Surrender to Mr. X (20 page)

Mind you, it wasn't easy for her. Lust my mother could have coped with easily enough: she had her early training as a counselor, she understood its passing nature. The Church had taught her about the sacramental aspect of sex. Life amongst the parishioners enabled her to keep her own problems in perspective. She had the great privilege and strength of knowing she was good—which I think was one of the reasons
my father ended up in Jude's arms: Jude being so bad in a sloppy kind of way, and thus needing no living up to.

But love was a different thing. I think my dear, patient, peaceful father would have sat the unwelcome emotion out, but Jude went in for the kill, and seduced him in our summer house one Sunday afternoon: just to stop him looking at her with those awful, soppy eyes. That was the explanation she gave to the twins after they burst in and found Dad and their big sister's best friend rolling about together on dusty rush matting: “Just to stop him staring at me, with those awful, soppy eyes.”

My mother was upstairs nursing bronchitis. I was away in Oxford at an interview for a college—Brasenose. I had got four starred A's at A level, Jude had got three ordinary A's and a B. It was nothing to do with my father or his eyes: she was just envious and taking it out on me. And instead of having the sense to just shut up and forget about it, the twins, unforgivably, went running to tell Mum.

She screamed, she wept. When I got home I scarcely recognized my calm, beautiful mother, raving and with her face mottled and swollen. Mind you, I'd had a glimpse of it, just a hint, the day she didn't want to leave me alone with Dr. Barky: the day he told me about Bipolar Two and broke my hymen by mistake. She'd wept and shouted and he had told her she just didn't want to let me grow up: she was a clingy mother
and ought to know better, and I'd screamed at her that I wanted her just to go away: then she just seemed to deflate, and walked off. Perhaps she should have stayed. She gives in too easily, turns the other cheek.

But so it goes: it's over now—as far as these things ever are. My father was full of remorse, my mother's bronchitis cleared up, the twins passed yet more exams and got their names and pictures in the papers as infant prodigies. The student medical center decided I had an eidetic memory, and fortunately a high IQ to go with it, so I could make sense of the reams of information which assaulted my brain, otherwise I might have developed serious adjustment “issues.” My case (anonymously of course) made the
Lancet
and a medical column in
The Times
. No mention was made of the gang bang scandal which so nearly got me sent down. And little Robert weathered the family storms and grew up un-traumatized, so far as anyone could see.

My mother explained my father away to me by saying that men do strange things when their daughters leave home: they get panicky and think youth and freedom are running out. So? She can forgive him but, though I miss the friendship, I will never forgive Jude.

M
EMBERS PAID THEIR ENTRANCE
fee and signed in, and leered at me as I sat topless in whatever threads or lack of them had been selected for my evening's role. They bought drinks at extraordinary prices, and the club made a profit. They could dance with me and if they wished to pursue and upgrade the intimacy would consult Clive, or Audrey, or both, and pay the tariff, one half on demand, second half on delivery.

A snapshot, a film still, then it starts rolling: the husband and wife team, Clive and Audrey talking to a couple of clients, father and son from the look of them, both big-boned, brash and confident. Parents' Day, I thought? The father looks as if he might be from the working end of the oil industry.

It must be Thursday, because Audrey's wearing a violet caftan. They all look over to me. They're haggling. I am suddenly self-conscious. No sign of Alden or Ray. It's easier to sit around in public with naked boobs when they're with me: I don't feel so
exposed. I particularly hate walking into the bar on my own when there are a lot of customers in there, and they all turn to look, and wonder how much I cost, and whether I'll be worth the money or not.

Clive beckons me over with a nod, and I get up and walk toward them. I am wearing a long flouncy skirt in transparent voile, and red sandals and that's all. There is a moment's hush in the bar as I walk by. Then everyone starts talking again. It is actually quite a lively place; a lot of people just come to talk and drink and hang out, and for some of them I'm just a sideshow. The casual boast, “I was at the Divan Club the other night” can make the most boring people seem more fascinating to most respectable company: or so the boasters told themselves.

Another snapshot, and again the characters start moving: Father has shown son how it's done. (Son knows pretty well by now how it's done, or at least how he does it, but father doesn't know that.) Girl on knees, grab hair, pull mouth onto cock, bang cock into mouth, choke if necessary. Girl onto bed, part her thighs wide, stare intently, lubricate with KY (lucky old me this time) and—in it goes. No time to spare for natural lubrication. Dad's member is a monster: girl is meant to gasp in awe, girl does—and she means it. Fourteen inches? Son wants his turn. Now, and he means now! Dad tells him to fucking wait. Son tells him he fucking won't. Dad tells him he fucking will. Dad turns me over, makes me kneel, and starts shoving up my anus.
Son waves yet more monstrous prick before my eyes: sixteen inches—can such prodigies exist?

That's down my throat now, really stretching my lips, pumping in and out with the use of my hair as the handle. I gag. Dad tells Son to get the fuck off his case, can't he see Dad is trying to fucking concentrate. Son says what's the matter, Dad, got a prostate problem? Dad says Son's a little douchebag compared to his elder brother, always was: no class, no fucking manners. Son sloshes on some more lubricant and tries to drive his monster dick in next to his dad's. I cry out, I wasn't expecting that; I wriggle my bum away from them both. Son tries to drag me back. Dad flies into a fury and begins to beat Son up.

“You're gonna fucking learn to fucking wait your turn!”

The son is silent. I look round. “You stupid old prick, you're past it!” he says, but he's waited too long. Bleats of reassurance from me, roars of rage from dad. Squeals of defiance from son. Bam, crash. Happy families! Father and son together get me on my face on the bed. Enter at speed Lam—to whom I attribute the knack of walking through walls, being of the Higher Light Realms of Sirius Two, the Dog Star—and he lightly tosses both men against separate walls. So he's an alien, so he's not: maybe this is some Tibetan martial art, or not—I'm not about to quibble.

Enter Clive and Audrey at the run: they blame me for “making a fuss” and being “unprofessional,” tick off
Lam for “direct physical intervention action against clients,” and offer father and son a full refund and another girl. Dad just goes for a refund.

Cut to postscript: I am relating this vignette to Alden and Ray over a full English breakfast I've cooked for us. Alden takes particular care with the application of a dollop of mustard to a grilled organic chipolata rather than meet my eye. But my tale quite stirs Ray up—he actually goes to his canvas and starts adjusting the little mirrors. Though I notice he doesn't quite pick up his brush, it looks like progress.

What was meant to take two weeks stretched into four. The Lukas workshops are waiting for the prototype new generation of post-Bluetooth widgetry to be delivered: Bluebeard. My days, and even more so my nights are a blur, sharpened into focus by more sporadic snapshots. There's one of me walking through St. James' Park with Phoebe, being happy. The sky is striped red to the west: starlings wheel. In the next we're sitting having coffee by the bandstand, watching Sergeant Pepper's baton coaxing euphony from glinting trombones.

I had not recalled Phoebe's existence at all, until a fleeting memory was triggered by the first picture. Phoebe the transsexual, the she-male, the man-woman. She was another permanent hostess; she had a delicate smile, and looked wholly female with her straight dark hair, luminous blue eyes and pretty C-cup breasts, but she had male genitalia. She was very
popular with certain of the clients, mostly the closet bi and gays, but on lesbian nights she really came into her own. It all comes back. I strapped on a dildo; they are awkward to use and always made me feel slightly absurd, and lunged, while Phoebe just glided about proudly, charmingly, bestowing pleasure, a reassurance to nervy women who were soothed by her breasts and fascinated by her member. Good times were had by all. All sex toys demonstrated by Phoebe and me could be purchased after the performance.

Phoebe was serene, a walking, living revelation of how it is possible to be all things to all men, and women too. She delighted in herself, in her all-things-to-all-people-ness. She was kind to me, and she explained human nature to me; always generously, and with forgiveness. I told her about Jude once, and she said, “It must have been hard for her, because you had everything, and she had so little. You were pretty and she wasn't. She thought having your father might right the balance.” I didn't tell her that I was really Vanessa, because all that other world of Oxford and Kant and PhD's would have been so alien to her, it would have frightened her off and spoiled our friendship. But I could see that Vanessa's world wasn't all that much to be proud of. Phoebe was just as beneficial to mankind, and womankind, as I was.

Things she said come back. That she was an important part of God's creation. That gender ran in a straight line from extreme male to extreme female,
with room for all sorts and mix ups in the middle. That people like her enjoyed short life expectancy, no-one knew why, other than that those the Gods love die young. “The flame burns brightly and quickly,” she says, “and then burns out.” She shrugs. “Who wants to grow old anyway?”

A
ND STILL THE
L
UKAS
bed was stuck in the workshops—a woman employee had a baby, someone else's girlfriend had a baby, a flood in north east China delayed a delivery of electronic chips. Clouds open in China, and in Soho a butterfly helplessly flaps its wings. Me.

In the meanwhile Alden and Lukas obtained their various gratifications at my expense. My guess is Alden had decided his way out of the tantric trap was through voyeurism: and Ray thought he might as well exercise some found Golden Dawn powers as he waited for his Muse to return. We went out of doors, lunching on the grass. I was “under will.” Perhaps Lam preferred indoors, for he is absent from these snaps, and only returns when we're back in marble halls, when he swoops down to rescue me from being held under to drown.

Snapshots. Green fields and warm sun, long grass and wild flowers. I am Europa, daughter of Agenor,
King of Tyre. I dance naked with my handmaidens, garlanded only by flowers. Zeus sees me, must have me, changes into the form of a handsome white bull: my girls flee in alarm but I stand my ground—he approaches me, pawing the ground, I am no longer frightened: I place my garland round his great jowly neck, and before I know it he's upon me, and I'm so small and he so animal, and big—

Snapshots. A seascape this time. I am Andromeda chained to the rock, waiting for the dragon to come. A dot in the sky, then nearer and bigger, blotting out the sun, leathery skin and gleaming eyes, breathing fire and thrusting penis: I scream, I struggle to no avail—and then a rush of wind and Perseus with his winged sandals swoops down, and the dragon's slain just in time, and I am unchained—and rewarding my hero as custom demands, on my knees while the water laps around my legs and the little white waves froth and bubble around my mouth: Alden planned those ones, no doubt, proud of his A level in the Myths and Magic of Ancient Greece.

Snapshots. These will be Ray's creation. He read a lot of science fiction when he was boy. I am the young daughter of space colonists on a far planet with three suns. Disobeying my parents, I wander away from the stockade to dally amongst strange and beautiful plants and whispering rocks. The alien approaches, giant, hideous, deformed, claws and probes instead of fingers, a yawning, toothy, greedy, slavering mouth: I
try to run but a tentacle reaches out and curls around my waist and he draws me screaming to him and lopes off with me to his lair where others even fouler wait. They strip me, explore me and probe my body, finding pain and pleasure in every orifice. No longer virgin, I am at their mercy. Shades of Dr. Bardsey. I am part pleasured, part destroyed, orgasm will kill me, I know it will. I die of pleasure.

And then a sudden escalation of event. Now we're on a grander scale. More people are involved, as is I suppose some other like-minded organization, or film company. Money is spent. This time the narrative is continuous, memory is joined up, though blurred. It is not so easily wiped, deleted. But it still has the texture of dream.

It's a Tuesday. We left the house early. We're on our way to a grand country hotel in Sussex. There's to be a wedding. We travel down in Loki's taxi. Alden faces me in his wheelchair, Ray sits next to me. I ask who the bride is and Alden replies, “You are, my dear,” and Ray turns my face to his with one finger under my chin, looks at me and says, “Joan, you are eighteen.” It is really sweet to be eighteen again: I am so full of trust, and tremulous excitement about the future. I am a virgin. I am conscious of the little tight pinkness of my pussy. I can't even say cunt. Ray asks me to say it and laughs at me but I just can't say it; I shake my head. “Joan's gone,” he says. “We have Tess here.”

Alden tells me I am from Ireland, where I was
schooled by cloistered nuns, am a good little girl who has never had a boyfriend. I have come to London to enroll on a nursing course and I have been terribly lonely, but now at last I have met a dear man I love so much, and who loves me. He has untold wealth, his name is Jasper, and Ray adds that he's a baronet, a Knight of the Realm.