Hot Breath

by Sarah Harrison

  All this I was taking in in the large and ornate mirror, and I had just decided that it really would not do, when Constantine reentered, stark naked and carrying two glasses of champagne and a dish of stuffed olives.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, handing me my glass. ‘A metamorphosis.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed glumly. ‘It’s called reverse evolution. Butterfly into caterpillar at a single bound.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he said, proffering the olives. ‘I like all your different personas. It’s exciting.’

  He was, as I have said, naked, and there was every evidence that he was telling the truth. We were just drawing closer and about to take a deep draught from each other’s glasses in the approved romantic manner, when I heard a knock at the door.

  We froze. ‘Who the hell can that be?’ I whispered wildly. ‘ Didn’t you put the sign up?’

  ‘Yes, but it may have fallen off early on.’

  I recollected with horrid clarity my head pounding the door. He was probably right. The knock came again, a brisk rat-tat.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just one of the hotel staff,’ I ventured.

  ‘Very probably. Go on—’ Constantine flopped down on the bed and rested the olives on his chest. ‘I’ll just wait here.’

  I went through into the sitting room, straightening the rug with my foot, and picking up several stray garments which lay on the floor. These I threw into the bathroom as I went by, and closed the door.

  Why it came as a surprise to me I shall never know, but when I saw who my visitor was I was so thunderstruck that I stood with my jaw on my chest and allowed him to swagger past me into the room.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Blair,’ said the GM. ‘ Fancy some champagne?’

  He stood in the middle of my room, hugely pleased with himself, grinning like an ape and swinging a bottle of bubbly from one hand. He wore a beaded kaftan in a dizzying mixture of primary colours. What I did (fool!) was to close the door and murmur: ‘I was just going to bed.’

  ‘Shall we call it a nightcap then?’ he suggested. ‘Got some glasses?’

  I was summoning the breath to say no, but he had already spotted the minibar, and was bearing down on it with awful resolution.

  ‘I honestly don’t want a drink,’ I protested as firmly as I could. ‘I just want an early night.’

  ‘Then you shall have one, Mrs Blair,’ replied the GM who, in spite of the kaftan, was continuing to address me as though he wore a three-piece suit, ‘you shall most definitely have one.’

  There was no ignoring the awful implication in this promise. As he set about the champagne cork I muttered ‘Excuse me a moment,’ and dashed into the bedroom, closing the door after me, and leaning back on it like a fugitive in a bad film, only this was for real.

  Constantine lay on the bed, sipping his drink. The now empty dish which had held stuffed olives had slipped down on to his stomach where it lay like a beached coracle in the lee of his stupendous erection. He was grinning all over his face and was obviously well turned on by my predicament.

  ‘You can laugh!’ I hissed. ‘What the hell should I do?’

  ‘Well, you can’t bring him in here,’ said Constantine. ‘Because I was in here first.’

  ‘Stop being so bloody facetious and keep your voice down!’

  ‘Have a drink with him and send him on his way. You can do it.’

  ‘But he’s after me …!’ I wailed weakly.

  ‘So am I, aren’t you the popular one?’

  ‘Oooh …!’ I moaned now, in black despair. It was clear I could expect no help from this quarter.

  ‘Mrs Blair?’ The GM’s voice, tortured into a terrible coyness, came from the other side of the door. ‘Not shy, are you? May I come in?’

  ‘No!’ I spun round and pressed the door hard with both hands. ‘I’m coming out!’

  ‘Attagirl …!’

  ‘Damn you!’ I mouthed at Constantine.

  ‘Good luck!’ he mouthed back.

  With head high and knees knocking, like an aristo going to the guillotine, I opened the door and went back into the sitting room.

  What confronted me there was more grotesque than anything I could have conjured up, even in my worst nightmares. The GM had discarded his robe and now stood before me as a hideous parody of Richmal Crompton’s William. Working from the top down, he wore: a small concentrically striped cap; a silk tie patterned with his own initials; a cellular vest; the kind of shorts usually associated with guerilla warfare in the tropics circa 1950; sock-suspenders; socks; and Gucci slip-ons.

  The effect of this ensemble with his hectic complexion, cockerel features, and Havana-tinted hair was nothing short of macabre. My blood, which not half an hour since had been thundering round my erogenous zones like the APT, froze.

  ‘Matron!’ he lisped. ‘Oh, matron—I want a drink!’

  Matron? I was quite sure the GM’s early education had been the responsibility of some lowly urban Mixed Infants, but obviously the boarding-school fantasy was a powerful one.

  ‘I am not matron,’ I said, as firmly as I could. ‘I am Harriet Blair, author, wife and mother.’

  ‘I love you, matron,’ said the GM winsomely. ‘You’ve got nice boobies.’

  Things were progressing a lot more rapidly than was comfortable. He took a step towards me and I slid, cobra-quick, to the side. I spotted the champagne and glasses on top of the minibar. At least a drink might keep booby-talk at bay for a few more minutes.

  ‘I’ll give you a drink,’ I said soothingly, ‘and then you must get back to bed and go to sleep.’

  ‘You’ll come with me, won’t you, matron?’ he asked wistfully. ‘You’ll give me a lovely good-night cuddle?’

  ‘Now then, here we are.’ I handed him his glass, taking care to keep the minibar between him and me. My discomfiture was not aided by the fact that Kostaki, I knew, would be laughing like a drain in the bedroom, and no doubt getting off on the whole thing, too.

  I picked up my own glass and took a huge gulp.

  ‘Drink up,’ I ordered sternly. ‘It’s bedtime and you shouldn’t be in here.’

  Unfortunately, my severe tone reinforced my fantasy-status.

  ‘Have I been a naughty boy?’ whined the GM craftily, moving in.

  ‘Yes! No! KEEP AWAY FROM ME!’ I bawled, and was rewarded by a distinct darkening of the scholastic cheek, and swelling of the shorts. He would have me, as the saying goes, coming and going. If I didn’t put up some sort of a fight I was just a sitting duck, but if I did I would whip his passion into a white heat.

  We stood there, staring at each other over our champagne glasses, each trying to anticipate the other’s next move. Frantically I tried to imagine how one of my own intuitive, spirited heroines would deal with such a contingency. Why, with a toss of the head, a flash of the eye, and a swift uppercut to the assailant’s jaw, at the very least. But not only was such behaviour quite out of keeping with my droopy spotted towelling, I also had a shrewd suspicion it would constitute and invitation to rape.

  ‘Dear matron,’ he breathed, fawningly. ‘Don’t be cross. I’m wild about you.’

  He advanced towards me with infantile, pigeon-toed steps, and an expression of simpering lechery which made my gorge rise. His limp torso rose above his shorts in a series of false crests … his pectorals quivered menacingly beneath the cellular vest … his bewattled neck all but concealed the knot of his customised tie … his eyes gleamed lecherously beneath the dreadful cap. I was absolutely panic-stricken.

  ‘Give us a cuddle, matron … I’ll be good as gold, I promise.’

  He put down his champagne glass, and now he made a sudden lunge, arms outstretched, across the top of the minibar. I lurched back, but not quite in time to prevent him grabbing my dressing-gown tie, which obligingly came undone and remained in his grasp as he nosedived over the bar. So now, if I was to preserve, at the very least, my dignity, I had to hold the two sides of my dressing-gown together, leaving only one hand free to fight off the GM.
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  He looked pretty helpless, upended like a beetle with his skinny shanks waving in the air and the now-prone champagne bottle dripping down the leg of his shorts, but his cunning was devilish. As I reached behind me for the vase of freesias—the nearest available blunt instrument—I realised with horror that the GM had actually wrapped my dressing-gown belt around my ankles so that I was effectively hobbled, his prisoner. And what was more, he was using the belt as a lever to pull himself up, at the same time nudging his head beneath my skirts. I could feel the peak of his beastly cap creeping up my shins, and hear his stertorous breathing. I made a final, galvanic snatch at the vase, but missed it, and only succeeded in removing the freesias, with which I helplessly belaboured the GM’s rump as I crashed to the ground. Cold water poured on to my face from above. The time had come for the cowards among us, if not to stand up (which was out of the question), at least to be counted. I blew out a spout of water, took a deep breath and yelled: ‘HELP! KOSTAKI, HELP!’

  I was nothing if not lily-livered. At that moment any threat to Constantine’s reputation was as nothing beside the prospect of further intimacy with the madcap of the remove.

  I should have known my lover would display admirable presence of mind. Any man who can screw a married woman witless (and fully clothed) against her own fridge freezer in under five minutes, and be able to make conversation with her daughter two minutes after that, has to be pretty much on the ball.

  At the same moment that the abrasive lip of the GM’s cap made contact with my shrinking cunt, Kostaki opened the bedroom door and strolled out, cool as ice, and dressed in shirt, tie, Y-fronts and, miraculously, a stethoscope.

  ‘Oh, thank God, get him off me!’ I howled.

  Kostaki raised a soothing hand, walked over to where we lay grovelling in a puddle of champagne and flower water, and tapped the GM sharply on the seat of his shorts.

  ‘You, boy!’

  I felt the cap freeze; remain motionless for a few seconds; and then, mercifully, begin to withdraw.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing, boy?’ asked Kostaki as the GM sat up, dangerously suffused and somewhat sheepish.

  ‘Giving matron a cuddle,’ responded the GM meekly, as I struggled with the knot round my ankles and freed myself.

  ‘Stand up when you address me!’ rapped Kostaki. The GM stood up. I did the same, and retired, open-mouthed, to the safety of the sofa, wrapping my dressing-gown tightly round me. Bernice was never going to believe this.

  ‘Giving … matron … a cuddle?’ The GM writhed visibly beneath the sarcastic amazement in Kostaki’s voice. ‘ Let me tell you, you little oik, that no gentleman cuddles a lady in that way! Do you understand? You have shocked and offended poor matron, and I want you to apologise to her at once, and get to bed. I shall deal with you in the morning.’

  The GM staggered to his feet, looking ludicrously cast down. I could almost find it in me to feel sorry for him. I just hoped that dawn would bring forgetfulness along with the hangover he so richly deserved, otherwise he might well decide that the best form of defence was attack, and he was not a man one would choose for an enemy.

  He removed the cap and stood before me, eyes lowered. ‘Sorry, matron,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Don’t let it happen again,’ I said severely, beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘No, sorry, matron.’

  Kostaki handed the GM his kaftan. ‘Now put this on and cut along to bed. You haven’t heard the last of this.’

  He watched, with a display of haughty opprobrium that was staggering in view of his Y-fronts and bare legs, as the GM put on his coat of many colours, and then held the door as he left.

  But the GM had one shot left in his locker.

  ‘Matron …?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your botty’s nice, too.’

  ‘OUT!’ Kostaki pointed the way. ‘Out of my sight, boy, and not another word!’

  Laugh? We nearly died. Kostaki simply slid down the door to land in a shuddering heap on the floor, while I writhed on the sofa in an absolute agony of mirth, fuelled by hysterical relief.

  ‘Oh Lord … give me strength …!’ gasped Kostaki, crawling across the carpet towards me, tears streaming down his face. ‘ I’ve never seen anything so funny in my life …! Old fish-face … the ink monitor rampant … and you, matron! Oh Christ … lying like a trussed turkey in a pool of water, hitting him with those bloody flowers … it was priceless …!’

  ‘Well, what about you?’ I cackled, pointing. ‘If you could see yourself! What on earth did you put on that stethoscope for? I mean …’ I collapsed, unable to continue.

  Kostaki lifted the end of the stethoscope and peered at it. ‘What, this stethoscope?’

  ‘Of course that stethoscope!’

  ‘I’ve forgotten now … oh yes, I thought it might give me a spurious air of—of—’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of authority!’

  This was too much and we fell about once more, reeling and hooting and clutching ourselves until our guts ached with laughing.

  When we had finally recovered, Kostaki clambered with his last remaining strength on to the sofa, slung my legs over his shoulders, and carried on where the ink monitor had left off.

  ‘Hey …’ I protested unconvincingly, holding his ears as though steering a go-kart, ‘ I thought you said no gentleman ever cuddled a lady in this way …’

  ‘That’s right,’ he replied, looking up momentarily and smacking his lips. ‘ But I never said I was a gentleman.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the overseas hall of the 29th Fartenwald Buchfest the next day, I was greeted by Vanessa in a state of high excitement.

  ‘You’re never going to believe this, Harriet,’ she said, as she frog-marched me down interminable avenues of coconut matting to the Era stand, ‘but the Big Cheese was here last night, the sneaky old bastard, and staying in the same hotel as you!’

  Outwardly, I may at that moment have looked like a thirty-five-year-old authoress in a Liberty-print shirtwaister, but actually, I had turned to a pillar of salt.

  ‘Golly …’ I began, hoping that some appropriate remark would simply rise to the surface and materialise. But fortunately Vanessa (in a gymslip, pop-socks and plimsolls), was too full of her news to wait for my reaction.

  ‘He looked in here half an hour ago,’ she babbled on, ‘looking simply shot at, and said he was glad to see us all getting on with the job, but he was sorry he had to catch a flight to Anchorage. Can you imagine? Not a word of censure, not a single query. He was quite unlike himself. I wondered if the Dynamik had given him food poisoning. Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh yes, perfectly.’

  ‘Did you see him at all?’

  ‘No! No, I didn’t. I just had a quiet dinner with Constantine, and an early night.’

  ‘Lovely,’ agreed Vanessa.

  The Era stand was alongside the back entrance to the overseas hall, a key position, and there was Tristan, standing before a vast blow-up of the LDG paperback cover, his head on a level with Victoria Principal’s crotch. In the labyrinth of chipboard ante-rooms at the back of the stand I could see Chris Lazenby, Marilyn, the Fucktotum (in a hat) and the tapir Lucinda, going about their diverse business with the representatives of foreign publishing houses whom they had sucked in.

  Spotting us, Tristan beamed, and raised a hand in welcome. He wore a natty dark suit and a carnation in his buttonhole, all of which created the impression that he was a bridegroom, and I a bride, being escorted up the aisle to his side.

  ‘Speaking of your dishy doctor friend,’ added Vanessa confidentially, ‘ he was round here early, too. He said he had some free hours and found the book fair so fascinating he might stay for a bit. You could have lunch with him if you like.’

  This was below the belt. Kostaki and I had agreed, in a muted exchange over the breakfast buffet, that we would maintain a more-than-safe distance during the working part of the day. We were both a little p
unch-drunk after the events of the previous night and I, in particular, was wary of the movements of the GM, who was not in evidence in the dining room. And yet here was Constantine brushing aside the terms of our agreement and turning up, so to speak, in the lion’s den.

  But I was still slightly light-headed with sexual excess and sleep deprivation, and quite unable to exercise rational thought. So I mumbled something non-committal as we fetched up on the stand and Tristan kissed me warmly on both cheeks.

  ‘Hallo, Harriet, don’t you look nice?’

  ‘Thank you, I bought it specially.’

  ‘Look who’s here!’

  It was, of course, Kostaki, looking fresher than any man had a right to after what we’d been through, and obviously well in with the Erans.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, a little dully.

  ‘Hallo!’ said Kostaki. ‘ Hope you don’t mind, but I’m free this morning, and I’ve never been to a book fair. How about some lunch?’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Aren’t I supposed to be lunching with Clarion Paperbacks?’

  Tristan patted me on the back. ‘Take Constantine along, if you want to. It doesn’t do any harm to appear sought-after.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ I sounded about as vivacious as a Dalek. The trouble was that being so close to Constantine reminded me with embarrassing clarity of our recent activities, so that it was actually difficult for me to stand with my legs together. I wondered how on earth I was going to get through my schedule with him constantly in the background, nudging my libido.

  ‘I must show you something,’ said Vanessa. ‘ The GM did have one brilliant idea!’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘You know how he disapproves of drinking on the job—’ He did? I dared not look at Constantine—‘well, he’s organised this dear little rest-room for us, with tea, juice, coffee, bikkies, fruit, not to mention comfy chairs for top-level discussions and so on. Isn’t that sweet of him?’