A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [151]
‘What was this place?’ Fifi asked. She had long since forgotten her hunger, the dark and the cold as Yvette took her back to France with her.
‘A brothel,’ Yvette almost spat out. ‘Not that I even knew that word then, or what went on in them. I hadn’t even started to menstruate or grow breasts. I knew nothing about the adult world. Just thirteen, a child still.’
Fifi gasped.
‘I was made to bathe and wash my hair, and then I was given a nightdress to put on. I kept asking where Tante Grace was, and crying, but this woman she didn’t even tell me ’er name, she slapped me, she say I am to do exactly what she tells me or be punished.’
Yvette relived that night again as she told Fifi about it. She could see the bare wooden stairs she was led down, the long gloomy corridor, and a door at the end of it. She was frightened, not by what lay ahead, for she had no knowledge of what was going to happen to her. But she was afraid of the woman, for she had a long bony face, sharp dark eyes, and her front tooth was missing, like a witch’s in a fairytale book. She wasn’t dressed like a witch – her dress was dark blue creêpe, and her blonde hair was set in tight waves either side of her head – but the hand that held tightly on to Yvette’s forearm was like a claw, and the large ruby ring on her finger looked like blood.
The room she was led into was dimly lit, heavy tapestry curtains tightly closed, and sparsely furnished with just a bed and a couple of chairs. Sitting on one of the chairs was a man.
He was portly, and he looked old to Yvette, though he was probably around forty, and he wore a dark grey suit with a yellow waistcoat beneath it. He had a big, florid face with a double chin, and when he smiled as he saw her, she noticed he had wet, fat lips.
‘You are sure she is intact?’ he asked, looking Yvette over as if she were a prize sheep or pig. He was French, and a Parisian judging by his accent.
‘I checked her myself. Not even hair on her fanny yet,’ the woman replied.
It was that rude word that alerted Yvette to the nature of this man’s interest in her, and she tried to shake off the woman’s hand on her arm and run, but she was held too tightly.
The man got up from his chair and came over to her, grasping her by both hands and pulling her to him. ‘Come, my little flower,’ he said. ‘I want to look at you.’
Yvette screamed then, and it seemed to echo around the bare room. The man laughed, and picking her up, tossed her on to the bed.
‘You can go now,’ he said to the woman. ‘If she’s all you said, you’ll get your bonus.’
Every second of that terrifying and painful ordeal was still imprinted on Yvette’s mind. She could smell the man’s breath on her face, feel the heat of his body through his clothes as he wrestled with her on the bed. There was such shame as he tried to look at her private parts and the pain when he poked and prodded at them. She tried to fight him off, but he slapped her hard, and pushed her down on the bed so violently that she thought he would kill her.
Then he unbuttoned his trousers, and such a fearsome thing reared out that she screamed again. She had only ever seen a little boy’s penis, never a grown man’s, and although a girl at school had once shown her a drawing of one, she’d thought it was a joke.
‘He forced it into me, Fifi,’ she whispered. ‘I felt as if I was being split in two. I was trapped beneath him and the pain was too bad, like being burned with a red-hot poker. It seemed like hours he was ramming it into me. I think I may have passed out. I just wish I could have died there and then.’
Fifi cried with Yvette, as they held each other tightly and rocked together. All those questions she’d asked Yvette in the past, fishing as to whether she’d had a boyfriend or been married, and the jokes Dan made about the sexy French mistress, shamed her now. She wished she could find words to show Yvette that she not only fully understood her suffering but shared her pain.
Much later Yvette finished the story. She explained that she was