Page 31 of Unseen

She caught me looking, and pulled her robe over her leg. “Games, love. Some of me clientele like to get a bit rough.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” I trailed off again, shaking my head and shrugging off my coat as I was suddenly far too warm in this cosy room. “I beg your pardon, you must think me quite mad to come here like this.”

“You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.” She chuckled to herself, looking me up and down as she inhaled, her cigarette crackling quietly. “You’re pretty. He told me you were.”

“He spoke to you about me?”

Rebecca laughed, a pleasant, gravelly laugh that sounded like a stream running over stones. “Incessantly! Besotted, that one.”

“I saw you with him.” I blurted the words out before I could stop, because it didn’t matter in any case and it wasn’t why I was here.

Rebecca lifted an eyebrow. “Did you just? Should have joined in.” She giggled behind her hand when I gasped. “Sorry, love, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I only meant… I saw you with him, and well… I’m not… I mean…” I sighed, and Rebecca uncrossed and recrossed her legs .

“Alright, let’s start at the beginning. What is it you’re wanting from me? What did you want to talk about?”

“Sex.” Even saying the word felt odd to me, and I cursed my upbringing more than I ever had.

Not even a glimmer of judgement passed over Rebecca’s face, she simply nodded. “Sex. Alright. Now, let me guess? Religious upbringing?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“The way you said the word sex like someone had stuck a lemon in your mouth and you expected Christ himself to jump out from under me bed and strike you down.” Rebecca gave me a warm smile when I shifted in my seat. “So, religious upbringing. No mother?”

I shook my head. “She died when I was a baby. My education was entrusted to my aunt, who in turn sent me to a convent school. The nuns weren’t exactly helpful, as you can imagine.”

Rebecca chuckled softly. “All hellfire and brimstone no doubt.”

“Yes, quite.”

“And what about when you were first married? What’d they tell you would happen then?”

I shrugged, stroking my hands over the fur of the mink. “Not a great deal. My aunt gave me a very brief talk about stirring members and flowers blooming the night before my first marriage. Nothing about the… physical side of it.”

“Bet it was a shock when the old man stuck his Johnson in then.”

My cheeks flushed violently, my eyes dropping to my lap as I nodded. “Yes, it was rather.”

“I’m sorry, love.”

I looked up to see nothing but sympathy on Rebecca’s face.

She shook her head, rubbing her chin with her thumb.

“I always feel for you high class ladies. No one gives a toss who we marry, but you lot? You lot don’t even get a choice.

I couldn’t even imagine being married to someone old enough to be me grandad. ”

“It was… not always pleasant.” As much as I wanted to tell someone just how horrid the marriage to Acton had been, reliving it would have been that much worse. That was best left behind, and not spoken of.

“And now you gone and married his son, ey? Bet that’s gone over well.” She widened her eyes for a moment, puffing out a breath from her red lips. “Brave, he is. Reckless, but brave.”

“Did you… enjoy sex with him?” How odd it was to even ask another woman this, whether she had enjoyed fornicating with my husband. Odd, and yet strangely liberating.

Rebecca smiled widely at me. “Is it wrong of me to say yes?” She shrugged, bouncing her legs up and down lightly. “He’s extremely passionate. Very good with his tongue.” She narrowed her eyes as she raised the cigarette back to her lips. “Do you not enjoy it with him?”

I looked back down at my hands, my fingers fidgeting relentlessly with the lace on my skirt. “I do. And that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Afraid of? Nothin wrong with a good time, love.”

“Isn’t there?” I raised my head again, fighting to bring breath into my lungs as the room became stifling. “He… he makes me feel things I’ve been told I shouldn’t. He… touches places I was always told not to touch.”

“Like your clitoris?”

“My what?”

Rebecca burst out laughing, and quickly covered her mouth with her hand as my cheeks flamed. “Oh I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, you poor lamb.” She gestured to her lap. “Your clitoris, that little bud he touches and has you practically singing for the angels. That’s the medical term for it. ”

“As I said, my education was… lacking.” My throat felt desperately dry, and when I coughed, Rebecca sprang to her feet and poured me a glass of water from a pitcher on her night stand. I took the water gratefully and gulped it down.

“So, what were you taught?” She asked, standing by the small hearth with her arms crossed over her chest. “What do you know about your body?”

“That pleasure was sin, and that there were parts of your body you should never touch.”

Rebecca grimaced. “The standard religious trollop then.”

“Indeed.” I placed the glass on the table. “And now I have to come to my husband’s prostitute for an education. A searing indictment of the state of our education system.”

Rebecca laughed merrily as she collapsed back into her chair.

“Oh, I like you!” She stamped her cigarette out in an ashtray beside the glass I had placed down, and brushed the hair from her forehead.

“But I’m here to tell you, ain’t no better place to get an education on anatomy.

We pinchcocks have to know our fronts from our backs or we’ll be in a right mess in no time. ”

“So it won’t drive me mad?”

Rebecca frowned. “What won’t?”

“Azriel… touching me, and making me….”

“Come?” Rebecca smiled kindly, and shook her head. “A load of bollocks, that is. I’d be in the madhouse by now if it was true.”

“But I find myself wanting it.” I tore off my gloves and dropped them in my lap, rubbing my hands together. “I find myself desirous for him to touch me. At first… I did not.”

“Hmmm.” Rebecca hummed with displeasure. “So he forced himself onto you then?”

I nodded. “Yes. I mean… I think so.”

“You think so?”

I blinked rapidly, trying to relegate all that I felt in to some sort of order, all that Azriel had made me feel on that first night - no, even before that, the night I’d accosted him with my pathetic little blade, when I’d been in the position to kill him and had instead let him touch me and send me awash with pleasure.

“I let him.” I said slowly. “I… I think I did. I don’t know. I am so… bewildered by it all. I told myself I did not like it, because I shouldn’t have.”

“But you like it now?”

“I-I wouldn’t say I like it.” The words escaped me too quickly, and I swallowed hard. “But… it is not as disagreeable to me as it once was.” I let out an awkward laugh. “I mean, it’s ridiculous isn’t it? To let a man like that do those things to me? And enjoy them? What does that say about me?”

Rebecca’s mouth twitched as she frowned at me, and she sighed. “Does it bother you that he forced himself on you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you forgive him for it?”

I scoffed. “He’s a beast. An ungodly beast. He is not even worthy of forgiveness.” But neither was I, only I couldn’t tell Rebecca that. I couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t as simple as Azriel raping me, but that he had used all the cards he held in his favour to coerce me.

Rebecca sighed again, heavily, and leaned back in her chair. “I’m going to tell you something now, Mrs Caine, and I hope you’ll forgive me, and not think I’m trying to convince you of anything. But I think you ought to know.”

“Know what?”

“You know Mr Caine’s in charge of a line of businesses, down on White Horse Road?” She jerked her head in the direction of the window. “One of the things his father gave him, to try and keep him busy and stop him dealing with, well, women like me. ”

“No, I did not know that. My… former husband was not forthcoming with his business dealings.”

Rebecca shrugged, and plucked another cigarette from her silver case, but did not light it, simply rolled it between her fingers as she spoke.

“Well, one of those businesses is owned by a Turkish family.

The Osmans. Lovely folk, beautiful fruit shop.

They always have pomegranates, beats me where they bloody grow 'em though.”

I nodded, wondering where this story about a little Turkish family could be going.

“Well, about two years ago, the Osmans little girl, Amina, she got sick.” Rebecca frowned at her cigarette, and shook her head.

“Very sick. It was awful to see. And well, the Osmans, they spent all their money trying to get her well. Had a right time of it. Being as it was, they had to close the business for a good long while, and then, well, they began to fall behind on rent.”

“That’s terribly sad.”

“It was. Mr Osman, he’d be pacing the street at night, crying. I’d go out and smoke a fag with him, try to calm his nerves. But he was so frightened that Mr Caine was going to toss them out onto the street. He couldn’t pay his rent no more, what was he going to do?”

I found myself leaning forward, engrossed in Rebecca’s lyrical voice and her story, this terribly sad story. “What did he do?”

“He went to see Mr Caine, to make a proper case for his family, and to promise to pay the missed rent. We was all expecting the worst, what with Mr Caine’s reputation and all.

” She lifted her eyes and smiled at me. “Next thing, Mr Osman comes walking down White Horse Road crying, singing praise be to Mr Caine.”

I exhaled heavily and frowned. “Azriel showed him kindness? ”

“He told Mr Osman that all missed payments were forgiven, and that the family would not have to pay rent for the next year while they got back on their feet.”

My mouth dropped open. “He what?”

“And that’s not all.” Rebecca’s mouth twitched into a grin. “Next thing you know, an ambulance comes, takes the little girl straight to the Hospital for Sick Children up Great Ormond Street. All bills to be forwarded to Mr Azriel Caine.”

“He paid for that little girl to get well again?”