Country Pursuits (8 page)

His friends roared with laughter again. Just then the doorbell rang. Camilla looked at the clock on the wall; it read 8.08 p.m.

Calypso's eyes lit up. ‘Sam!' she exclaimed, and ran out of the room.

‘Who's Sam?' boomed Angus.

‘Sam is Calypso's new boyfriend, and Angus, you
must
behave around him!' implored Camilla. ‘Don't challenge him to arm-wrestle you or anything! Calypso is frightfully keen on him.'

Angus gave Sniffer and Horse a knowing look. ‘As if we would.' They turned to face the door of the living room like everyone else, awaiting the new arrival.

Camilla could hear Calypso giggling coquettishly in the hall. Suddenly she appeared in the doorway, looking flushed and excited. ‘Everybody, I'd like you to meet my lover, Sam!' she announced and pulled Sam in next to her. There was utter silence in the room, and then Camilla, as if in slow motion, dropped the glass she was holding.

‘Bugger me!' exclaimed Angus, open-mouthed. Even with the short spiky hair and oversized man's shirt and jeans, there was no disguising the swell of breasts or the vaguely feminine face.

Sam was a she, not a he.

After an excruciating twenty seconds, Camilla realized how rude she must look, and managed to stop staring. Beside her Angus was making no such pretence; he was looking rather like a goggle-eyed fish as he gaped at the muscular, squat build, the multiple body-piercing and the leather dog-collar. For her part, Sam seemed remarkably unfazed by the reception, surveying the room with amused contempt.

‘Sam, hi!' Camilla trilled in what sounded to her like an unnaturally high voice. ‘I'm Camilla, Calypso's sister and this is Caro, our other sister . . .' She turned beseechingly to Caro, who looked like a rabbit caught in headlights.

‘Hi!'

‘I know who you are,' replied Sam in a gruff, cockney accent. ‘Cal's told me all about you.'

Cal? thought Camilla. Dear God, had her sister been leading a double life? She managed to carry on with the introductions: ‘This is my dear friend Harriet, and my boyfriend Angus, and his friends Sniffer and Horse . . .'

‘Are you a lezzer now, then?' Angus asked Calypso.

She gave him a scathing look. ‘Sam and I don't define sexuality; we're lovers and partners.'

‘Look like a pair of rug-munchers to me!' said Angus cheerfully, helping himself to another drink.

‘Angus!' hissed Camilla. Sam scowled at him. ‘Oh, it doesn't bother me,' said Angus. ‘As long as you promise to put on a girlie show later. Haw haw haw!'

‘He's only joking,' Camilla said quickly, as Sam looked ready to throw the iron door stop at his head. ‘Don't mind Angus, he's just got, er, a very peculiar sense of humour.'

Sam looked slightly pacified until Horse said in a stage-whisper to Angus, ‘Are you sure it's a woman? It's got a bigger neck than I have!'

‘Champers time!' announced Camilla brightly.

A few hours later everyone had relaxed visibly. In fact, they were all so drunk they wouldn't have noticed if the lemon meringue had come to life and started breathing. After several bottles of Bollinger, the eight of them had worked their way through copious amounts of an obscenely expensive red Angus had found in his wine cellar at home. They were now on extremely alcoholic Irish coffees, remnants of Brie and Camembert melting and oozing on a cheese board in the middle of the table.

Caro was having her glass refilled by Sniffer for the umpteenth time and telling him she hadn't had a shag in ages. ‘With my huzzband of course,' she said unsteadily. ‘I'm not slutting it around. Babies, you know, once you have them you get all fat and your sex life goes up the sprout.' She slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘I mean spout.'

Sniffer, sensing a damsel-in-distress situation, leaned in. ‘You look pretty sexy to me, Mrs Belmont.' He tried to blow cigar smoke out of his mouth seductively, no easy feat when you're six foot four and dressed like an extra from
The Rocky Horror Show
.

‘But you
are
pleased you've got Milo, aren't you?' interrupted Camilla. She had been eavesdropping on the exchange, and even through her haze of alcohol could sense something was definitely not right with her sister. But Caro was already talking wistfully about the days when she could fit easily into her size-ten jeans. Sniffer had leaned in even further, and Camilla resolved to switch to water and keep an eye on them. She didn't want that awful lech taking advantage. Sebastian did that enough already. Although Camilla had never been openly rude to her brother-in-law, she didn't hold a very high opinion of him in private. She'd seen the change in Caro. But every time she'd tried to talk to her about it, Caro had suddenly changed the subject. However her sister was feeling at the moment, she clearly didn't want to talk about it when she was sober.

On the other side of the table, Calypso was happily telling Harriet how she and Sam had got together. Sam was leaning back listening, one arm
laid possessively around Calypso's shoulders. ‘Yah, we met at this club in Brighton. I was like, going out with Henry at the time, but he was rah-ly doing my head in. Anyway, when my friend Lizzie decided we should go to this gay club because, like, it would be a total laugh, I totally said yes! As soon as I walked in, I saw Sam, and that was it, really.'

‘Yeah, I always hang round the entrance to corrupt new innocents,' said Sam in her gruff voice. She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes, and Harriet wondered if she was joking. She suddenly felt very depressed. Here she was at thirty, and still with her bloody hymen intact, while Camilla's bloody younger sister had moved on to women! Where was she going wrong?

Harriet stood up to go to the loo, lurched and fell straight in Horse's lap. She realized she was absolutely plastered. ‘Scuse me,' she slurred as she stumbled past him. His hands were suddenly on her bottom, ‘helping' her past.

When she got to the loo, Harriet stared at herself in the mirror. A wild-haired, mascara-smudged woman, with a chest barely contained within her flimsy dress, stared back. She pulled down her tights and sat heavily on the toilet. ‘My love life's a messh,' she murmured drunkenly.

When Harriet returned to the dining room about fifteen minutes later, after dropping her lipstick down the toilet, a fuggy, pungent haze hung over the table. Calypso was inhaling an enormous spliff, which she passed to Sam. Caro had passed out, her head on the table. Harriet sat down again.

‘I say, anyone fancy an E?' said Horse suddenly. He produced a small packet of Ecstasy from inside
his tutu and waved it around in front of them. ‘I got them off Dodgy Dave in town earlier.'

‘I'll just stick to this, tonight,' said Calypso, drawing on the joint. ‘I'm trying to cut back on my narcotic intake.' Sam nodded assent. Camilla tried not to look shocked – she thought her sister only smoked joints. Angus went to say yes, but Camilla shot him one of her rare steely looks. He was wrecked enough already.

‘No, old boy, thanks anyway.'

At the other end of the table, Sniffer had passed out next to Caro, face down in his third helping of lemon meringue.

That left Harriet. Horse turned to her. ‘What do you say, foxy?' He pressed his considerable thigh against hers under the table.

Maybe it was because she was drunk. Maybe it was because of talking to Calypso and Sam earlier. Maybe it was because she was already stoned from passively inhaling smoke from the joint, but something inside Harriet snapped. She was tired of being boring, safe Harriet. She wanted to live a little. ‘Go on, then,' she said.

‘Hats, I don't think that's a good idea—' Camilla started, but Horse leaned over and put one arm round Harriet.

‘Don't worry, I'll only let her have a little bit, she's in safe hands, I promise.' He guffawed and Harriet felt one of those safe hands creep round and squeeze her boob. Something inside her stirred slightly as she watched Horse fish a small pill out of the packet and cut it up clumsily with one of Camilla's cheese knives.

Horse gave a little bit of the pill to her and kept a
bit for himself. He picked up his glass of wine and Harriet did the same. ‘Here's to getting totally trashed. One, two, three!'

Thirty minutes passed. Harriet still felt drunk, but not really any different. Conversation had resumed around the table. Calypso was now telling a story about the time a millionaire businessman had offered two thousand camels for her when she was working as a promotions girl in Annabel's nightclub. ‘Like, I'm worth so many more than that!' she joked indignantly. By now it was two in the morning and everything was slowly winding down. Camilla was snuggled into Angus's broad shoulders, Calypso into Sam's even broader ones. Sniffer and Caro were still conked out, heads down side by side on the table.

The smoke from the joint had been making Harriet feel drowsy to the point where she thought she might drop off. Then suddenly – or was it gradually? – every part of her body started to wake up. She stopped eyeing up a remaining chocolate as a feeling of energy rushed through her body, eradicating her appetite. Her head and neck started tingling, as though she had been given a very pleasant electric shock.

Harriet looked round the table; everyone looked the same but somehow so
different
. Shinier, happier, more alive. Her senses were sharpened, colours more vivid, conversations louder. Harriet smiled to herself as a feeling of warmth and elation tucked itself around her. God, she loved these people, this room, this life!

‘Hats, are you OK?' Camilla's voice seemed a
million miles away, but it brought her face back into focus. ‘Your eyes look like saucers!'

‘I'm cool,' sighed Harriet happily. ‘Everything's cool. Live life!'

‘Er, OK,' replied Camilla. ‘Look, I'm awfully tired and Angus is about to pass out. You will be all right if we go to bed? Horse, you had better look after her!' She turned to him, but he was gazing in happy fascination at a watercolour of a hunting scene on the wall.

‘The colours . . .' he said in wonder. ‘It's, it's . . . like something out of
Joseph and his Techno Dreamcoat.
'

‘I think you mean
Technicolor
, you bloody pill-head,' said Calypso, who had managed to hold herself together remarkably well throughout the evening. ‘Don't worry, sis, I'll keep an eye on them.'

It was only when Calypso interrupted Harriet's monologue – about why Howard was the sexiest member of Take That – to say she and Sam were going to bed, that Harriet realized she had been talking non-stop for two hours.

‘Are you going to be OK, Hats?' asked Calypso kindly.

‘Drink loads of orange juice when you start to come down,' was Sam's gruff instruction. Then Calypso and Sam left them there, Horse still staring in wonder at the watercolour, Harriet just sitting, pulsing with new-found confidence and energy.

Finally Horse dragged his eyes away and focused them on Harriet. They glittered sexily, and Harriet was suddenly struck by how good-looking he was: like a younger Colin Firth. Horse, in turn, seemed mesmerized by her chest. It was
practically hanging out now; Harriet had stopped tugging her dress up long ago.

‘You're . . . stunning!' Horse said in wonder, coming over and running his hand through her hair. ‘Your hair, it's like a beautiful Brillo Pad.'

‘And I love your teeth, they're so big and white . . .' breathed Harriet, looking up at him.

‘All the better to eat you with,' said Horse lasciviously. He leaned down and stuck his tongue down her throat.

Any sober, innocent bystander would have seen this for what it was: a slobbering, wet and disgusting tongue sandwich. But to Harriet, her senses crying out in a chemical haze, having Horse's tongue thrust around her mouth was the most erotic experience ever. The last person she'd French-kissed was a nineteen-year-old viscount at a black tie two years ago. That had been a disaster, but somehow this was so different; she felt so uninhibited.

After a few minutes, they were groping each other like randy octopuses. Horse raised his tutu to reveal white M&S underpants. He dragged them off, pulled Harriet's dress down so her breasts were completely exposed, and started rubbing his erect manhood up and down between them. Harriet looked down at the purple, knobbly member that bent like a banana to the left, and thought it was the most exquisite thing she had ever seen in her life.

‘Fancy riding my knob, little lady?' whispered Horse in her ear. Through her drug-enhanced mood, Harriet was still aware that normally she wouldn't have put herself in this position in a million years. But this wasn't normal. And she was tired of waiting for Prince Charming to come and
whisk her off to be deflowered in a grassy meadow somewhere. She just needed to grab the bull by his horniness and get on with it. She
wanted
it.

Harriet led Horse into the living room and lay back on the sofa. ‘Have you got something?' she whispered, feeling like she was reading the script of a teen drama. Horse smiled and retrieved his wallet from under the tutu, pulling out a square silver package. Before he put it on, he rubbed Harriet's clitoris the way one might rub a horse's nose affectionately (‘Was that why he was really called Horse?' wondered Harriet fleetingly).

Horse crudely stuck his fingers up her, and Harriet winced. ‘Christ, you're tight! Are you a virgin?' he asked.

‘Of course not!' said Harriet, her euphoria momentarily dissolving. Then, before she knew it, her dress was up, her Janet Reger control knickers were completely down and Horse was on top of her. After a few attempts, he finally thrust his cock into her. Harriet felt a momentary stab of pain, and then it seemed like she and Horse were one, rocking and moaning in unison. She ceased to feel him in her; it was like he was part
of
her. Harriet looked past Horse; the room was spinning in a maelstrom of light. Feeling passion she'd never experienced before, she raked her nails down his back, and Horse whinnied as his orgasm exploded inside her. He fell back gasping and sweating, while Harriet lay still, every nerve in her body tingling. It wasn't just the ecstasy coursing through her veins making her feel euphoric.