The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet) (3 page)

‘Ugh!’ I kicked the leg of his desk with my toe and instantly regretted it. ‘Could you be a little less Armenian, please? When in Rome...’

I stormed out as I often did in those days. I was fifteen and with little prospect of enjoying myself that summer. A week in Athens where my father had attended a conference and my mother and I appeared by his side at every photo opportunity because that was good for business was followed by a fortnight in a hotel Acapulco that turned out into a succession of never-ending cocktail parties. Back at Hartsfield again, only to find out that my father had volunteered my services to some youth project for all of August. That too was good for business, apparently.

The project was taking place in a school in Alton, only about five miles from our house. It was run jointly by the Probation Service and the Department of Education to improve school attendance by problem youths. The boys, for there were no girls at all, ranged between eight and fourteen, almost as old as I was and centuries wiser. I was given a form to fill, listing my skills and talents in order of excellence. For instance, swimming 5 stars, archery 4 stars and so on. I gave myself five stars for absolutely nothing, I simply wasn’t a five star person, but I did admit to a few awards in archery and fencing. The project didn’t run to the equipment required for either sport, and the organisers didn’t think that teaching the already over-combative boys new fighting skills would meet their objectives. Nor did they particularly fancy sending me into the swimming pool with three dozen oversexed boys. The very thought of it certainly gave me the creeps. I had a momentary vision of the school’s indoor swimming pool, grease-marked all around the edges and full of witchetty grubs bobbing up and down the surface.

‘Are you all right, Miss Ganis?’ The council official looked concerned.

I nodded. ‘It’s the heat. It’s quite stuffy in here.’

He led me out of the concrete prefab with corrugated roof, the headquarters of the Staying Power project. ‘You seem to be a very well organised, sensible person, Miss Ganis,’ he continued when we stopped in the shade of some trees. ‘I may have just the job for you.’

My organised, sensible brain was working overtime. The man, who didn’t have a name tag pinned to his top, seemed keen to find a suitable position for me. There was nothing about me to suggest that I was either organised or sensible. That left only one answer. My father had made an impressive donation and said something humble and charming, like
My daughter only has her time and good will to donate. I hope you can use her in some small way.
And the council official, made aware of the size of the donation, was doing his best to find something suitable for a brainless, useless thing like me. Or, he may have simply fancied my tits. I was a very well developed fifteen years old.

I ended up as the Project Leader’s wingman. Wing woman just doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily, does it?

‘You must be Sonata Ganis,’ he smiled and shook my hand as if we were equals in age and position. ‘Can’t tell you how good it is to see you. My name is Mungo Steen.’

I blinked. ‘Why does that remind me of a lexicon? Or an encyclopaedia?’

He laughed, ‘It should. The original Mungo Steen, the publisher and scientist, was my several times great grand something or another. Not grandfather. Uncle, I think. Don’t hold it against me.’

I grinned. ‘I think that I can safely promise never to hold anything against you.’

He didn’t blush and that impressed me.

He was of nice height and overall shape. I was sure that there was no six-pack under the blue striped shirt, and his biceps probably wouldn’t send anyone’s heart racing, but he wasn’t a flabby couch potato either.

‘Riding, sailing and tennis?’ I asked, forgetting how desperately revealing the question was.

He had the grace not to laugh to my face. ‘When I get around to it. You’ve got gigabits running through your veins, I hope. We’d need to set up the timetable and database just as soon as... Can you operate that one?’ he pointed to a dusty desktop on one of the desks.

I snorted. ‘I’ll bring my own laptop.’

‘Oh, you’ll do nothing of the kind. It wouldn’t be fair on the lads to put temptation their way. This machine isn’t as bad as it looks.’

We were rubbing along just fine from the start. It took me all of ten days to realise that he was actually quite attractive. Not long after, I also had to admit that I was actually quite attracted to him. And it wasn’t just because he was the only one on offer. There were two rugby players, a footballer and a rock star among the twenty two strong volunteer force. All the four of them had started from more or less the same brink as the boys the Project was trying to help. Each volunteer could choose one or two slogans that would best describe them and send their own message to their young clientele. ‘There but for the grace of God,’ read the plaque on the rugby players’ locker. ‘Been there, done that, lost the T-shirt,’ was the rock star’s choice. On so it went on and on.

‘Does that work?’ I asked Mungo.

He shrugged. ‘It does more for the volunteers than the trainees. Most of the trainees can’t read.’

I took dozens of pictures of him on my phone, chose three that I thought were the best and sent them off to Rosie.

‘You’re in love!’ she shouted as soon as she appeared on the Skype screen. ‘Admit it! Admit it.’

I admitted to liking him. A lot.

‘Does he absolutely adore you? He must do. He’d be a fool not to.’

She was at the south of France with her parents and their theatrical friends, that’s why she talked like that.

‘Oh, gosh,’ I shuddered audibly. ‘You’ve only gone all la-di-da on me again. ‘Those luvvies that you...’

‘Never mind them,’ she interrupted. ‘This about you. Is he into you?’

‘I don’t know. Is he hot?’

‘Hot or what?’ Rosie’s nose was peeling. She was dubbing something onto the shiny tip that made it look even redder. ‘He’s gorgeous. Not gay, is he?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s almost twice my age. Well, twenty-seven. His father left him the publishing business...’

‘Hold it, hold it, child. You’re not marrying him. Not just yet. Maybe never. You just want a bit of fun, don’t you?’

I nodded.

Rosie and I never talked about that incident of over two years ago. On the face of it Rosie was affected much worse than me, but nothing was quite the same for either of us ever again. Neither of us had even as much as flirted with a boy and we both avoided sleepovers where boys were the main topic of conversations conducted in giddy whispers under the forgiving blanket of darkness.

‘Well, then,’ she shrugged in her worldly way.

‘What I’m trying to say,’ I knew very well what I wanted to say, I just couldn’t work out how to say it, ‘he’s not a boy. Grown men, well, they’re different. Their, you know, they look different, don’t they?’

Rosie didn’t answer immediately.

‘What are you thinking?’ I prompted.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.’ She reached outside the screen and brought back a handful of ripe red cherries. ‘I’m starting to think that the Lily Monster did us a favour...’

‘How do you make that one out?’

‘If it wasn’t for her, you and I would have probably done some dabbling of our own, and there’s no saying where that would have lead us. Nothing good, that’s for sure. I think that virginity is a rare and valuable commodity these days. It doesn’t matter that we kept ours... You have kept yours, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I confessed meekly. ‘I’m not sure whether I’ll ever lose it. Not tempted at all. Whenever I even think of it I see those horrible worms wriggling around me, and the smell...’

‘Me too,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m trying to say that you and I are not virtuous. We’re scared to death. That means that if it wasn’t for Lily and her pathetic friends, we probably wouldn’t have been able to resist temptation any more than any other teenage girl.’ She popped the shiny red fruit into her mouth. ‘And...’

I laughed, ‘And one can only have one bite at the cherry.’

After a bit more cajoling, Rosie admitted that her sex urge hadn’t kicked in yet either, but for some reason, she didn’t see it as a problem. Anything but.

‘Urges control people, don’t they?’ she asked imperiously.

I nodded. What else could I do? The only powerful urge that I’d ever experienced was to kill my father, wake up my mother from whatever slumber she was in, and blow up our so called security centre at home with all the bodyguards and especially Bakir in it.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘this way it’s us who’s in control,’ she concluded.

‘I suppose so.’

It was much, much later that I understood what she was on about. It was possible that at that time even she didn’t quite know what she was talking about.

Me? Well, I just wanted to be normal. I needed reassurance that I was normal.

* * *

The last Thursday in August was the Prize Giving Day.

We ended up with just under two thirds of the initial number of attendants still with us, which was considered a great success. Each and every one of the boys was mentioned in the final dispatches, each and everyone was described as precious, highly promising and ‘member of the Family’, whatever that meant. And each and every one of them was given a medal.

It took ages. The reception afterwards was attended by local dignitaries, the Mayor and his lady, no less than seven senior police officers in their dress uniforms, several Magistrates that displayed remarkable familiarity with the boys’ names, some family members, and a few patrons i.e. people who’s actually put their hands into their pockets to fund the Project. My parents behaved with their trade-mark humility, told everyone how lucky they were to be blessed with a daughter like me and expressed hope to meet everyone else again same time, same place, next year. Then they drove me home.

Well, one of Dad’s gorillas did the actual driving. Once the waving and smiling from the back seat of the car was over, my father latched himself onto his mobile, my mother repeated ‘Well done, Kitten, very well done’ a few times and then closed down. I worried that the monster Bakir was feeding her drugs.

I was still expected to return to Alton to help clear the place out. Not being very domesticated I confess that I would have probably flaked out of that, sent in some excuse. But Mungo was going to be there and I was perfectly happy to wear rubber gloves and use the prehistoric vacuum cleaner all day just to be able to say bye to him.

As it happened, there wasn’t all that much to do. Mungo had brought in removers and they were at it hammer and tongue by the time Dazza, my father’s latest favourite drove me over. My job was to delete all the files from the desktop, and to make sure that all the hard copies were either shredded or safely sealed off.

‘So, what’s next for you now?’ I asked quickly as Mungo approached my work station, fetching a handful of elastic bands. ‘Back to being a captain of industry again?’

‘Oh, no, no. No peace for the wicked, I’m afraid. I’m taking a dozen or so of our favourite layabouts for a week of white water rafting in Wales.’

I loved that smile of his. Self-deprecating and yet mischievous.

‘Can I come?’

He seemed surprised. ‘Boys only. Very basic. You wouldn’t enjoy it.’

‘Promise to tell me all about it when you come back, then.’ If that wasn’t blatant, I didn’t know what was.

‘Will do. With pictures and all,’ he accepted readily. ‘Let’s exchange emails.’

We did. I also added my mobile number, he didn’t give me his. That was bordering on rude in my book.

I just came back from the washroom, drying my hands on the only remaining paper towel, as he was shaking good bye to the few locals. I rated a bear-hug as well as the handshake, but that wasn’t anywhere near enough for me. I ran through the kitchen to the back door and caught up with him as he was closing the boot on his car.

‘You forgot something!’

He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Giving myself no time or opportunity to think, I jumped up, wound my arms around his neck and pressed my lips on his. For a first-timer, it worked out very well. Instantly, the hardness of his teeth gave way to the hot, firm welcome of his mouth. My tongue shot forward in search of his, and at the same time my hips pressed into him, seeking, demanding response. It was there. Oh, yes, it was there, pressing hard over my jeans, into my pubic mound, deliciously stretching down to the uppermost point of my vulva.

All that in no more than ten frenzied seconds.

His hands detached my arms from his neck and he pushed me away.

‘Sonata, for heaven’s sake, you’re a minor...’

‘There was nothing minor about this,’ I stretched my hand towards his biker shorts.

‘I could go to prison for this, child.’ He slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

‘I’ll be sixteen in December..’

I stopped. On my left a figure was approaching in a slow-rolling gate. I cast another look in the direction of Mungo’s Landover. ‘You want me, I know you do,’ I muttered stubbornly, and resentfully walked backed to my golden cage.

On the way back Dazza was playing Black Eyed Peas. I spent the entire trip kneeling on the back seat, expecting to see through the rear window Mungo’s Landover catch up with us for the last wave. My hands clasped tightly together between my thighs cradled the luscious imprint that he’d left there forever.

Chapter 5

A year later, moving to London at the start of September wasn’t a big deal. As I may have mentioned before, my parents owned the two flats turned into one on the top of a corner townhouse along the Chelsea Embankment. The kitchen, dining room, a spacious living room and three bedrooms were downstairs, the actual penthouse above it had been left for my sole use for quite a while. For the past two or three years. Everything I needed was more or less there already. The flat also enjoyed the advantages of our own lift, dedicated space for five cars in the underground garage, the porter’s lodge downstairs and the coded entry into the building. My mother had been spending quite a lot of time there, she liked the shopping, the drinks parties and a chance to lounge about in her dressing gown all day on her own. That is, on her own if you discount the inescapable Bakir and the two ‘Boys’. The trio always came along whenever one or both of my parents wanted to spend some time in London. The Boys were Lebanese apparently, cooked well, kept the place meticulously clean and humped each other noisily every morning in their room behind the kitchen. Bakir looked after everything else. Not that I was all that sure what that may have been. Nor did I care much, as long as he left me alone.