A House of Repute by E M Jones

Author:E M Jones [Jones, E M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912655373
Publisher: Rowanvale Books
Published: 2020-04-12T22:00:00+00:00

20

The expense for glass to partition the booths at The Lamb was proving its worth in manifold ways. Patrons luxuriated in alcohol and the confusion. Men and their companions became disarming sights made into a bewildering puzzle of the reflected and the tangible by mirror upon mirror upon mirror. The general response was to seek clarification in more wine and indulge in further imbalance and the softened boundaries of reality.

The tavern was teeming. The mirrored walls created more space and filled it with more and more dummies at the same time.

Charlie pushed open the heavyset door, the glimmer of candlelight through the tessellated glass panes providing a promise of a night’s pleasure. Her usually confident pace was stalled immediately by a battalion of sweaty male backs. Alcohol, smoke and indulgence replaced the oxygen in the tavern, and new patrons were drugged at the door. Charlie appeared in triplicate as she squeezed between the bodies swaying and wallowing in the suspension of certainty.

Lizzie soon lost Ted and Charlie, and each time she thought she had found them, it was merely their reflection, or a reflection of their reflection.

“Drink, darling?”

Lizzie managed to swerve the lower half of her body away from the hand proffered towards her posterior along with the offer of a beverage. She looked up without changing her position and the hand’s owner beamed at her. His face was like a drooping rose crinkled with a lack of air and water.

“No, love? You’ll regret it.”

He made a further ill-judged manoeuvre towards Lizzie’s posterior, but her relative sobriety was beyond the speed of his response. She gave an apologetic smile and made towards another wall of reflected faces. One of the morphed mouths, convex and rose-like, exploded into laughter—“All these beautiful women!”—and swiped towards another posterior passing within his reach.

Once Lizzie had sorted the next group of people into the real and the reflected, she squeezed past a real dress and slipped accidently into one of the mirrored booths. She looked up to find herself eye to eye with Georgie, who held court at the centre of the group. Georgie’s eyes were full of wine and reflected admiration. The men sat in the curved booth all stared towards her, their faces repeated indefinitely in the mirrors around her, as if all the men in London were there, engrossed by her. Her voluptuous width created a natural stage within the booth for her, the other inhabitants her audience. Her hair had started to fall around her face, where the affectation of casual preparation hid a fading hairline and pocked skin. Her jewelled ears set fireworks of light around the booth from time to time, as she swayed her head playfully in the retelling of a story of her days at court. According to Charlie, Georgie had spent one day at court with a useless footman who had promised much and delivered nothing, having used Georgie for pleasure. Georgie’s current retelling placed her far closer to the inner circle of the royal family.

She

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