Eighty Days Blue (23 page)

Edward and Clarissa were now mixing with their guests, offering liqueurs.

‘So what did you think?' Victor asked Dominik.

‘Fascinating.'

‘A new experience for you?'

Dominik hesitated, considering things. ‘Not quite,' he replied. ‘Summer, the violin player, once told me she had been to clubs on a few occasions and been spanked, whipped, I'm not sure . . .'

‘Did she really?'

‘I was never present,' Dominik added, ‘but I know she took much pleasure in it. It intrigued me. Must say that I've
never
been tempted to be on the receiving end of corporal punishment myself. I fear it might have an adverse effect on my hard-on.'

‘How funny,' Victor said. ‘But enjoyable to watch, no? As you see, sex is not always automatically involved in our scene, our little circle. It can be, of course; this is just one side of the coin.'

‘I see,' Dominik remarked.

‘Would you like to see more, be involved?' Victor asked.

‘Maybe.'

‘My New York contract comes to an end in three months, so I intend to leave for parts unknown, maybe even return home for a bit. I thought I'd hold a grand party. The party to end all parties. I have a wonderful centrepiece in mind, a real star, not quite ready now, but I know how to make her agreeable. I am confident you will take a shine to her too,' Victor said. ‘You'll like this pet. You should come. I dearly wish to make it rather unforgettable, come the day.'

It was getting late. Maybe Summer had left him a message from her hotel room. Dominik was ready to return to Manhattan.

‘Quite possibly, Victor. Quite possibly.'

But he knew already that when Victor whistled, he would come, get involved. It was uncanny how Victor recognised Dominik's taste in women. He was already fascinated by the mysterious nature of the star attraction Victor had in mind.

In Maine, on the East Coast leg of her tour, Summer had excused herself from the celebratory drinks in the dressing room with the other musicians following the evening's highly successful concert. She didn't feel like company,
or
drinking. She'd taken a cab straight to her hotel and slammed the door behind her.

Here, she undressed, showered in steaming-hot water, dried herself and moved naked to her bedroom. The suitcase was under her bed. She pulled it out and took the corset from the plastic bag she had hastily stuffed it in when she had, on impulse, taken it from the shared wardrobe at the New York loft. By the time she had poured herself into the corset and fastened it as tightly as she could, she noted it was already one in the morning. From her window on the fifteenth floor of the luxury hotel, she could see the lights of the principal railway station beyond the road and, in the far distance, the quiet shimmer of the waters of an immense lake.

She'd been doing all this in darkness and now switched the room's main light on and turned to face the full-length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. The black corset imprisoned her already-thin waistline, its bones pressing hard against her pale skin, underlining her breasts, pressing them out like an offering, dark nipples at attention, hard as cherry stones; below, she was quite nude, her bush a small, now unkempt core of flaming curls. This is me, she thought, the corset's embrace emphasising her sexual parts, the slut within her. The whore? she wondered.

A wave of unexplainable guilt swam across her mind.

Right now, she felt like she had to be punished, spanked until her arse cheeks burned like embers, fucked senseless. She knew the feelings made no sense; she truly had nothing to feel guilty about. Sexual cravings were just that. You either gave in to them of your own free will and indulged and learned to ride the pleasure or you denied them. That was all. Guilt was not an issue.

She briefly toyed with the idea of phoning Dominik, but part of her resisted it.

She took her trench coat from the hook on the door, the long, loose-fitting mac she usually wore to travel to and from concert venues, as it concealed her evening gowns from view and helped her avoid undue attention, and then slipped on the first pair of heels she could find in the mess of clothes and shoes scattered across the hotel bedroom.

She buttoned up the coat, the rough material scraping against her uncovered nipples and brushing the forest of her pubic hair, and rushed down the floor's long corridor to where the lift was waiting. Outside, she went left and reached the bottom end of the main street.

It was a street that went on for ever, in turns busy, well lit and affluent, and further up, shady, clandestine and even seedy, as the high-class restaurants and shops made way for bars, dubious dives and bargain stores, most of which were closed at this time of night. After wandering north for half an hour, Summer stopped. She stood in a pool of darkness.

She held her breath.

She unbuckled and then unbuttoned the beige trench coat, exposing herself to the night.

Just a few yards away, as she leaned back against the steel shutters of a closed store, exposed in full view under a flickering streetlight, cars raced by on the main road. None slowed down, as if she were not even present or worth a moment's attention.

Her mind was blank. Her cunt was on fire, or was it her face, her heart?

Slowly the silhouette of a passer-by walking south in her direction came into focus. It was a guy. He was visibly swaying, drunk, clutching in his hand a brown paper bag
from
which the neck of a bottle emerged. As he arrived at her level, he slowed down. Gazed at her. Stopped.

‘Fuck me,' Summer said to the drunk stranger. Begging him, forgetful of her dignity, desperate.

The man just looked at her, dazed.

‘Please.'

What else must she do? Get on all fours, uplift her arse, hold herself open?

The man hiccupped, his eyes still hypnotised by the provocative nature of her display, a thin smile across his lips, leering at her nipples, her exposed pussy. Then he took a step forward, and another, and moved on down the street.

Ignoring her.

Ten minutes later, still fixed to the same spot in front of the store's metal shutters, Summer realised how she had somehow become a parody of a dirty old man lifting his mac open to expose his genitals, and shuddered.

She pulled the flaps of the trench coat together, buttoned herself and tightened the belt. There was a crumpled bunch of banknotes in one of the pockets. She stepped to the kerb, hailed a cab and was dropped off at her hotel.

She took another shower, washing away not just the dirt but the memory of her despair, and determined never to wear the corset again.

She fell into a deep sleep.

She was woken in the morning by a call from her agent. Was she willing to extend the tour, which was scheduled to end a few weeks hence, with a further fortnight's travelling in Australia and New Zealand?

9

A Homecoming

Few other experiences made me feel as happy as walking through the large wooden arch at Auckland Airport that signalled the end of the landing corridor and the arrival into New Zealand.

It's the sound that always got to me first, the recorded Tui birdsong that played around the arch just before passport control, a ceremonial gateway carved with traditional Maori figures that separated my home from the rest of the world.

When I reached that point, I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run to get through the front doors and kiss the earth like the Pope does, an action that in practice would probably have me chased through the airport by customs officials and a pack of well-trained hounds on the hunt for any sign of forbidden fruit and vegetables in my luggage.

I always felt a little daft about my attachment to New Zealand, considering that I had left of my own accord, visited rarely and wasn't sure if I would ever return for good. It was the land that I missed, more than anything. There was nothing else in the world that made my heart sing as much as the sight of Aotearoa appearing through the aeroplane window.

Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, a strange
name
for a country not characterised by clouds but by hills, which bubble up from flat plains like the bellies of pregnant women, oceans as clear and bright as a fish's eye and rivers that wind lazily from one end of the country to the other, smooth golden water filled with eel and trout, a permanent reminder of hot afternoons and weekends spent floating on my back in the Waihou.

I had managed to negotiate a few days before this leg of the tour to visit my family in Te Aroha, the little town in the North Island where I was born, a couple of hours' drive south of Auckland.

My high school had got in touch and asked me to do a short speech at the morning assembly, a fact I found ironic, as my grades were never great and I had dropped out of university after studying music for only a year. I had also been asked to play a short homecoming gig in the school hall, and my mother had informed me proudly that my picture was in the local paper. Fortunately, not the picture that had appeared on the New York posters, in which I wasn't wearing any clothes.

I collected my luggage and burst through the sliding doors to the arrivals hall, looking eagerly for my brother, Ben, who had agreed to come and pick me up. He worked at the steel mill near Pukekohe, but had taken the week off to come down to Te Aroha and visit me while I was there.

He was nowhere to be seen.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

‘Hey, sis! Come outside. I'm driving round and round to save on the parking.'

Typical.

I flagged him down after about his fifth lap of the pick-up area.

‘Hey, bro!'

‘Hey, little sis!'

Ben leaped out of the car and flung his arms round me. He smelled of sweat and grease, and had changed very little since I had last seen him, though his shoulders were a little broader since he'd started working at the mill, and a few flecks of grey were apparent in his dark hair.

‘Jump in, quick, before they catch us,' he said, nodding his head towards the sternly worded signs that just stopped short of promising certain death to anyone who lingered in the pick-up zone.

He laid my violin case down on the back seat as gently as if it were an infant.

My brother had owned the same car for as long as I could remember, a red Toyota station wagon that he had bought second-hand for less than the cost of a bicycle and patiently restored until it ran with the sort of smooth efficiency that would make a Formula One driver jealous.

‘Zero to sixty in fifteen minutes,' he had proudly reminded me when he first managed to get it started.

I sank into the passenger seat with the familiarity that comes with a fond return to something that hasn't changed despite a long absence. My brother and his station wagon were both as reliable as the setting of the sun.

A gentle rain had begun to fall and the windscreen wipers made a steady scrape, scrape against the glass.

It was winter in New Zealand, but still fairly mild, much warmer than a New York winter. Despite the grey skies, it looked much more tropical than I remembered.

I stared out of the windows at the palm trees lining the road that led to the airport.

‘Wow,' I said. ‘I don't remember it being like this. It looks like an island.'

‘It is an island,' Ben replied sensibly.

‘I mean a proper island, like a Pacific island.'

‘Did you go to school? I guess the big city hasn't made you any smarter, eh, sis? All that pollution wrecked your brain?'

I leaned over and smacked him across the leg.

Ben had only left New Zealand once, to visit Brisbane for a weekend of surfing. He didn't see any reason to leave.

‘Wanna put a tape on?'

He still had a cassette deck in the Toyota, and the front passenger footwell was littered with tapes. I rifled through them.

‘Sade?' I teased.

‘She's good. Better than Beethoven.'

I stared out of the window again and marvelled at the lack of cars, and the fields spreading out on either side of the lanes of traffic. The last time that I had been in Auckland, it had felt like a rat race, a heaving jam of people and machines everywhere, and now even the busiest parts looked downright parochial to me.

‘So did Mum tell you I'm getting married?'

‘No! I didn't even know you had a girlfriend! When did that happen?'

‘About a month ago. Her name's Rebecca. Bex. She lived in London for a while, so you'll have something to talk about.'

‘Wow. Good work, bro.'

‘And she's pregnant.'

‘Bloody hell. Why doesn't anyone ever tell me anything?'

‘You never answer your phone!'

‘You could email.'

‘I'm not telling you I'm having a baby by email. Anyway, you'll meet her at your concert. She's in Tauranga at the moment visiting her family.'

We drifted into silence. The rain was coming down harder now and the traffic was slow, the usual queues of city workers escaping to more tranquil parts for the weekend.

When was the last time I phoned home? I thought about them a lot, my family, friends, New Zealand in general, but I hadn't actually picked up the phone since Christmas, six months ago, and that was just to talk to my mum and dad. I hadn't spoken to Ben for more than a year.

‘It's good to see you, big brother,' I said, filling up with sadness, my mood suddenly as grey as the weather outside.

‘And you, little sis. We missed you.'

We spent the rest of the journey chattering about old friends and acquaintances. Nothing had changed particularly, other than the inevitable run of marriages and babies in the younger set and divorces in the older. I was always surprised to hear of couples that I knew when I left who had actually managed to stay together.

My parents had made it, married for more than thirty years. They had always seemed fond of each other, though I had never thought that they were really in love. My brother and sister disagreed with me on that point: they thought our parents paragons of romanticism, proof that two people could stay together through thick and thin. I thought they had made it last because staying together was easier and more pleasant than the alternative of dealing with breaking up and then simply being alone. I'd always been the cynical one.