Ivory Read online

  “Hello,” she called with little commitment beyond her chore.

  He beamed enthusiastically at her even though she had yet to look up. “I’ve done a painting. I want you to see it.”

  She glanced over her shoulder blankly, returned to her chore for a moment then dried her hands to follow him through to the family room.

  Martin headed over to the grey metal PC station set in the alcove between the French doors and the fireplace. He ruffled Oscar and Fins mops of hair. “Off you get boys.” He waved away the ‘oh dad’ protests. “You can pretend to do your homework on it later.”

  “Oh dad, I have something to show you…” Oscar raced as he jumped down from the swivel chair that he had been sharing with his younger brother.

  “Later.” He began to close windows down on the desktop. One of them was the homepage of Arsenal Football Club. The grounds were in the area and a few of the boy’s friends supported the team, but Martin detested football and didn’t understand what the two boy’s saw in it. It made them a little alien to him.

  “Aw dad, I want to show you now,” he whined.

  “Later!” Oscar stalked, sulking to the door. “And then you have a treat! This morning you had my acceptance speech in gratitude of the awards you bestowed upon me last night, but tonight we celebrate with takeaway Pizza.” Oscar broke from his mood and joined Finn in cheering. Kids were easy to please.

  Jenny shot him a disapproving look. “But I have meat out of the freezer…”

  He waved his hand at Jenny also. “Then it can go in the bin. You have had months of my melancholy, a night off of cooking is the least you deserve.”

  “You don’t have to do things like that. We’re married.”

  “Marriage isn’t an excuse to be bad company.” With a couple of clicks of the mouse he replaced the gaudy website the children had been looking at with his Photographic software. He connected his camera phone to the PC and opened the file he had created earlier. With a couple of clicks the image of the painting he had completed that afternoon filled the screen. “Right then, my-wife-the-art-critic, what do you think?” That was his pet name for Jenny as she had been critiquing a show of paintings for the Art Monthly magazine and they had met over one of his paintings.

  “Who is she?” Jenny asked with a fleeting frown.

  “Does it matter,” he dismissed incredulously. “Do you like it?” he enthused.

  She hunched over the screen and took control of the mouse and zoomed in close to the photograph. He watched her exploring the flow of visible brush strokes, studying where they crossed and converged, where colours merged built and faded. It was her attention to the details of a painting that had attracted him to her. He aspired to achieve perfection and she aspired to find it. He remembered asking her when they had first met, what it was in a painting that attracted her; “I prefer work where the brushwork; the prods, the whips, the sweeps, the curves, the stroke and the caress of paint, can all be recognised when the work is studied closely. It’s not just the image created through paint, but by recognising the brush strokes it’s almost as if I can feel the movement of the artist’s brush, the grace of the hand that masters it. I love paintings where the artist is inviting you into his art in that way, showing you his secrets. Sharing an art only a few that might see it could replicate and for those that can’t then the artist is sharing something like magic.” It was her passion for art that he had fallen in love with.

  She stood back up and wrapped an arm around him and squeezed him. “Honey, it’s great. I mean it’s only a photograph of your work but it looks great. Your form and style is back, but it seems fresh. There’s an invigorated fervour to it.” She gestured at the picture with her hand, but then it wavered, reflecting the uncertainty in her voice. “The actual content is… very different for you.”

  Martin’s body stiffened and Jenny’s arm shifted at sensing it, he quickly draped his arm around her and kept her close to him. “You’re holding back. Don’t hold back,” he scowled over a smile.

  “It’s marvellous as a surreal work, it’s just – the eyes… I find them a little chilling – but I was unsure if that was your intention.” Martin released her and folded his arms as he studied the painting through Jenny’s eyes. “It’s a great painting… Honestly,” she added and gave him another squeeze of a hug.

  He had struggled to wrestle Ivory’s details from his memory and had taken an impressionistic approach to capture the motion-blur of her dashing in front of his car and raising her arms defensively. “Obviously it’s an artistic interpretation, but essentially that is what she looked like.”

  “Yes, but not the skin colour and the eyes, surely…” Jenny goaded, an uncertain grin stretched tight across her face, not willing to be made a fool of. “Who is she?”

  She was right. The contrasting details of her features were fantastical. “Who? She’s a student,” he said it so genuinely and spontaneously the lie surprised him.

  “That explains it,” she expressed. “Goth? Dodgy contact lenses thick black make-up and an aversion to sunlight? Oh, to be eighteen again.” She rolled her eyes and gave a playful slap to his rear as she returned to her chores.

  It was only easier for Martin to reconcile himself with her unusual appearance as he had seen her in the flesh and blood and she was undeniably real and her appearance genuine. Part of his motive to paint her was to be able to set his eyes upon her again and marvel at her uniqueness and her beauty. The sketching, the painting, the whole creative process had been exhausting but also rewarding. The portrait marked a return of his art but his joy had been short-lived for it lacked the quality of life, the accuracy and realism that could anchor Ivory’s features into being accepted. He still hadn’t exorcised her from his mind, and his memories of Ivory were becoming fleeting wraiths with phantom details that circled his mind and taunted him with their presence. Fading memories were of no use to him if he were to successfully recreate her in acrylic or oils.

  Chapter Five

  For a moment Candy forgot herself and pulled her coat around her against the cold as she stood her ground on Arven Road. She allowed her jacket to gape so it didn’t obscure her breasts. She didn’t want to cover those babies up. After all, they were her store front windows. You wouldn’t keep the curtains closed on the John Lewis Christmas display. She enjoyed her job but for the autumn and winter months. She had never been one of those girls who bared their legs for a night out no matter the weather, she prized the warmth! As soon as there was a chill the jeans or leggings would be out. Except when she was in street mode, they weren’t practical for the street. She didn’t even bother with underwear. In the cramped confines of a car it just complicated things. She glanced back down the street into the dark and could make out the soft lighting within King’s first floor flat. It would be warm in there.

  The older girls had told her it used to better before the clean up at King’s Cross, you could stand out on the main road and feel safer for it. In the early hours of the morning the roads around the station would be as busy as Oxford Street in the day with punters crawling by on the prowl. You could make a nights wage in a couple of hours and because there was so much passing trade you could afford to be fussy about who you went off with. You had the toilets at the station to freshen up between jobs, café’s to keep warm in and get a cup of tea, plenty of sleazy B&B’s where you could book a room for an hour if you were lucky enough to find a punter that would pay for it, and a taxi rank with licensed cabs ready to take you home. Door to door commuting. Candy had only ever known Arven Road. The trade had been forced into back streets and cul-de-sacs. This road had been due to be demolished around the time St Pancras and the surrounding area had been redeveloped, but for some reason it had been left as it was and didn’t even exist on A to Z maps anymore. It was a road that led from the residential areas into the industrial units and was crossed by an iron bridge carrying the King’s Cross rail line. No cosy amenities here.

  Candy had blagged quite a fe
w easy nights in King’s flat, drinking King’s vodka smoking his weed, posing for his dirty pictures and letting him have his way with her. He hadn’t called her in from the street for some time now though. He had found himself a new playmate. He saw her quite often, more than Candy, or any of the other girls. Fucking bitch; sitting up there in the warm, enjoying the spoils and only having to take one dick for the night, and a nice one too. Then being paid with the cut that King took from all of the girl’s wages. She had seen him pay her and the roll of cash had looked fatter than he gave any of the others for such a night.

  She wished she had the balls to gate-crash but King didn’t like it when people interrupted him when he had company, and she had always done her best to never get on the wrong side of King. He was a psycho. She had heard about girls being slapped and punched for calling on him unnecessarily. Normally the only time King was called upon was for public relations issues; paying off a pushy copper with money or with a free ‘lunch’ courtesy of one of his girls, or sorting out disputes over prices or non-payments, and that usually resulted in the customer in A&E with busted ribs or a new facial feature. She had also seen King’s eyes when he was with that girl and she didn’t like it; they were mad eyes. Despite that bitch being up there and getting paid with Candy’s cut it wasn’t worth the hassle. She worked the street because it was easy money and she would suck it up and make do with the cold. Occupational hazard.

  Candy shielded her eyes against the headlights of an oncoming car as it turned into the street and parked up. The lights stung her eyes and lit up the whole street. “Fucking newbie,” she cursed under her breath while keeping a smile on her face as she squinted in the cars direction. King paid little shits to pull down the security lights of the houses at the end of the street where people still lived, and shimmy up the lampposts and smash the streetlights. Keeping the road dark meant there were more places to work a punter.

  This guy was a newbie that was for sure. Looking for sex that he never had and would never get from any wife he might have stashed away somewhere. She strutted down to his side window but stood with a foot angled to her side to expose the inner aspect of her leg and cause the hem of her skirt to ride up a little. He stared at her and then looked away, licked his thick bearded lips then looked back, his eyes flitting from place to place. He appeared shifty and nervous. He didn’t wind down his window. Rude.

  She knocked on the glass. The overweight man looked uncertain then looked back towards the road, and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to acknowledge her, then he lowered the window a couple of inches. He must have realised how ridiculous the gesture was and lowered it further. The glass had already started to steam up in his car from the humidity of his anxious breaths. She imagined that his body would be as slick with moisture as the glass was. He was pale with terror, or disgust, either a loathing for her or for himself, She could tell that he would be the anguished type that would have to be talked through every step until he got going, and then he would gorge himself on the experience and be finished shortly after starting. His kind made her want to shower before during and after and they also frightened her a little. She worried where that loathing could lead to. It reminded her of the danger involved with what she did, and that she wasn’t a good-time girl and that her life wasn’t the easy-going care-free existence she presented to the close friends and boyfriend that knew how she made her money. She preferred the experienced punters because their hang-ups didn’t come out and they both had a mutual understanding of what they were there for. It would just be sex for him. Money for her. Done. Have a nice night. Please cum again.

  Still, it wasn’t good business to get a reputation as being picky and choosy. She figured that the majority of the punters were there because they normally got rejected by the women they approached and they didn’t want to take the risk of being rejected by a prostitute. Equal opportunities was everywhere.

  “You wanna turn off your headlights? The girls down there are trying to work and all that light will put off their customers. Some of them girls don’t look that great under strong light. Like those weird looking fish you find at the bottom of the oceans. They can’t all be blessed with my fine looks.”

  Martin fumbled for the controls for the headlights and caught a glimpse of the spray of powdered glass on the road, lit up like diamonds in his car’s beams, a gritty reminder from the scene of the accident. He switched the headlights off and the dark rushed in. Most of the streetlights were out and the majority of houses this end of the street were boarded shadowy husks. The dark hazel girl, no more that twenty years old, wavered in the window and her heels clicked and scraped the pavement as she bobbed from one foot to the other in the bitter cold. He didn’t know what to say to her.

  As if reading his uncertainty the girl’s full lips, made-up to be vivid purple to match her skirt and top, broke over her milky white teeth in a broad and disarming smile. “Hello, I’m Candy. how can I – help you?” her voice was slow, seductive and suggestive of euphemism and descended into a throaty coquettish giggle.

  Martin was unsure how to answer.

  “What do you want?” her lips pursed into a tighter sweeter smile.

  The question startled him from his daze. What did he want? He had gone out in the Focus under the pretence of needing to put petrol in her and driven like an automaton to this place. “I’m looking for a girl.”

  The dark girl tossed her head back in a laugh that started deep and then mellowed. She shook her head and her mop of springy raven and died blonde curls quivered around her face. Her arms crossed and she yanked the hem of her tight fitting tee shirt up to her chin. Her bare round breasts bounced and jiggled as she laughed, “What do you think these are; testicles?”

  Martin tried to ignore them and smiled against his discomfort, feeling his cheeks burn. “No. No – I mean I’m looking for a specific girl.”

  Candy’s face dropped into a measuring and untrusting wariness. She shoved her breasts roughly back into her top with one hand as if she was stuffing fruit into a bag. She cursed venomously as if she couldn’t believe her poor luck. “You’re a copper aren’t you?”

  “No, no.” He shook his head roughly. “I was involved in a crash here last night. I hit a girl, and I’m looking for her.”

  She straightened up, disinterested, her eyes had hardened into glassy marbles and she rested her free hand on her hip. She pouted on a cigarette, lit it and took a deep drag. “You are looking for Ivory then.”

  Martin experienced an arc of energy in his gut that could have launched him from the car at the mention of her name.

  She looked down at him took another drag and huffed a sulky smile. Smoke drifted from her bitter lips as if at the mouth of a volcano. “The look you have on your face. I’ve seen it before you know; you aren’t the first.” The smile snapped from her lips like the slack cracked from a whip. “She isn’t working tonight. Not the streets anyway. King has her at his flat.”

  “Who’s King?”

  “Jeez, you are new to Arven!” She paused in consideration of whether to trust him. “He’s her pimp.”

  “Not Ebony?”

  “Who?”

  “Nothing.” The blind black man was Ivory’s ward after all. Did he then know of Ivory’s lifestyle? “Would you be able to get hold of her? Tonight.”

  Candy looked Martin over. “Yeah,” a look descended on her face that Martin didn’t understand, as though she knew something he didn’t or that there was a joke he wasn’t aware of. “I think we can arrange it. Come on, honey.”

  Martin followed her from the car to the alley. It was the alley that Ivory had run from only the night before. What had she been fleeing?

  The mouth to the alley was dark, and was only lit further down by a dim outside light above a front door. The door was fully glazed with a heavily textured glass. Its wood surround was battered and looked soft with damp, its once lurid blue paint rotting and flaking away. From what he could see the whole building, with its
blown rendering and graffiti, looked as neglected as the other houses in the area. Candy gave the doorbell a protracted ring and him a broad smile and a wink.

  Martin stood and waited with the girl. ‘What am I doing?’ he screamed at himself inside. Yet that need to see Ivory kept his feet planted on the spot, and denied his instinct to run back to the car and screech away into the night, back to his neighbourhood and his wife. A large dark silhouette suddenly undulated across the rippled glass as someone came to the door.

  The door was flung open, slamming it against the wall of the hall. A man in his late twenties, with thick and powerful limbs filled the doorway. Hard dark eyes, sunken into grey hollows beneath a thick brow, twitched furtively between Candy and Martin. His skin was pale and clammy looking, his hair, receding at his temples was cropped close to his head. Verging on being a skin-head, and with baggy hooded grey jogging suit hanging from his sturdy frame he was the picture of a chav thug.

  A shadowy shape of a man flashed into Martin’s mind from the accident and this man that stood before him filled in the details of the cookie cutter shadow in his memory. He was sure it was the man who had chased Ivory into the street.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he spat.

  Martin wondered if he would end up running for his life in the same way that Ivory had seemed to be.

  “It’s not what I want, it’s what he wants.” Candy tossed a thumb in Martin’s direction and blew a slug of smoke over her shoulder in the opposite direction.