centre seam again. I can wear a low-cut bikini, ’case you’re wondering – by a whisker.’

‘Tiffany… Do you know how early it is?’

‘Got to get on the early bus, haven’t I? We don’t want half the town seeing me leave, and I don’t want to know where you go to work. I got the coffee-machine to work all right, but should there be milk on this muesli stuff?’

‘A lot of people think so. But last night… I mean, you must be used to younger men?”

‘Ooh, fishing!’

‘Well, I know I always take a long time to come, I don’t know why, and that can’t be altogether bad. But wouldn’t a younger man be more… vigorous?’

‘Eh? A human battering-ram’s a bloody show-off, an’ doesn’t do a girl a lot of good. An’ it’s real horrible being battering-rammed if you’re a bit slow being ready, like I am. But you… I tell you, I got so little sleep I’ll be scared of waking up in the Carlisle bus depot, and if I’d to ride a bicycle I’d probably die. ’Tisn’t just in the nick, you know, that girls talk about being happy-sore, but I never was till now. And would you believe I was terrified you’d mind me not having bigger boobs? Even if they aren’t ever liable to droop.’

‘That’s silly, They’re absolutely perfect.’

‘Okay, you convinced me. I feel like you unbuttoned me perfect, after I’d buttoned myself up a little girl that morning.’

‘And you just never stopped… coming. I didn’t know that was possible.’

‘Oh yes, eighth wonder of the bloody world I am, but it just leaves me all grumpy if the man isn’t up to it. My God, I’ve had men that think everybody in the world takes about thirty seconds, an’ it doesn’t help if getting inside me takes twenty-eight of ’em. But it served me right, ’cause I still let ’em after I knew that, just ’cause it’s what girls do. I swear if I wasn’t a trier, I could have given up on men by now. It came to me in the shower just now, we’re alike as two peas in one way, you and me, because we neither of us ever had anything but rotten sex before. A women can tell.’

‘And our plan isn’t rotten?’

‘Not if we’re in control. But look, Matthew James, these Hammonds... It’s mainly educated people have that sort of jewellery. They’re upper-class, like?’

‘Or think they are, which is even worse. He’s a high legal official.’

‘Bad as that, eh? Well you’re respectable yourself, an’ you’ve always been too nice to treat anyone as inferior. But I see the other side, and I tell you, you’re wrong to think they’d let you bring in some street girl. They wouldn’t sling us out – I bet you any money I’ll have the best thighs there - but they’d remember us forever, like people once thought murder victims had the murderer’s face engraved inside their eyeballs. I tell you, he could get a photofit done, while a dozen poor old ladies who’ve been burgled get a card with Victim Support’s number on it. Do you know why I wore that suit, and my going-to-hospital panties? To show you I’m ready to make a serious project of this. I’m going to start evening classes an’ read books, so I can talk better. And you’re going to teach me manners an’ that, ’cause yours are lovely.’

‘Well, that might do you some good when this is over. Not that there’s anything the matter – ’

‘You’re just saying that.’

‘Not at all. You know, I can’t help thinking that you’re turning out a lot more like the sort of girl who ought to be looking for a proper job. If you don’t commit any more crimes, your convictions will be spent when you’re in your mid-twenties, and you needn’t even tell an employer.’

She hesitated a while, just as she once had on that riverside bench, and I wondered what she wasn’t telling me. Even men don’t miss everything.

‘Tiffany, you don’t have another case coming up already?’

‘Just the opposite. I don’t have no -any convictions.’

‘None? But I read – ’

‘“ARE YOU TIFFANY MAIR, BORN ON THE 22nd FEBRUARY 1979?” they yelled in court, no clearer than a bloke selling papers. I know about that Tiffany, born in Dalbeattie and died of drugs in London just after I got out of the nick, I hear. Me, I’m a Blair, born on the 10th November 1978, and I’ll celebrate my birthday in 2078, you see if I don’t. I got a horrible fright when I heard the paper had got something right for once.’

‘And for all those months in prison – ’

‘I lived on my nerves, I’ll admit, but I was born a fighter, and how many people in the nick get to feel that every new day’s a victory? How many anywhere? Anyway, there was never any comeback. Tiffany-the-22nd never heard she’d an extra conviction to take where all the forgiveness is. I got more time ’cause she’d more previous than I had, which was a – which was annoying. But I lost most of it by getting extra remission, for kicking a drug habit I never had. God, it makes my blood boil, there’s dangerous maniacs get to see how dim the police are, every day, and it only encourages them.’

‘You said yes, when they shouted your name?’

‘I mumbled it, and later I pretended to be illiterate, which is common in the nick. They’d have a job pretending I knew, if they ever realise their mistake. But they never will unless you turn me in, and you won’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know you. But here, can I tell you a secret?’

‘What, a bigger one than you’ve just done?’

‘In a way. I was christened Talia, God help me. Oh, don’t laugh, please! I trusted you not to laugh!’

‘I won’t laugh. When did people start calling you Tiffany?’

‘The first time I was taken into care, which is half my life ago. But on paper, only since I got out of the nick. I’m Tiffany Blair now on everything official, benefits and NHS and so on, and even if they made the connection, Talia’s stuff was all juvenile. So I’ve no convictions.’

‘All the more reason to go straight now. I’d gladly give up our business if it would help you.’ It was another sacrifice, which she tossed back at me:

‘No bloody fear. My end of thisis straight, legally speaking, and anyway, I sort of fancy it. Not just the money, nor even the sex so much, ’cause we got last night’s sort now, but the game. Do you remember how, on that riverbank, I clasped my hands under my chin for a minute?’

‘Yes. What about it?’

‘I didn’t want you to see that my nipples had gone – oh, the way you know they go. It was my hormones putting their oar in, but mostly because no man ever got me into a big adventure before. Viagra could rot on the shelves if everybody had adventure.’

‘Oh, I see… I just wanted to be sure you you’re happy about it. But look, if you’re serious about learning, could you use a computer? I’ve still got the one I had before I bought my new Pentium.’

‘Gosh, thanks! You know, I really hate those weak bastards that never made me attend school properly, or noticed that I did really well when I was there, considering what I’d missed. They were too busy doing right by the little Hammonds of this world. And we could never get on the computers enough to learn anything. You really don’t use it?’

‘It’s just in my way. All this isn’t too much trouble for you?’

‘No trouble so far. An’ if ever it is, you can just relax me. Now drink up your coffee, and you can relax me one more time before I got to go.’

I found a marvellous pencil drawing of me in the living-room that evening. It was modelled on one of my photographs, but stopped chastely above the nipples. She had clearly heard somewhere how to smear the shadows with a rolled paper stump, and it hadn’t been done while I was asleep. Proper artists sneer at photographic accuracy, nowadays, but ordinary people know better. How long can you play a girl for a fool, who is no fool of any kind? I was scared of how it might end.

That was the beginning, though, of a strange and exhilarating late summer and autumn. We spent a lot of time together, my Wednesdays off in my flat and Sundays in Dumfries. I thought, at one point, she had come close to having cold feet, for during two Wednesdays and a Sunday she claimed to be busy in the video shop. But that passed, and the second Sunday set everything to rights.

We talked far into the night, usually, about anything and everything, and Tiffany seemed to expand, as her thinking grew brighter and more logical. You will think I have forgotten to give her the accent she had when I first knew her, but that is not true. She always had a Scottish accent, informal but classless, and yet except when she was stirring me up, she lost nearly every trace of dialect you could put into print. She never shortened my name, for example, which I hate, because she felt just the same way about her own. There were vulgarities she loved to tease me with, but others torture couldn’t have dragged from her. I never could see the difference, but logic can take you only so far.

She read voraciously, and right from the start, I noticed, she could change gear instinctively, poring over an idea or skimming from page to page. She thought everybody did that, but lots don’t. Her handwriting, which had always been joined-up and clear, settled into a faster rhythm. She would even put off sex to watch T.V. documentaries – though she made it up later - and she never missed the news, but I doubt if she watched much else. She dressed with unassuming elegance, except when we were indoors, although I never again knew her to wear underwear that would seriously crowd a matchbox.

She insisted on cooking when we were in Dumfries, which was not, initially, her best side. But her cooking grew less menacing with every week that passed, and she never used any kind of processed food for which she could not name the ingredients. A jar of white sugar sat undisturbed on her shelf from week to week, unless she had guests. That had started because she was proud of her teeth, although her passion for chocolate seemed to do no harm to any part of her. She had, of course, spent time where chocolate was hard to get. She took to running on the riverbank most mornings, although she had never been unfit, and it was a pity the season advanced too quickly for us to have more than one or two mornings in my sailing dinghy, which she enjoyed hugely. Her skin became marvellously fine, and her hair grew longer and glossier.

She didn’t have much money, but something turned up. She had been eager to see just how I had made up the cubic zirconia rings. So I taught her how to do setting work, and soon she was proving extremely competent at soldering. We had been sending our jewellery repairs to Glasgow at that time, and it was not long before the firm was employing Tiffany on a piecework basis. It still intrigues me that I never thought to doubt her honesty with our customers’ property. It had the useful result that when we met old Mr. Maxwell in the street, I was able to introduce Tiffany as our jewellery repairer from Dumfries.

A few people knew I had a mysterious girlfriend, but when they find out that much about a notoriously private person, it never occurs to them that there could be more. She learned the use of the computer hand over fist, better than me in some ways, which might have been age. So by late autumn she was spending a couple of evenings a week on advertising artwork for a big store in Dumfries. I never liked to ask if it was the store of the Wonderbras incident, but I doubt if they would have recognised her.

She had always hated that dreadful flat, which she had inherited from her parents in some way she never talked about. So it was a relief when the council let her move into a tiny but comfortable studio flat, as they call attics nowadays, above some council offices in the commercial part of Dumfries. It was an odd little place, with sloping ceilings and a round, bull’s-eye window which looked down a steep, pedestrianised street to the river. That window had a stained-glass border, and the sun cast its image across the bed, on some of those bright Sunday afternoons in late autumn.

Tiffany did a lot of decorating while I was away, and I often helped. She actually hated to accept presents of any value, in a manner very different from the meant-to-be-overcome protests which every jeweller knows. But she considered books an operating expense of the project. She did not have the heart to protest at the fax machine I gave her, and I at once had to put my own in the bedroom away from any casual visitors, when the fuller versions of her drawings started coming through. She could hardly make me uproot a water-heater and electronic shower, which I was able to fit as a fait accompli while she was out, but I had to replace my own washing-machine, as an excuse to give her the old one. She had never been a dirty person, but she seized upon cleanliness as something in which she could be the equal of anybody. I doubt if she realised just how much else there was, compared with the unending banalities of my two unlamented girlfriends. We became each other’s best friend, and second-best was nowhere.

The flat made it easier to break off contact with her local criminal acquaintances. But she twice gave a few days’ hospitality to released fellow-prisoners, which I gathered was some kind of debt of honour. I met those girls, whom I could never see as any less polite or pleasant than anyone else. No doubt they were untypical, since only trusted friends, in prison, would have known her true surname. Even so, Tiffany would never let them be seen with me in public, and avoided going outside with them herself, as much as was tactful. Reputation, clearly, was a valuable commodity.