She hardly slept during the long hours when no one called at the apartment. Late at night when she went back to bed from watching television there was always a bed companion for the night: Tiger or Sludge-Pump – sometimes both. She called him Sludge-Pump now. She loathed both of them, if she got around to thinking about it. She didn't care what they did with her: in fact, her orgasms were always much greater when they had her together late at night or before they went down for their morning swims in the surf. One day she would go down with Jenny's board and swim out into the cool Pacific to cleanse herself of the nightmare she was enduring, suffering it because her mind was too pathetically weakened to deny the demands of her genitals or the fire of sensual desire raging day and night throughout her entire system.
One day, she couldn't remember which, she wrote a letter to her parents, a short note about how happy she was tripping around Queensland with Jenny. Hugh dictated the letter which he sent to a friend at Rockhampton to post back to Mr. and Mrs. Spender at Bondi Beach. She had written again, intending to throw the letter out of the window in the hope that someone would post it to her parents, but by then she had forgotten the address and the phone number; she wasn't allowed to use the phone and she was never left alone.
On the fifth day she asked for a television set to be installed in the bedroom so Hugh hired one which she left turned on all day, the sound turned up. She stared with drugged eyes, the sound drowning out the constant vulgarities pouring into her ears, while Hugh's friends ravished her. Instead of one or two men standing in the doorway while another lustily rammed and bounced her in the bed, the living room seemed packed with men drinking, talking, swearing and discussing money: "twenty dollars" were the only intelligible words she could distinguish from the babble of voices. Once she had counted the men who fucked her one way or the other during the day, feeling a strange kind of perverted satisfaction in knowing that she had cum so many times, feeling at the same time a relief that she should not have to see those friends of Hugh's again.
She couldn't count now. There were too many. One after the other. Undressing hurriedly, flopping heavily onto her body, squeezing her breasts, fumbling to find the entrance to her vagina, shoving hard into her wet crotch and kissing hard on her bruised lips as they rammed into her. As soon as the fuck finished in a grunting climax she would turn her head to watch the television until the man dressed and another came to stand by the bed, dropping his pants to reveal an erect cock and ripping off his shirt; she would watch until the new friend pulled her face around for the expected kiss.
She stopped eating the day before, refusing a greasy stew someone offered her during the short evening break and now, after twenty-four hours she felt no appetite, merely a thirst for vodkas and Coke. She never answered any questions, the only time she spoke was when Hugh would come into the bedroom.
"Where's Jenny? Is Jenny back?" she would ask listlessly.
She intended to kill Jenny. Why, she could not remember. She had a long pair of scissors on the dressing table. She wanted Jenny so that she could stick the scissors in her guts.
The life savers were worried enough about her deteriorating condition to put the closed sign up early that night. Jenny might return on the ten o'clock plane and Linda might pass out completely from lack of food and sleep. She looked terrible. Tiger was sent to stand outside the entrance of the apartment building to warn all clients that the girl had gone and that a respectable lady had taken over the apartment. They regretted their decision, thinking that perhaps Linda could fuck on until ten.
Their decision was enforced by the law. Sergeant Wright, with four officers; from his squad, arrived at half-past eight. It was the first time the sergeant had been back and this time it was semi-official in that he was prepared to use his authority if Hugh and his friends didn't comply with his requests. The apartment quickly emptied of horny drunks when the cops walked in. The word would spread throughout the club that the place had been raided. The "Princess brothel", as the apartment had become known at the club and with local taxi drivers, was now permanently closed.
"Yes," Sergeant Wright said to Hugh as they stood in the kitchen with the door closed. "Five hundred dollars is a very fair contribution to the Police Fund. I don't think it'll break you boys. If your father wasn't a police sergeant, Hugh Watson, the donation would have been about two thousand. We know that the four of you have been very lucky in business lately."
He couldn't quite catch Hugh's mumbled reply. He heard him clearly enough offer him and the other plain-clothes officers an hour or two with the blonde nymphet, an offer he refused, having looked at the bedraggled creature curled on the bed, staring at a television program of life in a convent.
"Well, good luck boys in the championships at Coogee tomorrow. I think you'd better have an early night, don't you? And send that girl away… she might give the neighborhood a bad name. Goodnight." The sergeant walked out, followed by his men. They would collect fifty each and he would give his wife three hundred to stash away in her secret bank account. A good start to a busy Saturday night… next there would be the exercise of punching drunks before a free late supper downtown at Sammy's nite-spot. He wondered how a young girl like that American whore could age so much in five days. Probably drugs! Remembering that Hugh's father was a dumb cop on the beat in Brisbane he resisted the temptation to turn back. Hugh was probably giving some of his earnings to his old man. He looked like a nice kid.
"That's the end of the party, boys!" the nice kid was saying as he held up a beer-glass full of champagne. "Here's to the little Princess!" The others interrupted their counting of hundreds of fives and tens to lift their mugs of champagne to the toast. "Here's to the little Princess!"
"Come out and join us, Linda," Billy called. "The party's over. Come and have a farewell drink!"
There was no reply. Linda was asleep with the light blazing over the bed, the television blaring. Billy went in, turned out the light and switched off the set. He shut the door softly. Tomorrow, someone would have to deliver her to wherever she lived. Tomorrow was Sunday. Another surf carnival with hundreds of luscious young birds wanting to be picked up by glamorous life savers.
Linda slept for twelve hours, a dreamless uninterrupted sleep that enabled her youthful reserves to resuscitate her nervous and physically exhausted body. When Hugh and Billy awakened her she drank her orange juice and ravenously ate her ham and eggs. She asked for the television to be switched on, feeling cheated when Hugh shook his head.
"The party's over, Princess."
"Don't call me that. My name's Linda. Do you want to fuck me, Hugh? Do you, Billy?"
They both laughed. They were dressed in their green surfing costumes with that odd zig-zagged stripe of red running all the way down to their bulging genitals.
"Time for a surf before you go home, Linda," Hugh said. "You haven't tried Jenny's board yet."
"Is Jenny here? I want to talk to her."
"No, she's been delayed in Melbourne. Here, put on this bikini and we'll go down to the beach." He gave her one of Jenny's bikinis which she slowly pulled on and they each held her arms to guide her unsteadily down to the beach. Tiger and Sludge-Pump had gone with the rest of the Brisbane team over to the beach at Coogee.
Walking into the sea, the first small wave rolling near the shore knocked her over, her legs weak from lying in bed for five days and nights. They held her up as succeeding waves rolled in. They tried to get her on the surfboard but she kept slipping off so they let her swim, holding her head up when the force of waves threatened to dump her. After half an hour a weak smile came to her lips as she sensed her freedom and her body responded to the revitalizing action of the sea.