Ménage (21 page)

She led us then, giggling and ranting in her exaggerated voice, to her mother’s bedroom. Marimekko curtains and trims, potpourri, festival masks from Venice, a huge bed of seventies-style silky sheets made up like a hotel bed but with fluffy cushions; a Hindu god in ivory by the bedside.

— What if she comes back?

— Oh O, must you always be so practical? She’s never here, she can’t stand being near the old bugger.

She pulled her mother’s clothes out of the seventies mirrored walk-in wardrobe and threw them on the bed. Saul lit a menthol off the end of the last and stared out the window. I asked on his behalf if it was OK to smoke in her mother’s bedroom.

— Fuck her, Dot laughed. — She smokes spliffs in here secretly all the time. Tragic really.

Dot held a sixties Chanel dress first to herself, then her eyes shot from Saul to me. Panic surged through me.

— I think . . . this one’s for you, she said to me with a wry smile.

— What?

— It’s art, she laughed. — I’m going to get my camera in a min. And this – with the utmost seriousness, holding up a floor-length crocheted hippy cheesecloth dress, — is for you, Sozzle.

She must have known that Saul would take offence at that particular garment. If so, it was a cunning move. He seemed oblivious to the greater question of why the hell we would be dressing in her mother’s clothes in the first place, as he then searched through the wardrobe trying to find something more ‘him’. In his silence he was, perhaps,
working
out the weight of bottles he could carry home or some other calculation for maximising our exploitation of the capitalist context. I was still counting on him to stop the farce, but he was fully engaged with the textures of silk and chiffon and nylon and I was thrown into confusion as Dot took off her clothes and, naked before us, pulled an eighties business suit from the wardrobe, declaring it ‘very her’. She was to dress as her father.

— Come on, girls. You like dressing up, don’t you? She winked at me. — I’ll get you some panties.

I was terrified then that if I opposed the plan it would only take the smallest slip-up for Saul to know that Dot and I shared a sexual secret. I agreed to put on the Chanel number, in the hope of silencing her, and started to undress.

— You too, Sozzle. He was still fussing over the many styles. A green-and-yellow-striped seventies flared jumpsuit, a ball gown, a Versace in gold lamé. I stood in my underpants, hoping that at any moment he would explode in rage and declare the game over.

— What’s wrong, Soz, you scared? She poked his belly.

How clever of her to know that for Saul to seem scared of any transgression was tantamount to an exposure of hypocrisy.

— I’ll bet Owen makes a better woman than you do, she added. — I’ll award points and a little kiss for the winner.

— I’m a fucking damn sight more of a woman than you’ll ever be! Saul snapped back.

There was no way out. Saul insisted on dressing alone in the en suite on the condition that Dot fix him a tall Martini, while he flicked the Versace in her face, picked up a pair of strapless heels and pootled off inside, satisfied that he was once again laying down the rules for us all. I asked her again what the hell we were doing. All of that stuff she’d said earlier about manic depression and her deathbed, was any of it true?

— Shh, my dreary dear, she said, quoting him, — we’re making art. Then she ran off to fix more drinks and get her video camera. I was left alone in boxers and socks before the mirror, the little black dress in my hands.

My humiliation grew as my member nodded in approval as I slid the tight dress over my head. I struggled to think of something horrible – the yellow slime in the kitchen sink – the bluebottle infestation in the old bin-bag room – the toilet clogged with Saul’s shit-smeared tabloid pages – the breakfast bowl I once found crawling with maggots – anything to make my swelling subside. But the sight of the bulge in the tight material, then that of Dot wiggling naked into the room with the three pint glasses filled with cocktails and her video camera – I sat down rapidly, resting my elbows on my knees, crossing my legs to hide my aching weakness.

The clink of the glasses must have been what roused Saul from the en suite. The image of him then, thick black stubble and the legs of some kind of anorexic gorilla, chest bones from a prisoner-of-war camp highlighted by the sheer lamé dress. Dirty overgrown toenails hanging over the edge of the heels.

—
Et voilà
! he called out, striking a pose. Dot stifled a laugh, and raised the camera – we both knew better than to laugh at Saul for any reason.

She complimented and toasted us both, clinking glasses, as if sensing that a moment of silence would bring it all to an end.

— Oh, but we need to get you stockings, my cherubim! 15 denier, I think, to hide the hair, and foundation to cover the stubble. You both really should have shaved. Oh but you look so glorious! My little peaches – I could eat you all up.

I worried then that we were not making art at all but re-enacting some perverse primal scene that her father had once put her through. But she chattered on, high-pitched
and
high camp, as her hands rummaged through her mother’s lingerie drawers. And part of me did want to wear suspenders and stockings and lacy panties and to beat Saul in this competition of hers.

The cocktails were finished, so then there was gin. Dot poured a huge one for Saul and his humour seemed to come back with every millitre of alcohol more.

— Just a smidge more debauchery for me my dreary dear.

All the lovely expensive frilly thrilling thingies laid out on the bed, and Dot was talking about how her mother had really been a burn-your-bra hippy but her father liked her to dress like a ‘real woman’, as she put on the old man’s double-breasted padded-shouldered suit.

I must have been drunk, because I’d forgotten the why and where of it all. I turned my back to them and tried to pull a stocking on but my foot got stuck. I lost my balance and fell back onto her mother’s bed. Dot was laughing, manhandling me.

— No, no, not like socks! She took it from me, rolling it up. — Like this, like putting on a condom. Her fingers through the silk, tight round my foot, winking at me again.

— You should have cut your toenails, silly sausage, we don’t want to ladder Mummy’s best stockings, do we, she could get suspicious. I made facial expressions to try to express my anxiety. She put her finger to her mouth to shh. I checked Saul’s face to see if he’d seen the secret exchange, but he was head down, another menthol lit, rolling on his stockings, mumbling, — Philistine, have you never worn silk before?

Nothing I could say or do. The beauty of it struck me then. Of games, how they eclipse reality and become their own. Life should be a game, Saul once said. I told myself to relax and play it out. We sat so quietly, attentive, in our dresses as Dot put the lipstick on us both, then mascara, Saul play-acting the spoiled girl-child.

— Why him? Me first, me first!

In compensation he demanded a beauty spot, which Dot dutifully gave him.

— Bigger, bigger, he was shouting. — I want to be a slut! Another gin and he was proclaiming that we should, nay everyone should, do this every day.

Dot was up, video camera in hand, filming me, as I forced my feet into her mother’s tiny stilettos. A moment of bonding then with Saul in which he laughed at my ill-fitting feet, oblivious to his own, him pouting and blowing smoke rings, Dietrich-style. My knobbly knees. A little game of insults, in the name of competitiveness.

— My darling. You’re a dog’s breakfast.

— It’s a dog eat dog world, I said. Surprised that, for once, I’d come up with a witty riposte.

— Indeed, let the best bitch win!

Dot was silent behind her camera. Her voice instructing. As she led us up another flight of stairs, the walls lined with images of the great English, of the conquests of the empire, I finally saw the joke of it all. Her revenge not against Saul but against the great men in gilded frames. Her camera pointed up our dresses as we stumbled on ahead. She, in her father’s suit, made lewd suggestions in a play-man’s voice, getting us to pose as she shot us from below, her voice that of a film or porn director.

— That’s right, cutie, raise your leg, show me the top of the stockings. Higher, lovely, that’s it.

She asked us to stand on one leg, pout for the camera, waggle our bums. At first I was embarrassed, but seeing the gusto with which Saul embraced his part, some ludicrous sense of competitiveness overcame me. So I copied and tried to outdo him, flashing my legs and pouting, as per her instruction. Fighting him for space to show more leg, more stocking tops. Her camera was rolling and it was art.

— That’s good. Now kiss each other, a big smoochy kiss. Saul puckered up, all labial lips and stubble, big mwaaa, mwaaas. I closed my eyes and extended my lips. He pulled away immediately, giggling like a man-girl.

She showed us the playback on the big TV in the lounge as Saul opened the fifty-year-old Glenlivet. On-screen was a shot perfectly framed by the banister. It could have been anywhere, another time – a Warhol screen test from the Chelsea Hotel, ’72.

— Mmmm, very Andy, Saul proclaimed – the only positive thing he’d said in weeks.

Two drag queens, posing, following commands as a voice made demands from behind the camera.

‘Bend over, show me your asses. Shoogle them, let me see those ass cheeks wobbling: Now do the catwalk, and come back to the banister.’

On-screen two drag queens fighting to go first.

‘One at a time, girls!’

The queens so studious in their every move, the one that was Saul stumbled in his heels, swore – fuck fuck! Then steadied himself on the banister and sighed deeply like Zsa Zsa Gabor.

‘Now pull your dresses up, show me your suspender belts. Show me your pussies. Touch your pussies. Blow the camera a kiss.’

A moment then when both drag queens stared at the camera, falling out of their roles, standing like men waiting at a bar for a pint.

‘I’m the winner!’ shouted the one that was Saul.

‘No, me!’

‘Me, me, me, me.’

The voice from behind the camera: ‘There’s no winner.’

The tape went to fuzz.

Dot turned it off and sat back on her haunches.

— So what you think? Is it art?

Saul got up suddenly, spilling his drink, running past us, falling against the wall in the heels he’d forgotten to take off. The sound of the bathroom door slamming, of him retching. I reached for Dot’s hand.

— Do you think he knows . . . about us?

— Shh, she said, — listen.

The sounds in the bathroom were not just retching, but something almost inhuman, animal. The puking-up of what sounded like inner organs. Dot got up to go to him but I held her back. Whispered, — Did you tell him?

She shook her head, silent, listening with worry to his every spasm. She ran off to be with him. Her face at the closed door.

— Sozzle, you OK? What’s wrong? I followed and at the door held her hand.

— Saul, you OK?

— EEEE! A scream from inside. — GOD!

— Open this door! Are you OK? she shouted.

— GOD! GOD, I HATE YOU, he shouted back.

We looked at each other then like two children who had upset their father. He shouted – something that sounded like weeping with chunks of food. — IT’S A FUCKING . . . IT’S A FUCKING OBSCENE FUCKING . . . IT’S A . . .

The toilet door fell open, his mascara running down his cheeks, vomit on his dress. He fell forward into our arms, stenching of puke, whispering, — It’s a . . . It’s a . . . He was exhausted by the exertions — . . . a fucking masterpiece!

I swear his lips brushed my neck and his arms reached to us not only for support.

— ’S fucking masterpiece.

For all of that, though, I found myself in her bedroom, alone as she put him to bed. Sitting there in her mother’s dress,
the
room seemed preserved by her parents as if Dot had died a decade before and everything had to be kept as she’d left it. Like a shrine, like the
Mary Celeste
. The rows of Sindy dolls; arts and crafts; a Swedish rug; a poster of some Scandinavian weaving; Doctor Seuss. The entire twenty-seven volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. Inside the drawers in the dresser were trinkets and plastic jewellery, frilly panties, a first training bra, white schoolgirl socks. On the mantel was a hockey trophy from St Paul’s, a row of Russian dolls, beside a lovingly crafted horse in clay. Something was missing from the picture, there were no posters of bands or records or magazines, her entire teenage years seemed lost – and nowhere in the house had I seen a picture of the dead brother. I thought of the mad mother and shrink father and shivered. I tried to sleep on the small, single bed. The duvet cover was Laura Ashley, all flowers. It smelled of dust and something sweeter – air freshener or maybe vomit and detergent.

I was awoken by a dark figure looming over me, a man.

— My God!

A hand reaching for me, speaking.

— Shh, silly, it’s me.

— Fuck, Dot! What you doing here?

— It’s my room.

— Is he sleeping?

She stepped away then, eyes scanning her assembly line of furry animals. She stopped at the window and leaned on the high shelf. Sight of her from behind: the curves of long slender legs, the gap between them running from knee to inner thigh, the shifts in shape as my eyes roamed upwards, following the line that led to her pubis, then the hard black edge of Saul’s Armani jacket. I sat up hugging the duvet, trying to hide my mounting arousal. I was deeply troubled by the events of the night, worse still by the things she’d said about her ‘episode’. I tried to find the courage.

— That thing about the deathbed?

— Yes.

Her back to me, her voice changed, somehow sincere in tone, dark.

— Your episode?

She turned to me then.

— Am I scaring you, should I put something on?

Her eyes, in the half-dark, not her own, seemed drugged. I could not stop her. My eyes fixated on her hands as she pulled something from the drawer, then bent forward, baring her arse to me. I begged her to stop, but she lifted one foot and I saw then – the white schoolgirl panties, then the other foot stepping in, my eye following the fabric as she pulled it up. The feminine flesh bulging over the edges where the elastic bit too tight. She did not turn to face me. I whispered, begging her to stop.