by Ben Foster
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ she replied.
She turned over. Her breasts were firm with rosy nipples. Her pubes were a tidy dark triangle. I massaged her abdomen. I closed my eyes and skirted the side of her bust. I worked on her hips and legs. Feet in reflexology represent the whole body. In someone as sensual as Zara Swift, it didn’t come as a complete surprise that her feet were an erogenous zone where all her passion and sexuality was concentrated.
I massaged her right foot, pressing my balled fist over the arch where tension gathers in the feet of women who always wear heels. When I switched to her left foot, her breath began to race. I dug my thumb into the sole, in the acupressure point symbolising the heart, and she slid forward. She spread her legs, wedged her feet against the end of the table and lifted herself towards me, bowing her back. I lowered my head between her thighs and she rolled in a rowing motion as the tip of my tongue caressed her clitoris. She shuddered, rocking the table, and heaved to a screaming climax that echoed around the walls. It was like a mini-earthquake and I continued massaging the channel of her vagina as the after-shocks receded.
She dropped back on the table, quivering and breathless. Her face was tranquil, passive. Then her expression changed and I watched in amazement as her features morphed to absolute rage. She swung her legs from the table, stretched into her gown and stormed out of the room.
She returned with £50 that she threw down on the massage table.
‘Now get out. I’m not a mark,’ she said, and disappeared again.
I put the money away and packed up my things. When I left the flat, Arnie was waiting at the end of the hall. His shadow climbed over the walls as he approached. It was like a scene from a horror movie. He reached for my table.
‘I’ll take that,’ he said.
‘Thanks, mate.’
The silent porters watched as we passed through the hall and stepped into the black Range Rover. I gave directions to my car. As he eased into the traffic, the automatic locks snapped into place and I took a long breath through my teeth. The drive took ten minutes, just long enough for me to conjure up a vision of Arnie racing out of London to some secret base to pull out my fingernails.
‘How’d it go?’ he finally asked. I let out the breath I was holding.
‘Not bad. She does have a lot of tension.’
‘Not surprising, is it, things she has to put up with. That git of a boyfriend. What do you expect?’
‘That’s true.’
As I transferred my table to the back of the Golf, I felt as if I had survived a war zone. I started the engine and turned it off again when my phone buzzed. It was a text from Vivienne. She wanted to know if I was close by and asked me to drop in ‘if I could spare a few minutes.’
My underarms were wet. I was still coming down from the rush of paranoia after the journey with Arnie and felt as if I was being watched, monitored, checked up on. Perhaps the car was bugged? That’s one of the problems serving the rich and powerful. You are always off balance.
My gold Omega read five to five. I had wanted to get home and put the children to bed for a change. But I had a feeling that Vivienne was the axis around which the entire circus spun and I did not want to let her down. I tapped out: Be there in ten, and hit send.
When Vivienne opened the door, my heart skipped a beat. My knees almost gave way. She was wearing an exact copy of the dress Zara Swift had made famous. Her silvery blonde hair was covered by a dark wig like Zara’s hair. She had done her makeup the same. She had the same slightly disdainful look about her features and the identical deep sexy voice.
‘I’m not wearing any knickers,’ she said, and it made me smile.
‘Is that so?’
She nodded in an exaggerated way. ‘What happens to naughty girls who forget to put their knickers on?’
I don’t know how I knew the script, but I did.
‘They have to be spanked,’ I replied.
She eased up the tight skirt of her dress, bent over the Henry Moore sculpture and I spanked her white bottom until it was pink. I still had the taste of Zara Swift in my mouth and stirred it in a cocktail as I brought Vivienne to orgasm with my tongue.
Vivienne was like therapy. I had felt as if I needed a massage I’d been so tense when I arrived. Now I was floating. She sucked down my load and kissed me, letting my semen drain back into my mouth.
‘I believe in sharing.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m a Bolshevik at heart.’ She paused. ‘How’s Gemma? I haven’t seen her for ages.’
‘She’s quite . . . demanding,’ I said, and she laughed.
‘I adore her. She’s wonderful. She’s one of my favourite people in the whole world.’
She pulled down her skirt and left the room. I loved watching her. We all have boundless, infinite, myriad potentials. Vivienne brought out the decadence in me. She returned with a little mound of cocaine on a mirror with a straw.
‘I won’t,’ I said.
‘That’s sad.’
‘I get high just being with you.’
‘Don’t say that unless you mean it.’
‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.’
She smiled. She seemed girlish, happy, a bit lost. I watched as she diced the coke, separated it into two lines and snorted one of them. She held her nose and shook her head. Her eyes went out of focus and came slowly back in again.
‘I’m going to stop. Will you help me?’
‘Course I will.’
‘I’m glad I found you Ben Foster.’
She snuggled up like a child in my arms. My bookings at Southley were full every day. The money kept rolling in. My goal was clear. My world was in balance, except for the feeling of Vivienne breath fluttering like a butterfly against my chest.
The children were asleep by the time I got home. We had moved Claire into the box room. We had bought a small pine bed and a matching chest of drawers on which stood a doll’s house with lights that ran on a battery. It gave the room a warm glow, a feeling that there was a joyful life behind the miniature doors and windows.
We had exchanged the frayed carpets in the sitting room for oak floorboards. A decorator who lived on the estate had stripped off the flowery wallpaper, plastered the walls and sprayed them white. Kelly and I exchanged a few heated words, but I had got my own way when we chose the new three-piece suite. It was dark green leather – no fabrics, nothing fancy, nothing to gather dust.
Kelly had taken up cooking and was working her way through the latest Jamie Oliver recipe book. That night, she made sweet potato, chickpea and spinach curry with rice. Fresh pineapple for dessert. When we were digging down the back of the sofa looking for every penny, I bought the kids Crunchies and Milky Ways to soften my shame for being poor. Now that I could afford those treats, we didn’t buy them. Ice cream and pizza had been replaced with fruit and carrot sticks.
We used to have a mishmash of old plates, white with blue rings and fine cracks filled with ancient germs. I’d boxed up the lot for the Oxfam shop and bought a set of plain white crockery from Habitat. New cutlery, too. We sat at the table to have dinner, following the rules set for the children. No eating on our laps in front of the telly and no telly at tea time.
Or dinner time, I should say.
Every word you say puts you in a box. I didn’t want to be in a box anymore. You don’t become confident and positive overnight. You start by acting confident and behaving in a positive way. Slowly, the act becomes reality. You are what you do. If you change what you do, you change who you are. I had been a care worker. Now, I was a well-paid masseur. The educated articulate every word. Working people in Norfolk drop their ‘y’s and aitches. They say ‘bootiful,’ ‘ouse and ‘ammer. I wasn’t in Norfolk. I was in London, and made an effort to say beautiful, house and hammer.
Kelly made fun of me and said I was trying to be something I wasn’t. I tried to explain that anyone could be whatever they wanted to be. Th
e only limitations are those we set ourselves. I intended to make the most of myself so that it would rub off on our children.
When we were in Habitat, we also bought wine glasses, and with wine glasses you do need the occasional bottle of wine. One glass of red is supposed to be good for you and that’s what we had. Kelly put the curry on the table in a serving dish. I dimmed the lights.
‘This is what I call tasty,’ I said.
Kelly looked up from her plate. ‘How was Zara Swift?’
‘Bit of a bitch, to be honest.’
‘She always comes across as a bit ditzy, but sweet.’
‘Course she does. She’s an actress,’ I said. ‘When you see them on chat shows saying how they didn’t think they were good enough to do this, that and the other, they want to come across as genuine, like ordinary people. It’s all an act.’
She sipped her wine. ‘This is nice.’ We clinked glasses. ‘Is she as pretty as she looks in real life?’
‘Nah, it’s all makeup. Zara Swift can’t hold a candle to you.’
‘Who you kidding?’
‘I mean it. She’s just an empty shell. They all are. You’ve got inner beauty.’
She gave me a sceptical look and put the plates in the dishwasher. I made a cup of tea and we watched Newsnight on the flat screen television.
Jeremy Paxman was giving a chief constable a hard time over his investigations into child abuse. He promised to hold an inquiry. Paxman shook his head. ‘Another enquiry?’ he shot back. He looked annoyed and that’s how I felt. It was always years before enquiries came up with answers and, then, nothing was ever done. Children continued to be abused. Girls were being groomed by paedophile rings. And senior policemen were spending weekends at Southley with their mistresses.
I had massaged one top cop with shoulders as tense as sheets of iron. When he turned over, he had tears running down his cheeks. He had just lost the promotion he had expected and that meant he would probably never get the knighthood he had worked for ‘all my damned life.’ He behaved as if I were a counsellor, or a vicar. He told me that for years he had been taking Olanzapine, the same antipsychotic drug the lads were prescribed at The Lodge. He was so emotional, I had to walk him back to his cabin where a woman half his age was waiting.
There were times when my job got on top of me and I felt like quitting. Then I reminded myself that my changed finances had changed the lives of my kids. They were growing up happy, curious, confident. Ollie was a wiz on the computer and had started teaching George. Claire had turned three. She had grown into a talking dictionary and was beginning to use logic as well as tears to get her own way.
What I did for a living didn’t matter. I wasn’t hurting anyone. I wasn’t robbing banks. The bankers were doing that and the rich ones had discovered Southley. The spa had become fashionable. Celebrities and people in the public eye were booked into my rota on a daily basis. I massaged movie stars, soap stars, models, judges, footballers, politicians, corporation bosses, oil barons, police chiefs and bankers.
Often, I’d see well-known faces at the spa and, within a few days, they popped up on television. In front of the cameras, they were confident, witty, charming. On the massage table, they lowered the mask. The dance of the massage is magical. The power of chi energy cleansing the chakras releases the body of stress and opens the mind to revelations and confessions. Whether they came for ‘extras’ or a sympathetic ear, the one thing those illustrious clients had in common was fear.
I had an actress in a soap who sobbed because she thought the writers planned to kill her off. A footballer with a knee injury was afraid he would never be picked for the first team again. A renowned chef admitted that he was an alcoholic. He could no longer hold a spoon without his hand shaking. I heard sex secrets, government secrets, confidences that needed to be shared by people who had no one else to share them with. Public figures and fame junkies live in fear of failure, fear of aging, fear of losing their jobs, and most were taking prescription drugs or cocaine – or both – to overcome their fear.
One of the problems for celebs is that they have so much they don’t know what they want. Zara Swift had looks, class, money, fame. She had control over her life, her future. Losing control of her bodily desires, even for a moment, had made her angry with herself. She wanted to believe that I had taken advantage of her. That was not the case. Not that there was ever any point in arguing with celebrities. They are like spoiled children.
If anything, the determination to survive and the fear in the famous that drove it made me feel more contented with my own life. It was also financially rewarding. The more tears that flowed, the more lavish the tips. I worked long hours and, on days off, I continued with my circle of regulars, Vivienne, Maggs, Rufus, Angela and Kate.
Caroline called, as I knew she would. I followed the GPS to a remote farmhouse in the Cotswolds. She was waiting with another woman whose face was hidden by a mask. I only realised it was Vivienne when she spoke. Caroline had money; her husband was selling their bar in St Tropez. But Vivienne was not the sort of person who knew the sort of people who owned bars. They connected on another level.
They were dressed in white bunny costumes that covered their heads and entire bodies. Music played from speakers in every corner. It was Ravel’s String Quartet, I later learned. The volume deafening. They ran and hopped and bounced from room to room. I chased them, pulling their ears and smacking their furry backsides. They were covered in sweat when we stripped off. I went to bed with them both, a confusing but not unpleasant experience.
19
SECRETS
I was chatting to Tiffany at the massage centre’s main reception one morning when an elderly man in a pin-striped suit came to look at the price list. It was the prices, as well as the spa’s veneer of respectability, that kept Southley exclusive. A variety of different massages were offered at £120 for forty-five minutes; anti-ageing facials £120; mud wraps £100. The ultimate indulgence was the Four-Hands Massage at £250, one client with two therapists.
He pointed at the last item on the list and spoke like a Shakespearean actor in a deep plummy voice. ‘Is that with a man and a woman?’ he asked.
‘It is, sir,’ said Tiffany.
‘Then that should do nicely.’
He booked a time. Denny and Anastasia performed their speciality treatment and, by lunchtime, the whole world knew that the client was a high court judge hearing a case vital to national security. His way of coping with the pressure was giving oral sex to a man while receiving oral sex from a woman.
What plays in the massage room, doesn’t stay in the massage room. The Golden Rule was like a finger stuck in a dike. Gossip is the human condition. It’s like water. It finds its way through every crack and gap. It can’t be contained.
Denny loved the sound of his own voice and what he liked talking about most was the louche details of his many conquests: the Italian actress with the 38 d-cups, the new weather girl on Channel 5, the hot male lead causing waves in Eastenders. He swung both ways and was the source of an endless stream of chatter that ran along the corridors from the massage rooms to the hairdresser, out the window to the tennis pro and groundsmen, and back through the main doors to warm the ears of the porters, reception team, kitchen staff and house maids, girls mainly from Eastern Europe employed for their outstanding bed-making skills.
Bethany behaved as if she were the mother superior in a convent delivering the damaged and distressed into the healing care of her therapists. But as she marched along in her spiky heels and fitted black dresses, the impression to me was more of a dominatrix at a high class bordello. It is not surprising that sex at Southley was the major attraction. For those who can afford to indulge every passion and whim, what else is there?
The spa was a hothouse of rumour, jealousy and politics. Bethany was pleased that I received good reports and had repeat customers, but remained guarded, even mistrustful of my relationship with Vivienne. She would like to have been more than just
a listing on Vivienne’s smartphone, but must have been aware on a deeper level that that was never going to happen.
What Bethany didn’t know was that Vivienne and her circle spotted what they called ‘star fuckers’ a mile off. They tolerated the nouveau riche, money is an equaliser, but couldn’t abide hangers on, sycophants, philistines – a new word to me – and those whom they labelled ‘middle-class’ with their middle-class ambitions and values. It was one of the biggest con tricks of all time. Old money in pin-striped suits and Barbour coats, with their skinny daughters and shooting weekends, were the icons of British ethics and morals which they themselves scoffed at and flouted.
Something else that Bethany did not understand. You didn’t discover them. They discovered you. They took you up because you were amusing, or had something to offer – drugs, sex, secrets – and I always knew that they dropped you the second you didn’t.
Vivienne booked me for a double session at least once a week. She roared into Southley, bouncing over the traffic bumps in her yellow Ferrari, and stepped into the spa looking like one of the lost children from Peter Pan. She rarely wanted a massage. She liked to swim, or have bone-shaking sex below the pressure shower, that she called water-boarding.
When the weather was fine, we played tennis. One occasion, a November day I particularly recall, and still have the scar as a reminder, Vivienne was hyped up, eyes big as snooker balls. She unleashed her ferocious backhand and forehand and I could barely see the ball as it crossed the net at 100 miles an hour. I raced around the court like it was a rifle range and cut my knee so badly falling it needed three stitches from the nurse.
Most women are squeamish about blood. Not Vivienne. It turned her on. I, on the other hand, turned as white as a sheet and had to take the rest of the day off. As she drove back to her apartment, she called Maddy Page, the model, Committee member, arm candy to rock stars and billionaires – perhaps arm candy to her – and, according to Vivienne, an accomplished artist.