Читать книгу Flint and Silver - John Drake, John Drake - Страница 12

1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia

As Long John laughed, he took care to keep an eye on the girl. He laughed till his belly ached at what she’d said. He laughed wildly over the thought that – of all the warped and twisted fiends that came in nightmares – Flint might be a gentleman. It was the solemn way she’d said it. It was the innocence of it, God love her, with her plump little arse and her big eyes and her bouncing tits. So even with the tears blinding his eyes, Long John kept a close watch on her, and on the room itself, Charley Neal’s liquor store.

The door was the only way out. The walls were heavily built, with one high window covered by an iron grille to make sure that the liquor did not wander off during the night. Still laughing, Long John kicked the door shut behind him, and leaned himself against it to make entirely sure she’d not escape.

He took these unconscious precautions because Walrus had been months at sea and not a sight of anything female had Long John taken in all that time, and when coming ashore to Charley Neal’s house Long John was as used to making up for lost time as any other seafaring man.

Finally, Long John drew forth a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, sighed happily and smiled at Selena, who all the while had kept an even closer watch on him than he had upon her. She was watching and waiting. She knew precisely what was in the man’s mind, and she knew that all the other girls were at that very moment laid on their backs with drunken sailors snoring contentedly between their legs, breeches blown to the four winds and hairy buttocks displayed to the world. She knew too, that each girl would be clutching a fistful of gold, which (after Neal’s percentage) they would keep for their own selves.

“Now then, my girl,” said Silver, “what might your name be? For I’ve taken the most powerful fancy to you, and no mistake!”

The words were true in a constricted sort of way. Long John looked at Selena in the dim light of the hot storeroom and he liked what he saw. The cheap cotton gown was her sole garment and it was thin. It covered her nakedness for decency’s sake, but all the pleasures beneath jutted and curved most appealingly.

“My name is Selena,” she said. “And I’m no whore.” She had made her decision and set down the rules. All she had to do now was enforce them.

“Indeed you ain’t,” said Long John. He smiled and produced a large gold coin. He held it up and turned it so it gleamed and shone.

“It’s no use,” she said.

“Oh?” said Silver, and looked at her afresh. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, and nodded. “You ain’t like some o’ them dog-faced drabs neither, nor ain’t you neither. You’re quality, my girl. That you are!” He produced another coin. She sneered. He produced a third. There was now more money on offer than Selena could earn in years by any other means.

“I told you, John Silver, it’s no use. I’ve never been a whore, and I’m never going to be one.”

“Oh?” he said, with a sneer of his own. “Don’t tell me there’s been a virgin found in Savannah, for there ain’t never been one yet!”

She blinked, considering her own precise status in that regard, following attentions pressed upon her by a certain Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, who had once been her owner. Long John grinned, mistaking the signs.

“Well, there you are then, my little bird,” he said. “What was good for them, is good for me. And I ain’t no Jew nor Scotchman when it comes to paying the reckoning.” He flourished his three gold pieces. He set them on a nearby barrel. He thought the matter settled. “This’ll do nicely,” he said, looking round the room. “Private like, and quiet as a church.”

He threw off his hat and pulled his shirt over his head. He was a fine-muscled man: strong in the arms, flat in the belly, with a dominating physical presence. Selena crushed the impulse to run because there was nowhere to go. Instead, she stood her ground.

“I said, I am not a whore!” she cried, with all the force in her body, but she was seized by two powerful hands and hoist up off her feet, her eyes level with his.

“Well then, madam,” said Long John, glancing at the gold pieces, “just what is the price, then?” He grinned. “And don’t I get a little something for what I already laid down?”

He tried to kiss her lips, but she turned her face away. He ran his tongue all over and around the silky black column of her throat. She stayed rigidly still. He gave up. He set her down. He was puzzled and annoyed.

“Beach and burn me, girl!” said Silver. “Just how much d’you expect? You’re a rare fine shaped ‘un, I’ll grant you that, but this ain’t Paris nor London, and you ain’t King George’s mistress!”

“I told you. I’m not a whore!”

“Oh yes you are!”

“Oh no I’m not!”

“No?”

“No!”

“You bitch!”

“You bastard!”

“Whore!”

“I AM NOT A WHORE!”

In his anger and balked desire, Silver swung back his hand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t bring himself to strike the small, helpless figure. So he sighed and growled and cursed. And then, eventually, and very late in the day, it occurred to him that it just might be a good idea to pay some attention to what she’d been saying.

“Are you really not a whore?” he said.

“Are you deaf!”

“But all Charley’s girls are.”

“EXCEPT ME!”

“Oh … well … I …”

He fumbled for words. He was a stranger to the art of apologising and no words came. Instead a heavy guilt fell upon him: the guilt that sits on a man who knows he’s behaved very badly. Beyond that, as he looked at Selena, a tiny barb had been driven into Long John Silver, and it smarted. For a long time he didn’t even recognise what was happening, because he’d not had such feelings for years.

He picked up his clothes and his money and left, slamming the door thunderously behind him. And later, when he encountered Polly Porter, who’d gone out for a breath of air while Billy Bones was asleep, and she – ever open for business – welcomed him with open arms, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was no joy in a sweating copulation with a fat tart when his mind was full of the small, lovely, black figure staring back at him with fierce determination.

When Long John was gone, Selena was seized with a terrible shaking. She’d kept herself bold and calm while danger threatened and, now that it was gone, her legs shook and her teeth chattered, and there were tears too. There was a great quantity of these. She was very young and entirely alone and the world was a very hard place.