Satan Wants Me (17 page)

We were later getting back to London than we should have been and, having got to London, we had to first drop Granville off in Kensington. We had missed dinner at the Lodge, but Grieves had put sandwiches out in the kitchen. I had hardly finished the last mouthful when Felton urged me to take a bath. If I was making an early start tomorrow, it would be better if I took a bath now. There was no reason to argue and I went upstairs, got in the bath and lay back and thought about my seminar paper and then about the events of the previous couple of days. I was looking forward to writing my diary in bed.

I was wandering back down the dark corridor in my pyjamas when I heard something which made my skin prickle and my body feel cold all over. It was the sound of a woman singing opera. The sound was coming from my room and from my record player, but I had put no record on and this was not my music. I pushed the door open. Although I had left the light on when I went for my bath, the room was now in darkness. I stood there hesitating and thinking of turning and running, when a match was struck and a candle lit. It was Laura who sat on my bed and held the candle up to my face. She was smiling.

‘“
Voi che sapete.
” You who know about love. It is Mozart, Peter. “Love is the Law. Love under the Will”.’

She spoke in clear bell-like tones. She was wearing a tweed skirt and silk blouse. She patted the bed, motioning me to sit beside her. I did so and we sat close but without looking at one another.

‘Peter, I want us to play a game of pretend. Let us pretend that I am a virgin and I want you to seduce me.’ She paused and reconsidered, ‘Or rather that I might want you to persuade me that I want to be seduced.’

I could hear her breathing. She was tense. What was I supposed to do? And never mind what I was supposed to do, what did I want to do? Looking at her properly I saw that she was quite a bit older than I was, but not actually old. She was in her forties, I suppose, and vaguely attractive in a matronly sort of way. Without looking at her, I placed a hesitant hand on her stockinged knee. She brushed it off.

‘I don’t want a grubby feel. Talk to me. Persuade me that you love me and that I should sleep with you.’

‘Well, I don’t and I’m not into pretend games,’ I said. ‘Look sorry, Laura, it’s nothing personal, but I don’t need your sex lessons. I’ve slept around and had a lot of experience.’

‘Now, don’t be so graceless, Peter. Simple politeness should have dictated a more courteous response to an older woman who is proposing to go to bed with you – eventually, if you play your cards right. I am sure that you do not need sex lessons. That is not the point. We could be mistaken, but we suspect that you do not know much about courting – about how to make a woman feel special.’

(Courting? Get real.)

‘We are not interested in whether or not you can get it up with any dolly bird. The question is whether you can court a respectable, innocent girl and, not to put too fine a point on it, seduce a virgin. Now do you have experience with virgins?’

‘No, well, I admit that I don’t go around collecting maidenheads. But I can’t do this. It’s silly. What am I supposed to say?’

‘You have to understand that I am a virgin, so this first time I will be afraid. You will need to reassure me about it. You will also need to persuade me that you are serious and that this is not some casual affair, but that you really care about me. Tell me I am beautiful. Tell me how much I will enjoy my first full experience of sex. Promise me marriage. Promise anything.’

‘This is just so weird. I can’t.’

‘Don’t be chicken, Peter.’ She reached out to me reassuringly. ‘You’ve had plenty of experience at role play during the pathworking sessions. This is just another sort of role play and one that will be much more enjoyable than most, I promise you. It’s really not that hard a thing. You must have had a lot more experience in seducing girls than I have at playing at being a virgin. It does not matter what you really think about me. Just make something up. Obviously I want to go to bed with you, otherwise I would not be sitting here. But, as far as the pretence is concerned, I’m young, inexperienced and emotionally insecure. So I just need to hear some words that will make it seem all right for us.’ And suddenly, in an artificially high, schoolgirlish voice, ‘Oh Peter, are you sure it’s all right, just the two of us being here alone?’

Some play acting and then, at the end of it, a good fuck. It was freaky, but I decided to enrol in this impromptu course on how to seduce virgins.

‘We really have to be alone, Laura for me to tell you how much I love you. I would be too shy to do it in a crowd of people. Besides, isn’t it pleasant being here on a summer’s evening in the candle-light and listening to Mendelssohn?’

‘Mozart,’ Laura corrected me instinctively.

‘ – listening to Mozart. This is our night, our moment and nothing is more important than our love – at least nothing is more important than my love for you. I still don’t know how you feel about me.’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps it is not so easy for a girl to know what her feelings are.’

I took her hand. With half my mind, I was trying to remember seduction lines from films like
Alfie
or
The Knack
. Trying, but not succeeding. I was on my own.

‘That is something I just can’t understand, Laura. I know how I feel. Whenever I see you, I feel weak. I didn’t ask to fall in love with you, but, now that I have, I am in perpetual pain. Perhaps it would have been better if I had never met you. Then I would not be in this terrible pain – ’

I stopped and turned anxiously, as Laura was leaning forward, bent double. Only as I looked closely did I see that she was convulsed with laughter.

‘What is it darling Peter? Is it the gallstones again?’ And shakily trying to pull herself together, ‘Oh, I’m sorry I know that’s not fair, but really you were going a bit over the top. Sorry, sorry. Take it from “Perhaps it would have been better if I had never met you”. ’

She composed her face and struggled to gaze back at me gravely.

‘Perhaps it would have been better – ’

It was no good. She creased up with laughter again. Something inside of me did a flip. Hitherto, she had been to me a Lodge teacher and a strange old bag. Suddenly I found myself sitting next to a living, breathing, laughing human being and I desired her intensely. I had a hard on.

‘Oh this is hopeless.’ She managed eventually. ‘No, go on Peter. Give it your best shot.’ But she was weeping at the ridiculousness of it all.

‘Perhaps it would have been better if I had never met you. But though I am in pain, it is still a very sweet pain. Laura, may I kiss you?’

She nodded,

‘Of course you may,’ and hastily wiping away the tears of laughter, she turned her face to me.

From what Mr Cosmic had been saying, I was expecting Laura’s kiss to be like a blowtorch on the mouth. However, she was still trying to act out the part, and she only opened her mouth a little and she did not allow my tongue to get very far.

‘Laura darling, you have such a beautiful body. It is a pity to keep it covered in clothes. Will you let me undress you? Just that and nothing more? I only want to look at your glorious body unclothed and worship it with my eyes.’

‘Aaah, yer father’s moustache!’ she replied in a croaky voice. ‘Sorry, sorry. Well Peter, I don’t know. Won’t Daddy be angry?’

‘He need never find out.’

As I said this, I was grimly fumbling at the zip of her skirt. Unfortunately the zip had snagged.

‘Let’s both be naked. I too would like to stand naked before you so that there are no pretences between us.’

Now Laura who had been watching my struggles with the zip with interest, just threw herself back on the bed and howled.

‘Oh Laura Wilkins, how on God’s earth did you ever get yourself in this fucking stupid, stupid, ridiculous situation?’ And then, ‘Oh, let me do the zip. Yes, I definitely think you’ve persuaded me that I ought to yield my maidenhead to you. I’m bored with being a virgin. Come on let’s get our clothes off and fuck.’

We stood to strip in front of one another. She was wearing a corset and the straps of the corset dug into the flesh of her shoulders. I was already fancying her, but this pathetic physical detail made me fancy her rotten. I was on my knees in front of her and I was not acting as I unclipped her suspenders and murmured endearments to her mute but glorious legs. Then I rose to kiss her and she ran her fingers down my ribcage.

‘You have an amazing body,’ she said wonderingly. ‘It’s like the body of a flamenco dancer. I wonder if there can be space for a heart in such a skinny body?’

Then,

‘Oh Peter, you will be gentle with me, won’t you?’

Her whole body was rippling with laughter as I entered her.

Laura was a good lay – no, let me rephrase that. She was a sensational lay. She knew about things that Sally had never dreamed of and some of those things were seriously weird. After sex, she produced cigarettes. I had never seen her smoke before.

‘Well, we cocked this one up – to coin a phrase,’ she said finally. ‘The Master is not going to be pleased.’

‘Need he ever know?’

‘Unless Aiwass strikes him blind in the next twenty-four hours, he will know all right. He will read about it in my diary. Just as Felton will read about it in your diary. They will probably compare notes.’

‘Oh.’ (I had thought that we would keep the details of tonight’s encounter secret. Stupid, but that is what I thought.)

‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil,’ said Laura. ‘That’s what I say – not that I’ve ever seen the Devil ashamed.’

She was now very brisk, smoothing down her skirt and touching her hair. Seeing my horrified expression, she allowed herself a little smirk.

‘Things have not worked out quite as planned. Still tonight’s encounter has brought us closer together. I hope that soon you will come to regard me as your new mother.’

‘My real mother is dying.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She paused at the door. ‘If I were you Peter, I would not go to sleep yet. It will be better for you if you write your diary now, while every detail is fresh in your memory. You have to tell the truth in your diary. The penalty exacted by the Lodge for not doing so is pretty grim. Take it from your new mum.’

So I did set to work straightaway bringing my diary up to date and it was late before I could set my alarm clock and allow myself to drift off to sleep.

I set off as early as the trains would allow to the conference in Leeds University. I only missed the speech of welcome and a couple of short papers. Michael was also at the conference and we talked over coffee. I had to explain a bit about my new address and although I was studiously vague about what sort of set-up Horapollo House was, he still twigged that I was tied up with some sort of occult group and he was caustic about it.

‘All these kinds of esoteric set-ups are after one thing and one thing only and that’s money. They will milk you dry.’

‘I don’t think that it’s like that with my lot, Michael. Pretty much the opposite, in fact.’

‘It’s your funeral.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose it could be interesting from a sociological point of view. You could do a paper on it, “Inter-group Dynamics in a North London Organisation of Occultists”, or something like that.’

‘No way, Michael. I’m really serious about this.’

‘More fool you. What do you expect to get out of it? If these people really have got amazing mystical powers and all that stuff, why aren’t they ruling the world, instead of preying on gullible young students?’

‘How do you know that they are not ruling the world?’ I retorted. ‘Outer appearances are not the same as inner reality.’

Still he had a point.

My paper was at the end of the afternoon. I gabbled it a bit, but it went OK, I think. Nobody could understand what I was saying, so there were no questions, so it was successful in that sense. I would rather not be understood than be asked difficult questions. We were all supposed to be talking about ‘cognitive dissonance’ in society, but none of us seemed to be clear what that was. I feel terribly young, compared to the other researchers here. Well I am young to be doing a doctorate, I suppose. Conferences are hectic affairs and I hardly had a single minute to think about Laura’s night visitation, or about Mum’s illness. I felt somewhat guilty at not being in Cambridge with my parents. However, at least, the Lodge wants me to advance myself and encourages my work, whereas Dad does not take my studies seriously. Things overran at the conference and I had to spend the night in a sleeping bag on the floor of a lecturer’s office.

I awoke, stiff and uncomfortable. I decided to spend the greater part of the day in Leeds, talking to other sociologists and exploring the faculty library. Leeds is a bleak, grey place. My train got me back to London too late for dinner at Horapollo House. I went straight to bed exhausted. This time I had no company.

I looked for Laura at breakfast, but she was not there. Shall we have another opportunity to play at seducer and virgin?

This morning, for comparative purposes, I went to a different school playground. The stumpy and aggressive little children reeling about in play reminded me of figures in a Brueghel painting of a carousel at some village fair. The purpose of the fair’s centuries-old celebration has been long forgotten. It is playtime and for half an hour the world has been turned upside down. I think that I should not like to be trapped with these sinister little monsters, stunted incarnations of violence and folly. I watch a ring of infant bullies close round their chosen victim and I hear the taunting rhythm of ‘Neeurgh, neeurgh, neurgh, neurgh, neeurgh’ and I shudder. Felton is curious why I cannot find a playground more conveniently close at hand in the Swiss Cottage area. I suppose that might be a good idea, only I already have so many notes based on the St Joseph’s playground.

On my way back in to Central London, I see that the newspaper headlines are full of the Israeli attack on Egypt and the Middle East conflagration in general. I remember Felton saying that Damascus is the prophesied birthplace of the Antichrist. Perhaps the Apocalypse has begun. I have to return for the second fitting of the dinner jacket (this time without Granville). The little man measures bits of cloth against my body. I hate this black thing that he is making for me. It feels like my winding sheet. Perhaps my dinner jacket will be ready in time for me to attend the Apocalypse wearing it. Correctly dressed and with champagne glass in hand, I should watch the fires pour down from the heavens. (Cosmic told me a few months ago that he was hoping that the world will end on a Wednesday. After thinking about this for a bit, I asked him why. He said that it would break up the week.)