‘Is it a girl? Is it a ghost? Is it a glamour puss?
Is it a grand dame? No, it’s me mate, Zuky-dot!
How’ve you been, darlin’?’ Venus’s droll
contralto floated over the empty wooden tables
in her twilight bar Mount Venus, at the junction
of Ludgate Hill and St Paul’s Churchyard.
It was late, not quite the done thing for a lady
to be ordering a pint just up from the docks,
in fact to be out alone at all. But Venus and me
went way back to when I was a mite
of seven, scavenging for leftovers at the market
of a Saturday evening in the years
before Dad became a ‘man successfully made’.
Venus showed me how to tell the difference
between an overripe apple and a maggoty one,
helped me carry my assortment of cabbages,
turnips, radishes and wotnots home
much to the snooty disdain of Dad,
waiting in the road for supper to arrive,
for Venus was a sight to behold, and some.
‘It’s a long story,’ I called back, all gung-ho,
braving a room acrid with stale beer and vino,
testament to the previous night’s round
of ribaldry, rivalry and lewd rhetoric.
We embraced, tears came into my eyes,
partly because she’d just come from the baths
and had overdone it with a mixed potion
of lavender, rose and honeysuckle perfumes
and partly because it had been so long
since I’d been held without it being a precursor
to a demand for sex – non-negotiable.
She fingered my gold dolphin earrings,
her dark blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
‘Upmarket tomfoolery, eh. The real thing, luv?’
I had left home that afternoon with wings
on my heels, ordered the sedan-bearers,
bodyguard and train of status symbols
to trot ten paces behind, made a dash for it,
up Bucklersbury and out of sight, headed
for Gracechurch Street, popped in to see Alba,
who was chasing headless chickens in the yard,
before plucking them for display outside.
She couldn’t believe it was me.
She moaned she had no time to herself now.
I moaned that was all I had. She asked
why I hadn’t come out to play,
I could tell she was angry. She was catching
chickens, then letting them go.
‘Stop and talk to me,’ I begged. ‘Please.’
‘I said it would change, Zee. Look at you,
all poshed up, I went to your house twice
but the guards told me to scarper.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ I replied. ‘It’s him, it’s my …
I’ve missed you so much. It’s been awful.’
She stopped running, came over,
awkwardly, not knowing what to do
with her hands, whether to hug me.
‘Me too. Look at all that make-up, Zee,
and that dress, you look so grown up.
So when do I get to go to your manor?’
‘When I can fix it. Tranio’s the head honcho
when he’s away, so it won’t be easy.’
‘I feel sorry for you, Zee.’
‘Thanks!’
‘No, I’m not being bitchy. I’m just glad
I’m still free. Come and see me soon.’
She disappeared inside the house.
Two doors up, Mater and Pater
were serving a queue of bemused customers.
Dad was chatting his usual bollocks,
‘My palace bigger than governor’s. Yes. No lie.
I made good, see. Look Zuleika here,
married to Roman nobilitas. Veritas princess?
Clothes so fine? My blood, see.’
Blah, blah, bloody-blah. Mum glared at him,
as usual, whispered loudly he’d taken
to gambling, wanted a villa like Mr Felix.
‘Nothing good enough now.
Him want quick-come money.’
She’d found a backgammon board
with rolling dice in the yard, confronted him,
but did he listen to her? She moaned
he spent most evenings in a seedy den
by the river front with a bunch of low-lifes.
I tried to furrow my brow with concern
but felt I was watching a B-rate play
with C-rate actors, sitting in a D-rate seat
at the amphitheatre.
I asked after Little Bro Catullus
(aka He Who Can Do No Wrong), was told
he was at Maestro Caesar’s over the way.
Took this as my cue to leave, though I just
studied him from a distance while Caesar,
bald as a pumpkin, cut his locks in the middle
with their complaints, had slashed a face
or two in his time, you see.
There the Little Usurper sat, fat brown
cheeks gleaming, full petulant lips,
wearing the smug demeanor of one
so dearly loved he’d been bought a dog,
a parrot and a blooming nightingale.
Then Caesar’s knife plunged suddenly
into his neck, blood spurted out, Catullus
released a spine-chilling scream, his eyes
rolled back, he fell off his stool
on to the ground, writhing. Yeah, right. I think not.
I took to my old stomping ground,
the narrow backstreets, hawkers poked sulphur
matches in my face, or lamps for sale
or bread or second-hand shoes.
‘Oh, come on, miss, be a benefactor
to a poor beggar, why don’t you?’
‘Abi!’ I said, telling them I never walked
with cash and that the jewels were fake,
then pushed them roughly aside,
as they had done me, oh not
so many moons ago. A flower-seller
sold vibrant bouquets, an ivory-vendor
from Arabia and Ethiopia floated
out of perfumeries, others sold spices
and cotton, there were pearl-sellers,
goldsmiths, robe-makers, cloak-makers,
cabinet-makers, embroiderers, dyers,
tanners, workers sitting on stools outside,
or doors wide open to shops;
money-changers lurked in doorways
like dirty old men, luring me
to make my fortune; I heard horn-tuners,
horses’ hoofs, barrels on gravel, chisels
on stone, saws on logs, knives
scraping leather, coppersmiths’ tapping,
children’s laughter, grunting pigs, sausages
frying in saucepans, chanting schoolboys
sitting under trees, I heard shouts,
bells, gongs, chimes,
how I loved and missed it all.
Outside the Forum, Dinesh the bow-legged
mystic was still doing his old
cobra-in-a-basket act with a reed whistle,
though the viper was geriatric,
could no longer writhe its alluring,
double-jointed body in a dance
on wooden crates who predicted
the destruction of empire or that Christianity
would soon come west, cracking jokes
about virgins giving birth or how
to walk on water without getting your feet wet
or the ten best ways to rise from the dead
or declaring Jupiter is really a woman
or that raw eggs give you a longer hard-on
or parading in a papyrus placard announcing
that the world will end in the year 300 –
to a crowd of onlookers who kept up a steady
supply of rotten fish and pigs’ entrails.
Inside the orators were out in full force, juicing
every syllable for its music, competing
to speak the most passionalissima Latin
to a lively audience. I slid in at the back,
desperate to know about the world I lived in.
They spoke of the great Septimius Severus,
who had gone from African boy
to Roman emperor, had spent many years
travelling the empire from Germania
to Syria, back to his hometown in Libya,
who would surely one day visit Britannia,
this far-flung northern outpost of empire,
on our cities and towns, spear every last man
of them, burn their villages, castrate
their infant sons, occupy their women,
colonize their terra firma, make them speak
our lingo, impose taxes, yay! and thus
bring Pax Romana to this our blessed island.
Vivat Emperor Sevva!
Vivat Emperor Sevva!
* * *
‘The first time is always the worst, Zuky-doo.’
Venus had listened to each scene in my drama
Girl Weds Rich Old Man Who Locks Her Up.
‘I know, believe you me, I couldn’t sit for days.’
She crossed her eyes, sucked in her cheeks,
affected a shrug and we burst out laughing,
though mine came with a few tears, unwittingly.
I saw Venus afresh, noticed that under the slap
her features were drawn, her bright-red
lips were miserable when immobile.
‘Wassup?’ I ventured quietly.
Her staff were drifting in, sweeping the floor,
fetching water, lighting lanterns.
Outside the street was coated with black.
‘Show must go on an’ all that.’
‘No, really, tell me,’ I insisted, realizing
for the first time that Venus was my alma mater,
but that I knew Sweet FA about the desires
beneath the glamorous alter ego of glitz and wit,
had never really cared before.
I sat up, astonished at the revelation
that this was probably My First Adult Thought.
She looked me straight in the eyes,
not one ounce of glitter. ‘It’s like this.’
She slumped forward on the table,
both hands now cradling her face, pushing
her chalky white flesh into high cheekbones.
‘You’re either a figure for fucking or a fucking freak.
Everyone needs a one-and-only after a while.
I’m twenty-two, Zuky-do. Middle aged!
A Venus must ’ave an Adonis.
Even if it’s just for a while. Bronzed, rippling,
adoring, preferably, compliant, essentially.
Someone to come home to, to cook
a pease pudding for of a winter’s night.
Look at the facts.
Thousands of bloody years ago
the Ægyptians believed in a sparring partner,
Why can’t I have it too? I’ll never have children.
No Cupid to match-make us mere humans.
You and Alba are my sprogs,
but I need a husband! Not a touch-your-toes-
and-it’ll-be-ten-bucks-more number.
Flippen ’eck! I need a bona fide husband!
I need a C-O-N-I-U-N-X!
Whadoesthatspell? Husband!’
She jumped up from her seat, began shouting
at her staff, ‘Get a move on, you bunch
of loafers, no-hopers, trollops and has-beens.
The punters’ll be here soon. Get your glad rags,
falsies and wigs on. You look a state!
I’m going out for a bit and if this taverna
ain’t spick and span by the time
I get back, you’ll be joining the paupers
queuing for handouts outside the mansions
of Cheapside on the morrow!’
She turned back to me.
‘Let me ball-of-chalk you home, darlin’.
You’re a woman of means now.
Ain’t no scamp no more.
Prime target for muggers and ne’er-do-wells.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I replied. ‘What does Juvenal say?
‘My dee-yah! You’ll be quoting Plato next!’
‘Actually, I’ve been studying poetry
with my professor, Theodorous.
I’m going to become a great poet.
I’d love to be famous for something.
Felix wants me educated, so how can he object?’
I pulled my brown woollen shawl over my head,
‘Good,’ she said, putting an arm around me.
‘Keep you out of trouble.
Just make sure you write witty ditties about me.
I wanna be immortalized, dontchaknowit,
and ain’t no one never gonna write
about your life but you. Once you’re dead,
you never existed, baby, so get to it.’
Two heads taller than me, she steered me past
the brothel at the corner, its owner a man
from Gaul with a wet donkey’s tail
of a moustache, who used to call out:
‘I ’ave a Woppy, a Chinky, a Honky, a Paki,
a Gingery, an Araby, now all I need is a Blackie.
‘Ow’s about it, leetle girlie?’
In the old days Venus slapped his face
if he propositioned me, though
tonight his jaw dropped when I passed by,
the dockland streets, slipping
on the slimy contents of chamber pots
thrown from the tenements.
She had long been a fantastic sight
in our town, originally from Camulodunum
on the east coast, she had acquired
an affected mockney accent,
part of me re-invention package, my dee-yah!
Fair hair was dyed black, piled with curly
hairpieces, wooden pattens raised
her sandals an unheard-of three inches
off the ground, and her feet were as large
as any man’s. In her off-the-shoulder gowns
and dolled-up face, hair showed
where breasts usually sprouted. She used
to be followed by hordes, pelted with stones,
but folks got used to her,
most didn’t give a damn and those who
did found their faces re-structured,
for it was not wise to bring out the man
in Venus, née Rufus.
Mount Venus was a haven for her kind,
men who loaned themselves out for cabarets
or private parties for rich married men
Others just liked to parade in chic gowns.
The sassiest called out to soldiers from the bar,
‘Ditch the beard for the lipstick, bay-bee!
and life’ll never be the same again!’
to hoots of laughter. Alba and me were their pets,
allowed to watch and giggle, promising
not to tell a soul when a famous lawyer
or butch centurion emerged
from the back room unsteady on his legs,
in a wig, torn gown and smudged lipstick.
The first time we met, me and Alba
had joined in with a crowd throwing stones
at her as she sashayed up Newgate Street,
cream veil swept over her shoulder,
and a shopping basket swinging at her side.
She chased and easily caught us,
and was about to land us one
when she clocked we were ‘stinkin’ little raggas’
and released us with an earful of expletives.
Fascinated, we followed her every time
we saw her after that, stood outside her club
until she invited us in on condition
we sat quietly in the corner.
She once confided to us that at our age
and prance around in them to much laughter
from her parents; but many years later,
when they discovered her doing the same
and sneaking out to date a local shepherd boy
at night, they kicked her out.
She’d not seen them since, and felt brutally
severed from her past, blanking
it all out to survive.
She came to Londinium, aged fourteen,
feeling like an orphan who quickly
became an urchin, a rent boy in fact, working
in the shadows of Spitalfields Cemetery after hours.
But she’d inherited her father’s ambition
and business acumen. The result?
Spank (saucy panties and nookie kit),
a shop for the lady with a prick and no tits,
but the clientele was pathetically small,
so after much market research Mount Venus
was created to fill the gap in the club market,
and was making a pile.
‘The thing is,’ she’d say, ‘a life without a past
is a life without roots. As there’s no one
holding on to me ankles I can fly anywhere,
I became the woman you see before you.’
and over the years her words sailed
back into mind and made sense.
* * *
I was glad of the escort home.
Felt vulnerable, never had before,
when I was nil, when I was one of us.
Tranio was waiting at the porticus for me,
a veritable Vesuvius eruptus bursting
in his neat little grey tunic, black hair
coming out of nostrils, ears, neck
and so thick on his legs no skin showed.
A torch was shaking in his hairy hand.
He opened his gob: ‘The master ordered me
to keep an eye on you, missy ma’am.
It is my duty to inform you –’
I swept past him, I was the madam, after all.
He was my slave, after all.
Venus rolled her eyes at me, I whispered
she’d get an invite to a private do chez moi
next time Felix exited-off on
one of his long-distance gallivants,
and I’d tested the boundaries
enough to do what I liked when he was gone.
over the open drains, exposing
discus-thrower’s calves (thankfully waxed).
I would have more days out on the town.