Gigolo

by Ben Foster

  The atmosphere at home was still tense. It was beyond Kelly’s comprehension that I had bought six suits at once, and I had been unable to invent an excuse that would explain that I didn’t pay for them at all. After giving Carly her massage that morning, Kelly had watched as I emptied the wardrobe and drawers of everything I owned. I filled six bin bags with my worn out clothes and took everything to the Oxfam shop. I only had new things now, new clothes, new car, new watch, new shades. I was going to have to grow into my new image.

  Clothes are a flag, an emblem, a walking notice board. It doesn’t matter if your shirt is stained or frayed, as long as it was custom made to begin with. Shoes are a personal signature. You can wear torn jeans and your shoes may be worn out or pushed down at the back, but the jeans are Levi’s and the footwear is hand-stitched by Crockett & Jones Hallam, Church, Barker Alderney.

  What you wear has its own glossary, gauche, gaudy, loud, kitsch, overbearing, frumpy, dowdy, subtle, unassuming, flattering, tasteful, discreet. It is easy to get things wrong but sometimes, as Vivienne would say, ‘when it’s wrong, it’s right.’ Clothes don’t maketh the man. They do say who he is, or who he is trying to be.

  Clothes, your accent and your choice of words are class indicators. For the PLU folks (people like us) flashy displays of wealth are signs of new money, nouveau-riche, social-climbers. The old rich never say ‘pardon.’ They say what or sorry. It is never the toilet. It’s the loo or lavatory. The word serviette makes high class ladies wince as if they have just bitten into a lemon. The word is napkin. The rich eat dinner. The poor have their tea. That place for resting your backside is called a sofa. Never a couch or settee. You don’t invite guests into the lounge or living room. It is the sitting room or drawing room. Sometimes the parlour. The rich stay thin by eating pud or pudding. The poor get fat filling up on sweets and dessert. Just a word can make all the difference.

  The poor use the word posh to describe people and items beyond their reach. The PLUs use posh for irony, as in: Are you going to the Russian Debutante Ball? No, it’s much too posh for me. The poor describe the rich as snobs. The rich describe the poor as oiks, clods, louts, those people and the great unwashed.

  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know these things, but once you know them they can’t be unlearned. Class indicators are the way by which everyone in that world knows who’s who and who matters, while everyone else is placed outside that particular box. They see society as a top down structure. A pyramid. Those born at the top – the Queen, the upper classes – are there because that is the natural order. It is the way it is meant to be. It. They believe social harmony is preserved by knowing and keeping your place. They do not believe in fairness, equality or equitable distribution. They view the notion as ridiculous or, worse, socialist. People have duties and responsibilities. The workers are responsible for working hard without complaining or forming unions. The duty of the rich is to keep the pyramid exactly the way it is. The old rich believe in something called noblesse oblige, which inspires spates of generosity like attending charity balls. The new rich don’t bother with that sort of thing.

  Remarkable people, the super rich, working class stars, sportsmen and very beautiful women are raised up the pyramid because they are remarkable. Rudy Johnson belonged in the group of remarkables. He was the exception that proves the rule. He was himself and that is a category on its own.

  I was reluctant to put Rudy’s crisp white card with raised black lettering in my wallet. It was dirty, stained and worn out. Another expense. But you mustn’t think about that sort of thing. I now had two invaluable contacts. Rudy Johnson when I needed a mortgage. Filippo Borghese Pecci when I needed Inca quality cocaine.

  When I drove Kelly to her afternoon shift at the laundry, she wore trainers, old jeans and a charity shop blouse with a stain I think was already there when she bought it. I dropped her off and went straight to Topshop. I bought a cornflower blue dress with a strappy top and flowers decorating the skirt. Summer sandals were in the sale and I found the perfect pair of mules with a navy blue material top, thick soles and a four-inch wedge heel.

  She took the dress out of the bag as we were driving home.

  ‘Only one?’ she said, and I had to smile.

  ‘Look, I got the suits in a special deal. Their last year’s fashion. It was a clearance sale.’

  She opened the box containing the sandals.

  ‘These are lovely,’ she said. ‘Can you remember when I last had a new pair of shoes?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor can I.’

  ‘That’s going to change, Kelly. Trust me.’

  ‘I do trust you, Ben, you know that. But people bite off more than they can chew. They get carried away. Don’t let that happen.’

  ‘I’m not going to. This job is going to change my life, our life. It’s what I’ve been waiting for. I’m totally positive.’

  My hair had fallen forward and she leaned over to push it back in place. ‘I thought you were going to get your haircut?’

  ‘I can’t afford it,’ I replied and finally she laughed.

  As soon as we got in, she rushed up to the bathroom to take a shower. She put on eye makeup and lipstick. She lifted her freshly-washed hair so I could attach the cross on a fine gold chain she always wore when we went out. It was part of the modest collection of jewellery that had belonged to her mother, her wedding band, thin as a wafer, two pairs of clip-on earrings and a cameo brooch like the one Miss Pelham always wore. She kept the pieces in a box made of seashells, the hinge loose, the shells chipped, but none the less precious.

  I zipped the back of the new dress. The blue matched her eyes. She stepped into the sandals and did a twirl. The strained look about her lips from the constant worry about money and the kids had gone for a moment. Kelly was pretty, slender, feminine. She was just as beautiful as the beautiful women I had met at the Great Hall that day a lifetime ago, with one big difference. She didn’t know it.

  Carly came over with Lily, her little girl, to babysit and we drove into town to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the big summer movie. The film is like a cartoon. You have to suspend reality for two hours. But Kelly – and every woman in the audience – swooned watching Johnny Depp swashbuckling across the screen, and Keira Knightly was no strain on the eyes.

  We walked back to the car, my arm like a wing around her shoulders. We looked like a happening couple, me in my white linen suit and white shirt, Kelly in the blue dress. She was happy and we made love that night, the first time for ages.

  16

  DEFYING GRAVITY

  Saturday afternoon, I loaded the car with my table and a suit bag containing a navy blue suit, a pale blue shirt, and a Ferragamo tie, dark blue with a pattern of rajahs riding elephants decorated in gold and red. The tie was ‘playful,’ Vivienne had said. I completed the outfit with dark blue knee-high socks – ankle socks are a no-no, and brown Alden tassel loafers.

  I felt as if I was journeying back through time when I entered the tunnel of trees and parked in the York stone courtyard at Frowley Manor. The last week of my life had been an intensive social and psychological course in the ways of the world. I knew so little and realised the more you know the more you know you don’t know.

  Douglas opened the door and I had a flicker of déjà vu as I followed him past the suit of armour in the hall and manoeuvred the table along the corridor with its paintings of stormy seas. Maggs was waiting in the familiar wood-panelled room.

  ‘I’ll be away for the rest of the day, Lady Margaret,’ Douglas said. ‘Is there anything you need?’

  ‘No, we’ll be just fine, won’t we, Ben?’

  ‘We will, I replied.

  He about turned. Maggs stood back to look at me in my new Hugo Boss shirt, lightweight jogging pants and white trainers without flashes or ornamentation.

  ‘You clean up very well, I must say. I’m glad I was the first.’

  ‘And the best,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.
So you’re learning to be charming now.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I’ll pretend that you do.’

  I erected the table. Maggs dropped her gown.

  ‘You like being naked,’ I said.

  ‘I once ran starkers through the street of Paris. It was a dare.’

  ‘Did you get arrested?’

  ‘In Paris?’

  ‘I’ve never been.’

  ‘That’s so cute. We shall have to fix that, won’t we?’ She paused. A puzzled look crossed her features. ‘You’re seeing Kate, later, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re not going out dressed like that?’

  I smiled. ‘No, I have a suit in the car.’

  ‘Oh, goody. I shall help you dress.’

  She stretched out on the table, I coated my hands in oil. She wriggled and squirmed as I ran my stretched fingers down her back.

  ‘Mmm, I like it.’

  ‘You’re supposed to keep still.’

  ‘I can’t. I love being touched.’

  ‘I’m going to do something different today.’

  ‘Do whatever you want.’

  ‘We’re going to try kundalini massage.’

  ‘Isn’t that the sexy one?’

  ‘I’ll let you decide.’

  After my discussion with Bethany Bolter, I had a feeling kundalini massage was going to be popular at Southley. I had never actually given anyone this particular treatment, and could think of no more suitable subject for the trial run than Lady Margaret.

  Ancient Indian mystics defined kundalini as the well of potential that exists and remains inactive in every person. It is a metaphysical concept given form in massage workbooks as a sleeping serpent coiled in the base of the spine, usually illustrated by a woman with full rounded breasts, a narrow waist and generous hips, for which Lady Margaret was the perfect model.

  The spine has seven chakras, or energy centres. Kundalini massage is designed to awaken the sleeping serpent so that the dormant energy comes to life and flows up the spine. The exercise realigns the chakras and brings about a higher state of consciousness and well-being. There is a side effect. The awakening of kundalini stirs the repressed libido, resulting in heightened sexual desire. The ancient sages had set out to find a route to greater spiritual growth and discovered the untapped potential in the core of the senses. We are often starved of human touch. Massage loosens inhibitions and feeds a hunger which the Ladies of the Committee appreciated and had the wherewithal to feed.

  Using plenty of oil, I massaged Maggs’s lower back until her breath slowed and became even. I then glided my open palms up the sides of her spine to her neck, around the shoulders and back down. I slid my hands across the mounds of her bottom, lightly running my fingertips over her rosebud, the spiral of puckered skin at the entrance to the anus. I repeated the motion ten times before rubbing my hands up her back and down her arms to her fingertips.

  I continued the exercise along the sides of her body, one side then the other. As I worked on her hips, I pushed the flesh up and held it for a moment. From her hips, I moved to her waist, easing the skin continually upwards. I carried out the same movements on each side of her chest before placing my hands under her armpits. I pulled up and stretched out her whole body. Manipulating the outer, nonvascular epidermis in a rising motion is designed to defy the will of gravity and keep the body youthful, unwrinkled and fresh. The Sanskrit word tan, the root of tantra, means to stretch, expand, to smooth out.

  Maggs rolled her shoulders as I pulled from beneath her armpits, the muscles relaxing as they eased back into their cushions of protective tissue. I returned to her back. I squeezed the flesh either side of her spine with my thumbs and fingers in the same way that you knead dough. I continued nipping and pinching the fleshy areas of her buttocks with more pressure. I moved down over her thighs, first making long, fluid strokes, then with my fingertips in a circular motion, going randomly from one area to another in a way that Maggs could not anticipate where each new set of strokes was going to occur. Her breath raced. She liked that. I then turned her over on to her back and our eyes met.

  ‘Close your eyes. Don’t think of anything,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she replied.

  Through the next part of the massage, I focused on her stomach and chest. I dribbled some oil into her bellybutton and ran my palms in a circular motion over her stomach, up to her breasts, around her nipples and down again to the whirlpool of flesh marking her navel. I repeated the movement ten times before running my hands with spread fingers down the tops of her legs and up between her thighs. I repeated this ten times. Each time, I allowed my fingers to move closer to her sex without actually touching the lips of her vagina.

  Maggs was gripping the sides of the table and breathing faster. The exercise was healing, sensual, invigorating – the goal of kundalini massage. When the serpent rises, it races along the spine, illuminates the chakras and fills the mind with light. The feeling triggers a sense of restoration and can activate the slumbering parts of the mind, fears as well as desires, that may have been blocked for years.

  I massaged Maggs’s shins and calf muscles, her feet and toes, which tickled and she wriggled like a wet fish on the massage table.

  ‘Enough, enough. You’re killing me.’

  She swung her legs from the table, took my hand and we hurried up the narrow staircase to the room with the big four-poster bed where I had slept before. The late afternoon sun filtered through trees and painted the walls in pastel shades. I tore off my clothes and we tumbled into the white sheets like two people who have crossed the desert and arrived finally at a watering hole.

  Sex for Maggs was like walking, swimming, breathing. It was an act that came naturally, that you did because it was human, instinctive, limbs entwined, skin pressed to skin. She wanted to possess and be possessed. I could smell the briny pheromone scent of her arousal. Maggs was a woman who enjoyed the abundance of everything, food, riding, laughter, sex. She was eternally in heat, her body lush, ripe, wet, the quintessential female form sketched in yoga books and carved on temple walls. She was designed to give and receive pleasure in every way and in every position. She was as supple as soft melting wax and opened her body to be filled to the full in every opening.

  Maggs had not needed kundalini massage to spark her desire. What it did do was awaken in her an impulse to draw out each second, to slow down, to transform the act of love from an endeavour to a meditation. We tumbled like acrobats. Like pieces of a Chinese puzzle. I felt as I drilled into her that I was mining a deeper, more dangerous seam within myself. We stained the bed with our sweat, with the liquids I released from her and the liquids she released from me. When I was soft, she sucked me until I was hard again. And when we were done, we rolled in a ball, the puzzle complete.

  I lay back, panting for breath, the dying sunlight pressed against my eyelids. She slid from my embrace and took my flaccid cock back into her mouth. She massaged the tender flesh.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she whispered. She looked up at me and smiled. Her eyes were bright as stars. I started to harden again. ‘Big Ben has grown even bigger.’

  She swallowed me down to the root of my penis. She massaged and sucked my balls. We made love again, slowly, gently, like a soft wind through trees. She bit her lips and climaxed in an easy, rolling motion like the tide receding.

  ‘Ah, yes. That was lovely,’ she said breathlessly. She smiled mischievously. ‘I’d better not wear you out.’

  She crawled back into my arms. We closed our eyes for a few minutes. Then it was time to go.

  We showered. I collected my suit bag from the car and she sat

  on the long pink sofa below the window in her gown as she watched me dress. She redid my tie knot to make it smaller. She brushed her hand across my hair.

  ‘Does it need cutting?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘But not now. In about two weeks. This is the perfect length.
You should have it cut often so it always looks the same.’

  ‘That’ll cost a fortune.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Good for you.’

  What I liked about Maggs was that there was no pretence. She wasn’t interested in my life. She didn’t want to know how the ‘other half’ lives. She was immersed in her own passions and pleasures. It was just sex. I stood back and looked at myself in the mirror. She watched me in the reflection.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t look like me.’

  ‘Oh, but it does.’

  We had arranged the massage for five. When the clock chimed it was hard to believe it was already eight. I noticed as I glanced at the clock that on the dresser, in a glass dish, was a folded white packet identical to that which Vivienne had produced at Southley.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ Maggs asked.

  ‘No, no. I really ought to go.’

  She kissed my cheeks and brushed down my lapels. ‘Ben, that was smashing. Thank you. I’m away for a while. I text you when I’m back.’

  I drove slowly, the radio silent, and listened to the sound of the air gushing past the car. I had forgotten to ask for my fee and realised, finally, why Angela Hartley had warned me not fret over petty sums of money – not that fifty quid was petty by any stretch of the imagination. What Angela had meant was that there was a bigger picture and I should only focus on that.

  My throat felt constricted by the tie. I remembered Vivienne saying a little pain can lead to a lot of pleasure. There was certainly some truth in that. I wondered if a little pleasure could lead to a lot of pain.