The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  ‘The hell with it!’ she called to them. ‘A short happy life is better than a long miserable one! That’s my motto.’ Consoling herself with the thought that these creatures had never known a wet, grey city landscape she paused for a moment and looked towards the shrubs that screened the campsite. She was overwhelmed with a sudden stabbing need for a lover to magically appear beside her and throw her to the sand. With a guilty start she realised that this lover had no face. At that moment she would have allowed herself to be taken by anyone – including Qito who, anyway, would give her no choice.

  For some reason this thought inflamed her. Going to the folding table, so immaculate with its clipped-on, pristine white linen cover, she poured more of the heavy red wine and drank it down in one huge gulp. With her head buzzing with alcohol she turned away and found a sensuously curved palm tree. She lay there, her back against the sharply ridged trunk, while letting the fingers of one hand seek out her sex.

  Opening her thighs slightly, so not to disturb her evenly balanced body, she sought out her hardened and aroused bud. Moistened and ready, her fingers gently stroked the apex of her pleasure, dispatching waves of toe-curling energy to the furthest ends of her body.

  Giving way totally, she felt the warm tropical air blanketing her as she rocked herself harder and faster into an unconscious riot of emotion, leading to her heavily breathed, choked words. ‘Hurt me!’ she gasped. ‘Hurt me, take me! Hurt me!’ she told the palm as she ground her naked back into the tearing ridges of the tree bark.

  At the moment of orgasm there was only one thought in her head. ‘Jeffrey!’ she called into the still warm air, and then collapsed as all the energy flooded out of her.

  Levering herself from the tree, aware that she had all but rubbed her back raw, she lay on the mattress-like texture of the sand and felt totally miserable.

  ‘Why did you have to be married?’ she asked the gritty sand.

  13

  STANDING BENEATH THE drifting mist of water Helen had time and space to think. Posing, she decided, was a mindless task, but the thoughts that crowded in to fill the unengaged space in her head were unsettling.

  She marvelled at the pandemonium of events which had brought her to be standing naked on an uninhabited island in the company of a man whose name had, less than a week ago, been but a legend.

  With only the occasional screech of an outraged bird to break the all-pervading silence, her mind was free to retrace the steps that had brought her here.

  Carla. Astonishing that she had shared intimacy with yet another legend and done so without remorse or shame. The yacht, although a magnificent experience in itself, had become no more than, as her mother would have said, an ‘extravagant’ means of transportation peopled by beings from another world in which she remained an alien.

  In boarding the jet which had brought her from Paris she had been taking flight in more senses than one. She had been fleeing from Jeffrey. A man with whom, in the intimacy of a bed, she had exposed her body, and, even more intimately, her inner fears, more totally than to any other living being. That he had harboured significant secrets while presuming to delve even deeper into her own life, had shattered her. It wasn’t the fact of his being married that bothered her so much. After all, she had no such expectations of him, but that he, in the face of her confessions, should not have found time to mention it, appalled her, and told her that he was not the man she had thought him to be.

  The incident with the flight crew had been sheer vengeance. As that thought entered her head she wondered why she didn’t think of the intimacy with Carla in the same light, before realising that there was a very great difference. What she had done with the pilots had been of her choice, while Carla, while not coercive, had imposed intimacy on her.

  The same was true of Jeffrey. He had come into her life like a whirlwind and, gathering her up like a latter-day Dorothy, had taken her down the yellow brick road which had led, not to Oz, but to disappointment. She had wanted Jeffrey to be the all-knowing Wizard able to grant her every wish, but instead she found him to be the Tin Man who had no heart. Of even less comfort to her was the suspicion that she had cast herself in the role of the Scarecrow – all outward appearance and no substance – a victim but now resolved to be a victim no more.

  ‘The light’s going. Let’s call it a day.’ Qito’s voice echoed dully about the glade and was heard by Helen with enormous relief. Her arms, which she had been holding above her head, throbbed with relief when she lowered them and, for a moment, she was back in Jeffrey’s penthouse recovering from his bondage of her in the conservatory.

  Hoping for a glimpse at his progress Helen was disappointed to see him hastily lower a canvas flap to cover the painting. Anticipating her protest he told her she could only see it when it was complete.

  Her offer to help him carry the canvas back to the camp was dismissed. ‘No need,’ he told her. ‘There’s no one else on the island.’

  ‘It might rain.’

  ‘Not likely and, in any case, the cover is waterproof. Moving a wet oil is likely to do more damage than leaving it where it is.’ Helen saw that Qito looked drawn and tired as he turned and started leading the way through the flowering shrubs to the beach.

  ‘Shall I help with the evening meal?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I can’t stand people watching me work – whether it’s painting or cooking. You go have a swim or something. I’ll call you when it’s ready.’

  Standing on the beach watching the sun redden and start its seemingly headlong plunge over the horizon, Helen felt a sense of acute isolation as she realised the immensity of the ocean at her feet and her own insignificant occupancy of this tiny speck of earth. Had it not been for Qito she would, at that moment, have thought herself totally forgotten by the teeming outside world. She sought refuge from her thoughts by wading hip-deep into the warm tropical water and then, plunging head first, sought to swim herself into a state of exhaustion.

  Tiring quickly from her initial exertions, she turned on her back and gazed upward into the even greater immensity of a sky which was already starting to light up its stars. Lazily she swam and floated until, feeling more relaxed, she was overjoyed to hear Qito’s voice calling her to come to the table.

  Qito had lit and strung four oil lamps from a rope suspended between the trees, while on the table lay dishes of food which stingingly reminded her she was famished.

  Qito had magicked a dish of an exotic fish under a thick piquant sauce accompanied by pasta and a salad which, as she ate, filled her with a reassuring sense of well-being. ‘This is delicious,’ she told him. ‘Where did you learn to cook like this?’

  ‘Only when you’ve known real hunger,’ he told her, ‘do you learn to appreciate food.’

  Looking at the famed face in the light of the lamps Helen remembered Carla talking about finding someone even hungrier than she had been and, with a pang of envy, she saw that the bond that had been forged between the two of them was close to unbreakable. Idly, she played with the idea of scouring the attics of London to find herself a similar cause deserving of devotion but then decided, with her luck, she would devote twenty or thirty years to a no-hoper and, in any case, thirty years was a long time to wait for posterity to catch up.

  Helen ate silently for some moments, aware that Qito, having wolfed down his food, was now enjoying his third or fourth glass of wine and was watching her closely. She hoped his mind wasn’t speculating on anything sexual and she was startled when he seemed to have tuned into the thought.

  ‘Is it too boring?’ he asked her.

  ‘Posing?’ she asked. ‘Not boring, but I had no idea how tiring it could be.’

  ‘I meant being here with me,’ he insisted. ‘With a lover this place could be paradise for a young woman. Unfortunately, when I work, I am impotent with everything but my paints, so I cannot fill that role for you even had you wanted me to.’

  Uncomfortable with the thought that he might be reading her mind, she sought to
divert him. ‘Carla did warn me.’

  Qito nodded. ‘Carla is extremely possessive of me, but she earned that right.’

  ‘Aren’t you jealous of her?’

  This question was greeted with a scornful laugh. ‘Any man who marries a beautiful woman and imagines she cannot be tempted by other admirers is a fool. Jealousy is a total waste of energies which can be better employed in seeking redemption.’

  Helen found the word ‘redemption’ laying heavily on the table. Big philosophical concepts had always made her uneasy since she suspected she would never understand them. ‘Are you a religious man?’ she asked.

  Shaking his head, Qito reached out to refill her glass. ‘I believe in the soul. That is my perception of what life is – a striving to find a soul. When we have that, we have redemption. Not in the eyes of some prescient, all-seeing deity, but for ourselves. A simple self-justification for having lived.’

  ‘You’ve found it then,’ smiled Helen. ‘In your art, I mean.’

  ‘In the eyes of others, perhaps. I have yet to find it in myself. Redemption calls for discipline; gratification is much more accessible so we take the easier path and, in the struggle, lose purity, without which, all is lost.’

  ‘Your philosophy sounds almost monastic.’

  Roaring with laughter, Qito rose from the table. ‘The monks wouldn’t have me!’ he cried and, reaching for a bottle of brandy, poured himself a generous draught. ‘Which of them was it prayed: “God grant me chastity – but not yet!”? That is my downfall, you see?’

  Helen shrugged off the question as Qito came round the table, cupped his hands about her face and lifted her bodily to her feet. ‘You are a very beautiful woman,’ he told her, ‘but I am a tired old man and must now go to my rest. We shall meet again at dawn.’ Planting a chaste kiss to each of her cheeks, he wished her goodnight and disappeared into the tent.

  Helen watched the tent flap drop back into place behind him and couldn’t escape a feeling of rejection. Perversely, she felt he might at least have tried something with her if only to give her the virtue of rejecting him. Now, instead, she found herself, revitalised by food, facing a long empty evening.

  A stir of the palm fronds reminded her that a night breeze had sprung up, so, finding a blanket, she wrapped it around herself and was drawn towards the brilliantly moonlit beach.

  There, watching the liquid silver ocean rippling under the full moon, she thought of herself as standing on the edge of eternity. Qito had said life was a quest for the soul and here, she decided, was as good a place to look for it as any other.

  She spread the blanket, lay down on the still, warm sands and looked into the immense sky above her. The combination of wine and sun and Qito’s philosophising – not to mention his working ‘impotence’ – had induced in her a warm glow of relaxation which, for Helen, always brought about a sensual awareness. Qito had been right in one thing. This was a place to be shared with a lover but where was he to come from? With one hand trailing over her groin and another cupping her breasts, she was reminded of Qito’s words: ‘Gratification is much more accessible,’ and that, her questing fingers reminded her, was certainly true but she lacked the fantasy to stimulate herself. Carla? The pilots? Both conjured up a background of sophisticated technology which was far from her mood.

  Closing her eyes, she sought out her old favourite. The regiment of sex-starved men, but even they were out of ear-shot, and she was left with nothing but the physical stimulation of herself.

  It was then that some sixth sense, or, perhaps, some tiny sound, caused her to open her eyes. There, rearing above her, the whites of his eyes bright in the moonlight, stood a man. Curiously Helen felt no fear and was, only afterwards, to understand why. In the moment of opening her eyes and registering the man’s presence she had imagined him a manifestation of her own longings.

  After a moment of stilled surprise Helen found herself smiling a welcome. The man said nothing. His body, bare to the rope that supported his baggy sailcloth trousers, was athletically dark and polished, with the moonlight bright enough to shadow the deep contours of a powerful chest. Feeling that to speak would break the magical moment, she instead spread her thighs and arms in invitation. The man’s expression barely flickered and she saw that more was demanded of her.

  She laid a hand on the man’s groin and, feeling him already hardening, reached for the knotted rope that supported his trousers. The man brushed aside her feebly questing fingers to quickly dispose of the knot himself. The baggy trousers slid from his taut, muscular stomach and Helen, now more fervent, took him fully into her fist, thrilled to find that her fingers could barely meet about the thickness of the still-growing penis. She drew him down to kneel beside her in the sand. Unwilling to lose her daring initiative she guided the intimidating size of him down over her belly to where her readied sheath awaited his sword.

  It was then, inevitably, that she ceded all control. Now the man, his body tangy with salt, lay above her, staring directly into her widened expectant eyes, seeming to ask if she had enough courage to take him. Gathering both her wrists in one huge, roughly textured hand, he effortlessly pulled them rigidly above her head, pinning her helplessly under his body, which now bore down on her with threatening weight and slab-like solidity. Searching the man’s eyes, she could see no sign of curiosity about who she might be and, more worryingly, no sign of mercy. Helen wanted to speak – to give consent, reassure him that her reaction was that he paid her homage rather than rape, but his intense, set expression muted her, and made her know that what was about to happen would be devoid of tenderness and that pain and pleasure would be mixed in equal parts.

  When he moved to gently probe at the outermost sides of her pubis she could not suppress the gasp of welcome that escaped her tight lips. Urgently she rose to meet him, swallow him, but he paused, teasing her to the point of torture. Shuddering with expectation, she tried tearing her hands from his indomitable grasp to wind them round him and use her nails to goad him into her, but still he waited, his face expressionless. As her body begged, he ended the agony of expectation. And so it was with relief and apprehension that she felt him pressing gently forward, opening her up to penetrate, with deliberate slowness, deep into the centre of her soul, until she writhed, her body pleading, even as her fear mounted that she could never accommodate him. Just when she was certain she would be split in two he began to withdraw – so slowly and with such deliberation that she feared he meant to drive her to distraction.

  Shamelessly, fearing that he meant to abandon her, she pressed herself against him, her legs around his broad hips, until she was all but lifted from the blanket. It was then, when she was at her most vulnerable, that he plunged with surprising accuracy deep into her to rub against the tender flesh inside her. He brought forth a gasp which ripped through the silence of the night as, having shown her the worst, he once more withdrew with tantalising slowness to hover at the gate.

  There his solid cock rested, teasing and threatening before, when she least expected it, it again plunged deep into her, ravaging her senses to be immediately followed by another, even more hearty thrust, causing her to voice yet another scream of triumphant pleasure.

  His movements became a mix of slow withdrawals and inward thrusts. There was no tender smile, no brush of his lips to reassure a vulnerable Helen. Instead, he held himself away from her upwardly arching body, creating a space of intense heat between them, making her skin as liquid as the fire he stoked in her loins. Not one word had passed between them as he plunged himself, huge and vibrating, inside her. The sheer strength of this assault excited her as she strained to intensify her own pain by squeezing her stretched, outer lips, vainly attempting to trap his huge, pulsating cock.

  The only sounds between them had been her alternating cries and sighs, lending an almost ritual air to her exquisite torment. When she felt the helpless embrace of her own orgasm rushing through her, it seemed almost impertinent. He, this man, this stranger, this total
ly unknown lover, gave no sign that he felt anything other than a delight in assailing the willing flesh laid open to his mercy.

  Consciously aware that this was animal savagery, she cried out in the certainty that this was right. To couple without preliminary, without even a word, was totally in tune with the primaeval setting and her own mood. Waves of orgasm swept through her, as she abandoned every doubt and restraint imposed by hundreds and thousands of years of social pretensions. Qito had spoken of redemption and now, naked and savage, she felt she was close to knowing it – red in tooth and claw!

  His expression didn’t alter one iota as he continued orchestrating one unstoppable wave after another – his heavy sac banging into her until, without warning, he pulled completely out of her. His grip still firm on her wrists, he raised himself until she could feel the dead weight of him between her breasts. With his free hand he took both her breasts to squeeze them tight about his huge erection so that she felt his throbbing climax long before the first gouts of his heated offering spurted forth to lay a sticky trail across her throat and lips. With this came the first sign of humanity in the man as his body relaxed and his weight came down, threatening to crush her as her freed hands forced themselves between their sweat-streaked bodies, to seek out the precious fluid that lay there.

  Smearing her breasts and belly, as if anxious to coat herself in the memory of him, she reached up and tried, with the other arm, to draw him down to her, shamelessly seeking some moderating tenderness in which she could express her thanks in the only language her fevered mind could recall.

  The man seemed puzzled by this gesture and, despite her protest, levered himself out of her attempted embrace to stand over her. Muted by the immensity of him, she continued to work the rapidly cooling semen in a vain attempt to soothe her aching breasts. Unable to summon the will to move, she lay, her eyes filled with the still half-erected hugeness of him, and passively watched him reach for his discarded trousers. With eyes that never left her, he put them on, tied the rope and, still expressionless, turned away.