LAID & BETRAYED (Getting wrong with Mr. Wright) (5 page)

We were meeting
to celebrate
Camilla
having
finished her second year and
me
, to my relief,
having
got through my first
with
satisfactory, rather than good
grades
.
Camilla
had been in the year above me at
school
, and when
I arrived at
college
,
she
had taken
me under her wing as my
mentor and
guide through the
fetishes
of
Mr.
Qu
oyle
,
whose
fixation
was
a
belief that in every woman was the subconscious
desire to sell
herself for, as he put it, the
chink of cold hard cash.

He was totally
eccentric
,
but an incredible teacher. He
had opened my mind and
through his guidance I had come to see
that I
could be whoever I wanted to be, that I
wasn't one solitary person, but
all those different people
in
the mirror's
numberless
reflections.

It was mainly men in the bar – that
'
s why it was called
Dick
'
s,
I suppose, but there was a sprinkling of women dressed like me, close to naked with too much makeup and bare legs tanned in the
July
heat wave – it had touched 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the first day of
the month
, a record by all accounts.

I paid £
15 for a flute of champagne and, as the barman poured it, a girl
further along the stainless steel counter
raised her glass as our eyes met; she was a
natural
blonde
with a tiny waist and prominent breasts presented in a green dress that rippled and sparkled like fish scales.
She didn't smile, but gave a little shrug as if to
acknowledge
something, although what exactly I wasn'
t
sure.

The barman moved away and I
turned back to
many mirrors
. My lips were that shade of red that said danger, my green eyes looked glassy like old bottles, and my dark hair in the ivory lights had a gloss that made me feel, I don
'
t know, sexy
, I suppose
. Even my expression was different
: relief,
perhaps
,
being back in the real world beyond the quads and punts and Footlights of Cambridge.

W
ith
the first sip of champagne, the bubbles went up my nose
and I instantly felt giggly. I sent Camilla a text, drank my drink faster than was sensible, and sat there telling myself not to spend
another
£1
5
refilling my
glass.

I turned to
wards the pianist. H
e had polished skin li
ke the black keys on his piano
and sat hunched over as if to guard a secret.
He was playing
a
jazz-flamenco fusion, s
omething
slow and
melancholic that reminded me of the
cante
hondo
performers
I had seen in Madrid.
In two days,
and I would be leaving to join friends with a
cortijo
, a
smallholding
,
in Andalucía
,
and planned to spend
two weeks
walking, reading and swimming in the wa
rm
waters of
Cabo
de
Gata
before returning to work for the rest of the summer back at the estate agents in Canterbury. Father had insisted
.
Father paid the bills.
 

My phone played three notes from the William Tell Overture to announce the arrival of a text.

Will call in a mo. Hang on. C

As I looked back at the pianist, I
realized
that
there
were two men
in the corner staring at me, studying me, like you
might
study your image in a shop when you
'
re thinking o
f buying a new dress.
One of the men stood. He made his way towards me, nodded as he approached,
but,
at the last moment, passed by and stopped
beside the
blonde
along the ba
r.

I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed and actually felt a bit of both. Within a couple of minutes, the man left with the
blonde
wriggling like a fish at his side. She gave me that same nonchalant shrug, then glanced in the direction of the other man now alone in the corner.

He
was making a
flapping motion
with his hand
, pointing at the stool next to me,
then
pointing at himse
lf. He smiled and
I found myself nodding.
Camilla
was surely on her way and I thought I'd pass a few moments
chatting with a stranger
.

The man
was wearing a black suit like an undertaker and a silver tie. He lowered his head in an old-fashioned way as he sat on the stool beside me. He had dark eyes, a moustache, coffee-
colored
skin and
neat
hands that he placed together on the bar.

It was at that second that my phone rang. CAMILLA came up on the screen.

'
Where are you?
'
I demanded.

'
Darling, something terrible
ha
s happened.
'

'
What?
'

'
I can
'
t tell you now. I
'
ll tell you tomorrow.'

'What about
our celebration?
'

'It's a long story.
Jus
t, you know, go with the flow…
'

'
What?
'

The phone
clicked off and her name faded.
I was sitting in a little
red
dress, legs twi
sting below me like snakes,
a stranger at my side
and,
for some reason
,
an essay by Georges
Bataille
on
The Object of Desire
slip
ped into my head like a warning,
or a
n
invitation, I wasn
'
t sure which, and I wasn
'
t sure if that glass of champagne had gone to my head and I was imagining things.

The man had sat patiently through the phone call and now offered to buy another
glass of champagne
.

'
Thank you.
'

'
Nahume
,
'
he said, introducing himself. He was the same age as
Quentin
Quoyle
, dark and mysterious. It made me feel mysterious.
Like my new name.

'
Camilla,
'
I
told him
.

'
Agh
, like the Queen.
'

'One day.'

I smiled.

He smiled.

He was looking into my eyes and turning his watch around his wrist. His wrist was hairy and the watch was gold with a heavy bracelet. I sipped the champagne. He continued turning the watch as he cast his eyes over my legs, my breasts, my collarbones,
my
lips. I held my back straight. I remember reading that the secret of grace is to be poised not posed
, important when your name's Grace
.

'
We go?
'
he sa
id
.

I swallowed. I could feel my heart thumping like my tutor's ebony cane.
It was all so quick.
So easy.
I was playing a role. A game.
Of course, the
blonde
in the green dress was a prostitute.
The man
had mistaken me for a prostitute. I was
outraged
and intrigued. I
caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar
, painted, breasts on show
.
I hardly recognized myself.

'I'm sorry?' I said, denying to myself that I knew exactly what he had said.

'We go?' he
repeated
.

This was like being another person living a stranger's life. I had told him my name was Camilla and I wondered what Camilla would have done if faced with the same
proposition
.

'Go?' I said
stupidly
.

He held up his palms,
then
tapped his chest and I wasn't sure if this was some sort of religious gesture or he was tapping the pocket that held his wallet.

'
Yes.
Of course,' he
replied
, and tapped his chest again
.

Running through my head
as I slipped to my feet
was a tickertape like you see on the bottom of the television news, a long explanation that I wasn
'
t what he thought I was…
and
perhaps I wasn't what I thought I was.
I
recalled a quote from
Ba
taille
, a line I had
highlighted
in yellow with a marker pen and would look up
again
later.

Not every woman is a potential prostitute, but prostitution is the logical consequence of the female attitude.

Is a glass of champers is all it takes,
I thought as
Nahume
placed two £20 notes in the si
lver
dish
the waiter had left?

I followed him out into the street feeling heady and daring and glad I
'
d got through my first year at
Cambridge
.

In so far as she is attractive, a woman is prey to men
'
s desire. Unless she refuses completely because she is determined to remain chaste, the question is at what price and under what circumstances will she yield.

It reminded me of Q.'s favorite joke. An older man meets a beautiful young girl at a party and says: Will you go to bed with me for £50,000. At first offended, the girl thinks about it and agrees.
When they reach
his
house
, the man turns to the girl a
nd
says
,
will you
go
to bed with me for £20
? The
girl is outraged
,
£20, she repeats, what do you t
hink I am
? We know what you are,
the man
says, we're just quibbling about the price.

Night had fallen but it was warm still. I felt hot and breathless as if all the air had been sucked out of the city. The man selling flowers outside the tube looked like the gardener
who tended the school grounds
. I thought for a moment it was
him
, but it was just the green checks of his flat cap and the tone of his voice.
'
Fiver a bunch,
'
he was shouting.
'
Come on, only a fiver. Buy
'
em
for
the lady.
'

Nahume
bought
a bouquet of pink roses
, and
I
wondered if perhaps
I had been mistaken, that
he hadn
'
t taken me for a working girl, just a lonely girl in a
red
dress looking for
some fun
.
I wanted to explain,
but was carried along by the race of the traffic, the heat
of the night
, the
relentless logic
of
metamorphosis. I had objectified myself in the red dress and heels, the makeup, the
trouble
I had taken with my hair, the gold chain at my throat, the drop earrings.