The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (18 page)

‘Pweese?’ I put on a baby voice and batted my eyelashes, just like I’d seen the Screamer do to him once.

‘Fine, okay, whatever,’ J grumbled. ‘But don’t you two go and do anything stupid!’

vendredi, le 11 mars

I knew of a river, starting from springs inland, that ran as far as the sea. It was supposed to be a great place for swimming and canoeing, the fishermen were always talking about it, and I’d even heard that if you went diving in the limestone source you could find arrowheads. I reckoned if we set off early enough we could cycle there, hire canoes and paddle down it and back up, then cycle home.

‘What should we do?’ the Boy asked, about the bikes. ‘Chain them to something?’

‘It’s that or take them in the canoes,’ I said. The Boy considered this seriously. ‘Of course we chain them up.’

‘I’m a little worried about your cousin,’ he said. ‘What if they get nicked?’

‘Not to worry, he’s a lot more laid back than he looks.’

The Boy disappeared to find a good place to hide the cycles while I paid a bored-looking woman for canoe rental. I went down to the edge of the springs. The water was glass-clear and smooth; thick, long grass swirled in the currents.

Hmm, he’s taking his time, I thought. I pulled the canoes down to the edge of the water, went back up for our bags of food and water. Waited a few more minutes: no sign of the Boy. Retrieved the paddles and sat on the ground. Still no Boy.

I bet he’s ringing some girl, the cunt. It put me in a very black mood to think of him sneaking off to whisper sweet nothings to some slag while I was all but turning cartwheels to keep him entertained.

By the time he came back – some twenty minutes – I was not in the mood for our outing any more. ‘Oh, why do you always have to be this way?’ he said, trying to put an arm round my waist. Why do I always have to? Is he actively trying to make me angry? I turned away. ‘I just wanted to ring my family before the battery runs down. I didn’t know the charger wouldn’t work here.’

Like fuck, I thought. The sooner that battery goes dead the better.

samedi, le 12 mars

The Boy loves food. Correction: the Boy loves large amounts of food, he’s not picky. Magnus poked fun at his eating habits when I visited at New Year – they were arguing over who should have the last of the lemon cake, and as the Boy had had a slice already and Magnus hadn’t, you would have thought it was clear cut. But no, the Boy insisted everyone had already eaten more than he, at which point Magnus pulled a face and imitated his brother’s voice with surprising accuracy: ‘No bulk, big sulk.’ Everyone laughed and the Boy reluctantly gave up his claim.

In fact, he has probably the worst palate of anyone I’ve ever met. Nothing is salted enough, and a slow-simmered white wine sauce, in his opinion, holds nothing against a jar of shop-bought Bolognese. At least he’s easy to please, and once you have the bulk equation cracked, it’s smooth sailing. Also it saves money as Michelin stars are mostly lost on him.

Unfortunately the Boy doesn’t like the local food. In spite of his brawny appearance, he is the sort of man who goes into a curry house and asks for extra-mild korma. Luckily there’s not just local food on offer here: the tourist restaurants cater for less robust palates. Well, I think, if you can’t take the chilli here, I can’t imagine what you would have eaten with Susie in Thailand.

We were walking back from the Greek grocer when he noticed something on the ground. ‘What’s that?’ he exclaimed.

‘It’s a starfruit,’ I said. Now that I’d eaten loads and knew that they grew everywhere, I was no longer surprised by this weirdly geometrical fruit.

‘Can you eat them?’

‘You can,’ I said, and picked it up. The tree was only feet away. This one must have just dropped; it was smooth, with no insect holes or bird-pecks. ‘Want to share?’

He reached out. ‘Do I peel it?’

‘No, skin and all. You can eat the whole thing.’ He bit into the fruit gingerly. ‘Oh, wow,’ he said. ‘It’s like a lime-flavoured plum.’ I started to walk away. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘There might be more.’

dimanche, le 13 mars

Which part of ‘That feels good’ – in the sexual context, of course – is so difficult to understand?

When I was paid to sleep with people, being told ‘That feels good’ was a green light, a signal that I was on the right track and, if lucky, could expect a generous tip or a repeat customer. Therefore, when someone told me in no uncertain terms that something felt good, the last thing I would have done was stop doing it.

But now that my services are available to one person only and on a strictly voluntary basis, it seems ‘That feels good’ means the opposite of what I thought it did. Because as soon as I say something feels good … the Boy promptly stops.

I can’t imagine why. Perhaps he thinks I mean ‘That feels good – but it could feel better,’ therefore concluding that doing whatever he is doing, only faster, harder, and in another location altogether, is the way forward. Or maybe he’s a stubborn, contrary type at heart, the sort of person who will suggest going to the cinema just when you say you want to stay in, and ‘That feels good’ is an incentive to do the complete opposite.

I’ve tried several times to remedy the problem. First I stopped saying anything at all, but that led to the assumption that I wasn’t enjoying anything.

So I moved on to the subtler approach: squirming and groaning with pleasure, for instance, instead of vocalising my approval. He thought I was being ticklish and stopped. So no gain there.

Maybe the problem is a lack of specificity? I could be saying ‘That feels good’ when he’s doing more than one thing and so, confused about which ‘That’ it is and how ‘good’ it’s feeling, he stops one in order to concentrate more fully on the other. Except if so, it’s always been the wrong thing.

And while some people like a bit of direction – harder, there, more, now – it can be a touch deflating when your partner comes over all Orson Welles on you with ‘Do the windmill thing with your tongue again, but more slowly, and not pinching at the same time, please, and for goodness sake don’t breathe on me unless it’s a dry breath and not a damp one. Starting when I tap you on the shoulder, okay?’

Or maybe – gulp – he’s become so accustomed to other women that he can’t remember what feels good to me. The weirdly fussy way he’s been handling my nipples might support this. I don’t like softly-softly when it comes to breasts; I like rough handling that leaves evil-looking marks and probably comes within Geneva Convention definitions of torture.

The thought drives me round the bend: I’ve kept multiple lovers at the same time, and in the line of work had to deal with the unrelenting newness of many clients, night after night. It’s not so hard to figure out what a stranger wants, whether he likes blowjobs shallow or deep, with light teeth or without; whether the cheeky finger up the backside is a welcome intervention or no. You get used to adapting to the signals, and by the end of the hour should be fucking him just the way he wants to be fucked. If not you haven’t done your job. So to a so-called partner, reading your signals should be second nature, right?

Maybe we’ve been apart too long.

lundi, le 14 mars

There’s an island off the coast that’s only accessible by ferry. So we hire a vehicle for a few days. The Boy presents his UK licence and about seven thousand other forms of identification, in the hope that some combination of them will be suitable, as my Spanish is far from good enough to deal with questions. It all goes smoothly, and the keys to the car are soon in his pocket.

He wonders why we didn’t hire a sailing boat, some nice compact little cruiser, but I assure him that it was prohibitively expensive. Besides, the car will probably be drier and more comfortable. With the back seat down, the area in the car would be larger than my bed. So we pack food, water, clothes and armful of bedding. Then it’s just us and the open road.

Us, the open road, and every other tourist who reckoned negotiating a completely unfamiliar highway system would be a doddle. No one respects the signs here; I reckon they don’t even know what they are. Cars are undertaking left, right and centre.

We stop at a layby where two men are sat on the edge of the open bed of a truck. The hand-painted signs nearby advertise their wares: meat. It looks like – no, on closer inspection, it is – they’re cooking something over coals in an old oil barrel.

We buy two of whatever they’re selling, and take off. Steering with one hand and eating greasy pork (I think it’s pork; it had a trotter) with the other might seem dangerous, but in fact we’re swerving no more madly than everyone else.

The Boy makes a manful effort to get through all the food – truly, this is his talent – but in the end gives up, declaring it ‘too greasy’. Wow, I think, that’s a new one.

We stop again an hour later and feed it to the grateful seagulls.

mardi, le 15 mars

We reach the end of the ferry ride just in time to find out the campsite is full. The Boy’s worried; I’m not. We can always find a place close by on the mainland. That leaves a few hours until the last ferry back.

The island is long and thin, a barrier island. We start walking, barefoot, on the beach with everything back in the car park. It’s longer than I imagine, because almost an hour later we’re still walking. I suggest we turn round or we’ll miss the ferry. The Boy guesses it can’t be much further.

We meet a family on bicycles coming in the other direction. I ask how far it is to the end of the island. They say they don’t know; they didn’t make it that far. I thank them and tell the Boy we should really go back now. He winces. There’s a thorn in his foot, and he can’t walk very fast.

All our food and water is back in the car, miles away. He’s limping badly. I stop and try to extract the thorn. It’s tiny, and we have no magnifying glass or tweezers. Eventually I do extract it, and he’s grateful, but it’s taken almost half an hour. ‘Like drawing a thorn from the paw of the lion,’ he says. By now there’s little chance of making the ferry. We have a wind-up radio and listen to it for a bit. There isn’t much radio reception. A Shakira song comes on, though, and I sing along, dancing circles around the (very amused) Boy.

‘You must be delirious with thirst. Usually you’d be in tears by now.’

The bottom of my feet feel like they’re on fire, but it’s worth it. We make it back to the car park and the ferry is long gone – so are the people. Ours is the last car left. We could try to camp somewhere, but fold the seats down instead, and make a feast of tinned beans and tortillas before falling gratefully asleep.

mercredi, le 16 mars

‘We can’t leave without a swim,’ the Boy insists. We’d woken to the sound of tapping – a bird was attacking its own reflection in our wing mirror. We washed at a standpipe and went to watch the sunrise.

‘The riptides here are lethal,’ I say.

‘Are you saying you’re scared?’

‘I’m saying you’re welcome to risk your own life, but not mine.’

He jumps right in. With the position of the sun, there’s so much light reflecting off the water I can’t see him. What if something happened? I look around. There are a few people on the horizon, fishermen probably. No phones for miles; the first ferry hasn’t come yet. How would I raise the alarm?

I sit and worry my nails for almost an hour until he returns, covered in goose pimples and jellyfish stings. ‘Actually, I’m glad you didn’t come,’ he said. ‘Did you see that? I almost didn’t make it.’

‘Turn round and look, I couldn’t see anything. I was worried you might drown, you fool.’

He looks down and sees my raw fingertips. ‘Oh, poor thing,’ he says, and kisses my head. ‘Let’s get the ferry and some breakfast – I’m ravenous.’ His skin is still damp, and cold to the touch.

I shake my head. ‘Not just yet,’ I say, indicating the car, where the back seat is still down and our bedding from the night still strewn. ‘I think maybe you need some more intensive warming up.’

jeudi, le 17 mars

I’m a woman. As such, I am privileged to enjoy certain prerogatives. One of them is to have arbitrary rules of conversation that are indecipherable to men. There are lines, and then there is between the lines, and that’s where I prefer to conduct things at times. I know it’s not fair, but then men get to pee standing up. Throw us a bone here. Gentlemen paramours and relatives, take heed.

The Commandments go roughly thus:

1 I am the woman, the one in charge of the conversation. Thou shalt not have any subject changes unapproved by me.

2 Thou shalt remember the first ten minutes of the morning and keep them holy. The period before my first cup of tea is not suitable for chat.

3 Thou shalt not refer to sporting analogies too often.

4 Thou shalt not interrupt The Simpsons, even if it is dubbed into Spanish and the only thing I clearly understand is Mr Burns saying, ‘Excelente.’

5 Thou shalt not covet another woman’s rack unless I have mentioned it first.

6 Thou shalt not refer to PMT, even if I am clearly experiencing it.

7 Thou shalt not pronounce the word ‘controversy’ with undue stress on the second vowel. Do you know how annoying that is to everyone else?

8 Thou shalt not use the word ‘hypocrisy’ in conversation. Thou art not twelve any more. In writing thou shalt not spell the word ‘hippocracy’. That would be a government run by horses. There are online dictionaries, and thou shalt make use of them.

9 Thou shalt not expect conversation when I am reading, even if it’s only the paper or the back of a packet of rice.

10 Thou shalt not talk to me through the toilet door. Ever. That’s just wrong.

vendredi, le 18 mars

We were walking the beach, looking for turtle eggs – Tomás had dropped by with a sheet on how to identify the nests, what to do when you see one, and so on. Unfortunately, most of the locals think that the appropriate thing to do, on finding the delicate nest of an endangered animal, is to collect the eggs for overpriced tourist drinks or to set their dog on them. But we are undeterred.