“It’s your fault, anyway. If you’d screwed me first, I wouldn’t have needed Adrian.”
He had pinioned me against a tree. Both my hands were trapped behind my back. He does that when we fuck. I love it then. He rams in and out of me while I lie disabled from the waist up, kicking and flailing with my feet and yelling. Sometimes he muzzles me, as well, so I can’t even scream, only bite his hands. He loves me powerless.
I was powerless now. His face was very close to mine. I could see the tiny points of dark stubble pricking against the sky, the fine black hairs protruding from his nose, his full, brownish lips.
“If you ever sleep with Adrian again …” he said. I could almost see the stubble growing, hear his whole body breathing, digesting, excreting, beating, “I’ll kill you.” His voice was so soft, it was like a tiny beechnut dropping in a dense wood. I heard a twig snap underneath his shoe. “I’ll break you into pieces. Do you understand me, Thea?”
I nodded. I almost worshipped him because he could say things like that and mean them. Adrian would never threaten me, not in a thousand years, not even if I committed some atrocity. Leo let me go. It was raining faster now, almost in relief. We had left the formal centre of the park and were striding towards the woodlands. There were rustlings and cracklings in the undergrowth, sudden swoops of wings, the cackle of a rook, and, over everything, the hoarse, bad-tempered rumble of the rain. I loped along behind him, my shoes squelching in the mud, jeans clinging sodden to my knees. I felt horror mixed with pride. Leo had made me powerful like a woman in a Greek myth, dark, dangerous, monumental, driving men to murder. With Adrian, I was only the Upper Second, some scatty and exasperating urchin whose ear you tweaked or sweets you confiscated.
Leo turned into the avenue of chestnut trees, dark trunks lined up like guards, branches reaching out to trap us. It was so hushed, so gloomy, even Karma seemed subdued. He was padding along close to Leo now, both of them large, black, unpredictable. I suddenly realised we belonged, all three of us. We were all dangerous, all majestic, all from the same dark myth. I wanted to shout with triumph, hurl myself upon them and claim my kinship with them. I fell against Leo’s back and smelt wet leaves, wet sheepskin.
“Leo,” I cried. “Leo.”
He stopped and turned around. He was kissing me so roughly, my whole mouth had turned to pain. I could feel his hands moving further down. We were pressed against the fence which lined the wild, tangled enclosure beyond the trees. Half the fence was broken. Leo trampled it down and forced a passage through. I followed. I wanted him so wildly, I was already pulling off my sweater, fighting with my shirt. Leo pushed me down. The ground was soggy underneath my back, a briar scratched against my breasts, and I could feel cold, clammy leaves sticking to my shoulders. Leo was tearing off my jeans. The cold was so sharp it hurt. As soon as I was naked, it swooped in and stuck its fingers in all my secret places. Leo had entered me, too fast. Everything was pain, the tall trees rushing past me, the steel rain stinging in my eyes. I was shivering with cold and shock and sheer simple shouting ecstasy, like Karma’s. Leo had only half his clothes off. His body burned against mine, yet was cold round all the edges, as the rain lashed in between us and tried to force us apart.
He was hammering against me, as I slid and slithered in the black sludge underneath. It was a wild, surrendering feeling. I was a leaf, a twig, a straw, crushed by his body, joined to all the earth. I could smell bright rain and bruised leaves and the strange oily tang of Leo’s hair as it brushed against my eyes. A bird swooped past, an insect ran across my hand. I opened my eyes and saw the sky sweeping down towards us, clouds wrapping round our bodies like a duvet, stars and moon blanked out to keep us private. The bell was clanging for closing time. They were shutting all the gates, turning people out. They couldn’t turn us out — they would never find us. The rain was muffling all our cries. It was joining in with us, slamming down on me in time with Leo, forcing its way inside me like another lover. The whole world was inside me, sky and earth, clouds, great trunks of trees.
Suddenly, the lights went on, further down the park. Leo stopped, sat up. I could have wept for those few lost moments before he entered me again. I was nothing on my own. But joined to Leo, I was a king, a priest, a god. My body only worked when it was under him, over him, sharing the same wild purple rhythm, the same crashing heartbeat.
He rolled me on my belly and licked the mud off my shoulders. His tongue was rough and humble at the same time. He was like a dog, a great, dark, dangerous animal mounting me from behind. His own dog was blundering through the undergrowth, but he hardly heard it. He had pressed my face against the earth. I could feel the sting and prickle of holly leaves, the nudge of a tree root underneath my breasts. My hair had fallen over my head so that I lay in a tent of drenched, soggy strands. The gardens were floodlit now, the park shut, but here everything was dark and open. We were in our own private park, which had no lights, no gates, no rules. Leo had twisted his body at an angle to my own. I was burning hot inside, freezing outside. My hands and feet were numb. Cold was darting through me like a snake. I hardly cared. Cold and rain were all part of it, part of us. I couldn’t tell where Leo ended and I began, where the numbness at the edges melted into the scorching, spinning feeling, further in.
Leo refused to let me move. He knew exactly how to trap me, muzzle me with his body, until I was wild with having to be still. Any man can let you thrust. I worshipped Leo because he didn’t let me, and yet he made my stillness more fierce, more frenzied, than any amount of movement. I could hear myself shouting out above the rain. I could also hear Karma howling for his master. His howls drove me on. I came three times just thinking of him jealous and outraged. We had snuffed him out, so that he was only a broken shadow at our heels. Leo was my master now.
He was coming. I clung on. Leo has great seething, swelling, violent, anguished comes which swallow up me and him and everything around us. It was starting now. I dug my fingers into the earth to get a grip. He likes me to squeeze and squeeze and yell out words and almost fight with him. I shut my eyes and saw a shadowy group of swarthy park-keepers creeping up on us, bending down to watch, the gold braid of their uniforms scratching rough against my back. Their flashlights were blinding me, the hot breath of their tracker dogs panting through my breasts. I was moving now. We were all moving, all coming. Shouting, pounding, bucking, hurting, coming. Karma was coming and the keepers coming and the whole world and sky and earth and world and Leo Leo Leo Leo Leo …
Chapter Five
We slept together that night — I mean really slept, in the same bed, in the same bedroom, with all twenty dragons crouching and rejoicing over us. In the morning, Leo left for work like a normal man, and I sat down with a piece of paper, Adrian-fashion, and tried to make a plan. Normally, I hardly listen when Adrian rattles on about getting jobs and settling down. But things were different since the baby. I knew I’d really lost him now. He wasn’t just a couple, but a family. There’d be other kids (all Daddy’s boys); bright, shining, cheerful, jolly Christmases; parent-teacher meetings; football workouts in the park; bruised shins, broken legs. I sat and thought about the broken legs. I hoped there’d be a lot of them, fractured skulls as well, deformities.
Somehow, I had always thought of Adrian as being in the background of my life, like a sort of supplement, or back-stop, a universal comforter. Janet hadn’t counted. Even with all those ‘J’s’ on everything, I felt I could always peel them off. They were only transfers, not tattoos. But now, she and Adrian were indissolubly united. The baby had pooled their genes, tied them together with its umbilical cord, imprinting their new, combined formula for ever and ever down the generations. I shivered. I had only Leo, now. I would have to change him, mould him, batter against him until he let me in. Adrian was right. I couldn’t drift and doze for ever, letting Leo keep me, own me, trample me, treat me like his second, smaller dog.
I stared at Adrian’s wedding ring, mocking on my finger. I was married to Le
o now. He’d never buy me a nine-carat noose from a high-street jeweller’s. He’d never buy me a ring at all — full-stop. All the same, I liked it when people looked at us and assumed we were married because we both had the right bit of booty on our wedding fingers. Leo’s ring was a heavy antique gold one he’d bought from a market stall. It was no more connected with me or marriage or mating than Adrian’s ring united me to Leo, but people didn’t know that.
I twisted the band round and round and round. I felt a racking spasm of energy like a labour pain. I wanted to scour out my life like a saucepan, sweep through all the mess and complications with a rough, scratchy broom. If pregnant women get the urge to purge and clean, then I was the one who was pregnant.
I swept my hand across the table and stemmed the tide of magazines and papers; stuffed them in a cupboard, weighted them down with the peanut-butter jars, the dictionaries, the playing cards, all the things which Leo had dug out weeks ago, or years ago, and never put away. I banished the bread and tea and branflakes to the larder. It was crammed with fancy, foreign delicacies — guavas and black-eyed beans, bird’s nest soup and lumpfish roe — exotica he’d bought in Soho delicatessens and forgotten to enjoy. I threw out every tin and jar and packet which looked strange or stale or rusty, or was priced in old pence. I cleared the dishes, cleaned the sink. I didn’t dust or polish. The kitchen was so gloomy, you couldn’t see the dust, so there was no point in going to extremes.
I started on myself, instead. I washed my hair in Fairy Liquid, dried it with a drier, and secured it with a brown velvet ribbon, with long streamers hanging down the back. I got out all the pots and bottles and lotions my mother had been giving me (in mingled hope and reproach) for the last ten Christmases and spread a selection of them on my face. There was no mirror in my room upstairs and the bathroom one was always cracked and steamy, so I sat at Leo’s dressing-table and stared at my reflection. My hair is my best feature. It’s very thick and straight and reaches almost to my waist. It’s the sort of middle brown which was described as dark when I was married to (sandy) Adrian, but looks almost mousy when I’m standing next to Leo. It’s the same with my eyes. They started off a good, strong, uncompromising brown, but once I lived with Leo, they paled and faded as if someone had left them out in the sun for too long. My skin is sallow like Leo’s, though not as smooth, but I have better teeth than him. I rarely bother with my looks. This time, though, I messed about with scents and salves and varnishes, until I felt very frail and precious and new-born, like something which had climbed out of an egg and still had damp feathers and shaky legs. I pulled on a dress sprigged in dark purple flowers, with a tiny collar and a row of fiddly buttons down the front. I looked modest and demure. I pinked in my lips and gave myself high Slavonic cheekbones out of a bottle. I stared at the woman in the mirror. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t even a Mayfair receptionist, more like the owner of a Bond Street picture gallery. I shivered. I know nothing about art. I’m the sort of person who muddles up Vorticism with Expressionism and hasn’t a clue what either of them mean. (There are probably more ‘-isms’ in art than in any other field, except sex.) But I wasn’t going to think about sex — not today. This was reform day, new-start day, get-a-job day, cook-a-meal day. I took off the dress and put on a suit in fine grey tweed which my mother had bought me in an attempt to wean me off my dungarees. I coiled my hair on top, removed the ribbon, and changed my lips from ‘Dusky Pink’ to ‘New Dawn’. Now I was a receptionist, perhaps not quite Mayfair, but getting closer all the time. I didn’t have a coat and it was January outside. Well, I’d simply have to freeze. Leo’s sheepskin would only turn me into someone else.
I stood for a full ten minutes outside the employment agency before daring to go in. When I did, everything was mustard-coloured vinyl, including the plants. There were only two interviewers, but they appeared to be handling the entire London job market between them. Phones were screaming, temps jostling for their pay cheques and every available mustard-vinyl chair was in use. A Girl Friday who looked as if she’d just made it into double figures was trying to keep control. “Temp or perm?” she asked me.
I paused. I would have loved to have said ‘permanent’, but it’s not a word I have much faith in.
“Oh, temporary, I think.”
She handed me a form so long and detailed, I almost walked straight out again. There’s never enough of me to spread on forms. I’ve only got one Christian name to start with, and that a mere four-letter one. They’d left so much space for your educational record, I doubt if Einstein could have filled it. I invented a few O-levels to make it look less bare. There were whole long lists of skills you were asked to tick or cross. Some of them I’d never even heard of. I thought of ticking every third one, just to show I was keen, but in the end, I ticked the four most likely. I’d like to have compiled my own list. There’d be ticks for praying, then, and for fellatio and making fudge, and being the only girl in London who’d eaten every one of Baskin-Robbins thirty-one flavours in the same week. (That was last July and cost me as much as half a pair of new jeans.)
I’d just put a zero in the box which said ‘Number and Ages of Children’ when the girl came back. I took my half-completed form and followed her over to a metal desk which had a notice on it saying, ‘No time-sheet, no pay’. Behind it was a woman made of stainless steel with a smile on top. The smile was so insistent, it must have been cut right through her, like letters in a stick of rock.
“Do sit down.” The smile bent in the middle, but still stayed put.
I sat. The soggy vinyl chair was still warm from the last applicant. The interviewer scanned my form, still smiling. I wondered if she practised the smile at night, or switched it off the minute she got home, and started kicking cats or roughing up old ladies. So much charm seemed suspect. Every time the phone rang, she said, “Do excuse me, please”, as if she’d peed on the carpet, and when a girl butted in to demand her pay cheque, she threw me so many extra little smilelets, I almost picked them up and started a smile collection. I found myself simpering back. I felt like a schoolgirl sucking up to the head prefect or the history mistress. Any minute now, I’d be offering to carry her books. She so inspired me, I concocted delightful and exciting little lies for her. We were going over my employment record now, and I told her tales of jobs I’d manned for gruelling and devoted years (most of them I pinched from Janet), and how I’d only left to nurse my (long-dead) grandmother. She must have been impressed, because she phoned the Mayfair job I wanted there and then, and even persuaded them to take me on without an interview. (It was Friday afternoon and they were desperate.)
I was to start on Monday, which gave me the whole weekend to get myself in order. It all seemed neat and businesslike, like one of Adrian’s timetables. My boss had an OBE and a double-barrelled name, which I felt was even better than the luncheon vouchers.
Once I was accepted, the smile switched abruptly off, like a sort of ‘file closed’ sign, and I could feel the interviewer trying to edge me to the door.
“I’ll have to take up your references on Monday, but I’m sure there’ll be no problems.” She was already smiling over my shoulders at the next one in the queue.
“No,” I assured her. I’d given her the names of two ex-lovers, both of whom owed me favours.
I swept through the door, looking pityingly at the other applicants still grovelling for employment. I was now a fully-fledged receptionist, with my own time-sheet and introduction card, shoring up the economy, contributing to society — a success, a salary-earner, a slave.
When I got back, the receptionist and I sat down to a proper lunch. It would be fatal to change my character too soon. I could ruin everything by flinging off my suit and munching a Mars bar, or scraping out last night’s saucepans in my nightie. I made myself a dainty little omelette aux fines herbes (dried-up parsley I found in one of Leo’s jars) and ate it with a chicory salad and a piece of Camembert. It all felt very Mayfair. I laid the table properly and used one of
Leo’s hand-painted Chinese plates which had a peony on it. As the omelette went down, the petals grew bigger and bigger, until there was no egg and all flower.
I was sipping my second cup of coffee (Melitta filter) when Leo rang. He said all sorts of luscious, creamy things until I felt I’d consumed a very rich, succulent pudding or been crammed with liqueur chocolates. Leo’s like that. He can scream abuse at me one minute, and then pick every flower in paradise the next, and lay them at my feet.
“I’m bringing back some friends,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
I panicked. Leo’s friends terrify me. They’re all artistic and unpredictable and do things like shiatsu or batik or Reichian psychology or water-divining.
“How long are they going to stay?” I asked. I pushed my plate away. The peony was wilting.
“No idea.”
“I mean, will they want a meal?”
“Course. That’s what they’re coming for.”
“I’ll cook it, then.”
“Don’t be silly, Thea. You know you never cook.”
“I do. I used to. I’d like to cook this time.”
“Just make sure you’re in, that’s all.”
“I’m always in. Leo, listen …”
“And looking good.”
“Leo …”
“What?”
“I’ve got a job.”
“Congratulations. Where?”
I was starting to tell him about the employment agency when the pips went for the second time. He was phoning from a public call-box at a picture dealer’s. I waited for the phone to ring again. I felt sure he’d call me back, but nothing happened.
After Purple Page 6