Domina

by L. S. Hilton

  5

  They started to go wrong at dinner the following evening. I had woken in my room alone – I hadn’t moved my things into Tage’s Balinese boudoir, as I don’t like actually sharing my bed unless strictly necessary. I had been for a run round the island, ending with a swim in the cobalt surf, where fat grey fish played around my feet, then spent the day with the rest of the party, lounging by the pool. Tage had organised a boat trip to the nearby island of Formentera, but as the September heat banked and shimmered over the mainland, I preferred to retreat to the cool of my bed, reading and dozing until it was time to change.

  The girls retired to dress at about nine, and from the sounds of giggling and feet pattering between the bathrooms I guessed they were also enjoying a little pick-me-up. I took a long shower and dressed in a simple black georgette maxi dress from Isabel Marant with plain leather sandals, adding a pair of antique earrings I’d picked up on Murano; flaming lozenges of marbled glass set in gold filigree. All suitably relaxed and bohemian. When we reassembled for drinks, I was startled to see Tage turned out in a garment that could only be described as a party caftan, but I didn’t need to get involved with that if I didn’t want to, and the maids were setting down bowls of flatbread and delicious-smelling albondigas. I offered a dish to the woman next to me, whom I recognised from earlier as Egg White, but she pinched me playfully on the thigh with a familiarity that should have been grounds for murder.

  ‘Eating is cheating, Elisabeth! Have a dib dab.’

  She proffered a tiny cloisonné bowl of MDMA and stuck the tip of her little finger encouragingly in my mouth. I swallowed my irritation rather than her digit and muttered something about needing carbs to get started, but looking down the teak table, draped with a narrow Turkish rug set with silver coins, I wanted to cry with anticipated boredom. Why is it that the people who can afford all the fun in the world have discovered only such limited ways of having it? I’m not anti-drugs exactly; it’s just that I prefer the doors of my own perception to remain firmly bolted. The maids were imperturbably laying out a baroque still life of food, which the guests were equally impassively ignoring, gleefully dipping away at the white grains. This was going to get very messy very quickly, and I wondered how long it would take for them to get so bombed that I could retire discreetly to bed. I grabbed a glass and a fag and wandered to the edge of the terrace, where one of Stahl’s friends was gazing out to sea with the wistful sorrow of Sylvia Plath contemplating Lyonesse.

  ‘It’s almost time for the closing parties, you know,’ he whispered mournfully. So I left him to that and beetled back to the table, hoping to score a meatball, but Egg White intercepted me and pulled me towards her with a scraggy mahogany arm. Then Tage’s club-standard sound system started up, the music banging so loud that Egg White practically had my earlobe off with her veneers as she began a pasty-breathed explanation of why I really, really needed to understand Ibiza, because it was such a special creative place, and I really needed to understand that, because for people who were free and creative like us there is just nowhere like it. As her eyes flared nearer and nearer to my own I wondered what would happen if I ground a handful of powdered happiness into her pupils with both my thumbs, but our little love-in was interrupted by Stahl, who had accelerated from nought to sixty in an astonishingly short time, leaping onto the balustrade and from there clambering onto an upended whitewashed canoe artfully trailed with purple bougainvillea. He swayed as he caught his breath, then reached for one of the lighted bamboo torches which burned away the twilight along the walls. Red-faced, pores gaping, teeth grinding, I could barely recognise him. The considerate, rather attractive man I had known the day before had morphed into the Beast of Beefa. Minding the sequinned hem of his caftan, he held the torch aloft in the direction of the shore, where two white Jeeps were roaring up from the dock at which I had arrived earlier, driven by white-shirted men in Ray-Bans.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he slurred, ‘the fuck trucks have arrived!’

  The crowd made a fair shot at going wild as the vehicles drew nearer, fists pumping the air in time with the blaring horns. There were six or seven bikinied girls in each, standing up on the seats, twerking their arses as best they could without knocking one another out onto the road. Stahl turned back to his audience, and on cue the music faded as he slowly mimed pushing a head down to his crotch, thrusting his pelvis towards an imaginary mouth. ‘Boys and girls, the fun starts here! Let’s goooooo!’ He hopped down and led off towards the pool, where the first carload of stilettos was clattering up the steps. Regret isn’t a thing I go in for much, but as I trailed after him I was disgusted by my own lapse of taste. What had I been thinking? Thank Christ we’d used a condom.

  ‘Ready to party?’

  It was Alvin again, clutching at the fabric of my dress. I tugged it sharply away but he was holding tight, and as I moved it tautened between us until I couldn’t go further without ripping it.

  ‘I don’t know whether I’m quite ready for Ibiza.’

  He unsnapped his fingers smartly. The dress fluttered back against my body.

  ‘That’s not what I heard, Elisabeth.’

  ‘Maybe you heard wrong.’

  I turned my back on him and walked past the abandoned dinner table to my room on the first floor, scooping a mound of quinoa and pomegranate salad into a flatbread on the way. The bedroom faced the hills at the back of the house, which mercifully absorbed some of the pounding music. I lit a fag and opened my work phone. Sure enough, there was Alvin, profiled under a witty photo of Michelangelo’s David. We had been ‘friends’ for about a month. I’d never bothered to look at any of his posts, but now I scrolled through, scanning the pictures. Alvin at White Cube in London, Alvin scarfing a come-down kebab in Dalston, Alvin weedy in board shorts next to a better-groomed female version of himself on a beach in the Hamptons, caption: ‘Congratulations, Big Sis ☺!!!!’ Big Sis was flashing an engagement ring, next to her – presumed – fiancé, who, judging from his pallor and the crumpled pink shirt open over his shorts, was English. Next to the fiancé, hip kicked artfully to the camera, blonde hair trailing to her bikini straps, was Angelica Belvoir. I had sensed immediately that Alvin was bad news, but why had I then ignored my instinct that the this whole trip was clearly, horribly, bad news? When was I ever going to learn that Joining In really, really wasn’t my thing? I threw the fag end out of the window and lit up again.

  *

  Angelica Belvoir. Fuck. The no-mark Sloane who had been given my job, back when I’d been fired from the House in London. Back when I’d discovered my old boss was involved in a faking scam and I’d dumbly poked my nose in it. Before – everything.

  Before I’d learned that everything I’d been taught to believe about merit and talent and hard work was a useless load of crap. Before I became complicit in a system I despised. Before I took off from London to the Riviera, before the blood and the bodies, before I made myself adamantine on a diet of rancour and rage. Before James and Cameron, before Leanne and Julien, before Renaud. I had come so far. I had thought Elisabeth Teerlinc was done with all that, but still it pursued me, sure as that scent of lilies in a quiet room, still their streaming arms scrabbled at me, to pull me down until the waves of the past closed inevitably over my gasping head.

  I shook myself. This was really not a moment for nostalgia. Was Angelica the reason Alvin had friended me? Had she identified me? I flipped back through Alvin’s connections, but there was no way of telling; our mutual friends included five art people I’d never met, apart from Tage Stahl. But I had to get off this sodding island and put a country or two between me and Alvin immediately. I didn’t want my face in any of his fabulous Ibiza snaps if there was a chance Angelica might see them. I saw I had been getting slow, complacent, and balls-ups like this were what came of it. That’s what happy does for you.

  I took a few pointless paces around the room, the vibrations of the party fizzing through the floor, feeling suddenly caged, breathless
. Calm down, Judith. This is nothing. Was Alvin really a risk? He was creepy, sure, but he didn’t strike me as anything other than lecherous and none too bright. Almost certainly harmless, yet he provoked a sensation I hadn’t felt in a long while, had hoped never to feel again: the claustrophobic adrenalin clutch of pure fear. Irrational. It wouldn’t do to look scared. Elisabeth Teerlinc had nothing to hide, even if Judith Rashleigh had plenty. I’d put in an appearance at the party, I thought, keep my distance, and leave first thing in the morning. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

  When I returned to the terrace Stahl’s soirée had accelerated from naff to grotesque. The circular white beds around the pool were covered in jerkily syncopated bodies, each man surrounded by two or three writhing women. The tarts were directing operations with all the conviction and enthusiasm of motivational dancers at Hieronymus Bosch’s Bar-Mitzvah, rearing up to shake their hands to the beat before plunging back to insert a tongue or a finger into a waiting body. The female houseguests were performing a more complex psychological manoeuvre, chemically stiffened faces simultaneously attempting Up For It and Cut Above the Sluts. Stahl emerged from the melee and approached me, sliding an arm around my waist.

  ‘Having fun, honey?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Wait until you see this.’

  The maids were still moving among the group, changing ashtrays and filling glasses with champagne. How they must pity us, I thought, how they must pity us. Stahl clapped his hands and again the music faded.

  ‘Boys and girls! Come on! Time to stop fucking each other’s brains out for a few minutes!’

  The women abandoned their activities with suspicious alacrity, lolling on the beds like a trawl of tanned sardines. Stahl was rooting in the pocket of the caftan.

  ‘First of all, a big hand – ahem – for these lovely ladies who’ve come out to entertain us tonight! And now, the challenge you’ve all been waiting for . . .’

  Christ, what was the man on? He was brandishing a tightly rolled wad of familiar pink notes. ‘Ten thousand euros, yes, ten grand in cash, for the girl who can give us the best impersonation. What’s it gonna be?’

  A few people called out suggestions – celebrities, historical figures. What was this – porn charades? One man called out in Norwegian or Swedish and Stahl cupped a hand to his ear.

  ‘What was that? OK, farm animals! Sounds good! Come over here, girls.’

  The tarts gathered around him, adjusting their hair and what was left of their bikinis. Closer up, I had to admit that Stahl didn’t do things by halves. Every one of them had a lingerie-model physique, and beneath the layers of make-up their faces were exceptionally pretty. I wondered idly where he’d rented them. Stahl was explaining what was required.

  ‘OK, OK. Are we sitting comfortably? Get yourselves a drink, have a line, Jens. Close your mouth over there and put your dick back in your trousers. First up – what’s your name, darling? . . . First up, Stefania here is going to give us – a pig!’

  Ten grand, the price of a forest fire. I watched, disbelieving, as in the silence that fell the girl dropped to all fours, wrinkled her face into a snout and began grunting.

  ‘Come on, darling, you can do better than that!’

  Stefania was presumably keeping her mind on the money, and I daresay she’d done worse for it, but as she crawled forward, snorting, and buried her head in one of the guy’s laps as though rooting for a truffle, I actually felt nauseous. Whoops and howls from the guests. One by one, the girls sank down and became cows, sheep, goats, chickens, bleating and squawking, floundering between the guests’ knees in the torchlight. I couldn’t watch, but if I needed an excuse to leave right now, I had it. I stepped over the back of a girl who was braying like a donkey while one of the men dry-humped her from behind, and pulled Stahl to one side.

  ‘I’m leaving. Please could you have the boat ready for me on the dock? I’ll carry my own bag.’

  ‘Elisabeth! What’s the matter? Not your scene? No need to get uptight, baby – just go with the flow.’

  ‘I’m not uptight, I’m horrified. So I’m leaving. Enjoy your party.’

  He caught up with me in the doorway of my bedroom. I’d barely unpacked – it would only take a minute to gather my things.

  ‘Darling, I thought we had a nice thing going. Yesterday? You can’t just leave.’

  ‘Watch me.’

  Stahl’s face made an attempt at nasty, but the MDMA had him inanely grinning, which made it really nasty. His conviction that what he had created out there was pleasure was both unshakeable and appalling.

  ‘I don’t like girls who are ungrateful.’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck what you like. Have your skipper get the boat ready now, before I call the police in Ibiza town and tell them you’ve got enough blow in your sorry little paradise to pay their pensions in rewards for the next five years.’

  He looked confused. ‘Come on, darling. Alvin told me –’

  What could Alvin have told him? Who else had the idiot been blabbing to? What I wanted to do more than anything was slam the heel of my palm into Tage’s nose so hard he wouldn’t be able to speak to Alvin or anyone else for a week, but I had to get out. Now. I answered him tightly, forcing down the tension that threatened to shake my voice.

  ‘I don’t know Alvin. Just get the boat ready. Thank you for the hospitality.’

  My case was on the bed and I reached around him to zip it up, but he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me down so my face was wedged between the case and my putty leather Bottega Veneta handbag. He giggled and started to lick my ear.

  ‘Relax, baby. Just relax. Go with it, you know.’

  I closed my eyes and let my muscles soften, and sensing it, he nuzzled closer and worked a hand between my legs.

  ‘That’s it, honey, yeah, that’s it.’

  I couldn’t exactly blame him. After all, I’d been more than willing earlier. But above the beat of ‘Knights of the Jaguar’ below us I could still hear frenzied, infantile whinnyings and snorts. Stahl was pulling up both our skirts, I let my thighs loll open as I scrabbled in the bag for my hairbrush. Encouraged, Stahl locked his knees behind mine and began a rummage among the sequins. I inhaled deeply, clenched my muscles and whacked him in the perineum with the Mason Pearson with all my strength. Nothing like pure bristle. He gave a little breathless gasp of surprise and torqued sideways, fell off the bed and curled up, groaning and sniggering. I didn’t bother kissing him goodbye.

  *

  Two hours later I was sitting in a bar on the port in Eivissa town, the white cone of the old walled city behind me, chasing my second proper drink with my third proper drink, my bags at my feet. It was only about 2 a.m., early for Ibiza. A group of girls in PVC ant costumes shimmied past, handing out flyers for a club, followed by a team of S&M slaves, linked in a complicated human loom of leashes and latex garters. One of them, a beautiful tall black guy, with blued Saharan skin and ice-white hair, blew me a kiss. I’d swapped my dress for jeans, shirt and boots in Stahl’s boat. The captain had been a little confused at first, but a pink super-note had convinced him of my urgent need to get into town. I hoped Stefania had won her prize.

  I was contemplating drink number four and then finding a hotel for the night when a gang of lads swarmed over the table next to me. ‘Lads’, definitely. Quiffs, tats, gym muscles, cider tans. I sat up straighter, which took rather longer than I expected. They were looking me over, and I suddenly felt quite happy to look back. The dreadlocked waitress appeared, and they ordered beers politely, despite the fact that her denim hotpants barely covered half her arse. I liked that.

  ‘Ask the lady if she’d like a drink then.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll have a bourbon. Neat.’ I liked that too.

  They shunted their chairs around to make me part of the group and we chinked glasses.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Liz.’

  ‘All right, Liz. Cheers.’

  ‘First tim
e on the island?’ I’d been here all of thirty-six hours myself, but I gave it out like I was an old hand.

  ‘Yeah. Went to Greece last year, but it were shite. Too many little kids.’

  They were from Newcastle, which somehow prompted me to let on that I was from the north too, a fact I’d not divulged to the general public for years. We chatted a bit, and I bought the next round, and they smoked a joint, and then one of them was leading me off along the quay, holding my hand, while his mates smiled for him, and we were in a cab, kissing, and his mouth felt soft and sweet and clean. Their apartment on the high-rise strip at Platja d’en Bossa smelled of cigarette smoke and fresh boy sweat. He found a half-empty bottle of sweet white wine and we drank from it while he took off first my clothes, then his own, his tongue entwined with mine. A crimson snake curled up his wrist and splayed its fangs across one smooth shoulder. We sank onto his unmade bed as I stretched my arms luxuriantly above my head, then he angled his body crosswise over mine, pulling my wrists towards him in one hand while his tongue found my cunt. I told him to keep it flat, steady, gentle, and he lapped and probed and got me to the edge, but I bucked him off me and sat up.

  ‘I want to look at you.’

  He stood up, back from the bed, and pushed a hand through his hair, eyes down, shy. Beneath the serpent’s head, a tumble of black and blue dice spilled across his chest, his waist was beautiful, tight, narrow, the planes of muscle above his hipbones outlined like a sculpture.

  ‘You look like a kouros.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Turn around. Lift your arms, put your hands on your neck. Yes, like that.’

  I crawled forward across the grubby sheet and reached for him, sliding my hands along the wings of his shoulder blades, somehow so tender and frail. The twin hollows of his lower back were lined with blond down. I dipped my head and licked his buttocks, reaching, probing with the tip of my tongue, deep into the earthy scent of him, until he let out a little gasp, then dropped lower, opening gently until I could lave his arsehole. There was an angry constellation of red spots on the underside of his arse, which made me almost love him. I lapped him until his balls were juicy with saliva, then turned and lay back, spreading myself open with two fingers for his eyes.