“Oh is it?” challenged Gordon. “And you think they knew nothing in the nineteenth century? Is that what you’re saying?
Well, I’m telling you this: I judge a man by the cut of his jib. I can tell.”
The argument had fizzled out, and later that day Matthew had stolen a glance at himself in the mirror, at his eyes. They had flecks of grey, of course, a feature which some girls had found interesting, and attractive, but which now seemed to Matthew to say something about his personality: he was a grey-flecked person. He knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice – based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom – how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!
Had the scorned phrenologists got their hands on Eddie, they would have reached much the same conclusion as had Matthew.
Eddie had a thin face – not in itself a matter for judgment – but a thin face combined with shifty, darting eyes and topped with greasy, unwashed hair conveyed an impression of seediness. It was, quite simply, not the face of an honest person – or so Matthew had concluded on first encountering Eddie.
And combined with this impression of unreliability – backed up, of course, by Matthew’s knowledge of Eddie’s past – was the conviction that Eddie was planning to take advantage of Big Lou by getting her to back his restaurant endeavour. Matthew had been horrified to discover that Big Lou was proposing to lend Eddie the money to buy a restaurant without anybody even looking at the accounts. Matthew may not have been a conspicuously successful businessman in the past, but his gallery now turned a profit and he knew the importance of keeping a good set of books.
When Eddie entered the coffee bar, Matthew was carrying his cup back from the counter to his accustomed seat by the wall.
“Good morning, Eddie,” Matthew said politely.
Eddie nodded, but did not return the greeting. “Lou, doll,”
he said. “Big news!”
Big Lou leaned over the counter to plant a kiss on Eddie’s sallow cheek. He smelled of tobacco and cooking oil and . . .
She drew back. There had been another smell – that cheap, cloying perfume that teenage girls like to use. That was there too. “What’s the news, Eddie?” she asked.
“We’re going to be a club,” Eddie announced. “Not a restaurant after all. This boy came round – this boy I know from the old days – and he’s putting in a bit of money too, on top of what you’re subbing me, and we’re going to make it a club.”
Big Lou was silent. A club for whom? she wondered.
“There’s money in clubs,” Eddie went on. “And it’s less work just serving drinks. Less overheads. Although you have to pay the waitresses and the dancers.”
Big Lou’s voice was faint. “Dancers?”
214
Eddie reached for a stool and drew it up to the counter.
Matthew, who had been listening while pretending to read the newspaper, glanced at him as he sat down. He’s a funny shape, he thought.
“Aye,” said Eddie. “Pole dancers. Not every day, but maybe once or twice a week. There’s lassies very keen to develop a career as a pole dancer. We’ll give them their chance.”
Big Lou picked up her towel. “Well, that’s nice for you, Eddie,”
she said. There was a sadness in her voice, a resignation, which Matthew picked up and which tugged at his heart. She does not deserve this, he thought. She does not deserve this man.
“What will you call the club, Eddie?” she asked.
“The Rootsie-Tootsie Club,” said Eddie. “How’s that for a name, Lou, hen? See yourself there?”
Waking in her bungalow in the pirate settlement overlooking the Straits of Malacca, Domenica looked out at the world through the white folds of her mosquito net. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was almost seven o’clock; the dawn had come some time earlier and already the sun was over the top of the trees around the village clearing.
Pushing aside the net, Domenica rose from her bed and stretched. The air was warm, but not excessively so. In fact, the temperature, she thought, was just perfect, although she knew that this would not last. If she felt fresh and exhilarated now, by the end of the day she would be feeling washed out, drained of all energy by the heat. So if anything had to be done, it would be best to do it in the first few hours before the sun made everything impossible and nobody could venture outside. That was the folk wisdom so neatly encapsulated by Noel Coward in ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’; they were the only ones to be seen out in the midday sun. Well, Domenica knew better than to do that sort of thing.
She crossed the room to where her clothes were draped over a chair. She donned her blouse and her light- fitting white cotton trousers, and then, picking up her shoes – a pair of light moccasins which could be worn without socks – she slipped first her right foot in and then the left, and then . . . And then she screamed, as the sharp jab of pain shot into the toes of her left foot. Instinctively and violently, she tore the shoe off her foot and dashed it onto the floor. Out of it, half crushed and limping from the encounter, a dark black scorpion emerged and began to drag itself away across the boards.
Domenica stared in fascination at the creature that had stung her. It was so small by comparison with her foot;
