Belle - Lesley Pearse [86]
Opening her door and going out on to the narrow staircase which led to the next floor, she listened for signs of anyone else being up. But there wasn’t a sound aside from gentle snoring which seemed to be coming from Hatty’s room.
She could smell the cigars from the previous night and there was a blue satin garter lying on the red and gold carpet on the landing below her. She wondered which of the girls it belonged to, and why it had been dropped there. A window on the landing had a pretty white lace blind over it, and as the bathroom door was slightly ajar she could see the black and white floor, and part of the claw-footed bath.
It all looked so clean, bright and pretty, and she smiled to herself, thinking back to how she had thought of nothing but escape when she was in Paris. She could leave here right this minute, get dressed, walk down the stairs and out the front door. But she realized she really didn’t want to.
And it wasn’t just because all she had in the world was the two dollars and fifty cents in tips she got last night. She actually liked it here.
‘Better start behaving like the other girls then,’ she murmured to herself, turning to go back into her room and into bed.
A week later, about three in the morning, Belle was alone in the drawing room collecting up glasses and ashtrays, when she heard screaming coming from out in the street.
It had been a quiet night at Martha’s. The last gentleman had left half an hour earlier, and the girls had gone up to bed as there clearly weren’t going to be any more callers. Martha had gone to her room on the first floor, and Cissie was in the kitchen making a cup of tea.
Belle put the tray of glasses down and went over to the window to look out. She could see a small crowd gathered some twenty yards away, further down the street by Tom Anderson’s, for they were standing in a pool of bright light from his place.
Belle had been astounded when she first saw Tom Anderson’s by night for it was lit with so many electric lamps it almost hurt her eyes. Anderson ran everything here – he settled disputes, punished those who needed it, and owned more than his fair share of the town. His dazzling, half-block-long saloon was all ornate carved cherry wood, mirrors and gilt, and was run by twelve bar tenders round the clock.
Basin Street was never completely silent. There might be a lull after five in the morning until nine or ten but the rest of the time music blasted out of dozens of bars, clubs and sporting houses, there were buskers in the streets and on top of that all the carousing and shouting which went hand in hand with a red light district. Sometimes Belle would look out to see gangs of sailors lurching drunkenly down the street towards the Few Clothes Cabaret. The other girls said they’d probably had a drink in most of the bars they’d passed since leaving their ship. They would be making for the cribs in Iberville Street where the whores cost a dollar, but by the time they got there they’d probably be unable to perform and their money would be gone.
Men who came into New Orleans by train were better placed to get to the women before they were too drunk, for the trains stopped right there at the start of the District and the passengers would have seen girls in some of the sporting houses posing seductively in windows for their benefit.
Unable to see from the window, Belle went to the front door and out on to the porch. She assumed the gathered crowd were watching two brawling men as there were cheers and shouts of encouragement. But suddenly the crowd broke away, and to her astonishment Belle saw it was two women fighting, going at each other like two savage dogs.
She had seen the big woman with dyed red hair the previous day, for she’d been shouting out in the street. Hatty had said she expected it had something to do with the woman’s pimp, who’d been seen with another woman or something similar. If that was the case and the slightly smaller woman with bleached hair was the one who’d stolen the red-headed woman’s lover