Scarlet Women

Limehouse. He did business. Not legitimate business, but it was business anyway.

‘I’m here with—’

‘Sir William. I know.’

Mira was silent for a moment, but her eyes spoke volumes. ‘Billy has a sleep after dinner,’ she said at last.

‘Does he?’

‘For an hour.’

‘You know what? A person could do a lot. In an hour.’

‘Yes. That’s true.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Mira,’ she said. ‘Mira Cooper.’

She flicked her leonine blonde mane and was off, streaking across the pool, her blood fizzing with excitement. Oh yes, she remembered everything. The good bits…and the bad.

She’d told him all about herself, something she had never done before, not with any man. That she had once worked in a high-class brothel run by her friend Annie Carter—who’d been Annie Bailey then—in the West End of London. She told Redmond that, while they lay naked together in his sumptuous Cliveden suite.

‘I don’t want you seeing Billy again,’ he said as they lay back against the pillows, him lazily playing with her splendid breasts, her lightly caressing his flat, well-toned stomach. ‘Not after this week.’

She turned her head, looked at his face. ‘He’ll be upset,’ she said.

‘Fuck him,’ he said.

She grinned at that. Knelt up on the bed and straddled him.

‘I’d rather fuck you,’ she said, and bit his nipple quite hard.

‘Okay,’ he said, smiling up at her. ‘Do it.’

Chapter 6

Annie was in church. She never went to church except for the usual stuff—funerals, christenings and weddings. Apart from those, she normally wouldn’t have been seen dead in such a place. She hadn’t been raised that way.

Her mum, Connie Bailey, had never even sent her or her sister Ruthie to Sunday school. Other kids had attended, collected those neat little stamps with pictures of Jesus to stick in books and get a gold star, got those little raffia crosses from the vicar on Palm Sunday. Annie and Ruthie had spent Sundays wondering whether this was going to be the day when their mother finally up and died on them. Choked on vomit, drank herself into oblivion, take your pick. Their mother had been a drunk, and Dad was nothing but a faint memory.

So, no church. No giving thanks to the Lord, because excuse me but what had there ever been to give thanks for, really? Annie and Max had been married in a no-fuss, no-frills ceremony in Majorca, and Layla had been christened there too. The Church of England, into which Annie had been born, was foreign to her.

But now here she was.

In church.

And a choir was lifting the roof off, singing ‘Praise the Lord, hallelujah!’ Twenty purple-clad black women were standing in front of the high altar, shafts of multicoloured sunlight illuminating them through the stained-glass window. They were moving rapturously to the beat. A dumpy, pop-eyed little man was at the organ, flapping one arm at the choir and mouthing along, obviously doubling up as choirmaster. The vicar was standing silently beside the lectern, listening and watching. The organ was belting out the backbeat, the beaming women giving it their all, the very rafters of the beautiful old building were vibrating with the power of the combined sound.

Annie sat in a pew and listened, feeling all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Yeah, it was magic.

She’d called first at Louella’s address, expecting that a whole bunch of family would be gathered around to support her. But a neighbour told her that Louella had gone to church. Said Louella always went to church this time every week for choir practice. So Tony had driven Annie over, and now here she was, listening to the choir pounding and clapping and swaying and singing to the rafters and wondering what good she could possibly do here. But she had to be here, had to say how sorry she was, had to ask if there was anything she could do to help, if only for Aretha’s sake. She didn’t even know what Aretha’s aunt looked like—but, as it happened, that proved no problem, because there, on the left-hand side of the group, bellowing out the words of praise and swaying in time to the beat, grinning and clapping with all the rest, was a woman whose eyes were full of tragedy and whose cheeks were wet with tears.

It had to be Louella, singing and sobbing at the same time.

Annie gulped as it hit her again. Aretha was gone. Had Aretha ever come here, with her Aunt Louella? Had she ever sat right here and listened to the choir? Before Aretha and Louella had fallen out over Aretha’s career choices, had they come here together to worship?

Annie didn’t know. There was so little that she really knew about Aretha Brown. All she did know was that she’d been a friend. All she knew beyond that was that she couldn’t let Chris get stitched up for something he didn’t—couldn’t—do.

The choir roared out one last, bell-like note, and it echoed all around the great vaulted ceiling before finally fading away. Their organist clapped madly. The vicar clapped politely too. Annie stood up and joined in. The choir started to disperse. Annie walked up the aisle. Some of the women were patting Louella’s shoulder, murmuring to her. The vicar came forward and talked quietly to her. Annie waited until he moved away, then she stepped up and said: ‘Louella?’

The woman looked at her blankly. Her eyes were swollen with all the tears she’d shed.

‘Louella, I’m a friend of Aretha’s. I’m Annie.’

Louella’s face closed down. She looked at Annie with suspicion.

‘You one of them Delaneys?’ she asked.

Annie shook her head.

‘Only she was workin’ at a Delaney place,’ said Louella.

‘I know.’

‘And you ain’t one of them? You ain’t one of them that preyed upon my little girl?’

My little girl.

But Aretha wasn’t Aunt Louella’s little girl: she was someone else’s. Someone thousands of miles away, toiling under the baking Rhodesian sun, had lost a daughter. The Africans had extended families; they shared their children, their grandparents, their joys and their losses. The English did not.

‘I’m not a Delaney, Louella. I’m Annie Carter.’

Louella looked no happier. She rubbed a hand over her face, drying her tears.

‘She spoke about you,’ she said.

‘Did she?’ asked Annie.

‘Yeah, she said you was tight together. But you was involved with that place she worked, I know that. You and that Dolly woman, and there was a boy too who worked there…’

‘Darren,’ said Annie, swallowing hard. Darren was gone, and she still missed him.

‘He was homosexual, that’s against the word of the Lord,’ said Aunt Louella huffily.

‘He couldn’t help what he was,’ said Annie.

Louella looked at her. She shrugged. ‘Maybe. Anyway, the Lord says hate the sin, but love the sinner.’

‘Can we sit for a moment? Have a talk?’