Quiver (20 page)

She became responsible for running Jock’s social functions, held to promote both his business and public profile. Under her guidance, Motherwell’s rapidly became more of a public institution, renowned not only for its meat but also for its benevolence. With Deidre’s help she would coordinate the catering, the guest lists, the tip-offs to the local papers and decide which charity would hold the greatest publicity potential. Stacey was careful to exploit Jock’s own humble beginnings as a means of transforming the company’s image. It worked.

Soon Jock was called on to open sports centers and visit dying children to distribute Motherwell’s Christmas hampers. Stacey even organized a Jock Motherwell scholarship for educationally and economically deprived children. That landed
Jock a fifteen-minute interview on prime-time television. Sales went up sixty percent overnight. Jock was initially overjoyed, but as Stacey’s confidence grew and she became more and more assertive at board meetings, Jock found himself secretly threatened. Behind her back he hired himself a new assistant, then redefined Stacey’s position, limiting her duties to stocktaking and social-diary coordinator. Stacey accepted his decision without question, but blamed herself, suffering silently as she searched through her actions to discover what had caused Jock’s change of heart.

It happened the day Jock had insisted that she entertain their Arab contact Ahmed el Hassam, who was visiting from Saudi Arabia.

“He’s our main man there. Has heaps of cash, brings in over two mil worth of business. So we’d better put on a decent spread. I’ve organized the caterers; all you’ve got to do is smile a lot and look like a blond princess. He collects racing horses, so you two have something in common.”

It was hot, one of those days when the sun beats mercilessly down on everything. Jock had asked her to take the Mercedes for a service. Before she left the garage she decided to check the glove box. She flicked it open. Something glimmered inside. She pulled a tiny shoe out into the light—a miniature version of her own shiny red shoes. She turned the shoe over slowly. Size four, Charles Jourdan, exactly the same style, only smaller, much smaller. Everything around her receded. All she could hear was the pumping of her own heart, drumming loudly in her ears. The shoe sat in her hand comfortably. In fact, it was smaller than her hand.

“Excuse me, Miss, but we need to put the car on the blocks.”
The mechanic’s voice dragged her back to reality. She slammed the door shut, hiding the shoe in her handbag, and hailed a cab amid a rain of wolf whistles from the building site opposite.

The trip back to the house was a blur. Stacey gazed out at the passing suburbia, numb. His duplicity burned hard; the weight of the shoe in her handbag was like a millstone.

Back at the house they had already erected a huge marquee in the garden. Inside were tables spread with the most extraordinary collection of cold meats, shellfish, salads and dips. In the center of each was a curious display of long sausages and meat bones, arranged to look like macabre flowers—Jock’s idea of a joke. Dazed, Stacey checked that the right number of plates had been laid out.

Tiny, shining, beautiful. She locks the bathroom door behind her and looks at the shoe. She sniffs along the shimmering patent leather. Jock’s distinctive aftershave intermingled with something else—jissom and a heavier perfume? She wants to slash the shoe, as images of impaling Jock through the eye with the heel flood up behind her retina. She wants revenge. She looks at herself. Her external appearance remains deceptively composed. Grimly she reaches for her lipstick. She puts on the same Chanel suit Jock bought her that first day and goes down to welcome the guests, the perfect hostess.

Many of the visitors are there mingling already: the stock farmers who supply the livestock, bureaucrats from the agricultural department who are unofficially on the payroll, the odd socialite determined to ingratiate herself with the nouveau riche. Stacey murmurs greetings and propels them gently in the direction of the most appropriate circle of chatting people. Fragments of conversation drift by.

“Jock has really trained her well.”

“Lucky to have her. I mean he’s not exactly a paragon of virtue himself, is he?”

She floats by, superficially tranquil, as brittle as glass. She hates him for this public humiliation.

At last he arrives, surrounded by his henchmen. They part like worker bees harboring their queen when Jock steps forward to show off his associate from the Middle East.

“Stacey, this is Ahmed el Hassam.” She realizes that she is staring directly into the stranger’s eyes. Ahmed el Hassam—dark-skinned, high cheekboned, handsome in a gaunt way—is exactly her height.

“Stacey is my partner in crime, aren’t yer, doll?” Jock pinches her bottom. She smiles and extends a long cool hand toward Ahmed. He squeezes it warmly.

“At last, a woman I can see eye to eye with,” he murmurs in perfect English.

“It’s not often that I see eye to eye with anyone.” Did I say that? she thought. How can I sound so calm? She smiles back at him. The novelty of feeling equal, of feeling that this man could physically overpower her, intrigues her. It does more than that. Jock steps possessively between them.

“And there’s someone else I’d like you to meet, Stacey. June Thistlewaite, meet the great Stance.” Stacey freezes as Jock’s new assistant, June Thistlewaite, steps forward. She is under five foot with heels, which, according to Stacey’s calculations, makes her at least four inches shorter than Jock.

“Hi, Jock’s told me so much about you.” A saccharine, high-pitched voice, a tiny triangular face, dark eyes and jet-black hair, pretty in a doll-like way, the exact opposite of herself.

Stacey pulls her aside. “What size shoes do you take?”

“Why do you ask?”

In a flash Jock separates the two women. He steers them both to the buffet table, talking all the time about the export business, tax tariffs, how Ahmed has offered to extend their business further into the Arab countries. She knows she is drinking too much, conscious only of the other woman, her natural grace, the dainty way her tiny hands handle the knife and fork.

She can feel the eyes of Ahmed catching her as she stumbles on the dance floor, bending over to pick up the broken heel of her shoe.

“Come, you need to sit down.” They walk past Jock holding court over a group of cattle farmers, their loud laughter exploding obediently after each of his jokes.

“You are married?”

“Not yet.”

“This is bad. He should marry you. You are worth it.”

“How do you know?”

“An instinct.”

“The same one you use for choosing horses?”

“Perhaps.”

He refuses to be insulted. This excites her further, the champagne rendering her fearless. Behind him she can see June bringing Jock another bottle; there is something intimate about the way she touches his arm. Stacey turns back to Ahmed. Close up he smells of a sweet, musky aftershave and soap, as if under the Italian suit he is as well scrubbed as his English accent.

“Let’s go upstairs.”

“Pardon?”

“Upstairs. There is a collection of photos of racehorses, the ones Jock owns.”

She takes him by the hand and drags him across the dance floor, past the buffet table, past the frantic caterers, past the drunken farmers whirling crazily around them. As they leave the tent she catches a glimpse of Jock staring at her.

Up in Jock’s study they stand before a photo of Jock’s favorite racehorse, a mare called Prime Cut.

“She has long, slender legs like yourself,” says Ahmed, running his hands up under her skirt as if to confirm his theory. His large hands span her easily.

“Good breeding stock, with a strong broad back and firm flanks.” She allows herself the luxury of being able to rest her head against a standing man. He squeezes the cheeks of her ass. She can feel his erection.

“I have never made love to a woman my own height.”

“Me neither.” They both laugh at her statement, at the sudden awkward intensity between strangers. He turns her around suddenly and plunges his tongue into her mouth, tasting the sweetness of her, while slipping a foot between hers, catching her as she falls onto the carpet.

The room is spinning. It is all wrong, as if the decor fits into the irrationality of her act, of surrendering to a man she doesn’t love in revenge for her lover’s infidelity. She is intoxicated with the smell and feel of him. She resigns herself to his caresses, and throws her head back as he lifts her skirt and buries his mouth into her sex. She moans as he sucks on her—now she is the conqueror, the one being served.

Her hand curls around something under the couch. She realizes she is clutching the twin of the tiny red stiletto. How could he? Here, in the house.

Ahmed emerges from under her skirt, his face flushed, eyes
bright, and tears off his shirt, jacket and tie in one motion. His chest is huge, broader than her own, hairless; his coffee-colored skin seems far younger on his body than on his face. Kneeling on the floor, he unzips his trousers and pulls his penis out. He is longer and thinner than Jock. Uncircumcised, something gold glimmers at the tip. She takes him into her hands, his size and weight unfamiliar to her. Close up, she sees that he has a pierced foreskin. A small gold bead sits at the top of his glans.

“What’s this for?” she asks, her voice breaking into the moment. He smiles broadly. “Wait and see.” He places himself between her lips, then pushes her back suddenly.

His cock seems to pierce the neck of her womb. The pain becomes pleasure as the gold bead rolls over her clit as he enters her again and again. She is close to coming, his shoulders and arms engulfing her as he rides her faster and faster.

Suddenly she hears a muffled cough. Opening her eyes she fleetingly sees Jock ducking behind the couch.

“Look at me! Look at me!” Ahmed’s voice is urgent, close to orgasm. Glancing up she gazes for a moment into his eyes. There is nothing there but this act between them. Sex, pure sex. And the knowledge that she is being watched. She wants to show Jock what he risks losing.

She spins on Ahmed’s cock and turns with her back to him. He runs his hands down her broad back, parting her firm ass. He watches himself entering her, her wet clenching as he slips in the whole length of himself. He moves back so that the tip rests between her glistening lips. He slips a finger in beside his cock and traces the moisture up to her anus, massages the rim, then pushes a finger in. Stacey gasps, the pleasure is intense as if two centers within her link and throb. She is close to losing
control. Ahmed groans and thrusts into her. Reaching around he cups her heavy swinging breasts with his left hand while playing her with his right.

“I’m coming,” she moans, loud enough for Jock to hear. Jock peers out from between the gold frame of the legs of the couch.

“I’m coming!”

Jock’s head appears in full view, an expression of pain and fascination dances across his features as he watches this huge man, this giant, take his lover.

“Ahhh!” she screams and grasps the shoe, throwing it full pelt at Jock. It hits him on the chest, bounces off and smashes the photo of the filly. Behind her, she hears Ahmed come in a huge resonating shout while Jock picks up the tiny red shoe and stares at it.

T
he plane trip had been bumpy. No matter how hard he tries, he can never get used to flying; there is something horribly unnatural about defying gravity on such a large scale. Mercifully, no one had recognized him on the plane. Normally he wouldn’t have liked that, being a vain man, but after the ignominy of last night, he was thankful for any anonymity he could get.

Karl leaned back in the cab and flexed his hands. They still ached. Old age, you can hide it in the skin but not in the bones. Tropical rainforest flashed past the window, sugarcane fields with workers in straw hats visible where the jungle had been bulldozed flat. He couldn’t even remember the name of the country he was in. It was just two concerts, one at the request of the President of this small island, an Oxford graduate and avid fan of Mozart’s. He’d been pestering Karl’s agent for months trying to schedule a stopover on one of Karl’s whirlwind tours. Finally they’d succumbed, and for an extraordinary amount of money Karl was to play the President’s own selected concertos. There was to be no public attendance. Just the President and his twelve mistresses as audience. The
second concert was for the hotel chain that had sponsored his accommodation. They had converted one of the old colonial palaces into a deluxe resort for the extremely rich. Karl was looking forward to the hotel; having spent most of the last twenty years touring, he’d become addicted to the convenience and transient ambience of hotel rooms. In his mind, they had all evolved into a monoculture of fluffy, clean, white towels, mini bars and spas. As his fame as a conductor had grown, Karl had gradually created a network of brief affairs that now spread over most of the globe. Classical music, like rock music, has its groupies. Musicians always hold an allure, and conductors, well, sometimes Karl wondered whether it wasn’t an unconscious reference to masturbation or digital competence. Whenever he’d wanted, they were always there, waiting backstage or in the Green Room, breathless, youthful, eyes glittering, nervous but alive with the thrill of touching fame.

Him. Karl Pope. The famous conductor and pianist. Available in most record stores.

Until Katherine.

The taxi skidded and the cab driver, large and black, shouted blasphemies as a nonchalant goat glanced scornfully at the car and sauntered back to the curb. Karl suddenly felt very sick. The humiliation of last night sat like a cold brick in the base of his stomach. Up until this moment, shock and the distraction of coordinating his departure had mercifully postponed the memory of the extreme ridicule he had been exposed to. Katherine. She had been everything he’d imagined in a partner. Highly intelligent, funny, musical—but, thank God, not professionally so. She was also fifteen years younger and beautiful. The best kind of beauty, worn like an irritating
obstacle that got in the way of communication. She worried that people didn’t take her seriously because of her appearance, but this was one of the eccentricities that had first attracted him. That and the fact that she was never in awe of him. She didn’t even know who he was when they first met. Because of this, Karl always felt she loved him honestly for what he was and who he was. And it had been love, in a way that at fifty-two he’d never experienced before—or perhaps had never recognized.