The Runaway

  Cathy sat at the table and put her head in her hands. ‘Mr Wonderful helped me enormously actually, Desrae. He took care of the funeral arrangements, everything. I don’t know what I would have done without him. Now, can I have a cup of tea? I’m parched. It’s a long old flight from New York and the journey back into London was a traffic nightmare. I really don’t need you and your bad attitude at the moment.’

  Desrae was wrongfooted now and he knew it. ‘I’m sorry, it was just a shock, seeing him here. You looked so very cosy together . . .’ Placing a cup of tea before her, Desrae said unhappily, ‘Tommy was special to me, you know that. He was my last link with Joey. My Joey was still alive inside his eldest son.’

  Cathy was remorseful now for her own reaction. ‘I know, and I’m sorry too, Desrae. It’s been hard all round.’

  ‘I had his sisters on the phone. I don’t think they were very happy about the funeral being over there. I must be honest, I can’t understand it myself.’

  Cathy wiped a hand across her face. ‘It just seemed like the best thing at the time.’ She sipped her tea and lit a cigarette.

  ‘It was quick, painless. He wouldn’t have known much about it, at least we can be thankful for that. Now, if you don’t mind, I really don’t want to talk about it. As for Eamonn, he’s a married man with nine children - yes, Desrae, I said nine children, and another on the way. And if you think that makes me and him an item, then you’re right. But all we’re guilty of is picking up our old friendship. If Tommy’s death showed me anything it was that life’s too short to waste. Now, I think I’ll drink me tea and see my daughter. I’ve missed her.’

  She looked into her friend’s face. ‘And I’ve missed you too. A hell of a lot.’

  Then, seeing the grief in Desrae’s eyes, she cried. She cried because at last she had seen someone who was really sorry that Tommy was dead.

  Wang Cheng was a small man, impossibly small even for a Chinese. He was only four foot ten inches, and his skinny body looked like a child’s. As he bowed to Eamonn, he was smiling.

  ‘Meester Docherty. How pleasant to see you.’

  Eamonn gave a small bow back and then, laughing, the big man embraced the tiny one. Up in a small flat in Gerrard Street he unpacked his cases and transferred his clothes into two identical receptacles. This was achieved in minutes.

  ‘No trouble at the airport?’

  Eamonn shook his head. ‘None at all. They’re exceptional, I was impressed.’

  Weng grinned agreeably. ‘Such a big worry for such small items, yes?’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to find another mule,’ Eamonn told him. ‘Tommy passed away unexpectedly in New York.’

  Cheng looked suitably sombre. ‘I heard - my cousin in Chinatown told me. Very sad, such a nice man as well.’

  Eamonn knew that Cheng was well aware of the circumstances; not much got past the old rinky dinks. But he carried on the pretence nevertheless.

  ‘Yes, very sad. In his prime.’

  ‘You make him sound like a piece of beef,’ Cheng joked politely. ‘Now I will bid you good day, I have to deliver these as soon as possible. I look forward to seeing you again before you leave.’

  ‘Always a man of few words, eh, Mr Cheng?’ Eamonn laughed.

  ‘Western people talk for hours, Mr Docherty, but they rarely say anything of importance. I wish you a safe journey to your hotel.’

  Eamonn picked up his suitcases and left, chuckling. Mr Cheng was a card, but he was also a very important part of their operation. The Chinese knew this and acted accordingly. Eamonn wished he could introduce him to Igor, the two of them would get on famously.

  Instead of making his way as usual to the Ritz, he jumped in a black cab and went to Knightsbridge. He was using a contact’s flat there. It would make it much easier for him and Cathy to meet.

  He was humming a tune to himself as he made his way to his destination. He was back in his beloved London, and life was finally looking up. As he gazed greedily out at the busy streets his mind was on Cathy and her daughter Kitty, the beautiful child of his body.

  Life had its compensations. It was just a shame it took so long to find them.

  Kitty was curled up on the bed, her head in her mother’s lap. Cathy looked down on her child and felt the tightening in her gut that seeing her daughter’s lovely face always produced inside her. She had the best features of both her parents: her mother’s sapphire eyes, her father’s thick brown hair. Her skin was a porcelain white. Even her teeth were perfect.

  ‘I’ll miss Daddy, I suppose.’ Kitty’s voice was low, heavy with sadness.

  Cathy sighed, heartbroken for her child. ‘Sometimes when people die it’s a relief for their families. I feel a little like that, though I wouldn’t say it to Desrae.’

  ‘Auntie Desrae loved Daddy too much. I loved him, Mummy, but I feel awful because I didn’t really like him. Does that sound terrible?’

  Cathy shook her head.

  ‘You’re very pretty, Mummy, I expect you’ll marry again.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Cathy was shocked.

  ‘Well, a lot of the girls in school, their mummies marry all the time and none of them is as pretty as you. Everyone says that at school. You’re like a celebrity there.’

  Kitty said this with pride and Cathy laughed. ‘Well, I’m not a celebrity, not really.’

  ‘You have the best club in London, everyone knows that at school because I tell them all about it. They think it’s marvellous having men dressed as women all over the place. Auntie Desrae is the mascot of the whole school. Everyone is interested in him and how he looks without his clothes on. But I never tell them things like that, it’s too private.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Cathy loved Desrae, and to think of him being discussed by a bunch of kids as some kind of weirdo really upset her.

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ she said, ‘Desrae is as much a woman as I am. He is a transsexual. But he feels he’s too old to have the operation. Some men have it and afterwards live their lives as women. Desrae lives his life as a woman anyway, and he’s a fine woman, a good person through and through.’

  Kitty stared at her mother solemnly. ‘I know, Mummy, but the girls ask stupid questions, like does he have periods, and things like that.’

  Cathy suppressed a smile. ‘And what do you say to them?’

  Kitty tried her hardest to look all mysterious and superior as she answered. ‘I just give them a cold look, and don’t answer them.’

  ‘Good girl. Now would you like to ask me anything about Daddy? I’ll answer your questions as best I can, love.’

  Kitty looked up at her mother with wide eyes and said honestly: ‘What’s to ask? He died, and really, Mummy, that’s that.’

  Cathy smiled down at her daughter but the girl’s answer bothered her. She should feel something, surely? But maybe Eamonn’s child was incapable of feeling the normal human reactions . . .

  Cathy arrived at the Knightsbridge flat at 10.15. She was dressed casually in jeans and a white silk shirt, her make-up light, lipstick pale coral. She looked understated and stunning. Eamonn opened the door to her in a towelling robe.

  ‘I have champagne on ice, and a few delicacies lined up for when we’ve built up an appetite.’

  She followed him through to the lounge and as he handed her a glass of ice-cold Dom Perignon, said casually, ‘I haven’t got long. I’m supposed to be at the club. Kitty’s with Desrae, and the girls - I use that term loosely - are all dying for a glimpse of me.’

  As she sipped champagne, he undid the buttons of her blouse, freeing her naked breasts. He stared down at her and whispered, ‘I love you, Cathy, I adore you.’

  She smiled at him then, a long, slow, languorous smile. ‘Same here.’

  He kissed her, and within minutes they were in bed.

  As they lay entwined later, both limp, skin shining with a fine film of sweat, she spoke what was on her mind.

  ‘This is it now, for us. Yo
u’ll come to me often as you promised you would. I can’t be without you, Eamonn.’

  He hugged her to him. ‘I’ll be here every month for a long weekend. There are a lot of things I have to take care of in America, you know that. But believe me when I say, I’d walk out on Deirdra and the kids in the morning, if that’s what you wanted. You only have to say the word.’

  She kissed his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t be responsible for that. I want to have a relationship with you more than anything, but you have commitments and so do I. We can keep up a transatlantic romance. I can come out to you and you can come out to me. A weekend shopping in New York every few weeks would suit me down to the ground. That way we both make the effort and see more of each other than we thought.’

  He was pleased, happy that she wanted to do this for him. He squeezed her to him tightly. ‘That would be fantastic, darling. Whatever you want, I’ll do.’

  She grinned then, mischievously. ‘Well, I can think of some unfinished business . . .’

  He laughed loudly at her words. ‘You’re sex mad!’

  ‘Only with you, Eamonn, only with you.’

  He looked into her eyes then and said seriously, ‘Remember that, because if another man touched you, I’d kill him.’

  Cathy tried to joke though his words, and the meaning behind them, frightened her a bit. He sounded so intense.

  ‘Thank God for that! I thought for a second you’d have killed me.’

  Eamonn still wasn’t laughing as he answered. ‘I wouldn’t rule that out entirely either.’

  Cathy was stunned. He meant what he said.

  She was saved from answering by the trilling of the phone. Eamonn picked it up and grunted into the mouthpiece. She watched while his erection subsided as if someone had burst it with a sharp pin.

  He listened for a few minutes and then put down the phone.

  ‘What’s wrong, Eamonn? What’s happened?’ Her earlier thoughts were pushed from her mind at the sight of his white face.

  ‘I have to travel home tomorrow, but I’ll be back soon, I promise.’

  She stared at his drawn expression and said forcefully, ‘For Christ’s sake, man, what’s happened?’

  He lay back against the pillows, eyes dead in his face, mouth turned down at the corners like a child.

  ‘Just work, that’s all. Just work.’

  As Cathy comforted Eamonn in London, Jack Mahoney was mourning his brother in New York.

  Earlier that day, as Petey and his latest girlfriend lay in their bed, tired after an afternoon’s love-making, two masked men had burst in on them. They had opened fire with two Berettas, silencers only making the sound more harsh and deadly.

  Between them the lovers took 200 bullets, the girl’s lovely face being one of the first things to be destroyed. Lying entwined, they took the full force of the men’s rage. It was all over in seconds, leaving only parodies of two people in love.

  In the silence afterwards the only sound to be heard was the slow dripping of blood on to the expensive carpeting.

  When Cathy walked into her home at 2.30 the next afternoon, Desrae was waiting for her, like a big wronged husband. His face was a tight angry red, eyes heavy-lidded with malevolence.

  ‘Well, well, well, you took your fucking time!’

  Cathy closed her eyes and said through her teeth, ‘Not now, Desrae, OK? I’ve had more than enough to keep me going without you on my case as well.’

  Kitty was listening from her bedroom, ears practically uncurling in her effort to overhear the conversation between her mother and Desrae.

  ‘How’s Eamonn? All right, is he? I assume that’s where you’ve been. My God, girl, but you’ve got a nerve! Tommy, God love him, not cold in his grave, and your only trumping the man he worked for! What happened to all your high falutin’ talk of yesteryear, eh? I seem to remember you referring to him as scum, amongst other things. What happened to change all that, eh? The old pork sword prove too enticing, did it?’

  Cathy bellowed at him then, her own fury making her want to hurt her friend. ‘Yes, that’s it precisely. I couldn’t wait to jump in the kip with him. I wish I’d followed my heart and done it years ago. So now you know, don’t you? Happy, are you, Desrae? Happy now that you’ve made me admit I’m a no-good slut?

  ‘I put up with more than enough from Saint Tommy. Believe me, I took my fair share over the years with him. I never loved him, not even when I married him. He was a weak and sad man, a drug addict and a drunk, you know that in your heart. He worked with Eamonn, and knew what he was getting into, and lied to me about it, lied to me for years, even though I knew what was going on, what he was really doing. I spurned Eamonn over it, but at least he was honest about it.

  ‘Where do you think all Tommy’s money came from over the years, eh? What did you think he was doing in New York all those times? Shopping? He was no better than Eamonn, so you have no right to judge him - or me for that matter.’

  Desrae was white with shock and anger. ‘You and Docherty . . . My God, you’ve held a torch for him all your life, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I have held a torch for him. I love him, Desrae, and if you can’t handle that fact, then there’s nothing more for us to say, is there?’

  Picking up his coat, Desrae stormed from the flat, slamming the door behind him.

  Cathy stood alone and forlorn in the lounge.

  Kitty crept out into the hall and said in a frightened voice: ‘Mummy, why were you shouting like that?’

  Cathy went to her child and embraced her tightly. ‘Because friends argue sometimes, darling. They argue over the silliest things.’

  One of Desrae’s protégés, a young man called Colin Masters, stage name Roberta, was singing his rendition of Cilla Black’s Surprise, Surprise. At the end of the song, he always pulled off his wig and dress and stood, a young man, waiting for the audience to clap and cheer, which they always did, rapturously.

  But Desrae took no joy in his performance tonight.

  Though the club was packed as usual to the rafters, he took no joy from that either. Walking through the dressing rooms he smelt the familiar odours of marijuana and perfume. There were ten men in there, all in various stages of undress. Normally he was the life and soul, chatting and talking, joking and praising.

  Instead he watched them silently, a sad smile on his face. Camilla, a huge black man who did a haunting rendition of Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By, greeted him happily. ‘Did you hear, girl?’

  He stood, all thirteen stone of him, with his hands on his hips and his surgically enhanced breasts standing to attention like a sixteen year old’s. With full stage make-up and no wig, he looked strange and somehow vulnerable.

  ‘No. What, love?’ Desrae’s voice was dull.

  Camilla grinned. ‘I have had the offer of a lifetime.’ He flapped his hands with a girlish glee that belied his huge frame. ‘Six months in Las Vegas, what do you think of that, eh?’

  Desrae smiled happily for his friend. ‘Good luck to you, you’ll enjoy it.’

  Camilla screeched with laughter. ‘The man who asked me - a really nice guy by the way, not averse to a bit of the old shirt-lifting - wants me to stay at his place and maybe see what evolves.’

  Desrae smiled then, sadly. All the TVs were looking for the same thing: a man to love. Someone to treat them with respect, someone to love them back. Desrae knew from experience that the chances of finding it were very small. But he didn’t have the heart to say so.

  ‘Good on you, Camilla. I wish you the best of luck. But don’t forget you’re still into me and the club for fifteen hundred quid what you owe on the tits.’

  ‘Don’t worry, that’s all been taken care of,’ Camilla said coyly. ‘Hank - that’s his name by the way - is going to clear all my debts here before I leave.’

  The girls all jibed at him for this and Desrae poured himself a glass of vodka from a bottle on the courtesy table, then sitting in a vacant seat, sipped it and checked over his own make-up. Little J
oanie, a small white man who bore a staggering likeness to Judy Garland, said softly: ‘You all right, Desrae?’

  He nodded. ‘’Course I am, just tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, girl, I hate to say it but you look rough, you know what I’m saying?’ Joanie’s voice was low, heavily feminine and sexy.

  Desrae nodded.

  ‘How’s Cathy? I haven’t seen her for a while, the girls thought she’d have been in by now. Terrible about her husband, wasn’t it? So young and fit for a heart attack.’ He flapped his hands. ‘Still she’s a good-looking girl, and a real one at that. Won’t be too long before she has a few men around her door, eh? She’s so young to be a widow, and so pretty. Beautiful in fact.’

  Desrae pursed his lips and didn’t answer. Instead he finished his drink in one gulp and left the dressing room.

  All the girls stared after him as he left.

  ‘What’s wrong with her then? Looks like she got her cock caught in her Spandex.’

  Everyone laughed, but Joanie said forcefully, ‘Tommy was like his son, all he had left of Joey Pasquale. It must be a bitter blow, losing him like that. I wouldn’t have minded a love affair like they had.’

  All the girls were quiet then, each thinking the same thing.

  Desrae had been one of the lucky ones. At least he had experienced it. The most the majority of them would ever experience was raw sex and a quick goodbye. Joey had loved Desrae, everyone knew that. They were a legend in Soho, even all these years after his death, and the fact that his only son had loved Desrae as a surrogate mother had made him the envy of every TV. Even Tommy’s daughter was a big part of Desrae’s life. The girl called him Auntie Desrae.

  A picture of a young Desrae and Joey Pasquale, both laughing gaily at the camera, hung above the bar. All the girls looked at it constantly and prayed that one day it would happen to them.

  After all, if it could happen to Desrae there was hope for them all.

  Joanie was singing Over the Rainbow as Cathy spied Desrae at the bar. It was just after twelve and Kitty was ensconced with the girls in the dressing room, having a fuss made over her and getting tips on make-up and clothes.