Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  “I’m giving you all I have,” I said. “That’s the best I can do.”

  She laid the money on the night table beside her without looking at it and, bending over, she kissed my brow. “You’re a brick,” she said. She remained bent over me, looking into my eyes with mute, strangled gratitude, then kissed me on the mouth, not passionately, but slowly, lingeringly, as if to convey the affection which she couldn’t put into words and which she was too delicate to convey by offering her body.

  “I can’t say anything now,” she said, falling back on the pillow. “Je suis émue, c’est tout.” Then, after a brief pause, she added: “It’s strange how one’s own people are never as good to one as a stranger. You Americans are very kind, very gentle. We have much to learn from you.”

  It was such an old song to me, I almost felt ashamed of myself for having posed once again as the generous American. I explained to her that it was just an accident, my having so much money in my pocket. To this she replied that it was all the more wonderful, my gesture. “A Frenchman would hide it away,” she said. “He would never give it to the first girl he met just because she was in need of help. He wouldn’t believe her in the first place. ‘Je connais la chanson,’ he would say.”

  I said nothing more. It was true and it wasn’t true. It takes all sorts to make a world and, though up to that time I had never met a generous Frenchman, I believed that they existed. If I had told her how ungenerous my own friends had been, my countrymen, she would never have believed me. And if I had added that it was not generosity which had prompted me, but self-pity, myself giving to myself (because nobody could be as generous to me as I myself), she would probably have thought me slightly cracked.

  I snuggled up to her and buried my head in her bosom. I slid my head down and licked her navel. Then farther down, kissing the thick clump of hair. She drew my head up slowly and, pulling me on top of her, buried her tongue in my mouth. My cock stiffened instantly; it slid into her just as naturally as an engine going into a switch. I had one of those long, lingering hard-ons which drive a woman mad. I jibbed her about at will, now over, now under her, then sidewise, then drawing it out slowly, tantalisingly, massaging the lips of the vulva with the bristling tip of my cock. Finally I pulled it out altogether and twirled it around her breasts. She looked at it in astonishment. “Did you come?” she asked. “No,” I said. “We’re going to try something else now,” and I dragged her out of bed and placed her in position for a proper, thorough back-scuttling. She reached up under her crotch and put it in for me, wiggling her ass around invitingly as she did so. Gripping her firmly around the waist, I shot it into her guts. “Oh, oh, that’s marvellous, that’s wonderful,” she grunted, rolling her ass with a frenzied swing. I pulled it out again to give it an airing, rubbing it playfully against her buttocks. “No, no,” she begged, “don’t do that. Stick it in, stick it all the way in... I can’t wait.” Again she reached under and placed it for me, bending her back still more now, and pushing upward as if to trap the chandelier. I could feel it coming again, from the middle of my spine; I bent my knees slightly and pushed it in another notch or two. Then bango! it burst like a sky rocket.

  It was well into the dinner hour when we parted down the street in front of a urinal. I hadn’t made any definite appointment with her, nor had I enquired what her address might be. It was tacitly understood that the place to find her was at the café. Just as we were taking leave it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t even asked her what her name was. I called her back and asked her – not for her full name but for her first name. “N-Y-S,” she said, spelling it out. “Like the city, Nice.” I walked off, saying it over and over again to myself. I had never heard of a girl being called by that name before. It sounded like the name of a precious stone.

  When I reached the Place Clichy I realised that I was ravenously hungry. I stood in front of a fish restaurant on the Avenue de Clichy, studying the menu which was posted outside. I felt like having clams, lobsters, oysters, snails, a broiled bluefish, a tomato omelette, some tender asparagus tips, a savoury cheese, a loaf of bread, a bottle of chilled wine, some figs and nuts. I felt in my pocket, as I always do before entering a restaurant, and found a tiny sou. “Shit,” I said to myself, “she might at least have spared me a few francs.”

  THE GREAT SWITCHEROO

  Roald Dahl

  Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot. Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, his books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide. Dahl served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, during which he became a flying ace and intelligence officer, rising to the rank of Acting Wing Commander. He rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and he became one of the world’s best-selling authors. Switch Bitch (1974) is a short story collection for adults. Originally published in Playboy magazine in 1965, each story deals with sex and deception.

  There were about forty people at Jerry and Samantha’s cocktail-party that evening. It was the usual crowd, the usual discomfort, the usual appalling noise. People had to stand very close to one another and shout to make themselves heard. Many were grinning, showing capped white teeth. Most of them had a cigarette in the left hand, a drink in the right.

  I moved away from my wife Mary and her group. I headed for the small bar in the far corner, and when I got there, I sat down on a bar-stool and faced the room. I did this so that I could look at the women. I settled back with my shoulders against the bar-rail, sipping my Scotch and examining the women one by one over the rim of my glass.

  I was studying not their figures but their faces, and what interested me there was not so much the face itself but the big red mouth in the middle of it all. And even then, it wasn’t the whole mouth but only the lower lip. The lower lip, I had recently decided, was the great revealer. It gave away more than the eyes. The eyes hid their secrets. The lower lip hid very little. Take, for example, the lower lip of Jacinth Winkleman, who was standing nearest to me. Notice the wrinkles on that lip, how some were parallel and some radiated outward. No two people had the same pattern of lip-wrinkles, and come to think of it, you could catch a criminal that way if you had his lip-print on file and he had taken a drink at the scene of the crime. The lower lip is what you suck and nibble when you’re ruffled, and Martha Sullivan was doing that right now as she watched from a distance her fatuous husband slobbering over Judy Martinson. You lick it when lecherous. I could see Ginny Lomax licking hers with the tip of her tongue as she stood beside Ted Dorling and gazed up into his face. It was a deliberate lick, the tongue coming out slowly and making a slow wet wipe along the entire length of the lower lip. I saw Ted Dorling looking at Ginny’s tongue, which was what she wanted him to do.

  It really does seem to be a fact, I told myself, as my eyes wandered from lower lip to lower lip across the room, that all the less attractive traits of the human animal, arrogance, rapacity, gluttony, lasciviousness, and the rest of them, are clearly signalled in that little carapace of scarlet skin. But you have to know the code. The protuberant or bulging lower lip is supposed to signify sensuality. But this is only half true in men and wholly untrue in women. In women, it is the thin line you should look for, the narrow blade with the sharply delineated bottom edge. And in the nymphomaniac there is a tiny just visible crest of skin at the top centre of the lower lip.

  Samantha, my hostess, had that.

  Where was she now, Samantha?

  Ah, there she was, taking an empty glass out of a guest’s hand. Now she was heading my way to refill it.

  “Hello, Vic,” she said. “You all alone?”

  She’s a nympho-bird all right, I told myself. But a very rare example of the species, because she is entirely and utterly monogamous. She is a married monogamous nympho-bird who stays for ever in her own nest.

  She is also the fruitiest female I have ever set eyes upon in my whole life.

  “Let me help you,” I said, standing up and taking the
glass from her hand. “What’s wanted in here?”

  “Vodka on the rocks,” she said. “Thanks, Vic.” She laid a lovely long white arm upon the top of the bar and she leaned forward so that her bosom rested on the bar-rail, squashing upward. “Oops,” I said, pouring vodka outside the glass.

  Samantha looked at me with huge brown eyes, but said nothing.

  “I’ll wipe it up,” I said.

  She took the refilled glass from me and walked away. I watched her go. She was wearing black pants. They were so tight around the buttocks that the smallest mole or pimple would have shown through the cloth. But Samantha Rainbow had not a blemish on her bottom. I caught myself licking my own lower lip. That’s right, I thought. I want her. I lust after that woman. But it’s too risky to try. It would be suicide to make a pass at a girl like that. First of all, she lives next door, which is too close. Secondly, as I have already said, she is monogamous. Thirdly, she is thick as a thief with Mary, my own wife. They exchange dark female secrets. Fourthly, her husband Jerry is my very old and good friend, and not even I, Victor Hammond, though I am churning with lust, would dream of trying to seduce the wife of a man who is my very old and trusty friend.

  Unless...

  It was at this point, as I sat on the bar-stool letching over Samantha Rainbow, that an interesting idea began to filter quietly into the centre of my brain. I remained still, allowing the idea to expand. I watched Samantha across the room, and began fitting her into the framework of the idea. Oh, Samantha, my gorgeous and juicy little jewel, I shall have you yet.

  But could anybody seriously hope to get away with a crazy lark like that?

  No, not in a million nights.

  One couldn’t even try it unless Jerry agreed. So why think about it?

  Samantha was standing about six yards away, talking to Gilbert Mackesy. The fingers of her right hand were curled around a tall glass. The fingers were long and almost certainly dexterous.

  Assuming, just for the fun of it, that Jerry did agree, then even so, there would still be gigantic snags along the way. There was, for example, the little matter of physical characteristics. I had seen Jerry many times at the club having a shower after tennis, but right now I couldn’t for the life of me recall the necessary details. It wasn’t the sort of thing one noticed very much. Usually, one didn’t even look.

  Anyway, it would be madness to put the suggestion to Jerry point-blank. I didn’t know him that well. He might be horrified. He might even turn nasty. There could be an ugly scene. I must test him out, therefore, in some subtle fashion.

  “You know something,” I said to Jerry about an hour later when we were sitting together on the sofa having a last drink. The guests were drifting away and Samantha was by the door saying goodbye to them. My own wife Mary was out on the terrace talking to Bob Swain. I could see through the open french windows. “You know something funny?” I said to Jerry as we sat together on the sofa.

  “What’s funny?” Jerry asked me.

  “A fellow I had lunch with today told me a fantastic story. Quite unbelievable.”

  “What story?” Jerry said. The whisky had begun to make him sleepy.

  “This man, the one I had lunch with, had a terrific letch after the wife of his friend who lived nearby. And his friend had an equally big letch after the wife of the man I had lunch with. Do you see what I mean?”

  “You mean two fellers who lived close to each other both fancied each other’s wives.”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “Then there was no problem,” Jerry said.

  “There was a very big problem,” I said. “The wives were both very faithful and honourable women.”

  “Samantha’s the same,” Jerry said. “She wouldn’t look at another man.”

  “Nor would Mary,” I said. “She’s a fine girl.”

  Jerry emptied his glass and set it down carefully on the sofa-table. “So what happened in your story?” he said. “It sounds dirty.”

  “What happened,” I said, “was that these two randy sods cooked up a plan which made it possible for each of them to ravish the other’s wife without the wives ever knowing it. If you can believe such a thing.”

  “With chloroform?” Jerry said.

  “Not at all. They were fully conscious.”

  “Impossible,” Jerry said. “Someone’s been pulling your leg.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “From the way this man told it to me, with all the little details and everything, I don’t think he was making it up. In fact, I’m sure he wasn’t. And listen, they didn’t do it just once, either. They’ve been doing it every two or three weeks for months!”

  “And the wives don’t know?”

  “They haven’t a clue.”

  “I’ve got to hear this,” Jerry said. “Let’s get another drink first.”

  We crossed to the bar and refilled our glasses, then returned to the sofa.

  “You must remember,” I said, “that there had to be a tremendous lot of preparation and rehearsal beforehand. And many intimate details had to be exchanged to give the plan a chance of working. But the essential part of the scheme was simple:

  “They fixed a night, call it Saturday. On that night the husbands and wives were to go up to bed as usual, at say eleven or eleven thirty.

  “From then on, normal routine would be preserved. A little reading, perhaps, a little talking, then out with the lights.

  “After lights out, the husbands would at once roll over and pretend to go to sleep. This was to discourage their wives from getting fresh, which at this stage must on no account be permitted. So the wives went to sleep. But the husbands stayed awake. So far so good.

  “Then at precisely one a.m., by which time the wives would be in a good deep sleep, each husband would slip quietly out of bed, put on a pair of bedroom slippers and creep downstairs in his pyjamas. He would open the front door and go out into the night, taking care not to close the door behind him.

  “They lived,” I went on, “more or less across the street from one another. It was a quiet suburban neighbourhood and there was seldom anyone about at that hour. So these two furtive pyjama-clad figures would pass each other as they crossed the street, each one heading for another house, another bed, another woman.”

  Jerry was listening to me carefully. His eyes were a little glazed from drink, but he was listening to every word.

  “The next part,” I said, “had been prepared very thoroughly by both men. Each knew the inside of his friend’s house almost as well as he knew his own. He knew how to find his way in the dark both downstairs and up without knocking over the furniture. He knew his way to the stairs and exactly how many steps there were to the top and which of them creaked and which didn’t. He knew on which side of the bed the woman upstairs was sleeping.

  “Each took off his slippers and left them in the hall, then up the stairs he crept in his bare feet and pyjamas. This part of it, according to my friend, was rather exciting. He was in a dark silent house that wasn’t his own, and on his way to the main bedroom he had to pass no less than three children’s bedrooms where the doors were always left slightly open.”

  “Children!” Jerry cried. “My God, what if one of them had woken up and said, ‘Daddy, is that you?’”

  “That was all taken care of,” I said. “Emergency procedure would then come into effect immediately. Also if the wife, just as he was creeping into her room, woke up and said, ‘Darling, what’s wrong? Why are you wandering about?’; then again, emergency procedure.”

  “What emergency procedure?” Jerry said.

  “Simple,” I answered. “The man would immediately dash downstairs and out the front door and across to his own house and ring the bell. This was a signal for the other character, no matter what he was doing at the time, also to rush downstairs at full speed and open the door and let the other fellow in while he went out. This would get them both back quickly to their proper houses.”

  “With egg all over the
ir faces,” Jerry said.

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “That doorbell would have woken the whole house,” Jerry said.

  “Of course,” I said. “And the husband, returning upstairs in his pyjamas, would merely say, ‘I went to see who the hell was ringing the bell at this ungodly hour. Couldn’t find anyone. It must have been a drunk.’”

  “What about the other guy?” Jerry asked. “How does he explain why he rushed downstairs when his wife or child spoke to him?”

  “He would say, ‘I heard someone prowling about outside, so I rushed down to get him, but he escaped.’ ‘Did you actually see him?’ his wife would ask anxiously. “Of course I saw him,” the husband would answer. ‘He ran off down the street. He was too damn fast for me.’ Whereupon the husband would be warmly congratulated for his bravery.”

  “Okay,” Jerry said. “That’s the easy part. Everything so far is just a matter of good planning and good timing. But what happens when these two horny characters actually climb into bed with each other’s wives?”

  “They go right to it,” I said.

  “The wives are sleeping,” Jerry said.

  “I know,” I said. “So they proceed immediately with some very gentle but very skilful love-play, and by the time these dames are fully awake, they’re as randy as rattle-snakes.”

  “No talking, I presume,” Jerry said.

  “Not a word.”

  “Okay, so the wives are awake,” Jerry said. “And their hands get to work. So just for a start, what about the simple question of body size? What about the difference between the new man and the husband? What about tallness and shortness and fatness and thinness? You’re not telling me these men were physically identical?”

  “Not identical, obviously,” I said. “But they were more or less similar in build and height. That was essential. They were both clean-shaven and had roughly the same amount of hair on their heads. That sort of similarity is commonplace. Look at you and me, for instance. We’re roughly the same height and build, aren’t we?”