Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  Tessa felt a fine mist of sweat developing on the side of her body which faced the fire. Being naked and being still focused the mind on the skin in a way that was unique and sometimes, as now, unpleasant.

  Tessa was only mildly interested in art. She has however absorbed certain items of information about it from the conversations she finds herself overhearing. She knows that one artist, Renoir she believes, is said to have once claimed that he painted with his cock. Having a slightly literal mind, she had pictured this as a rather messy and not very accurate endeavour. Other artists were rather cruel to their models and mistresses and wives, forcing them to pose hour after hour in baths of chilly water. Giving them pneumonia. Killing them for art.

  What we do for love! she thinks. But I do this for money. For this rather mild and well-heeled group of retired school teachers and secretaries and librarians, and yes, even one dentist, Mr Burnside.

  And what do I do for love? For Philip? In the privacy of our own little rented terrace house? If I did it for money it would be vile, but as I said, I do it for love.

  “Okay,” says Christopher and he claps his hands twice. “That’s ten minutes. We’ll have two more quick poses then tea break.”

  Many in the class cluck their tongues and grumble in protest. They do not like the quick poses, but prefer the laboured long haul so that they can be fussy with shading and erasers and minutely recorded eyelashes. The others, like Miss Finch, see the process as work; as exercise for the hand and eye that must be kept up, lest they; it; art withers.

  Tessa manoeuvres herself into a sitting position, being careful to keep her thighs clamped shut, which has become almost second nature. She stands and stretches, pointing the fingers of both hands at the ceiling and flexing her feet so that she is balanced on tiptoe.

  “Ah,” Christopher breathes. “That’s beautiful! Could you hold that pose at all, Tessa?”

  She stays where she is, balanced, ridiculous, but apparently beautiful.

  What she does for love. In order to be told she is beautiful.

  Thirty seconds and her ankles, her toes, her knees are quivering. Another thirty seconds and she’s wobbling wildly.

  Actually only a fifth of the class are even attempting to draw her. Christopher has his pocket sketch book out of his pocket and is working furiously, as are Miss Finch and the red-haired lady.

  Tessa manages to hold it for two minutes, then Christopher puts his little black book back in the pocket of his corduroy jacket.

  “Alright, Tessa,” he says. “That’s enough.”

  She lowers her heels onto the comforting flatness of the floor, lets her arms slowly carve the air as they drop and relax, and rolls her head to ease the tension in her neck.

  “Oh, what’s that?” says Miss Finch and she is pointing at Tessa’s neck.

  “Dear me,” says the red-haired lady. “That’s nasty. It looks like a burn.”

  She comes closer to Tessa, bearing the unstoppable concern of the school teacher, the mother, the social worker, the nurse.

  “How on earth...” she asks and reaches for Tessa’s neck.

  Tessa ducks her head, tucks in her chin, pulls her hair down to cover the mark.

  What we do for money is limited, but love, as Tessa knows, is another exchange.

  “It’s nothing,” Tessa says. “It’s fine.”

  Given the chance and the time the class would carefully squeeze red paint from their little metal tubes, use the tip of the finest brush, and artfully record this mark upon the model’s neck.

  *

  She is invisible until the moment they have some evidence of her suffering.

  He had promised to leave no mark, but the games were getting more elaborate. More painful.

  What she does for love?

  In the little rented terrace house.

  With Philip who says he loves her as he fetches the rope from the box in the wardrobe, who says he won’t hurt her.

  She knows at this moment more than any other she should have a robe to cover herself with, and her heart burns with hatred for the thief.

  THE MAN ALSO RISES

  Christopher Peachment

  Christopher Peachment worked as a stage manager at the Royal Court before turning to journalism. In the 1980s, he was a film editor for Time Out in London, later becoming Deputy Literary Editor and Arts Editor for The Times. More recently, he edited the specialist magazine, Book and Magazine Collector. He has written two novels: Caravaggio (2002) and The Green and the Gold (2003). For a long time he contributed a column to the Erotic Review that many feel represents the magazine’s spirit and ethos, and which provided material for a book: The Diary of a Sex Fiend. He lives on the island of Crete.

  “Animal rights activists protested against the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona yesterday. They branded the event ‘barbaric’. The group is planning to hold a ‘Running of the Nudes’ alternative. Wearing only red scarves, horns and sturdy footwear, hundreds of nudes will run down Pamplona’s streets.” Independent

  “Tell me, old man,” I said, “what is this thing with the nude girls of the Pamplona run.”

  The old man looked at me and looked at the drunk, slumped in the dust against the wall of the bar.

  “My throat is dry,” he said.

  I poured him a tinto.

  “This tinto is good,” he said. “It is rough and it is strong, the way a tinto should be.”

  “The girls,” I said.

  “This thing with the nude girls of Pamplona,” he said. “It is a good thing. When you rise at dawn, and the sky is streaked, and the coffee is good and strong and the eggs are done the way you like them. And you eat before you set out to run before the girls. That is a good thing.”

  “Tell me about the girls,” I said.

  “The girls,” he said. “They are not like other girls. They are specially bred for the run, in the rugged foothills of Andalucia.”

  “What do they look like, old man?” I said.

  “Not like modern girls, the skinny ones with the small tetas. No. These girls are bred to have the big tetas, and that curve which real women used to have. And they have thighs like women used to have thighs. They have thighs that can squeeze the life from a man.”

  “And what do they wear in the hour of glory?” I said.

  “They wear the suit,” he said. “The special suit. It is a good suit.”

  “What suit?” I said.

  “The suit that God gave them when they were born.”

  “You mean they are...”

  “Nearly,” he said. “Except for the thong.”

  “I have heard of the thong,” I said.

  He took another drink of the tinto and spat into the dust of Navarra.

  “This thing with the thong,” he said. “It is a good thing.”

  “The thong thing is a good thing,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Some say that they have new ways,” I said. “Some say they shave the parts of which we do not speak.”

  “I spit on this shaving thing,” said the old man. “It is a new way, and it is not a good thing.”

  “Things change old man,” I said.

  “A woman’s hair is her pride,” he said. “It should be thick and dark, like the hair on her mother’s upper lip.”

  An American came into the bar. He had a beard and was built like a barrel. He looked at the bar and he looked at me and he looked at the old man and I thought for a moment that he was going to hit me, they way they do, but he saw my weapon, and then I saw in his eyes that he would not. I keep my weapon concealed, but he saw it through my special suit.

  “Will you be running, Americano?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I have a wound. From the last time.”

  “That is a bad thing,” I said. “Where is the wound?”

  “I am wounded in that place we do not speak of,” he said.

  “I am sorry for your wound, Americano,” I said. “It means you are not one fo
r the run.”

  “No,” he said. “I am not a run one.”

  “Still, you can watch,” I said.

  “De nada,” he said. “I will watch.”

  “Have a tinto,” I said.

  “I will have a tinto,” he said. “Though the tinto makes me tonto.”

  He turned to the old man.

  “Does he know what to do?” said the Americano.

  “All men know what to do,” said the old man. “It is in the cojones. It is in the blood. It is a good thing, this thing with the cojones and the blood. All men have it, and they know this thing. And if they do not have it, they are a maricon.”

  And then from around the far corner I heard the sound. It was a terrible sound. I looked at the old man.

  “Is that the sound?” I said.

  “That is the sound,” he said. “The sound that calls you to be a man.”

  I stood up and brushed the dust of Navarra from my special suit. The sound of beasts grew louder as they stamped and ran and trampled the dust and trampled down all before them.

  “They are coming,” I said.

  “Vaya con Dios,” said the old man. “Come back a man. Or do not come back.”

  I stood up. That is all a man can do at this time. A man must stand up.

  Round the corner they came, the nude girls of Pamplona. They were proud and they were fierce and I could see from their eyes that their blood was up. There was nothing for it but to see this thing through to its rightful end. There would be the spilling of the fluids of bodies on the sand before the sun would set. And this spilling of the fluids would be a good thing.

  Already the young bucks were scattering before the charge. They were young and they were full of bravado, and they wanted the world to see that they were men. But they were not men, not yet. The nude girls of Pamplona bore down on them, their massive tetas swinging in the afternoon heat, their thick thighs pounding the dust of Navarra and their thongs... Words could not describe their thongs. Their thongs were unspeakable.

  Then one man went down before the run, and in an instant they were on him. He went down in the dust and that minute was the last he knew. They were on him and they were doing what the old man warned me they would do.

  “When they are on you,” he said, “they will toss.”

  “This toss,” I said, “is it a good thing?”

  “It is not a good thing,” he said. “If you go down, and they toss you, I will put you out of your misery.” He patted the holster at his side.

  “You would do that for me?” I said.

  “You will thank me for it,” he said.

  I looked across at the young man. The nude girls of Pamplona were tossing him and tossing him. He cried out, just once, and then it was over. They left him there in the white dust of Navarra, a spent and broken husk.

  And then the leading nude girl of Pamplona looked up at me.

  “It is the moment of truth,” said the old man.

  I drew my weapon. It is a good weapon. Not as good a weapon as the old man’s, which was worn and polished with use, and only a little rusty. But my weapon has been honed in the rugged houses of love in Toledo and it is a good weapon. The old man had told me how to hold it, and how to polish it for the nude girls of Pamplona.

  The girl of Pamplona looked at my weapon and her nostrils grew wide and I could hear her sharp intake of breath. Her feet pawed the dust as she gathered herself. She looked into my eyes. I looked into her eyes. She charged.

  She charged like no girl had charged before. When she charged the earth held steady for a moment and then it shook with the pounding of her feet. The earth moved with the weight of her thighs. Her body in its special birthday suit was thick with sweat and dust, and I knew that I must stand firm and wait.

  There is a moment, just one brief moment, before she is upon you. And that moment is when a man must strike. A man must strike at this moment if he is to be a man. Knowing where to thrust the weapon is the thing to know. Standing tall, I cried out to her, twice.

  “Senorita. Come,” I cried. “Come. Come, senorita.”

  And I thrust my weapon in at the spot. It went in deep, the way a weapon should go in, and I held my ground and thrust it harder. And briefly, very briefly, the nude girl of Pamplona and I were one.

  She struggled after that. But it was over. My weapon sank deeper and it was all over for her. She sank to the dust. Her eyes were glazed and her breathing slowed. And the lips of her mouth were pulled back over her teeth and she was happy in her fate.

  I looked over at the old man. He nodded just once. He walked over, drew his knife, and cut off the ragged remains of her thong.

  “It is yours,” he said, handing the thong to me. “You have earned it, El Hombre.”

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  About the Artwork

  The cover image of the book, World of Interiors, is by British artist Jonathan Yeo (b. London, 18 December 1970) and part of his collage series which dates back to 2007. Yeo is one of the world’s leading figurative artists with portraits of Tony Blair, Malala Yousafzai, Kevin Spacey, Cara Delevingne and Damien Hirst amongst his best known works. He is represented in many public and private collections internationally and has been the subject of major retrospective exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in London, The Lowry in Manchester and the Museum of National History in Denmark amongst others.

  World of Interiors is an experiment in making designs from pornographic magazine cuttings which mimic the style of traditional wallpaper patterns. The work is a continuation of Yeo’s Porn Collage Series, which started with an ironic portrait of former President George W. Bush in 2007, made from cuttings of similarly explicit material. By disguising the adult content as something innocuous and decorative, the viewer is invited to make the connection with the increasing pervasion of explicit imagery in advertising and contemporary culture.

  About Mariella Frostrup

  MARIELLA FROSTRUP is a writer and broadcaster whose career has established her at the forefront of arts and culture in the UK. She is best known as presenter of Radio 4’s weekly programme Open Book. She is also one of the UK’s longest running agony aunts, with her column ‘Dear Mariella’ for the Observer.

  She has been on the judging panels of numerous awards including The Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, the Costa Prize, the Turner Prize and the RIBA Stirling Prize Awards. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds an honorary doctorate from Nottingham Trent University.

  Mariella lives in London and Somerset with her husband and two children. The Erotic Review is the iconic magazine devoted to two things: great writing and great sex.

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  First published in the UK in 2016 by Head of Zeus Ltd.

  In the compilation and introduc
tory material © Erotic Review, 2016

  In the compilation and foreword material © Mariella Frostrup, 2016

  Cover image World of Interiors ©Jonathan Yeo 2016

  The moral right of Mariella Frostrup and the Erotic Review to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  The moral right of the contributing authors of this anthology to be identified as such is asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is an anthology of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in each story are either products of each author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB) 9781784975449

  ISBN (E) 9781784975432

  Author photograph © Rankin

  Cover art: Leaf Collage Wallpaper © Jonathan Yeo 2016

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  Extended Copyright

  Nicholson Baker: ‘Shandee Finds Dave’s Arm’ from House of Holes by Nicholson Baker. Copyright © Nicholson Baker, 2011. First published by Simon & Schuster UK.