Eighty Days White (18 page)

A fine drizzle was falling, blurring the West End lights and shop windows and I realised I had the wrong shoes on for this sort of weather, having chosen to wear thin
ballet-like flats for convenience during the cumbersome stocktake. I looked up at the sky to see how thick the clouds were. He was standing outside on the edge of the narrow pavement holding a black umbrella over himself as he kept watch on our exit. At first, because of the semi darkness and the thin blanket of rain surrounding us, I didn’t recognise him. Just another silhouette in the street. He could have been anyone.

‘Lily!’

It was Leonard.

He looked much the same as the last time I had seen him, all those months ago. My heart jumped and my stomach clenched, or a combination of the two. Why was it Leonard had such an instant effect on me?

‘It’s been a long time …’ I managed.

‘I know. Things have been busy. Work, travel, all sorts of things,’ he apologised.

The others from the shop hadn’t lingered and had hurriedly moved on to the pub. Leonard and I stood in the rain looking at each other. I pulled the hood of my parka up, and he stepped towards me offering me the protection of the umbrella.

‘Did you have any plans? Can we talk?’

‘I was only going home. Sure.’

He moved to my side, the shadow of his large umbrella enveloping the two of us as we moved towards Charing Cross Road.

The nearest hotel bar, off Shaftesbury Avenue, held too many common memories, and all the pubs in the area would be too noisy at this hour to allow a decent conversation, so
we ended up in a Soho coffee shop, tucked in a corner as far as possible from the other customers.

‘I still think a lot about you.’

‘Me too.’

Once again, the familiar core of sadness in his eyes reached out to me. I felt helpless, bereft of words. He attempted a feeble smile and his hand moved across the table and touched mine.

‘You’re so cold,’ he remarked.

His hand was warm, like his body always was at night when I spooned up against him and revelled in the welcome mould of his contact.

‘I know. I don’t think I’ll ever change,’ I said. ‘Cold hands, cold feet, cold arse. I’ve never quite been the ideal woman to take to bed, eh?’

‘It never bothered me,’ he said.

‘I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.’

‘I never said that, Lily, you know it. If only I could summon the right words to explain how much you’ve come to mean to me, I would. I still want you, badly. And, like you, I don’t care what other people say when they see us together. They just don’t understand. But all I do know is that we would have no future and—’

I opened my mouth in protest, but with a quiet wave of his hand he silenced me and continued his short speech, as if he had carefully rehearsed it in front of a mirror and would not allow it to be interrupted.

‘Like you,’ he explained, ‘I don’t give a fuck about the opinion of others, but I know things wouldn’t last. One day the age gap would begin weighing on your mind and you’d start questioning everything, and once the rot set in, it
would poison you, us. And I would feel guilty having you waste some of the best years of your life on me, Lily. And that’s one thing I can’t accept. I want you to be happy. Even if it’s without me. Call it respect, call it cowardice, call it whatever you want.’

Every single word hurt, like a dagger being twisted under my skin, every increment of pain causing a silent, agonising scream strangled at birth in the depths of my lungs.

It wasn’t that different from the last conversation we’d had in Barcelona. So why had Leonard wanted to see me again, just to repeat the same things over and over?

‘Why … ?’

His eyes looked down, avoiding my questioning gaze.

‘I needed some … closure,’ he said, the word like a whisper, discreet, defeated.

His free hand dug into the pocket of his jacket and he pulled out a handkerchief and unfolded it over the table.

A miniature golden key fell out. Bounced lightly against my saucer and settled.

The key to my ankle chain.

‘Take it,’ Leonard said.

I looked down, nonplussed, at the small key. This curious symbol of the freedom he was granting me, letting me go. For my own good, if I was to believe him. And I did.

He rose and kissed me delicately on the forehead. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss the teardrop too, but he hesitated, drew back and left the cafe, turning his back on me and not looking back.

My coffee had grown cold by then, but I slowly sipped it, angry at myself for not finding the articulacy to counter his arguments, to save our relationship, bitter at the set of
circumstances that had brought us to this point and the tyranny of having been born at the wrong time. The coffee also tasted bitter. I’d forgotten the sugar.

‘Please tell me you won’t freak out.’

Neil was looking wide-eyed at the mess of photographic equipment and orange cables scattered around the studio floor as Grayson adjusted the lights and I just stood there in an intense circle of brightness while his female assistant hovered by my nose holding a light meter up to my face and barking information at Grayson.

He’d asked me to come wearing my normal style of clothing, in this case mostly black, in an attempt to capture what he called my natural ‘vibe’. He wanted to keep the set simple. Neil was asked to stand by the side and just observe for now.

Grayson and his assistant exchanged some mumbled words and half a dozen different lenses were placed on a trestle table ready for use, while Grayson directed me to stand on a vast white sheet of paper that they had just unrolled, forming both a floor and a back wall against which I was about to be snapped.

And then it began, Grayson moving around me like a bee buzzing around a honey pot, as I stood there motionless and silent, increasingly dizzy from the sweep of the roving camera eyes and clicking of the lights.

This was so unlike the other time when the session had become a seduction, a game between me and him. Now I was unimportant and he was the one in control, seizing whatever image he wanted, the way my limbs stretched, a sinew in my neck, the angle between arms and body. It was
no longer personal. Tirelessly, he clicked away with joyful abandon. After a moment, I just drifted away mentally, absent, and let him capture whatever it was that he thought he was seeing. How it could really be my essence when I felt so disembodied, I didn’t know, but he seemed satisfied enough.

I was handed the guitar I had brought along and ordered to hold it in various different positions while Grayson captured the angles I formed with it, both natural and quite unnatural ones. I knew this was all preliminary work, approaches, guesswork. Taking pictures helped Grayson to think.

He stopped for breath.

‘OK. I’d like to start on the nude stuff now. Can you take your top off?’

He was fiddling with a lens and not even looking at me as I pulled my T-shirt over my head. Again, I hadn’t worn a bra, to avoid the straplines from an underwire digging into my skin that I knew would be fiddly to retouch.

The polished wood of the guitar against my bare chest was hard and inflexible. I turned my head and saw Grayson’s assistant yawning and further back Neil, hypnotised by the view of my small, pale breasts, a faint flush travelling across his cheeks. The heat of his gaze made me acutely aware of my nudity in a way that the disinterested stares of Grayson and his assistant didn’t. Despite my every effort to stay calm and collected, I could feel my nipples beginning to harden and a hot flush spreading into my cheeks. I looked away from Neil and back at the camera to try to distract myself.

‘And your skirt?’ Grayson asked, indicating that I should
remove it. A fluffy white robe lay within my reach so that I could protect my modesty between shots, but it seemed pointless to me. By the time I had my clothes off they’d seen everything there was to see anyway.

I was brought the cello, then a chair, and I sat down open-legged to accommodate the bulk of the instrument between my thighs while Grayson lay on the floor, looking all the way into me, no doubt seizing in his lens the contrast between my dark pubic hair or the shadow of my slit and the burnished orange glow of the instrument.

‘Neil,’ he said in a kindly tone, attempting to put him at ease in case he fled the room altogether and ruined his shots, ‘I could use you now.’

Neil stepped closer, attentive to Grayson’s instructions as he was now handed the guitar, and instructed to hold it so one of my nipples might be seen brushing against the taut strings from the camera’s perspective.

Grayson looked into the viewer and frowned.

‘Your shirt breaks up the lines of the shot. Could you take it off?’

There was a short hesitation and Neil obeyed.

Seeing the doubt pouring across his face, Grayson quickly reassured him. ‘Don’t worry, neither of your faces will be seen in any of the photos. They will be compositions. Flesh against flesh, skin textures, just unknown bodies and the way they commune with the instruments. Trust me.’

Next Neil’s hand was against my bare shoulder. His fingers drew a pattern against the small of my back. His arm brushed against my stomach. His mouth trailed barely inches away from my opening. His lips lingered in the gap
between my belly button and the midriff of the guitar held tight against my body.

I relaxed against him, enjoying the gentle pleasure of his touch.

Grayson frowned again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This isn’t right.’

The warm and comforting scent of Neil’s skin had made me drowsy and I struggled to focus my thoughts and concentrate on whatever pose Grayson wanted from us next.

He crouched down and looked me straight in the eyes.

‘Lily,’ he said, lifting his voice at the last syllable, like a question.

‘Yes?’

‘Can you domme him, please?’

‘What?’

‘I need your essence. This is all very nice but it isn’t working. The instruments aren’t really you.’

‘But Neil’s not—’ I protested.

‘Yes, that’s fine,’ Neil jumped in.

I spluttered.

‘It’s for art, Lily, and we’ve come this far,’ he added hurriedly, his hoarse voice down to a whisper.

I was outnumbered. And seeing as I’d already agreed to take my clothes off and had been captured in many explicit poses, I couldn’t think of any reason to explain why I didn’t want to dominate Neil in front of the camera. Or at all, I told myself fiercely.

‘I’m not in the mood,’ I protested weakly, but Grayson’s assistant had already received her orders and rushed out of the room to retrieve extra props, probably straight from She’s dressing room.

A suede flogger was pushed into my hand. Grayson had corrected the lighting and positioned Neil up against the wall with his arms outstretched as if he was leaning against a St Andrew’s cross.

Facing away from me, exposed and vulnerable, he didn’t seem like Neil any more. I was free to admire the pert shape of his bare arse that had been hidden beneath his boxer shorts at the club. Liana had always said that Neil had a nice arse, and I had scoffed at her. Now I could see it in all its glory, I was acutely aware of the way his cheeks curved so roundly away from his back, the little dimple just above his crack, and the light dusting of ginger hair that looked so soft to touch.

Neil had an arse that would look good red. Marked.

I brought the flogger down on his bare cheeks and he jumped, though I hadn’t hit him hard. Yet.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ Grayson exclaimed. ‘Pretend I’m not here. Carry on.’

At first, it was impossible to pretend he wasn’t there. Domming for the camera was completely different to just sitting there like an object, exposed to Grayson’s gaze. This felt theatrical, like it did at the club on the few occasions that I’d practised on She’s slaves under her watchful tutelage. Now I was in control, and I loved it.

My blood began to pump hot in my veins. Neil was moaning under each strike of the flogger and I watched with pleasure every flash of red that appeared on his skin and then faded as I brought the soft lengths of suede down onto his arse, first one cheek and then the other, up his back and down his thighs, varying the tempo and pressure of my blows to match his in and out breaths and the subtle change
in tone of his groans that told me how much he could take. It was like playing a drum. As if his body were a living instrument and I was its master.

Beads of sweat began to appear on my brow and on his sides. When I struck hard and then cupped his cheek to ease the sting, he relaxed against me and I was overcome by tenderness and wanted to take him into my arms and stroke him like a child.

Time stood still and I was aware of nothing but the rasp of Neil’s breath and the sound of the flogger beating against his skin.

Until the moment Grayson took a deep breath, paused, handing his cameras to his ever-silent and expressionless assistant and declared he was done.

Both Neil and I had become Grayson’s puppets, positioned left and right, straight and crooked, chastely and indecently, just another set of props like the instruments we had been using.

‘You can get dressed again, guys.’ In his eyes I could see he was still faraway, lost in the visions he had conjured. Until the next model, the next musician, came along and the dance would begin all over again.

Ignoring us altogether, Grayson retreated to one of the side rooms and the strong spotlights were switched off.

We were dismissed.

The grey shades of the city unfurled as the car sped north, soon making way for the orderly parades of semi-detached houses standing to attention behind well-tended front gardens that littered our steady path through London’s suburbs.

We’d begun the journey from Grayson’s studio when it was still light, but by the time we reached the open road, darkness had already fallen. Grayson was driving and She sat next to him in the front and dozed throughout the journey, creating an uncomfortable silence I was reluctant to break. The car radio was set low to a classical music station and the gentle, cushioned hum of wordless melodies lullabied us along.