The Pleasure Quartet (34 page)

All of us were mostly silent throughout the journey home. Quiet and ever so tired.

‘I’m spent,’ Thomas said, before falling asleep in Iris’s lap on the boat.

We all were. Elated, exhausted.

‘I feel a bit high,’ Clarissa told me.

Even the usual hustle, bustle, and inevitable delays and queues involved in exiting Victoria coach station did not snap us out of our pleasure-induced torpor.

The low came later, after we had returned to normal life.

Matilda dropped into the restaurant one night while I was working. She had made a dramatic return to the image of the woman that I had first met, all eyes opening a touch wider and turning to
watch her stride through the tables towards me, clad in skin-tight jeans and a low-cut, fire-engine-red cashmere jumper, her long black hair pulled into a high pony tail that swished as she walked.
She wore flat shoes and had lost some of her signature haughtiness. When she smiled, her teeth parted and her eyes crinkled up in a wide picture of happiness.

‘You look great,’ I told her.

‘I’m in love,’ she said. ‘It’ll do that to you.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh,’ I said. I glanced at the big, round, black-and-white clock that decorated the wall behind the counter. ‘I still have a few hours here, but if you can
wait, I’d love to have a drink and hear all about it.’

‘Just dropping in,’ she said. ‘Peter’s taking me out.’ She grinned again, and inclined her head towards the window. I looked out and saw a man standing under a
street light, waiting. He was tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and even in the half-light and beneath the outer shell of his suit, I could see that his body was fit and muscled.

‘Nice,’ I told her.

‘How are your two love birds?’

‘Same as ever.’

Iris and Thomas always welcomed me to join them, both in their sexual and social activities. I was deeply fond of them both and liked to watch them together. The way the rise and fall of
Iris’s desire played out on her face, and how expertly Thomas orchestrated her lust. I admired, and envied, the level of trust that the intensity of their encounters had created, and the bond
that they shared. But though they did not once block me out – quite the reverse – I still felt that I could never fully join them, or at least, not as anything more than an occasional
passenger, like someone watching a film play out in front of them but never totally engaged in the action.

Things were similar with Clarissa and Edward, though of course we didn’t share the same affection. I had spent the night of our return with them and Patch, all four of us cuddled together
on the expansive futon in the top of their studio. In the morning, Clarissa and Patch had shared a double-ended dildo on one side of the bed, as Edward and I sipped our coffees nearby and watched
them indulgently. But I had no wish to join their twosome and occasional triads as a third or fourth member on a permanent basis.

Even Gwillam had paired off at the Ball, having become enamoured with a young German artist, Stefan, who despite barely speaking a word of English, had returned to London with us and was now
camped out in Gwillam’s flat with no plans to return home any time soon.

‘But he’s only nineteen,’ I said to Gwillam.

‘Exactly,’ Gwillam had replied.

I was happy that he was happy, although I knew it meant that I was unlikely to see him much socially, at least until the initial throes of their new-relationship passion wore off and they
managed to get up out of bed.

Matilda invited me to stay with her and Peter in the Chilterns mansion for a few days. Her parents were away again, and had asked Peter to re-landscape and modernise part of the grounds so she
was taking every advantage of the opportunity to take him in new and unusual positions, including against all of the trees in their backyard.

‘Pegging,’ she told me, ‘he loves it.’ I had never heard the word before and asked her to explain it. She gladly obliged.

‘Does he like men?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t think so,’ she told me.

I added this knowledge to my growing pool of wisdom on the apparently boundless variety of ways to experience pleasure.

Weeks passed and began to blur. I was made supervisor at the restaurant and my hours and pool of savings increased. Iris and Thomas moved into a larger flat, one with a basement which they
converted into a permanent dungeon. Stefan remained in London and improved his English much more quickly than Gwillam learned to speak any German. The walls of the apartment they now shared were
soon dotted with charcoal sketches depicting Gwillam, nude and reclining legs akimbo over the furniture. I could not bring myself to look at them.

At night, when I was not sharing a bed with another twosome or threesome, I replayed all of my memories of the Ball and of the Mistress. When I wetted my finger and brought myself to climax, it
was her tongue that I imagined delving inside me, her scent that I did my damnedest to conjure up. Thoughts of the Ball brought me inevitably back to thoughts of home, and I found that I missed the
solitude of New Zealand landscapes almost more than I could bear. The comparative quiet of the cities and dead silence of small country towns. The blankets of stars that spread overhead on clear
nights, never visible in London. The sea salt tang of an ocean breeze. The rolling hills, the mountains and the lakes.

For once in my life, I was homesick, and deeply so. My melancholy longing for the place that I had so willingly left without so much as a glance behind me, now clawed at my heart like a shadow
from which I could not escape.

I was at work on a Sunday afternoon, half lost in a daydream as I finished setting up that week’s rota in the office out back, when I heard a soft rap on the door.

‘Yes,’ I called out, without looking up, presuming that it would be one of the waitresses come to ask to swap a shift.

‘Moana.’

Her voice.

I would know it anywhere. That soft, sultry, accentless lilt, the way that she rolled the vowels in my name as if she were tasting each letter.

‘Mistress,’ I said.

‘Please,’ she replied, ‘call me Kristiana. My birth name.’

‘Come in,’ I stammered, indicating a chair in front of my desk. ‘Would you like a drink? Coffee? Something to eat?’

‘Maybe another time,’ she said. ‘I don’t have long today I’m afraid.’

‘How can I help you?’

She walked in and sat down.

She was dressed in navy-blue ballet flats, loose jeans and a lemon-yellow jumper. A silver chain dangled from her neck, the pendant too small to see clearly, but it appeared to be a small coin,
like a St Christopher medallion. She didn’t seem to me like the kind of person who needed any luck. Her hair was loose, her auburn locks flowing in glossy waves around her shoulders. She wore
lip gloss, but besides that, her face was free of make-up. She looked to be around twenty-five, possibly a little younger. None of her tattoos was visible.

‘I have a proposition for you,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

Immediately I thought of Joan, and the red-haired woman by Piccadilly Circus who had invited her to join the Ball. My heart began to beat a fandango in my chest.

‘Join us. We have a position open, with the Ball—’

‘Yes,’ I said, interrupting her before she had finished. ‘Anything. I’ll do anything. And follow you anywhere.’

She laughed.

‘It’s not in London,’ she said. ‘How would you feel about returning to New Zealand?’

‘I would love to. I’ve thought of nothing else, these past few weeks. Well, not much else,’ I added, and then blushed, for besides New Zealand, I had been thinking of her.

‘Wonderful,’ she said.

‘There’s to be another Ball in New Zealand?’

‘Yes, but not for a few years yet. However, we have something magnificent in mind, and these things take a long time to plan. We’re hoping to have a representative there – you,
if you will agree – to assist us with the research and preparations. We’d like to invest in a small club, or maybe even a theatre. It’s something you know about, don’t you?
You could run it. It would be a perfect excuse for hunting down performers, singers, dancers, you know . . . And fun, of course.’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll do it.’ I had no hesitation.

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘I had hoped you would agree. We have much more to go through, naturally, but not now. I’ll let you think things over, and one of our staff will be
in touch to arrange further meetings. Inevitably, there will be much paperwork . . . all the formalities. There’s no rush, you know, if you want to spend a few more months here in London. We
see this as a long-term venture.’

We both stood up as she prepared to leave, and shook hands. Just that single, brief touch nearly sent me into spasms of delight. I wanted more but knew all too well that I would only see her
again on the occasions of our magic Ball and not in between. After she left, I went to the bar and poured myself an ice-cold glass of water to bring back my concentration.

Once I had made the decision, I was keen to move things along and leave London for good, though not in any particular rush to reach my destination.

Telling Iris was the hardest part.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she said, in a small voice. We held each other for a whole night.

Gwillam was beside himself with excitement on my behalf, and offered to travel over and help me with the legalities as needed.

‘I bet you’ll need to find the right premises and negotiate planning permissions and all that,’ he said, his eyes aglow with the prospect of a new challenge.

Clarissa gave me the grey felt trilby that she had stolen from the Princess Empire’s costume store. ‘A little piece of London to take home with you,’ she said. Edwards stood
beside her, as kind and enigmatic as ever.

All promised to visit me one day when the time was right. Some knew that I would be working for the Ball, but not all of them. I had preferred to keep Iris and Thomas in the dark.

They all came to see me off, our group’s over-affectionate departing embraces causing quite a stir in the departure lounge at Southampton. I had decided to travel back the slow way, by
boat. The journey would take around six weeks, with a stop in Egypt before we crossed the Suez Canal to continue through the Indian Ocean with further stops in Ceylon and Australia. I hoped that it
would be an adventure, and also I looked forward to spending so long so close to the sea.

I was not even able to watch them disappear as I departed, since the ship was so large and the passenger gate some distance from the visitors’ lounge. I did not fix my eyes on the landmass
of England shrinking behind us as we drew away, but instead kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, and the great blue expanse ahead.

There was a strong breeze, a chill wind, and a gentle sprinkling of rain. Initially I was the only passenger to brave the hard white seats that adorned the viewing platform on the outer deck at
the prow of the ship. I sat alone, thinking of nothing in particular, and staring at the ocean.

My mind wandered back, missing London already but also coming to the realisation that I was now making the same journey that my own parents, or at any rate my mother, had completed but also Joan
when she had travelled to New Zealand, in the early weeks of her pregnancy with Iris.

Were we all part of a book of coincidences penned by the spirit of the Ball?

‘May I join you?’

A soft voice, belonging to a woman.

‘Of course,’ I said, before I had even looked around, instinctively polite.

She was Maori, with brown skin and sleek black hair that whipped around her face in the blowing wind. She stepped in front of me and took hold of the rail, her green cotton dress dancing around
her calves with each gust. A blue jacket was clutched in her right hand. Her shift was loosely cut and low at the back, partially revealing a tattoo that covered her neck, shoulders, and beyond,
the bottom half concealed from my gaze. It was the shape of a bird, and made up of intricate hatching lines and spiral patterns. I watched carefully to check if it moved, as the Mistress’s
tattoos had, but it remained perfectly still.

My instinct told me she would have wonderful stories to tell, about her inking and her own life.

She shrugged into the jacket.

‘Brr . . .’ she said. ‘It’s freezing, I know, but I love the wind on the sea.’

‘Me too,’ I told her.

She extended her hand to me.

‘Aroha,’ she introduced herself.

‘Moana,’ I replied.

‘I bet you had as much trouble as I did with your name in England.’

‘Yes,’ I laughed, ‘drove me crazy, but you get used to it, I suppose.’

Her lips were full and her smile was wide.

We sat on the deck and talked until the rain began to beat down more heavily than we could bear. She half shrouded me in her jacket as we ran for the safety of the ship’s cabin.

The stairs down to the lower decks were slippery, and I took her hand.

Soon, we would be home.

Huge thanks go to the team at Simon & Schuster and The Hot Bed – Clare Hey, Emma Capron, Ally Grant, Rumana Haider and Hayley McMullen, who have been a pleasure to
work with.

We would also like to thank our publisher in Germany and the USA, respectively Christian Rohr at carl’s books, and Jane Friedman and Tina Pohlman at Open Road Integrated Media, along with
Stephane Marsan, Alain Nevant, Isabelle Varange and Leslie Palant at Bragelonne/Milady, and the team at Amber in Warsaw for their ongoing support of the worlds of Eighty Days and The Pleasure
Quartet, and their trust in us. We wouldn’t be where we are now without the network of international publishers who have joyfully welcomed us into their teams.

A sincere and fervent thank you to Sarah Such, our wonderful literary agent who has been behind us from the beginning and works tirelessly on our behalf. Thank you for your faith in us as we try
out new material, and manage somehow to keep on top of deadlines, and your unceasing efforts to promote us far and wide, with an eagle eye for all things contractual.

Thanks also go to our foreign rights supporters, Rosie and Jessica Buckman and to Carrie Kania. As well as to Wendy Toole, our ever sharp copy-editor who is deft in correcting all of our
infelicities.