Director's Cut (39 page)

She lay back, without hesitation, and in that same moment drew her
knees apart.

“It’s such a mysterious place,” he said. “A little Milky Way, a
spreading supervulva.”

“You shouldn’t be looking, not really. I shall have to arrest you and
take you in. I feel strange, like I’m swimming.”

“Relax. Do what you want to do. It’s the wine, you see, or rather,
what is in the wine. I should market it.”

“Oh, Mr Lawrence, my head is spinning and I’m out of control.
Why haven’t you seduced me, Mr Lawrence, like the others? Did you
fuck the others, Mr Lawrence?”

“In my own way, my dear.”

“Are you going to fuck me, Mr Lawrence?”

“In my own way, my dear.”

He put aside his brush for the painting was complete and just right.
Those questions in her dark eyes were answered by a subtle smile that
left the faintest of dimples on her cheeks, an enigmatic expression –
alluring and aloof
– that hinted of triumph.

She watched him move from behind the easel and shuffle to the
very edge of the studio. There, using a steel lever, he prised up a long
floorboard. He moved again and pulled the hook and tackle along the
rail until it hung directly over the narrow opening. He used the controls
to drop the hook. The steel groaned and squealed as pulleys turned on
their blocks and released the chain. As each clashing link fell over the
wheel the chain extended with a clanking and screeching that
reverberated through the room.

She sat quite immobile and watched a brick wall rise from the floor
until it stood as tall and as wide as a door. Clumps of dusty black
cobweb dropped from the crumbling edges and settled on the
floorboards.

He moved back to the sofa and extended his hands toward her. She
reached up, childlike, and took them and he pulled her to her feet.
“I feel so shaky,” she said and began to wobble. He slipped an arm
around her waist and held her steady. Her skin beneath his cold hand
felt smooth and warm. He stroked that infuriating hip, that ball-andsocket
joint, and realized that he no longer found its prominence

disagreeable. In fact, this tall skinny figure had grown on him.
“Let me show you,” he said and guided her to the wall.

“The wall, Mr Lawrence. It’s the wall in your picture…in the other
room!”

She leant against him, a long streak of Indian amber. She was living
in a distant place, a place called rapture. He could see it in her eyes,
not that they were slipping for they were wide and fixed on the dusty
bricks.

He caressed her slight breasts and tugged gently on the extended
nipples.

“Oh, Mr Lawrence, what are you doing?”

“Indulge an old man, just this once.”

He dropped his hand to her behind – that flawed wonderland that
had given him so much grief in the painting – and traced between her
buttocks until, finally, he cupped that seat of genesis and let his middle
and ring fingers slip upward. Unconcerned, perhaps even unconscious
of the source of this digital sensation, she began to gyrate and writhe
and swell until she ended up on tiptoes.

“Oh, oh, Mr Lawrence,” she said.

He pulled his hand away and her feet came down to earth.

“I think it’s time to find Mrs Harrison.”

“Shall I get dressed again?” she asked, surprising him. It wasn’t
simply the way she said it, which was lucid, but what she said as well.
That she could put words together that made any kind of sense, was
extraordinary.

“Not necessary,” he said. “We would only have to take them off
again.”

With his hand gently resting on her right buttock, he directed her to
the cellar door.

Mr Lawrence pulled away the sealing tape then led the way down the
dangerously dark and narrow stairway, reaching back to hold her hand
as she placed one tentative foot after the other on to the crumbling
steps.

“It’s wet. The steps are cold and wet.”

Again her words and observations surprised him. Should he come
across a girl like this again he would need to stiffen his cocktails. You
could never generalize with women; some were even more difficult
than others.

They reached the ground safely and he threw a switch and forty
watts from a bare dust-encrusted bulb threw its dim glow on the
chamber. Save for a discarded mattress and the dark lumps of rotting
rats and cats – some no more than stiff fur shells – it was an empty
room. The walls were damp and decaying and clusters of black
cobweb hung from the flaking edges. In parts the flooring had given up
to black compacted earth. On the far side was the black hole that the
wall of bricks had left and, as Mr Lawrence had observed once before,
nothing could escape a black hole.

“Be careful now,” he said as he led her into the narrow passage.
“There’s no lighting until we get to the end.”

“It smells horrible,” she said.

“I’ll light some joss sticks.”

“I like joss sticks,” she said. Once again he caught hold of her as
her legs gave way.

At the end of the passage he pushed open a solid door and threw
another switch. The room was bright and reasonably clean. The brick
walls on three sides were sealed and whitewashed and the floor,
although lumpy, was covered with green linoleum. The other wall was
screened from floor to ceiling by a heavy curtain patterned with
threads of red and gold. Mounted on a steel tripod a spotlight threw its
intense beam on to an examination couch that came complete with
thick foam wear-resistant black vinyl top with an elevated platform
that avoided finger accidents – or so the advertisement had promised.
Next to the couch stood a gleaming portable trolley and a high stool.
She steadied herself on one of the twin fixtures at the bottom of the
couch. “A bed,” she managed.

“It is. Why don’t you get on board and rest a while?”

She nodded enthusiastically and he helped her. For a moment her
feet dangled, until he lifted her legs up over the side. She lay back.
“That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll feel better now.”

She nodded again but already he noticed that her eyes had lost their
previous lustre. Already he could feel the heat radiating from the
spotlight on to her skin as he lifted her legs into the stirrups.
“Many years ago this place belonged to the shop next door. It was
owned by an old lady, Mrs Meacham, who sold wool and knittingneedles.
But her shop was knocked down to make way for the new

road up to the council estate. For some reason, perhaps the lack of
funding or, more likely, contractors on the fiddle, they only filled in
the one room. This was left completely as it was. If some of the bricks
hadn’t been dislodged during the building work I would never have
discovered it.”

From the trolley he produced a white apron that he tied around his
middle.

“I mentioned before how small your breasts are.” As though it
meant nothing at all he leant over and stroked them again and gently
pulled a nipple between thumb and forefinger. “If we let the pregnancy
continue they would fill out and your nipples would get bigger too.”
She struggled with the idea and her frown was exaggerated. She
turned her face from the penetrating light and said, “I’m so tired.”
“I know, but try to stay awake a little longer.”

Her eyes were slipping now; nothing seemed to have a definite
beginning or substance, everything was animated. Even his voice
seemed distant.

“Gosh,” she said. “That tickles.”

“I thought it might. Maybe it will wake you up a bit.”

He worked a shaving-brush around her groin.

“It’s cold and wet, Mr Lawrence. What are you doing?”

“Nowadays, as I understand it, shaving has gone by the board.
Maybe it’s part of the NHS efficiency programme that we hear so little
about. But I’m just an old-fashioned man. I believe today’s term is the
Brazilian. Perhaps it has something to do with the cutting down of the
rainforests. Now, this will tickle again.”

She felt the cold lather and the bristles of his worn brush and then
the razor and the slight tug as hair was cut away.

“My goodness, you haven’t been to your beauticians lately, have
you? I suppose we could call this Bikini Line, should we require a title.
Did you enjoy the show, by the way? I forgot to ask. I did notice you
in your box in the Carrington.”

“That feels funny.”

“There we are, all finished now,” he said as he used a towel to dry
her. “Didn’t want to get lost in the bush, as they say in Zululand and
maybe even Mumbai.”

Her eyes settled again and she smiled sweetly as he bent over and
examined her vagina, inserting two fingers into her vaginal canal. He
placed his bandaged hand on her abdomen and applied a little pressure
while he searched for the position of her uterus. A little smear from the
end of his bandage marked her stomach.

He fumbled around in his trolley for it was full of boxes and
instruments – forceps, dilators, pessaries, speculums, suppositories and
Aquagel lubricating jelly which he preferred – he did like to be up
there on the cutting edge. He toyed with the adjustable speculums and
tried to recall what he used on Margaret Domey – small, medium or
large – but it wouldn’t come back and he settled on small. Once, not
long ago, they resembled a duck’s bill but now they were more like
adjustable spanners used by filthy plumbers to unblock drains.
As he opened her vagina her mouth dropped open more out of
shock than discomfort and her frown turned to a grimace as he used the
dilators on her cervix.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she uttered and tried to sit up, failing even to rise to
her elbows.

Without looking up he said, “It’s true that women the world over
are all alike, even women from the subcontinent and that’s a surprise.
Only the Orientals are different, so I’m told, by my barber, believe it or
not – for everything about them is on the slant and that wouldn’t do at
all. As the old Duke of Edinburgh – Philippos the Greek – might say, it
would be like putting a round peg into a slitty hole.”

He replaced the gleaming instruments and wiped his hands. “And
now,” he said. “You wanted to see Mrs Harrison.”

Mr Lawrence moved to the curtains and drew them apart, first one
then the other, fussing with the rope fastenings that held them to the
wall.

It was a scene out of hell and she laughed at it and Mr Lawrence
saw the funny side too and joined in. He couldn’t remember the last
time he laughed out loud.

“There’s Helen!” She pointed a shaky finger. “And there’s
Margaret. And there’s Sandra too!”

torsos were held above the slime had dried out and the skin and tissue
on their faces had shrivelled and peeled so that eyes bulged and lips
were pulled back. On others, rotting flesh had fallen away so that a
cranium glinted here and a clavicle there. Some of them were covered
in green mould and their wrappings were straining under the growth.
The abdomens, from navel to crotch, had been sliced open and pulled
apart and left gaping and viscera and mucus and fat and streaks of
clotted blood had congealed and filled and tightened the transparent
film.

“There you are. I told you you’d see her again.”

She smiled happily and watched the light bounce from a scalpel in
his hand. The light danced on the blade and held her attention. She
watched it move closer until it hovered just a few inches above her
pubis, more prominent now, still smarting from its recent attention.
She heard his voice. “I’m going through the walls of the abdomen
into the uterus. You can watch. Sandra managed to watch the entire
operation.”

She felt the blade against her belly.

“It’s cold,” she said and giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Julius Caesar was born this way,” he said.

In her drug-induced sleep Luscious Laura lay face down on the bed.
She had barely moved. On tiptoes and with a gentle touch he pulled a
sheet and tucked her in. She would sleep soundly through the night.
He carried his case down to the shop. Everything was in order now;
the loose ends had been tied and everything was done.

Above the rooftops the sky haemorrhaged through the December
darkness. Along the High Road Christmas decorations winked and
rocked in the strong wind. Dishwashers and freezers were tied in
Christmas ribbon. It was the age of the gadget, of starvation and
obesity, of ignorance and information. It was the age of madness.
For a moment he paused as the girl’s image came back again – just
as it had after their initial encounter – the amber princess, the colour of
the gods. It stemmed from an old Arabic word –
ambergris –
perfumed
oil secreted by the sperm whale.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Mmmm,” he thought. Sperm counts had
halved since his father’s day and sperm whales faced extinction.
Helen’s was a new face.

Helen, Mrs Harrison, smiled from the latest posters stuck to the bus
shelters next to the pictures of Japanese fishermen harpooning the
sperm whales.

In front of him, blocking his way, a drunk lurched.

“Penny for the guy, mister. A cup of tea?”

“Guy! Guy! You idiot, that was last month! Where do you people
come from?”

He came from Liverpool or Newcastle or somewhere else north
where the accent was as painful as bloodstained piss.
Mr Lawrence swung his heavy case and the drunk went down,
bleeding.

Rick Cole woke suddenly with the image of Donna Fitzgerald
superimposed over the darkness of his room. The dream faded slowly
as he groped on his bedside table for the glass of Teacher’s he’d taken
to bed. He leant back against the headboard and waited for the alcohol
to kick in. He lit a JPS and brushed the odd spark from his chest.
His mobile went and he heard Sam Butler.

“Rick, thank Christ! I’m in trouble. I’m parked up at the back of the
Gallery. Help me out.”

“Talk to me, Sam. Sam?”

But Sam Butler had gone even though the line remained open.
Cole finished his drink in one and stubbed out his JPS. Anger
hardened his features. He knew without being told that the job had
been compromised. Now it was limitation time. And without any doubt
at all it was going to take every trick he knew to keep them all in the
clear.