Fire After Dark (17 page)

He’s staring at me and I would swear that he’s gone pale.

‘I saw it,’ I repeat dully. ‘I know what you do together. Is that why you want to finish with me before we’ve even had a chance?’

‘Oh, Beth.’ I can see that he’s searching for the words. ‘Oh, God, I don’t know what to say. You saw this in my apartment?’

I nod.

‘And you assumed it was me and Vanessa?’

‘What else am I supposed to think? It’s your apartment. I’ve seen you in there together. Who else would it be?’

He thinks for a moment and then says, ‘Okay, I think I know what’s happened here. You’re right about one thing. The woman you saw was Vanessa. She has a key to my apartment, you probably guessed that when she came in the other night. But . . .’ he fixes me with a steady look ‘. . . the man was not me. I can promise you that.’

‘Then . . . who do you allow to come into your flat like that, to be hit?’

‘Well, I don’t really allow it, as such. I mean, I don’t like it. But Vanessa knew that I was away that night and she has a client whose particular fantasy is to be a wealthy tycoon dominated in his plush flat. She’ll have taken him there to give him the scenery to play in.’ He shakes his head. ‘I haven’t forbidden it, but I’ve told her I want her keeping work out of my home. She presumes quite a lot on our old relationship.’

I’m confused. ‘Wait – her
client
? Her
work
? Vanessa’s a . . . prostitute?’ I can’t believe it. Beautiful, polished, sophisticated Vanessa is a hooker? It doesn’t seem possible. Why would she need to do something like that?

Dominic breathes out, a long whistling sigh, and leans back in his chair. ‘Oh my goodness. The proverbial can of worms has just been well and truly opened. I can see that I’m going to have to be straight with you here.’

‘I’d appreciate that, really,’ I say, a touch of sarcasm in my voice.

‘All right. I was going to tell you about me, but we’ll start with Vanessa.’ He picks up his wine glass and takes a sip, as though needing a boost of courage from the alcohol. I lift my own glass, cold and beaded with condensation, and take a gulp of the clean, minerally white wine. I have a feeling that I need courage too.

Dominic sets his shoulders, clasps his hands together, and looks at me. ‘First of all, Vanessa isn’t a prostitute, not in the way you think of a prostitute, anyway. She does charge for her services, but she rarely, if ever, has sex with her clients. She offers a different kind of service altogether. Vanessa is a professional mistress and dominatrix, and she specialises in offering people with certain needs a private and safe space in which they can live out and enjoy their fantasies.’

I don’t say anything while I absorb this. I’ve heard of dominatrixes but only as figures of fun in films and stories. I’ve never really considered that they exist in the real world. That’s what Vanessa does?

Dominic continues. ‘Most people think of sex and romance in a very straightforward way – generally, it’s one man and one woman, getting naked and have straight sex. Vanilla sex, as they say. Of course, you’ve probably seen the men’s magazines in newsagents, the ones that deliver the fantasies pretty much accepted as male: big colour pictures of bare tits and open fannies for men to wank over.’

It’s so odd to hear these words coming out of Dominic’s mouth, and he says them with a kind of cold scorn that makes it even more disconcerting.

He leans forward and focuses on me entirely. ‘But many, many of us are not like that. That isn’t our fantasy at all. We need something else, and we don’t want just to imagine. We want to live it.’

He’s saying ‘we’. He must mean himself. Oh my God. What’s he going to tell me?

‘You remember that basement bar, The Asylum?’ he says suddenly, and when I nod, he continues. ‘That bar belongs to Vanessa. In fact, the whole house above it belongs to her. It’s where people go to enjoy their fantasies and satisfy their needs without fear. It’s a safe house, really. She created it for people like her.’

I take this in, remembering the submissive people in their cages. ‘She’s a dominatrix . . .’ I say, puzzled.

‘All doms need subs, or nothing’s going to happen,’ he says and for almost the first time that evening, he smiles. ‘The top and the bottom. The yin and the yang.’ Then he looks thoughtful, evidently calling up scenes from his past. He continues after a moment. ‘Vanessa and I met in Oxford when I was studying there. I liked her at once, there was an incredible attraction between us. I’d just come back from America and knew nobody, so I was delighted to meet a woman like her. And she was very unusual in her attitudes. It wasn’t long before she introduced me to her . . . tastes. It started playfully enough. She began tying me to the bed during sex, getting me aroused and stringing me out for a very long time, tormenting me almost with her techniques – and I liked it very much. It wasn’t long before she introduced objects into the bedroom: scarves, ropes, blindfolds. She liked to gag me, blindfold me, play her games with me. Then she introduced me to spanking. Gently at first – some sharp raps on the buttocks with her hands – and then more seriously. She brought in paddles and belts, she began to spend longer spanking me than she did anything else, and she loved it. God, she loved it.’ His eyes glitter with the memory.

So he’s no different to the man on the stool after all.
I don’t like the feeling I get when I imagine Vanessa and Dominic having sex: it’s part burning jealousy and part secret arousal at the thought of him stretched naked on a bed, being taken to the edge of pleasure. ‘And . . . you? Did you love it?’

He sighs again, and takes another drink. ‘It’s so hard to explain if you haven’t done it. It sounds unbelievable, I know, but pain and pleasure are very closely linked. Pain doesn’t have to be the worst thing in the world – it can stimulate and excite and make the pleasure very, very intense. When it ties in with certain fantasies or leanings that already exist in your psyche – the desire to be controlled, say, or punished, treated like a naughty child or a saucy girl who needs taming – well, then it can be simply explosive.’

I try to imagine this but still I can’t understand how being hit, being hurt, can be fun. At least, I don’t think it can for me. I don’t think I have punishment fantasies. I’m sure my fantasies are love fantasies.

Dominic goes on, evidently keen to get the story off his chest. ‘I was willing to go only so far along that road, but Vanessa wanted to go further. She had a desire to enact full-scale flogging on me, but I wasn’t keen. I liked her games up to a point, and after that they did nothing for me. And then we found the Club.’

‘The Club?’

He nods. ‘A secret gathering of like-minded people. The Club met in an old boathouse near the river that looked nothing from the outside but inside was devoted to the art and practice of flogging. It had all the equipment that is difficult to keep in a private home: spreader bars, crosses, racks and so on.’

I gasp.
A torture chamber? My God, aren’t we trying to stop this sort of thing, not encourage it? Does Amnesty International know?

Dominic sees my expression. ‘It sounds bad, I know. But it’s all consensual. Nothing is done without the floggee wanting it. My first experience there was mind-blowing. I saw a man flogging a woman, seriously flogging her.’ He has a faraway look in his eyes and I know he’s seeing it again in his imagination. ‘She was chained to a St Andrew’s Cross – you know, a cross like an X – fastened by her feet and wrists, and he used seven different instruments on her, beginning lightly with soft horsehair and ending with a heavy flogger they call the cat o’ nine tails – except this had about twenty – by which time she was almost in pieces. It was amazing.’

I can see the image in mind: a woman screaming in agony, her back a mess of welts and blood, a man crazed with power, thrashing out at her with all his strength.
And this is meant to be fun?

‘And when did they have sex?’ I ask tentatively.

Dominic looks surprised. ‘Sex?’

‘There is some of sexual activity, isn’t it? Or I am completely missing the point? So when did they have sex?’

‘The rules of the Club forbid intercourse or penetration unless members are in private and agree that as part of their scene. But a lot of people get sexual pleasure without what you might think of as sex. Sex
is
flogging; flogging is sex. Or it isn’t. It all depends. The relationship and the power exchange between the participants is often enough to give the release they crave.’

I stare at him. He’s right: I’ve never imagined some of the things he’s telling me. ‘So you became members of this club?’

Dominic nods. ‘Vanessa adored it. It was the scene she’d been looking for, she’d found her family. The Asylum is an offshoot of the Club, but a little more elaborate because it caters for more than simple domination.’

‘There’s more?’ I ask faintly.

Dominic laughs. ‘Oh yes. There’s a lot more. But let’s not get side-tracked. I’m trying to explain why I would never be that man you saw in my apartment.’

‘Why not?’

He looks me straight in the eye. ‘Because when I saw that flogging, I knew then for certain that I did not want to be manacled to the cross, taking the bite and the sting, the vicious punishment of the instruments.’ He pauses for a second and says, ‘I wanted to be the man with the whip. I didn’t want to receive it. I wanted to deal it out.’

I don’t know what to say. I stare at him, my eyes wide.

Dominic sighs, his expression suddenly defeated. ‘I didn’t intend to tell you about it like this. It’s come out all wrong.’

I hardly hear him because I’m busy making connections in my mind. ‘So that’s what you meant when you said that your needs and Vanessa’s were not compatible.’

He nods, slowly. ‘Yes. I’m afraid so. You can’t have two dominant personalities in a relationship, not when it forms a vital part of the sexual dynamic. But, more to the point, we weren’t in love any more. The relationship had run its course and we became what we were meant to be – friends. And our exploration of the scene bound us very tightly together.’

‘With handcuffs, by the sound of it,’ I say tartly, and am a little wounded when he starts to laugh. ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny. This is all very strange for me.’ I lean towards him, looking intently at him. I should have known that a man this beautiful would be anything but straightforward. ‘So you’re telling me that you need to flog women?’

He takes another drink.
Am I making him nervous
?’ This is odd for me, Beth, because you know nothing of this world, and things that are quite normal for me are going to sound bizarre to you. Believe it or not, there are lots of women who get great pleasure from being submissive. And I get a great deal of enjoyment from controlling them.’

I don’t know what to say. I’m trying to picture this man, so outwardly normal, wielding a whip across the back of a vulnerable woman. I’m filled with a mixture of anger and sadness, but I don’t really understand where those emotions have come from. Before I’ve decided what to do, I’m stumbling to my feet, pushing my chair back across the stone flags with a harsh screech. ‘So I can see why you want to end it,’ I say, my voice trembling. ‘I suppose last night wasn’t enough for you. I thought it was amazing but I suppose that without beating me to a pulp, it just wasn’t any good for you. Well, thank you for letting me know.’

Hurt springs into his eyes. ‘Beth, no, it’s not like that.’

I cut him off. ‘No, I understand. I think I’ll go now.’ I turn and dash for the door. He stands up, calling my name, but I know he can’t follow me without paying the bill, so I head out onto the street and hail a passing taxi.

‘Randolph Gardens, please,’ I say breathlessly, as I climb into the back, and all the way back to Mayfair, I’m shivering as though the temperature has just dropped to zero.

Chapter Ten

James notices the change in me at once when I arrive at work the next day.

‘Are you all right?’ he enquires, looking at me over the top of his spectacles. ‘You don’t seem quite as perky as you were yesterday.’

I try to smile. ‘I’m all right. Really.’

‘Ah. Boyfriend trouble, if I’m not much mistaken. Don’t worry, my dear, I’ve been there. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that Erlend and I are a comfortable old couple with no more of the woes of the courting days. It makes up in restfulness what it lacks in excitement.’ His expression is sympathetic. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how much it can hurt. I won’t ask questions – I’ll just take your mind off it.’

I’m not quite sure how James can make me forget last night’s revelation. I’ve thought of nothing else since. Last night I lay in bed, my eyes wide and sleep elusive, as I imagined Dominic brandishing all manner of instruments, laughing maniacally as he brings them down over a woman’s back.

A man who wants to hit women. How can he be like that? I don’t understand. I don’t even know that I want to understand.

I try to tell myself that, but the reality is that I can’t stop the way I feel about him. I still long for him in every way and he fills my thoughts all day, despite James’s best efforts to keep me busy working on the catalogue proofs for the next exhibition. I hear nothing from Dominic and as the hours pass by, I’m weighed down more and more by depression at the thought that I might not see him again.

In the evening, I go home, stopping only to pick up some groceries, and try to fool myself that I’m not watching the flat opposite, hoping that I’ll see some sign of life there. I’m craving a sight of Dominic as badly as any addict craves a fix. In fact, I worry that if I do see him, I won’t be able to stop myself going straight over there.

By eight o’clock, with the flat still in darkness, I’m in a frenzy, pacing backwards and forwards, picking up my telephone to text him but managing to stop myself, and all the time picturing where he might be and what he might be doing. I’m on the verge of going back to The Asylum to see if I can find him, when there’s a knock on the front door.

I freeze.
Dominic. It must be. Unless it’s the porter . . .