The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet) (7 page)

My parents were on a fact-finding mission to several Pacific islands, but Bakir and the Boys were immediately dispatched to open up the place for me and look after me. My job was to study hard and make Bakir’s job as easy as possible. I missed school, missed my friends.

In particular, I missed Asha.

For, just after the last Christmas break, she had shown me what she’d declined to tell the other two.

I knew that she wanted to tell and she knew that I wanted to know.

One evening we worked on a history project together. We piled the books and notes on my desk and worked side by side on the bed. For a few hours everything was fine. Then I found my mind wandering off, my attention slipping hopelessly away.

‘Are you going to tell me or what?’

I didn’t need to explain. Asha closed her notebook. ‘If you want.’

‘Do I have to undress?’

‘You don’t have to,’ she emphasised ‘have to’. ‘Not for demonstration purposes. For full impact, the actual experience, on the other hand...’

We undressed.

Her breasts were heavier than they looked under the clothes. I was impressed with the style of her pubic hair. It was shaved smoothly off everywhere except for a small shaded crescent just above the vulva.

‘It gets a bit technical from here,’ she said, all focused and businesslike.

She positioned my left leg flat on the bed, then bent it under an angle at the knee. Under her direction, my right knee went up. Briefly, she inspected her work, nodded and started slotting herself in place. She pushed her left leg under the crook of my right knee, and overarched my right one with her right. She moved herself closer to me, then closer still.

My heart was pounding so fast that I nearly pulled out. This was sheer madness. What was I doing? What was I thinking of?

Within seconds, thinking was completely out of the equation.

We coupled with a faint sound of suction. There was nothing, not even air left between us.

I felt shivering cold and burning hot within seconds. There was no way that I could define the feeling. There was no time for that either. Slowly and gently Asha moved her pussy up and down mine, and I responded by pressing myself deeper into her, willing her to swallow me or sink into me. The faster and harder she rubbed the more stimulated I became, both outside and in. The thrill that I could only liken to an exhilarated ache that was increasing in intensity with every move, was spreading, taking over my entire lower body.

With a mind of its own, her clitoris was rubbing mine ever faster and ever harder. All of me was opening up, screaming and begging to be filled, aching unbearably with exquisite exhilaration. More, I cried, more. Harder. Get inside me, get in deep and hard, do more, be more. Please.

The craving intensified to a pitch, to a mad, reckless insistence on fulfilment.

My gyrations must have reached some incredible speed for the glorious torture, the excruciating agony of my desperate quest finally climaxed in frenzied gratification.

Fighting for breath and dripping in sweat, we were both leaning backwards, resting on our palms, our torsos as far apart as they could go. Only our clitorises snuggled against each other for a moment.

Unhurried, Asha pulled away and moved her legs down the side of the bed. She reached for a glass that contained remains of last night’s lemonade. She gulped it down and turned to me.

‘Want anything?’

‘A big fat cock, please.’

* * *

A few days later we did it again, and it was still very enjoyable. Not as exciting and frightening as the first time, but slower, more sophisticated, more pleasurable. I knew what to expect, I knew what was going to happen. But, more importantly, I also knew what not to expect.

‘Pussy sex,’ I told myself, ‘is like chewing gum. The taste gets your juices going, you salivate like mad. But to survive you need the real thing. The bigger and more real the better.’

I couldn’t wait to put my theory to the test.

Something that under the circumstances, I couldn’t expect to happen any time soon.

Sometimes, in the middle of another algorithm theory or the exceptions to the French conjunctives rule, I’d find myself on my sun lounger, its top section lifted to support my back and shoulders, pretty much in the same position as I had shared with Asha, my one knee up, the other one flat down, my pussy wide open and expectant. In my mind’s eye, I could see a man’s left leg stretch under my right knee, the right one find support over my left thigh, and his huge, fully erected cock making its way to me but never getting there. Then I’d shake off the fantasy and sink into despair. As things stood, that was never going to happen. Not for as long as I couldn’t make a move without my entourage of minders and boyfriend-catchers.

But hope and hormones are feisty warriors.

I booked an appointment at the beauty parlour. Not at the one practically next door to Harvey Nicholls where my mother went several times a month. I phoned
Smooth
situated half way up the Exhibition Road. Their TV ads inspired confidence. I did consider asking the other three to come along, my treat and all that, but it didn’t feel right. What I was about to have done was private. Girly giggles wouldn’t have enhanced the experience.

‘I’m taking Evora for a spin tomorrow,’ I mentioned casually to Bakir when he served my dinner. Evora Lotus was a present from my parents when I passed my driving test just over a week after my seventeenth birthday.

‘Where to?’

‘Beauty salon,’ I said haughtily. I was trying to make it sound as close as possible to
none of you bloody business
, but the attempt failed miserably. Bakir was impervious to my rudeness.

At 10.30 in the morning I descended to the garage and cheerfully skipped to the P1 section. My parents’ cars were neatly parked side-by-side, Bakir’s battered green Jeep stood guard behind them. My Lotus Evora gleamed in her red metallic glory in splendid isolation, her nose turned to the exit. It wasn’t parked apart from the others to show her off. Truth be told, I was scared stiff of scratching her or bumping into one of the other vehicles. I would have never lived it down.

The top was down already. Bakir was sitting in the passenger seat, reading the user manual. His canvas camouflage hat was pulled low down his forehead to stop it from flying off during the ride.

‘Was there enough milk for your cornflakes?’ he asked without lifting his eyes of the booklet. ‘I’ll get some more on the way back.’

I wished he held it upside down. At least I could have ridiculed him instead of putting on a display of indignation to someone who wasn’t even looking at me. ‘Or, maybe, I could drop you off on King’s Road. You can easily pick up some there and walk back or call a taxi.’

He didn’t answer. I sulked for the rest of the way.

Annoyingly, once we got there, it was actually quite handy to have him around. The girl on the phone had told me that there was a car park at the back. Not only that she exaggerated, the so-called car park was little more than a back yard accessible through an uncomfortably narrow entrance, the space was fully taken up by two repair vans, both belonging to the local water company.

‘Go in,’ Bakir ordered. ‘I’ll find somewhere... Text me when you’re done.’

‘I may be some time,’ I fired back ungratefully.

I was left in the Blanche’s capable hands, as the raven-haired proprietor with a weakness for botox put it. Blanche was a good looking woman in her forties, seemingly free from makeup or any other interventions. Her teeth may have been veneered or else she was naturally blessed with perfect ivories that she didn’t flash uncomfortably often.

So far so good.

Ignacio, my regular hairdresser, the protégé of Monty, my mother’s stylist, would have never forgiven me if I let anyone else touch my long tresses. He’d taught me how to plait them, how to pin them up, how to show them off without looking too old, too affected, too cheap or too severe. I therefore only booked a pedicure, a foot massage and leg and bikini wax.

I pulled out my own design from my bag. It was a product of a long and hard effort, a cardboard cut-out in the shape of a crescent.

‘Can you do this?’

Blanche nodded. ‘We’ll be doing a Brazilian, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed quietly. I had no idea what a Brazilian was. I’d had bikini wax done before, only it didn’t have a name and I got to keep my knickers on.

She placed my feet in a bowl of warm, soapy water that smelled of orange blossom and encased my bottom and genitals in hot wet towels. My reaction surprised me. The only way I could describe it was instant sexual arousal that lingered even as the terry cloth slowly cooled down. I wondered if my red face would betray me but Blanche was busy with wax strips on my legs. She was good and I’d had it done so many times before that it didn’t hurt any longer.

‘Let me change your nappies,’ she smiled when she’d finished swathing my legs with baby oil. ‘It’ll make it less painful for you afterwards.’

The second lot of hot towels made me randy again. Under the white modesty sheet that Blanche had thrown over me, my hand crept down towards my clitoris and discreetly I started rubbing it with the hot, wet terry fabric. I had been a sworn enemy of DIY jobs, and I still was. But, oh boy, that felt good. A little too good.

Blanche was pushing back the cuticle on my toenails. ‘I can give Bernard a shout if you wish...’

I nearly died. ‘No, no...’

‘Don’t be embarrassed. Happens all the time. Bernard is very good, very clean too. And his prices are reasonable. Shame to miss.’

I thanked her and declined as prettily as I knew how. In spite of excruciating pain inflicted by the Brazilian, the rest of the session went off in a haze.

When she was done, Blanche brought me a mirror. ‘Is that what you had in mind?’

Still embarrassed, I nodded.

She produced a gold-coloured eye-liner with a gold-coloured tip. ‘Let me show you something. Before your date, paint this thinly on the bottom row of hairs,’ she drew the pen lightly along the inside curve arched a quarter of an inch above my clitoris. She then used an eyebrow brush and run it upwards from the coloured line. ‘It lasts a few dates, it doesn’t dissolve in water, it doesn’t colour your partner’s genitals or... it’s not toxic... it’s kiss proof. Do you like it?’

The effect was very subtle but effective. My natural hair colour was chestnut brown. Nicely warm chestnut brown, I liked to think. The sparing, discrete gold speckles made it vibrant.

‘The speckles match your eyes now,’ Blanche smiled again. ‘Keep the pencil.’

I thanked her profusely and left her a large tip. She more than deserved it.

* * *

Bakir pulled up to the kerb as I stepped out on the pavement.

I greeted him with the brightest of smiles. ‘Let’s not go straight back. Let’s have coffee and cake at Kaffein.’

‘Plenty of coffee at home,’ he growled in his high-pitched soprano. If you haven’t heard a soprano castrato growl, you should. You really should. It’s priceless. ‘Half the plate of black wooden goat in the fridge, too.’

‘You mean black forest
gâteau,’ I laughed. Cruelty comes so naturally when you’re young. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel sorry for him. The fact that he’d been raped and castrated here, in this country as an adult made things worse for some reason. But, I hated feeling sorry for people. It was so undignified. Making fun of him was more like a compliment. More in the way that I would have been making fun of a baby brother if I had one.

‘Seeing that my parents are apparently the most loved up married couple in the world, how come that I’m an only child, Bakir?’ That sounded like a suitably grownup question. I would have given my left arm to be able to place my order in the style of
My usual, please Bob, and a lemonade for my friend
, the way regulars did. I watched two men come to the door, shout Hi Bob! and park themselves on the bench outside. A few minutes later they were given what they came for plus a friendly little chat with the waitress.

Bakir and I drank our lemonade and nibbled on walnut toast at the bar.

‘It is odd, isn’t it?’ I persisted.

He just shrugged. ‘You may not like them. You don’t choose family.’

‘Maybe, but that’s not the point,’ I muttered. ‘Do you have siblings, Bakir?’

‘No more. My senior brother was a bad man. He was killed. I had no one else.’

‘And that’s why you were in the orphanage? Was it really bad there?’

‘They gave us food and clothes. We had to learn to read and write and numbers. If we didn’t we were caned. I was caned only two times, one for getting my sums wrong and again for ink on my book. Ink and books are expensive.’

‘And my dad?’

Bakir drank some more of his lemonade and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. He then wiped off the back of his hand with the paper napkin. ‘He was teaching English.’

That was news to me. ‘He was teaching you English?! Ghee whizz! How did he get to know any English?’

‘He had much knowledge. Knowledge earns you much money.’

Bakir wasn’t a conversationalist. Idle chitchat wasn’t his style. I’d known that, but he was the only source of reliable information. After all, he’d been there from the start. From what my mother had told me, Bakir was around thirty seven, thirty eight years old. Certainly no more than forty. His appearance was ageless. His weight took away his age, his facial expressions, even his moods. It couldn’t have taken away his memories. Then it dawned on me. That horrible event of eighteen years ago could have done exactly that. It could have caused a sort of amnesia, fuzziness about anything that had happened before. Mother didn’t know how much he’d remembered about the attack itself. He certainly hadn’t been much use to the police. No one had ever been caught. My father had done everything possible for him and Bakir had been repaying the kindness in unswerving loyalty to all of us, but none of that could have possibly replaced the life that he’d lost.