Satan Wants Me (27 page)

‘You must woo Miss Boleskine. Tomorrow you will take her flowers and you will pay her the thousand little attentions that any young lady desires. Take an interest in her work. Laugh at her jokes. Tell her that she is beautiful. That she is, as far as you are concerned, neither beautiful nor clever is neither here nor there, for Miss Boleskine is a bridge, not a goal.’

‘So what is the goal?’

‘I can tell you this much. It is your task to draw her into Horapollo House and, once inside the House when the time is propitious, you shall take her virginity.’

So now I sit in my room writing this all up. The idea of making love to a bridge strikes me as somewhat bizarre. Why not to a lift-shaft or a tower-block? More seriously, the prospect of seducing the innocent and the undesirable appals my imagination: her frumpish coyness, my struggles with her bra and tights, her entreaties for reassurance, her hungry mouth on mine, her large anxious eyes, her arms flapping about, her last panicky struggle to prevent me penetrating her, her breathy moaning, her renewed entreaties for post-coital reassurance and the final summary report in this infernal diary of mine. But I am too deep in now. There can be no turning back.

Back on the wall of the playground, I watched the children. Theoretically it is really interesting, for they are playing games whose origins are as ancient and whose forms are as ritualised as anything that the Black Book Lodge can offer. Yet I am so depressed at the thought of my coming date that I cannot concentrate. I go back to Horapollo House early in the afternoon and read until it is time to don the hated suit once more.

Gear Shears is in Camden High Street. Its large picture-window is partly painted over with images of Art Nouveau women posing amidst chains of flowers and snaking rainbow-coloured tendrils. Seeing me at the window, Maud beckoned me inside. I shook my head, but, since she was insistent, I cautiously entered and, as I did so, almost gagged at the smell of perm lotion. Maud put the roses I presented her with in one of the basins. With obvious pride, she introduced me to her fellow-assistant, Phyllis. Then without any further preamble, she turned back to me and said,

‘Peter dear, if you think that I am going out with you again with your hair still in that condition, you are very much mistaken. Don’t you ever comb your hair?’

‘It is my theory that it’s combing their hair that makes men go bald,’ I replied.

‘Well you may think of me as an old bossy-boots, but I am going to have to give your hair a jolly good combing, before we are going anywhere.’

She did indeed sound fucking bossy. She looked it too, standing there with her hands on her hips. But then I thought of something that would freak her out.

‘Yeah, it does look a bit of a mess, but I think what I’d really like is to have it permed.’

She gave a yelp and Phyllis looked horrified, but I was insistent.

‘I have always wanted to have it permed.’ Apart from freaking Maud out I thought that this would be something different – better than going to some dreary foreign film and then making pretentious conversation about it in the restaurant.

Maud shook her head.

‘I can’t do it. This is a women-only salon, as the boss disapproves of unisex.’

‘So get the boss. I am happy to pay extra for a good perm with all the works.’

‘The boss isn’t here this evening.’

‘There you are then.’

‘I can’t do it. You would look so strange.’

‘It is just a little thing. If you really cared about my hair, you would do it.’

I inclined my head in Maud’s direction. She put out a tentative hand and seemed about to stroke my hair, but she held off and took a step back, as if she was resisting the temptation of the devil. But then Phyllis suddenly said,

‘Go on, Maud. Give him the works.’

‘Why not?’ said Maud doubtfully, as she reached out again for my hair. ‘Are you sure you really want this, Peter?’

I thought that I had seduced the technician in her. I walked over to one of the chairs where I was enveloped in a white gown. The woman under the drier in the next chair looked at me curiously. Maud ran her fingers over my head in an exploratory way and, as she did so, I felt my gooseflesh rise. Was it a ripple of apprehension? Maybe. It was a weird thing to be so fondled by someone who physically repelled me. I watched her in the mirror as she played with my hair and dreamily brooded over its knots.

‘I am only surprised that your hair looks as good as it does,’ she said before fiercely attacking it with a comb. Then she took a scissors to the ends. I observed her in the mirror halfway through the trimming, putting one of the snipped-off locks of my hair in a purse in her handbag on a nearby chair. Seeing that she was observed, she scowled, went red and said,

‘It is for my locket.’

Then Maud wanted to give me a shampoo. By now the last customer, the old bag in the chair next to me, had left and Phyllis came over to help Maud. Hitherto I had not noticed, but all this time Radio Caroline had been piping into the salon – ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ by Rod Stewart, ‘Surprise Surprise’ by Lulu and the Luvvers, ‘We Love the Beatles’ by the Vernons Girls and more stuff like that, the music of hell. Phyllis was humming along to the nightmare sounds, while Maud spoke with laborious intensity about the prescribed stages in handling a client’s hair. First there was effleurage which is stroking. Then she gave my scalp a petrissage, or kneading, before rubbing in shampoo. Finally, she gave me a second soothing effleurage. The whole process was indeed quite hypnotic and I was in some kind of trance when Phyllis said that she would be off then and Maud, having finished the rinsing and drying, bent low to fiddle with the edges of the white gown and tuck me in tighter. I was distracted by the heavy swing of her breasts as she leant over me.

Then she straightened up, but I could watch her in the mirror as she stood back to approve her handiwork. She came closer and ran her fingers down the back of my neck. Again I felt that creeping sensation. Her reflection seemed to hover over my head like a bird of night. Her own hair, lustrous black, billowed over her shoulders and then swung across her face when she tilted her head at an angle and announced,

‘Petting is OK, but a girl should keep her virginity for marriage. Don’t you agree? I know that I’ve got lots to learn now that I have my own boyfriend. It is your job to teach me about love … ’

I am sure that when I filled in that blasted computer-dating form, I did not tick the box saying that I wanted to meet up with a mad girl. Yet here I was alone with a mad girl in a salon.

‘Dear Peter,’ she continued, ‘I promise that you have found a willing student in me. I have so much to give a man. I just know that I have. All I want in exchange are little things … like a photograph of you that I can keep in my locket and … maybe you could show me your diary and I will let you look at mine and maybe we could write in each other’s diaries. And I want you to tell me about all your previous girlfriends and I can tell you about all the boys I used to fancy. And we can have dinner parties where we will meet each other’s friends. And one day, we may talk about babies, but of course there is no hurry about that … ’

The mad girl set to sectioning my hair, combing it into strands and winding those strands around plastic curlers. I remember that Adrienne Posta was singing ‘Shang A Dang Doo Lang’ when Maud began work on my perm. Songs come round so rapidly on Radio Caroline that I heard that song twice more before she had finished with my hair. Just the rollers alone took an hour and a half. Actually, if I consider the question of madness carefully, surely I was as mad as she to get myself in this position. What had possessed me to demand a perm? Once Maud had finished the back sections of my head, she came round to seat herself heavily on my lap, so that she could work more comfortably on the front. Her perfume, Chanel No 5 probably, almost made me choke. She planted a kiss on my sealed lips and, as she worked, she kept talking in a crazy way, only occasionally breaking off to stroke and kiss my face and the ‘Shang A Dang Doo Lang’ stuff which continued to play in the background was part of the horror of it all. After the sectioning and rolling, it took three quarters of an hour to apply the perm lotion. (How do women put up with this on a regular basis – all this, plus the morning ritual of applying make-up?)

While she continued with her deranged girly babble about love being forever and stuff, I was deep inside my head. I do not think that either Asmodeus or Choronzon will be satisfied with heavy petting. I will indeed teach Maud about love. ‘Love is the Law. Love under the Will.’ Yes, a girl should indeed save her virginity – for the demons. I will bring her shy and trusting to Horapollo House and hand-in-hand we will enter the Ritual Chamber together. Then other Adepts will roughly strip her of her dress. Next I will force her down on the altar and take her virginity and, as I do so, Felton will cut the throat of a pig, so that its blood cascades onto Maud’s face. Then it will be the Master’s turn to have her. Then I will have her again, but this time up the arse. Then I will pass her on to Granville and one after another the Adepts will have their way with her and slowly her screams will become fainter. Then I will come forward again and force her to take my cock so deep in her mouth that she gags on it. Finally, I will force the bloody and weeping bitch to kiss my feet and declare her gratitude to all those assembled there for teaching her about love. And the demons will feed upon her madness.

The perm lotion was washed off and my head went under the drier. Finally, I was released and, standing before the mirror, I shook my hair out. I looked like Struwelpeter. She came up behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder.

‘See, your hair has got more body now,’ and passing her hand over my new curls, she continued,

‘I have never had a boyfriend before, but now I’ve made you mine. I know it sounds silly but I think of the perm as a sort of magic spell,’ she added. ‘If you don’t like it the way it is, it will grow out in a few months. It is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, but I no longer had any idea what it was that I had wanted. I must control these loony impulses in future. The next time it might be circumcision, a tattoo of Choronzon, or trepanation, or all three together.

‘You are pleased?’ she persisted.

‘It is what I asked for,’ I replied.

‘Then kiss me,’ and she closed her eyes and waited to be kissed. As I kissed her, I was thinking how soon, very soon I would force my cock into her mouth.

She clutched at the lapels of my suit, (the accursed suit which, as it turned out, I need not have troubled to put on) and asked me when our next date should be.

‘How about tomorrow?’ I replied. ‘Why don’t you come to Horapollo House and I could show you where I live. I promise you that you will find it fascinating.’

She hesitated. Then,

‘All right, that would be nice. But you must collect me from my flat. That way you can see how I live too. Let’s be together all the time.’

And having collected the flowers, she followed me out of the salon and locked up behind me. A final kiss and I was free. But all the way back to Swiss Cottage I was conscious of people looking at me curiously.

Felton was lurking just off the hallway of Horapollo House. Seeing my hair, he raised his eyebrows.

‘I see that Miss Boleskine has made her mark on you,’ he said. ‘You look like the Archangel Lucifer. Do not tell me now, but write your diary tonight and show it to me after breakfast.’

So, having foraged for something to eat in the kitchen, I sit up in my room – my cell effectively – writing this all up. Curiously, I find that thinking about my plans for Maud has a certain erotic charge.

Laura at breakfast was simultaneously enchanted and entertained by my hair. After breakfast, Felton tossed me a bundle of notes and seized my diary, feverish in his eagerness to find out what had happened last night. There were the inevitable sneers at my ‘jargon-laden sociological claptrap’. But this time the main problem was the way in which I had described what I would do to Maud once I had lured her into the Lodge.

‘“Then the other Adepts will strip her …. Next I will force …. Then it … Then … Then … Finally …. And the demons will feed upon her madness.” I see that you like your squalid, erotic fantasies to be paratactic, Non Omnis Moriar.’

I did not reply, as I had no idea what he was talking about. Did ‘paratactic’ mean ‘in the nude’, or ‘convulsive’, or ‘sex involving pig’s blood’, or what?

Felton paused before putting me out of my misery.

‘I mean that your sentences are placed one after another, without one being dependent on the other. It is just like a small child describing a film. “And then a big man came into the room and he shot the woman who was in the room. Then she was dead. And then the other man who was in the room shot the first man dead …”’

Then he went on about how my stuff resembled pulp fiction by the hands of someone like Dennis Wheatley. Not only that, but my fantasies of what I was going to do with Maud resembled the nefarious thoughts of a preposterous, lip-smacking villain in a Wheatley novel. But I was thinking, if Felton despises Wheatley’s novels as much as he says he does, how come he is so familiar with their contents?

‘When the astral conjunctions are favourable and all our preparations are in place, you will indeed deflower Miss Boleskine,’ Felton said, (as if this was some wonderful promise he was making me). ‘But in the meantime,’ he continued, ‘you will wait upon the word of the Master and you will treat Miss Boleskine with all the respect that a young lady deserves. Kiss her, embrace her, dance with her, but you will proceed no further without our permission. I see that you have invited the young lady to Horapollo House today. That was perhaps a little premature. However, I suppose it would seem strange to call that off now. I suggest, though, that her visit should be a brief one and that you take her dancing afterwards. It is a Saturday after all. Why not telephone her this morning and suggest it?’

So I did as I was told (and she got terribly excited at the thought of going dancing). Sick with dread at the thought of the evening ahead, I went upstairs to work on the equations of inter-group dynamics. Felton is wrong to carp at what he calls ‘sociological jargon’, for all disciplines have their specialist vocabularies. Occultism is no different in this respect: grimoire, larva, Qlippoth, arcana, pathworking, zelator, athanor, shakti, mutus liber, Mother of Abomination, thurible, elixir, congressus subtilis. Half the task of a sorcerer is to master the language of sorcery. I found it hard to concentrate on my work. I kept trying to work out what use the Lodge has for the frumpish hairdresser. I will work it out eventually. In the meantime, I wish that Sally had not first left the Lodge and then me.