Eighty Days White (8 page)

At any rate, I had resolved never to attend parties wearing a pony tail again.

Richard brought me back to the present.

‘What do you think about dommes and their male subs and slaves then?’ he quizzed.

He signalled over to She, who looked like something out of a superhero film with her gleaming latex catsuit and towering stilettos. She stood with her back as straight as a broomstick and her dark hair piled on top of her head in a slick bun that made her appear even taller. Her legs were spread slightly apart so that she seemed totally grounded, not crossed at the ankles or teetering precariously in the way that so many women balanced on their high heels. In each of her hands she held a shining silver bracelet studded with diamante jewels that sparkled in the light. Attached to each bracelet was a long chain, and attached to the end of each chain was a man on all fours staring at the floor and clad in just a pair of rubber hot pants with ‘She’s Slave’ printed across their arse cheeks in hot-pink lettering. Mostly She ignored her slaves, but every now and again she would give one of their chains a tug and a smile would pass over her face.

‘That’s different,’ I said firmly.

‘How is it different? Why is it different?’

‘I don’t know. It just is.’

Richard’s questions were beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.

The front desk was dead quiet when I returned to my place behind the counter. I had hoped that we would have a busy patch to distract me from the thoughts crowding into my mind, but it was getting late and past the time that most of our patrons arrived, unless they’d been to a house party or another club beforehand.

I had no moral reservations about women cowering down to men, providing that everyone involved was an adult, fully aware of what they were getting themselves in to, and doing it for enjoyment’s sake, even if I couldn’t relate to the pleasure that they experienced or the mindset that drove them.

I could more easily understand the dynamic between She and her slaves. That seemed to be more like a different sort of government than a sexual game. Like a matriarchal society with She as Cleopatra. And that was a system that I could appreciate. In fact, the feminist in me thought it entirely sensible. Men in power had been screwing things up for centuries.

Leonard sometimes gave me instructions in bed. Or held me in place when I wriggled away from an intense sensation. But he was so gentle, and it always seemed that he could somehow read my mind and was giving me what I wanted rather than forcing me to acquiesce for his own gratification. And more often than not, he looked at me as if I was something to be worshipped. Sometimes so intensely that it made me look away. I didn’t feel that I was worthy of the sort of attention that She received. But I was certainly not a chattel to be used.

I could no sooner imagine Leonard wanting to whip me until I screamed or tie me so that I couldn’t move any more than I could imagine Neil doing it.

A vision of Neil dressed in full leather regalia and looming over me with a riding crop flashed into my mind and I laughed out loud.

‘Maybe it’s time for you to go home,’ piped Sherry, the girl who was helping with cloakroom duty tonight and who had caught me giggling to myself as she popped out for a cigarette. ‘Nearly closing anyway and I’ll cover for you. You look shattered.’

Sherry wasn’t her real name, any more than She was She’s real name. Most of the club’s staff and the guests used pseudonyms or ‘scene names’ to refer to the fetish side of themselves. Partly this was a way to preserve anonymity and avoid any trouble that the unveiling of their private lives might cause, and partly it was a way to step from one persona into another, like putting on a new pair of shoes or changing into a party dress.

When I signed onto the club’s payroll, I had been asked what I wanted to call myself and after little more than a moment’s thought I had decided to stick with Lily. I’d had so much trouble figuring out my own identity that I had no wish to add any more complications to it now. I didn’t want to be fragmented into the good-girl Lily and the bad-girl Lily, pre-tattoo Lily and post-tattoo Lily, Berkshire Lily and London Lily.

Right then I decided that I would just be Lily. The club was one place where I felt that I was truly free to be myself, whatever that was on any given night, and I didn’t want to confuse matters by giving another name to some identity
that I felt was the ‘real me’. I wanted to be me all the time. Just plain old Lily.

London was just beginning to stir when I changed out of my latex waistcoat and into plain jeans, a sweatshirt and old trainers for the journey back to Dalston. It was just gone five a.m. and always a strange time of the morning, when half the people on the street had just woken up and the other half were on their way home to bed. The streets were inevitably full of oddballs when I headed home from the fetish club so I walked quickly, my head down, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I wasn’t particularly afraid. Just couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of being harassed. Later the suits would be out in full force, but for now I was surrounded by drunks, tramps and council workers and it was a funny mixture that, combined with the early hour, seemed to bring out the worst in people.

Even the fresh air and brisk though short walk to Farringdon station couldn’t empty my mind of the questions that had flooded it that night. I was worried about Liana. We’d naturally fallen out of touch a little – we lived in different cities now and recently I had been so wrapped up in Leonard.

She was still with Nick as far as I knew, but the last time we spoke it had been clear there was some tension between the two of them and she had hinted in passing that she had been spending more time with a group of people who Nick wasn’t keen on. That was what had worried me.

Not long after I had begun working at the fetish club, I realised that Liana was by nature a sub, or at least had experimented in that area even if she didn’t necessarily see herself as that. We had never discussed it directly, but I felt
fairly sure that Nick was her dominant, and once I had got used to the idea and saw the two of them together I had developed an appreciation for him. He was discreet and clearly very affectionate towards her, and she always seemed happy when they were together. For as long as Nick was in the picture I was certain that he would take care of her.

But the thought that the two of them might have fallen out, leaving Liana to her own devices, made me panic.

She was the sort of person who was forever throwing caution to the wind in favour of chasing the next thrill. Liana followed her body where I followed my heart, and she was the type of person that I could imagine might easily take things too far and go down a perilous road.

By far the majority of doms on the scene were perfectly normal individuals who cared a great deal about their play partners, and the majority of submissives were equally well-balanced ordinary people who simply happened to enjoy a different sort of sex than the average, but there were a few folk who hung around the perimeters and were best avoided.

Every section of society has its fair share of extremists. Richard had been the first to warn me of the possible pitfalls to look for if I was supervising the fetish club’s play area or keeping an eye on unsavoury-looking patrons to determine if they needed to be thrown out. Single men in cheap military jackets who stood too close to the play area were the stereotype, but it took all sorts, and it was the manipulative ones who managed to hold up a veneer of respectability that I worried about where Liana was concerned.

She wasn’t stupid, but she was reckless. And she was my dearest friend.

I vowed then that as soon as I was back from this weekend in Paris I would make some time to catch up with her. I would tell her all about Leonard and confess my latest set of secrets, and hope that she still felt close enough to me to return the favour.

Until then, I would forget all about the underground club and the eternal fascination that world held for me. Even the parts of it that I didn’t fully understand yet. And instead I would focus on Leonard.

I hurried home to rest and to pack.

Leonard had a life before me. But it wasn’t one I wanted to hear about. There had been a wife, manifold adventures and much more. And I was jealous of it.

I sought my own adventures. A voice inside was screaming out that I deserved them, lots of them, and somehow this made me feel awkward when my feelings for Leonard took over and all I could do was daydream about an unlikely future together. My heart was his, but my soul was torn.

The room was on the top floor of a small hotel situated between the left bank of the Seine and the Boulevard Saint Germain. Leonard told me later that the famous French singer and dissolute Serge Gainsbourg had lived on the same street just a hundred yards away. You could even see the gated courtyard of his building from our window if you stretched your neck.

The train had been delayed under the Channel Tunnel for half an hour and it was already dark when I reached my destination.

The elderly man on reception looked up from his newspaper and just nodded when I mentioned Leonard’s name.
I had texted him when the train had drawn in to the Gare du Nord and he had given me his room number. I was just carrying an overnight bag with a single change of clothes and toiletries.

Leonard was sitting on the bed reading a paperback, wearing his usual dark slacks and a T-shirt. His smile as he greeted me was full of warmth. He dropped the book as I walked in. The door had been left unlocked.

‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Lily,’ he said. ‘Bienvenue à Paris.’

‘Hey, Monsieur Leonard. I’m pleased to be here …’ I was about to try to say something witty, albeit not in French, but words failed me. There was a sense of serenity about him, in this small, badly lit room, as he looked up at me.

‘Hungry? Most places wont be serving dinner this late,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure we can find something, a snack maybe. There’s a stall that does nice crêpes near the Odeon Métro.’

‘No need; I had a sandwich on the train, and I have a few apples in my bag.’

He rose and took me in his arms.

It felt odd, being with him here. On other occasions we’d entered rooms together, knowing all too well that we were planning to fuck. All of our previous meetings had been overshadowed by an immediate lust. We had never begun with small talk. But arriving separately like this, there was a sense of anticlimax, of doubt also, as if the whole process we were going through was artificial. I dropped my bag to the ground.

Leonard pulled me closer to him and kissed my cheek, with his tongue lingering lovingly across my minuscule
tattoo, as if tasting it. He kept his eyes open, and I forced myself to do the same, although my initial instinct was to close them and surrender to his amorous intentions.

He undid the buttons on my light summer jacket and helped me slip my arms out of it as I held them up to ease his task. I could feel the fleeting touch of his breath caress my face, and tried to kiss him but he took a step back.

‘No,’ he said. ‘First I want to undress you.’

I nodded obediently. He had visibly been rehearsing this moment, established its ritual. And I was willing to oblige. My mind flitted back to thoughts of the club and the conversation I’d had with Richard. But this was different. Even when he told me what to do. We were equals, indulging in mutual pleasure that sometimes varied in its form.

‘Slowly,’ he added and slipped down to his knees and began unlacing the knee-high boots I was wearing, giving me a full-on view of the top of his head as he concentrated on the task.

From my elevated perspective, his wild, untamed curls were a thick symphony of black and white threads spreading towards every direction of the compass. I felt, all of a sudden, like burying my hands in that luxurious garden of hair, but held back for fear of interrupting the solemn way in which he wished to unveil me, one lace, one garment, one lingering whisper at a time.

Below the window of our hotel room, I could hear the muted sounds of passers-by in the street, words I could not understand in a foreign language, like the murmur of a distant chorus to my agonisingly slow unveiling by this tender man I still knew so little about.

What did he see in me? I wondered. I knew I was
imperfect, a work still in progress, with so much of my life ahead of me, so many adventures to come. But I also knew that moments like these would be ones to cherish for ever, to hold onto in the fathomless storage vaults of my fevered brain cells and that they would affect me strongly until the day I died. Why was it that with Leonard I had these terrible intimations of mortality, a greater picture? Was it because of the gap in our ages, the fact that one day it was inevitable he would die and I would still be young?

Damn, I was taking this all too seriously.

The thin socks I wore under the boots came off, and then my tights and finally my knickers, leaving me fully exposed and, with a deep sigh, Leonard buried his face into my midriff, catching the intimate scent of me, releasing the warmth. It was both a solemn and an obscene moment and it was then I realised that he also was recording every gesture and visual of our ritual and storing it away. For future memories? For later gratification?

I tried to put myself inside his mind. Small Lily, with her modest breasts, her pale complexion, her jet black hair falling to her waist, her brazen, gaudy tattoo across her shoulder blade, her unkempt bush of curls, the tear beneath her eye. This was a man who had known women, many more than I had known men. What attracted him to me? Maybe it was the fact we were both lonely, even in the midst of crowds. They say opposites attract, but I sensed right then this was just another cliché, and what drew us to each other were the similarities, the emptiness inside, the silences, the desperate will to share our flaws, that’s what made us special.

I was standing there with my legs apart, now just wearing
the thin cotton bodice that ended up halfway down my belly and Leonard was at my feet, like a supplicant at the altar, gazing soulfully at my pussy.