The Pleasure Quartet (29 page)

‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ I suggested, pushing past her and stepping over an empty crisp packet. I picked it up and tossed it into the nearest heaving rubbish sack, ruminating as
I did so on the inequity of genetics that had gifted Matilda with a perfect set of pins regardless of how much junk food she ate. I’d be the size of a house if I indulged my black moods as
much as she apparently had.

She slumped onto one of the high-backed chairs and began picking from a bag of jelly beans that sat open on the table.

I rummaged through the cupboards and eventually found a box of ordinary tea bags, hidden behind a container of imported specialist coffee beans and Selfridges branded premium tea leaves.

The fridge was brimming with wilted vegetables and packets wrapped in butcher’s paper that I dare not touch for fear of what oozing, now-grey meat I might come across, well past freshness.
I shook the tetra brick of milk, unwilling to hold the soggy, browning open corner of the box to my nostrils, and put it back into the fridge, certain that the liquid swishing inside seemed thicker
than it ought to. I didn’t trust milk that came in a carton, anyway. Glass bottles were far preferable. We would drink our tea black.

I placed the two steaming mugs onto the table, pushing one across to Matilda, brushed unidentifiable crumbs from a chair, and sat down opposite her. She had abandoned the jelly beans and moved
onto a packet of Cadbury’s Toffee Buttons. I took one from the bag and popped it into my mouth.

‘So,’ I said at last, ‘care to tell me what this is all about?’

‘I’m just not sure who I am anymore,’ she said.

Her hair had fallen over her face and she ran her fingers through it, pushing it back from her brow. Her long red-painted nails were chipped and rough at the ends.

‘Everyone changes,’ I told her.

‘I don’t.’

I took another Toffee Button, hoping that she would keep talking if I remained silent.

‘I’ve been dating one of the gardeners.’

‘Oh.’ I had presumed that one of Matilda’s parents had green fingers and took care of their sprawling back yard with its manicured lawns, decoratively trimmed hedges and
sumptuous flower beds. I’d never come across anyone rich enough to employ a gardener before.

‘Been dating?’ I asked her. ‘Something went wrong?’

‘Well, yes. He’s the head gardener.’

‘Your parents won’t approve?’ I guessed.

‘They wouldn’t, but I could live with that. Thomas has always been the golden child anyway. Nothing I do makes a difference to them when he’s turning into the perfect little
lawyer.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘Oh, it is. I don’t blame Tom for it, you know, but they think what I do is just a silly hobby, playing at a career on a disposable woman’s magazine. Nothing important. No
matter that I work like a dog and had to beat off about a hundred other girls for the job. They don’t think I should work anyway.’

‘No? What would you do instead? Lounge around here? Or study something at University?’

‘Just get married. Society girl to society wife. Mother is always pushing me onto the sons of father’s friends . . . you know the sort, all play polo and talk like they’re
going to be the next Prime Minister but if you took two of them and banged them together they’d echo, their heads are that empty.’

She hunched forward over the table, shoulders slumped, and cupped her mug of tea in her hands.

‘Mm hmm,’ I said. Truthfully, I had no way to relate to anything that she was saying. My background was almost as far from Matilda’s as could be imagined. But I could empathise
with the notion of finding oneself to be different from one’s peers, the one spotted zebra in a herd of stripes.

I tried to be sympathetic.

She went on. ‘Peter – the gardener – is different to all that. He thinks it’s funny. Puts on a posh voice, makes fun of them. Makes me laugh.’

She took a swig of tea and grimaced.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘milk’s gone bad.’

‘Oh, it’s not that. I’d just rather champagne for this sort of conversation, but I’ve run out, besides the bottles in Dad’s cellar and I daren’t touch
those.’

I went back to the pantry and hunted through it again, this time returning with the sugar bowl and a bottle of red wine that I had found lurking behind an assortment of sauces and cider
vinegar.

‘Probably intended for making stew,’ I said. ‘Drinkable, I reckon.’

Tilly rummaged through her handbag and produced a bottle opener from one of the Tardis-like pockets. She took both of our mugs of tea and tipped them over the roots of the tall, wilting plant in
a deep blue ceramic pot that decorated the corner behind her, and refilled the cups with wine. I took a sip and winced. It wasn’t actually much better than vinegar.

‘Does Peter know about your . . . er . . . other activities? The parties?’

‘We met at one,’ she said. ‘Well, the morning after. About a year ago. My parents were away again and I hadn’t planned on anyone else coming by. About 7 a.m. he shows up
to mow the lawns and trim the hedgerows out back and the grass was covered in litter, bottles, lingerie . . . all the remnants of a party. Could have explained all that away but most of the guests
were still here. The tents were up and a whole group of dommes I know – women with whips like you saw at the party with your cousin, William –’

‘Gwillam,’ I corrected her.

‘Whatever — anyway, they were all at it with a bunch of subs in there. Spanking, pegging, the whole kit and caboodle.’

‘You were there too?’

‘No, I had passed out by the swimming pool, one of the lounge chairs. Still dressed in latex with my high heels on and with one of the dogs — my sub — the one you met last time
. . .’

I recalled it hadn’t been much of an introduction. I recalled the way that his ball sack had felt in my hand when I squeezed it at Matilda’s command, and shivered.

‘. . . he was curled up at my feet on a towel, nude besides a pair of hot pink rubber short shorts, with the crotch cut open and his cock flopped out . . .’

I tried not to imagine it, but couldn’t shake the image from my mind. I took another gulp of the wine.

‘. . . still wearing my collar and leash too, although I’d dropped the end of it during the course of the night. Pete came clunking by with all his gear, heading for the car park to
high-tail it out of there, and I woke up, and had to ask him who he was of course, because some of the guests, you know, were high profile. Can’t have strangers wandering in and out. Part of
my job as organiser was to keep an eye on all that, keep it discreet. You and Iris weren’t meant to be there, that night we met.’

‘Well, I’m flattered you let us stay.’

‘Don’t be. Thomas was just showing off. I like to indulge him.’

‘You don’t think Peter might have been the one to tip-off the press?’

‘Oh god no. He wouldn’t tell a soul. The poor boy, I’ll never forget the look on his face when I woke up that morning if I live till I’m a hundred. Until he saw me, I
think he thought our parents were responsible. Can you imagine that?’ she chortled.

‘I’d rather not.’ I hadn’t met Tilly and Thomas’s parents but had formed a mental picture of them. Polite, reserved, grand, but somehow I pictured them as beacons
of propriety and repression, probably one of the reasons why their children had turned out as they had.

‘It made Pete curious, I think, seeing me like that. People don’t know what’s inside them until something tips them over the edge. Did you ever feel like that? Like you were
the only one in the world who thought about sex beyond the normal sort that most people have?’

‘Sure, sometimes I still feel like that.’

‘Even with all us freaks around?’ She shook her head. She had stiffened her shoulders and was leaning back in her chair, long legs crossed, her usual imperious posture returning.

‘I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere,’ I told her. ‘I’m not a sub, or a domme, or straight, or gay . . . I’m just . . . weird.’

‘Why do you need a word for it? A label? Can’t you just be yourself?’

‘I don’t know who I am. I don’t feel as though I belong anywhere.’

‘I guess we have something in common after all then,’ she said, laughing. She leaned over the table and topped up my wine.

‘How did you and Pete end up together then?’

‘We didn’t speak much that morning. I felt horrid, hungover and still dressed in that hideous catsuit . . . I sent him packing without stopping to think about it. I’m pretty
grumpy when I’m only half-awake.’

I could well imagine it.

‘I kept thinking about him though. Not because I was worried about what he’d seen. It was the expression on his face. Shocked, of course, a bit panicked. Probably he worried about
walking in on something he shouldn’t have, that he’d lose his job. But there was something else too. Curiosity. I was pretty sure he had a bulge in his pants. And he was terribly good
looking. All that outdoor work, it makes men hulking . . . office workers and artists, they’re all too thin or flabby.’

I thought of Gwillam and Edward’s bodies. She did have a point.

‘He came back the next day. Luckily I was still alone. The slaves had finished cleaning up, so the place looked back to normal, you’d never have known what we’d all been up to.
A good thing the birds and bees and trees can’t talk, eh, or the secrets they’d be able to tell . . . Anyway, Pete knocked on the door, and asked me if he could finish the work on the
hedges he was supposed to be getting on with before my parents returned, and of course I said yes. Then I sat out front, by the French doors, and watched him. Muscles rippling and all that.
Eventually he moved out of sight, but I couldn’t get him out of my head so I went out there with a couple of cold drinks and we got talking. After a while he asked me about the ‘whips
and chains’, he called it. Why we do it, what we get out of it, what the men get out of it. I suggested that I show him rather than tell him. I was joking, really. I never expected him to
agree.’

‘But he did agree?’

‘Oh, he agreed alright. Took to it like a duck to water. We saw each other every night for months. Here, in the gardens, in broad daylight, so often I started getting grass rash from
rolling around outdoors. Back at my flat in Belsize Park. I’ve got a proper dungeon there, all the kit. Used to belong to a musician. All the walls are soundproofed so I don’t need to
worry about the neighbours.’

She paused. Threw her head back and gulped down a large mouthful of wine as if she needed it to gather her courage.

‘He asked me to switch,’ she continued. ‘And I did.’

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘never saw you as a sub.’

‘Oh, I’m not,’ she said. ‘As a general rule at least. But you know, I think everyone has it in them. Most people, aside from the switches – who are just greedy
– favour one side or the other. But I think anyone can enjoy both, if they let themselves.’

I had a vision of Tilly, arse bare, long legs open wide and teetering on sky high heels, bent over a spanking bench like the one I’d seen Iris on. It was an altogether pleasant sight.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ I asked her. ‘Subbing for him?’

‘I did. We played so many games together.’

She wriggled forward, slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and withdrew a small plastic bag with a few dried green buds in it. Further rummaging in her other pocket she produced a
pouch of tobacco and her cigarette papers.

‘Smoke?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ I said, swirling what remained of the red wine in my mug. ‘I’m already half cut and it’s barely the middle of the afternoon, so why not?’

She plucked a bud from the bag, using her long nails as pincers. Her jaw was tight with concentration. She licked her index finger and withdrew a paper, then carefully held it taut with her
thumb and index fingers, spreading a pinch of tobacco along the seam with her other hand and then breaking the marijuana apart, careful to spread it in an even mix before rolling it into a tight
straw.

I flushed, immediately imagining the way that her fingers would feel spreading my lips apart, playing with my clitoris. Her nails scratching my skin.

‘Ran out of filters,’ she said, holding the cigarette to her lips and flicking the silver wheel on her lighter, sending a flame shooting into the air. ‘So it’ll burn a
bit, sorry.’ She took a long toke and began to cough, then passed it over to me and continued talking.

‘We could go days without eating,’ she told me.

I remembered the old diary entry that Joan had written, about when she and her lover did nothing for three days but remain in bed together.

‘Like we just fed on each other. I missed work. Called in sick. He rescheduled his bookings. We were like two vampires in the dark, all the curtains drawn, playing at bringing each
other’s darkest fantasies to life. Making confessions. I told him everything. All the things I’ve ever been afraid of, ashamed of. All of it. There’s something marvellously erotic
about shame, don’t you think? But once you start playing those games with someone, you’re lost.’

She removed the cigarette from my lips and took another drag.

‘How do you mean?’ I asked her.

‘For someone who has experienced all that you have,’ she replied, in her usual snarky tone, ‘you’re sometimes remarkably naive.’

I was suddenly tired of being talked down to, and was tempted to pick up my bags and walk out, hitchhike all the way back to London. Find Gwillam, someone who treated me like an equal. It must
have shown on my face.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t tease. You’re young, and only just getting started. What I mean is to really open yourself up to someone, you have to trust them utterly. And once
you do that, you’re totally vulnerable, and you end up like I am now, drunk and stoned at four in the afternoon on a Sunday, blubbering into a ceramic mug full of cheap red.’

It occurred to me then that I had never fully trusted Iris with my body or my heart. I had kept a part of myself back. The part that I hadn’t wanted to own or admit to anyone. Perhaps
there had always been a wall of unspoken truths between us, and that was one of the reasons why she had sought solace in Thomas.