Brighton Rock by Heather Pollitt
26 March 2021 { Crime/Thriller }
Christina worked as a modern slave in the cellar of a well-known rock shop on the promenade at Brighton. Please don’t ask how she got into that excruciating line of work because I only know the gist of her story. She’d been sleeping rough and some arse hole had snatched her at her most vulnerable, threatening her that the police were patrolling the area that night. Arse Hole had promised to take care of her and find her work as a hostess in a night club together with comfortable lodgings and good pay. He’d managed to wrench her passport from her and within half an hour the poor girl was both literally and metaphorically, in his hands.
The rock was made in the basement of the seaside shop and the whole place smelt of toffee. It was a bit like a brewery with vats and dials and a constant low whirring sound. Christina’s job was to pour the sugar from the huge paper sacks into the vat of bubbling liquid, making sure the automatic paddle was working properly and that the temperature was exactly right. She hated breathing in those sugary fumes from the vat, but after a couple of weeks she’d improvised a protective mask from a piece of her skirt. She’d also mastered the art of rolling the rock mixture along the massive table until it was six feet long and with a ten-centimetre diameter. She used this white molten rock along with its red counterpart to form the words ‘BRIGHTON ROCK’ on the end of each stick. After a full and exhausting day of this, she had to scrub the concrete floor, cleaning away the day’s sugary droppings. After this she’d crawl into her alcove where a few lumpy cushions made up her bed.
Now you may want to ask why Christina didn’t walk out, even if it meant being back in a shop doorway, freezing in an old sleeping bag. Simple answer: because she was a prisoner, a slave to the arse hole (my name for him, although he deserved worse!) who’d got away with this before and who saw no good reason to stop now. She was a prisoner in this lousy basement. She had a basin to wash and to pee in, and at mid-day a tired looking sandwich was passed down to her. All the doors were specially constructed of thick metal and Arse Hole’s brother was on guard at all times. He sat on a bentwood chair, reading Racing News but keeping one eye riveted on Christina.
He’d tried some conversation while Christina was rolling the molten rock but she refused to speak, concentrating with a grim expression on perfecting the toffee-writing before the mixture solidified and sealed in any errors for which she’d be punished. Once, he’d got up from his chair and put his hand on Christina’s shoulder. Her clog got him in the groin, and he staggered back to his chair, moaning in pain. There were no consequences to this act of aggression on her part because the brother, being a bully, was also a coward.
You might ask what happened after the shop closed and the daytime voices of children morphed into the evening chat of courting couples, and after that, the rough tones of blokes, who were making the most of Brighton’s pubs and clubs, laughing and shouting until well after midnight.
You might also want to know the name of the shop, because at the end of this story you may be tempted to find the place for yourself. It was called ‘Rock Around the Clock’! How about that? Not bad? Enough to raise a smile or even just a smirk? Don’t think Arse Hole had the wit to make up that name. No. It was there before he took over. That was when it was a decent place and the best rock shop in Brighton. You could get little pigs, huge lollipops the size of your face, sugar bacon and eggs and stripy walking sticks all wrapped in squeaky cellophane and tied with gaudy ribbon or string! Kids and parents loved all this sugary treasure and they’d stagger home with bargain bags to dish round the family and the folk at work when the holiday was finally over and their sad train had pulled into the dull suburban town that constituted real life.
Now: back to Christina, our wretched slave, enduring such ill treatment that you and I can only imagine. Has she accepted her slavery? Has she given up all hope? After all, she’s been banged up in that metal-cased cellar for nearly four months now and to all intents and purposes she’s submitted herself to it: all of it except the lascivious advances of Arse Hole’s brother. And you’ll remember what happened when he tried it on!
Next, good news and bad news came filtering down into the cellar, borne on sugar particles and reaching Christina’s shell-like ears. The bad news was that a global disaster had struck in the form of a pandemic. ‘Unprecedented’ was a word that was to become as prevalent to the human lexicon as the virus was to the human respiratory system. This virus, named Co-vid 19 was a horrendous worldwide killer that had already claimed many thousands of lives. The UK was no exception and Brighton took an enormous hit as it was populated by drug users and the elderly. I know you’ll be wondering how Christina knew this was going on, and you’ll have picked up the irony that she, in her current situation would be protected and even shielded from this monster virus. Well, all that’s true, and this is how she got to know what was going on.
‘Rock Around the Clock’ suddenly offered online shopping! The arse hole was clever enough, or, rather, money minded enough, to engage his brain in attempts to avoid bankruptcy. A massive banner was slung diagonally across the shop window saying ‘Get your Brighton Rock on line at rockaroundtheclock@rockmail.com. Christina was then brusquely trained in packing and dispatching orders to various parts of the country. She was intrigued by all the addresses. Burnley, Glasgow, Stockport Warwick, Sheffield and many more destinations made her even more aware of her incarceration. ‘Rock Around the Clock’ thrived as never before! Why struggle home with a bucket load of rock and a chance that the giant baby dummy would be smashed to bits, when you could send your bubble-wrapped, jiffy-bagged online order from the shop or from your computer?
Christina was given Jiffy bags in various sizes to fit all the various items of rock but still the staple and most popular was the traditional stick of Brighton Rock. And it was whilst she was wrapping one of these that she gestated her escape plan.
Next night, after the brother had left her locked up, Christina re-lit the machine that heated the water, sugar and glucose together. It took about an hour to get the mixture malleable and to prepare two colours as she did every day ready for opening time. She kneaded and rolled the white mixture and then kneaded and rolled the red. Knead and roll, knead and roll and… there! Ha! There was her route to freedom! Her stick of rock would become a message in a bottle!
She waited impatiently for the long rolls of rock to cool so that she could chop them into thirty-centimetre sticks. Another hour or so and it would be nearly opening time. She had to have the ‘messages’ packed by the time the courier came with his bike to whiz off to the post office with the packages. So: Christina got the proper chopper, giggling hysterically at the name she gave it, and chopped off her first stick. She could read in plain English, ‘Help me 0124 155 3300’. Chop chop chop! Chop chop chop! went Christina’s cleaver! She didn’t have time to fantasize as she usually did about the rock being part of the arse hole’s vital anatomy. She was completely focussed on getting the job done in time. And she made it!
I know the waiting’s hard for you to bear, but a whole week passed before Christina heard the noises she’d been waiting for. Voices sounding official and stern. Bars and metal locks being turned and then Christina looking up to see through her blinks, two uniformed men in police gear jumping down to her level, while other such officers marched the arse hole off, presumably to the ubiquitous and very black shiny van.
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