dddk 6 - la baptême

la baptême

« Oh it’s looking lovely, come up a treat it has. My hands have swelled like a couple of honey roast hams, but it’s better if I keep them moving, and really, if I do say so myself I've done a lovely job.

I have to keep busy when I’m fretting. I’d get twisted if there was anyone to ponce a drink off. There’ll be murder when they do get back - I’ve made a terrible mess. I just can’t see why she’d disappear like that. First I’ve thought some clever sod was being funny and hid her. So I’ve turned the place over. « Becky. » I’m calling, « Becky. » But she’s nowhere. Then I thinks maybe I didn’t leave her. I know she was tucked up in the Persil box, but maybe I grabbed her, automatic like. So I’ve upended my trolley and she’s not there. The phone is though; wedged tight; wrapped in my poorly cardi. I used the heel of a winkling pink stiletto to lever it out.

I look at the thing, remembering . Then I start picking. I do love a good pick. It’s one of my guilty pleasures. I’d have got the back of Daddy’s hand if he’d seen me. « Would you not be taking your dirty fingers out of your scabs now. » He was never fond of filth, was Daddy. But I think he’d love my red telephone. I could wrap it up and leave it on his doorstep. I starts rubbing - there’s dried blood and grease, caked into the coils and oh my nails are black. Still I reckon, it’s not my fingers I’m giving him. I would though.

It was Daddy gave me Becky. He’d come home all guinnessed up. The littluns were in bed and mum and me are cleaning out the pot cupboard. He puts her on the table. Fat tears are wibbling down his face, tiger striping his plaster powdered cheeks. He’s singing a Fureys song to Ma and she’s looking up at him with a soppy expression. He’s reaching down, giving her his hand. Then he remembers I’m there. « Take the doll and get yourself to bed. » I pick her up as he picks up the melody. « When you were sweet, when you were sweet, sixteen. » The night before he’d given us both his belt. Maybe that’s why I’m fretting.

Me and Ma watched all the old films together. We’d just seen ‘The Little Princess’ with Shirley Temple. So I called her Becky, she would be an adoring and devoted servant to my ill used Sara.

I’ve took her everywhere. She’s what you might call ’well travelled’. On my first foreign excursion, she was there. Peeping out the top of a Browns leather holdall, as I was rolled and pounded by the mute, nameless god that had come upon me in the communal shower room of a zero starred Piraeus harbour hotel.

It was my tits that did it. It’s my tits always did it.

I have wondered if I shouldn’t have a rabbit with Dame Nellie about this. But she can be a bit touchy, and I don’t want her to think I’m trying to muscle in or anything. Anyways if I did, London’s total pauper population, would know the ins and outs, and have an opinion about my most personal and privates within ten minutes of opening my trap. Her hearts in the right place, but she’s got a bloody great gob on her has Nellie.

I wonder if she picked up my Becky.

That Browns bag was lovely. First thing I bought with my staff discount. I was working there ages before one of the girls asks me down the champagne bar after knocking off. They were all there, in their Hamnett silks and Bertie boots. Giving it the posh tart bit. Sipping their Pouilly fumé and chatting up every tanned and suited male entrance. And there I was, in a green velvet two piece I’d got down the market; a bit baggy round the hips, a bit tight round the tits. That and my famous pink lipstick.

I panicked a bit, when the waiter asked what I wanted. The only thing I’d heard of was Liebfraumilch, so I ordered a bottle. They weren’t being very nice, the girls. I filled and refilled my glass as they talked to and about every Tom, Dick and Harry from Bond Street to South Ken. And I panicked again as the last syrupy dribble of mother courage drained into my now pink rimmed and fingerprinted flute. Then this load of geezers comes in. Broker boys, they looked like. They’re larking about and ordering bottles of Dom Perignon. I lights up a menthol More and tingle with the rush of sophistication that follows. The blokes are eyeing me up - Fellas do like to see a girls lips wrapped around something long and thin - Then one of them makes a big show of sending me over a glass. I blow him a kiss, and before you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle’, they’re grabbing bottles and piling round the table. The girls aint looking best pleased, but at least we won’t be paying the bill I says.

They’ve tweaked the music now. The place is packed. Donna Summer is giving it her all. One of the blokes leans over and runs a finger over my straining buttons. « I’d love to love ya baby.. » he croons. The fizz is flowing. I haven’t eaten since my lunch break cheese sandwich and everything is suddenly very easy. I push back my chair and start to groove. They’re all jigging and clapping now. I’ve got good legs, so I don’t mind hitching up my skirt to climb on the chair. It’s getting hot and David Bowie hollers « Fame » as I step on to the table and start unbuttoning my jacket. Uproar. They’re on their feet now. I peel it off slowly and my tits roll out. He’s kneeling on the table, « juicy, juicy Charantaises. » He cries, upending the bottle, anointing me with creaming bubbles.

We’re in a taxi on our way to his Chelsea pad when he asks my name.

« Tina , » I says. My nipple pops out of his mouth as he falls back into the squidgy black interior, choking and laughing.

« Tina The Tits! »

I don’t remember his name.

I didn’t last long at Browns. But I stayed on South Molton Street. I moved from shop to shop; building up my wardrobe, my alcohol tolerance and my new name. I could sail into the most exclusive bars and nightclubs in London. ‘Tina the Tits’ was welcome everywhere she went.

I was practically living out of that bag. I tried to keep it light; a change of dress, lipstick, a canister of femfresh, and Becky of course. Daddy said I’d turned into a dirty cat and he chucked me out.

Me and my girl skipped from once fancy postmark to the next all that winter. Then this photographer tells me about his boat summer days round the islands, and ah, the cocaine nights. So I gets him to buy me a ticket.

« See you in Mykanos T.T. » he waves.

Me, Becky and my tits have hopped more yachts since, than you’ve probably had hot dinners. I’ve clung to the shirttails of the international jet set for more bottles and lines than I care to remember. But I still missed my Daddy.

I hooked up with this lovely little gay fella for a while; Peewee. He pointed out that if we did what we were doing for free, professionally, we’d be living in relative comfort. But I didn’t want relative anything and anyway, it was all a question of respect. Not that I was carrying that by the bucket when I washed back up on British soil.

I’d been stuck in St. Lucia for months. The party had moved on without me. Reduced to sucking tourists for bed and board, I jumped, when a couple of young lads, out to crew a boat back to Blighty, offered me the position of cook. As it happens, I’m not up to much in the kitchen, but the boys didn’t seem to mind. They made up for the lack of food by trying me out in every other position they could think of. Fucked me stupid all the way home. I wanted to see my Daddy.

There was no answer when I knocked at the flat, so I stuffed my bags behind the bins, and cut up to Lewisham Way. I stuck my head round the door of every pub I passed. I heard the music long before I got to the door. A Bodhron, beating like a beacon, fiddles and pipes, rolling and reeling, feet thundering. I knew he’d be there. And there he most certainly was. Sitting at the bar. Older, greyer, but still my handsome Daddy. It wasn’t too late. He was just nicely bevvied and he twinkled like a string of fairy lights when he sees me.

« That’s never my little girl over there? » He slides off the stool, tottering towards me. « You’ve come back to your old Daddy. Everyone! » He calls to the ceiling, « my Christine has come home. »

I match him glass for glass; Guinness, Bushmills, Guinness, Bushmills. The music is getting louder, the dancers wilder. He pulls me to my feet. « Sure you remember a few steps. » And then he grabs my wrists and kicks off. The crowd opens out, clapping and cheering as we turn, around and around, heads back and laughing, till he drops my hands and edges, panting back into the mass. But I can feel the music. It’s thrumming in my guts like some kind of tribal imperative. And the steps are there, unlocked from my ancient brain. I hop and skip from foot to foot.

« Steady girl, you’ll have your eye out. » Someone shouts from the bobbing circle. And he’s not wrong. My nipples are like little bullets, friction rubbing against silky T-shirt, as my unfettered bosom bounces enthusiastically to the cross beat. I can see the musicians grinning down at me now, they’re leaning into the tune, turning it on, speeding it up, faster they go. With a whoop of joy I hook a finger into the neck of my top, hoiking it over my head and into the crowd, as I launch into one final pirouette.

When the dust settles, Daddy’s gone. I head back to the flat. There’s a light on, but no answer. I shouted through the letterbox. But the door stayed closed. So I went to get my bags. A badly aimed black sack had split, and spewed it’s contents over the last remaining relics of my goodlife. I fished them out and started walking.

Me and Becky have been here ever since. Sometimes I think I should’ve called her Sara. Reckon that Nell’s been a better mate this last while than she’s ever been. Can’t see why I’m fretting.

He had a phone like this, Daddy did. But it wasn’t red.

Lovely in red. Innit?