Katherine was a kindly faced woman approaching forty who spent every morning making-up. She would sit on the park bench and would smile at the couples, the children, the sunlight on the pond, the dance of the ugly swan. Alone, she would go to the pub and drink her sherry in the corner. Her only friend was the safety of pattern. Friendship was a thing to observe.

Nightfall was the time for work. A shift in the heart of London, a different beast at night than day. She wasn’t ashamed. She was a prostitute.

Men, she noticed, all had a similar look in their eyes. Nor did they ever seem unique. Paradoxically, in the most intimate moment she always felt far away. She knew that the man was also not close either. A use. A service. Maybe a kindness. Sometimes, she would look for something from the man. She knew too that he was also looking for something. But neither could give the other. She had no anger, only a kind of disappointment. She wondered if she wanted a different life. 

They came in tropes – the old ones, one foot in the grave; the virgins, awkward and deferential; bankers, full of cupidity and themselves; the ‘Geezers’, a loose confederation of grocers, taxi-drivers, security and perverts; the drunks, who often went limp; the married professional, heading for a crisis; the unmarried professional, too excited; the Northerner, always talking about ‘proper this and proper that’; the foreign student, an exotic addition, though often poor; the petit aristocrat, staving off ennui … and then the rest.

For men a prostitute is gin without the hangover. Her cheapest is the same as a plate of sushi. The man arrives, orders, has his sushi, and leaves. 

She finished early enough for the night bus. Like the feeling of motion that remains after leaving a boat, she could still feel the men inside her. And then she wondered if there anything more disenchanting than a half empty London night bus. Was there anything more enervating than the over bright, vapid box of florescent metal dragging itself along the damp street? To occupy the mind, she would recollect the night’s men. But not their faces rather their sizes and shapes, their rhythm, their pulse and energy. She would index them according to mysterious criteria. She judged character based on these calculations. For example, short, thick and slow was a man of extreme vanity. Long quick and thin a weaselly obtrusive type. Long, thin and slow …

One day, as she sat on the park bench, she felt faint and lost consciousness. When she woke, she felt a strange hand on her cheek.

‘You were out cold, dear,’ an old woman said.

‘Oh,’ replied Katherine, ‘what happened?’

‘Can you walk?’

The old woman walked her to her house. Her touch was soft and it was a vital new sensation to Katherine. The old woman made her a cup of tea. Shen lived close, her name was Alice, she was a widow. A wrinkled face with blue-grey eyes.

Alice helped her to the bedroom. Katherine lay down as Alice sat on the bed and helped her off with her shoes. It was done slowly, regally. Alice took Katherine’s sock off and cupped her black foot. Tender hands Those feet had long lost the lustre of younger days. Alice disrobed, unembarrassed, and slipped under the covers. Then Katherine noticed something. An ineffable recognition of kindred spirits. A sudden knowing between them. Does it show? Katherine thought. She knew without proof what Alice had once been, maybe still was. Maybe it’s the face that is used to service and sees past absurd notions of piety and holiness, only to arrive at a strange kind of grace. It is the knowledge of one of mankind’s oldest truths: that the individual is the sovereign locus of dignity, and it can be rented out for a plate of sushi. 

Divinity requires whores. Ones like Alice, who had now slipped close to Katherine. An old whore and a young one. Katherine’s mind drifted into the anaesthetic of daydream. The same vague reality of having over a dozen men a day and not being able to feel any one of them. They existed, she existed, they paid and she lived by their payments. Fine, only there was nothing to hold on to. Not to her colleagues, her friends, pets, nor much of her life. A large round tear fell. She felt the squeeze of Alice’s hand. She pressed in return. The old woman’s eyes calmed her. Alice drew her arms around her body.

‘In the end it makes sense,’ Alice said with a gentle voice. ‘In the end you understand.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve had thousands in my life. Enough men to sink a ship. I drank. Drugs. Drifted along. Most were nice. But when I saw some of the girls fall apart, I decided I had to keep it together.’ She smiled. ‘It can be an honourable job, if you think right. If you understand.’

‘Understand?’

‘If you find God in it.’

Katherine was taken aback and laughed. ‘We’re sluts not priests.’

‘No, that’s wrong,’ Alice said, gently smiling. ‘Prostitutes are divine creatures.’

Katherine laughed again. ‘There’s nothing holy about it.’

‘Sex can be sacred.’

‘Oh, come on. Not for pay it can’t.’

‘Even then.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Katherine said.

‘But isn’t it the case that you feel numb right now? Empty?’

Katherine frowned. ‘How did you know?’

‘Oh, my dear, was I born this morning? Do you think it’s a riddle? I was once exactly where you are.’ 

Katherine stared.

‘People call it low, disgusting, filthy. Slimy pimps and gross women. Cheap. Lonely. Sad. But what would they be without us? The politicians and newspapers may condemn us but we’re not going anywhere. Fashions come and go, civilisations collapse, but there will always be hookers. Arrests, pandemics, fines, fear, nothing stops us. We survive because we’re not hypocrites. We survive because we satisfy human nature. We survive because we are sacred. We are sublime.’

Alice leaned her head on Katherine’s shoulder and her words struck the latter like the tolling of a bell, ringing right to the bone.

Night. Katherine was again at her trade. Her colleague laughed like a gatling gun, her sweaty, glistening bosom wobbled. Katherine considered plumbers, they endure and are not sacred. She shrugged, maybe the old woman was mad. 

A whorehouse has a scent. Something like damp, dog-weary carpet and walls and furniture as if soaked of sweat. There’s an additional layer, the clinical: the smell of sanitiser, rubber, plastic, boredom. Not the frankincense of a church, nor the vinegar of a woodland. Nothing sacred, Katherine thought. Animal passions, nothing more. Men paid for the use of her body, and she admitted to herself, that just maybe they got more out of it than mere pleasure. Take the virgin for example. When he loses it, it is more than just fun. It’s for him a milestone. An end and beginning. A rite of passage. Pride. Wonder. A Man at last. Relief, even. Maybe there was something mythical in it, but not sacred. With that in mind she began to study her customers eyes. She sought the godly. Was there anything there? Was there a spark? 

But she only saw the act of two strange bodies meeting. The rush of a man’s keen feeling. In his eyes shone a desire, nothing more. 

By the time of the last man, she was drunk. The live in whores had taken stronger chemicals. The madame was watching TV. By some mysterious law, the last man always took the longest, and generally was needlessly noisy about it. Katherine looked to the blue neon-light-drowned window. The torn cloth that half-heartedly covered a part of the window seemed frozen by the ugly luminescence. It chilled her, spoke of ocean water, empty, dark. It advertised its ware as if it were a trinket: ‘Massage.’ And even that was a lie. A lie of dreams and false centres. Alice was a lie too. Or a devil. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered. 

The man stopped. Finally, she thought. But something was wrong. He clutched his chest and rolled off her. It seemed like slow motion, unreal and numb. He staggered and fell on his side balletically. His face contorted into varying grimaces, and Katherine watched as if it were on TV. His stiff gasps shocked her out of her dream. So did his pale face. The only real part were his eyes that were fading. They clung to life and to something in the middle of it. Then he curled a little, relaxed and his eyes rolled back, looking at something else and with a different quality. They were in communion with eternity. She got up and wanted to call for help, but was trapped in the stillness of his dying. A rush of pain, burst through her. His eyes turned down to look back at her and she felt them punch her with their agony. She gazed, and in her trembling the man died. The next thing she knew, she was zigzagging through the corridor to the Madame’s room. They returned. The room boiling, choking, as if the dead man stole all the air. She ran to the window and smashed it. Suddenly cool air rushed in and she gasped. Every inch of her stung. Her sight was keen, her ears heard the conversations on the street. She felt the blood on her hand, and it was joyous, it was sublime. She felt the world spinning inside her and the pure air blowing around her. She felt as though rising into a bright light as she fell to her knees. She put her hands together in prayer and wept. Somewhere a church bell tolled. 

The brothel was shut down, but a place means nothing to a trade that lives everywhere. Katherine continued, and was proud to. For she understood Alice. She understood and believed that God had selected whores as his angels.