Elise becomes the man and I become the woman – my role is to accommodate her, to allow her to find the source of her pleasure. Her tongue searches my mouth, her hand clamours through my hair. She presses my lips to her neck and forces them onto her breasts until our bodies lash against each other, keen to forge an urgent bond. I feel my need to please her rise; a need to match my body to her desires, while all the time playing the victim.
She thrashes her body against mine, her hair strokes my chest. She smiles with a pleasure that's uniquely hers. We press against each other until my body craves to join her. She's tricked me, making me lust for something that terrifies me, and in that moment she eases me into her. I feel that sense of relief, but the cord tightens so hard that the room begins to spin. I try to open my mouth, to beg her not to choke me, to try and break the silence of this game. But she pulls harder on the cord, and my head pulls to one side. I feel the wound on my neck widen, the bruising spread. Every inch of air is forced from my lungs as she pummels into my body. The light glares over her stockings and illuminates their crushing rhythm. “You like that, don't you?” she taunts, finally releasing the scarf as my body stumbles for air. “You didn't really think you wouldn't have to pay for it, did you?”
I want to throw her off. I want to just gorge myself on air, but she has no such concerns. To her, those few breaths were a plentiful reward. Her eyes are clenched shut, her lipstick smeared as her pleasure builds to a crescendo. Before, I would struggle not to tear her from me and lay myself against her, but this time she's possessed. I fear the moment my body will react to her fury, and I urge myself to submit. Be passive, I tell myself – just let her win. She twists and thrashes, and her nails embed themselves in my side until they draw blood. It begins to trickle down her fingernails, and her neck scarf falls between her breasts. I seize the opportunity to throw the scarf to the other side of the room. Even though she now has no weapon she continues to thrash against me with complete control. Without the scarf we are now just a man and a woman, but she still has total superiority. And the fact that she knows that makes me feel somehow humiliated. I know then that Elise has got her revenge. And, as if acknowledging that, she clenches her way into a tearing orgasm. I've never heard a woman make a more feral and unrestrained sound as she makes, gripping me in her fingernails. It irreversibly changes me, as if I've somehow now been freed from my role as a man.
Before the flush of blood on her chest has subsided she prises herself from me and lies on the bed. “Take me quickly,” she pleads. “Before people catch us.”
I hesitate, and try to steady my breath. I can't tell her I feel nothing for her but fear; that I can't imagine dominating her now, under any circumstances.
“What is it?” she asks, her expression full of accusation.
I wait for a few moments, and mentally count my wounds. The skin on my side is torn by her nails, the wound on my neck is bleeding, there's that slightly preserved twist in my windpipe. I know I shouldn't speak. I'll only stagger over words and tear everything apart. Impetuously, she leans over the side of the bed and pulls her crumpled dress against her body. Her scent is smeared all over the bed, but, even overwhelmed by it, my body still doesn't respond. I retract in fear, pull the sheets towards me. As my body feasts itself on air I realise it is still shackled to the girl outside. That I must preserve whatever little I have left for Carina.
“It's Carina, isn't it?” she snaps, reaching down to adjust her stocking. She looks over my shoulder, at the fountain outside. “I saw the way you looked at her. Does she have something I don't?”
“You're being ridiculous,” I say, knowing that the difference between them is all I can think of. I desperately want to be articulate, to explain away this sharp alteration of my feelings. But my body is still demanding that I focus only on survival and it seems unable to produce words. I know that even if the words do come, my throat will be unable to deliver them. I look back at her, sensing her anger build with every second that I don't speak.
“It's okay,” she says, pulling the dress over her head and zipping it up with one movement. “You feel you have something in common, don't you? It's that stupid book, isn't it?”
I feel my mouth fall open, but it suddenly feels dry. Confusion overwhelms me, as I realise the moment to respond has passed.
“It's not the book.”
“If you think she's better than me because you've both failed at something then perhaps you are right for each other,” she hisses, reaching down to grab her heels. “If I'd known you were bringing me here as some sort of accessory then I wouldn't have bothered.”
“It's not that, I brought you here because I wanted you to meet these people who've been a huge part of my life. But I've realised a lot of things tonight Elise. I'm not the person that you want me to be, and I can only pretend that I am for so long.”
“How could you have any idea what I want you to be?” she screams, and then her voice drops quickly to a whisper. “I want you to see how ridiculous it is that you feel a bond with these people, particularly that you feel a bond with her. If it was going to happen with her, Vincent, it would have happened by now. Do you really think I'm going to hang around and put up with this?”
“I don't expect you to.”
“Well I won't stay any longer then. Not for you, not for any of these other failures.”
As she towers over me on the bed I know she realises she has gone too far, but I stay silent. “Have you got nothing to say?” I am hit by the full force of what I need to say to her, but prevented from speaking by fear, pure fear at what she might do.
She suddenly looks vulnerable. “Vincent, I thought you were going to propose to me tonight. How stupid is that?”
“Elise, I am sorry. I am so sorry, you do not deserve this. I brought you here with good intentions, but tonight something has changed, and I don't think we can go on anymore.”
“I told Francoise you were going to propose to me, and then she teased me about it.”
“She shouldn't have done that. It was wicked of her to do that, but you shouldn't not have presumed that I was going to propose.”
“What should I have presumed Vincent? That tonight you would fall for someone else? You humiliated me. Look at what you make me do.”
Her hand slaps me, hard across the face, and then with an anguished cry she hits out at me. I fall from the bed, smashing a bedside vase as my head strikes against it. Looking down at the shards of porcelain I see drops of blood.
“I am being honest with you Elise. I don't deserve this.”
She steps towards me. In that moment I feel sure Elise could do anything. I'm prostrate at her feet. My body is still attached to her, yet quaking in fear at what she might do. She looks to the neck scarf, and an instant later, streaks over to it. I try to stop her, but she grasps it. I retract, back into the shards of broken porcelain under the window.
“Don't do anything stupid Elise. This little game has gone too far.” I feel sure at that moment that I have paid my dues to her. I have been choked, cut open, humiliated. My eyes plead with her to see that our balance has been redressed.
She keeps winding the cord round her hand. I grab my shirt from the bed, and move back against the window. She comes closer, looking down at me with utter pity. She laughs, and it's a very hollow sound. She screams, kicking the shards from the vase into my half-naked body.
I pull them from me, speckles of blood covering one hand.
“I'm going,” she says, her voice shaking with emotion. She paces around the bed, grabbing her handbag and stole. “I'm going to leave you to your pathetic little life. Hopefully you'll realise one day that your father is right.” She pauses for a moment, as if willing herself to meet my eye, but her trembling head does not raise itself one inch. And then she turns, and storms from the room. I lean back against the wall and close my eyes.
I crouch there for a while, waiting for my heart to steady again. But even with my eyes clenched shut something tells me I ca
nnot relax yet. The window has been blasted open, and the second I look over to it, shouting fills the air. For a dreadful moment I wonder if Elise is berating Francoise as she storms from the house, but then I recognise Georgina's voice coming from the room below. It seems upset, angry, and the shouted reply it provokes seems to be Barbara's. Has Georgina caught her mother with Franz? I crane through the open window, the shadows in the room beneath suggesting pronounced movements.
“Don't make assumptions Georgina. You have no idea what Franz and I were doing,” Barbara says.
‘Well you weren't talking mother; I'm not a child. He was tucking his shirt into his trousers when I passed him on the stairs, and then when I come up here I see you adjusting your makeup. It's perfectly obvious what the two of you were doing. He is half your age mother, closer to mine than yours. You're an embarrassment.”
Barbara responds very quietly, with menacing restraint. I lean out further to catch her words. “What is embarrassing, daughter, is how out of your depth you were this evening. Did you not notice that?”
A pause.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
I hear the clatter of cosmetics, the scratching of a hairbrush. “Did you not look around you at any point Georgina? Did you not notice how many achievers there were at the party? Did you not feel even a little out of place?”
There is silence for a moment and then the sound of repetitive pacing. “You don't get it, do you?” Georgina replies. “You have no idea why I brought you here this evening. You just can't work it out for yourself, can you?”
“I don't have time for this.”
“Well I'll make the time for you mother. I'll work it out on your behalf. I brought you here tonight because I wanted you to see the effect of that little agreement you parents made all those summers ago. When you all decided to push your little children to each achieve something great. I wanted you to spend just one evening with the people whose lives were wrecked by that decision. You're too pig-headed to look beyond their achievements and glamour; but every one of The Intimates is a ruin. A decaying, crumbling ruin, twisted by self-hatred. Permanently dogged by the idea of what they think they should be. Not people at all; just petri dishes for you to all plop your ambitions inside.”
“As usual, I have no idea what you are talking about Georgina. All I know is that everyone here has gifts that they have used to a greater or lesser degree. Everyone except you. Because you have no talent.” The final words are whispered in a deadly monotone.
When Georgina replies her voice is raised, slightly hysterical. “You're so pathetic! As if that matters. You're still living in the past. You think you're a movie star, but you were never one in the first place. You were just a piece of cinematic fluff. And yet you carry on like you're Greta Garbo, embarrassing yourself day after day. Can't you see that?”
Barbara is silent.
“Every second of the day you're living this failed dream. When you realised your time had passed you tried to channel your ambitions through me. But then something occurred to you, didn't it? That it would be easier to take all of your bitterness and spite out on your daughter. I can't believe that I brought you here tonight to try and get you to see the consequences of your actions. To try and perhaps mend things between us. That could never happen. You're too pig-headed!”
“How dare you!” Barbara screams, and half a beat later I hear the shattering of glass.
There's a smattering of muffled shouts, the sound of rinsed glass. “Don't blame me if your career is over. Don't you dare blame me!”
Barbara curses something inaudible back. It sounds understated but viciously sharp.
“Let's not go there. Let's not go there,” Georgina hisses. “Your boyfriend was right, he was right all along. I've read your diary mother. The one you left in the garage? I know what happened.”
Barbara seems to have fallen silent.
“Oh yes, you listen to me now, don't you? Because you know that I know the truth. And that is what makes me right, and you wrong about all of this. It was you that let my brother die. You wrote in the diary that you knew very well the au pair would not be experienced enough to handle two young babies. You knew that before you even employed her. And yet you pursued employing her and her alone. And then after only a few weeks she left both of us unattended in the bath – and only I survived it. And yet in your diary you don't express grief, you don't mourn. No, nothing like that. You just mention how much more manageable your life will now be. I won't ever know if you planned the whole thing, if you wanted both of us out of your life. But what I do know is that you hired that au pair with your eyes wide open. You knew only too well how inexperienced she was. You knowingly neglected both of us until one of us died. You killed my brother.”
The last words are barely completed when the air is filled with a terrible scream, followed by the sound of more shattered glass. Then a sickening thump, as if a body has been thrown against furniture. I hear the trickling of shards, a series of pleas which seem threatening but edging towards apology. “You've – ” Barbara starts, and then she screams agonisingly, a scream that turns to an anguished sob as if she's consumed with pain. Has Georgina lashed out at her? Stabbed her?
I realise that I have to intervene. I have to separate them. I have to see if Barbara is alright, to find the source of that terrible scream. I wonder if it is all in my mind, but the awful chill in my blood tells me that it is very real. I stagger to the entrance, look wildly around me for the stairs.
“Barbara?” I fly downstairs, to the room directly below. But it's empty, curtains flying with abandon at the window.
“Barbara!” I shout, wondering if the two of them are perhaps slumped in the corner, but scouring the room I see that it is empty. I tear outside, and a voice catches my ear. It is a short, sharp scream which punctuates the still air.
“Get away from me!” it screams. “Get away from me right now!” It's accompanied by a protestation that's indisputably male.
The sound has come from downstairs, from the library where James and I were, earlier that evening. But as I run in the direction of it, through one of the doorways to my side I see a flash of dark hair that I'm sure is Carina's. Then that male voice again.
“You destroyed me! You rejected me, reduced me to nothing – and now I'm going to do the same to you.” There is a sickening curdle to the voice which it takes me a moment to recognise. Finding the room it emanates from I see James, brandishing a large fire poker at a cowering figure in the corner of the library. My blood stops as I see it is Carina. James' other hand is pulling at his belt, his shirt looks unbuttoned. Carina is trembling against a wall of books, her eyes wide with fear. She sees me behind him as I enter the room.
“He's gone mad! He's trying to – he's trying to – ”
With Carina's dress torn, and the hand James now has clasped to her thigh, I can see exactly what he is trying to do.
“Don't try and trick me into thinking there's someone there,” James leers, taking a step closer to her. “It's just you and me, and I'm going to get what you've been promising me for years.”
On a small table by the doorway is a half-empty bottle of champagne. As I grab it James turns towards me with a triumphant leer in his eyes. He swipes the vast poker in my direction, dashing a drinks trolley. I leap back, inches from its terrifying arc. I dash the bottle against the wall and raise its jagged edges at him. The sound of it breaking shocks James, who steps in my direction with the poker. I see now that it's so hot, the tip is glowing.
“Get away from her,” I say, as confidently as I can. “Get right away from her James; you're not going to do this.”
“Vincent? You have no idea how pleased I am that it's you who's come to her rescue. After all, it's you that has thwarted my destiny so far. Do you not feel even slightly ashamed for all the false advice you have offered me through the years?”
“James come on, this isn't you,” I whisper.
“Are you really threaten
ing me with something?” he asks, turning fully towards me for the first time. “I thought perhaps you had accidently broken a bottle, but now I get the impression you are actually trying to threaten me with that little weapon.” His whitened eyes shine in the light from the chandelier above. His hair is wild and his shirt open enough to reveal a scarred, naked chest.
“I'm not threatening you with anything. I just want you to let Carina go. Come on James, the poor girl is terrified.”
“Poor girl? Your poor girl? She is not yours – she is mine.”
Carina screams, tries to wriggle to her feet. James roars in fury and swipes at her with the poker. It tears across a row of books, scorching them in a jagged black line. Some of them start to smoulder as Carina crawls towards me. “Vincent, stop him!”
“Don't you touch her!” James roars.
He raises the poker above his head and smashes me across the chest. I collide with the door in perfect time with Carina's scream. I clutch my chest, doubling over, before thrusting a desperate hand towards the bottle I've dropped. I don't even have time to brace the extraordinary pain as James brings the poker down on me again. But Carina's screaming makes him miss, and he only just catches my neck with its end. As I roll on the floor beneath him, he tears it across the back of my shoulders, and bending over with cautious precision he smashes it again into my chest. A horrible cry emanates from my throat, one of begging rage. My hands tremble for the bottle, finally grasping it and jabbing it in his direction. I need to threaten him with something, something that will frighten him off me. My mind is still with me but my body is now moving much more slowly.
The Intimates Page 14