Dawn.
Dawn was not to be found, so Lola spent the night crouching beside her case in the empty house, and in the morning she went out to wander around town, feeling feverish and lightheaded with the pain in her wrist and also, though she did not know it, a stiff dose of pleurisy that gave her a pain like a red-hot knife in her left side. She found Dawn that morning by the painstaking method of tracking her from address to address. Dawn had been at four places in nine months and when Lola found her she was still in bed.
‘Come in, kid, come in,’ she invited, no whit embarrassed by the National Service Trainee customer who still slumbered beside her. He was covered in adolescent acne and smelled to high heaven of port wine. He must have been eighteen to be doing his Nasho’s, but he certainly did not look it.
Dawn was all geniality as she hopped out of bed and Lola saw that she had become immense. She pulled a dressing-gown on over her naked body and Lola was surprised to see that she was glistening with sweat.
‘Is it hot?’ Lola asked, in a voice that sounded to herself to be coming from under layers and layers of cotton wool. ‘Gee, I feel as cold as can be.’
Dawn gave a wrench at the top of the dressing-gown to see if she could prevent it from gaping too widely across the bloated obscenity of her breasts, decided to give it up as a bad job and sat down and poured herself a drink. She looked warily at Lola.
‘Look, kid,’ she said, ‘if you’re in trouble I haven’t got any dough, and I’m not sticking my neck out to get into any trouble with the cops.’
Lola said that she had not been going to ask for money; but she had been going to, and she was considerably disappointed in Dawn, whom she had never seen before in one of her businesslike moods. She did tell as much of her story as she thought necessary, and when it was over Dawn had had two drinks and stopped shaking and was in a more expansive frame of mind.
‘Well, you can’t go to work, that’s for sure,’ she said, ‘you’d be picked up. And you can’t go to hospital to have that wrist set for the same reason, so, what are you going to do? Where’s Brownie?’
‘He’s in the States.’
‘Yes, sure.’
‘He is, Dawn, no falsing. I’ve only got to hang out till he comes back and that should be soon.’
‘Out of sight out of mind, honey, he won’t be back.’
‘Look, Dawn, can I camp in with you for a few days till I get to feeling a bit better?’
Dawn thought about it and then gave permission, very grudgingly.
‘Remember,’ she warned, ‘if the cops spring you here, I know nothing and no charity moll capers with my men.’
‘I’m not a charity moll, and anyway I feel too sick.’
Dawn said that was all right to say, but it was a well-known fact that anyone who had just come out of Jacaranda Flats would be rairing to go. Lola shook her head wearily.
‘I feel too sick,’ she repeated, and seated herself in an armchair—the larger of the two which, standing in a corner beside a globeless standard lamp, apparently put the sitting into Dawn’s bed-sitting-room.
For the next week she spent most of her time crouched in that chair. She even slept huddled in it, sometimes with an army greatcoat thrown across her, sometimes without. She should by rights have hated it, but she was too stunned with misery to notice anything very much, not even pain nor cold nor hunger. One of Dawn’s clients, who claimed to have done two years’ medicine, set her wrist. After that it hurt less but it was impossible to get work with one wrist strapped up, so she hung around in a sort of miasma of unhappiness and managed to touch several of Dawn’s men for small loans.
Whether they gave the money out of kindness, or as a sort of insurance against future sexual deprivation, she never knew, but Dawn thought very poorly of it. Lola, she said, was a bolting, bludging little bastard and Lola could go—cadging money from men she thought she was
Dawn was not to be found, so Lola spent the night crouching beside her case in the empty house, and in the morning she went out to wander around town, feeling feverish and lightheaded with the pain in her wrist and also, though she did not know it, a stiff dose of pleurisy that gave her a pain like a red-hot knife in her left side. She found Dawn that morning by the painstaking method of tracking her from address to address. Dawn had been at four places in nine months and when Lola found her she was still in bed.
‘Come in, kid, come in,’ she invited, no whit embarrassed by the National Service Trainee customer who still slumbered beside her. He was covered in adolescent acne and smelled to high heaven of port wine. He must have been eighteen to be doing his Nasho’s, but he certainly did not look it.
Dawn was all geniality as she hopped out of bed and Lola saw that she had become immense. She pulled a dressing-gown on over her naked body and Lola was surprised to see that she was glistening with sweat.
‘Is it hot?’ Lola asked, in a voice that sounded to herself to be coming from under layers and layers of cotton wool. ‘Gee, I feel as cold as can be.’
Dawn gave a wrench at the top of the dressing-gown to see if she could prevent it from gaping too widely across the bloated obscenity of her breasts, decided to give it up as a bad job and sat down and poured herself a drink. She looked warily at Lola.
‘Look, kid,’ she said, ‘if you’re in trouble I haven’t got any dough, and I’m not sticking my neck out to get into any trouble with the cops.’
Lola said that she had not been going to ask for money; but she had been going to, and she was considerably disappointed in Dawn, whom she had never seen before in one of her businesslike moods. She did tell as much of her story as she thought necessary, and when it was over Dawn had had two drinks and stopped shaking and was in a more expansive frame of mind.
‘Well, you can’t go to work, that’s for sure,’ she said, ‘you’d be picked up. And you can’t go to hospital to have that wrist set for the same reason, so, what are you going to do? Where’s Brownie?’
‘He’s in the States.’
‘Yes, sure.’
‘He is, Dawn, no falsing. I’ve only got to hang out till he comes back and that should be soon.’
‘Out of sight out of mind, honey, he won’t be back.’
‘Look, Dawn, can I camp in with you for a few days till I get to feeling a bit better?’
Dawn thought about it and then gave permission, very grudgingly.
‘Remember,’ she warned, ‘if the cops spring you here, I know nothing and no charity moll capers with my men.’
‘I’m not a charity moll, and anyway I feel too sick.’
Dawn said that was all right to say, but it was a well-known fact that anyone who had just come out of Jacaranda Flats would be rairing to go. Lola shook her head wearily.
‘I feel too sick,’ she repeated, and seated herself in an armchair—the larger of the two which, standing in a corner beside a globeless standard lamp, apparently put the sitting into Dawn’s bed-sitting-room.
For the next week she spent most of her time crouched in that chair. She even slept huddled in it, sometimes with an army greatcoat thrown across her, sometimes without. She should by rights have hated it, but she was too stunned with misery to notice anything very much, not even pain nor cold nor hunger. One of Dawn’s clients, who claimed to have done two years’ medicine, set her wrist. After that it hurt less but it was impossible to get work with one wrist strapped up, so she hung around in a sort of miasma of unhappiness and managed to touch several of Dawn’s men for small loans.
Whether they gave the money out of kindness, or as a sort of insurance against future sexual deprivation, she never knew, but Dawn thought very poorly of it. Lola, she said, was a bolting, bludging little bastard and Lola could go—cadging money from men she thought she was
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