LITMIR.BIZ

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bird obviously agrees with me because she shakes her head and wanders over to the door where there is a dressing gown hanging up. In one quick movement she drops the sheet and has the dressing gown round her shoulders. It’s a man’s dressing gown and it’s far too big for her. She feels in the pocket, pulls out a fag packet and sticks a dog end in her mouth. No matches. She points to her fag and looks at me and I nod. I don’t smoke but I always carry a box of matches for just such moments. It’s like boy scouts carry around those penknives with bits on them to get stones out of horses’ hooves. She shrugs her shoulders and with a feat of strength that impresses me almost as much as the view down the front of her dressing gown she pulls up the window.

      “If we’re going to go on handing things backwards and forwards to each other you’d better come in. You’re not going to rape me, are you?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “Pity. I feel like being raped this morning. Do you ever get feelings like that?”

      “Sometimes. Only it’s different for me.”

      “Of course. You’ve got to do the raping, haven’t you? I wonder what happens when somebody who wants to be raped meets somebody who wants to rape someone. It can’t be rape, can it?”

      “No. I suppose it’s normal.”

      “Or passion – yes. I think it’s probably passion.”

      She sits down on the bed and crosses one leg over the other, which is something she does very well. I light her cigarette and start wiping over the inside of the windows.

      “What’s that thing called?”

      “It’s a squeegee.”

      “Oh, I’ve heard of those. I always thought it was some kind of mop.”

      “I think it’s that, too.”

      “Well, I’m glad we thrashed that out, you learn something new every day, don’t you? Do you want a cup of fabulous, taste-bud tickling Nescafé while you’re here?”

      “Yes, ta.”

      She has an accent which is a mixture of posh and working class so you can’t quite tell what it is but the vaguely piss-taking way she talks has a definite style to it.

      She puts the kettle on and washes out a couple of mugs in the washbasin.

      “The milk’s off. Do you mind it black?”

      “No, that’s fine. What are you doing here?”

      “You mean what’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? Well, I’m resting, dahling.”

      She makes her voice go all husky.

      “I’m a theatrical you see and at the moment no one wants to know about me.”

      “But why here?”

      “Well, I usually stay at the Ritz but when I heard the Aga Khan was staying there I thought it would be more diplomatic if I dossed down somewhere else. We were lovers for years, you know.”

      “I hadn’t heard.”

      “No, well you wouldn’t would you? It was a terribly well kept secret. I used to have a couple of fantail pigeons which carried messages backwards and forwards between us – “Be by the bandstand on Clapham Common at eight o’clock on Thursday. My private plane will collect you” – that kind of thing. Then we’d be off to Biarritz or Budleigh Salterton or wherever his exotic fancy took him, making mad passionate love until it was time for him to go off and be weighed in jewels or something. He was a slave to Islam you know.”

      I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about but I’m impressed.

      “You’re an actress then?”

      “Brilliant. I could see you were a bright boy the moment I clapped eyes on you. Yes, sort of. Ooops – coffee time.”

      She switches off the gas and hands me my coffee,

      “What have you been in? Anything I’d have seen on the telly?”

      She claps a hand to her heart and looks disgusted.

      “Television? Oh! Goodness gracious me, no! I work in the live theatre – and besides, nobody has ever asked me.”

      “So what have you been in?”

      “You are persistent, aren’t you? Well, let me see. I was Becket in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ – no, actually, the last thing I did was to stand next to a girl with a very personal problem in the chorus of “Babes in the Wood” at the Granada, Tooting. You may not have seen the show, but you probably smelt it. You know: two balloons up your jumper and a string of jokes about baked bean commercials.”

      “When did that finish?”

      “You’re not from the Inland Revenue, are you? My goodness, but you ask a lot of questions.”

      “I’m sorry but I’ve never met an actress before.”

      “Well, I misled you a little bit. I’m not really an actress, I’m a dancer. An acrobatic dancer – or I was. Now, I’ll do anything within reason, and provided I can keep my knickers on. Would you like to see my credentials? I was waiting for a fan to show up.”

      She doesn’t stop for an answer but goes and gets this book of press cuttings I mentioned earlier.

      “Come with me down memory lane,” she says and pats the bed beside her. I sit down and she takes me through the book. It’s a bit sad because all the big cuttings are from a newspaper in Baldock which is where she must have come from and which would probably make it a front page story if one of the locals farted outside Covent Garden Opera House.

      “Who’s the bloke?”

      In some of the pictures there’s a good looking dago dancing with her, wearing some kind of gypsy costume. His hair is slicked down and parted in the middle so the parting looks as if someone made it with a meat cleaver. He reminds me of Valentino who Mum is always going on about, and he’s probably meant to. A few photos later he’s wearing a turban and a lot of boot polish and then he disappears altogether.

      “That’s the Great Fakir, if you’ll excuse my pronunciation.”

      “The what?”

      “That was what he called himself in the act – in that one anyway. He was also known as ‘The Sheik’ and my husband – he wasn’t very good at that though.”

      “Is that his dressing gown?”

      She smiles and pulls it closer around her. “Yes, I – yes. How observant of you. But then I suppose it’s unlikely that I’d go out and buy a man’s dressing gown, isn’t it?”

      “You’re divorced now?”

      “No, we were never married. I said he was ‘known’ as my husband. Roy was doing you a favour just to live with you. He was too bloody clever to get married. I was married, though, before I met him. God! But I made a wonderful botch of things. Still, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; a complete stranger who suddenly appears on my window sill.”

      “Probably because I ask so many questions.”

      “Maybe. Perhaps it’s also – oh, it doesn’t matter. You’d better get back on the job, hadn’t you? – if you’ll excuse the expression. You’re losing money sitting here.”

      “That’s alright. I like talking to you.”

      I look into her eyes and she looks back at me very cool. I can feel her mind examining the same set of possibilities as mine.

      Then there’s a knock on the door.

      “To be continued,” she says, and tightening the sash round her waist she opens the door.

      “Oh, it’s you, Miss er, Miss

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