The Adventures Of Una Perrson

by Michael Moorcock

  'I suppose it is the springtime,' he said gently. 'But I would be honoured.' He turned to regard her. 'Not a question one should ask a respectable young English lady, really. But I do not regret the impulse. And you said "Yes" before you began to change your mind. Why not follow your first impulse?'

  'Well, there's my mother,' said Catherine lamely.

  'She has warned you about rich men who would rob you of your virtue and leave you with nothing.' He made a quiet joke of it. 'I promise you. Miss Cornelius, that I value your virtue quite as highly as your mother would.'

  'And I've nothing to wear,' she added.

  'You look exquisite in what you are wearing now. The frock is absolutely a la mode. Wear that. We shall dine in my apartment.'

  'I couldn't. . .'

  'The maid will remain here.'

  'Oh dear.'

  'I can see that you want to accept. Are you afraid of me?'

  She wet her lower lip with her tongue. 'It would probably be better if I were, Mr Koutrouboussis.'

  'Please accept.'

  She told herself that she did not wish to anger him. Indeed, she very much wanted to win his approval. She had to think of Auntie Edna's business. Mr K was her best customer. It would, however, mean lying to her mother. It would not be the first time, of course, 'When shall I come?'

  'About seven. I like to dine fairly early.'

  She knew that he intended to seduce her and she began to feel a heady excitement. He bowed. 'I will see you at seven.' He touched her shoulder. He inclined his head; his eyes were serious. He left the room.

  She worked automatically, filling vase after vase with flowers. Some of the vases were removed by the little Chinese girl and taken to other rooms. As soon as he had gone she had begun trying to consider how she might release herself from the agreement she had made, but she could think of nothing. If she left without giving him a good excuse as to why she could not come back that evening there would be no way of escaping without angering him. She imagined that he would be very angry if she let him down—not heated, but cold, possibly vengeful. And yet, even out of loyalty to her mother's friend, could she commit herself to the bargain? She had to consider it: he could ruin her. Unless, of course, Mr Koutrouboussis were to marry her. It was possible that he might have fallen in love with her when he had seen her in the flower shop. No, he was already married. She sensed, however, that he would be loyal, whatever happened. She knew a moment's humour—perhaps he would set her up in a flower shop.

  After she had left the flat, and during the rest of her day at the shop, on the tram home, she continued to debate with herself not about the wisdom of seeing him that night (she knew that she had reached that decision the moment he had asked her) but whether he would look after her if she did get into trouble. He seemed a sentimental man and he had demonstrated his kindness. He was also very attractive, the kind of man who had always attracted her. Sophisticated, free, original—a modern bandit-king, in a way. And certainly she had never felt more feminine than when she had been at his flat. As the tram approached Notting Hill Gate she glanced at the clock over the watchmaker's shop. It was already a quarter past six. She would be late.

  She ran all the way home and was so out of breath when she reached the front door of the house that she had to pause for a moment before going upstairs and letting herself into the flat. 'Mum?' To her relief her mother was out, probably still working at Sammy's pie shop where she helped out part-time. Sammy himself had been Mrs Cornelius's boyfriend of some years standing. Catherine wrote a note saying that she was going to a dance with Nellie and might stay at Nellie's overnight. She knew that her mother would be suspicious but it was better to invent a simple and conventional excuse than a complicated one which her mother would resent as insulting both her intelligence and her sense of decorum. She put on a little make-up, took her best coat from the cupboard, pulled her new cloche over her head, filled her tiny evening bag with a few necessities, all the while hoping desperately that her I mother would not arrive back before she could leave, and then she fled down the stairs again, out into the darkening street, past the pie shop, retracing her steps to the tram-stop, seeing from the watchmaker's clock that it was ten to seven. She would only be about five minutes late, with luck.

  When she returned to Hertford Street she realized that she did not know the number of the house. Almost all the doors looked alike to her, but eventually she found the one with the brass plate. She rang the bell. The Chinese maid opened the door. This time the girl's smile was direct and friendly and her eyes were appraising. 'Good evening, miss . . .' I 'Good evening. Mr Koutrouboussis is . . .'

  'He said to show you up, miss.' For a second time that day the maid led Catherine to the apartment, took her coat in the hall (now filled with flowers) and showed her in to the sitting-room. She was surprised at how fine her arrangements had been; they were certainly the best she had ever done. As before, the other door opened land Mr Koutrouboussis emerged. He wore a different smoking jacket, dark green, with dark red lapels. It was longer than the one he had worn that afternoon, almost a dressing gown. 'My dear.' He seemed innocently delighted. 'You see, I, too, am informally dressed. You do not mind?' She shook her head. He crossed to a cabinet of decanters and glasses. 'What would you like to drink?'

  'Dry sherry?'

  'I think you will like this one. It is very light.'

  'I'm sorry if I'm a bit late,' she said. 'I had to go home and tell my mum.'

  'That you were coming here?' He handed her the sherry and indicated a place for her on the lacquered ottoman with the woven-cane back. She sat down. She decided not to answer his question directly.

  'I left her a note,' she said. She sipped the sherry. He had the art of making her feel at once sophisticated and vulnerable. She enjoyed the sensation, but now that she knew that she was to be seduced she no longer had the same reservations about offending him. 'This is lovely sherry. What's it called?' He told her a name in Spanish. She decided to look at the bottle later, then she glanced across and remembered that he had poured the sherry from a decanter. He had '' drawn the heavy curtains over the French windows and the room had a luxurious, tranquil atmosphere; she felt safe in it.

  The maid came in. ‘The soup,' she said.

  Catherine had finished her sherry. He took the glass from her and helped her rise. ‘You are such a graceful creature. You are like a faun.'

  She had not been listening. ‘Fun?'

  ‘That is how you would pronounce it?' He was politely interested as he led her across the hall and into the dining room with its electric flambeaux on the walls which were papered with a raised flock pattern showing Chinese horses and soldiers. This room, although ' in the same style as the others, had a much more masculine air to it. The dining table and the chairs were heavier. Even the tableware was of heavy porcelain and silver. She had felt completely at ease in the sitting-room but here she felt like an interloper; like a child taking its first meal with its parents. After a moment's bafflement she selected a large soup spoon from the array of cutlery. She ate in silence, for he made no attempt at conversation. The soup was delicious, light and faintly fishy, with more than a hint of the sherry she had been drinking earlier. The maid cleared away the bowls and brought the main course, some sort of cutlet in breadcrumbs. I hope you will forgive a very simple meal, my dear.' With the cutlet were thin fried potatoes, spinach and some kind of vegetable she had never tasted before and which she didn't like very much; similar to sliced, cooked cucumber. Expecting a great deal from the meal she ate slowly, savouring it, sipping the wine he poured for her. The whole effect on her was to make her feel more alive to sensation than at any time since her first experience of puberty. It seemed to her that her skin tingled at the lightest touch—her napkin against her wrist, her arm against a glass—and a sense of well-being filled her so that, when the maid brought flaming crepes suzette she could do little more than taste a morsel, enjoying for the first time that exquisite combination of bitterness
and sweetness. Finally the Chinese girl came in with the cheese, and Catherine sampled something pungent, foreign and soft. Then at last there was a tiny glass of port, which warmed her through.

  'We shall have coffee in the sitting-room,' he told the maid, and he had touched Catherine's arm as he helped her from the chair. She was a little dizzy, but not unpleasantly so. He escorted her back to the sitting-room, back to the ottoman. The room was full of floral scent, but she was not sure if it came from the flowers themselves. A small table had been placed near the ottoman. There were a pot of coffee, some brown sugar, a jug of cream, two small porcelain cups. The tray, art nouveau silver like the big vase she had filled that afternoon, matched the coffee things. I suppose all this looks a little old-fashioned to you,' he said.

  'Oh, no! I've always liked it. I liked it before it came back.'

  'Came back?'

  Something unwanted was emerging in her mind. She dismissed it successfully. He was stroking her neck. ‘You are very young. Are you afraid of me?'

  'I could be.'

  'Yes. How old are you, Catherine?'

  ‘Twenty-nine?'

  He smiled. ‘If I knocked about thirteen years away would I be closer?'

  ‘To what?'

  ‘To your age.'

  'Maybe.' She might have shrugged.

  'You are very delicate.' He stroked the line of her jaw. It was wonderful. 'Utterly feminine. You are everything a young girl should be and so rarely is. You know that I intend to possess you.' She nodded as his dark eyes came towards her own and she felt first his moustache touch her upper lip, then his lips touch both of hers at first softly and then aggressively until his tongue was pushing through, parting her teeth, to touch her tongue, and she had closed her eyes as his body pressed against her soft breasts and her thigh and his arms grasped her about her shoulders and her waist, and then he had gently bitten her lip and she was sure that she tasted her own blood, but it was not pain she felt; it was an electric sensation that passed through her entire body and it was followed by another of possibly greater intensity as his thumbnail seemed to make a tiny incision in the back of her neck. She had probably gasped, for he withdrew his tongue, leaned back from her and with his other hand gently touched first one breast and then the other. 'Will you come with me?'

  'Yes.'

  He led her through the door by which he had first entered the room. His bed was the largest, the most opulent she had seen. The sheets were of dark blue silk, the cover was of a lighter blue embroidered with a single Chinese motif. There were candles burning in a candelabrum and it was these which gave off the floral scent, heavier and more erotic here. 'Undress,' he said. 'I will join you in a moment.' He went through another door, presumably into his dressing-room.

  She took off her frock, her underclothes, her stockings, putting them neatly on a nearby chair. She drew back the sheets and climbed into the softness of the bed; it became the universe. She had never felt more naked. She turned her head at a sound and he was standing beside the bed. The hair on his chest was almost grey, his belly was slightly rounded, seeming to shade his genitals as he moved in the candlelight. After he had got into the bed he did not immediately touch her but lay for a moment looking at her. Then his hand stroked her face. She kissed it. He stroked her neck and her shoulders, her waist, her stomach and he touched her pubic hair only for a moment before he withdrew and stroked her breasts. And then his hand was firm on her waist and he had rolled towards her so that his body touched hers and she thought she could feel his soft penis against her thigh while he kissed her forehead and her ears and her neck and her shoulders, then her breasts and her waist and her thigh, his right hand still firmly holding her waist. She wanted his whole body against hers. She moved towards him but he held her back and with his sharp-nailed thumb stroked her pelvis. She tried to move her vagina towards the thumb, but again he held her, his thumb stroking more gently. He moved his hand quite suddenly so that she rolled hard against him and his nails slid down her back and were like tiny knives moving across the flesh of her bottom, her inner thighs and the backs of her legs, behind her knees so that she forgot her immediate sexual needs, giving herself up to his cruel and gentle fingers, lying now on her stomach as he continued to caress her.

  Gradually, perceptibly, the touch of his finger-tips, scarcely felt, profoundly sensed, was replaced by the lightest pressure of his fingernails on her shoulders, neck and back so that she anticipated and welcomed the pain when it began to come, when he drew her onto her back, stroking and scratching her waist, breasts, stomach and groin until her sexuality was completely sublimated and she wished only for greater pain, for catharsis by means of his subtle and relentless cruelty, and she moaned very faintly, unable either to speak or to cry out, even as she became aware of another presence in the room, of his parting from her, of a soft body moving into the bed beside her, kissing her delicately upon her cheeks and her lips and her breasts, caressing her waist and her pelvis, touching the lips of her vagina, her clitoris, so that she lay completely still while the Chinese girl murmured to her, pressing her small, rounded breasts to her own, taking her hand and placing it against a vagina that was, to her surprise, completely hairless, like a child's, parting her legs a little, kissing her chin and her stomach and, finally, her vagina, her tongue firm and controlled as it licked her clitoris. Then

  Catherine's hands found the Chinese girl's head and grasped it as she tried to bring the girl up to her so that she might kiss her in turn, but at first the girl resisted, only gradually acquiescing, kiss-ling her navel and her breasts again until at last her lips were on Catherine's and her tongue was in Catherine's mouth and her hairless pubis was hard against Catherine's vagina, moving with a rhythm that was at once gentle and demanding, and to which Catherine responded, shuddering as she felt the beginnings of orgasm. She felt him move, felt a quick hand on her body, on the girl's, an awkward movement, a break in the rhythm which she could not tolerate, then it was gone and the girl was kissing her again, one leg across Catherine's leg, and Catherine could no longer tell if the moans were her own or the girl's, for she identified the girl almost completely with herself. Without altering her rhythm, the Chinese [girl moved her hand and it held something that was cold, smooth [and hard. Catherine was afraid. Still on top of her the Chinese girl put the thing to the lips of Catherine's vagina and began slowly to move it inside. Now the cathartic pain and the orgasm were coming simultaneously. Catherine screamed as she was ripped; it was as if her entire body had been torn in two; from feet to head a cold fire ran through her again and again and she was sobbing, sinking, only partly aware that the girl had moved to join the man and, in turn, was crying as he took her.

  By the time Mr Koutrouboussis had begun to push his flesh into her dry, painful vagina, she was wholly abstracted, noting the areas of his body where he was hard or where age betrayed itself in softness, listening with a kind of distant affection to his grunts as he rapidly reached orgasm and flung himself away from her. She felt liquid cooling between her legs and took a corner of the sheet to wipe it from her, peering through the candlelit darkness for the Chinese girl. The girl smiled at her from the doorway, blowing her a shy kiss before she vanished. Mr Koutrouboussis seemed already asleep. In a moment, Catherine slept, too. She was awakened by the Chinese girl, wearing a silk robe, bringing her a cup of tea. Mr Koutrouboussis was not in the bedroom. 'Gone out,' said the Chinese girl. 'Business.' She bent and kissed Catherine on the forehead. Teel good today?'

  Catherine winced as she moved. ‘I never felt better.'

  The Chinese girl drew back the sheet and stroked Catherine's 'body. 'Shall I bring more tea? We drink together?'

  'Oh, yes.' She began to sit up, arranging the many pillows for herself and the girl. She took the cup from the table and sipped the scented tea. She could not tell what the time was, for the room was still dark. The Chinese girl came back with her own tea-cup and got into bed with a sigh of pleasure. She had her hair-brush with her and, after
a moment, began to brush her long, straight black hair. Wordlessly, Catherine took the brush from her and combed i1 through her hair, arranging it almost as, yesterday, she had arranged the flowers in the sitting-room. Thank you,' said the girl 'You are beautiful.'

  'You're beautiful.' Catherine parted the girl's gown and stroked her pubis. This morning it did not seem quite so smooth; it was faintly bristly. 'Do you shave there?'

  'He likes it.' The girl giggled. 'I like it, too. But it itch, you know, have to do every day.'

  'Will he want me to do that?'

  'Oh, yes. Later I do.' '

  'Does it hurt?'

  'Little bit.' The Chinese girl turned on her side so that she was facing Catherine.

  'What's the time?' asked Catherine.

  Again the girl giggled. 'No time here.'

  'I've got to go to work.'

  'Work?'

  'To the flower shop'.

  'Oh, yes.'

  'Does he want me to come back? Tonight?'

  'You want to come?'

  'To see you.'

  'Nice. Yes.'

  'Then I'll have to send a postcard to my mum so that she'll get it this evening.' Catherine looked for her clothes. They were no longer on the chair. 'My frock?'

  'Look. He said to wear that.' She indicated a silk kimono, similar] to her own. Catherine laughed. 'I can't go to work in that.' She got up. Her legs were a little stiff and she had a pain under her ribs on the left, and in her back, like the beginnings of a period. She groaned and straightened. 'Goodness, I do feel well. I shouldn't. Should I?'

  'Always feel good next day.' The Chinese girl moved like a cat in the bed. She watched Catherine with affectionate amusement.