The Pleasure Quartet (16 page)

And, from the expression on his face, how much he enjoyed it.

Having satisfied his lust, the older man, after a final fearsome thrust into Gwillam, disengaged himself from him, bent down at the waist and pulled up the tangled pool of his
trousers, buttoned them and, in silence, moved away.

Just a couple of yards from him, I stood motionless, still transfixed in both fascination and horror, cocooned in darkness.

Close by a bird sang a timid song of morning.

Gwillam, splayed, was laid out like a disconnected puppet, panting gently from the savage effect of the man’s assault, catching his breath, as if badly wounded.

His continued immobility began to worry me.

‘Are you alright?’

His head turned.

He opened his eyes.

‘Who . . .?’

‘It’s me.’

‘What?’

He rose, quickly grabbing a dark blue towel that lay by the side of the pool and draped it around his waist in a by now futile attempt to partly cover up. I had seen enough, or too much.

He peered hesitantly at me.

A flash of recognition.

‘Moana?’

‘Yes,’ I confessed, my voice no louder than a murmur.

Surprise rushed across his weary features.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he asked me.

‘Thomas brought Iris and me along as guests,’ I said. ‘But they’ve gone off somewhere and I somehow got lost . . .’

‘You too?’

‘Me too what?’

He looked at me with an expression of resignation.

‘Here as chattel, to please? Paid for it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Or at any rate if we were, Thomas never made the terms clear. And anyway, no one specifically asked me, I suppose.’ I briefly remembered Christine and
Mandy’s throwaway invitation to join in their revels.

‘Good for you. Some of the customers here can be pretty rough and demanding . . .’

‘So I saw . . .’

‘You were present all the time? Watching?’

I bowed my head. ‘Yes.’ I could not admit to my horrible fascination for the spectacle he had unknowingly provided, let alone the mixed feelings of arousal it had given birth to in
the pit of my stomach.

‘Damn. There goes what remains of my dignity.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose I could pretend that law studies sometimes require more than a poorly clerk’s pay packet . . . But I should also confess to the fact that there’s a devil inside me
who can’t curb his attraction to anonymous sex too . . . Please, don’t think the less of me, Moana . . .’

‘I don’t.’

‘Good.’ Gwillam sketched a feeble smile.

‘Maybe it’s reassuring to know that a taste for the same sex runs in our family,’ I flippantly said without thinking. It was a feeble attempt at a joke, and he knew it.

His face darkened.

‘There is nothing wrong about it, Moana. Wanting, having sex with someone of your own gender. It’s natural. Who says what is right or what is wrong? The heterosexuals?’

‘I suppose so.’

The burning torches were dying out all around the mansion’s grounds as morning light made a timid appearance. Gwillam, wearing only the towel around his waist, began to shiver. He looked
scrawny.

‘Shall we walk back?’ he suggested.

He’d been allocated a small room in the basement. Once the servants’ quarters.

I watched as he dressed. A tired pair of jeans and a checked shirt with a button-down collar. He slipped the tight denim on, his long legs straightening its creases. He didn’t bother with
underwear. I couldn’t help note how his slim, long cock bulged under the thin material. Not attraction per se, but a kind of puerile fascination.

He followed my gaze.

‘It’s the way I normally dress,’ he said. ‘I just have the one formal dark suit, which I only wear for work. I prefer to be casual the rest of the time.’

I sat there silently.

He noted my dreamy state.

‘What is it, Moana?’

‘Just thinking.’

He looked me up and down, as if really seeing me for the first time that night.

‘Of what? That’s a lovely dress,’ he remarked, ‘although I’m not sure it totally suits you, a bit girly-girly, I reckon . . .’

I looked him straight in the eyes.

‘Gwillam? What does it feel like?’

‘What?’

‘When a man fucks you? To feel a penis inside you?’

‘You never have?’

‘No. Never.’

I considered telling him about Clarissa and her dildo but dismissed the thought.

‘Well, I can’t speak for the way it usually is for a woman, of course. But if you’re curious, you should try. If only once. It’s just so difficult to describe. Keep your
mind open . . . Your identity and who you choose to screw aren’t the same thing, you know.’

‘Does it . . . hurt?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘But hurt is good sometimes, isn’t it?’ I ventured.

‘Absolutely.’

He opened his arms to me and we hugged. Within moments, I felt sleepy. He brushed his fingers through my hair and closed my eyes. ‘Rest,’ he said. ‘You seem even more exhausted
than I feel, and that’s saying a lot. Emotions can prove more tiring than action on occasion, I know.’

By the time we both awoke, I saw from my watch that it was already midday. We ventured out to the front of the house where some cars were still parked; there were only a half dozen left. Thomas
and Iris must have departed earlier. The room I’d shared with her was empty and her stuff gone. I’d changed back into my normal clothes and left the extravagant dress behind.

As we stepped across the gravel, Gwillam peering at each car to see if he knew the owners and we could maybe catch a lift back to London, Matilda emerged through the front door of the mansion.
She was still in her evening dress, and it continued to shimmer in the pale morning light. But she carried no more leashes and trailed no human dogs behind her.

She waved at us and a handful of other couples standing forlornly around and whom I couldn’t recognise, signs of evident dissipation and tiredness spread across their bleary features.

‘There’s a hired coach arriving in ten minutes,’ she declared. ‘It will take you to the nearest train station.’ Then she handed out envelopes to several of the
stragglers, including Gwillam. Seeing me with him, she expressed no outward sign of recognition nor mentioned Thomas, or Iris.

We were almost the only passengers in the carriage of the London train and the non-stop journey would take just under an hour to Marylebone High Street. I was bursting with questions but Gwillam
spoke first, possibly wishing to avoid further conversation about the events at the mansion.

‘You know about Iris’s grandmother Joan?’

‘Yes?’

‘I really think I’ve made progress.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’ve scoured archives, newspaper libraries, even police records – you’d be surprised how easily the doors open to a request emanating from a lawyer’s chambers
– and you’ll never guess what?’

‘No.’

‘An unbelievable coincidence. Did you know that Joan worked at the Princess Empire theatre too?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Apparently she used it as her last known address before she embarked for New Zealand.’

‘That’s amazing.’

‘So the theatre should be our next destination to find out more . . .’

‘I’m . . . friendly with someone who’s involved in the management there,’ I said. ‘Maybe she can help us?’

‘That would be super,’ Gwillam said.

By the time our train reached the city, I knew I would barely have time enough to catch the Tube home and change for my evening shift at the theatre. Together with the fact that Gwillam felt and
looked shattered from his mansion sexual travails, we agreed I would make some discreet enquiries and attempt to set up a time the following weekend for him to visit me, and Clarissa, there. We
parted with an embrace at the station, each of us heading for a different line.

My mind was in something of a turmoil, still disturbed by the events and revelations at the mansion in the Chilterns and excited at the prospect of revealing the news about Joan to Iris. At the
same time, there was an undercurrent of dread rushing through my veins as I approached our bedsit. An instinct that something was wrong.

Iris wasn’t there.

The place was topsy-turvy, with coat hangers spread across the bed, where she had hurriedly emptied her side of the closet and pulled her clothes together. There was a hastily scribbled note for
me: she had decided to move in with Thomas, as an experiment, she wrote, and asked to be forgiven. She knew I might find myself stretched for the rent, so had left her share of it for the next two
months. I had no doubt Thomas had provided the money as Iris, like me, had little in the way of savings. She guessed it would be relatively easy for me to find a new flatmate and assured me we were
still friends, but maybe this was best for the both of us.

It was not a surprise. Ever since she had met Thomas, I had blinded myself to the changes in her desires and my own, I realised. I tried to think back to the last occasion that we had really,
properly made love, but came up with nothing.

There was little time for tears or to indulge in the blues though, as I had to make my way to the theatre. Even more so now that my meagre wages would have to stretch further.

Throughout the show, I had to fight the waves of anger coursing through me and paint a fixed smile on my face as I led the patrons to their seats, encouraged them to purchase the overpriced
programme and, at the interval, tramped around the auditorium peddling ice creams, Kia-Ora drink cartons, minuscule bottles of Babycham, sweets and pop corn.

Following the final curtain call, and having checked the empty rows for anything the audience might have left behind and coming across the usual assortment of umbrellas, a couple of cushions,
eye pieces, scarves and even a forgotten handbag and deposited them with the cashier’s office, I slumped on a chair in the claustrophobic staff area and felt the weight of the world
collapsing over my shoulders.

It would be another half hour before the Princess Empire closed, and a pair of cleaning ladies were moving through the rows swooping for sweet wrappers and other detritus. They looked like
mirror images of each other, both clad in the sky-blue, shapeless uniform of the cleaning company, their silken black hair tied into a tight bun held in place with a deep red hair band. One was
much older than the other, I realised, and they might have been mother and daughter. The younger one stood on something unpleasant and lifted her foot to inspect her shoe, muttering, and the older
one shushed her in a language I didn’t understand. I was in no rush to return home. I felt I should cry, but the tears would not come, and I couldn’t force them to.

‘Something wrong, Moana?’

A hand on my shoulder. A familiar perfume.

Clarissa loomed above me with a look of concern on her face. She appeared like an earthly angel in her white chiffon jump suit, the same one, I realised, that she’d worn when we first met.
It was cinched at her hips with a silver chain belt that jangled when she moved. Thick hoop earrings were threaded through her lobes and a grey trilby hat balanced precariously on one side of her
head. She looked as though she had been raiding the wardrobe department and stealing the props.

I opened my mouth, but the words got stuck in my throat.

Her hand delicately swept through my hair.

‘The blues, eh?’

I nodded.

‘You do look tired,’ she stated, ‘and hungry, too. You shouldn’t be skipping meals at your age,’ she added. I realised she was right: the last food I had eaten had
been at the mansion when I had stuffed myself much too fast with the plentiful snacks on offer. I felt as if they had quickly evaporated inside me and left me paradoxically empty.

‘Come,’ Clarissa said. ‘Let me take you home and cook something for you. And I won’t take no for an answer . . .’

I wondered if the offer of dinner was a euphemism for altogether more primal appetites, but for once the look on her face was one of affection and care, not passion.

I stood up and followed Clarissa out of the theatre. Her trouser suit swam over her legs and arse as she walked, and I spent the duration of our walk through the corridors to the exit imagining
what kind of underwear she wore underneath, if any at all. She hailed a black cab. In the back seat, we held hands, and stared out of the windows without saying a word, both lost in our respective
worlds.

The moment I walked into the warm, lived-in atmosphere of Clarissa’s two level studio off Brick Lane, in a converted warehouse with tall ceilings, red brick walls and
wide bay windows, I felt at home and the pain inside began to ebb away. Of course, there was some degree of familiarity since it was my second visit. It felt different somehow, not least because I
could see my surroundings in full light, but also because without the certain immediate distraction of sex, I was free to look around and absorb my environment in a way that I hadn’t the
first time around.

She worked on the ground level in a cavernous space piled with multicoloured rolls of fabric, railings heavy with garments, long tables, a scattering of large portfolios stuffed with
photographs, prints and sketches, and rows of burnished metal shelves displaying a small collection of antique sewing machines. The plush leather sofa that we had so recently fucked on ran along
one wall, scattered haphazardly with cushions and a cream-coloured fringe throw.

The living quarters were situated upstairs and could be reached via an intricately wrought circular staircase of art deco origin. The area was divided by thin partitions carved from silk and
wood, most bearing Chinese calligraphy and images, or was it Japanese? But a striking oriental presence dominated and in an odd way reminded me of some of the splendours of the Ball, as if a
tapestry of subliminal patterns and shapes repeated ad infinitum in the grooves of my brain and connected Clarissa’s lair with the extravagant past I still couldn’t banish from my
mind.

She gently but forcibly installed me on the futon – a wide, low bed that doubled as a sofa – and offered me a glass of sickly sweet but potent liqueur with an aftertaste of
pomegranate. It first burned my lips and throat before settling into an overall fuzz of warmth as it seeped lazily into my system and soothed my whole body from the inside.