The Diamond Ring

by Primula Bond

  We are both held down for a moment longer until the applause, and the music, start to fade. The audience waits as the dildos are slowly pulled out of us. My tutu is pulled down over my bare bottom, but the show isn’t quite over, because Chloe turns on her dancer, holds the dildo up like a spoon and makes her assailant lick it clean.

  I remain tied to the stool. I am still just a stark outline. They are waiting for me to straighten up, snap out of it, presumably so the curtain can go up and we can take a bow. Margot is still watching and she isn’t going to witness any weakness in me, even though I can’t move.

  But now the two dancers are unclipping the curtain, the barman is winding it up to the ceiling, and Chloe and her mates are bowing to the crowd. They all start roaring with laugher as I’m revealed to the audience, still bent over the stool, the skirt barely covering my sore ass. I know I look helpless, and there’s a moment when I feel it, too. Weary of fighting for my life. For my man. But I can’t let it show. Not for a second. Not while that woman’s hateful eyes are on me. And especially not if Gustav is somewhere in this club, watching how his girl is fielding Margot’s latest grenade.

  Chloe pretends to forget about me, then skips across to untie my wrists.

  ‘Bravo, Serena!’ she says, laughing and lifting me upright. ‘You and your man were brilliant!’

  But instead of lifting my hand or directing me to curtsy for the finale, she leaves me standing there in the middle of the stage. She and her dancer carry the stools to the side, sit astride them, take cocktails from the barman, and the lights all go out, leaving me in a single spot.

  ‘Time to take a bow, Serena. You’ve done what you set out to do.’

  The deep voice in my ear makes my whole body buzz. A trickle of juice tickles my inner thigh. My knees threaten to buckle as I stare up into Gustav’s black eyes, glittering with pride and triumph.

  ‘You crazy, crazy man!’ I squeal, bashing uselessly at his chest as he ostentatiously buttons up his jeans, and the audience break into rapturous applause as they realise they’ve been had. ‘Who knew you could impersonate a dildo!’

  ‘Can you impersonate something inanimate?’ He lifts me up on to my tiptoes to kiss me. ‘And talking of inanimate objects—’

  He jerks his head in the direction of the raised area where the queen bee was holding court earlier. I glance across in time to see Margot rising to her feet, shoving her companions away from her. Her white face is drawn tight beneath the red lace netting. Her mouth is an uneven buttonhole of fury.

  The only part of her that is alive is her eyes, which blaze as she draws one red fingernail across her throat.

  ‘Ignore her and kiss me!’ Gustav turns me towards him.

  I flush, itching to turn back and see what Margot is doing. ‘I did it for you!’

  ‘You exhibitionist little slut! You didn’t even question who, or what, was inside you!’

  Before I can answer or apologise or explain, he tilts my face up in the big hands that were holding me down just now, and the audience goes wild as he kisses me.

  The last light snaps out, leaving us in the dark.

  ‘Too late to be angry with me now, lover.’ I pull away from him, my lips warm and wet as I jerk my head out towards the dance floor. ‘Whatever I did just then, I did it to show Margot.’

  We stand together on the stage, searching the blur of faces as people resume their conversations, buy more drinks, demand new music. But the banquette on the far side is empty.

  Margot has slunk away. For now.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Being engaged suits you, sugar. You are positively glowing!’

  Ingrid Weinmeyer folds me into her pastille-scented embrace as I step into her panelled hallway over on the East Side of the park. I close my eyes and let her hold me. Despite the kinkiness that lurks beneath her porcelain exterior, despite her penchant for enticing uninitiated young peaches into threesomes with her and her randy husband, this woman is the nearest thing I have to a mother figure. Or maybe an aunt. Otherwise, what I have agreed to do later would be way too incestuous.

  ‘Hey, honey, put her down. You don’t know where she’s been!’

  Ernst Weinmeyer takes his turn to greet me, folding me into his burly arms. This embrace doesn’t feel quite so natural. I can’t shift the memory of his long, surprisingly slim erection nudging hopefully at my backside the first time I ventured into this house and nearly ended up as the tasty centre of a Weinmeyer sandwich. Nor can I forget that same erection, barely concealed beneath his white toga, nudging into my back at the ball in Venice, demanding to take me from behind in front of all his masked, euphoric guests.

  Despite those memories, or perhaps because of them, I hug him back. I’ve shed a lot of inhibitions, been inveigled into several compromising situations, since the first time I was propositioned by this powerful couple. I smile demurely, twine my bare arms around Mr Weinmeyer’s neck and press myself coquettishly against him, the silky black lace of my dress rucking up slightly against the bulge inside his exquisitely cut dinner trousers.

  Keeping my eyes on Gustav all the while.

  Back in January I came here to take the couple’s portraits that are tonight being showcased in their house. This rich, influential couple enticed me down to their basement boudoir and tried to get me into bed with them. It later transpired that I was one of the few people who had refused their advances and lived to tell the tale, at least professionally. Not only that, but they have continued to harbour me under their wing, sung my praises to anyone who would listen and flown me over to Venice to film their annual masked ball.

  But there’s something else I owe them in return for their custom, their generosity and their kindness, and we all know it. I owe them no less than my naked body to do with what they will.

  ‘You know exactly where she’s been, Ernst. With me. Day and night.’ Gustav steps into the hall after me, and taps his host on the shoulder. ‘But we’re all here to admire Serena’s professional work tonight. So while she goes and checks the exhibition, why don’t you deflower that rare Scotch you were telling me about? I’ve been thirsty ever since you mentioned it when we last bumped into each other.’

  ‘Ah, yes. At the Club Crème. What a night that was! My God. This girl was magnificent then, and she still looks good enough to eat. She may still have much to learn—’ Mr Weinmeyer kisses my hands before handing me over to his wife. His handsome, slightly thickened features glow with a mixture of pride and lust. ‘But she’s a hundred times more stunning than the first Mrs Levi, and of course these younger models have so much more torque!’

  Gustav tries to hide the flare of anger in his eyes by pushing his black hair off his forehead. ‘Be careful what you say, Ernst!’

  Ernst spreads his arms out and for the first time I recognise the primitive surrender in the gesture. The symbolic dropping of fists and weapons and the subconscious exposing of all vital organs in defeat. I daren’t catch Gustav’s eye. But I have to admire Mr Weinmeyer his deft diplomacy.

  ‘Relax, Levi. I only meant that Serena is the jewel in your crown. How do you ever let her out of your bed in the mornings?’

  ‘With immense difficulty, I’m sure!’ Mrs Weinmeyer sashays back into the circle and slaps at the men. ‘Unless he had someone even more delicious to play with! Comme moi!’

  ‘You are the toughest act to follow in the land.’ Gustav bows over her hand. ‘I’m always up for play, and variety, Madame Weinmeyer. But there will never be anyone more delicious or beautiful than my fiancée.’

  ‘You’re a betting man. How much would you be willing to put on that?’ Weinmeyer claps him on the back and starts to lead him to the back of the house. ‘On me producing one day a filly even more lovely?’

  ‘You can keep any new blood for your own nefarious devices.’ Gustav winks at me over his shoulder as they walk away, sending me a blatant horny message. ‘But I’d put every single penny I own on that being an impossibility.’

  Fresh d
esire, never far from the surface, no matter how often I’m satisfied, clutches at me.

  ‘My God, Peaches. Your eyes!’ Mrs Weinmeyer stares at the two of us. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman glow with passion like that. I am just green with envy!’

  The manservant takes my Tamara Mellon leopard-print coat and my hostess hands me an elegant flute bubbling over with champagne.

  ‘Loving the dress, sugar. Florentina, yes?’ She raises her glass and then to my astonishment downs it in one. ‘We fully expect to be guests of honour at your wedding, by the way. When is it to be?’

  Her cornflower-blue eyes water slightly as I start to giggle, and she makes me down my drink in one before her butler refills us.

  ‘Of course you’re invited. And I don’t know yet. Gustav says before the end of the year.’

  ‘You have a say, you know, sugar. Why don’t you surprise him?’

  We chink our glasses together. ‘Now what a marvellous idea, Mrs Weinmeyer!’

  She lifts her shoulders with pleasure then wraps her long thin fingers round my upper arm.

  ‘Now I want to show you what we’ve done with your marvellous films and pictures before everyone arrives. Come and see how we’ve mounted your Venetian series. We’ve decided to make it a series of moving images, as if we’re all at the ball again, and that will lead us through the rooms until we reach the main drawing room and the pièces de résistance, those private photographs you took when the three of us were here in the winter.’

  She starts to lead me into the first of the elegant salons, but I stop in my tracks. ‘This is completely different from when I was here before! The place was crammed with all your priceless furniture and paintings, Mrs Weinmeyer! Why have you cleared it?’

  She takes a step in front of me and then, with a slight cluck of annoyance when she sees I’m not following, turns on her pin-sharp heel.

  ‘Well, we wanted to create the correct space to show the images. We didn’t want anything here that would distract from the exhibition! In fact, we asked Gustav’s advice on that.’

  I bite my lip, harder than I meant to. ‘You could have asked my advice! This is my work, after all!’

  ‘You seem a bit on edge, sugar?’ She puts one hand on her hip, and the other holds her glass up to her lips as she waits. ‘But technically, you know, this is our work. I mean, we’ve paid for it. And the reason we asked Gustav’s advice rather than yours is because we wanted you to have a surprise.’

  I raise my eyebrow knowingly. ‘So that’s where he’s been sneaking off to some evenings. Secret meetings with you!’

  ‘Oh no, cupcake. We just spoke on the phone a couple of times. Now. I hope you like what we’ve done here.’

  She picks up a remote control and waves it elegantly in the air. A group of people in period costumes and masks seems to emerge from the wall by the door and starts to parade across it, followed by others, moving, dancing, laughing, the figures spreading up to the ceiling, down to the floor, across to the corner and on to the main wall, until the whole room is inhabited with projected life and colour and music.

  And here it is, that extraordinary Venetian ball in that extraordinary city. On that extraordinary, almost fatal night. Thank God I can react to these images as an art installation now – my hard work – rather than viewing them solely as the prelude to Pierre’s tricks. My stomach might tighten a tad as I examine the sequence. I certainly won’t welcome the sight of a figure hovering in the shadows, dressed in green velvet. But at least Pierre’s mask has been ripped away by the conversations Gustav has forced us all to have.

  Every so often the parade of dancing figures is halted by a still photograph, a couple caught spinning in a waltz, a violinist holding his instrument high under his chin, or a sinister hooded figure on the sidelines, sipping that lethal punch, and then the dance continues to accelerate, becoming, as it did that night, wilder and louder and more degenerate.

  Somewhere in real life the doorbell rings, heralding the first guests, but Mrs Weinmeyer comes to me, takes my hand in her cool fingers and waltzes me through to the next room.

  ‘We thought it would be an entertaining way to entice everyone through the rooms towards the portraits. I know you would normally oversee the printing and production process, sugar, but we sent it to a graphics studio because we wanted to make this as hallucinogenic as it was on the night. Remember how surreal the ambience was? See how we’ve over-tinted everything, so that costumes and make-up and faces are even more brilliant! Remember the effects of that punch we were all drinking? We never admitted what special substances we spiked it with, but it was magic, wasn’t it? Made you see everything edged so clearly? We wanted to recreate that with this tinting expert Gustav knows. Hope you’re OK with it?’

  ‘It’s the perfect treatment of the film. I wish I had this kind of expertise!’ I breathe out at last, determined not to be precious about the way they’ve altered my work. I turn in circles to follow the progress of the film. ‘It’s fabulous!’

  The story of the Weinmeyers’ masked ball progresses across the walls. A soundtrack of waltz and minuet accompanies the initial sedate greetings and curtseys at the beginning of the evening and gradually drowns out the brittle chatter.

  The second room shows the stage of the ball where the women were being thrown into the revolving centre of ersatz Eightsome Reels to be touched and fingered until plucked from the fray by the winner to be ravished. Now the music whines and charges from mad polka to frenzied folk dancing, to accompany the change in tempo and mood of each frame.

  As we reach the door to go into the third room, Mrs Weinmeyer’s grip on my arm tightens. ‘And now, la crème de la crème! I’m so thrilled to have the wonderful Serena Folkes exhibited here. I can’t wait for you to see how glorious the family album display looks! All Cecil Beaton and classy in here, all bordello and bawdy in the final room!’

  ‘You sound like a tour guide! All these French superlatives! What’s the hurry though?’ I laugh, tripping slightly on my vertiginous Louboutins as the Venetian revellers circle chaotically behind us. ‘The guests are only just starting to arrive.’

  We’re about to enter the next room when the baroque colour and music around us fade and we are enveloped by a new, muted realm of shadowy blue and purple Gothic shades. A moody, sombre track winds through the air in here, impossible to pin down. More an idea than a tune. This totally alters the Venetian mood that was just capering over these walls.

  The walls still seem to be alive. But different figures move sinuously across them now, and at first I can’t make out the detail.

  And when I do, I wrench my hand out of Mrs Weinmeyer’s fingers.

  Because as the purple light bleaches to reveal the exhibition, it’s plain that the well-dressed characters being silently fucked and whipped in the orgiastic film now creeping across the walls of this mansion on the Upper East Side, obliterating my Venetian images, come directly from the loop that used to be installed in Gustav’s old house in Baker Street, London.

  I can’t tear my eyes away, even though my heart is galloping. You’d think Manhattan would be far enough away from all that shit, but no. The power of film can reach you anywhere. Gustav and Margot Levi recorded these orgies in that house towards the end of their marriage. I knew the films were for sale to erotic art collectors, and I knew the Weinmeyers were putting in a bid for the collection at auction. But stupidly I assumed I would never have to look at them again.

  However, the loop has been resurrected right here. The deceptively harmless carousing at a London house party, guests’ arms raised in bacchanalian delight, descends from decorum into debauchery as bodies prostrate themselves on sumptuous couches or rest in poses too awkward for real sleep. Then there’s the realisation as you watch that, just like the lupanare frescoes painted on the bordello walls in Pompeii, these solemn participants are being coaxed into group sex.

  The first couple are half-clothed on a big bed, stylised like a classical Titian, com
plete with slave girls whispering in the corner. They are joined by another couple kissing messily and pulling at each other’s remaining garments. In the next frame a woman is on her back and a man is thrusting into her while other people gather round to watch, including the slave girls.

  A familiar heat starts to trickle through my body. I’m vaguely aware of people gathering closer to watch, voices exclaiming, heels clicking rapidly towards me. I fold my arms around my body to stop anyone touching me. My eyes travel over the faces, the mouths, the hands, the naked bodies in the film. It all comes back to me. Not only the display itself, but all the sensations that consumed me the day I first saw it. Despite my resistance, despite not wanting to respond to anything that involved Gustav’s past, watching these people pleasuring themselves excited me. They reminded me of the nuns I’d spied on in Venice, drifting round their cells and flagellating themselves with the shocking slap of knotted leather on their downy skin.

  The scenes progress into a no-holds-barred orgy, beautifully composed and patently not simulated. This is sex by numbers. The hands, fingers, mouths, are everywhere. One woman’s face is contorted with abandon as she’s groped and penetrated by two men. Other women are open, the men are erect, they’re all gymnastic in their positions, beautiful in their physiques. It’s art, but it’s unadulterated sex, too.

  And the display is starting to work on me just as it did when I first saw it. Introducing that same coiling mixture of dread and arousal. The underlying menace in the film, because of its history and the person who masterminded it, is echoed by the chills running through my own limbs.

  Mrs Weinmeyer is beside me now, plucking at my arm and twittering. I flick her fingers away.

  ‘What is this doing here? I saw this display once before, and once was enough. You know what associations this has for me, Mrs Weinmeyer, both personally and professionally!’ Despite the heat curling within me, my voice is reedy with rage. ‘Why have you – when you told me you were buying the Baker Street footage for your erotica collection I specifically said – I begged you never to display this pornographic crap anywhere near mine!’