Addison sighed. ‘Awful. In this day and age.’
‘Such damn prejudice,’ she continued. ‘Everyone knows what’s going on. Everyone. Yet nobody is prepared to deal with it. Nobody is prepared to help.’
‘Mark my words, the enquiry will also blame it on thewomen,’ Addison said, ‘rather than examining how British colonial rule and the presence of the military in such huge numbers has encouraged the exploitation.’
‘I don’t know what to do. They ignore Otto’s articles and I’ve talked to everyone I can think of. I’m wondering about holding a meeting.’
‘What kind of meeting?’
‘An open one, to point out the hypocrisy and start a petition to call for immediate action to ensure the safety of the girls.’
‘Be careful, Riva. I don’t want them to find you dead in an alleyway.’
At the beginning of 1933, despite Addison’s warning, Riva did go ahead with her meeting in a hall not far from Strait Street. She paced the room feeling exposed, while at the same time she worried nobody would turn up. In the end, a few church members trickled in with placards calling for an end to prostitution. This wasn’t the angle or focus Riva had been hoping for but she eventually managed to persuade them to take a seat, saying everything would be addressed in due course.
She was pleased when a few girls came in and sat at the back, hair covered, and eyes fixed on the side door. Riva’s own hair was fully red again now, the waves tumbling to her shoulders. She’d long given up the pretence of having dark hair to protect her true identity. When no one else appeared to be coming, Riva stepped forward and began to speak, passionately arguing for human rights and against the violation of those rights,and for an end to the exploitation of young women brought in from other countries. She talked about her own experiences as a dancer, and without naming names, told them about Anya.
‘It’s time the authorities took this seriously,’ she said as she neared the end of her speech. ‘How much longer must we wait for action that actually makes a difference to these girls? Please sign the petition you see on that table over there and tell your friends I will hold another meeting at the same time next week. If we can achieve enough signatures, I’ll deliver it to the chief of police and the ministry will have to take notice of our demands for more safety controls.’
She glanced at the main door and spotted a stream of men coming in. They stood at the back of the hall, feet wide apart, arms folded. Her heart raced as the atmosphere became heavy with unspoken threat. At first nothing happened, and she continued to speak. That was her mistake.
The heckling started as a whisper and carried on as a kind of low-key chanting with words she couldn’t quite make out but that had an ugly undertone. She couldn’t believe it when she realised it was coming from the women, the look on their faces completely blank. The women!
Didn’t they realise she was trying to help them?
Soon after that the girls hid their faces and sidled out of a side entrance, their job done. Riva was gripped by an immediate fear but carried on. ‘I don’t want to argue with you,’ she told the men, who laughed and blew raspberries.
‘Go back to where you came from, Frenchie,’ one of them shouted.
She stood her ground and went on trying to be heard above the growing noise of catcalls and whistles. They’ll calm down, she told herself. But they weren’t there to calm down and the heckling continued until the voices became more aggressive, the stream of invective uglier.Whore. Bitch.She saw their faces screwed up in anger as they chanted.Whore. Bitch. Whore. Bitch.Although shaking inside she was determined not to let the vitriol stop her and raised a hand to plead for silence. She noted a policeman standing with his arms crossed a little away from the other men. Would he step in?
He did not.
She glanced around her as the voices continued.Bitch. Whore. Slut. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.
‘Frigid cow, I know what I’d do to her, boys,’ someone sneered, and they all laughed approvingly.
And now she glanced at the side door, realising she would have to cut and run before it became physically violent. She should have got out of there before all this.
Someone threw something at her. It missed but the church people at the front who had been sitting in shocked silence began shrieking and ducking their heads as pebbles began to whizz through the air.
‘Take it as a warning,’ someone shouted and laughed when one hit Riva on the cheek.
‘Next time, missy, it’ll be bullets.’
The men clapped each other on the back and finally left the room.
Shaken, Riva felt blood tricking from her cheek and abruptly ended the meeting. No one had listened. Not the religious women, not the girls, not the men. What had she expected?
Night came down thick and black as a taxi dropped her and she walked towards Addison’s place that evening. Hearing something behind her, Otto’s words came back to her.The island is beautiful but there is an undercurrent, and it flows through Strait Street. But this was Mdina, not Valletta, and yet her skin still prickled uncomfortably. She stopped dead, felt the fear in her bones. Silence. Was there someone loitering in the shadows? Lying in wait? The feeling of foreboding deepened as she glanced around. Nothing. Whoever had been there was not visible. She walked on and then she heard the rumble of an engine. Just someone leaving Mdina then. Probably one of the locals. Nothing sinister. She’d been imagining things.
At Addison’s she sat alone on his terrace while he went inside to fetch a second bottle of wine. Her mind kept clicking back to the meeting with Lucas. Subdued and disheartened, she felt the pull of the past. Not her life with Bobby. Not that. But Paris where she was born. And where, nearly eight years ago, and with barely a backward glance she’d packed her bag and run away from home. She thought of her sister Claudette, and how much she missed her, and she thought of her parents too; even though she had never fitted in or felt she belonged, she couldn’t completely erase the pull of home.
‘Do you have a never-ending supply?’ she said as Addison came back out with a bottle.
He laughed. ‘Something like that.’
She smiled.
