I now needed to know how Lucille would react to receiving that birth cert. If she went out to Clonkeelin to see who she thought was her mother, I could follow her. But that wouldn’t tell me what they’d said to one another. And it wasn’t as if I could ask her. I could do the next best thing. I could ask her flatmate, Gemma Small. She’d know. But first I’d have to get to know her and gain her confidence.
By this time, I had pubs and hotels. (Whoever said crime doesn’t pay can’t have been any good at it.) I’d built up a few over the years, all paid for courtesy of outwitting Chilly Winters. Crime seemed to be the only option for me when I came out of that home. I couldn’t think of any other way to get what I really wanted (going to the law wasn’t gonna get me it), and I’m not talking about personal wealth. I found villains refreshingly honest. They knew what they were and didn’t try to paint themselves as saints. I did the odd bit of work for Charlie Swags, but nothing like I used to. The money for the hotels had mostly come from surveillance work. It was an old scam – catch people with money fucking women on camera. The trick was not to let them know I was behind it, amusing myself. I had two hotels. Small-scale. The odd whore brought in the odd celeb and I made sure they got a room next to the one I use for recording embarrassing goings-on. I even had photographs of Chilly himself in bed with a girl. And her name wasn’t Mary. But that’s another story.
Anyway, Gemma Small went to the job centre a lot … interviews … back to the centre. Wanted work but didn’t seem to be having much luck. So I waltzed in behind her one morning, saw her looking at the vacancies and went up to her.
‘Mind if I ask you a question?’
‘No.’
‘I’m looking for bar staff, and I’m in a hurry. If I put the job through here, they’ll take days to find someone.’ I’d actually seen a TV programme about employers doing this; apparently it wasn’t uncommon. ‘What d’you think? It’s hard work and long hours. If you’re not up to it, say.’
‘Where?’
‘The Copper Jug. Usual rates. Nick and you’ll get my boot up your arse.’ A bit of humour goes a long way with kids. ‘Graft and I’ll bung you the odd few quid extra.’
Big smile. When they start palming their locks and blushing, your bullshit’s hitting home. Still, there’s a lot of dodgy characters around – a girl has to be on her guard. The cops were warning girls – particularly small-chested ones, for some reason – about some nut the newspapers had nicknamed ‘Picasso’, who was going around leaving them in serious need of sticking plasters. He’d helped himself to over twenty so far, and now he’d started taking them in pairs.
‘Check with yer woman behind the desk, if you like. She’ll tell you I’m straight up. I’ve employed the odd few from here before. If you tell the taxman about the bung, OK by me, but you’ll go down in my estimation. Am I tempting you?’
The left lock went into her mouth and got on giggling terms with her tongue. Nice little thing – blonde and fuckable.
‘One thing – can you add up?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good. Make sure you get your fair whack of the tips.’
Another little giggle. ‘When do you want me to start?’
‘Right away.’
‘Will I be all right like this?’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Nice lemon sweater and jeans. Very presentable. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Gemma Small.’
‘Red Dock. C’mon.’ I’d the motor outside. Still with the Mercs. ‘I’ll ask you some questions about yourself on the way over. Is that all right? Usual employment stuff for the paperwork.’
‘OK.’
‘That’s not a Dublin accent you’ve got. Where you from?’
‘Galway.’
‘Great pub town. Your people still live there?’ I knew she had none.
‘I was brought up in a home.’
‘Oh, you’re an orphan?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Find out. Go to the health board. Listen to me going on. Sorry. It’s your own business.’
‘The health board are useless.’
‘I know.’
She wondered how I knew.
Thinking on my feet here, improvising to keep the topic going. ‘A mate of mine called Ted Lyle has a couple of girls working for him in your position. One of them went to a support group.’
News to her. ‘A support group?’
‘They have them for everything: booze, dope, kids in trouble and kids like you. I’ll get Ted Lyle’s girls to have a word with you, fill you in.’
‘Thanks.’
So far so good. Red the Revelation. The health boards are a fucking joke. Kids go to them and get told sweet fuck all sometimes.
I left the conversation like that. I’d only wanted to know how she felt about her background so I could use it as a talking point to learn Lucille’s feelings on the subject.
Then I rang Ted Lyle and told him I’d a young girl – ‘Pretty little thing, she is’ – who’d like a word with one of his. The ‘pretty little thing’ would make him take a look. No need to make it any more obvious than that. He’d get around to it. Ted had a room-service angle on the go with hotel porters. Class girls. No tarts in lampshades. Throwing one of them a few quid to get the leg over once a week does me. Fuck all that emotional crap. Sex, then get t’fuck outta there’s as far as I go. ‘So you can send Sally over on Friday night,’ I told Ted. Size ten, hair like a seal’s, that was Sally.
I was in the office at the back of the Copper Jug that Friday night. I usually count the takings on a Friday. Gemma was in the bar serving.
‘Gemma, c’mere a minute and give us a hand.’
Fra – Fra manages the place for me – gave me a bit of a ‘don’t keep her long’ look. The place was crammed. Tina Turner was belting out ‘Steamy Windows’ on the jukebox. Seemed appropriate. The upstairs ones’d be steamy when Sally got her kecks off.
‘Yes, Red?’
I led her into the office. ‘Count that, will you?’ There must’ve been twenty-odd grand on the desk. The sight of it made her eyes ping. The first time anybody’d trusted her, by the look of her.
‘I’m expecting company, Gemma. Send her up when she arrives. Sally her name is. She’s one of the girls I was telling you about who’d fill you in on those support groups. Have a word with her when she’s finished.’
I left her to it. Sally arrived and Gemma sent her up. I fucked Sally then sent her down to tell Gemma to give her two hundred quid. Nice and casual. As if Sally was nothing more than hired help. That’s all she was anyway. Then I had a shower and came down.
‘How you getting on, Gemma?’
She’d figured out what the two hundred was for but didn’t say. Just looked embarrassed. ‘OK.’
‘Good. Give that to Fra when you’re finished. I’m away. See ya.’
That was it. A few Fridays came and went. Nice girls with them. Gemma had to know that she herself, being young and attractive, was not of particular interest to me as far as it came to fucking her – that I paid for girls when I wanted them and wasn’t into making passes. Detached.
I let this situation between me and Gemma build up over the weeks. I say ‘situation’. I won’t use the word ‘relationship’. It’s not a word I feel comfortable with. I haven’t felt anything for anyone since Sean. Gemma was to be used, nothing more. How she felt about me, I neither knew nor cared. Distance. I always keep my distance from people. I didn’t want my emotions getting in the way of what I was about.
The thing was, Gemma went to a couple of Charlie Swags’s nightclubs on weekends and got into Sally’s company. Which meant she got into Ted Lyle’s. All you have to do is look at Ted to know what he’s thinking. When you see him coming all suave – if jewellers displayed their wares on pimps, Ted’d be a walking model for them – Mr ‘No Problem’ – you know he’s making a move. He was looking at Gemma and seeing pound signs. And if he didn’t tell Sally to tell Gemma that she could see them too, if she came and worked for him, he wasn’t the greedy fucker I knew him to be. Oh he’d take it nice and easy. Everything aimed at making Gemma feel comfortable with Sally’s way of earning a living. A lot of girls you can just put it to them straight. Tell them they’ve got the goods and do they want to get the best returns from them? Other girls would take it as an insult of course. But by allowing a girl to gradually get used to the idea that someone like Sally was making plenty, doing all right for herself, being looked after, no violence, all that, if a girl is of a mind, it slowly begins to seep in that it’s just a good way to make money. Five or six punters a night, five or six hundred in their pockets a night. The important thing is not to rush it. I’m telling you stuff you probably already know here. If you don’t, fuck knows where you’ve been living.
The following Friday night, Gemma’s counting the money. She’s expecting, as usual, a girl to turn up for me to fuck. I hadn’t ordered one, but I didn’t tell Gemma that. I didn’t say a word – just let her think I had. I went upstairs, came down a half-hour later.
‘No sign of one of Ted Lyle’s, Gemma?’ Straight face. Always keep a straight face. Gemma had to have the impression I dealt with girls simply on a business level. I paid bar staff for a service; I paid girls for a service.
‘No,’ she said. No red face now. She’d become used to it.
‘Fuck it.’ I sat down at the desk beside her. ‘I hate people screwing up my routine.’
‘I know.’
I read nothing into that. I’d been let down. Nothing serious. No big deal. But Gemma, I was sure, liked the honesty of my situation, the way I acted, the straightforwardness of it all. No hassle. A ‘service’ hadn’t turned up, that’s all. It was important that Gemma felt that although my set-up might be unusual to many, it was normal to me. I could get girls on a phone call. Gemma, therefore, had to see herself as just another girl.
‘I’m gonna ask you a question here, Gemma. Say yes or no. It’s no big deal to me either way. I can easily ring Ted Lyle and tell him to get his finger out.’
She sensed what was coming. Her face went red and a gulp was on the way. ‘What is it?’ came out with a ‘Fuck me, what’s he gonna ask me?’ attached to it.
‘I want to fuck you.’ Unorthodox? Not to me. Depends what you’re used to. She knew it was just business. But there was a risk. I didn’t want to frighten her off.
Timid little thing. I could see the nerves jumping in her. She took her time. I used it against her.
‘No problem,’ I said, with no hint of anything in my voice approaching bad feelings – I’d taken her silence as a no, but fuck it, so what?
‘All right,’ came out. A letter at a time, it sounded like. Maybe she felt something for me; maybe she felt I’d been let down. Kids of her age look up to people who’ve been good to them. Don’t like to feel they’ve let them down.
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’ It croaked out. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes.’
‘OK. Come on. Here.’ I handed her two hundred. ‘Makes no odds to me who gets this.’
Up we went.
I keep the bedroom nice. I rarely sleep in it. The bar staff know why I use it. No doubt the other waitresses and Gemma had talked about me amongst themselves, how I never hit on staff (and some of them were more than fuckable), how I kept it all on a detached business footing. Maybe Gemma felt a little special. I neither knew nor cared. She’d bunged the money into her back pocket anyway.
I peeled off and sat up on the bed. She went to lie next to me.
‘Get the gear off, Gemma.’
Took her aback, that one. Perhaps she thought this would be a necking session to begin with, or a touch of lovemaking foreplay. She might’ve been into lovemaking. I fuck – that’s it. She stood back up, looking nervous. The light was low. I wanted to see the goods. I’d a reason. Not the turn-on one – another one.
Gemma had no tits. She wore thick jumpers trying to hide it. Why? Self-conscious probably. You know what young girls are like, always worrying about how they look. If they’re well stacked, they think they’re top heavy; if they’ve nice tits, they think their arse is too big, or their hair’s … I dunno, something wrong with it anyway. Gemma was built like a kid. Smaller than I usually go for, but she was nice all the same.
I ignored the way the shyness was getting to her.
‘You’ve a nice figure, Gemma,’ I told her, just to make her feel better. Helped get rid of her inadequate look anyway. Fuck knows what she was worried about. Some men go in for kid-like girls.
‘OK – I like a blowjob then a fuck. OK?’
Shoulda seen her face. The gulp came quicker this time.
I was sitting up. She knelt on the bed and gave me a blowjob. Then I fucked her. I won’t describe it. I’m sure you know what a blowjob and a fuck are like. If not, ring Ted Lyle. And if you want to find out what other kinds of sex are like, he’s your man too.
She even cuddled into my chest afterwards. No pro ever did that before. I didn’t fancy the cuddle.
‘OK, Gemma,’ I said. ‘I have to be going.’
‘Did you like it?’ she asked. Jesus, I dunno. Talk about insecure kids.
‘Of course. You’re nice. I have a thing for girls who shave between their legs though, but other than that, fine.’
Her reaction to that would tell me something in the weeks to come.
‘Next Friday night? OK by you?’
She nodded. Went red again too. It was my way of proving I’d meant what I said. That she was worth the money.
Now the following Friday, I got what I’d hoped for. I could tell by the way she’d been acting all week that the fuck was between us. I doubt she’d mentioned it to the others. Maybe she did. But there was something in her shy little smile when she passed me or caught my glance. Kids’ stuff.
And when I took her up to the bedroom to repeat the exercise, there it was. The jeans came off. She was watching for my response. The pants came down. It was comical. Sweet, some might say. Not me. Though I let on I was pleased. She stood before me, her skin as pink as a newborn. And the blonde hair had gone. She’d shaved it for me. The smile of embarrassment and of waiting for my reaction said it all.
I pulled her over and kissed her. She read affection or love or some such shit in it. It wasn’t there. Just manipulation.
OK, you’re probably wondering what all this is leading up to. How would Gemma having electrolysis tell me how Lucille had reacted to that birth certificate?
Well, it’s like this: there’s probably a fancy word in the dictionary for people like me, and I don’t know what it is, but what I do know is that I seem to have a way of adapting other people’s circumstances to help my own.
Me and Charlie Swags play poker every Sunday night. Have done for years. It’s not one of these schools like you see sometimes where you need a big wad to get in. The money is big, but it’s incidental. Me and Charlie and a few lads going back a lot of years get together and that’s it. No one else.
He was telling me there a while back about a guy called Drake who owned a garage with land attached to it near the city centre, enough land to build a nightclub on. Charlie wasn’t interested in the garage. He was gonna sell that bit off. The price had been agreed and Charlie’d had plans drawn up and all that. Then Drake started fucking about, wanting more money. Charlie was fed up with the cunt.
So while all this business with Gemma was going on, what Charlie was saying was beginning to tie in with it. How and why would be too difficult to go into now. Call it instinct, a sense of what might happen – it’s up to you. But with me, both Gemma’s and Charlie’s situations were coming together. I was starting to look at them as a likely opportunity.
What I did was I started avoiding the Copper Jug on a Friday night. Gemma would read stuff into it, I figured, that maybe I was avoiding her. I wasn’t, yet I was. I just wanted to see how it played out. I knew that by spending Fridays in The Minstrel, one of my two hotels, Sally would – not would, might – tell Gemma that I’d got Ted Lyle to send girls over there instead. Which I did. Fra might tell Gemma that I sometimes spent Fridays in my other places. I went to the Jug Monday afternoons, or something like that, instead.
I popped in one such afternoon and there she was, with a big smile on her face, glad to see me. ‘Red, how’s it going?’ and all that.
I acted like nothing was untoward. ‘Gemma, how’s it going?’ There was something different about her though. Ted Lyle hit me with it weeks later, and I told him he was imagining things. Anyway, I was in the office when she came in for a new till roll.
‘I meant to ask you, Gemma.’
‘Yes?’ sprang out of her like a big exclamation mark, which she checked, realising she was coming across a bit eager. A flattened down version of ‘Yes?’ followed.
‘How’d you get on with that support group? Any luck?’
She lit up, yet looked nervous at the same time. ‘I found out who my mother is.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No. Honest.’
I didn’t care. I was hoping for news of what Lucille was up to.
‘Sit down,’ I said, ‘and tell me all about it. If you want to now. I don’t want you to think I’m prying. Just interested, hoping things are working out for you.’
‘Sure if it hadn’t been for you, Red, I might never have found out.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ I pulled up a chair. We were both sitting on what you might call the visitor’s side of the desk. ‘Hang on a minute and I’ll close this door,’ I said, as if we were in for a heart-to-heart. ‘Don’t want everybody hearing your business.’
I won’t say she lit up again from then on in, but everything about her definitely sparkled. Her nice blonde tit-length hair was making me feel like having another poke at her. I say blonde, but it was more white-blonde than the yellow kind. Nice eyebrows. Great mouth. She leaned forward in her chair a lot, emphasising.
‘I’m going to write my mother a letter,’ she told me. ‘She lives in Allens, County Longford.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Angela Reading.’
The Connemara orphanage must’ve used a different system than the Dublin one I was in.
‘Her name was Smart when she had me.’
Ah, same system. As Smart starts with ‘SM’, the ‘AL’ was for Allens with the final ‘L’ for Longford. That’s how they’d come up with ‘Small’. If I’d thought about it long enough I’d probably have come up with it myself, plus a few more possibilities.
‘The trouble is, Red, I don’t know what to say to her.’
‘Why not just say you’ve been thinking about her and would like to have a chat? That you’d travel up – in case she might find it difficult to get away, y’know, save her maybe making up yarns to her family. One meeting. Then take it from there. Tell her you’re working and taking good care of yourself – mothers like to hear stuff like that – and it’ll also tell her that you won’t be a burden to her; just in case she’d be worried. You don’t know her circumstances. Make it sound like you’re your own girl. That’s how I’d run with it. That you’re initially hoping to strike up a no-strings friendship.’
‘Oh, Red, you’re so understanding.’
‘Just older than you, Gemma. Age gives you a common-sense perspective, that’s all. Want me to type it up for you? Longhand’s OK, but it might strike of intimacy. Just an idea.’
‘Oh, would you?’
‘Sure.’ I pulled the keypad and the monitor round. ‘Fire away.’ I then came across as if I’d been acting the know-all. ‘Listen to me. This is your private business. What right have I to be taken into your confidence like this? I wasn’t thinking, Gemma, I’m sorry. Why don’t you write what your flatmate wrote to hers? What’s her name again?’
‘Lucille. But no, listen – I want you to write it. Your idea’s good. Anyway, Lucille’s not writing to her mother.’
‘Oh?’
‘She doesn’t look at it the same as me.’
Fuck it. Lucille wasn’t going to contact Anne Donavan. That’s all I could think of as I typed Gemma’s letter. That’s the trouble with this game: you can never predict how it’ll turn out. Some kids want fuck all to do with the person who gave them up. I’d had it in mind that she’d contact Anne, who’d of course deny she was her mother. It wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t be the first to deny she’d given her kid into care. Lucille wouldn’t believe her. Official documents, birth certificates, don’t lie. Lucille would come away believing she’d been rejected all over again, which, it could be argued, would add to her sense of grievance. For the revenge angle I was working on, y’see, I needed her to confront her mother.
There was nothing else for it. I’d have to force Lucille to go out to Clonkeelin, and to do that I’d have to up the emotional pressure on her.
Some of the kids I’d grown up with had sought out their birth mothers for no other reason than the fact that they had no one else in the world. They came out of the home and were alone. Adopted kids are different in that sense. They have their adoptive families. They’re part of something. That’s why some of them never trace their roots, I believe. They’re emotionally shored up.
In that sense, Lucille had someone: Gemma. They were close. Without Gemma, Lucille would be alone. Bereaved, she might then begin taking steps into her past.
‘You’ll have to sign this.’
‘OK. What do you think I should write?’
‘How about “Love, Gemma”?’
‘OK.’
‘“Love, Gemma” it is.’
And that’s what she signed, after reading it four or five times, full of trepidation: longed to send it but was full of uncertainty, all that.
I told her I was going to the post office later, and that I’d mail it for her.
But I’d no intention of doing that. Angela Reading would never see it. Therefore she’d never reply to it. I was gonna do that. And I was gonna do it in such a way that when Gemma read it, she’d feel her mother had rejected her all over again. If Gemma had given any indication that Lucille had gone to Clonkeelin, what happened next wouldn’t have happened. There’d have been no need for it.