‘What d’you reckon to all this?’ Rick asked her suddenly.
‘The video, you mean?’
‘Yeah – are we right to do it, or what?’
‘Rick, of course we’re right to do it. It’s the future. The band’s got to change, we can’t go on doing the same old stuff the same old way forever. The kids who used to buy our records are grown-up now, there’s a new audience coming along and they want something different.’
They sat down on the warm grass. Monty folded her arms around her knees like a little girl, watching her loose red silk dress ripple as she moved. Her hair was a wild mass of dark tendrils into which the hairdresser had plaited some red silk thread. Rick wrapped a curl around his finger, admiring its sheen.
‘Tell the truth, I don’t like what we’re doing now,’ he admitted. ‘We really need you, Monty. You’ve just got a way with music that I haven’t. Oh sure, I can leap around the stage and make a lot of noise and cause a lot of aggravation, but I can’t just hear a tune in my head and play it like you can. There were some fabulous songs on those first albums, eh?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply, not daring to say more in case years of resentment sounded in her voice.
‘When all this is over, how would you fancy doing your own album?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Sending the old lady out to work?’ she teased him, delighted.
‘Yeah, why not? You’ve got a better voice than I have, girl, and you know it. That’s what I don’t like, though. It’s not how good you are, it’s how big you’re hyped. We’ll just have to think of something to make’em sit up and remember who’s the boss, that’s all.’
‘It’ll be OK, Rick. It’s always OK.’
‘I’m sick of it all, if you want the truth.’ He patted his pockets, looking for cigarettes. Monty had some in her bag, and gave them to him, but he continued, talking in a low, urgent voice. ‘I’m sick of doing it all for them – making money for them, crashing the cars for them, fucking the chicks for them, being photographed for them, dressing up in fancy clothes for them, going round the clubs for them – I want to live my own life, not the life two hundred million people think I ought to live for their benefit.’ He shook a cigarette out of the pack, then offered, her one, which she did not take. ‘You’re what I really care about, Monty, if you want the truth.’ He looked at her, his speckled grey eyes full of emotion. ‘You do love me, girl?’ Discarding the unlit cigarette, he reached out for her hand and took hold of it.
‘Oh, Rick, of course I love you. I’ll always love you.’
‘I haven’t been very good to you, I know that.’
‘You couldn’t help it. It seems like we’ve both been out of control ever since the band made it. Suddenly it wasn’t you and me any more. It was the tours and the albums and the tv shows and the money and – oh, I don’t know, everything.’
She thought of the endless days in anonymous rooms, of the nights in recording studios when she felt like just one more piece of technology in a high-powered machine for making money and pleasure – pleasure for other people, money they spent just to keep the horrors away long enough for the whole cycle to start all over again.
‘What I want to know is – where was it? It, you know, The Business, the real thing, the big O – whatever it is you’re supposed to have made when you’ve made it.’ Rick stretched out his legs in their bleached jeans. ‘It’s like it was always coming tomorrow and if we could just do another gig or another couple of songs, then they’d give it us. Everything’s just hollow in the centre, somehow.’
He looked at Monty; she was real all right, as real as life. Those huge, black eyes, that velvet skin with its own rich, musky scent that he loved. He remembered how the skin scent changed around her body, how rich and sweet it was down there between her legs, how delicate in the warm hollows of her neck. Rick knew every inch of her body, and wanted it now more than ever. It was the only prize he had won. He stretched out and held the warm heaviness of her breasts, savouring their texture, soft and firm together, the nipples hardening with desire under the fragile silk.
‘Rick! Come on, we need you now …’ the voice of the director’s assistant broke into the private world of their intimacy.
‘Can’t it wait ten minutes?’ Rick yelled over Monty’s head, his hands warm around her breasts. There was silence. He leaned over to kiss her, but the mood was gone and the nerves had come back. They got up and returned to the set.
An hour later they were all dressed in shimmering tunics tied up with gold ribbons. Monty’s was a soft turquoise, the other girls were in pink and white. Rick was in black with a gold key pattern around the hem. The hairdressers put plaits of gold braid round their heads and loaded Monty’s wrists and ankles with wide brass bracelets. The make-up girl painted her eyes with sweeps of soft blue and grey, and dusted her golden shoulders with sparkling powder.
‘Cocktail time,’ Keith announced, and his assistant appeared with a tray of champagne glasses filled with fizzing amber liquid. In the bottom of each glass a few crystals were dissolving.
‘Heavens, real champagne cocktails,’ Monty muttered nervously. She gulped down the first one, took another, then a third.
A dry-ice machine spouted mist over the surface of the purple water. First Keith ordered shots of the band miming to the playback of their new single, ‘Heart’s Desire’, which had a raunchy, almost disco beat. Three of the dancers crawled around their feet, lasciviously caressing the boys’legs, while two more dancers stood thigh-high in the water and embraced.
Keith shot the boys lolling on the couches drinking whisky and champagne, eating grapes (Cy insisted) and fondling the dancing girls.
‘Now, you girls,’ Keith pointed to Monty, P. J. and Maggie. ‘The swing.’ They lifted Monty on to the swing while the other two stood in the water pulling her to and fro. Keith ordered a hand-held camera to come in close on her face. It felt wonderful, swooping to and fro in the warm, steamy air, a little drunk, a little high and full of the sense of love and security she had from getting close to Rick.
‘Fabulous, love, fabulous,’ Keith grunted. ‘Head back – further – further – don’t worry, love, you’re quite safe. Really let go and get into it.’ To and fro, back and forth she swung. The music pounded on, louder and louder. Rick and Keith talked intently. ‘This is great – I want to do more of you looking really blissed-out and spacy,’ Keith told her, helping her off the swing. ‘Take this – it’ll make your eyes wider.’ He gave her a white tablet from a tiny silver pillbox.
Suddenly one of the dancers in the water jumped out on to the poolside and ran towards the choreographer, complaining that the dye in the water was irritating her skin. Keith and the choreographer wrangled at length and the girls in the water were sent away to have cream smeared on their legs to protect their skin. Monty began to feel hot and dreamy. She wanted to lie down somewhere.
At last they were ready to go again, and two of the girl dancers came forward, black girls with braided hair. Keith made Monty lie at the end of the water on her back. The music started again and the girls undulated their bodies over hers, shaking their shoulders frenetically until the gold ribbons holding their tunics unravelled and the light fabric fell away. Monty felt tingling excitement course through her and she writhed her body as Keith directed. A boy dancer held her feet to stop her slipping towards the water; from the corners of her eyes she thought she could see Pete lying on a couch with a naked girl astride him.
It was misty and the light seemed to be growing dimmer. The trembling flames accentuated the dancers’movements. Monty felt her blood race in her limbs with the mixture of drugs and drink. The music thundered on. A hand tore away the top half of her tunic and one of the girls bent over her, her red tongue flickering over her breasts. A shower of rose petals fell on them, caressing her skin, arousing her still further. The set was full of dancing bodies, mist, noise, flowers and flames.
Someone pulled her upright; two of the boys held her against thei
r naked chests, tossing her from one to the other. Monty relaxed in their muscular arms – there was nothing else she could do. She realized, without concern, that she couldn’t control her body. She felt like a swallow, swooping weightless through the air. Lips pressed her flesh, teeth nuzzled the softest parts of her body, teasing and toying and now-and then threatening with a bite. Somewhere to her left she saw a white boy in a leopard skin kneel before a naked black boy and take his swelling erection in his mouth. They moved slowly together; everything was slow now, even the music.
She was carried, whirled around, thrown from one man to another. Her tunic unravelled, and became nothing more than a drape of diaphanous silk which trailed between her thighs, around her waist, across one of her breasts. There was a girl eating fire, putting lighted brands in her mouth and closing her lips to extinguish them, then exhaling streams of flame.
Splashes. More people were in the water, dancing in the water, churning up the mist, sprinkling rainbow droplets through the air. Wet bodies were dancing together, moving together, hands cupping breasts, fingers sinking into buttocks. There were thighs on thighs, arms around arms.
Monty was lying on a couch on black velvet cushions, raging desire in every atom of her body. Desire for what, for who? She couldn’t remember. She wanted, wanted, wanted. She would die if she didn’t get. People were leaving the poolside and walking away. The light dimmed further, until the flickering flames from the torches were all that remained. The music died away, and she could hear the cicadas in the palm trees and the small liquid noises of the pool.
Rick was beside her, naked, with the gold fillet still holding back his hair. His arms reached under her and picked her up. He carried her to a pile of cushions in a warm, dim corner, laid her down and began to kiss her body.
‘Beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful,’ he was murmuring as his hands pushed away the wisps of drapery. She reached towards him but he pushed her back, laughing. ‘We’re on our own now, darling, and this is your treat. Don’t do anything. Nothing. Lie back and enjoy yourself.’
She wanted him like a searing pain. Tremors as light as moths’ wings ran over her skin as he touched her. She stroked his cheek as he sucked first one nipple then the other, holding her breasts like precious fruit to his mouth.
‘Please, Rick, now – now, darling Rick, please,’ she begged him, wriggling under his hard, narrow body. But he made her wait, still laughing; finally, sharp shudders of pleasure began before he had even entered her.
It was not enough. It was a stinging pleasure which lashed her senses like a whip, stirring them higher. He knelt between her legs and teased her with his mouth, his tongue stabbing, his lips stroking her taut, wet flesh, lapping in the sweet moisture, avoiding, with cruel cunning, the one touch that would release her from the prison of passion. She writhed beneath him, abandoned, uncaring, wanting nothing but the vortex of hot darkness, and him within her as it whirled her away.
With demonic strength, his hands held her still, and then at last she felt him, hot and avid as she was, but moving into her flesh slowly, so slowly. She screamed as suddenly he withdrew and she clawed at his chest, and saw tracks of blood appear from her nails. Then he was on her, and in her, and they rolled over and over on the cushions, their faces wet with tears, but whose tears? They were on hard tiles, then grass, then half in the warm water. The darkness opened for her and she surrendered to it, wanting to melt or shatter or be destroyed utterly in a cataclysm of love.
‘I love you, darling, I love you,’ were the last words she heard.
Rick disengaged; he stood up, holding out a hand for the towel which Keith’s assistant ran forward to give him. He wrapped it around his waist.
‘I hope you got all that,’ he said to the director. ‘I don’t think I could do it again.’
‘I got it, don’t worry.’ Keith patted the camera casing. ‘Do that every night, do you?’
Rick grinned and gave him a kidding punch in the ribs. ‘Can’t beat the old home cooking. Will she be all right?’
‘Yeah, don’t worry about it. They often zonk out on’ludes. Take her home and put her to bed and she’ll be fine in the morning. With any luck she won’t remember anything.’
‘You sure she’s all right?’ Rick walked over to Monty’s still body and felt her wrist. He hardly needed to. Her heartbeat was visible through her chest wall, like a flutter under the skin between her breasts where the distended artery was pumping.
‘Quite sure, trust me. Don’t worry about a thing. She won’t remember what happened, most like. And by the time I’ve finished cutting it all together she won’t even recognize herself.’
‘They’re great, aren’t they, them qaaludes.’ Cy had been standing with the rest of the spectators behind the camera. ‘Got any spare?’ Keith tipped the contents of his pillbox into his hand.
‘Don’t give’em to anyone you don’t like,’ he advised.
Rick looked at the young director curiously. ‘What’s this to be, then – the first hardcore rock video?’
Keith shook his head. ‘Maybe I’ll do you a special tape for private consumption only. But the one I do for Excellent will be OK. Trust me. I’ll cut around the naughty bits. But it’ll be quite clear what’s going on, all the same. The look on your old lady’s face will be enough. Those eyes – incredible!’
When Monty regained consciousness the following afternoon she felt thirsty, she had a terrible headache, the skin of her legs and back had come up in a rash in reaction to the dye in the pool water, and she remembered nothing of what had happened. Rick told her that the video was to be edited in New York, and that there would be no time for a private viewing of it by the band before it was rushed out to coincide with the release of ‘Heart’s Desire’. He was quiet, and very attentive to her, feeling guilty for what he had done.
Monty was taking a taxi home from her hairdresser in London one afternoon when a flickering screen in the window of a record store caught her attention. She made the driver stop, paid him and got out of the cab.
‘That must be it, the “Heart’s Desire” promo,’ she thought, joining the small group of people watching the screen in the store window. She saw Rick’s face below the gold headband, his jaw gaping with the mimed effort of singing. Then she saw one of the black girl dancers wriggling up his naked calf, then the snake, then herself singing with P. J. and Maggie. ‘Heavens, I look so fat,’ she wailed inwardly. The next shot was her own face, eyes languorously half-closed.
She ran eagerly into the store and asked the man at the counter for a copy of the video.
‘D’you want the regular version?’ he asked her in a low voice.
‘What regular version?’
‘This one’s a bit notorious. We’ve got the regular version you’ll see on the TV, twenty-five quid; and just one or two copies of the special somebody put together from the out-takes. That’s a bit pricey, of course.’
‘What’s in it?’ Suddenly it worried Monty that she had no memory at all of the shoot. She could usually remember something, no matter how smashed she got. Instinctively, she knew what the boy was going to say.
‘Rick Brown getting it on with some chick. Hot stuff – there’s life in the old dog yet. Take a look if you like – I think the lads are running it in the stockroom. Can’t get’em out here serving customers, anyway.’
Monty opened the door he indicated at the back of the store, went down a short concrete corridor and peeked into a room at the end. One glance was enough. Three kids were sitting round the TV on crates, jacking off like monkeys. Monty just had time to glimpse the screen before she withdrew, but the split-second view was enough for her to recognize her own body thrashing as Rick impaled her.
Numb and breathless with shock, she ran out of the store and blundered through the crowds of shoppers looking for a payphone. The first one she found had been vandalized. The second was out of order, and whined in her ear. The frustration made her angry, and the anger made her calm. From the third tele
phone she called Cathy’s office.
‘It’s horrible, so horrible, Cathy. I can’t tell you what they’ve done, the bastards …’ Monty gulped, choked and started to cry.
Cathy’s voice was firm and soothing. ‘Where are you calling from? Tell me where you are and I’ll be right over.’
Monty told her, then went to wait in a coffee shop. Twenty minutes later Cathy’s steel-blue BMW swooped out of the traffic. The nearside wheels mounted the kerb and it stopped with a jerk. Cathy’s slim figure in a black-and-white tweed suit darted through the crowds and Monty flung herself into her sister’s arms.
‘The most awful thing, Cathy.’ Monty started shaking as she told Cathy about the video.
As soon as she understood why her sister was so upset, Cathy said, ‘OK. Now come and sit in the car and stop the cops covering it in tickets while I go and see how many copies of it I can find. It won’t take long to check out Tottenham Court Road – will there be any more anywhere else, do you think?’
Monty shook her head and sniffed, still on the verge of tears. ‘This is the place for hot tapes – let’s hope they haven’t sold too many of them.’
After she had settled her sister in the BMW’s passenger seat, Cathy calmly walked into one shop after another up the length of the road where London’s principal hi-fi shops clustered. With her smart City suit and her commanding upper-class voice she was an impressive figure, although the shop assistants were taken aback when she firmly asked outright for the bootleg version of the ‘Heart’s Desire’video.
‘What bootleg version? There ain’t no bootleg version, and if there were I wouldn’t sell it,’ blustered one greasy-haired, thickset man in shirtsleeves.
Cathy, cool and pleasant with the merest hint of a persuasive smile on her immaculate red lips, looked directly into his bloodshot eyes. ‘Either you sell them to me and make your profit now, or you keep them until tomorrow when we get our court injunction and get stuck with a load of hot tapes you’ll never be able to sell at all. I know which I’d prefer.’ Within half an hour she had bought every copy of the pornographic tape that she could find.
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