Eighty Days Red (4 page)

Now oblivious to the situation, the surroundings and her nearby helpless husband, Liz threw herself back against Dominik’s cock, inviting him into her, greedily embedding herself on him with studied rage as if she’d been denied pleasure with Kevin for ages immemorial and was now intent on seizing the day and pleasing herself.
Both Lauralynn and Dominik, witnessing the change now taking hold of her, smiled.
The room grew warmer.
Immobilised on his chair, Kevin watched in silence as his wife warmed to Dominik’s thrusts, her movements becoming increasingly frantic as she impaled herself on him time and time again, her breath running short and her face contorting as waves of pleasure raced through her, increasing the flow of her wetness.
Her growing enthusiasm aroused Dominik and he took hold of her waist and orchestrated the rhythm of her reverse thrusts against him, feeling his cock grow even harder inside her, invading her, filling her.
There was a small cry, starting at the back of her throat, dying on the threshold of her lips, and she came with a spasm. Kevin went pale. Dominik wondered if this was this the first time he had witnessed his wife’s pleasure.
After he’d come, ridding himself of the necessary condom in the room’s regulation wicker bin, Dominik noticed how downcast Kevin was over by the wall, still shackled to the chair, uncertain as to whether this was the spectacle he had dreamed of (or feared)? And wondered how the couple would live with this memory.
Now subdued, Lauralynn unlocked the toy-like pink handcuffs and handed Kevin his clothing, while Liz rose tentatively from the bed, almost dazed, not so much as a result of Dominik’s lovemaking, he knew, but at the realisation of what she had just done.
The couple were still slowly dressing in silence as Lauralynn and Dominik exited the room and found themselves in the gloomy darkness of the small hotel’s main corridor, with its faded walls and indeterminate-colour carpeting.
Outside, the trees by the British Museum fluttered in a gentle breeze and Dominik began looking for a cab light.
‘Ah, Lauralynn,’ he said, as she zipped up her leather jacket against the cooler evening air, ‘one day your sense of mischief will get us into trouble.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But wasn’t that little wife cute?’
‘If you thought so, maybe you should have played with her instead,’ he replied.
‘It had occurred to me, but when I was negotiating the scene with her hubby, he was very insistent there should be no female interaction.’
‘Really?’
‘Indeed. Didn’t you notice, when I passed my hand between her legs, how he almost jumped out of the chair? Some people are so prejudiced …’
‘You are truly wicked, Lauralynn,’ Dominik remarked as a cab pulled up.
‘Better wicked than boring, I say.’ She laughed.

Lauralynn’s little interludes were all well and good but they made no difference when Dominik found himself back again facing the computer screen, attempting to summon the right words and ideas without being overwhelmed with thoughts of Summer. His memory was like a hard disk that was now so full of feelings and images, bursting at the seams, and was now incapable of processing further elements, redistributing them in equanimous fashion.

All the women he had known, Summer and the others who had come before her, were present, jostling for attention, for a sliver of kindness, and there was no way he could erase any of them. They were now part of him, what made him what he had become.

As soon as he wrote about one, in the hope that a stream-of-consciousness improvisation on her features, the colour of her eyes or the way she spoke or moved, might turn into the seed of a story, she morphed into another and then yet another and he lost whatever semblance of plot he was hanging on to.

He switched the computer to sleep mode, consigning his half-written page to the multicoloured galactic explosion of his screensaver, and rose before stepping away from the desk.

Glancing at the window, he saw today’s weather was grey but clear, with no signs of imminent rain, and opted for a walk outside to clear his mind.
The Heath was an obvious destination.
It was already mid-morning and joggers were by now thin on the ground, heavily outnumbered by childcarers with prams and buggies, trailing noisy charges, and pensioners ambling idly by the ponds, watching the ducks, feeding them in spite of the warnings not to do so. Past the second pond which expanded into a bathing area, Dominik took the first path and wandered in a daydream towards the narrow bridge connecting this part with wilder areas of the Heath.
This was what he loved so much about London; the infinity of places where within a few minutes’ walk from a main road in almost all areas you could find yourself deep in a landscape of trees, sky shielded from view, a comforting jungle of greenery and nature. There was something almost clandestine about it that appealed deeply to him, a sense of privacy and isolation at the heart of the urban jungle. A place for secrets.
Dominik took a different direction, instinctively opting for the comfort of a winding, barely delineated dirt avenue where a thick canopy of trees blanked out the sky. A jogger came running towards him and he shifted aside to give her right of way on the narrow path. She briefly nodded in acknowledgment. It was a young woman in black leggings, wearing an incongruous pair of emerald-coloured satin shorts and a heavy dark-green sweatshirt. Her dirty-blond hair was held tight together by an elastic band and her ponytail bobbed up and down in her wake, accompanying in delightful synchronicity the rhythmic movement of her breasts despite the obvious constriction of her crop top. As she passed him, Dominik heard a thin melody straining through her headphones before fading as she continued her run away from him.
For some inexplicable reason, he wanted to know what she had been listening to. It felt important.
He stopped and sat for a moment on a felled tree trunk, allowing the fleeting memory of the young woman’s breasts and the indolent rhythm of their movement to linger a while.
Had she been a nurse from the nearby Royal Free Hospital, a student maybe, a housewife, a banker, a shop or an office girl? The possibilities were endless, as a thousand fantasies raced across his imagination. ‘Stop’, ‘Undress’, ‘Reveal yourself to me’ … Not just having her undress, but getting her somehow to unveil what was beneath her skin, what went on in her mind … As he had once attempted with Summer. All so irrational. He quickly banished the thoughts from his mind.
He shrugged, rose and moved on. But the thoughts of Summer lingered. Her wariness the first time they’d met. His proposal, the private concert she had played here, just for him. The fire and passion that consumed her when she held her violin, saturating the Heath with her music.
The bandstand. He wanted to find the bandstand again. The place where Summer had played, a deeply ingrained image he just couldn’t keep out of his mind. The landscape, the colours of the grass and the sky above, and the look of her face as she lost herself in the music.
Summer playing on the bandstand: his lost masterpiece.
Dominik made his way through the wood, saw a faint dash of unnatural colour in the distance. Movements. Figures beyond the thinning wall of trees. Stepping gingerly forward, taking care not to get his clothes caught in the outlying bushes, he emerged into a clearing. Children running around, bikes racing across a set of paths, the bandstand in the distance.
As he walked up the small hill that led to the concrete and iron edifice, he caught the initial drops of rain as the skies opened with a vengeance. Under the bandstand’s roof, a rag-tag bunch of nannies, harassed mothers and unruly toddlers were gathered, indifferently watching the storm.
One of the mothers stood in one corner, her blouse unbuttoned, offering her breast to a baby. The small one’s head was almost totally hairless and its scalp a delicate pink, its face all crunched up in a parody of either concentration or just sleep. Dominik watched them with deep fascination, couldn’t keep his eyes away until the mother noticed him staring and gave him the dirtiest look she could summon. He was obliged to walk away, down the steps and into the clearing rain, angry at himself and annoyed by the fact he was now obliged to share the magic of the place with all these strangers.
Lauralynn had brought someone back with her the previous night.
Even though the bedroom she was using was on a different floor of the house, Dominik was kept awake most of the night by the noises the two women couldn’t help themselves making: cushioned moans, sharp shrieks, muffled growls of pleasure or pain, indistinct words half whispered or cried out at peak moments, a whole curious symphony of unrolling lust.
He briefly caught sight of Lauralynn’s guest as he came down to breakfast late the following day and the girl was on her way out. A goth-like waif, all dyed jet-black hair amateurishly cut in a short bob by a blunt pair of scissors, a fearsome silver skull necklace like a collar separating her head from the rest of her body, and a blur of faded tattoos snaking all the way down her right leg. He was glad Lauralynn had not invited him to join them.
Lauralynn, having escorted her friend to the door wearing nothing but a pair of French knickers and an unbuttoned man’s shirt, returned to the kitchen and handed Dominik a mug of freshly brewed coffee.
‘A new one?’ he asked, taking the coffee.
‘Yes. Picked her up at a gig,’ Lauralynn said.
‘She didn’t look the classical type,’ Dominik remarked.
‘Nah. Rock ’n’ roll, man. She was hanging with some guys I did some session overdubs for. Neo punks, whatever they call themselves. They invited me to see them play in Camden Town. She was there and, you know,’ Lauralynn said with a lascivious smile on her full lips, ‘one thing led to another.’
‘The diversity of your tastes will always amaze me,’ he pointed out.
‘I’ll try anything once,’ Lauralynn said. ‘But I knew she wasn’t your type, so I didn’t try and wake you.’
‘You have all my gratitude for that—’
He almost spat out his coffee. She’d forgotten to put sugar in it.
‘Careful there …’
‘So what are you doing today?’ he asked her.
‘I have to be at the recording studio in Willesden from midday. I’m booked up for the rest of the week. The guys in the band don’t seem to know what sort of sound they’re after. The only reason they need a cello is that the bass player wants an “Eleanor Rigby” mood, or whatever, on the track.’
Dominik nodded, taking in her torrent of words.
‘Easy money,’ Lauralynn continued. ‘I’m not complaining. I spend much of the time there reading magazines and I’m being paid for it at union rates. And you? Making much progress with the new book?’
Dominik hadn’t listened to the Beatles’ song in ages, and was unsure for a moment whether it did feature a cello. Or had it been a string section?
‘Not much,’ he admitted, his mind suddenly elsewhere, inwardly humming the tune to ‘Eleanor Rigby’.
Lauralynn took the empty coffee mugs to the sink and ran the water over them before placing them in the dishwasher.
‘If you’re so uncertain about what you’re writing, maybe you should let me have a look. I could help?’ she said.
‘Hmm …’ Dominik feigned interest.
‘I liked the Paris novel,’ she added. ‘A lot. Not saying it just because we’re mates, you know.’
There was nothing he could decently show her yet. Unfinished scenes, thinly sketched lists of random characters, descriptions of places and things, sex scenes verging on the crude between faceless protagonists even he the author could not engage with. A fine mess, he was aware. As if the road map for the book had gone missing, the train it was travelling on still miles from the station.
‘Hey?’
Lauralynn was watching him as he just stood there, his mind elsewhere.
‘Snap out of it.’
‘I’m sorry. You caught me daydreaming.’
‘About the book?’
‘I suppose so. Yes.’
‘You could tell me about it, the story you’re hoping to tell. Might help sharpen your focus.’
Dominik repressed a wave of irritation. She was a musician. She knew how to interpret, not to create. What did she know? Then he realised how unfair he was being to her. She was only trying to help.
‘I don’t have a story. A skeleton on which to hang the characters, the places,’ he confessed. ‘It just won’t come. Whatever I conjure up is commonplace, done a hundred times before and no doubt better. I’m struggling. For a story,’ he said.
‘The story?’ she repeated, her eyes widening as if she was only now realising the enormity of his failure.
‘Yes,’ he sighed.
He was saved by the ring of the front doorbell. From the kitchen window, he could see a red post office van – it was a postman with a parcel delivery. Probably more books he had ordered as part of his incoherent research.
‘I’ll get it.’
He rushed down the stairs and signed for the delivery, not even bothering to look up at the driver’s face as he handed the lightweight parcel over. A guide book to Berlin night life and a novel set there in the 1960s, which he’d impulsively acquired with the click of a button just a week ago when he had toyed with the idea of setting the new novel in the German capital. Which, by the following day, he had realised was a stupid idea, as not only had he never been to Berlin but didn’t even speak German.
He set the brown cardboard box down on the floor next to the muddy trainers he had kicked off and abandoned there on his return from the Heath the previous day.
Lauralynn’s tall and heavy cello case stood in the corner of the hall, festooned with labels, travel mementoes from hotels foreign and local, backstage passes and memorabilia she had assiduously stuck across its surface.
One of the labels was peeling off, he noticed, advertising the charms of the Royal e Golf Grand Hotel in Cour-mayeur. Where was that? Switzerland or Italy, he thought. When had Lauralynn ever been there? It was a ski resort and unlikely to have much of a music scene. Maybe he would ask her.
His curiosity awakened, he kept on staring at the gallery of labels adorning the cello case.
Ideas come out of nowhere. They make no sense. Drop unannounced in your lap. Ignore logic or sanity.
It was as if something had clicked.
The instrument. Its travels. The tale behind all those stickers, hotel labels, decals and the torn remnants of airline baggage tags.
There was his story.
The one that had been eluding him. As if he’d been blind all the time and ignored the obvious.
It didn’t have to be about characters.
In the Paris book, he’d been writing about an alternate, imaginary version of Summer. Of a past world in which she was not a musician, had no violin.
This time, he could write about her instrument. The one he had bought for her.
The violin.
The story of a violin.