Belle - Lesley Pearse [83]
Polly and Betty had worked together in an Atlanta bordello but it was closed down by the police and so they came to New Orleans. They said they were fortunate in being directed to Martha’s, and in being taken on immediately.
All five were white girls. It seemed that mixed houses weren’t allowed, so the coloured girls were in different houses.
The pianist sat down to play in the drawing room in the early evening, the girls arranged themselves prettily on the couches, and soon afterwards gentlemen began to arrive. To Belle’s surprise they really did appear to be gentlemen. They were astoundingly well-mannered, they didn’t use any profanities, and treated the girls like real ladies. They all wore well-cut suits, boiled white shirts, highly polished boots, and had neatly trimmed beards and moustaches. There were a few who sported the kind of loud checked waistcoats and ostentatious gold watch chains that Etienne had pointed out as being markers of ‘white trash’ while they were on the ship from New York. But though these men were a little brash and flashy, they were still very polite. Belle thought it rather sweet that they asked the pianist for special tunes so they could dance with the girls.
The pianist’s name was Errol, and he was a negro, but apparently all pianists here were called ‘the Professor’. He knew hundreds of tunes, just playing them by ear without any music. Some got Belle’s toes tapping and made her want to dance. Betty told her it was called jazz, and she would be hearing a great deal more of it for it was the music of New Orleans. But the Professor sang too – he had a lovely deep, husky voice – and in some of the songs he’d changed the words to rather naughty ones about Martha’s house which made everyone laugh.
Belle offered the gentlemen whisky, wine or champagne, which seemed awfully expensive at a dollar a time, especially as she knew the ‘wine’ they bought for the girls was just red-coloured water. She thought it was nice that the men weren’t rushed up the stairs and that the girls sat around chatting and flirting with them, just as if they were at a party. But she realized later that all the drinks they bought added up to quite a lot, so that was why Martha encouraged the girls to keep them in the drawing room.
Asking a girl to dance appeared to be the discreet way the men picked their girl, and when they left the room together, hand in hand, they could have just been going to take an innocent stroll around the garden.
Belle wondered how the money changed hands, for apart from charging for the drinks, and seeing the gentlemen tipping Errol, she saw no other money. But Suzanne explained that the first thing the girls did when they got to their room with the gentleman was to ask for the twenty dollars. This they handed to Cissie, the upstairs maid, who passed it on to Martha who kept a record of what all the girls earned in an evening.
Cissie was a negro, a tall, thin woman with a cast in one eye. She had a very stern expression and rarely smiled, but the girls had said she was kindness itself, especially when they were sick.
Belle had been very surprised by what a short time the men spent upstairs with the girls, especially as they usually stayed in the drawing room chatting and drinking for over an hour. She thought the average time they spent in a girl’s room was only about twenty minutes; if they stayed as long as thirty minutes Martha began to look tense. Then as soon as the men came down they left the house. Belle had always assumed the sex act lasted at least an hour, for that was how long it seemed to be for her in Paris, and when Kent was with Millie. Now she was beginning to see that it had been a much shorter time than that, it was just the horror of it which had made it appear so long.
As each girl entertained about ten gentlemen during the evening,