The White Room Read online

  The word ‘love’ hit her father like a dart. He physically recoiled from it.

  ‘Love?’ He spat the word out. ‘What does he know about love?’

  Monica felt the anger rising within her. ‘A damn sight more than you.’

  Her father looked at the floor, seemed to be staring at the pattern in the carpet. He sighed.

  ‘Look, Monica, don’t be like that. Stay here, eh? With me. Eh?’ There was begging, pleading in his voice.

  He made a clumsy grab for her hands, caught them. His hands felt like two enormous worn, cracked leather gloves. They were wet and shaking. He pulled her over to his armchair, sat down, still holding her hands.

  ‘Come an’ sit on me lap, eh? Come on, we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘I’m too old for that, aren’t I?’

  Her voice dripped vitriol.

  He kept pulling at her, tugging at her wrists. She resisted. ‘Come on, pet, sit down.’

  His voice all warm and paternal, yet shaking below the surface.

  She resisted.

  He pulled harder.

  ‘Don’t be like that …’

  ‘I told him, you know.’

  Her father stopped pulling. He looked at her.

  Monica’s voice trembled. Her legs were shaking. She suddenly wanted to go to the toilet.

  ‘Brian. I told Brian what you used to do to me.’

  She felt wetness in her eyes. She blinked it back.

  Her father stared up at her, his face clouded and crowded with emotions. All of them unreadable.

  ‘He said …’ She swallowed. Her throat had gone dry. ‘He said if you touch me again, he’ll fuckin’ kill you.’

  Her father stared at her. Beyond shock.

  ‘I’m leavin’ now. An’ I’m goin’ to live with Brian.’

  She turned and walked out of the house, body burning with a heat more than embarrassment, more than rage.

  She set off down the street. Inside, in her heart, she felt a change. The heat of her inner crucible was forming a new person. A stronger, happier one that could look to the future.

  She found a wall, sat down, stared at the Tyne. She put her hand in her coat pocket, felt something in there. She drew out her father’s hip flask. She shook it: liquid sloshed inside. She opened it, lifted a shaking hand to her mouth and drank. It burned.

  She stared down at the Tyne, looked to the future.

  And let the tears fall.

  ‘Aw, no. I’ve pissed mesell …’

  Monica looked at the bare boards. Wetness blossomed from her body, spreading wide, soaking into the wood. The backs of her legs, the base of her spine were wet.

  She began to panic. This wasn’t urine. It didn’t smell right. It was another rebellion by her body, another piece of ignorance about the way she worked.

  She wished Brian was there.

  Another spasm.

  Followed by an urge to push, to confront the pain, the terrible strangeness of her body, and face it down. The urge was overwhelming. She couldn’t fight it.

  She gasped, grimaced.

  And pushed.

  Brian wasn’t the first. But she wished he had been.

  There were all the men in all the rooms, curtains drawn, smelling of enforced loneliness and unhealthy obsession. Her father’s friends and acquaintances. They had used her, hurt her, scared her. Sometimes they had been kind to her afterwards, sometimes cruel. Most times they would just turn away from her, turn inside themselves. Ignore her. In time she had come to accept it.

  Her mother never asked where she had been. Not once. Monica would always go up to the room she shared with her brother and hope he wouldn’t be there, hope she could be alone.

  At night the dreams came. Her daytime experiences relived through a subconscious, nightmarish filter. The men from the rooms would be in hers. Repeating their terrible acts. Starting on her again. She would wake, sometimes screaming. Sometimes her father would be there. Sometimes she would be alone. Never would there be any comfort.

  This stopped when hair and breasts began to appear. Then her father and his friends didn’t want to know her. The rejection was so sudden and so harsh she was wounded by it. She didn’t know what to do. She blamed herself. She felt undesirable, unattractive. She felt spurned.

  She started going out. Hanging around pubs, getting men and some of the older boys to buy her drinks. In return she let them touch or even have her if they were nice enough.

  In back alleys, in other men’s houses while their wives were out. Down by the Tyne, at the backs of the factories. They took her everywhere. She would urge them to push into her hard, to make her feel it, and they would oblige. But the harder they pushed, the deeper they went, they never touched her inside. She would hold on to them, push herself against them, feel their rubber-sheathed thrusts, but it never happened. It never went deep enough.

  Sex but not love.

  In deep, but feeling nothing.

  Until she met Brian.

  He felt like the first.

  He talked to her, wooed her even. Looked at her in a different way from the others. Like he really knew her, what it felt like to be her.

  Love. That’s what it felt like to her. She told him often that she loved him. He just smiled. She expected that. Men weren’t good about saying those sort of things, she knew.

  He took her out, bought her presents. Told her she was special, different. She responded, fell for everything he said.

  After she had moved in with him and had the memory of her father’s displeasure happily lodged in her mind, things began to change.

  The presents stopped coming. The compliments stopped being given. Things began to be expected of her. Duties had to be performed.

  Brian shared a house in Fenham with two others, both like him. She didn’t know what the three of them got up to when they went out, how they made their money, what arrangement they had with the landlord about living there. She didn’t care. As long as he came back to her. As long as he gave her money, kept her. That was the important thing. She was also expected to cook, clean and look after the three of them. She had her reservations, but she put them to the back of her mind. This was for Brian, this was for the man she loved. It was what was expected of her.

  Then there was that one night. And afterwards nothing was the same.

  The three lads had come in well after dark in high spirits, laughing and joking, alluding to what they had been doing, carrying the smell of the night on them. Whatever they found funny had been at someone else’s expense. Monica didn’t listen. It didn’t concern her.

  They had wanted music. She had turned on the wireless, but they wanted records. She had reached for her new Alma Cogan disc, ‘Banjo’s Back in Town’, but they didn’t want that.

  ‘Vincent,’ said Brian.

  She swallowed a sigh, re-sleeved the disc. She liked the song. The melody was simple but hummable. Bright. It made her happy. She reached for Brian’s choice. Gene Vincent – ‘Be Bop A Lula’. It was all the things Alma Cogan wasn’t. Dark. Complex. It didn’t make her happy. It stirred up unpleasant feelings within her. She imagined it did the same to Brian. She imagined that was why he wanted to hear it.

  She put it on.

  ‘Hey,’ said the oldest, Eddie, slumped in an armchair and dropping an empty beer bottle on the carpet, ‘I wanna ’nother drink. Monica, gerrus another drink.’

  Monica got up, picked up the fallen bottle, crossed to the sideboard, took out another bottle. She picked up the opener.

  ‘Nah,’ Eddie said. ‘Whisky.’

  She put the bottle opener and bottle back, took out the bottle of whisky and a glass, took it Eddie. She stood in front of him pouring.

  ‘I’ll tell you when.’

  The whisky reached the halfway mark.

  ‘When.’

  She passed him the glass. He took a mouthful, swallowed, grimaced.

  ‘Me an’ all,’ said Brian, holding up his empty glass. He was one whisky ahead of Eddie.
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  Monica crossed the floor, filled up Brian’s glass. She knew the level he liked his drink to be at. He winked at her when she had finished. It was a cold gesture, impersonal. The kind a tightfisted gambler gives to a cloakroom girl in a casino. Service rewarded. She smiled back at him, hesitantly. She had become as adept at reading his moods as she had been her father’s. He was drunk. Mean drunk.

  Gene Vincent yelled more, more, more.

  Brian gestured to Brimson, the third man, then to the bottle.

  ‘Nah,’ Brimson said, shifting in his seat. Monica could see he was already very drunk. He looked her up and down as she stood in the middle of their sitting room holding the bottle, smiled. It was a smile she had seen many times before. Not just on him. ‘I wan’ somethin’, but not that.’

  Brian stared at Brimson, his hollow eyes boring in to him. Brimson slipped from drunkenness to sudden sobriety. He swallowed hard. At first he wasn’t sure Brian had heard him, but looking at Brian’s expression he knew he had.

  A grim smile split Brian’s face, like a hard blade slicing through soft flesh.

  ‘Cost you,’ he said.

  Brimson looked at him, tried to gauge Brian’s seriousness.

  ‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re on.’ He dug into his pockets, brought out crumpled notes, tarnished coins. Brian plucked the notes from him.

  Brian turned to Monica, pointed.

  ‘Go on.’

  He nodded at her. She stared back at him, unmoving, unable to speak.

  Gene Vincent sang that Lula was the one that loved him so.

  ‘Go on.’

  Brian was becoming angry at not being obeyed. Monica didn’t want him to get angry. Moving slowly, as if her life had just tipped over into an unbelievable dream, she crossed to where Brimson was sitting in the armchair. He was already unbuttoning his trousers, slipping off his braces. She looked around the room, felt her face flush with embarrassment and humiliation.

  ‘I love you, Monica,’ said Brian, his voice harsh, like flesh dragged over broken glass. ‘If you love me, you’ll do it.’

  She looked at him, the knife-like smile still in place on his face. She kneeled down in front of Brimson, took his semi-limp penis in her hand.

  ‘That’s right, pet,’ Brimson slurred, laughing, ‘give it a good clean.’

  The other two laughed.

  She bent into his crotch, took him in her mouth. He tasted as if he hadn’t washed for several days. She did as she had been bid, working at keeping his drunken erection, holding him in place until he came.

  She tried not to think about what she was doing. It became secondary. She thought of the word. It was the first time Brian had said it to her.

  Love.

  ‘Me next,’ said Eddie. His trousers were already down to his ankles.

  She repeated the act with him, all the while trying to ignore the taste and the smell, trying to absent herself from her actions. Trying to focus on the one word:

  Love.

  That’s what Brian had said.

  She finished off Eddie, grimacing and trying to hide it, and stood up. She turned to face her boyfriend, found a smile, put it on.

  Gene Vincent sang of his baby love, his baby love, his baby love.

  Love.

  ‘What about you, Brian? Your turn now?’

  He turned to her, eyes as cold and hard as the stone their house was built from.

  ‘Whore.’

  A whisper. A venomous, disgusted whisper.

  ‘Fucking whore. Slag. Fucking slag.’

  The words long-drawn-out, every syllable enunciated to its twisted maximum.

  He lifted his arm, drew it back to strike her. Monica dropped her head, cowered in fear before him. She let out an involuntary whimper.

  ‘Howay, Brian, man.’ Brimson. ‘Divvent hit ’er, man. She’ll not do it again.’

  Brimson’s voice cut the tension in the room, broke the spell. Eddie tried to laugh. Brian turned to him as if seeing him for the first time. The laugh died on Eddie’s lips. At that moment Monica became aware of the relationship between the three men. Brian was the boss. Brian was the one the other two feared.

  Brian turned back to Monica, blinked.

  ‘Get to bed.’

  Monica just stared at him.

  ‘Bed.’

  Her lower lip trembling, her eyes beginning to moisten, she turned and made for the stairs.

  Alone in the bedroom she let it all out.

  She was still awake when, hours later, Brian came up to bed. She was on her side staring at the curtains, watching the new day appear, hoping that it would bring with it enough light to illuminate the dark corners.

  The bedsprings creaked as Brian slid beneath the blankets and sheets, moved in to her. She felt his erection poking in to her back, his hands roughly working their way between her buttocks, her thighs. His fingers probing her vagina, pulling it open. His penis forcing its way inside her. Skin on flesh; for the first time no rubber between them. The rough friction of his back and forth thrusts. The tremble in his abdomen, his thighs as he came inside her. The instant withdrawal and squeal of bedsprings as he flopped on his back. The tickle between her legs as his semen slowly trickled out of her. She heard his snores as he fell into instant sleep. She sighed. She didn’t move.

  She lay on her side staring at the curtains.

  He had said the word. He had told her he loved her. And even rough love was better than no love at all.

  She was watching the new day appear, hoping that it would bring with it enough light to illuminate dark corners.

  But doubting it.

  They all slept in the next day. Brian woke Monica, told her to get up, make him his breakfast. Fearing what would happen if she refused, she did as she was told.

  Downstairs in the cramped kitchen, she cooked him bacon and egg.

  Brimson and Eddie didn’t stir.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’,’ said Brian, forking a load of egg into his mouth, sucking the yolk in.

  She turned from the sink to face him. Stood expectantly.

  ‘What you did last night.’

  Her stomach turned over.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’ you should do that. Make some money.’

  He put his knife to a slice of bacon, tore a strip off, pushed it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, looked up.

  ‘D’you reckon?’

  Monica stared at him.

  ‘D’you reckon.’

  Malice and menace had entered his voice. Not a question this time.

  Monica didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t agree with him, and she didn’t dare argue. Instead she heard herself say: ‘You said love.’

  Her voice was tiny and frail, like a bird not daring to fly.

  ‘What?’

  She cleared her throat, preparing her wings.

  ‘Last night. You said love.’

  ‘So?’

  He shrugged, went on eating.

  ‘Love. It’s the first time you’ve said it to me.’

  He finished his breakfast, rimmed the plate with his fried bread to sop up the juices, crammed it into his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

  Monica remained standing, staring at him.

  ‘You’ve never told me you love me.’

  Brian took a mouthful of tea, looked up.

  ‘I’ve never told you I love you?’

  The words sounded foreign, alien to his mouth.

  ‘No.’

  Brian stared at her, blank-faced. Then he smiled. As he did so, his eyes seemed lit by a strange light.

  ‘So if I tell you I love you, you’ll do it?’

  Monica stared at him.

  He gave a small, snorted laugh, shook his head.

  ‘I love you.’

  He took another slurp of tea, set his mug down.

  Monica stared at him, her eyes unreadable.

  ‘I’ll do it, then.’

  Then, a couple of months later, the news. The news that she thought would end
that part of her life, usher in a new, happier one.

  Illuminate the dark corners.

  ‘I’m gonna have a baby.’

  She smiled when she told Brian.

  Brian looked at her.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I can stop working.’

  Brian shrugged.

  ‘You won’t show for a while. You can keep goin’.’

  She felt herself reddening.

  ‘And then what? What about when I start to show?’

  Brian shrugged again.

  ‘We’ll just have to find some punters who like pregnant lasses.’

  He shrugged on his drape, checked his quiff in the mirror, walked out of the house.

  Monica sat there alone in the living room. She looked around. The sun streamed in through the windows. Dust motes danced in the light. But there were dark corners the sun couldn’t reach.

  There would always be dark corners the sun couldn’t reach.

  She was gasping, panting, as the baby’s head began to emerge.

  It poked out from between her legs, purple and gnarled, covered in blood.

  Blood. It was everywhere. Pouring out from between her thighs, darkening the wooden floor, dripping down between the boards. Covering her hands and arms, making them slippery. She wiped them on her body, left long red streaks.

  She pushed, gasping again, groaning through gritted teeth, propped up on her arms. The pain was intense. She had experienced nothing like it before. As if her body was being ripped apart, flesh peeled off the bone like the skin peeled from an orange. Like trying to shit a melon.

  She pushed again.

  The baby was head and shoulders out now.

  She had to stop, to rest. She was exhausted; she could push no more.

  She looked down, the baby half in, half out of her body.

  Panic again gripped her. She didn’t want to go on, but she couldn’t stop. She screamed in frustration. Wished for somebody to make it stop, take it all away. Deal with it for her.

  She had the sense at that moment of being alone. Not just in the room, on the floor, but in her life. No one there to help her, to reach her. Alone.

  Apart from this thing sticking out of her.

  She pushed again, sobbing, wanting the ordeal to be over.

  The baby moved further out, further then, almost with a pop, slipped fully out and lay there on the floor.

  Monica breathed deeply, gasping, relieved as if she’d just run twenty three-minute miles.