Gigolo

by Ben Foster

  ‘That’s too much, Vivienne.’

  ‘No it’s not. Not for a work of art in progress,’ she replied.

  8

  DEEP BREATHING

  Claire fell asleep laying on top of me as I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for about the twentieth time. Ollie and George identified with Charlie Bucket. I suppose I did as well. Charlie is a poor boy who has a stroke of luck finding a golden ticket in a chocolate wrapping that allows him to enter the secret world of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory.

  ‘Why can’t we have Wonka chocolate, dad?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘It’s only a story. It’s probably the same as a Crunchie.’

  ‘What, with honeycomb?’

  ‘Can’t see why not.’

  ‘I wanna Wonka,’ George intoned in his deep little voice and Ollie groaned.

  ‘It’s only a story,’ he said.

  ‘Right, you two, back to your own room. I’m going to put Claire in her cot.’

  ‘Can we have another story, dad?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘If you get into bed and be quiet.’

  The boys ran out, George copying Ollie by pressing his finger to his lips. Ollie gave George the occasional shove, it’s what older brothers do, but he watched out for him crossing the road and was always protective. I was sure they would be friends for the rest of their lives and I was sorry not having a brother to share my secrets with.

  Claire was sighing, deep in sleep. She was a non-stop ball of activity from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning and snuggled straight down sucking the corner of her blanket when she went to bed at night. It made my eyes grow misty just looking at her sleeping.

  We’d learned from all the bringing-up-baby guides that getting children used to books was the best start in life and helped them adjust to school when they started. No one thought of those things when Kelly and I were growing up and we knew how important education was because we didn’t have any. I read another story to the boys and went downstairs to join Kelly.

  We had the new Doctor Who series on video recorded for us by Pete. I watched David Tennant, the Time Lord in a pin-stripe suit, leap through space and time with Billie Piper, his companion, blonde with bright eyes and teeth like a shark.

  ‘Here we go, saving the world again.’

  ‘Shush. I’m watching.’

  ‘No wonder he’s got bags under his eyes.’

  ‘Is that the green-eyed monster talking? He’s gorgeous.’

  ‘He looks gay to me,’ I said and she turned with an irritated expression.

  ‘You can tell by the way Billie Piper looks at him he’s not gay.’

  ‘Billie Piper, now that’s another story. She’s . . . ’ I paused. ‘She’s luscious.’

  Kelly sniffed the air. ‘Luscious,’ she repeated. ‘That’s a new one.’

  ‘Only word for Billie Piper.’

  ‘Dream on,’ she said, and I didn’t say sometimes dreams do come true.

  In two days, I had slept with two of the most beautiful women in the world. I had a new Volkswagen Golf and a cheque for £500. I had a satiated if slightly tender penis and I was living in a parallel galaxy. Millions of ghosts had emerged through a time warp in the universe. Four Daleks in a void ship were following Doctor Who and I had no doubt he would save the world before I found a way to explain to Kelly how my private parts came to be denuded of pubic hair.

  I kept picturing the fine silvery lines meshed across Vivienne’s back, her bottom turning pink as I spanked her, the way it felt as if the world had been reborn as we erupted in orgasm. Why had she been wearing ballet clothes when I arrived? Why did she want to make a mould of my penis? What did cazzo mean? It was obvious, but nothing with Vivienne was obvious.

  When innocence ends, pleasure begins.

  Had I lost my innocence along with my pubic hair?

  The only reason men shave their pubes is when they get crabs, and that gave me an idea. I would tell Kelly there was an outbreak at The Lodge and the staff had been advised to shave as a precaution. That’s what I was thinking about while the characters in Doctor Who flickered across the screen. Then it struck me: I don’t have to tell her anything at all. Kelly was uncomfortable with nudity. She rarely saw me naked, unless I was stepping from the bath. I just had to be careful and save the explanation in case I needed it.

  I squeezed the dimples above Kelly’s knee and she almost jumped off the couch.

  ‘Ouch. I hate it when you do that.’

  ‘I’m going to read, Jelly Belly,’ I said and kissed her cheek.

  When I was broke or bored or feeling down, I chose one of the books from the shelf in the bedroom and reading always put me in a better mood. Not that I was in a bad mood. I was confused. I wanted to feel ashamed, remorseful, angry with myself. But I didn’t. I wasn’t. What had happened with Vivienne that day was beautiful, natural, life-affirming. It was going to happen again. We were at the beginning of something, not the end, and I had no intention or desire to stop it.

  I picked up Martin Kirk’s Hatha Yoga and settled down on the bed with my head against the pillow.

  It always comes as a shock when I tell people that you can relieve stress simply by breathing properly. Pranayama, the Sanskrit word, means breath control, a force when mastered that intensifies the body’s energy levels and aids the heart in its job of pumping blood through our veins. Shallow breathing, customary for most people, doesn’t oxygenate the blood. The result is a build-up of toxins. It is those toxins that make us feel sluggish, restless, despondent. Deep breathing nourishes and repairs body cells. It washes out toxins and makes us feel content and balanced. I had learned a simple technique easy for anyone to practise:

  Inhale for the count of two

  Exhale for the count of TWO

  Inhale for the count of two

  Exhale for the count of THREE

  Inhale for the count of two

  Exhale for the count of FOUR

  Inhale for the count of two

  Exhale for the count of FIVE

  By repeating this several times, when you breathe normally, you feel more alert. You can stay in focus longer if you need to concentrate, and still the mind if you want to meditate. The secret of meditation, its very purpose, isn’t to think about something, to ponder some puzzle or mystery, but to think about nothing at all. I exhaled and took another breath, but it wasn’t the void that I entered, it was Vivienne Raynott’s gallery of sadomasochistic images with Vivienne stretched out between the Henry Moore sculpture and the black stone woman and child.

  I had never lied to Kelly. Now each lie was compounded by another lie – Maggs, Vivienne, I didn’t even have the courage to tell my wife I had a £500 cheque in my pocket, money we so desperately needed. It was hardly the worst thing that could have happened. It was the best thing that had ever happened, and that made it all the more confusing. I was like one of those lottery winners who suddenly had a fortune and wanted to blow it all so I could get back to normality. Or the drunk with a hangover who swears in the morning he will never drink again and can’t wait till the pubs open so he can have a pint at lunchtime.

  I cleaned my teeth, stepped over the safety gate and went back downstairs. Kelly was watching another episode of Doctor Who and I snuggled up close on the couch.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ she said.

  ‘Love you,’ I replied.

  First thing Monday morning, I repaired the wheelbarrow and cleaned out the rest of the weeds from the garden with Ollie and George. I drove to the bank to deposit the cheque and used the credit card to buy new trainers for the three of us knowing the money would be there to cover it when the bill came in.

  The boys knew better than me what Kelly bought in the supermarket and filled the trolley with their favourite things. Ollie must have had an addictive personality – I wasn’t sure who he took after – and his eyes lit up when we stumbled upon a special offer on five-packs of Crunchies. He jumped up and down he was so excited.

  �
�Get five dad, go on, get five.’

  The supermarkets had convinced us it was cheaper buying economy packs and that’s how they made their money, making us spend more to save more.

  ‘I will this time. But they have to last a week. All your teeth are going to fall out if you keep eating chocolate.’

  ‘Thanks, dad,’ he said, and gently laid the Crunchies in the bottom of the trolley.

  By the time we went through the checkout, we had enough packets of biscuits and crisps to last till Christmas.

  ‘Don’t go mad, Ben, you’ve only done two extra massages,’ Kelly said as she unloaded the bags. ‘New trainers as well . . . ’

  ‘It’s called positive thinking,’ I replied. ‘When you stop worrying about money, the universe opens up and it comes pouring in.’

  ‘I suppose all your rich friends have been telling you that.’

  ‘No, they don’t think about that sort of thing.’

  ‘What do they think about?’

  ‘I don’t know, art and music, you know, like Bach, Van Gogh. When you don’t have to worry about money, you can think about other things.’

  ‘Still makes me wonder how someone can just give you a new car.’

  ‘Like you said, Kells, we paid for it out of our taxes.’

  She had taken my new trainers out of the bag; white Nike’s with red lightning stripes down each side. ‘They don’t look cheap.’

  ‘They cost what they cost,’ I said. ‘Honestly, don’t worry. I have to look my best if I’m going to get more work. Five massages a week and I’ll be earning the same as what I’m getting at The Lodge.’

  I gave her a hug, the boys howled in protest – as usual, and there was a knock on the door.

  Carly, our kind neighbour, had arrived for her massage. Lily, her little girl, was Ollie’s girlfriend and I was sure there would be tears before lunch if George and Claire intruded on the private world of big boys and girls.

  With Carly stripped to her knickers and bra, I oiled my hands with the last of the arnica and told her to count to ten as she held her breath. She had shooting pains along the sciatic nerve and down the back of each leg. I massaged her lower back, concentrating on one area. Working out the tightness in the lumbar muscles reduces the stress on the intervertebral disc, relieving the discomfort, though not its cause.

  ‘Ah, that’s so much better. You have magic hands, Ben.’

  ‘I know, I should be a conjuror.’

  ‘You’d earn more money, like that, whatshisname, you know, Darren something or other?’

  ‘Derren Brown.’

  ‘That’s him. You could do that. You’ve got a face for the telly.’

  ‘Someone once told me I had a face for radio,’ I said and she laughed.

  ‘Aw Aw. Ouch. It hurts when I laugh.’

  It was warm with the morning sun lighting the room. I opened the window as wide as it would go and glanced out at the garden. The roses still had their blooms and a pair of blackbirds were pecking over the fresh earth where I’d cleared the weeds. Like the garden, everything that had been muddled in my mind the previous night was clearer in the daylight.

  I worked my way over Carly’s thighs. There was no stirring between my legs. I was a professional again, not that Carly was anything like Vivienne. She was about the same age, under thirty, and getting heavy with big hips and a wide backside. A bottle of Lucozade stood on the side table. People thought it was an energy drink, but it is full of empty calories and the sugar doesn’t give you more drive, it gives you a momentary boost and then you feel more weary.

  ‘Hope you drink plenty of water, Carly, you have to hydrate. It’s good for the sciatica. It’s good for everything.’

  ‘I don’t like water, it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.’

  ‘It’s better for you than all those fizzy drinks.’

  ‘I know, but a little bit of what you fancy does you good.’

  ‘As long as it’s not too much of what you fancy,’ I said.

  She laughed and said ouch again.

  We really are our own worst enemy. Old people were dying that summer from dehydration, and still they wouldn’t drink water. Another thing that struck me as a bit strange, most of the poor women on the estate were fat and all the rich women I’d met in the Great Hall were thin. Was there a secret diet only rich people knew about?

  Before lunch, I went for my jog. I called at Pete Taylor’s house, but he was still at work. He started in the dark at four, spent four hours with his unit sorting the mail into the different ‘walks,’ then spent another five hours hiking five miles to deliver 600 letters a day. A five mile walk is good for you, but better when you’re not stopping and starting. I glanced across the road at the white Golf sparkling in the sunshine and carried on through the estate to the park.

  I ran fast, it was hot, and I sweated out all the toxins and doubt. Boys raced each other on skateboards. Girls sunbathed in their underwear. I saw a mother duck snapping at little dogs as she herded her five ducklings back to the lake. Families were eating pizza. Everything today was the same as yesterday. You can’t change the past or the inevitable. I had read that in one of my books and it’s true. I had set out on a path and there was no turning back.

  After lunch I went back to give Pete a foot massage. I wanted to tell him about those last couple of days. I needed to tell someone, but it was so unlikely that I’d got with two classy women in two days it would have sounded like a great big boast at best, a gigantic lie more likely. I couldn’t avoid telling him I had a new car, he was going to see it soon enough, so I worked out a more feasible story while I stirred some foaming gel into a bowl of hot water. While his feet softened in the bowl, I told him the Red Beast had finally died and Lady Margaret had arranged for me to have a new car on a lease through some tax fiddle.

  ‘Must have been a bloody good massage,’ he said.

  ‘The best,’ I replied.

  ‘So what’s she like?’

  ‘You know, money to burn. Big house, butler who used to be a Para, more like a bodyguard. Nice though . . . ’

  ‘The butler?’

  I laughed. ‘Actually, not a bad bloke. He wants to open a hotel in Italy.’

  ‘How the other half live.’ He paused. ‘And what’s she like?’ he asked again.

  ‘Attractive, you know, reddish hair, green eyes. Funny. Nice. She’s not snobby at all.’

  I towelled his feet dry and rubbed in some eucalyptus cream. I sat on a leather bench and rested his left foot in my lap. I began by massaging the instep, applying pressure as I worked around to the sole, then back again. I used my thumbs to press out the stress from the heel, turning in close circles with medium pressure before repeating the motion on the ball of the foot.

  ‘Do you drink plenty of water, Pete? You should this weather.’

  ‘All the time, mate. Eight glasses a day.’

  ‘I just gave Carly her massage. She came with a bottle of fizzy drink. She says water leaves a bad taste in her mouth.’

  ‘That’s why she’s putting on weight.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. All these rich ladies I met are just skin and bone.’

  ‘You know what they say, you can’t be too rich or too thin.’

  The sole of his foot was coarse with hard skin packed around the heel. I rubbed in some more cream and pressed my thumbs into the arch. He groaned.

  ‘Bad case of Postman’s Foot, that’s what you’ve got,’ I said, and he groaned again.

  When people say their feet are aching, the discomfort begins in the bundles of nerve endings clustered in the arch of the foot. I closed my hand in a fist and rolled it back and forth to knead the skin.

  ‘I did another one yesterday,’ I told him. ‘Vivienne Raynott. She’s the one we read about in Wikipedia.’

  ‘You can’t believe everything you read on the internet,’ he said. ‘It’s all spin and lies.’

  ‘Now take a deep breath and relax. Your feet are getting all tense.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yeah, past tense,’ he said.

  ‘She’s actually really nice,’ I continued. ‘Really generous.’

  ‘When people are generous, they usually want something.’

  ‘My Gran was generous.’

  ‘I don’t mean people like your Gran, Ben.’

  I shut up and carried on with the massage. Using my thumbs, I pushed up and down in what’s called cross-fibre friction around Pete’s heel. With both hands, I then moved in a circular motion around his ankle bone. I moved on to the toes, extending each one with a gentle tug. I rubbed the base of each toe with my index finger, then slid my finger between the toes, stretching them out and giving each toe back its individuality. Finally, before treating the other foot, I inserted my fingers between the toes and massaged them all at the same time.

  I had started learning about reflexology, an ancient form of Chinese massage designed to relax the whole body, even treat internal disorders, just by massaging the feet. With a quarter of the body’s bones in our feet, misalignment can lead to aches in the hips, knees and lower-back, causing neck and shoulder pain, even headaches. There are reflex points, mainly in the feet, but also the hands and ears. By applying appropriate pressure to these points, a good reflexologist can heal the pains and improve a patient’s general health.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I feel like a million dollars.’

  ‘Shame it’s only a feeling.’

  ‘I don’t know, never been rich. Don’t want to be.’

  ‘If you were rich you could give it all away.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not what they do is it? They hide it abroad and don’t pay their taxes.’

  Pete dipped his feet back in the bowl of water, dried off and slipped on some shoes. We crossed the road to look at my new car.

  He got in, turned on the ignition, released the bonnet and listened to the motor running.

  ‘Purrs like a baby,’ he said, and looked back at me. ‘How are your kids doing?’

  ‘Good. Everyone’s great. Little Claire says no, no matter what you say to her.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound a bad thing. How’s Kelly?’