by Louisa Young
I made an idiotic, mooney, out-of-it face for him. He brought his face close to mine and nuzzled me.
I thought you wanted to win me fair and square, break me like the plucky filly I am. I thought you were going to make me want you. Isn’t drugs cheating? Wouldn’t drugs make it no better than rape, which as we know doesn’t interest you? Or have you given that up? Are you just going to take me any way you can?
Eddie was burrowing in my neck. The dancer was vamping both of us. I looked up at her over the fine grey hairs on the back of his neck and a flash of Arabic leapt from my mouth: ‘Ouw’Ï’ – don’t you dare. Even if she was Turkish, she got the message.
Eddie, one hand creeping over my thigh, under the skirt and heading for my clunge, did not.
Enough already. My body is for love and dancing, not for this crap. I tried to stand. What with Eddie, the dancer, the table and the immovable banquette it was hard. And furthermore my legs wouldn’t do it. Jelly. Jelly legs, jelly head. I seemed to be fading out again.
*
When I woke again, I was naked, and Eddie was standing above me.
Oh, shit.
Again I pretended not to have woken.
He left.
My head was clearer. I was in a bedroom, an anonymous posh English guest bedroom. There were two windows, long and high, with drawn chintz curtains, and all the flouncey bits. Pelmets. There was an armchair, an unattractive carpet, flowers, two doors, a fireplace with a large mirror over it, and ornaments. I wasn’t tied. By the feel of my body I had not been fucked. I stood up. My legs were OK. I looked in the mirror. Just me. Just standing there, naked, in a strange room.
I tried one of the doors. Locked. I tried the other. A bathroom. I washed, before I realized there were no towels. I went back into the bedroom and dried myself on the bedspread. Shiny chintz, no good, but better than nothing.
Eddie came in as I was drying. I stood up straight and stared at him.
‘Cover yourself!’ he said, shocked.
I pulled the bedspread across my front. Automatically it was a dance movement, a drawing of the veil.
‘Hide those pomegranates!’ he said.
My head was not clear enough to formulate a policy.
He sat on the end of the bed.
‘I fucked the other girl,’ he said. ‘You watched, though I don’t suppose you made much of it. I’m saving you up.’
So my career as his personal sex doll was beginning. But it’s better than last time. Lots of people know where I would be. Brigid, Ben Cooper, Harry, Liam. I’ve been talking my mouth off, really.
That is presuming that I am here. Pelham Crescent.
Eddie picked up the phone and ordered some tea.
‘I will be missed, you know,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t it worry you?’
‘Not at all. It’s too late. I’m off any minute.’
‘So Ben said. He said it wasn’t clear where.’
‘I’m off, I’m off, and all is waste and nonsense in my wake … Don’t worry, I’ll send you back. In one piece, probably.’
‘Probably?’
‘Meaning if you behave …’ he said. ‘Or, meaning that I have no intention of harming you but I’m not telling you so because I might want to frighten you.’
‘What does behave mean?’
He gave me a louche look. ‘Oh, work it out for yourself.’
‘Fuck you?’
‘Language!’ he snapped. ‘No.’
‘Want to fuck you?’
‘Oh, do - oh, please,’ he said.
‘But you’ve got me here under duress. How could you know if I wanted to or not?’
‘I’m very vain, you know,’ he said. ‘I’ll believe all sorts of things to my own advantage.’
I was tired. I cannot spend a year here naked playing Beauty and the Beast with him. I am not going to sleep with him. He’s off any minute. So why is he wasting time? Neither in practical terms nor from the roots of his … attachment, can I work out what he’s doing. But he can win, in his terms. Perhaps it is enough for him just to have me here before he goes. Whoops, mind the phraseology there. But when exactly is he saving me up for?
There was a knock on the door, and Siao Yen brought the tea in. Peppermint, in little gold and green glasses. Very Arab. Rather like my blue ones, but better quality, of course. She took no notice whatsoever of the fact I was naked, and slipped out again.
We sipped.
‘Do you know how I met your sister?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. I got a sort of thrill out of saying it. Just saying no, about anything, about any of this mad stuff.
But of course No I don’t know means, Yes – tell me. And that was all I wanted. And exactly what I wanted. To be told. And he told me.
‘Our mutual friend, little Ben Cooper, took me out to see you dancing. Yes, Ben! We went to a little place somewhere north of Oxford Street, down some steps, all very secret-looking, and inside, after dinner, there was you – oh! My dream! You were wonderful. So beautiful, so proud, so gorgeous, so mobile. From the angles of your head to the meat on your arse – perfect. Every move.
‘So I said to Ben, I must meet her. And he said that you were very proud, very haughty, and that you did not agree to meet men. I begged him. He said he did not think you would. I begged him and begged him. I begged him for weeks. He said he would ask. I was in heaven!
‘Then he said you said no. He said you only entertained Muslims … Are you cold, my love?’
‘No. Go on.’
‘Have some more tea.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I went to watch you again and again. I was besotted. In love. I never approached you because I didn’t want to frighten you off. I returned to Ben and said to him, “Look out the window.” Outside there was a beautiful little Mercedes. I said, “That is for her. If you introduce us, there is another one, for you.”
‘A week later I met you …’
He broke off to pour more tea. ‘But you’re tired,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly dawn. You should sleep.’
Don’t you Scheherazade me. I looked at him. Luckily he did not have Scheherazade’s patience. He couldn’t resist it.
‘I took you to the Ritz for dinner. You were charming. You loved the car. Without your costume and your make-up and the magical movements of your dance you were not as exciting as I had expected, but I put that down to the natural bathos of achieving the fantasy, of holding the impossible woman in my arms and seeing all too clearly the sad flaws of reality when considered against the ineffable delights of the distant and the unobtainable. Stage lighting must be very flattering, I thought. Though you were happy to fuck me, and you wore your costumes for me, you declined to dance for me. You loved the two thousand pounds I left on the bedside table. You were not worth it. I kept you for a month, after which I did not call you again.’
There are times when your body seems to pass into suspension. Now was one of them.
‘Later, I saw you dance again. By chance. I had not known that you would be appearing – I was just getting cheap fixes of other girls. My dream of you had been sullied, exploded. But there you were again. You were more magical than ever. As usual, unlike most girls, you did not vamp and cajole, you did not have to beg for tips. There you were, up there, perfect woman, and there were us, down below, all the men, howling silently for you. If I could bottle the sex that you inspired! All the women were happy – they knew they would get their share that night.’
It made a sort of sense.
‘But you did not know me. I stared at you; even caught your eye. You did not know me. I called to you; you did not hear me. I poured brandy at your feet, a libation to my goddess. You did not look at me. When the flame of my ardour burned up all around you, you looked my way, but you did not know me. When I offered you money, you scorned me, and looking at you I knew I had never met you, never fucked you, never bought you, never looked at your face, your own self withi
n the uniform of your outfit and your position, and beyond the lust inspired by your timeless movements.
‘The next day I cut Ben Cooper out of eighteen business ventures in which he was involved, much to his loss. I made some inquiries, and found that you had a sister – an alley cat who looked quite like you. I had not been fooled by any physical similarity, but by the gap between fantasy and life, between archetype and the tart on my arm. I found her, took up with her again – at a greatly reduced price – and learnt to enjoy her for her own qualities, which were many. I never held the trick against her. She was just a girl. Girls like her do what they’re told. She was making films for Cooper – did you know that? Dirty little films – rather fun. He financed them and believed that she was marketing them – which she was, through me. He didn’t know that. We never told him I had discovered his deception. She fiddled him left right and centre on those films. He made no money. Wherever I could arrange for him to lose, he lost.
‘Janie was disappointed in him. She thought me cleverer and more fun! She was right. And she never liked sleeping with him. She wanted me to take her on, and a few of Ben’s other girls too. So I did. I employed her boy Jim in one of my companies, to keep things tidy. Jim was not a problem, to her or anybody. Jim is not clever.
‘Do you know I only took Harry on because of you? A vague, undying, sentimental notion that he connected me to you … otherwise I don’t think I would have taken him. I don’t like him. He’s a smartypants. Always seems to know something.
‘I knew when you went away, of course. I always hoped you would come back.
‘Janie’s pregnancy was not convenient, of course, but it didn’t matter because by then she was less in the field, as it were, and more behind the scenes. She had given up that little job she had. I knew she never told you anything. I never told her anything about you, and how I felt about you – how I still feel, you know. Nothing has changed. She suspected. After our first meeting, how could she not? We even did the same ploy a few times ourselves – I tell you, you always got a very good price. But not often. We didn’t want to damage your reputation.’
I believed him. I believed everything he said. How interesting it all was. How tired I was. How sick.
I pulled up the bedspread around me and lurched to the bathroom to puke. Then I went back into the bedroom and began to throw things at him: a vase, the tea glasses, a china spaniel off the mantelpiece. Then he was lying on top of me, pinning me down, his mouth all over my face, trying to hoick his dick out and get it into me. But I can wriggle … I can wriggle and flex like a great big fish, I can swerve and avoid and snap and entangle, I learnt my muscles from the Ouled Nail, no one man is going to pin me.
So there I was stark naked in front of the fireplace with the poker in my hand. So I clouted him.
And then … and this is the bit that surprises me. Seeing him lying unconscious on the unpleasant carpet, with his head flung back, his shirt collar loosened, his handsome face white and his elegant trousers open from the waist with his penis, extraordinarily still rigid – what was the blood doing there? Wasn’t it needed elsewhere? – I was washed over with … well, it was lust, but it was something else too. I think it was joy, to have at last one of these sods that have been tormenting me at my mercy. It was glee. One moment he loves me, the next he is raping me; the next he is out cold. Well, try this, sweetheart. Try this. And don’t be flattered. I don’t care what you think.
So I carefully put down the poker, within reach, and quietly wrapped my naked self around him. Mine for the taking, and I had had none in so long. I couldn’t keep still, just moving, moving, circling, grinding, encircling, building the heat, rubbing my breasts on his clean shirt-front, laying my mouth on his neck, finding his cock – How extraordinary! I must ask a doctor about this – he was out cold, but it was game. Shapely, large, rockhard, and all mine. And just playing with it, putting it in various places, as I liked, places that hadn’t felt flesh in too long, all those lonely empty neglected bits of body, armpits and toes and hands and teeth and hair. And I kissed him a lot and stroked him and scratched him and fed my pomegranates to his immobile mouth, and amused myself no end before taking him into me by pure hunger and suction.
I did him. I did him proper. He hardly stirred. Four years of repressed woman; a fabulous dance. And he missed it. He joined in a little – twitchings and stirrings, little moans. Well might he moan. It didn’t bother me. I was having a marvellous time. Occasionally it seemed as if he might be going to come – but he didn’t. I didn’t let him.
And when I was finished I wiped myself on his hands, and found myself starting over again, and then on his shirt-tails, to make sure he knew what had been going on without him.
SIXTEEN
Out
I hurtled down the stairs like a banshee, flinging open doors as I went to see if there were any exits or any clothes. The house was old, and a weird shape – corridors off, extra staircases. I was way up high, that much I could tell. But as to what was a bedroom, or a way out … that I couldn’t. I headed down.
Two flights down Siao Yen was there on a landing. She was little. I could barge straight through her, knock her sideways, so long as she wasn’t a secret expert in some diabolic Oriental martial art. But she stood aside, and said as I passed: ‘He deserved it. If you need a witness, I’ll say whatever you want. Poor old Buenos Aires will have to do without him now!’
I gave a glancing stare backwards as I hurtled, and decided I was hallucinating. Down, down, down.
I came to a kitchen. Too far. Hanging on the door was a flowered housecoat, Siao Yen size. I put it on, pulled it round me, but it gaped. There was an apron, too. That covered the front. I pulled open the nearest door – some kind of pantry. The next was a broom cupboard. The next was a huge dark glass-roofed and glass-walled room. I could see sky and stars, above me and below. I was almost in the swimming pool before I realized what it was. I slammed the kitchen fire extinguisher out through one of the glass sheets of wall and I was out, in a garden, wet grass beneath my feet, and the smell of an English summer night in my nostrils.
Well, I’m not in Pelham Crescent.
I ricocheted around the garden for a minute or two before I realized that without taking stock I would end up in a cowfield. I stopped, panting, hurting. Apart from me, all was silent and calm. It was so beautiful that I lay down on my back and breathed nicotiana and night-scented stock. In to four, hold for two, out to eight. Beautiful. I was laughing. Sex, my God! I must do it some more. Maybe that’s what men are. Battery rechargers. Plug yourself in and watch your energy levels go wild. Poor fucker.
Sitting up and looking around, I saw the shape of the house defined by the moonlight emerging around it. I was in a back garden, and the darkness round beside the house seemed to lead to the front. Jumping up, I followed the smooth wet lawn, treading daisies between my toes. Sure enough it led to a driveway, lined by mounded rockery, saxifrage glowing in the huge light of the suddenly visible moon. Standing in the driveway, gleaming in the moonlight, was the Pontiac. It looked like a ghost. It was a ghost. My car from the past, waiting for me, just where I would want it to be. What the hell was it doing there?
Is Harry here, then?
Time to go. Even more so.
I walked over, gravel crunching my feet as the daisies had soothed them. The door was unlocked, the keys in the ignition.
From way up, up the house I heard a noise – a bump, and a voice. So he wasn’t dead. Probably just as well. I don’t kill people, heck no. My methods are far more subtle. He tried to rape me, so I fucked him in revenge.
Unless it was Harry. But I hadn’t heard the car draw up. How long had he been here? What was he doing?
Definitely time to go.
I jumped in my car, and followed my nose.
*
By the time I could work out where I was, the dawn was well up and my nose seemed to have led me to the outskirts of Milton Keynes. Not so bad. I criss-crossed a million mini-
roundabouts until I found the London road and turned into a Happy Eater. Nobody seemed to find my dress that outlandish. Clearly Happy Eaters at dawn are the place to be. Trusting to Harry’s old habit of keeping a fiver or two tucked somewhere unlikely in case of emergencies, I found a fifty pound note, slightly the worse for wear, down the back of the back seat. Egg bacon sausage chips beans and two slices, with tea, gave me change for the phone. Before I could call I puked it up again. In the loo I realized that the reason my feet were still wet was because one of them was bleeding. I washed them and bound them up in paper hand towels, which disintegrated.
I looked no more unseemly with the housecoat sleeves ripped off and wrapped around my feet. One was bad, the other not. I could drive one-footed.
It was ten to seven. I rang Brigid. Maireadh answered. I could picture her, dopey on the sofa, groping in her sleep for the telephone, just to stop the damn noise.
‘Maireadh,’ I said. ‘How’s Lily? Listen, I’ve had a bit of an adventure but I’ll be along soon, tell Brigid everything’s all right, and tell Lily I’ll be picking her up later and tell her I’m sorry I wasn’t there last night and tell Brigid I don’t know what I’d do and I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, and if she could get Lily to school and say thank you to her, I’m sorry to wake you …’ and then I went and was sick again, and then I sat in the car and cried for ten minutes, then I dozed for ten minutes, then I went in and had a black coffee, then I filled up with petrol and then I turned on Harry’s tape machine in my car. It was Bob Marley. I wound on the tape till I found the one about the three little birds on my window saying every little thing’s gonna be all right, and I believed every word.
Janie always felt cheated. Always felt that the parents in educating us had cut us off from what we were and set us up as something we could never be. She always had wanted something else. She always had been willing to blame others for the fact that she didn’t have what she felt was hers. I just never knew it was so personal. I never knew she was jealous of my dancing. I used to give her things all the time when I was making all that money when I was a teenager. I never thought she minded. Stealing my dancing, stealing my reputation, stealing the likeness of me, stealing my sex and flogging it. And I never noticed, never helped.