by Ben Foster
‘Yes, that will do,’ she said. ‘I’m cooked.’
Angela was coated in sweat. She slipped down from the table and hauled me by my shirt across the passage to the bedroom. The blinds were half-closed and the way the lines of shadow crossed the sunlight from outside made the room shimmer in a heat haze. She pulled off my clothes and we fell across the bed. She straddled me and pushed my cock up between her legs. She rode me hard like it was a steeple chase. She was panting, drawing long breaths through her open mouth.
She rolled over, cried out: ‘Yes. Yes. Yes,’ and dragged her fingernails across my back as she climaxed.
She screamed and I screamed, for different reasons.
‘Jesus! What are you doing?’
She leaned over and bit my neck in the vampire spot.
‘You are such a baby,’ she said, and began running the loose skin up and down my cock. ‘Big Ben. That’s so clever.’
I went to speak and she put her finger to my lips, which I didn’t like.
‘Red or white?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘White.’
She left the room and returned after a few minutes with two glasses of white wine that she set down on the bedside cabinet. She left again and came back with a small bottle of cream.
‘Turn over,’ she said. ‘And don’t move.’
As she applied the salve to the scratches on my back, I bit my lips. Tears welled into my eyes. The cure was worse the pain.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘Witch hazel. The scratches will be gone by tomorrow.’
‘Why did you do that?’ I demanded and she shrugged.
‘I couldn’t help myself.’
She waggled my cock back and forth then stopped and reached for the two glasses of wine.
‘Cheers,’ she said.
‘What am I going to tell my wife when she sees those scratches?’ I asked, and she thought for a moment.
‘Does a carpenter ever hit his thumb with a hammer?’
‘What?’
‘You think about it,’ she replied, and touched the rim of her glass to mine.
The wine slipped down. The way the light crossed the ceiling made it feel as if the room was moving. Sex with Maggs had been surprising, pornographic. Sex with Vivienne was dreamlike, a fantasy. Sex with Angela was brisk, clinical, an exercise to release her pent up energy and anger. The scratches on my back, stinging still, were an industrial accident and in this, my new job, it occurred to me that I would face the same dangers I’d faced at The Lodge, clients with a psychopathic lack of logic followed by sudden violence and a complete absence of respect for anyone else’s feelings or well-being.
When we emptied our glasses, Angela went to get the bottle and refilled them. I felt dazed more than drunk. It was the oddest thing in the world to be sitting in bed at seven on a sunny evening with Angela Hartley.
The Angela Hartley.
I remembered something she had said about unemployment on some discussion programme, Question Time, most probably, with David Dimbleby.
‘Did you mean that about giving everyone who’s unemployed a free bike?’
She remained tight-lipped and glared back at me.
‘What?’
‘Sorry, I thought . . . ’
‘People pay taxes for other people who don’t want to work. It’s ridiculous. Give them a bicycle instead of benefits and they’ll get fit while they go out and look for a job.’
‘But there aren’t enough jobs . . . ’
‘Rubbish. If a man wants to work, he’ll find work. Haven’t you?’
‘Yes . . . ’
‘Who pays for their big televisions? Why are they all so fat?’ She leaned closer. Her eyes were intense, glassy with passion. She lowered her voice. ‘I have seen the files. I have studied the files.’ The wine trembled in her glass. ‘People are not sick. It’s all psychosomatic. We don’t need a public health service.’
‘What about people with cancer?’
She shook her head. ‘People with cancer should have paid for their own health insurance,’ she replied. ‘And let me tell you something else: when people pay for their health care, they are more careful. They don’t get sick. They don’t get cancer.’
There was no arguing with her. It was like talking to a machine. Angela Hartley embodied the opposite of everything I was brought up to believe, what Gran called fairness and common human decency. Gran would pose the question: What happens if someone is born blind? Do you send them out into the street to beg? Or do we pay our taxes in order to provide schools with teachers paid a fair salary? For my grandmother, that was the measure of how society should be. Angela Hartley would have closed all the schools and pushed the blind down the road on a bicycle.
There was so much I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the words to express myself and Angela wouldn’t have listened anyway. She had never struggled, never gone without. She had no idea what it was like to live day after day with the dull pain of poverty. Was I a class traitor? I certainly felt like one. But while I carried that feeling in the back of my mind, I also felt lucky to be earning fifty quid for an hour’s work and having this insight into the politics of Angela Hartley.
‘You’re Annabel Lee Hartley’s mother?’ I said and she looked offended.
‘What has that got to do with you?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that Rufus said . . . ’
‘Rufus says too much and Annabel’s wasting her time.’ She paused and her tone changed. ‘You have a chance to make something of yourself. Be aware of that at all times.’
Her words struck a chord in me, but I didn’t have a moment to think about what she had said. She put her glass down and started to play with my cock, rubbing it slowly up and down.
‘Big Ben,’ she said and smiled up at me. ‘Did you know that’s what Maggs calls you?’
I shook my head. ‘What’s the Committee?’ I asked her.
I knew she didn’t like being asked questions but couldn’t resist answering them.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I asked Maggs. She said it meant nothing.’
‘That’s a first for Maggs. She was being modest. We are a group of friends who like to ride and quietly rule the world. Does that answer your question?’
She went back to what she’d been doing. She massaged my balls and sucked my cock until it was hard again. She looked up.
‘They call it a trip around the word,’ she said. ‘It’s seems to make men feel dominant.’
I had no idea what she was talking about and watched as she dipped into the bedside cabinet and withdrew a tube of KY Jelly and a condom. She used her teeth to open the foil and ran the rubber down the shaft of my cock. She squeezed some lube on to her index finger and swirled her finger around the opening of her anus. She then rolled over, went up on all fours and stared back over her shoulder with her teeth clenched.
‘Now fuck me,’ she snarled.
I pushed in through the back door, another first for me, and we went at it doggy fashion for what seemed like forever before she screamed, her body quaked and we both gasped to a climax. Our limbs gave way and we collapsed in a jumble of sweating flesh.
‘You’re something else,’ I said, and she laughed.
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ She slid straight from the bed and gave me two tissues from a box of Kleenex. ‘There’s a bin there,’ she added, pointing. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’
I removed the condom. I would have liked to have taken a shower myself, but it wasn’t on offer. I dressed, folded the massage table and packed my bag. Angela appeared at the living room door combing her hair. She was wrapped in a towel patterned with Union Jacks.
‘Have you given up that job at The Lodge?’ she asked.
‘No . . . ’
‘Then do so. Vivienne has plans for you and what Vivienne wants Vivienne gets,’ she said and I sensed the resentment in her tone. ‘And
another thing, Kate will probably call you . . . ’
‘Kate?’
‘Lady Catherine. Be a nice boy when you are with her. Be kind . . . ’
‘I’m always kind,’ I said, interrupting for once.
‘Then let me put it another way, be the perfect gentleman. Can you do that?’
‘I can try.’
‘Come. Come.’
I followed her back to the bedroom. She dressed in ivory-coloured underwear, black stockings and shoes with four inch heels. I ran the zip up the back of a fitted, wine red dress with a square neckline. She turned and it was the formidable Angela Hartley from the television talk shows staring back at me.
‘How do I look?’
‘Elegant, really . . . ’
‘You’re supposed to say beautiful.’
‘I was about to.’
‘I love it when men lie. They’re so bad at it.’
Her eyes glowed. She smiled and seemed natural, almost friendly. She took her notebook from a black leather handbag, tore out a page and gave it to me. On it, was the name, Raul, and an address in Jermyn Street.
‘Be there at ten tomorrow. Ask for Raul.’
‘What do I have to do?’
‘It’s a tailors. You just have to wear clean underwear and be on time.’
There was a lot I might have said and bit my tongue instead. I followed her into the bathroom and watched while she applied make-up. She rubbed cream around the corners of her eyes, applied a shade of lipstick that matched the dress and brushed her hair in place. She was quick, efficient, not a wasted movement or moment’s hesitation.
‘Beautiful,’ I said.
‘Liar,’ she answered.
She handed me a gold cross on a chain, bent forward and held her hair out of the way. As I hooked the necklace in place, the buzzer in the hall sounded. She went to answer.
‘Just wait. I’ll be two minutes.’
I collected my table and bag.
‘You haven’t paid me,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It’s fifty pounds for the massage.’
‘Oh, is it now. I don’t have any change,’ she said. ‘And, another thing, it’s vulgar to concern yourself with petty sums of money.’
‘Not if I’m going to give up working at The Lodge. I have to earn my living.’
‘Ben, are you a patient man?’
‘No, not really.’
‘It is a virtue. Trust me. Everything comes to he who waits.’
She pressed her finger against my lips as I was about to speak. She grabbed her handbag, locked the flat and we travelled down in the lift to the ground floor. A black Jaguar, engine running, stood outside the building. A driver wearing a peaked cap opened the passenger door and she stepped in without a backward glance. I watched the car disappear and thought Kelly was dead right: I should always ask for my fee in advance.
I felt disorientated and couldn’t remember where I had parked the car. I could smell sweat on my clothes. At least the heat had gone out of the sun and there was a breath of cool air.
Men say things like ‘I know what she needs,’ and ‘I’d like to give her one.’ I am sure there were men all over the country who would have given a week’s pay to have given it to Angela Hartley doggy fashion as retribution for being who she was. I had lived their fantasy. But I couldn’t help thinking the roles had been reversed. She was the stalker. I was the fox. Metaphorically, I had done the bending. Even while I was giving her the massage, I had felt her aura dominating the room.
A young couple passed. They were attractive, casually dressed, the new breed of Londoners with open faces and nice accents. I asked for directions to the Imperial War Museum. The moment the man pointed at the corner where I had to turn, it came back to me and I headed for Lambeth Road where the car was parked. The meter only operated until six thirty. I locked the table in the boot and looked about me as a man from another planet might have done after stepping from his spacecraft.
I wasn’t used to drinking. I wasn’t used to having sex with famous politicians for that matter. I needed to clear my head before driving home. I bought a bottle of water and drank it as I looked up at the museum’s façade. Standing in front of the entrance were two huge guns with long grey barrels that reminded me of one of the photographs on the wall in Vivienne’s apartment.
The church on the corner reminded me of St Margaret’s, where Kelly and I were married. The young wives club met every Thursday and there was a bring and buy sale the following Saturday. New tower blocks were going up, dwarfing the terraces of Victorian houses. Lights were coming on in kitchens and living rooms, windows into unknown worlds away from the frenetic life of the city. During my days laying paving stones, I had enjoyed working in different parts of London. I could see how each area had been a village, but it was beginning to blend now into one giant metropolis where it was going to get harder for the little people to survive.
If I stayed working at The Lodge, I would always be one of the little people. I would always be working double shifts for the minimum wage and living in fear of the hot water boiler breaking down. Kelly would never escape from the laundry. I had spent a long time refining my skills giving free massages. It was outrageous that Angela hadn’t paid me and, yet, I couldn’t help having a grudging respect for her. She was a woman who knew what she wanted – she certainly knew what she wanted from me – and knew how to go about getting it.
Worrying about what ‘people are going to say’ and ‘what the neighbours might think’ was always in the minds of working people. They aren’t afraid of failure. They are afraid of success and how they would have to make excuses to their friends if it ever came their way. This attitude ground people down. It made them dull, anxious, afraid. I was like that myself. Angela Hartley radiated energy like a lit fuse about to explode a bomb and didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought about her.
She had said. ‘You have a chance to make something of yourself. Be aware of that at all times.’ I wasn’t sure if this was encouragement or a warning, but it had stayed in my mind. My family came first. Their well-being was all that mattered – bikes for Ollie and George, dancing lessons for Claire when she was old enough. A holiday. Tiny things. Simple things that make a family a family. I had a new car, a few quid in the bank and a bizarre choice: to remain trapped on a treadmill of relentless poverty or choose a new life providing rich women unemotional sex. I could have kidded myself that this was just an extension of my massage practise, but it wasn’t true. In four days I had slept with three women. I wasn’t just a masseur. I was a gigolo.
At the Elephant & Castle, I found an ATM machine. I checked the balance. With my last wage transfer, I had more than £500, not enough to make you rich, but enough to make you feel rich. I withdrew £50 to give to Kelly, another departure from the truth to add to the list when I arrived home.
There was dinner waiting for me in the oven, shepherd’s pie with vegetables. I found stains on the back of my shirt when I took a bath, and thought that’s typical: Tory MP Angela Hartley had drawn blood, screwed me out of fifty quid and forced me to throw out a good shirt with the rubbish so Kelly didn’t see it.
11
SHOPPING
My Gran worked in a warehouse packing yogurt pots and puddings into boxes that were trucked to the supermarkets. She did four hour shifts on her feet and loved the gossip shouted up and down the production line, that sense that the workers were ‘all in it together.’ When one of the girls got married, she’d put two £20 notes in an envelope as a wedding present. There were times after she had seen on the news hungry children displaced by famines and floods when she gave her entire wage packet to the appeal.
I was with her once in Twickenham High Street when it started to snow and we saw a man standing on the corner shivering. He was a resident of a local nursing home where the men were given cereal for breakfast and a couple of pounds every day to buy fish and chips for lunch. They were expected to stay out until nightfall, when th
ey returned for a meagre supper. It was called care in the community which meant no care at all.
Gran asked the man why he didn’t have a coat. When he said he didn’t have any money, she marched him straight into the nearest charity shop and we watched while he tried on numerous overcoats. When he found one he liked, he buttoned it up and his eyes filled with tears when Gran took the money from her purse to pay for it.
There was nothing unusual in this. Gran was kind to everyone. She crocheted woollen squares to make blankets for the church fair and her three-layer coffee and walnut cakes raised a fortune in the raffle. She had standing orders for Oxfam and Save the Children, just £5 each, but it was every month for as long as I could recall.
Everyone in the family thought I had moved to London when Grandad died to look after Gran. The truth is, I’d left Lowestoft because there wasn’t any work and she was looking after me. Gran had an edge. An attitude. People listened when she talked. She was stubborn, independent and was still going out with friends to play bingo twice a week a month before she died suddenly of a massive stroke. I missed her without being sad. She had died as she lived: on her own terms. She would have hated being in a wheelchair or having carers coming in every day.
Gran never lost her marbles, as she liked to say, pausing from her crochet and tapping two fingers against the side of her head. She wasn’t particularly vain, but coloured her hair that she wore in a bouffant and at seventy was proud that she could still touch her toes, which she demonstrated in case anyone had any doubt. She had a sharp tongue and strong opinions. She couldn’t stand the Queen but admired Lady Diana for her work trying to ban the use of land mines. She liked Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones because one of the women she worked with was related to Keith Richards.
When Gran made cakes and pies, she never used a recipe or measured the ingredients. It was all done on memory and instinct. She rolled the dough with a milk bottle and left floury prints on the radio when she turned up the volume to sing along with a song she liked. Her roast beef and Yorkshire pudding could have won prizes, and she couldn’t stand what she called ‘foreign muck’ – curry, sushi, spaghetti bolognaise. ‘If you can’t spell it, don’t it eat,’ she said, quoting someone on the telly. She made one exception. She liked Chinese food and had it delivered every Saturday when she watched Blind Date with Cilla Black.