A Girl's Adventure - full length erotic novel (10 page)

The schoolgirls screamed. Sparks bounced across the windows, the wheels squealed and the passengers were pitched forward like earthquake victims as the train careened to a halt at South Kensington. The sudden jolt shook the man from his feet. He tripped over his briefcase, slipped to the floor and the schoolgirls cried out with renewed passion as he peered up their navy blue skirts.

‘Perv.’

‘Pederast.’

‘Disgusting,’ added a man in an old-fashioned bowler hat.

The looks the girls exchanged with Greta included her in their secret club and the bald man lost his confidence as the toffs and City girls squeezed in with their freshly-washed hair and bulging shoulder bags. He stood forlornly at her side and Greta cheered him up during the remains of the journey by running her knee between his thighs. It was the least she could do.

She skipped from the carriage at Green Park, bought a hot bagel that scolded her fingers and strode along Piccadilly shedding crumbs along the way.

Madame Dubarry was just unlocking the door as she arrived and the man with small feet who had been seeking out a pair of summer lace-ups was waiting with his nose pressed against the window.

‘You’re here,’ he said when he saw her. ‘Thank God.’ His jacket was rumpled and his hair stood out in points.

‘Size seven, white,’ she said and his eyes glowed like a lottery winner.

He followed her inside. She went straight to the stock room and returned with the box. Greta sat on the low stool, her skirt riding over her legs as she slid the shoes from their cotton bags like a diamond dealer with precious stones. The man was wearing the intense look of a schoolboy and it occurred to Greta that men are instantly boys when there’s a hot pussy around. They go into rut and it was thrilling to have this power. She had power over men and Richard had power over her. Perhaps her power came from his power? She thought about that as her customer shuffled his feet into the lace-ups and she tied two bows.

‘There,’ she said and he took the shoes for a test run along the burgundy carpet, flexing his toes, peering down as he walked.

She strolled slowly up the aisle towards him and he clutched her arms when she stopped.

‘I have to paint you,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of life and death. You must, simply must be committed to canvas...’

He spoke fast in a funny accent and Greta couldn’t quite understand what he was saying.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.

‘I have to paint you. I just have to.’

She smiled. ‘Ooo, yes please,’ she responded and the man gripped his hands in prayer.

He looked up to heaven, well, the chandelier actually, and Greta was sure there were tears misting his grey eyes. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ he repeated and looked back at Greta. ‘I was up all night preparing...’

‘Preparing?’

‘
Everything
,’ he said darkly and she trembled as she tried to imagine things beyond her imagination.

He decided not to change back into his old shoes, the new ones were so comfortable, and while she was running his credit card through the machine he wrote down his name and address. Greta promised to get a taxi after work and he galloped out with a spring in his heels, the old shoes in a maroon bag with long string handles.

Four minutes past nine and she’d made her first sale.

Greta served a man with two wives, the newscaster with dyed hair she had seen on television and a footballer who pinched her bum as she bent to open a box.

‘Cheeky,’ she said.

‘Don’t shake it about then.’

And she gave it another provocative wiggle.

Madame Dubarry seemed glazed that morning and watched Greta moving through the store as if she were seeing an apparition, the ghost of herself, perhaps, in the age of her namesake. She had exchanged her usual dark attire for a white suit that clung to her curves and Greta was aware of the firm slender body moving below the folds of white linen.

Madame Dubarry was smoking a gold-tipped cigarette in the staff room during a quiet moment and stabbed it out as Greta entered. She reached for her hand and pulled her on to her knee.

‘Just a few more days, Greta, and I’ll never see you again.’

‘Course you will. I’ll be back...’

‘No, dear, you’re never coming back,’ she said emphatically. She ran her hand over Greta’s shoulder blades. ‘I can feel your wings. They’re just beginning to grow. You’re going to fly away and have the most marvellous life.’

‘But how can you be so sure?’

‘Experience,’ she replied. ‘Be yourself and you will be everything.’

That sounded like good advice and Greta marvelled at how each decision we make is so important. If you take one wrong turn, it’s easy to take another and you could end up going round in circles. She had at first thrown Richard’s phone number away and had she not picked it up again, she probably wouldn’t have been sitting there right now on Madame Dubarry’s lap with Madame Dubarry’s hand running up and down her bare thighs. Greta turned to kiss her forehead and, at that same moment, the doorbell chimed and she hurried out, her heels like heartbeats muffled in the thick weave of the carpet.

The tall man with the lush flowing locks had entered. He smiled warmly, greeting her like a cherished friend.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘What a pleasure.’

‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘How are you today?’

He thought about that for several seconds. ‘I’m quite well. Under the circumstances.’ He didn’t explain those circumstances but stood there openly studying her and she felt like a mannequin in a shop window.

‘Is there anything I can show you?’ she finally asked.

‘I’m sure there is, but that wasn’t what I had in mind.’ He paused again and smiled. ‘I’d like to invite you to tea.’

Greta replied instantly. ‘That sounds super,’ she said. ‘I’d like to come.’

He looked serious now. ‘When you’ve finished work?’ he suggested.

Greta drew breath through her teeth to show she was disappointed. ‘I can’t today. Someone’s going to paint me...’

‘Tomorrow?’

Now she smiled. ‘Brilliant.’

He produced his card. There was no address or telephone number, just the name Count Leonardo Ruspoli in finely etched gold letters on a grey background.

‘You don’t look like a girl who eats cake and biscuits,’ he remarked.

‘I’m afraid I am,’ she replied.

‘What’s your favourite food?’

Greta raised her shoulders as she thought about it. She didn’t have a favourite food. She ate everything.

‘Fruit salad... and ice cream,’ she finally answered because she couldn’t think of anything else.

‘Perfect, Greta,’ he said, and she was surprised.

‘You know my name?’

‘I must have heard your colleague using it the other day.’ He smiled. ‘Am I right?’

She nodded. ‘Greta May,’ she said and they formally shook hands.

He gave her directions to his hotel, which was just around the corner, and told her to show the card to the doorman. He ran his long fingers through his hair and was about to turn away when Madame Dubarry appeared from the staff room. The Count bowed, just slightly, in the chivalrous way of Europeans from another time.

‘Fruit salad happens to be my dish
de choix
,’ he whispered and Greta watched him stroll unhurriedly along Bond Street.

Greta showed Madame Dubarry the card. ‘He invited me to tea,’ she explained.

‘Ah, Count Ruspoli,’ she said, her eyes bright. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

They had to stand back right then because a large woman with pendulous breasts and wearing tweeds barged in rattling her handbag.

‘Ah, Mrs Maddox,’ said Madame Dubarry. ‘What a pleasure.’

‘I saw those little kitten-heels in the window. They’re fabulous. I must have them. I simply must,’ she cried and stared at Greta. ‘Well, come along then, girl, what are you waiting for? We haven’t got all day.’

Greta was breathless and stared back at the woman, at her gigantic breasts clanging like lead bells against the shimmering silk of her white blouse.

‘Size?’ she mumbled.

‘I don’t know, let’s have a look, shall we?’ she said and Greta had a feeling they would be bringing out every pair of shoes in the store before the woman’s feet found happiness. Madame Dubarry raised her plucked eyebrows, gripped her hands behind her like a trusted courtier and accompanied the woman to the velvet sofa below the soft lights that made everyone look their best.

Greta ran up and down the stairs perspiring and the woman watched her as if she were a clever monkey as she slid the shoes from their bags and on to the plump waiting feet.

‘Come along, girl, come along,’ she kept saying. ‘You’ve brought the wrong size, haven’t you. Let’s start again shall we.’

She grew hotter, the silver dress crinkled like tinfoil, and the woman slapped Greta’s flanks in encouragement, her toes wriggling merrily in the spotted pink kitten-heels.

‘There, now you’re getting the hang of it,’ she said and Greta noticed her nod towards Madame Dubarry with that look of approval she remembered the house matron giving the games mistress when a girl was about to be slippered.

The woman finally selected two new pairs, the kitten-heels and some high pointy sling-backs that made her feel all fluffy and good about herself. Shoes can do that. She stood and arranged the shoulders on her tweed jacket.

‘Come here, girl,’ she said, slapping her thigh. She pinched Greta’s cheek affectionately but it really hurt.

‘Ouch!’

‘You’re going to do very well,’ she said. ‘Very well indeed. I can tell.’ She glanced at Madame Dubarry.

‘Very well,’ she said.

How very confusing, Greta thought, and left for lunch as the woman searched for her credit cards.

She sat in Pret with her sushi and carrot juice feeling oddly content. She was wondering why during those six months at the shoe store everyone had virtually ignored her, then not one, but two different men had made dates and they both seemed terribly interesting, not boys but men. One of them a count, for heaven’s sake!

People were passing the long window that looked out on Piccadilly. Greta had heard on the radio it was going to be the hottest June on record and girls were shedding their clothes like sweetie wrappers, like mannequins on a runway with the summer collection. There was so much bare flesh being offered for bronzing it made her positively giddy. Bare waists, bare legs, bare breasts. One girl who passed was wearing a hipster mini that was so low you could see wisps of pubic hair. Greta nodded out of respect as their eyes met.

At least she wasn’t alone in her impulses. Girls want to take their clothes off. She wasn’t sure why but she knew it was true. Girls’ clothes aren’t just designed to be provocative, they are designed to be taken off: look at the black dress she had chosen that night to go and see Richard, one pull of the bow and she was virtually naked, on show for a perfect stranger. You get dressed in order to get undressed, and while dressed, it’s the way in which you conceal the bits that are covered that makes it interesting.

She had never thought about these things before but it made sense. When you see stars on the red carpet at Cannes, the men are tightly buttoned in their dinner jackets while the girls glide by in a few square inches of chiffon, their bodies offered as if in competition for the Palme d’Or. Men keep their shoes on as they stroll along the beach, but girls like to feel the wet sand between their toes. Girls when they really try can get in touch with their deepest instincts, their innermost desires, their true selves. Give any girl two glasses of champagne and the slightest excuse and she will become a striptease artist. It’s just fun. Greta pursed her lips and sucked on the red and white striped straw stuck in the carrot juice. Her knickers were damp. Her nipples tingled. She loved being a girl.

As she was leaving Pret it was quite astonishing because she bumped into the saucy schoolgirl she had seen on the tube and they both screamed and threw up their hands smiling because it’s always a pleasure when you see someone unexpectedly in the City. The girl’s name was Bella. She was nearly 18 and was just finishing her A-levels. She was supposed to have spent the morning at the Portrait Gallery but after half an hour had marched her long legs and perky breasts into Soho to check out the sex shops.

‘Be careful,’ Greta warned her. ‘There are some weird people about.’

‘I shouldn’t think there’s anyone weirder than Miss Birch in classics,’ she said and Greta laughed. ‘She’s always getting us to stand on the desks so she can explain how the Greeks built their temples.’

‘You go to a girls’ school?’

‘Unfortunately,’ Bella replied.

‘Me, too,’ said Greta, ‘least I did,’ and they grinned with secret knowledge.

‘I need to get a job in the summer and I want to find something, you know, interesting for a change.’

Greta tapped her lips thoughtfully with her finger and studied the girl in the same way as Count Ruspoli had studied her. ‘You know something, I might be able to help.’

‘No?’

‘Come, we should hurry,’ and they gripped hands as they skipped along.

Greta felt like a schoolgirl herself as they rushed back to Bond Street and it only occurred to her now as she glanced up at the sign that Bond Street was such a cool name.

Madame Dubarry agreed to give Bella an interview on the spot and Greta noticed the girl unpopping an extra button on her blouse as they descended the stairs to the stockroom. The door closed behind them with a muffled sigh.

At that moment, the bell tinkled and she watched Jason Wise stride in behind his pointy beard. Greta wondered with all these weird coincidences occurring if she were in the midst of an elaborate game of snakes and ladders and here was the stretched gaping mouth of the anaconda.

He stopped, hands held up in mock surrender. ‘I will,’ he said, ‘accept only one answer...’

‘I don’t know the question.’

‘... yessssss,’ he hissed.

‘Only if you buy some new shoes.’

He grinned.

She smiled.

He’d got her.

Or has she got him?

‘Size 8,’ he said.

T
HE SKY WAS BRIGHT
and clear, even the Albert Bridge was freshly painted, but as the taxi turned into the back streets of Battersea it was like going back in time and she imagined Jack the Ripper prowling through the shadows. Everything was dark and gloomy, the winding terraces so densely packed she found it hard to breathe. She clutched her bag, as if for comfort, but Richard had taken her mobile. She didn’t know why and was suddenly dying to go away to the country.

Greta heard fire engines bells in the distance and then saw a blazing car beside the road. The driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror flamed as they fell on her. For some reason it brought back to her mind the brief conversation with Jason, that wicked cast in his eye.

What’s he after? There has to be something.

Perhaps, that’s not fair, she thought. After all, he’d been very complimentary. He had bought a pair of suede slip-ons and his invitation to go for a drink at the club on Friday with Marley Johnson reminded her that she was on sabbatical and the smell of the greasepaint still beckoned.

Greta had appeared at the National with Marley in a play where, in the lead role, he had played a black slave who had gained his freedom and now had a throng of white people as his slaves. She couldn’t recall what point the play was making, but every night and two matinees for six weeks she was hauled from a circle of cowering women and led to the front of the stage where he ripped her dress from the neck to the hem. He pulled the rags from her shoulders, gripped her wrists behind her and thrust her naked body at the startled audience. Her cheeks would bloom with shame but she remembered feeling totally alive at every show and was praised in
The Observer
for her ‘selfless performance’.

It was her best review.

The taxi stopped at a gap between the buildings and she gave the driver a generous tip.

‘Fanks, darlin’,’ he said, and sounded just like Dirty Bill.

Greta made her way down the silent passageway, glancing over her shoulder at the pursuing footsteps until she realised it was only the echo of her own heels on the cobbles and she felt silly for being such a worrier. The passage opened on the river bank. The sun was bright again, the reflection on the water making the same shifting pattern on her metallic dress.

She showed the address she’d been given to an old lady walking her dog and the woman sucked her dentures as she pointed to the grey building immediately behind her.

‘Looking for that artist, are you? Bloomin’ nutter if you ask me.’

Greta nodded. ‘They usually are,’ she said, and the woman carried on clucking.

Her little dog was snapping merrily and Greta bent to stroke its head.

‘Right one for the girls, he is. Come on, Angus. Come on. Leave her alone.’

Angus licked Greta’s leg and the taste of her bare flesh drove both the dog and its owner into paroxysms of hysteria. Angus started frothing at the mouth and howling, chasing its tail in circles, and the old lady was suddenly whipping the animal’s flanks with the lead.

‘Bloody fing. Come here,’ she was screaming. ‘We know what you need...’

Finally she got hold of Angus by the throat, attached the lead and gave it a good few whacks on the backside with the leather strap. The dog howled and Greta watched in horror.

‘It’s all right. They like a bit of discipline,’ she said, and owner and dog wandered off completely satisfied.

Greta looked up at the building. It was an old factory with the words
Allon &
Goldman
in ancient lettering fading on the brickwork. She climbed the iron stairs to the loft and was surprised at the contrast when she pushed through the door into a modern studio with a polished beamed ceiling and a long glass wall facing the Thames. The space was ringed with numerous canvases that recalled the abstracts on Gustav’s walls.

The name on the slip of paper she had been given was Vanlooch and she didn’t know if that was Mr Vanlooch or just plain Vanlooch, but it was the sort of thing painters go in for. He was speaking on a mobile and she was sure she heard him say, ‘She’s here,’ before closing the machine. He watched her approach, the dress jingling as she moved through the big squares of sunlight that patterned the paint-dappled floor. Even the floor was a work of art.

‘This way,’ he said, and led her to the far corner where there was a bathroom. ‘You can hang your clothes in there. I want to make a start while we’ve got the light.’

A nude portrait, she thought. What else? She started removing Tara’s silver dress.

‘Everything,’ he said.

Vanlooch had appeared timid in the shoe store but standing there in his new shoes he was on his own territory and occupied the space like the captain of a ship, the studio with the water outside having a vaguely nautical air. He watched her undress, scratching his cheek while he made an appraisal of her body. Greta was entirely confident being naked, especially after that day in Camden Market, and only blushed at her own wantonness.

They crossed the studio to the windows and Vanlooch studied her in the light, her breasts, her arms, the tilt of her chin. He turned her round and, as Greta watched the people across the river washing their houseboats, he slipped to his knees as if in prayer to the holy orifice. He squeezed the cheeks of her backside, moulding her flesh like he was making a sculpture, and she wondered why men were so obsessed by bottoms, with her bottom. They were fixated, spellbound, overcome. They wanted to touch it and smack it, lick it and beat it with whips and belts. It was a pretty bottom, she’d always thought so, and while he nursed it in his palms she felt so ashamed as an oily teardrop leaked into her pubes. He ran the side of his finger like a saw between her legs and the breath caught in her throat as she grew wetter. Greta adored being touched, being fondled and fingered and it was frustrating because she hadn’t had sex since first thing that morning and it was already getting on for seven.

‘We ought to make a start,’ he said, and stood with a sigh.

Immediately behind them, flat on the floor, was a framed canvas, about six feet by four feet. It was pale blue like the sky outside, and around one end on the stained floorboards were numerous bowls of paint in every conceivable hue.

‘It’s acrylic,’ he said. ‘Washes off in a jiff.’

Vanlooch wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing at the bowls of paint as if in all those bright colours was a clue to the meaning of life. His hands, she noticed, were well shaped, his long slender fingers that were knitted together uncoiling as he came to a decision. He took a plastic cup, scooped up some pink paint and poured it into an empty bowl. He added a dash of vermilion with the tip of a wide brush. The pink was shot through with spirals of red, the paint darkening a tone as he stirred them together with a wooden spatula.

‘Come here and bend over,’ he said sternly.

Greta thought for a moment he was going to slap her arse. In fact, he did, but gently, and it tickled as he coated her bottom in the dark pink mixture with a wide brush.

‘Ooo,’ she said.

‘Don’t wriggle about. This is vital.’

He painted her bottom with infinite care, over the two plump cheeks and into the crease. She then had to sit on the top left hand corner of the canvas.

‘Stay there. And don’t move.’

He watched her like he was reading a foreign menu, waiting for the print to set. She began to get cramps sitting still for so long, but at that moment he reached for her with extended hands. ‘Easy now,’ he said, and pulled her slowly to her feet. He smiled for the first time.

She stood away and studied their handiwork.

‘Angel’s wings,’ Vanlooch said contentedly.

Dipping a fine brush into black paint, he skirted the outer edges of the print she’d made with narrow, fluttery chevrons. Greta was amazed as the picture emerged. The cheeks of her spread bottom had stamped two perfect wings, the contours from her flesh leaving a gauzy, diaphanous effect. Vanlooch’s swirling flicks with the brush created a feeling of movement, of flight. He was very clever.

Vanlooch took her hand and they stepped away. There was a bucket with a sponge and he used it to wash off the dried paint, over her cheeks, deep into the crack, the water running down her legs. She tilted forward as he swept the sponge between her thighs and worked it scrupulously into the runny cleft of her pussy. He wiped her dry and for some reason Greta remembered the girl in Gustav’s video towelling down the amber pony.

He started again, painting her bottom, squatting her down carefully beside the first set of angel’s wings and creating a matching pair, almost, but not quite identical. He produced the same feeling of movement with the black scribbles and washed her bottom and pussy, the sponge sliding over her distended clitoris and making her giggle.

They made 12 sets of angel’s wings, five along the top, with five making a mirror image facing them, and two more to fill in the gaps on each side. The outside edge of the canvas was now ringed by butterflies, with the heart of the painting empty. Greta wondered for a moment if they had finished and had no idea that they had only just begun.

Using pure vermilion, Vanlooch coated a brush and studied her nipples. ‘Good. Good, nice and hard,’ he said, and of course they were. Her bottom had been receiving so much interest, the darkened buds had sprung to attention. After painting her nipples with a generous layer of vermilion, he used another brush to coat the palms of her hands in pale green. Greta then had to do a sort of press up, supporting herself on her toes and lowering her breasts on to the top central half of the first set of wings. Her green hands with spread fingers made a pattern like the footprints of a bird as she repeated the exercise, the artist washing her hands and breasts between each print.

Her feet were next. He poured pale yellow into deep pink and blended a sort of amber colour. He pulled up a low stool for her and, as feet are so sensitive, she couldn’t stop giggling as he slapped the mixture on her soles. As Greta made her way across the canvas, just below the butterflies, he rushed round to meet her, the stool in hand. He washed her feet, it was awfully biblical, gave them a fresh coat, and she set off again, her light touch leaving a faint trail like a memory of something and you’re not sure what.

‘What do you think?’ he asked suddenly, staring at his work.

‘Mmm, it’s marvellous,’ she replied and he smiled broadly as he turned her around, holding her in profile and running his hands over her sides, his palms brushing against her taut nipples.

‘This is the important part,’ he now told her, and bent to pour gold paint into a fresh bowl.

Greta had to go down on her hands and knees to dip her hair into the bowl. She stood and while golden drips rained over her shoulders and breasts, he coated her entire body in twisting swirls of pink in various shades and it was just so amazing, so weird, she thought, because that very morning she had awoken like a giant raspberry ripple with Tara warm and sticky at her side. Tara was so delicious, so creamy, the memory made her insides turn luxuriously moist.

She was enjoying herself. It was fun being an artist’s model and it seemed as if everything that had happened since she’d met Richard was connected; there was a pattern, however arbitrary, as free forming as Vanlooch’s canvas, a sort of surreal play with each scene an echo of something else. Except Bill Longman, perhaps. That was just a blip, the exception that proves the rule.

Once Vanlooch had completed his work with the brush, layering her entire body in shades of pink, Greta rolled across the canvas. He scrubbed her down while the acrylic was drying and painted her again, changing the depth of colour, the paint swirls like a misty veil that blurred without ever quite concealing the configuration of angel’s wings, the bright red stamps of her nipples, the pale green prints of her hands.

Vanlooch was getting excited, the paint going everywhere, over his face and hair, the floor, his white shoes, and Greta, being practical, couldn’t work out why he hadn’t worn an old pair. He went down on his knees and deftly applied a generous coating of nut-brown to her sticky pubes. The imprint she left on the canvas he assisted with flicks of a thin brush, making shadows, adding depth and contrast. She did it again and again, the browns and pinks and yellows building up in patterns that kept changing like the glass chips in a kaleidoscope.

‘It’s coming,’ he said, as they stood back to wait for the paint to dry.

The sun was slipping over the rooftops across the river. It was warm behind the glass walls. The light was orange, the sky clear and cloudless. Greta studied the canvas and was surprised to find that within the storm of colour, the angel’s wings, the brown triangles, the brilliant red dots from her nipples, the footprints and handprints, that from the pattern of swirls and abstract shapes the figure of a slender girl was emerging, shadowy and unformed, the mollusc from which the angels had flown, and if you half-closed your eyes they seemed to lift from the painting and hover in the still air.

Vanlooch mixed a bowl of white paint with a touch of brown and yellow, stirring the mixture with a spatula until it turned ivory, the colour of her skin. Greta then had to lay on her side, head up, back bowed, bottom pert, her arms stretched out, her legs behind her, bent slightly at the knees, her hair flying, her weight supported on her right thigh and shoulder.

‘Hold it. You mustn’t move,’ Vanlooch instructed as he reached for the bowl of ivory.

He ran paint about her profile, the flicking movements with the brush giving an effect of movement, and when he was done she had to remain immobile, a marble statue carved in full flight. She was getting cramp by the time Vanlooch was ready to release her. He lifted her legs to one side, balanced her feet on the floor and pulled her up in one movement.

He spent a long time adding fine lines of ivory paint in what to Greta at first seemed pure whimsy, although a new shape, new life, was evolving from the figure of the girl, another incarnation. She couldn’t yet make out what it was but it was exciting like being at a funfair and seeing yourself in the mirror maze, tall and short, fat and funny, as skinny as a thread, a child, an old woman, seeing yourself not as others see you but as you see yourself in your wildest fantasy.