Even Pat took a flier occasionally; a bit of strange was on most men's agenda and he was no different, he just had more access to it than the average guy. But that was as far as it went with him, the odd flier. Never the same bird and always without any kind of wooing. No drink bought, no meal provided, and definitely no offer of a lift home. He did not want a repeat performance, and he did not want to get involved in their lives in any way, shape or form. He got a blow job and that was it. Something he would never have asked of, or expected from, his Lil. And nine times out of ten, only then when Lil was indisposed through pregnancy or after a birth. It was nothing more than an urge. It had nothing to do with his life, or his family.
This was another reason he was respected by his peers. There was no real talk about him, in fact no one really knew anything about him. Even the Williamses had to admit that much.
As for Lil, she attended church regularly, she was still young enough to hold his interest and he loved her and what she represented to him. And in her own way she was now a lynchpin in his organisation. He used her and she was shrewd enough to understand that. She was the only person he could really trust.
Lil still visited the prisons and passed on information; it had never occurred to her not to do it, her husband expected it and she did as he asked. It made her feel needed, a part of it all.
She also felt that, at nineteen with two handsome sons, and enough money to keep her in a way that most people only dreamt about, she could turn a blind eye to any rumours or suspicions she might harbour about her husband.
Lily Brodie, nee Diamond, was a great believer in what you didn't know could not hurt you. She had known instinctively when he had been unfaithful to her the first time. She had felt his shame, had breathed in his treachery, yet at the same time she had always known that the day would come. She didn't know how she knew that; she had been so naïve sexually, still was in many ways, but somewhere in the back of her mind she had registered that fact.
She also knew that only a complete fool would cause an international incident over it. On some level she knew without a doubt that it meant nothing to him, and she also knew that it must therefore mean nothing to her. He was not like the average man, and if she tried to make him like that, she would only set herself up for failure. She had seen the consequences of the women who had tried to tame their mates and it had always ended in tears. The men eventually outed even the most virginal of wives, the mothers of their legal children, because the women had been too much like hard work. No woman, no matter who they were, could compete with youth and the mystery of a silky pair of drawers and a lusty laugh. So she decided early on in her marriage to overlook his other life; it was the only way she could even hope to survive it.
No matter how much her mother tried to poison her mind, she knew that the woman who could lure Pat away from her for any length of time had not been born yet.
When they went out together she saw the way he was treated and she knew the temptation that was under his nose on a daily basis. Lily had the same sexual drive as her husband and so she appreciated that he had the opportunity to take advantage of it by the very nature of his business commitments. Men like Pat Brodie needed to take advantage of their freedom because they never knew when it was going to be taken away from them.
Ignoring it all was, she knew, a mindset. She just had to accept it as something that was part and parcel of his lifestyle and she was not about to throw away the best thing that had ever happened to her over something that was so trivial to her, and so unimportant to him that he forgot about it within minutes of it happening.
She had decided that she would rather live with him, and all that entailed, than be without him. She had also realised that she had to be more to him than just his wife, than just the mother of his children. She had to make a connection with him that would give them something other than their shared children in common. She was determined to become an important part of his life in her own right.
He was going to be unfaithful to her, it was something she expected and accepted. It was inevitable. She was a realist, and she hoped that her honesty would not be rewarded by her breaking her heart over his disloyalty. At least his forays into the world of strange were not a regular occurrence; unlike most of his contemporaries.
The first time it happened she had felt as if her heart had been ripped out of her chest; now she felt contempt for a woman who would allow herself to be used like that, even as she pitied her, because the life the girl lived ensured that encounters with men like her husband were a foregone conclusion.
Lily had an innate kindness that allowed her to see everyone in the best possible light. Once she had seen the inside of a club she had not seen the women as whores, or rivals in any way. Instead, she had seen them as victims. Victims of men in that they were forced by circumstances to utilise the only asset they possessed. If she had daughters, she was determined that they would be educated enough to make different choices if their life went pear-shaped.
She had once gone to one of the hostess clubs to relay a message after one of her prison visits and been witness to a punter causing World War Three over a bill. She had watched as the doorman tried to calm the situation and seen how the bill had finally been paid in full, without the hostess getting her fee. She had stepped in, and before the punter had left the premises she had seen to it that the girl was also paid in full. The doorman was left in no doubt that the hostesses were to be his priority in future as they were the ones who brought the men into the club in the first place.
Without the girls, why would the men pay the inflated prices? Why should a girl spend the best part of the night talking the man out of his money for the club and then be left out when the punter was asked to weigh out at the end of the night?
To Lil, it was ludicrous, but then she was too young to realise that the girls in the clubs were ten a penny. Pretty girls were commonplace and women willing to sit on the meat seats were legion. Men walked away from their kids without a backward glance; women, however, were not afforded that luxury, nor would they want to anyway. But they still had to earn a living so they could feed and clothe their kids, which was why the clubs were inundated with women.
The doorman, however, had humoured her that night and the girls had fallen in love with her.
It had been a difficult situation for Patrick Brodie when he listened to Lil; he had never in his life been expected to see a brass all right. But the brass in question had been an acquaintance of Lil's in the cigarette factory. Seeing her reduced to hostessing because her husband had gone on the trot, leaving her with three kids and a mountain of debt, had made the now-powerful and fair-minded Lily Brodie angry. And she let Patrick know it in no uncertain terms.
She liked the feel of the clubs anyway; she enjoyed the camaraderie of the girls, it reminded her of the cigarette factory and how she had finally felt a part of something. She found that she liked being outside the home with other women, and it brought her closer to her husband. Like any young girl, Lily craved excitement and suddenly she had it in abundance.
Now that Pat wanted her to do more in the clubs she was realising just how hard the life was for the women who had to live it. She didn't yet understand that it was the kindness inside her that her husband was exploiting because he saw the way the girls reacted to her, and how she dealt with them. Lil was a natural head girl, and she was not averse to seeing a punter slaughtered if he was not feeling inclined to pay his hugely inflated bill.