by Roger Curtis
How many others, she wondered, were guests like herself rather than companions or friends. There was no answer to that. The sexes seemed balanced, but that was no guide. The whole performance might be for her benefit alone; or, just as easily, her role and that of the other women could be the sole gratification of the friends, and they merely gullible stooges hired for free. Not knowing these things lent piquancy to the proceedings.
She was approached by a woman dressed in a similar gown to her own and sporting a lamb mask. Looking around, it seemed the common choice. Perhaps the innocence of white enhanced the potential for transgression.
‘Is this your first time?’
‘My second,’ Sarah said. She should have added, but not like this. But it did not come.
A figure in black they had not noticed joined them silently out of the shadows. ‘Perhaps I can offer guidance, dear ladies. The amusements and delights’ – he nodded towards the black vacuity – ‘are arranged in sequences, rather like the branches of a tree, with diversions on each theme to suit all tastes. How you progress is entirely at your discretion, but I should add that not many guests would wish to experience all that is on offer, or even pass to the extremity of any one branch.’ His small chuckle, intended to be reassuring, carried the merest hint of warning. ‘But first,’ he continued, ‘please enjoy some refreshment.’
From the demeanour of those around her Sarah decided that they were still on neutral ground: an unmarked haven where to do other than remain in conventional behavioural mode would have been bad form. Attendants in the same white garb as her own came and went with trays of food and drink. They seemed adept at being close only when needed, at other times receding unobtrusively into the shadows.
‘Why don’t we start off together?’ the woman said, ‘then go our own ways as soon as we feel like it.’
‘That’s a civilised approach. Yes, let’s.’
‘Civilised, yes. That’s what it is. Our base natures in a respectable and enlightening frame.’ She sounded like an academic. Sarah resolved to find out more about her before the evening was out.
They entered a dimly lit, rectilinear landscape. It resembled the contents of a warehouse in which all the crates of goods and all else visible were encased in fine black velvet. But there the resemblance ended. For the rest the effect was sumptuous and splendid. Here and there little oases of light illuminated clusters of people gathered in rapt attention. And around and beyond each of these, diverse routes and passages led into deeper recesses where activity was evident only from the glow of distant and subdued lights.
‘A rabbit warren,’ Sarah said.
‘I would say it’s more that we’re spoilt for choice.’
There was simplicity and directness about everything she saw, presented without embarrassment or shame. They entered between two near-motionless groups of figures: on their left twins, hardly more than girls, clasping each other tightly and writhing with the slow deliberation of serpents, their golden tresses alive against the blackness of the velvet podium; on the right a single brooding male wearing only a translucent waistcoat extending to the bottom of his rib cage. It was like entering the statuary garden of a Palladian villa, except that here was promise of fulfilment, not parody.
‘I know where my talents lie,’ whispered Sarah’s companion, with a knowing glance towards the girls.
Sarah was surprised because they showed no reaction when their hair and skin were caressed, and their bodies explored. They were signposts only, there merely to hint at what lay beyond.
She, for her part, stood undecided. The male figure turned his head slowly towards her, with a fleeting smile; but she was more cautious than her companion, who had already moved on.
Words alone, as Sarah would one day find, could not do justice to what she saw that evening. There were images that would remain lodged in her memory, as much for their grace and beauty as their licence. Like when, by chance, she looked up and saw suspended above her a couple linked together with their only aid the single rope passing between their naked bodies. There were postures and contortions beyond the reach and imagination of ordinary lovers; and extremes of physical development interlocked in the manner of Chinese puzzles, for contemplation and exploration.
She chose a path on the theme of solitary masculinity and found herself in a group admiring the phallic splendour of three youthful Apollos competing with one another for the accolades of elevation, turgescence and rigidity. She laid her forearm alongside one and found herself wanting in each dimension. ‘You’ve priced yourself out of a market,’ she told him. But a squirrel-faced woman beside them took the remark as a challenge. Sarah looked back in amusement to see the pair in earnest contemplation of the impossible.
There was further development of this theme, in which the devotees no longer enjoyed the right of choice, or even the option to move freely. And beyond that were devices that gave pain, or situations where the willing participant – the guest – was able to couple her own pleasure with the humiliation of her victim. Sarah’s body language must have revealed her feelings for when, out of curiosity, she peeped to see what was beyond, a figure emerged from the shadows to ask if that was truly what she wanted.
Up to that moment she had been a passive, if fascinated, observer. No medical training could have prepared her for human behaviours such as these. But it was not what she sought and she made her way back to the relative sanctity of the first few tableaux. She tried another route where bisexual combinations and numbers held the key. And beyond that was the exploitation of age: youths enjoying the attentions of older women, women still teenagers subjected to the aesthetic equivalent of gang rape. Again she was politely but effectively barred. ‘For you there would be no pleasure in going on. Have you not already passed what you came for?’
But something here had caught her attention. She brushed aside the well-meaning attendant. The girl, passive and moaning beneath a convulsing scrum of male lust, engendered a sense of pity that welled up from some deep, hidden and unstoppable source. The pity was not for what was being done, but for the willingness of the girl to let it happen, oblivious of the consequences – for herself, her violators and those sick enough to watch.
Sarah stepped closer, the better to see the girl’s expression. The force of the penetration caused the resigned face to contort in pain. Sarah turned angrily to the attendant. ‘Why do you let this happen to her? Can’t you stop it, for God’s sake!’ She could not see the face behind the mask, only the embarrassed hunching of the shoulders, admitting to a situation that should not have been allowed to develop. The explanation was not what Sarah expected to hear. ‘But that’s the purpose of it. It’s what some guests want to see. Come away now, please.’
She sought refuge near the lagoon, away from people. What had moved her? Why this concern for a waif evidently willing in spite of the degradation and pain, and who no doubt would be paid fabulously. There was an answer, she was sure, but it was so deep within her as to be quite inaccessible.
She needed a drink badly. Across the floor an attendant in a red gown stood holding a tray. Rather than wait for the attention that would be offered within seconds if she remained where she was, she walked across and helped herself to a glass. There was no remonstration, but she had the feeling she shouldn’t have done it.
The unidentifiable yellow liquid was cool and refreshing, and faintly familiar. Within seconds the depression that gradually had been gaining ground was dispelled. No longer was there indignation; instead her thoughts regressed to the delicious expectation she had experienced in the car, and the surge of desire when Pierre had opened the door for her. She looked around for the bull mask. But why should he be there? He was probably in a bar somewhere, loudly ridiculing the crass stupidity of it all.
There was one avenue, more central than the others, that she had still to explore. It stretched more visibly into the dista
nce or, rather, into the far darkness, for the end could not be seen. Here were no set pieces, but people interested only in one another: discarding gowns, stroking, probing, penetrating. Sarah found herself looking at a sea of disembodied animal heads tossing about on a white-cream froth of convulsing flesh. Thankfully the shrieks and groans were reduced by the all-embracing velvet to the level of low vulpine howls.
More out of curiosity than in expectation, Sarah negotiated her way through the seething mass, careful not to touch. A fascinating anomaly caught her eye: the physical perfection of the women against the less impressive endowments of the men. Were they here just as objects of gratification, selected for their bodies alone? And what did that say about their faces? As to her own face – until now she had not thought of it.
Unlike most of the others, she had not shed her gown. She realised she was singled out by it. She might become, if she were not careful, a target of attention, and began to move away. She felt faint; but something else was gaining possession in her head, telling her it did not matter.
Her last tottering steps were towards a velvet wall, high enough to keep the revellers in but low enough to see into the blackness beyond. And there, as if suspended in space like a brown balloon, she saw Pierre’s bull mask.
‘Hello, Sarah, how do you feel?’
The voice was indistinct; she was no longer in control. Her legs felt weak and her mind was quietly numb. She became aware of a delightful throbbing in her lower abdomen. It seemed wrong that he should have known her name. Surely he couldn’t have known the mask she would be wearing.
‘How did you recognise me?’
He pointed at her amulet.
‘I didn’t need to press it?’
‘No.’
The drug was taking hold now. The bull’s head was beside her, somehow having come through the wall. She could not see clearly. Images assumed the undulating motion of chocolate being layered onto biscuits in a television advert. Then – horror – she was sinking to her knees.
Her upper arms were gripped by hands that appeared from nowhere, turning her body so that she was looking upwards. She worried that the dragging of her heels on the soft carpet might leave marks that would not go away. As her head lolled from side to side she could see back down the long, dark tunnel, over the masses of cavorting flesh, to the silence of the of the lagoon under its black dome. Then the movement stopped and there was only darkness.
Was it you, Elizabeth, who told me this, so vividly that I’ve usurped your own memory and see it all now as if with my own eyes? Looking first far out over the blackness of the vale of Oxford and then below to the lesser darkness of the churchyard and all around. So cold it is, up here, with the wind biting at my chapped knees and blowing hair about my face. It’s a savage place, isn’t it, until the wind lessens and becomes still; like the silence of an audience before the curtain rises.
We used to signal to one another, didn’t we, you and I. From here, on this old bench. So that light – that distant pin-point star – should not have surprised me. What is your word? Meandering? Rivers do that, not lights, Elizabeth, but I know what you mean: that it’s the path and not the light that meanders. And it’s not difficult to trace its course through the ancient oaks of Tippett’s Wood to the churchyard; and then away again through more trees until it’s joined by the greater light of doors opening and milling grey figures melting into it. But who held it, that coursing, purposeful light, and what did it signify?
She was looking upwards now, with near sightless eyes, sensing, not feeling, the weight that bore down upon her. There was still the other image: the face of the raped girl. But, try as she might, she could not identify with it. And that was because there was no violence here, external to her, that is; such violence as there was came only from the rhythmic aching of her own responsive body.
Pulses of brilliant light came at her through the window as they sped through the streets. As she closed her eyes against them her stomach began to turn. She needed to keep control because there was no way to communicate through the glass screen, and the consequences could be severe if she were sick on the carpet. So she tried to hold herself in a state of semi-consciousness that hovered between grasping for reason and planning resistance. If she remembered anything it was the car stopping where there were trees above and fewer lights, and the door quietly opening.
A voice, presumably Pierre’s, said something like, ‘five minutes and I’ll bring her in.’ Then the car prowled noiselessly about the streets. It stopped again and once more the door opened; but she could hear only fragments in low whispers. ‘He’s out there now. You know it, Tom, you’ve been there. You go ahead.’ Then: ‘Okay, take her over your shoulder, but no touching, know what I mean?’ It was a serious threat and the tenor of the reply did not disguise an unconvincing bravado. ‘As if I’d do such a thing!’ ‘Wait though,’ the other said, ‘give her another shot first.’
It seemed she was being carried to a party. There were people shouting, and more lights; but it was all further into the distance than they would go. There was gravel underfoot, but over his shoulder all she could see were imprints from their combined weight. Then something else took hold of her mind: a scything, numbing assault that demanded sleep.
It came again, Elizabeth’s voice. Look now, Sarah, through the crack in the curtain. What can you see?
She wanted to tell her sister that the pain was too much, that her little body could take no more. But she was just able to turn her head. She could almost reach out and touch it, so bright it was. And for a second – but only a second – there was relief from the pain and the shame.
Elizabeth! Elizabeth! They’ve lit the fire on Beacon Hill.
Then someone took hold of her face and wrenched it back. After that there was nothing left to remember.
17
Mark was shaking her violently by the shoulders. ‘Jesus, Sarah, won’t you ever wake up?’
‘What time is it?’
‘That doesn’t matter. Where the hell were you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You didn’t hear anything, see anything? Christ! Get your skates on. You’ve got a shock coming, young lady.’
She still had on her white dress, but Mark would not have seen that under the sheets. She waited for him to go, then tore it off. She dragged on her dressing gown and coaxed her feet into her slippers, then followed him down the stairs and out of the back door in the direction of the stables.
A kinder man would have prepared her better for what she saw.
Steam was still rising from the piles of ash and charred wood. Steam because they had doused it so thoroughly that the ground was covered with oil-brown rivulets of excreta and blackened straw, with deeper pools where the fire engine had stood. Figures in rubber boots prodded and probed amongst he remains. One was a policeman.
‘Apparently it was ablaze before anyone noticed,’ Mark said. ‘We tried to wake you but couldn’t. Heaven knows what you’d taken.’
‘My horses! Are my horses alright?’ she screamed.
He pointed to two heaps amongst the charred fallen rafters, like gigantic overdone steaks on a barbeque griddle. A man in wellingtons was attaching ropes to the nearer one. She followed their line to the winch in a recovery vehicle, then paced up and down on the periphery of the mess until her slippers were sodden. Suddenly she stopped and looked up sharply. ‘Where’s the third one?’
‘Broke loose, apparently. Not been found yet.’
She recognised the policeman as one of Guthrie’s men who had guarded their gate.
‘Constable Waverley, Mrs Preston. Not having much luck these days, are we?’ He called to the others, ‘Can we go inside now, please, to talk it through.’
They gathered around the kitchen table. Sarah tried to determine whether Mark’s agitated glances towards her were of sympathy or ex
asperation.
‘You see Miss, there’s a problem,’ Waverley explained. ‘Mr Preston here says he woke up at three when Mrs Fowler down the road telephoned to say she could see flames. That’s correct, isn’t it, Sir?’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Mr Preston says he called by your room on his way to investigate.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I… um… understand you have separate bedrooms now. You weren’t there then, but twenty minutes later you were sound asleep in bed. I’m sure there’s nothing amiss, but you see the problem.’
Sarah saw the problem only too clearly. Indirectly she was being accused of arson. She needed desperately to bring her intelligence to bear. Her head ached and she felt terribly alone. She realised her response had to be a bold one.
‘I wouldn’t know about the time, officer, but I was unwell during the night and couldn’t sleep. It’s possible I was in the loo.’
‘You weren’t, Sarah. I checked the bathroom.’
‘Would that be next to the bedroom, Sir?’
‘Yes’
‘That’s because I went downstairs,’ Sarah said. ‘To get water from the fridge – for my sleeping pills. She hated lying, but what was the alternative? The consequences of divulging the truth needed evaluating. ‘There was a noise while I was sitting there, but I’m afraid I wasn’t in a position to investigate. Probably that was you, Mark.’
‘And soon after that you found Mrs Preston in bed, Sir?’
‘Yes. It was impossible to wake her. That was bloody frustrating, Sarah.’
Sarah’s brain was clearing now. ‘Maybe two tablets were too many – on top of the others.’
‘Mr Preston also said you were out last evening. May I ask where?’