‘I can read,’ said Sporting hopefully.
‘I mean something other than your name.’
‘Oh.’
Burlesque took a huge drag on his cigar, and then pushed the bowler hat that was permanently planted on top of his grease-drenched hair back on his head. His nasty little eyes settled on Vanka and for a moment he was reminded of just what a vicious bastard Burlesque really was.
Be careful, Vanka, be very careful.
‘I’ve gotta idea, Wanker. I’m ‘aving an audition this evening. I’m looking for a chirp, see, a new singer: someone classy. I’m looking for a jad singer… a Shade jad singer. Why don’t cha stick around, Wanker, an’ see ‘oo turns up. Maybe you’ll find a PsyChick amongst that lot.’
Vanka sighed. He knew the sort of girls who came to auditions at the Pig: most of them had been around the block so many times they could only walk in right angles.
But Vanka needed a PsyChick. To pull off a seance he would need an assistant of such mesmerising loveliness that the men in the audience wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes off her. All good psychics knew that a pretty girl wearing not much more than a big smile was the ideal way to distract an audience’s attention, and distraction was the psychic’s most powerful weapon. But there was more to it than that. The girl – mentally Vanka emphasised the word girl; she had to be young – also had to be intelligent enough to help Vanka work his tricks and, most importantly, be so terminally naive that she didn’t realise that if they were caught running a bent seance they would both be for the high jump.
Not a chance… but then hope springs eternal.
Ella took a left down Bottomley Road, thankful that it was quieter here and that there were fewer people jostling her. With the noise of Sidney Street reduced to a background grumble, she took a moment to gather herself. The Prancing Pig was easy to spot at the end of the road: it was an oasis of light in the thickening gloom. But though it was well lit, judging from the expression on the face of the urchin swathed in an old army coat several sizes too big for him who was guarding the entrance, it wasn’t very welcoming. Crouched in the pub’s doorway out of the Winter wind, the boy looked about ten years old and was, rather incongruously, puffing on a pipe.
He glared out at Ella from under his tatty chapka as she tried the door and then spat into the gutter. ‘Yous one ov them singing tarts?’
‘I’ve come to audition,’ said Ella, tapping a finger against the soiled notice pinned to the door, ‘if that’s what you mean.’
‘Don’t get shirty wiv me, luv,’ admonished the boy with an angry puff on his pipe. ‘Sos yous sing jad, right?’
Ella referenced PINC. Jad was the swing music popular in the JAD – the nuJu Autonomous District of NoirVille – and it was widely thought in the Demi-Monde that only Shades could sing jad in anything approaching an authentic manner.
‘Yeah, I’m a jad singer.’
‘Burlesque ‘as left me ‘ere to tell yous chirps that yous is to go round to the back room.’ He nodded down an alleyway that flanked the Pig.
She flipped the boy a penny for his advice and trudged down the dark alley. Twenty yards along she came to a pair of red doors. Ella had never been in a real – well, as real as anything could be in the Demi-Monde – English pub before and she was taken aback by the concoction of smells she was subject to: the sweet stench of rancid sweat, the tart aroma of spilt Solution and the undercurrent of damp and decay. And if her nose took a moment to adjust to the Pig so too did her eyes. She had to squint against the glare of the dozens of gas lights that illuminated the place, the light reflected, in turn, by the huge mirrors that decorated the walls.
As it was early in the evening there were only about thirty or forty people in the pub. Most of the clientele seemed to be workmen enjoying an after-work pint and taking the opportunity to chat up the somewhat fly-blown girl idly polishing glasses behind the bar. There was also a circle of five or six heavily made-up women in rather risque costumes drinking Solution – pinkies held out from the glass in an imitation of refined behaviour – around a table on the far side of the room. A trio of musicians were setting up on the low stage to the front of the bar.
When she walked in every eye in the room turned in her direction.
A quick reference to PINC told Ella that Burlesque Bandstand was the fat and scruffily dressed man seated at the table near the stage. He had a rather too well-endowed blonde girl – a floozy called Sporting Chance – by his side and a long-haired man sitting across from him. Long-haired or not, unfortunately – and worryingly – PINC couldn’t tell her anything about him. He was a mystery: a tall, lean mystery with a big bruise on the side of his face. Despite the bruise she thought Mr Mystery to be rather good-looking and she liked the careless way he had draped himself over his chair: the word that came to Ella’s mind to describe him was ‘louche’, closely followed by ‘rascal’.
She strode across the sawdust-strewn floor of the pub and presented herself at the booth.
‘Excuse me, Sir, but would I be correct in thinking that I am addressing Mr Burlesque Bandstand?’
15
The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004 nuJuism is the religion practised by the Demi-Monde’s Sectorless nuJu community. nuJuism is an unrelentingly pessimistic religion which teaches that suffering and hardship is life- affirming and necessary to prepare nuJus for the rigours to be experienced during the Time of Tribulation (aka the End of Days). It is a central tenet of nuJuism that there will arise a Messiah who will lead the nuJu people safely through Tribulation and to the Promised Land. As with everything to do with the nuJus this is, of course, pernicious nonsense.
– Religions of the Demi-Monde:
Otto Weininger, University of Berlin Publications
Vanka looked up. It was difficult to see the girl who was addressing Burlesque as she had a light directly behind her and she was wearing a veil. All he could make out was a silhouette. It was a very nice silhouette though, without any of the usual humps and bumps that were de rigueur for women who frequented the Pig. From what he could see, the woman – girl! – was everything he had ever dreamed of in an assistant. Okay, she was a bit scrawny, but still…
He shuffled his chair around to get a better look, hoping, as he did so, that she didn’t have a beard. He held his breath as she pulled back the veil that so completely covered her face. She didn’t have a beard. She was quite lovely. Young, slim and lovely: perfect.
Except that she was black. Well, not black exactly: she was a wonderful light caramel colour. But there was no denying she was a Shade and this was the Rookeries.
And if any of Archie Clement’s SS thugs ever saw her, there would be Hel to pay: Shades weren’t popular with the SS, who were liable to deal with them pretty viciously. As far as they saw it the ForthRight was a Shade- free zone and they would fight to keep it that way. But as a PsyChick the girl would be perfect. Even her colour would be useful: it’d bring a touch of the exotic to the proceedings. He could bill her as a WhoDoo mambo. It’d hide the bruising too, if the SS ever caught up with her.
Burlesque didn’t seem to notice the girl’s skin colour, in fact as Vanka remembered it he had specifically wanted a Shade singer. The punters liked Shade birds: they were sexier that the fat Anglo items Burlesque usually employed. In fact this girl was so sexy that even Burlesque was persuaded to be pleasant. ‘Good evening, m’dear,’ he crooned as his eyes made a professional inventory of the girl’s body. ‘I am indeed Burlesque Bandstand: purveyor of alcoholic beverages an’ fine victuals, an’ impresario extraordinaire. An’ to ‘oo do I ‘ave the pleasure of introducing myself?’ Burlesque used a boot to shove a chair out from under the table and gestured the girl into it. She sat down and now, illuminated by the candle that sputtered in the middle of the table, Vanka could see her better.
She wasn’t lovely.
She was more than lovely. She was beautiful and very, very clean. He couldn’t remember when he had seen anybody that clean before or who smelt so… nice. The bouquet of violets and strawberries that shrouded the girl reminded him of days in the park and walks in the woods, which was remarkable because, as far as he could remember, he had never been in a park nor had he ever walked in a wood. She was so clean that he had to resist
