Eighty Days White (25 page)

I felt in no mood to return to my room that day. I’d eaten too much at lunch and knew I’d just pussyfoot around, munching unnecessarily on crisps and watching reruns of reality shows on TV or slob around to no purpose and feel even worse about myself.

I hadn’t heard from Dagur for some time. First he had been on tour with the band and had only returned to London while I happened to be in Amsterdam and unavailable. I decided he would the best possible distraction for me tonight.

I called him up.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello, Teardrop, it’s been a long time.’

‘Busy lives, eh?’

‘Feel like meeting up?’

‘I’d love to. Are you free now? I could be along in half an hour.’ Dagur shared a house with the band’s bass player in Brixton, just a stone’s throw from the tube station on a quiet road behind the Ritzy cinema. His housemate was never present, seemingly permanently shacked up with one of his string of girlfriends, so we’d always had the run of the house.

‘Come on down.’

‘On my way.’

I knew sex with Dagur would be unburdened. There would be no unwelcome mention of feelings or sentimental complications, and he wasn’t the sort of man who harboured submissive tendencies so I would not be tempted to turn the tables. For my dominant streak to surface properly, I needed men who would respond instinctively to my taking the lead, guys who secretly craved having the tables turned on them.

I rushed down the escalator to the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road station. There was a long-haired guitarist singing ‘Wonderwall’ on the busker pitch where the corridors separated and I remembered how shortly after my arrival in London, I had marvelled at the melodious sounds of a young woman who had been playing violin on the very same spot, her eyes closed and a rapt expression on her face, but whom I’d never seen there again. I swept by as the singer hit a false note.

It was dark by the time I reached Brixton. The lights in the windows of the shops on the High Street shone bright, bathing South London in what felt like a Christmas atmosphere, although the festivities were still months away.

‘The door’s not locked. Just turn the handle and make your way in,’ Dagur’s voice echoed through the intercom, the recognisable strain of the Rolling Stones ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ playing in the background. ‘I’m in the bedroom.’

In the initial throes of my affair with Dagur, I had once spent a whole week of nights at his house, commuting to and from Denmark Street in the early morning and evenings, so I knew the lay of the land well. His bedroom was on the top floor, a vast space that had been carved out as part of an extensive loft conversion.

I ran up the stairs and pushed the door open.

Dagur was in bed.

But he was not alone.

The first thing I unavoidably set my eyes on was the perfect circle of a woman’s arse, as a blonde with unfeasibly long, straight hair falling across her flanks and porcelain-coloured buttocks busied herself sucking Dagur’s penis.

She was on all fours, but even in that compromising position I could already see she was the owner of an endless pair of model-like legs.

I held my breath.

Finally Dagur acknowledged my entrance.

‘Hi, Teardrop,’ he murmured distractedly, still under the influence of the blonde girl’s attentive ministrations.

Hearing this, she abandoned his cock for a brief instant and turned her head in my direction.

She was straight from a glamour photographer’s portfolio, her breasts compact and firm, her cheekbones razor-sharp and her eyes a pale shade of seablue. She flashed me the friendliest of smiles. Then moved back to her blow-job, her full lips swallowing Dagur’s length in one elegant gulp.

Dagur winked at me.

No doubt I was wide-eyed.

‘Why don’t you join us, Lily?’

At least he remembered my name.

I stood there rooted to the spot.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said calmly.

I wasn’t jealous. Neither was I possessive of Dagur. He was a musician and women threw themselves at the likes of him and others in the band. We’d never sworn each other any form of exclusivity. We were fuck buddies, and until now, that had proven enough for me. I’d even been involved in a threesome with him and Grayson, so the thought of a sexual variation on it even had its attractions, but I was not in any mood to compete with another girl. I would just be a third wheel. And I wanted to be in charge.

I walked out and left them to it, knowing all too well this was the last I would ever see of Dagur.

I’d been asked to deliver an assortment of replacement violin strings and return a bow we’d repaired to a rehearsal studio in the bowels of the Barbican complex. It was mid-afternoon, so there was no need for me to return to the West End and the store.

I crossed the Thames on the Millennium Bridge, feeling its vibrations sway gently beneath my steps, and was soon facing the squat façade of the Tate Modern, watching the pale autumn sun briefly eclipsed as it journeyed across the museum’s central tower. It was getting late in the day and there was a nip in the air. Under my green parka I had on a short denim skirt and a thin pair of tights, and I missed the warmth of the jeans I normally wore for work as well as leisure.

Grayson was previewing his new exhibition of photographs of nudes and musicians in a private show at a fashionable gallery close to the Oxo Tower in Southwark and I had been sent an invitation. A few nights ago at the club, reminding me of the date, She had hinted that some of the pics Grayson had taken of me had made the cut and were being included in the show. Which left me a trifle nervous, as I well remembered the circumstances that had given birth to the snaps in question. I also knew that he
had later organised a successful session with Lauralynn, to which she had brought her cello. I was unaware of who else might also have been involved.

I hadn’t seen much of Grayson since, and never without She on his arms. I didn’t think he was avoiding me; he was probably just too busy seeking out extra subjects for his photos, in addition to his regular sought-after fashion work.

The walk along the South Bank between the Globe Theatre and the National Festival Hall was one of my favourite London itineraries, and I was in no hurry to reach my destination, ambling along with the lazy river to my right, along paths and short tunnels, the city skyline unfurling like a slow tapestry on the farthest side of the Thames. As a result, I arrived long after the party had begun. The exhibition space was on the top floor of a tall building and as I emerged from the lift, the main room was already a throng of sharply dressed people, the insistent beat of electronic music punctuating the rumours of swirling conversations against the backdrop of clinking glasses.

There had been a cloakroom downstairs and I’d left my parka and tote bag, but already realised that even with my skirt on, I was distinctly underdressed – most of the women present were wearing couture, outperforming each other in elegance and expensive fabrics and teetering on exquisitely high if impractical heels. With my Doc Martens I felt like the hired help, were the waiters in attendance not all male and black-and-white uniformed like butlers.

Picking up a glass of champagne or prosecco from one of the circulating trays, I planted myself in a corner of the gallery’s main hall and looked around the room.

Grayson and She were in a group at the far end, he in
designer jeans, a flouncy white shirt unbuttoned at the chest, and a sand-coloured suit jacket. A broad smile played across his face, and his hair was rakishly slicked back. She stood by his side in a form-hugging fire-red latex outfit that seemed to have been poured over her opulent figure, matching her lipstick and boots. In one hand she held her glass aloft, while in the other she gripped a leash which led, as my gaze descended, to a male slave positioned on all fours like a dog on the gallery’s stone floor, his head pointed downwards.

I recognised the middle-aged man from the club where I had often seen him at She’s feet, begging to be punished and abused. He was naked but for a ridiculously minute posing pouch inadequately holding his genitals. It was so small one of his testicles was pouring out of the pouch, making his plight even more absurd. The string of the thin silk pouch cut sharply across his butt crack. His arse cheeks still displayed red lines from a recent whipping.

Occasionally She would shake her cigarette ash across his bare back and a thin smile would cross his satisfied lips. I had once seen him feeding from a dog bowl under She’s instructions. I was just surprised that he had agreed to be displayed so humiliatingly in such a public space, unlike the club where the audience was somewhat more selective and accustomed to such activities.

I was about to cross the room to go and greet Grayson and She when I saw them being joined by a group of three. I recognised all of them.

In the centre, as if formally escorted by the two women accompanying him and hanging on to his arms, was Viggo Franck, the notorious lead singer for Dagur’s band, the Holy Criminals. We’d been briefly introduced on a few
occasions when I had still been an item with Dagur, but we’d never truly spoken. His reputation as a provocative ladies’ man was widespread and he was fodder for the popular press with his pranks and dalliances. At least, like me, he’d not dressed specially for tonight, his long, spidery legs in the skinniest of clumsily patched-up jeans, laced-up black leather boots, studded cowboy belt and a loose washed-out T-shirt.

To his left, the tall blonde with curls falling to her shoulders was dressed all in white and even in the artificial light of the gallery it was evident she wore nothing beneath, her long limbs outlined clearly. The gown was simplicity itself, although I knew it must have cost a lot, reminding me of a tailored Roman toga, cinched by a gold belt, with all its subtleties mindfully engineered – the way it fell across her body and flared out as it married the very shape of her slim body.

The moment I saw her face, though, I knew she was also the nude dancer I had seen at the country mansion whose underwater performance and ecstatic look had just taken my breath away. Seeing her accompany Viggo Franck was not a surprise. She would, of course, be the sort of ethereal beauty he would easily attract, although my first impression was that she was so much more charismatic than him. Maybe it was his shaggy, high-brushed hair that prevented me from taking Viggo seriously and made me think of a spoilt, mischievous brat?

The other woman, however, I knew not only from the many photos I’d seen in the press, but also, I realised in a flash of recognition from that brief glimpse all those months ago busking on the underground. It was Summer Zahova,
the famous classical violinist. That red hair was unmistakable. I also remembered Grayson mentioning how much he wanted to contact her to see if she would participate in his project. Maybe she had.

She was wearing a simple green silk dress that reached down to her knees and, one of her professional trademarks, a corset as outerwear, bound tight around her thin waist almost in a parody of bondage. The expression on her face was distant, as if she had something important on her mind and was not quite physically in the gallery right now, sharing herself with another person or event.

How typical of Viggo to attend the showing with two such striking women.

I froze. No way was I going to join them.

I exchanged my empty glass for a full one and resolved to go and take a close look at the actual photographs making up Grayson’s exhibition. This was, after all, what I had come here to see, as I had no truck with the superficial social niceties of the occasion.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Lauralynn arriving. Even later than me, but quite unconcerned. The way she manoeuvred her way past a crowd of shorter people made her appear more Amazonian than she actually was, sporty, relaxed, clad in tight black leather, predatory in the best possible way. She saw me and waved from afar, indicating with a gesture of the hand that we’d meet up later in the evening.

The large prints were distributed across the long, white gallery walls with geometric precision, each image carefully brought into focus by an individual spotlight, aligned like soldiers on parade. On the floor I noted a red line, punctuated
by decals of small arrows piercing a cupid-shaped set of lips, indicating how the spectator – the voyeur? – should view the exhibition, to properly appreciate the sequence of photographs and the increasing boldness of the successive images on display.

It was as if Grayson, or whoever had hung the prints, wanted to tell us a story.

I stepped forward, obediently following the scar-red road, knowing the scenario was about to become more interesting.

The first photo was of one man giving another a blow-job. A flute lay abandoned near the feet of the man on his knees. A symbolic phallus, cast aside? Perhaps I was reading too much into it. I studied the picture closely, looking for some sign of airbrushing on the model’s back. Dagur had posed for some of these pictures, I was sure of it, and I knew that he had male lovers. The thought made me shiver with a brief pang of arousal. On the night of our threesome, Grayson and Dagur had both concentrated entirely on me, but at the time I had wished that I could watch them spend some time with each other.

Two women embracing in the next shot did little to banish the image of Grayson’s long cock inside Dagur’s mouth. I admired the beauty of the feminine form and wasn’t averse to the idea of having sex with a woman, but in reality I was almost exclusively attracted to men and I had to make an effort to focus on the pictures in front of me instead of the homoerotic fantasy that had begun playing out in my mind.

Some of the images were shockingly explicit, yet no one in the crowd milling around me seemed in the least
bit perturbed. Perhaps the audience had been selected from a known group who were comfortable with full-frontal nudity, which would explain why none of them had so far raised so much as an eyebrow at the sight of She’s nearnude slave cowering on all fours.