The Pleasure Quartet (17 page)

‘Relax. Just make yourself comfortable. I’ll be cooking over in the kitchen. Call me if there is anything you want,’ she said, throwing off her ballet pumps and moving barefoot
to the far area of the space, beyond a set of dark curtains.

On a table nearby, an assortment of fashion and home decoration magazines were scattered. I began distractedly leafing through them, although my mind was still elsewhere and conflicted. After
all, I had kept Iris in the dark about my frolics with Clarissa and maybe she had guessed that I had been, well, unfaithful, and could this have thrown her into Thomas’s arms? I was
undoubtedly attracted to Clarissa. But when I examined my feelings, I had to recognise that this attraction was purely sexual, that she did not make my insides flutter like Iris always had. My
stomach clenched as I remembered the way Clarissa had entered me with the black, carved dildo and I had briefly imagined it was a man inside me, and experienced both lust and disgust. And then my
unreliable mind pictured the stranger thrusting into Gwillam the previous night. Could I not control my feelings, my desires, my obsessions of penetration and not just watching others do it? I
turned the pages of the magazines like an automaton.

Strong odours of food cooking wafted through from the kitchen area where Clarissa was busy behind the drapes.

‘It’ll be ready soon,’ she called out.

I could hear the sizzling of oil in a pan, a strong smell of onions, garlic and frying meat. My mouth began to water and my stomach rumbled.

The food, when it arrived, was as delicious as the sounds and smells that preceded it. Clarissa brought out wide wooden trays and we ate while draped across the bed. It felt delightfully
intimate.

‘It’s a Vietnamese stir fry,’ Clarissa explained as I had to restrain myself from eating too fast and clearing my plate long before she was even halfway through her meal.

Thin strips of beef had been marinated in a cleverly blended mixture of spices, pungent enough but in no way aggressive, and then flash-fried in olive oil with an assortment of al dente
vegetables: red and green peppers, baby corn, onion and invisible but undeniable savoury wafer-thin slices of garlic.

‘It’s wonderful,’ I said.

‘I learned to cook it in Paris when I lived there,’ Clarissa replied. ‘I made so many friends in the Asian student community when I was studying fabric at the Beaux
Arts.’ It all sounded so exotic to my ears. And the taste was quite divine.

The white wine she served with the stir fry was equally addictive, dry and sweet at the same time, flowing down my throat with the ease of tap water.

I eagerly wiped my plate clean with a piece of bread, not wanting to miss a drop of the juices the dish had left behind. Clarissa watched me indulgently.

Another glass of wine, plates set aside.

‘So, Moana, care to tell me what this is all about?’

‘Iris has left,’ I blurted out.

Her expression remained impassive. She shifted closer and took my hand in hers as the words bubbled out of my mouth. I told her about the way that Iris had always just lain there when we were
making love, and I had felt so ashamed of my desire for her. Like I was always pouring myself into Iris and hoping that I could fill her with so much affection that she would have some left over to
return to me. Yet, yet, there was something else there, lurking in the darker corners of my soul and that was the fact that a part of me
liked it
, the way that she so passively allowed me to
molest her, and what did that make me? There were things that I loved about Iris that I felt guilty for loving. Her fragility, the bird-like lightness of her body, the blank slate of her face when
I drove my fingers inside her, the awful tugging need that encouraged me endlessly to stimulate her until I provoked some kind of response. Her response satisfied me because it made me feel as
though I had won.

‘I’m just like Thomas,’ I sobbed, and Clarissa wrapped me up in her arms and held me to her. I appreciated the gesture, but Clarissa was not in the slightest motherly. Her
scent was too sharp, her body too thin to be comforting.

‘Shh, shh,’ she said. ‘You and Thomas do have something in common. You’re both after the same girl, for a start. But desire, and the way that you choose to express it,
the way that Thomas expresses it, are not inherently evil. Iris seemed happy enough with the situation until now and it sounds as though she has sought out the same with Thomas . . . Had you ever
stopped to think that maybe the parts of you that you’re so ashamed of are the parts that attracted her in the first place? That maybe the very thing you’re trying to hide from is the
thing she wants?’

What she said made a dull sort of sense. I felt as though I was on the brink of understanding something about myself that had previously been in shadow, but I still couldn’t make it out,
as though I was staring at my face in a fogged-up mirror that was only just beginning to clear.

I had already confessed so much to her that my feelings of shame began to dull and I just kept talking, telling her all about how I had felt watching Gwillam and the men that Tilly had dragged
along on their leashes, the tornado of bruised feelings I could sense tearing me apart inside. When it came to the specifics of the party at the mansion, she raised an eyebrow and queried the
events there and the type of people involved. She appeared to have an underlying reason for asking me these questions. I had to repeat myself several times over until she seemed to be
satisfied.

‘Good,’ she said.

‘Why is it good?’ I asked her, puzzled by her response.

‘Oh, it’s just that for a moment there, I thought someone out there – Matilda you say was her name? – was attempting to pass a plain old, and nicely decadent sort of
party off as an instance of the Ball . . .’

‘The Ball?’ My heart jumped.

‘Yes.’

‘You know about the Ball?’

That was the one thing I had kept back in my story, having only provided her with information about my life with Iris since we had arrived in London. Not least because I feared that no one would
believe the events that had occurred that night Iris and I travelled to Cape Reinga. Clarissa was the first person I had come across, aside from Joan, who knew of the existence of the Ball.

I was eager to question her further, when we heard the door to the studio downstairs open and sounds from the street briefly filter in before it closed again. Clarissa smiled.

‘Ah, that must be Edward . . .’

I must have been staring at her like a fool, with my mouth wide open in an O of surprise.

‘Oh, no need to worry, my dear, he knows all about our night together. In fact, I think he rather enjoyed the tale.’ She winked at me. The caring Clarissa was gone, and the version
that I was used to had returned, all hard edges and overflowing with gentle malice.

I heard Edward’s steps coming up the baroque circular staircase, and looked round to him as he emerged.

He was a rake-thin man in his thirties, with flowing dark hair down to his shoulders that reminded me of a romantic poet in an old print. His square chin was dimpled and his eyes were a striking
shade of dark green. He was dressed in a kaftan and jeans and wore scuffed knee-high boots. Had it not been for the fierce look of intelligence on his face he could have been mistaken for any old
hippie from the narrow streets of Covent Garden and its subterranean clubs. I had pictured the type of man that Clarissa might be attracted to. Someone handsome and droll, her equivalent in another
body. I would never have picked Edward out as her physical match.

‘Hi,’ he called out. Sniffed. ‘The food smells wonderful. Any left?’

‘Tons, darling,’ Clarissa said.

Noticing me, he waved. ‘You must be Moana,’ he said and walked towards us, pecked Clarissa on the cheek and extended his hand to me, with an air of interest spreading across his
features.

‘I need to clean up, ladies. See you in a jiffy.’

He pulled his heavy kaftan over his head and dropped it to the floor. He wore the tightest jeans I had ever seen on a man, the shape of his cock distinctly outlined beneath the thin material. I
wondered how on earth he would manage to get them off without assistance. His chest was totally smooth and his body so lean that I imagined he and Clarissa, nude, were a similar shape. He lacked
the broad shoulders and musculature that I associated with men. I pictured him in a shift dress – yes, he would look great garbed as a woman. He disappeared between a row of partitions at the
far end of the living area and I heard the sound of water hitting the shower stall. I was arrested by the thought of what his smooth skin might feel like beneath a pair of soapy hands.

I looked tentatively at Clarissa.

‘You told him everything? You and me . . . about what happened?’

‘Of course. Edward and I have no secrets. None whatsoever. We play apart . . .’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘And together too, you know . . .’

January 3rd, 1922

Ever since that night we went dancing and Gladys confessed that she wanted to be an actress, we have spent all of our time dreaming of the theatre. Gladys knows the name of every show, every
director, all of the stars and the minor cast and even all of the chorus lines. ‘The Gaiety Girls!’ she said today, ‘can you imagine how it would feel to be one of them?’
She picked up her skirts and flung her leg into the air in a high kick, flashing me a glimpse of her thighs and the pale pink trim of her bloomers. We have both stopped wearing corsets and the
freedom is delightful, and deliciously daring. When no one is watching, we dance, and revel in the glorious movement of our bodies.

Sometimes, I think that Mrs Moorcroft’s mother – a corpse walking if ever I’ve seen one, just bones clad in a mourning costume – watches us dance. She seems
perpetually in the shadows whenever Gladys visits, and probably when I’m alone too, forever peering around corners and appearing out of shadows and making me jump three feet in the air with
her cold touch and soft breath. I try not to be too hard on her; she just wants to be near life, and youth. Gladys says she’s an old busy body, and probably wishes wrinkles on us
both.

We have been living on nothing but tea and toast, saving our wages to see a show. Even the New Year we celebrated indoors, standing at my little window with our arms around each other and our
cheeks pressed together, unwilling to let a single fire cracker go off outside unwitnessed. The Islington sky bloomed bright beyond the harbour of my humble room. It made me glad to live in London,
and in a way, guilty that I don’t miss home even a bit. I don’t deny there’s a quiet beauty in a sheet of stars shining bright over farmland on a still night, and many poets have
remarked upon the fact – who am I to contradict them? But my heart is at home in the big, sprawling city, brimming with rainbow-coloured sparks of light and life.

January 15th, 1922

I live in hope that Harold Butler Jnr. may yet present me with a late Christmas bonus, and I’ll use that to purchase my ticket. I doubt this hope will ever come to fruition, though he
has not stopped supplying Gladys with little ‘presents’. Jewellery and gloves and bits of fabric from the store that he always says are off-cuts to be thrown away anyway, but which seem
far too fine to me for that.

I keep telling her she’s asking for trouble leading him on like that, but she’s stubborn as a mule and complaining too much would make me the worst sort of hypocrite since I have
been happily receiving her old hand-me-downs – still perfectly good – while she makes room for a whole new wardrobe that would make even a girl of means jealous.

‘I must go up West,’ she excuses herself, ‘or die! And not in the cheap seats either. I won’t sit right up in the gods, behind a pillar at the back where you can
barely see a thing.’

I worry that she has taken money from him, and I fear for what might happen if – dare I say when – he realises he’s being taken for a fool.

But for now I try not to brood, and focus on the future.

We pour over newspaper reviews, deciding which show to see. You would think that Gladys expects a red carpet to be rolled out for us both at the box office, champagne poured into our glasses,
and that the starring man might even spot us in the audience and invite us backstage to dine in his dressing room.

Maybe I will meet a ‘Gentleman’ during the interval, as Gladys keeps promising.

I’m not sure that I want to.

February 2nd, 1922

Tonight we attended the theatre, dressed like Parisian fashion plates, ready for the catwalk.

Gladys wore a cloche hat, deep red velvet with a ribbon around the middle, and a darling long white and blue gown with a low-cut front that she spent hours beading. When it was finished, we
joked that it made her look like a sailor on a luxury cruise ship. We re-stitched my Halloween outfit for me, adding a cream lace modesty layer below the yellow chiffon, and alternating pink and
yellow ruffles at the bottom so that the hem reached past my knee. I felt like a canary bird, just been allowed out of its cage. ‘It’s not too much?’ I asked her.
‘You’re an original,’ she told me. I had never seen anything like it in any fashion magazine illustration.

She had chopped all of her hair off in a chic little bob, so high it barely covered her ears and showed off her neck, so lovely and long. We changed into our frocks in my room. Gladys strode
right in through the door and up the stairs as Mrs Moorcroft raced after her, moving far quicker than I had ever given the large woman credit for, tutting all the way, and telling us that if Gladys
planned to sleep here for the night then we had better not arrive back too late, crashing and banging in our high-heeled shoes and disturbing Pansy and Alice, who must wake early in the morning to
boil potatoes in Clapton. ‘And if I catch either of you ladies drinking, you’ll both be out the door,’ she said, ‘this is a good Christian household.’ Mrs Moorcroft
was a creature of misguided convictions, had even fiercely opposed the suffragette movement before it had obtained all its gains.