The Deadly Space Between (15 page)

‘Oh, I can’t wear this. I’d look like Dracula’s bride. We’d be arrested.’

The next black dress was one of the prototypes for the models we had seen at the last show. It was constructed out of handmade lace and decorated with shining black sequins. The collar arched stiff around her neck and the sleeves stretched down to heavy points upon her wrists. But the deep V-neck held with a Celtic knot all but opened out across her breasts, revealing their warm weight and the pale blonde line of hair descending towards her groin, which was only visible when she turned at a certain angle towards the light. She could have worn black knickers underneath the dress, but nothing else.

‘It looks great,’ I said, ‘really sexy. But you might pop out at the wrong moment.’

She bounced up and down on the spot, as if she was skipping, and sure enough the dress stretched back under her armpit and her left breast suddenly leaped forth like the witch at a puppet show. It was made for a woman with less to reveal. We collapsed on her mattress snorting hysterically.

‘Luce must have done that on purpose. To get a load of the youthful titties!’

I kicked off the spats and tightened the belt on my Fred Astaire trousers, which Luce had made for her, perfect with pleats and turn-ups. I realized then that I could easily have worn her dresses too. We were so astonishingly alike. We resembled two cut-out dolls, the same size, the same shape, the same colours. She lolled back, her naked breast was still exposed. I leaned over her, ogling like a lecherous seducer. I was aware that I was going too far, trying it on.

‘Madame, may I kiss your breast?’

‘You can if you like.’

I had expected her to laugh and order me off, out and to hell. But she stretched out, one leg buckled up beneath her, and closed her eyes. The dress smelt of naphthalene. The flickering sequins scratched my cheeks. My hair fell across my eyes as I leaned slowly down and took her nipple in my mouth. I moved my tongue against her dark circle in a long slow curl. The tip hardened and rose to meet my tongue. I felt her hand on the back of my head as she pressed my face against her breast. I sucked her hard, suddenly aware that my penis was burning, pushing against the flies of Fred Astaire. I reached for the naked cleft where her pubic hair darkened and swept downwards, a place I had never knowingly touched. Gently she caught my hand and held it tight. Her eyes were still closed. I tightened my lips on her breast. I felt her weight shift beneath me as her legs parted. She pulled the dress up to the top of her thighs exposing her slit sex. Cautiously I kissed her breast once more, then let it go. She pressed my head down onto her stomach. I caught my breath for a moment. I could see the fine down of her pubic hair, darker at the rim where her body divided with the pink fissure opening beneath. I dared not move too quickly. I dared not speak.

But this was my time, my turn. I need no longer deny or repress the scale of all that I felt for her: all the desire, all the fascination and all the longing. I shifted my weight gently above her and gazed into her open sex. She lifted her hips to greet me. I was astonished at how dark the folds of delicate flesh appeared to be. She was swollen and engorged. I peeled back the hood over her clitoris with my fingertips and began to lick her small protruding mound. My mouth was instantly drenched with a rich salty liquid. Her legs parted still further and she pushed herself against me. I increased the pressure and speed of my movements. But I took my time. I wanted her to desire my touch so much that she would not be able to resist. I wanted her to beg me to make love to her. I wanted her to say yes. She tasted salty and odd. Gradually, her breathing changed and deepened and her stomach heaved. She came quickly in my mouth, crying out to me as she did so. My penis throbbed and burned as I sucked her dilated sex.

I had never desired her so much before. I was in pain.

I knew, even then I knew, that I had to wait until she wanted me to touch her, strip her, enter her body with my own. But now I was certain that we were playing a waiting game. I had only to wait.

She sat up slowly, full of hesitation and regret. Her eyes were black and strange. Not now, not yet.

‘We’re supposed to be deciding what to wear,’ she said reproachfully.

I cupped the liberated breast in my hand, caught her wrist in mine and made her feel the shape of my penis still captured in the pleats and folds of my dancing trousers. She ran her fingers lovingly all along its length then took hold of both my cheeks and kissed me hard on the lips, sliding her tongue into my mouth as she did so. She tasted of paint and garlic. I took a deep breath, then kissed her back, squeezing her nipple between my finger and thumb. I was angry that she had stopped me.

‘Why not?’ I demanded.

‘Because if we start doing that we will never be ready on time.’ She stood up. The dress fell to the floor in a torrent of sequins.

‘Iso, have we ever done this before?’

I began to remember something irrevocably lost, something that had ceased to chime in my mind, but was still there, like the sound of a bell underwater. Here was a house on the beach, sand on the lino, and the damp smell of collected shells, wet trunks lying in knotted heaps, and a terrible windy night when the surf rose up towards the dunes. I remembered the sound of its crashing slap upon the sand, coming closer and closer. I slept in her arms, my mouth encircling each of her nipples in turn, her salt skin sore against my own, her kisses tasting of the sea. I felt my tiny hairless prick sinking inwards, buried in the warm ravine between her legs as she rocked like a gentle wave beneath me.

‘We have, haven’t we? When I was much younger and we were on holiday.’

‘We always used to sleep together in the great big bed,’ she sighed, peering into the wardrobe and pulling out a sober suit of Lincoln green.

‘Did you like it when we did?’

She looked at me directly, her face full of tenderness.

‘I love you, my sweet. You are my first and only love. I shall always love you.’

I lay flat and gazed at the Indian tent bedspread hanging in folds and coils above me. Here was a great white embroidered elephant and here were Krishna and Rada. Krishna, for some reason best known to himself, was bright blue. I felt delighted and justified. My erection subsided. I had not been deceived. It was I who had changed more radically than she ever had. Yet she accepted me back into her body, whenever I leaned against her belly, her thighs, her breasts. She was the open door. She had never pushed me away, forcing me to leave her, find someone else, grow up. The silk twist she had let down for me had never frayed or broken. It held, tight and strong.

She put on the suit.

‘How do I look?’

‘Like Robin Hood. You got any red shoes? You always look wonderful in primary colours.’

She preened and turned before the mirror. I gazed at her. She now looked older, more elegant.

‘You’re so beautiful, the fairest of them all.’

There in the mirror she stood, framed and fixed in red and green as if she was a nineteenth-century portrait of an aristocrat in hunting costume. She was the Wolf Man’s mother, ready for the forests and the great sweep of snow. The figure in the mirror bowed low before me.

_{*  *  *}

The box at the opera was coated in deep red velvet. Iso’s suit shone luminous against the reds. She looked extraordinarily vivid in her lavish fragility of green. She looked as if she was part of the set. Roehm’s pale grey eyes never left her face. I watched him feeling irritably in his pockets for the cigarettes he couldn’t actually smoke inside the house. I leaned my elbows on the padded rim of the box and watched the incoming hordes. Some people, even those sitting in the stalls, were far more casually dressed than we were. I followed a boy in T-shirt and jeans who was nibbling a Choco-Bar. This was a little disappointing. I gazed at Roehm’s white tie and silk lapels with passionate approval. I wanted them both to look elegant and rich.

‘You look great. Like one of the James Bond villains.’

Roehm smiled slightly.

‘I don’t have the white cat.’

‘No, but you’ve got the fag and the eyes.’

‘Speaking of which . . .’ Roehm got up and went out to smoke on the stairs. When he stood up there was no more room in the box. He handed me the programme.

‘Tell your mother what it’s all about,’ he commanded.

As he left the box he caught my eye. I recognized a sudden glitter of satisfaction in his gaze. I thought, he knows. Somehow, he knows.

The programme was one of those thick information packs got up for the uninitiated which told you all about the first performances and reproduced unreadable posters in Gothic type. I began reading the script Roehm had officially delivered.

‘ “Weber took five years to compose
Der Freischütz
. He worked on the opera from 1817 to 1821, while he was Royal Saxon Kapellmeister in Dresden. But he chose Berlin, the intellectual capital of Germany, to present his masterpiece for the first time. At the first performance on the 18th June 1821, the overture was encored and the first act received with interested bafflement. But the audience rose to their feet at the climax of the Wolf’s Glen scene to belt forth their shout of triumph. Here was an opera, which expressed the artistic ambition of Germany. Here were the darkest regions of the psyche bursting forth into the daylight world.” ’

There were pictures of the first sets. These improbable facades, which moved in all directions at once, were apparently immensely sophisticated for their time. The Wolf’s Glen scene was a tour de force. A wind machine sent all the painted branches into shivering fits and brought a rapturous gasp from that first terrified audience. The torrid effusions of the first critics were excessive, hysterical, bizarre. I read them out to Isobel, who was beginning to fidget.

‘ “Weber has captured the soul of the German nation. All our longings and dreams are represented here. This is the music that will fan the fires of our patriotism and bring us to a blaze, in which we shall recognize ourselves at last.” ’

‘I didn’t think it was political,’ she said.

‘Germany was becoming one nation then for the first time.’ I repeated one of my political history lessons on nineteenth-century German unification. ‘There was a common language and to some extent a common culture. Intellectuals used to move around the little princely states with a certain amount of freedom. But some states had savage censorship and some didn’t. It says here that Weber was rebelling against the dominance of Italian opera. The Prussian court had an official Italian composer called Spontini, who had once produced gigantic operas for Napoleon, adapted from classical myths. I’ve never heard of any of them. They were huge affairs, empire stuff. And very expensive.
Freischütz
was based on a German folk tale and developed out of the “Singspiel”, which was a native German form. So maybe it was cheaper. Weber was hailed as a national composer who had composed the first national opera. It wasn’t political exactly, it just got read in political ways.’

Iso went skimming through the plot.

‘It’s awful nonsense, Toby. Listen to this. Max is a huntsman who has to win a shooting competition to earn the right to marry Agathe. He keeps missing. The evil Kaspar suggests that he comes down to the Wolf’s Glen and has a word with the satanic demon huntsman, Samiel, who does a nice line in magic bullets. You
have
to buy seven. Six will take out whatever you want to hit but the seventh bullet belongs to Samiel. Max buys in. Anything to get his fingers on Agathe. Meanwhile, the fair virgin maiden is faced with all sorts of silly omens and presentiments, pictures falling off walls and melancholy thoughts. An atmosphere of impending doom builds up, lightened only by the cheerful confidante. A comic role, I suppose. They send her a wreath rather than a bride’s crown.
Totenkranz
. That’s a wreath, isn’t it? She gets a Holy Hermit to make up a crown of white roses for her instead. Have you got that? You’ve got to remember the sodding hermit because he comes in at the end. Max and Kaspar turn up at the shooting competition armed with the magic bullets. Now what you also have to know is that Kaspar has done some sort of deal with the Demon so that he has to be given
somebody’s
soul on the big day. He can’t have Agathe because she’s so saintly and in the grip of the Hermit. But he can get either Kaspar or Max. So Kaspar fires off all six bullets, leaving the last one for Max. I suppose he thinks that it’ll ricochet off one of the trees and do for the aspiring bridegroom. Anyway, here comes the Prince and all the Huntsmen. Full chorus of yokels on stage. Max gets told to shoot the white dove. Heavy symbolism, geddit? White dove! They only ever represent one thing! Don’t look so vacant, darling. I keep forgetting that you are mercifully post-Christian. Agathe rushes up yelling, “Max, don’t shoot!” So she must have got wind of the bullet. Bang! And she collapses. But so does Kaspar. Samiel must be on stage too. Everyone else is. Chaos. Climax. Shock. Horror. On comes the Holy Hermit and revives Agathe. Must be a sort of resurrection theme. He tells everyone off for sin. Sentences and judgements all round. Kaspar’s dead. Samiel’s legged it, presumably clutching said sinner’s soul. Hermit abolishes the tradition of the
Freischütz
and calls for general repentance. Entire cast kneels and asks forgiveness from God.’