The Pleasure Quartet (36 page)

The sound of coins dropping onto my outstretched coat at regular intervals punctuated my reverie as the melody unrolled both in my mind and from the tips of my busy fingers. All too soon, it shivered to an end. The sound of a few hands clapping, and I opened my eyes. Two older women stood, watching me, gentle smiles drawn across their lips. As if expecting me to play something else. I returned their smile, bowed my head in response to their approval. The crowds of passengers came and went in waves, as trains on both lines drew onto the nearby platforms, disgorging their commuters. It was a weekday, so I knew I was not at risk from a horde of football fans as had happened on that first fateful occasion.

I briefly thought of what I could play next, but none of the prospects pleased me. I was badly out of practice, and in no state to improvise.

I returned home.

By the time Noah arrived back the following day, my fingers were raw and the strained muscles in my upper arm were groaning from all the hours I had put in playing, rehearsing, practising, failing time and time again until I was happy with my playing. I had barely slept.

‘You look tired,’ he said as he set down his overnight bag in the hall and kissed me. ‘Are you feeling alright?’

I nodded. When he walked into the study, he caught sight of my violins, the music stand I had set up and the mess of partitions spread across the room on all possible surfaces.

‘You’re playing again,’ he said. ‘Wonderful.’

He took me in his arms.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But early days.’ I didn’t want him to get too excited about it yet, make any sort of plans, but Noah was understanding and careful not to ask me any questions, which I was grateful to him for.

I felt so thankful for the delicacy of his intuition and a totally crazy thought ran through my mind.

‘If you want,’ I told him. ‘I’ll play for you tonight. Something special, somewhere special.’

‘I would love that.’

‘A surprise.’

All through the evening, I could sense his impatience, as we ate and then watched a Scandinavian thriller serial on the TV, slyly glancing at me throughout, wondering what I might have in my mind.

Towards midnight, I rose from the sofa.

‘Now . . .’

‘I thought you’d forgotten, or given up,’ he remarked.

‘Of course not.’

I changed back into my little black dress. Wearing it had become something of a ritual for me and I wondered whether he was aware of the fact. I chose the Italian violin.

The minicab I’d ordered earlier was waiting for us downstairs. The driver knew our destination, and I’d agreed to pay extra for his discretion.

As Noah opened the car door and held it for me, I handed him a black velvet blindfold.

He appeared surprised.

‘For you.’

‘Really?’

‘To maintain the element of surprise,’ I said.

He slipped it on, sat down next to me and slammed the door shut and the car drove off. The driver remained silent throughout the journey. The roads were empty. I held Noah’s hands as we journeyed east, past Lord’s Cricket Ground and along Regent’s Park and then cut north on the Finchley Road towards Hampstead. The minicab dropped us off on the hill, close to the ponds. Still holding his hand as we exited the car, I could feel Noah’s disorientation as he blindly tried to guess from the directions we’d driven where we might be.

‘Hold on tight,’ I said to him as I led him along onto the Heath. ‘The ground is uneven.’

We passed the ponds. The darkness was overwhelming but I knew these paths like the back of my hand. The slope ascended and ten minutes later we reached the familiar clearing away from the canopy of trees. There was a thin sliver of moon, bathing us in an eerie glow. I pulled an often stumbling Noah along as we took the incline that led to the bandstand. He was remarkably restrained and unquestioning, considering the circumstances.

‘Sit,’ I told him.

He didn’t mind the grass being damp, and did so.

He was facing the bandstand, looking upwards.

I slipped out of my clothes, climbed the half-dozen steps and placed the violin against my chin. It felt cold.

I had earlier given much consideration to what I should play.

‘Fingal’s Cave’.

The initial chill breathing across my body soon faded and I played for the hungry segment of the moon and for my new lover.

As I squeezed all the beauty and melancholy out of the wonderful piece of music, I kept my gaze firmly on Noah.

His face was serene. He knew exactly what my intentions were and sat absolutely still, accepting of the theatricality of the moment, not even tempted to pull his blindfold away, guessing I was bare and vulnerable and offered.

All too soon, carried along by the deep yearning of the melody I came to the end of the piece and knew I had no need for further improvisations.

‘You can take off the blindfold,’ I called out to Noah.

He took his time, savouring the tension in the air, the fading echo of each note and quaver, and delicately pulled the blindfold off, stretching the silk band across his ears, ruffling his hair.

Saw me.

His face showed no expression, confirming that he knew how he would find me.

Without a word he unbuttoned his shirt and stepped out of his trousers and walked towards me.

We made love on the stone floor of the bandstand.

Neither Summer nor Noah had ever been to Iceland, though she had always dreamed of visiting the stark landscapes of the far North, home to the legendary aurora borealis alien light show that she had only previously seen captured, still, in photographs. He had once thought of visiting the Holy Criminals’ birthplace when Viggo and his then band had toured there, but another commitment had prevented him.

When Aurelia’s invitation to the Ball arrived, they both joyfully accepted.

‘So – what exactly is this Ball? Are you going to let me know this time what you’re getting me into?’ he teased her.

They were in Ping Pong by the Southbank Centre, sharing steaming baskets of dim sum. Summer was sipping from a boiling-hot glass of flowering hibiscus tea. He watched her with affection as she stared at the bud unfurling in the water that had now fully bloomed and appeared unfeasibly large and lifelike in all its three-dimensional, tentacular glory, like uncharted flora that belonged on the depths of the ocean floor.

She looked up. Met his gaze. Her chopsticks were resting on the olive-green, ceramic holder by her napkin as she waited for the next round of dumplings and wontons they had ordered to arrive. Summer was saving space for the seasonal special, a dish of crab shu mai – an open-top pastry with a filling of seafood, turnip and coriander. Noah was unconvinced by the advertised presence of goji berries, and instead filled up on another of his favourites, the sweet and salty char sui buns.

‘Honestly,’ she told him, ‘I could try to tell you but I fear that I would only sound ridiculous. It’s better if you rid your mind of expectations, and just appreciate the experience once we arrive. Besides,’ she added, ‘each occasion is different. I can barely believe some of the things that I have seen with my own eyes, let alone explain them.’

She had provided him with only sparse details of her employment with the Ball and the Network, of the theatre piece that Mieville had mentioned attending in the Spiegeltent, her later performance on the American desert plains of Nevada, and the circumstances that had led her to the Amazon region and then to Rio.

Noah was eager to learn and to see more but he knew better than to press Summer for details. She tended to close up when she felt harangued. In the course of their communication he learned that sometimes it was better just to leave her be and trust her to open up to him in her own time.

She continued speaking, as he thought she might.

‘There’s going to be a magician at this one, apparently,’ she said. ‘A famous illusionist.’ She paused. ‘I’ve agreed to provide musical accompaniment to one of his performances. Lauralynn too, on cello.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ he said, and meant it. He was so glad to see her returning to the violin.

Her hand was resting on his thigh under the table, grasping him tightly through the denim of his jeans. His fly was a button-up rather than zip, and occasionally she wiggled her fingers through the gaps in the stiff fabric, managing to just brush the tip of a single digit against the bare skin of his shaft. She had insisted he go commando.

Earlier that evening, when they had dressed together in his Maida Vale flat before going out, he had told her to slip in the stainless steel butt plug with the jewelled end – a small, pretty toy he had gifted her with some weeks back – and he knew that she wore it now and was panty-less beneath her short black dress, the one he had noticed she now made a habit of wearing as a prequel to their particularly rough, wonderfully perverse sex sessions.

Her eyes were deep glowing pits of bright hazel. He had never been able to quite identify the precise shade. They shimmered across the colour chart, sometimes appearing paler and sometimes darker, the flecks of green tonight more pronounced than the flickering lines of amber or brown. Her pupils dilated in that glazed expression she wore when she was fantasising about what she knew would come later, and her gentle touches and gestures of endearment became more pronounced until the rest of the world receded entirely and she seemed totally oblivious to the diners that sat around them on the shared, hexagonal table as she groped his cock in full public view.

After they settled the bill, collected their coats and headed back into the crisp night air in the direction of Waterloo station, Noah intended to take Summer’s hand and pull her under the relative privacy of the arches beneath the Hungerford and Golden Jubilee Bridges, press her against the damp wall, lift her dress and press the plug deeper into her arse or perhaps remove it and replace it with his fingers, or get down on his knees and make her come despite the presence of strangers walking by who would surely hear her moans. He was confident now of his ability to both tease and torment her. Had learned all of her quirks and limits and used them to his and her advantage.

Yet the infinite territory of her sexual landscape continued to intrigue him. He never grew tired of Summer.

Could not help but love the heart, the body and the soul of this flame-haired woman who had catapulted into his life when he had least expected it.

Summer did not bother to sling her jacket around her shoulders when she stepped onto the balcony of the small cabin that they were staying in for the night and stared out at the white and black expanse of the arctic ice fields spreading out in all directions around her beneath the inky sky, in which an endless array of bright stars shone their twinkling lanterns.

She had been unable to sleep, full of excitement and apprehension when she considered the events that the coming days would bring. It felt like the crossing of a final Rubicon, introducing Noah to the Ball. The threads of their relationship were now woven over every part of her life. There was nothing that she kept from him anymore, not in the humdrum of her day-to-day environment or even the far richer tapestry of her inner thoughts, dreams and fantasies.

Her skin prickled in the frozen air, so cold that every infinitesimal puff of wind cut like a knife’s blade. Summer thrived in the wintry depths of the North as much as she had loved Rio’s humid air. The extremes made her feel alive, fed the opposing dichotomies of her contradictory personality.

The sliding door squeaked on its rollers. Noah had noticed the absence of her warm body between the covers next to him and woken. He stepped behind her and pressed his torso against her back, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and laying his hands over hers where they rested on the verandah’s top rail. The heat of his body burned a sweet flame against her chilled skin.

‘Brr . . .’ he remarked. ‘You’re frozen.’

She burrowed back into the warmth of his welcoming arms.

His prick hardened against the small of her back and he shifted his weight and slid inside her, revelling in the sultry wetness of her slit, still slick from their earlier fuck.

She groaned and clung onto the wooden support for balance as he thrust into her, hard. He shuddered and came quickly.

‘Thought I’d better make it swift,’ he murmured into her ear, mischievously catching the lobe and licking it gently. ‘We’ll catch our deaths out here. Come back to bed and I’ll lullaby you to sleep with my tongue.’ He took her hand.

She followed him gladly, this man who knew every inch of her inside and out and had captivated every morsel that was left of her untamed heart.

They had arrived earlier in the week, and spent three blissful days as tourists, based in Reykjavik, relaxing in the temperate milky waters of the Blue Lagoon, relishing tasting plates of lobster risotto, smoked fish selections and crème caramel made from skyr at Fridrik V, or feasting on shrimp tempura and sashimi at the Fish Market before stumbling back to their hotel on the bay in the dark after sampling too many of the exotic offerings from the cocktail list, and staying up late talking and making love throughout the night as the caffeine in the espresso martinis kept them both awake and terribly alert.

Summer fell head over heels for the shaggy beasts who carried them over a moonscape of pure soft white when they tried their hands at husky sledding, after first waking in the early hours of the morning to embark on a perilous drive across a volcanic dark mountain road where Noah could not even see two inches clear in front of the windshield but the driver managed to find his path through the falling snow. The sun’s rising rays cast fingers of pale pink over the horizon, and standing behind the musher, rugged up in protective outer gear so thick they could barely move, they had felt as though they were speeding swiftly into a world imagined in a child’s dream. Afterwards she made Noah promise to investigate the possibility of adopting a dog.

‘An Alaskan Malamute?’ he teased her.

‘A mongrel,’ Summer replied. ‘One that’s all mixed up and needs saving, like me.’ She laughed, and Noah had embraced her and kissed her cheek, once he managed to locate it beneath the layer of her extensive fur-trimmed hood.