Was mid-afternoon the time for sex? I wondered. Certain kinds, maybe. I parked the car by a small canal and looked from the image on my phone to the line of apartment blocks across the way. They looked different of course, without the sun reflected from the windows, less sinister, different yet the same. I had called, to ask for a girl. There was a long pause, and the sound of the telephone being set down, then lifted, and a woman’s voice replaced the man who had answered. Her English was refined, with a slight theatrical gravitas to it. Who recommended us? she asked. A colleague, I told her, from London. Mr Samuelson. And you? she asked. From London too, I told her. Mr Baker. Samuelson, she repeated. He recommended a girl called Petra, blonde, in her early twenties. Petra, she repeated. Yes, Petra is quite special. In some demand. We run a clean establishment. No funny business. And you, sir, do not demand funny business. And I wondered then what funny business entailed. But I assured her I wanted none of it.
And as I crossed the road, walked down the broken pavement towards the building, the sun must have dropped a notch or two, because the upper-storey windows began to blaze it back towards me, like silvered reflective sunglasses. Was there something sinister in their apparent gaze, or was it my imagination? It was the latter, I persuaded myself. And I was a London businessman on a routine visit to a quite ordinary brothel.
There was a rusty metal lift with a mother wheeling a buggy from it and, once inside, the acrid odour of urine. I pressed the button for the third floor, and, somewhat absurdly, turned up my collar, hoping no one else got in on the way up.
It whined upwards, stopped at two empty floors and I saw two dim corridors stretch away from the doors, towards pools of afternoon sunlight. And the third floor was identical to the first and the second, down to the shaft of sunlight at the end.
I stepped from the lift and the doors closed behind me. There were four doors to my left and four to my right, and a broken window to the end of them, with a pigeon standing in the metal frame.
A door opened then, and the pigeon took to the air. A man stood there, playing with the zip on the top of his tracksuit.
Mr Baker? he said.
Yes, I said.
You pay cash, he said. And yes, I had it ready. I reached for my inside pocket and he shook his head.
Not here, he said. Inside.
He nudged the door open with his foot, and I walked in.
There were soft chintzy curtains covering the windows, dampening the hard daylight. There was a tailor’s dummy sitting incongruously to one side, her plaster face frozen in a smile, one hand held upwards that seemed to be waiting for a non-existent teacup. There was a sofa against the wall with a glass-topped table in front of it and I took a seat there, as the door closed softly behind me. There was a small bell sitting on the table, and I had no idea what its purpose was. Then I heard the door closing softly behind me, and I realised I had entered alone.
I sat there for an unbearable five minutes or so, inhaling the odour of old cigarette smoke, and eventually, out of exasperation, I rang the bell.
Be with you, a woman’s voice answered, and I recognised the anglicised tones coming from behind the door to my left. It was a room of doors, three of them: two of them facing each other and one facing the muted light from the window. And I wondered, did the establishment, as she had insisted on calling it on the phone, extend the length of the whole corridor outside? And then the door to my left opened and she was there.
A capacious lady in a pink tracksuit, dark hair piled into a kind of nest on the top of her small head.
Mr Baker, she said. I’m Maria.
Maria, I said and rose and held out my hand before I realised the gesture was unnecessary and unwanted. I assumed the name was as fictional as my own.
From London, she said, and took my hand, ever so briefly.
Staying at the Radisson?
Yes, I lied again.
And you were recommended my Petra?
I nodded and she smiled, stiffly.
She is a special girl, she said, a little bit shy maybe but Englishmen like them shy.
You know England? I asked.
Mayfair, Windsor, Royal Ascot. Brighton.
Margate, I added, hoping to fill out the list.
Bath, Southend-on-Sea.
I had only ever known it as Southend. But I nodded, appreciatively.
Lyme Regis.
Had she been a tourist guide? I wondered.
Where they shot movie – you remember—
The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
Meryl Streep and my favourite—
Jeremy Irons?
Yes. Now, to the money business—
You’ve been to all those places? I asked idly, as I took the rolled bundle from my pocket.
Been to, read about. And Petra price, three hundred.
How long has Petra been –
In this establishment? Not long. She is shy girl, you will see. And her fingers whipped through the notes, with alarming expertise.
Two hours, condoms by the bedside. No funny business.
I nodded, some shabby understanding. There would be no funny business.
Hove, she said. Hastings.
Harrow, I replied. This list seemed to substitute for conversation.
Harrow-on-the-Hill, she corrected me.
Of course, I said. Harrow-on-the-Hill. She held open the door and I walked through and found another door facing me.
Inside, she said. And she held up two fingers.
I opened the door.
Blackpool, she said, as it closed behind me.