Dark Places (19 page)

Vaucluse and Macquarie Street did not stay long, moving off in shoals to their smart dinner engagements. But they had come, and what with the python, Norah's dress, and the camels (one of which had finally spat at a gentleman with a cane, and got him fair and square in his starched shirt-front),
Singer Enterprises
had made its mark.

It was fitting enough for women to step into cabs and be driven home after such excitement, but it did not do for me, or for Ogilvie. My blood was hurtling through my veins, my tongue was loosened, and I was at last finding it easy to laugh, and even to make others laugh in a surprised sort of way.

The last thing I wished to do, as I saw the last of them off the premises, was to go tamely home with my wife. Ogilvie and I were at one in this, as in so much, and we retired up to my office with a bottle of brandy and a box of best Havanas. In the glow of the good evening's work behind us, Ogilvie and I sat over our brandies until the stars were small and sharp in the sky outside. It was a warm feeling, two men together enjoying the best in the way of company and cigars: I was at last like a cup or bucket, a receptacle filled to every edge and corner, with not a pocket of hollowness anywhere.

We both leaned forward in our chairs at the same moment to reach for our brandies. Our hands did not touch as we picked up our glasses, but they nearly touched, might have touched, and our eyes met. ‘Well, Singer,' Ogilvie sighed on a smile, holding my gaze. ‘What now, Singer, how can we round off such an evening as this has been?' he tilted his head back to drink and I was sure—almost sure—yes, quite sure—perhaps—I saw an eyelid drop over an eye for an instant. I was almost sure that Ogilvie had something on his mind.

But I was shy of rushing in too foolhardy: I watched him put the glass back on the table, and thought before I spoke. ‘I have some friends I am sure you would like,' I said, and almost regretted it, for the open look of surprise on Ogilvie's face as he wiped his moustache where brandy lingered.

I wished I had not spoken: I felt a blush rising to my face, and Ogilvie watching in what I was sure was amazement. I could wish, but I could not make the words unspoken, so all I could do was go forwards, but I could feel mad blood pouring up from my chest, racing up my neck and into my cheeks as I went on, ‘They would be glad to welcome us, I know.' Ogilvie continued to stare with what seemed unbelievable obtuseness, and I floundered on against his silence, feeling myself blurting out the words like some pipsqueak schoolboy with a dirty mind, ‘Little friends, you understand, Ogilvie, charming little friends.'

Was Ogilvie stupid, after all? Was he a secret Methodist? Or did he adore his shrewish wife? Why was he continuing to stare in that unnerving way?

‘Singer!' he exclaimed at last, and I felt heat prickle on my palms; but he was smiling, although still not quite sure. ‘Why Singer, are you suggesting a visit to your friends, your
little
friends, at this hour?' He was positively grinning now, almost certain, and when I fought down the blood flaming in my face and said calmly, ‘This is their finest hour, Ogilvie, I assure you,' he let out a great rude guffaw, the like of which
Singer Enterprises
had never heard, and stood up. ‘Let us go, then, Singer, let us rise to their finest hour!'

We sat in silence as the cab jolted us towards joy. I could feel Ogilvie's thigh, Ogilvie's hip, jouncing against my own, and wondered if this was what people meant when they said they were
beside themselves with happiness.
Several times I began the movement of turning to Ogilvie, to say, ‘The curls of their hair are like a tame creature in your hand,' or, ‘The tiny mirrors on their wrapper make my head spin,' but I was afraid he might think me soft-hearted, and did not.

Mrs Smith never let me down: there were dear Agnes and Una, rather younger than I had remembered them, and even more marble as to shoulder, and melon as to breast. They exclaimed over us, and patted our arms, and laughed at nothing very much as they ushered us along the hall past the artistic prints. ‘Any friend of our dear friend Mr Smith,' they cooed. ‘Such a pleasure to meet another gentleman, Mr Brown,' they clucked.

As I had hoped, Una—or was it Agnes?—had on her wrapper with the tiny mirrors, and they made us sit down on the squashy couch,
to catch our breaths. Catching my breath
before we got down to business, with cheeky little bosoms slipping and sliding out of the folds of a mirrored wrapper, was one of the things I most looked forward to at Mrs Smith's.

One of them signalled the end of preliminaries by standing up and stretching in a way that reminded us of the shape of her chest. ‘We are going to have ever such a nice time, dearies, I feel it in my bones,' she said with a wink from one of her artfully darkened eyes. ‘In your bone, dearie?' the other one cried. ‘Well, dearie, if that is what you would like to call it,' and she placed one finger, with its long nail of brilliant red, beside her nose and gave Ogilvie one of her bold looks, and I could see that Ogilvie was prepared to enjoy the bold looks of Agnes and Una as much as I did.

Oh Ogilvie, how my heart swelled to see you, and know you my friend! ‘Indeed, Una,' he said with his engaging smile—and he seemed to have sorted out which was Agnes, which Una, within minutes, whereas I still had not got it straight in my mind. ‘Indeed, I do believe I am beginning to feel it in my bone too!' and Agnes and Una positively shrilled at this, and nodded and smiled at me, congratulating me on my choice of intimate.

I could not be outdone, though: Ogilvie was the companion of my soul, but I could not have him outdoing me in my own house of pleasure! ‘Well,' I said in the sort of tone that signalled another witticism, ‘I am pleased to have extended your
circle
by the addition of another
member.
' I was conscious that my wit was not quite in the same breezy spontaneous class as Ogilvie's, but they all turned to me and appreciated my effort: Ogilvie touched my shoulder in a suggestion of a manly slap on the back, Una sagged and needed to be supported, and generally the whole thing was off to a fine start.

There were two back rooms at Mrs Smith's: one was tricked out in a sort of Bedouin tent effect, with stuff draped across the ceiling, and cheap Turkey rugs on the walls, and gimcrack brass tables and lamps. The other was what the girls called the Marie Antoinette boudoir, with frills and furbelows, bits and pieces of petit-point and little gilt mirrors.

As the guest, Ogilvie was given the choice of Bedouin Tent or Boudoir. ‘Oh, I have a Moving Finger that is itching to Write something tonight, so it had better be the Bedouin Tent,' he said. It was a joke I had used myself under the canopy, and I was struck again at how much we were in tune with each other.

As Agnes and I—or was it Una and I?—got down to business, I could hear noises from the next room. I listened, and held a hand over Agnes' or Una's mouth. She was making moaning noises, of the
yes yes oh yes
variety, but just this once I did not find them inflammatory: I wanted to hear the sounds from the other side of the wall. Ogilvie and I were separated only by the flimsiest of lathe-and-plaster partitions; I clearly heard a buckle strike a piece of furniture, a spring cried out as weight came down on it, and there was the rumble of a male voice.

I answered. I made sure that my own shoe struck the wooden floor, made sure that my voice also rumbled, and although in the normal way I was a discreet driver of a bed, tonight I bounced and thrust so that the bedhead tapped against the wall and the under-parts tinkled and creaked symphonically.

It was a delightful duet. I tapped, he tapped in response; clinked and tinkled, he clinked and tinkled too; and was that him I could hear panting so hard? We tapped and clinked and tinkled, and in due course things became dim about me, and I felt myself about to lose myself, and at last there was a cry, but I could not have said whether it was from myself or from the other man on the other side of the wall.

Mrs Smith was not one of those who hustled visitors tactlessly on their way. When I emerged with Agnes or Una, Ogilvie was sitting
catching his breath
again on the spineless sofa, and I sat down beside him. Post-coital, Ogilvie was a man softened: there was an appealing languor in his movements, and his laugh was lazy now, like a hungry man after a good feed. His eyes met mine and kept hold. ‘My word, Singer,' he said, and made a fluid circular sort of gesture. ‘My very word, Singer!' I felt I had never looked as deep or as long into anyone's eyes as I now submerged myself in Ogilvie's.

Nineteen

WITH MY WIFE sitting smugly on her own flesh, I was empty sounding brass. I could set Albion Gidley Singer in motion, make his lips utter the right kinds of banalities, make his cheeks crease into smiles or frowns as the moment demanded. But upstairs in my study, wedged behind my heavy desk, padded around with the soft piles of alphabetical facts, about lemurs, seagulls and Emperor moths, that multiplied each day, enwombed in my facts, I was no mere gesturing husk.

Emperor Moth
, I would write in my best copperplate at the top of one of my index cards (yellow for Lepidoptera).
The most acute sense of smell exhibited in Nature is that of the Emperor Moth, which can detect the sex attractant of the female at the range of 6 and four-fifths miles upwind
. I would then take the card over to Filing Drawer 37 of Filing Cupboard 6, and insert
Emperor Moth
between
Elephant Beetle
and
Firefly
.

My research was coming along very nicely: from time to time I got out
Chapter One
and looked at my opening sentence, but saw no way in which it could be bettered. One day I would write all the rest, but the important thing was to have all the facts at hand before I started.

The curves and graces of the silver lady who strained to hold up my desk-lamp were a consolation to me when times were lean. I could sit at my desk with my pen in my hand and my colour-coded filing boxes around me, and enjoy the comfort of her little thrusting breasts, and little clenched buttocks, in the privacy of my trousers. Of all the good things about her, though, the best was that she was nothing more than a bit of furniture, and only a mad person would suspect a man of lascivious thoughts about his table-lamp.

Up here in the privacy of my study I waited for the arrival of the day's mail, and whiled the time away in watching the way the light caught her folds, and fingered her pointy little breasts until I was no longer a man sitting on a chair inside his trousers. I became some other being, watching from a great distance as Albion Gidley Singer became a creature consumed entirely by white lust. The smile of my silver lady seemed to congratulate me warmly on the vigour of my blood.

When there was a knock at the door, I was thrown into a minute's confusion. I was pleased it had not occurred just a few minutes before, but now I was simply a gentleman having a small adjusting fiddle with the desk-lamp in his lap, and calling out, ‘Come!' to someone on the other side of the door.

‘It is the letters, sir,' foolish Alma said, peering around the edge of the door as if I might bite. ‘They are come a bit on the early side today, sir.' She stood in the doorway breathing hard over the silver tray of letters: what a slattern she was, with the hair coming out of her cap, and a frightened sort of grin on her red-blotched face. She was a coarse sort of woman, like a piece of bag. How was it that other wives managed to find housemaids pert, alert, upthrusting of bosom, square of shoulder, saucy of eye, while Norah had found only this slope-shouldered drab?

‘Well, bring them over here, Alma, I cannot read them across the room,' I said, and laughed at my joke to see her bare her teeth in a kind of laugh too. Poor dolt, I had confused her now, for yesterday I had told her never to enter my room, but to leave the letters by the door. She came across the room with an awkward self-conscious walk, and laid the letters on the desk with a nervy jabbing motion as if I might be too hot to come close to.

I saw her tongue as she put them down, and it was pink and lewd, and she seemed to lean rather closer to me than necessary as she put them down. Perhaps it was the exertion of coming fast up the stairs, or the sense of being scrutinised by her employer, but something had brought a flush to her cheeks, and I looked at her with a moment's curiosity: her blushes and confusion made me realise that under her uniform she was generously endowed. In fact, now that I looked I could see that this generous endowment thrust against the starch so hard that it strained the buttons. As a man of the world, a man of wide experience with women, I recognised that Alma was highly conscious of the proximity of a man such as myself, and could very well turn out to be another strumpet.

I had assumed that Norah's inability to choose a stylish maid was just one more example of why women could not be relied on to do a thing properly. But watching Alma now, another more interesting possibility occurred to me. Was it possible that Norah had chosen Alma not from stupidity, but from guile? Knowing her husband to be the man he was, had she chosen her housemaid expressly for her redness of knuckle, brownness of teeth, and cheesy insipidity of feature?

If so, she had failed: being a woman, and believing in romance, she did not understand that a female does not have to be pretty, or young, or gracious, to rouse a man's blood if his blood is prepared to be roused.

The thought of poor Norah and her failed schemes made me jovial. ‘Thank you, Alma,' I said, and tried to fix her eyes with my own, to test my new idea. But she could not meet my eye: her mouth was wet and shiny, her eyes darted everywhere except towards myself. Yes indeed, I was not mistaken. Alma was overtaken with a particular kind of fluster, and could only have a certain kind of thing on her mind.

What a woman of wantonness Alma turned out to be, in her smell of yellow soap! She was a secret artist of passion. And oh, so clean! I knew her the first time at her cleanest, her most provoking, and the breath gasped in and out of her mouth as she surrendered to me.