The Pleasure Quartet (19 page)

A young woman was lying spread-eagled and bound by her ankles and wrists to the four corners of the king size bed, the outline of her body severe against the stark black background of the protective plastic sheeting that had been spread over the bed covers. She was of average build, even a little plump, with a soft body, small, pointed breasts and large, rose-coloured nipples.

The man who loomed over her was fresh-faced – he might have been even younger than the interns who worked summers archiving records for the label. He was slim and pale, with the kind of heroin-chic physique that was popular in some men’s fashion spreads these days in contrast to the usual bulked-up muscle-men of Noah’s generation. A long, half-hard penis hung between his legs. His pubic area was totally smooth. Shaved. Black medical gloves covered his hands.

On the sheet alongside them lay a packet of condoms, lube, baby wipes, a small bottle of anti-bacterial cleansing gel and a variety of penetrative implements. Everything was carefully organised, with the lube and rubbers in easy reaching distance and the toys arranged with mathematical precision in order of size, from a small, silver butt plug with a jewelled end to a frighteningly large neon-orange coloured dildo that Noah would never have imagined could actually be slid inside anyone, if he hadn’t seen women being invaded with similar objects within the context of pornography.

A long electrical extension cord ran from the socket beneath the bedside table up to the bed. Plugged into it was a device that Noah recalled finding hidden under the bed that he had briefly shared with Bridget when he first moved to New York. A tennis-ball-sized white sphere attached to a long handle, with a single blue switch giving the option of two settings. He had turned it on to high and held it against his balls and been shocked by the power of the apparatus and set it to low immediately.

Later online investigation had informed him that it was a Hitachi Magic Wand; a ‘personal massager’ that vibrated at 240 volts and apparently gave women earth shattering orgasms. The sex he and Bridget had shared had always been enjoyable, and adequate, Noah had felt, until that point. After his discovery he hadn’t been able to knock the lurking fear from his mind that he wasn’t entirely satisfying her. On a handful of occasions he had masturbated using Bridget’s Hitachi as an aid, and his orgasm had been all the stronger for knowing that she was unaware he knew her secret, which he never did have the courage to broach.

The woman on the bed emitted a deep groan in response to her partner’s ministrations.

She had already been filled with two toys, one in her anus and the other in her cunt, and her partner was busily pumping each of them in and out of her as she tugged against her restraints.

‘You know that the more you struggle, the more this is going to hurt,’ he told her. ‘Relax.’

Her body went limp.

She licked her lips.

‘Thirsty?’ he asked. She nodded briefly and he abandoned his assault on her openings, reached for the water bottle he had stationed near them and brought it to her lips. He had removed one glove so that he could use his bare hand to prop up her head as she drank. When she indicated that she was finished, he tenderly laid her back down again and pulled a fresh glove from a tissue-sized box full of them and tossed the other into a small plastic bag by the bed.

This was no spur-of-the-moment bondage scene like the one Noah had badly enacted in the hotel by the Strand with – he struggled for an instant to recall her name – Clarice. These two sexual adventurers had come prepared.

‘What do you say?’ asked the woman’s dominant, or top, Noah wasn’t sure which. Lauralynn had given him a crash course in sex party and BDSM etiquette on the drive over but there was only so much a person could learn in thirty minutes.

‘Thank you,’ she replied.

‘Thank you, what?’ All tenderness had now left his expression and he was again a parody of menace, thin lips stretched into a scowl and his long body held straight, leaning over her as though he was about to strike out if she did not furnish him with the response he wanted.

‘Thank you, Daddy,’ she said in a small voice.

Noah inhaled sharply, and stepped backwards, away from the door. He had expected her to say ‘Sir’; wasn’t that the standard, albeit clichéd, expression in such circumstances? His cock had swelled to painful proportions in his trousers and yet his mind was reeling, unsure whether he ought to be aroused or disgusted by what he had overheard. Neither was he sure that he had any choice in the matter. He stepped forward again, this time concentrating on the woman’s face. Full lips, wide eyes, mousey-brown hair spread out in untidy ringlets around her face. A picture of innocence.

Her partner turned directly to face Noah.

Caught in the act.

‘No need to just stand there,’ he said. ‘You can come closer. This little slut loves being watched. Don’t you, whore?’

She nodded.

‘Say it,’ he continued. ‘Tell this nice man you’re a dirty whore and you want him to touch you.’

She twitched and moaned, his words apparently a powerful stimulus.

‘Say it,’ he insisted.

She did.

Noah tentatively approached the couple and kneeled on the bed. He reached forward and placed a hand on the woman’s breast and she jolted sharply in response to his touch.

‘Make her come if you like,’ her partner said, liberally spreading lubricant over the ball of the magic wand and then handing it to him. ‘Press it down hard on her clit. She likes it on high.’

Noah followed his instructions.

‘Harder,’ he was told.

She began to convulse so strongly he feared that she might break the headboard.

‘How do you like that, little whore, a total stranger toying with your cunt?’

He didn’t wait for her to respond. Noah doubted she was capable of speaking. A blotchy shade of red crept over her skin and her mouth opened into a scream.

‘Oh god,’ she cried. ‘Oh my fucking god . . .’

‘I’m going to let him fuck you afterwards, as hard as he wants, whether you like it or not, slut.’

‘I’m coming, oh god, I’m coming,’ she whimpered.

Sweat pearled on her brow.

Her dom reached out and switched the wand off.

‘Better give her a moment to breathe.’

Slowly, her taut limbs relaxed, and her previously contorted expression morphed into a wide smile.

‘God gets a lot of credit for the work I do, you know,’ he mused to Noah, a note of humour obvious in his tone.

The dom and his sub both laughed. Just another ordinary couple again.

‘Well,’ Noah interrupted, now feeling more than a little awkward. ‘Thank you both. I should get back to the party.’

He stopped at the other bathroom on his return, having forgotten in the heat of the moment how badly he actually needed a pee.

When he returned to the main room, he discovered that a plate of cucumber sandwiches had been left out on the kitchen counter, a fact that struck him as singularly odd under the circumstances. He took one and munched on it, picked a bottle of beer from the ice bucket and went in search of Lauralynn and Viggo.

Out of the blue, Noah received a call from Nikolas Mieville. The older man revealed that he had managed to get hold of a hitherto unknown recording of Summer in concert. He sounded very ill. Probably an illegal capture of a concert she had given in Europe some years back when she had been briefly touring with the Holy Criminals, he stated. The pieces played were actually quite different from those that appeared on the later album, in all likelihood earlier still unpolished versions but also some new improvisations altogether. Would Noah care to listen to them?

He would.

The recording quality was poor, he was warned, as one would expect from sounds seized surreptitiously by inadequate equipment in an echoing concert hall, with the audience’s coughs and whispers and even occasional conversation all too prominent and upfront. Technically speaking, Mieville suggested, the recordings might actually be the property of Noah’s record label as Viggo’s band were then under contract to the company, but as the tape’s date of origin was unclear, possibly Summer was signed elsewhere or not yet a free agent at the time. Noah had to agree to come and listen to the music in a strictly private capacity. Conditions he was willing to agree to.

Mieville lived in Highgate. It felt to Noah as if he was becoming a captive of a small perimeter of North London sacred territory, where both the past and his obsession of Summer unfolded as did the present. From the top-floor study where Mieville played the newly discovered tapes to Noah, the view looked out on the edges of Hampstead Heath in the distance, a rolling field of green like a becalmed sea under the grey autumn sky and its slow procession of clouds.

Noah peered out.

Seeking familiar pointers to the Heath’s geography.

‘Can it be seen from here?’ he asked.

‘The bandstand, you mean?’ Mieville said.

‘Yes.’

‘No. It’s further down on the other side of that hill.’

‘Ah . . .’ Another question was on the tip of his lips. Mieville guessed and cut him short.

‘And, no . . . If the story of Summer playing there in the altogether is genuine, it would not have been possible to hear anything this far away. Anyway, I was living overseas, in Prague, at the time.’

The tape began to play.

The sound quality was indeed poor, but the recording proved fascinating. The idiosyncratic sound and rhythms of Viggo’s band were instantly recognisable, jagged, in turns subtle and bone-crunching, but the counterpoint melodic lines of Summer’s violin transformed the music, opening up new aural tides of fluid emotions and over-arching widescreen panoramas of melancholy and rage that Viggo and his musicians had never been capable of raising to the surface. Sadly, there was not enough violin; some of the tracks only featured the Holy Criminals, and when they performed alone there was a sense of deflation, as if without Summer’s violin they were incomplete. Noah estimated that the concert must have taken place towards the beginning of their fleeting collaboration, both parties still unaccustomed to each other, experimenting, moving one careful step at a time, stretching, flexing, still unsure how far they could take the music.

Noah tried to imagine how they had appeared onstage, Viggo and his acolytes in their rock ’n’ roll gladrags and Summer – he was quite certain of it – in a short, tight black dress that espoused every shape of her body, her hair an explosion of red waves and curls, thrown one way and then the other as the music took hold of her, just as he had witnessed with terrible relish in all the infrequent YouTube clips he had managed to hunt down of Summer in performance.

‘Rather beautiful, no?’

Mieville’s voice interrupted his imaginings.

‘Quite.’

The hiss and crackle of the tape was all that could now be heard. The recording had come to an end.

All Noah wanted was to listen to the tape again.

Immerse himself in this lost world of sensations that he could feel fleeing with every passing second from the outstretched tips of his questing fingers.

‘Drink?’

Mieville handed him a glass, with a generous measure of Four Roses.

‘I reckon you take it straight; none of that ice and on the rocks nonsense.’

Noah nodded.

‘I can make a copy for you, if you wish . . .’ Mieville suggested.

‘That would be fantastic. I promise I’ll keep it totally confidential.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

The bourbon slipped down his throat, burning him, awakening him from all the dreams.

Mieville made a gesture to fill his glass again. Noah indicated he had no need for another yet.

‘It’s not just the music that affects you, is it?’ the older man asked.

Noah nodded in agreement.

‘I guessed. She has that effect. You’re not the only one, if it’s any consolation . . .’ Mieville sighed, downing his second glass of Four Roses, his eyes distant, summoning the past.

Noah waited for the older man to continue.

Mieville sank back into his armchair, extended his legs as if to shake torpor out of them. ‘From the moment I saw her playing, I was entranced,’ he said. ‘I was brought up from childhood on classical music. Always appreciated its beauty and certainties, its intellectual rigour. But Summer brought a strange new dimension to it. The notes were the same, obviously, but there was a gentle madness, an inner life that she communicated through her playing. I’d never come across the phenomenon so sharply before. She played as if her life depended on it. Put her soul into it. A rare quality.’

‘I think I understand.’

‘And you’ve never even seen her play, but still it has the same effect on you, Noah . . .’

‘Uncanny.’

The two men fell into silence. Thoughts swirling. A ghost presiding over the room. Beyond the window, dusk fell over the North London fields and hills.

‘She was damaged, you know . . . At least, I believe so.’ Mieville finally burst the serenity of their private reflections.

‘All those stories, the rumours?’

‘Probably why she ended up disappearing from view. It all became too much. There’s only so long you can play with fire and not get yourself burned. Badly.’

‘But she’s alive, surely. She allowed the violin to go up for auction. Though it’s quite unlikely she’ll surface, play in public again, is it?’

‘I’m not so sure. You don’t get rid of the demons so easily, I’ve found. And if just a part of the stories are true, she lives for the danger. It consumes her. When she lived with that writer, I guess she managed to keep them at bay, but then he died and a new raft of stories emerged. She fell to pieces. Understandable. I heard terrible things.’

‘I think I know,’ Noah said.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop, the alcohol’s fire raging in his throat and stomach keeping him on edge and warm.

‘When I was younger, I met a young Italian piano player, Marirosa was her name . . . In a competition in Pescara. Technically proficient, but she had a fire inside that you could sense from the back row of the audience. It was difficult not to fall in love with her. I did. Even though I was married to another at the time. We ended up together, but I was helpless at protecting her from that fire. Eventually, it consumed her. Almost did me . . .’ Mieville said with a note of regret. ‘Coming across Summer Zahova had a similar effect. Fortunately by then the years had taken their obligatory toll on me, and I was able to just remain a spectator. Not get involved. Just sit back and admire, without getting my fingers burned.’