Tell It To The Birds

She had no pimp to protect her and she had no regular beat. It was when she was ill, frozen and defeated not caring what happened to her, using her last few dollars on cheap whisky, that she met Phil Barlowe.

She would always remember that moment when he came furtively out of the darkness. She was standing under a street lamp, wet snow falling on her, her feet frozen, aware that the cold had turned her face into a stiff white mask.

Barlowe, wearing a black, slouch hat and a dark topcoat, had paused and they looked at each other.

"Are you looking for a naughty girl?" Meg asked, her lips so stiff with the cold she had trouble in speaking.

"How naughty?"

The pale brown eyes scared her. The thin, ill-tempered face warned her this man could be a sadist, but she was beyond caring. She had to have money. If this mean looking creature had money, then she would take a chance with him.

They had gone together to her room. Barlowe had sat on one of the chairs making no attempt to take off his topcoat.

Meg had sat listlessly on the bed, shivering.

"Come on, honey," she said impatiently, "don't just sit there."

"I only want to talk to you," Barlowe said. "I've got no one I can talk to."

She was so used to nuts, perverts and queers, that she wasn't surprised.

"Look, honey," she said. "It'll cost you either way. Let's have your present."

He fumblingly produced his wallet and gave her three ten dollar bills. Meg, who had been working for practically nothing, couldn't believe her eyes.

The room was heated by a small paraffin stove. It was enough only to keep out the frost. Cold, shivering, and feeling she was now running a temperature, Meg pulled the blankets over her and settled down in the bed, fully dressed.

She half listened to Barlowe talking. She vaguely gathered his mother had just died and he was lonely. He talked on and on and on. She had an idea he told her he had money, a cottage and a lovely garden. She gathered sleepily that he had a good job in some store. Warmth at last began to steal over her and she fell asleep.

She woke the next morning to find the stove out, the window covered with white frost and her head aching wildly.

Barlowe had gone. She sat up in panic and opened her handbag, but the thirty dollars was still there. She remained in bed, too ill to move, and at one time she thought she might be dying.

Sometime during the evening, as the shadows lengthened and the cold sordid little room began to dissolve into darkness, she heard a tapping on the door.

By then she was too ill to bother. She became aware vaguely that Barlowe was standing over her, his bitter distressed face close to hers. She tried to say something ... to tell him to go away, but the effort was too much for her. She grimaced and closed her eyes, sinking into a feverish, frightening oblivion.

Later, she was vaguely aware of being carried down the narrow stairs in a kind of hammock ... the stairs being so narrow and difficult a stretcher was impossible. She found herself in a hospital bed and she was in the quiet ward for ten days. Each day Barlowe came and sat by her side. He just stared at her and said nothing. She was so ill and weak she accepted him ... a nut ... but she was grateful for what he had done for her. During these ten days she constantly thought of Jerry Hogan, wondering where he was, who he was sleeping with, how he was making money enough to live.

Then suddenly, one morning, she woke up and she knew she was well again. Her one thought was to get out of the hospital, but she shrank from returning to that sordid room with its inadequate stove and the bitter wind that whistled under the door and through the cracks of the ill-fitting windows.

Barlowe came in the evening. They talked. "I've been pretty ill," she said. "I don't know anything about you ... why have you been so kind?"

"It's not kindness," he said quietly, his pale brown eyes moving over her in a way that made her uneasy. "You and I are lonely people. I have a cottage: a garden: a good job. I've lost my mother. I'd like to marry you. Will you marry me?"

Right at that moment, thinking of the life that lay before her if she continued to try to battle along on her own, Meg didn't hesitate. She regarded marriage as a convenience. If it didn't work out, you could always get a divorce, so she accepted his offer.

They were married by a special licence a week after Meg had left hospital. She had been at first intrigued and pleased with the isolated house and the garden. She believed that she would be able to find some kind of happiness here, but she was quickly disillusioned.

She now never wanted to remember their first and only night together. It ended by Meg locking herself in the spare room while Barlowe scratched on the door as he knelt outside in the passage. She realized bitterly that she had married one of those sick minded men whom she had had to cope with so often during the time she had walked her beat in Hollywood.