The Pleasure Quartet (28 page)

If anyone could lead us to the Ball, it would be her.

Matilda’s mood had now settled down.

We cleared away the long-neglected breakfast things and Thomas and Iris went to dress. They had agreed to meet friends from work on Portobello Road. I declined to join them.

It left Matilda and me alone.

I asked her about that last occasion on which we had crossed paths and the tears in her eyes and her distraught appearance.

‘A man. What else?’ Tilly answered. There was a resigned look on her face. ‘Another day, another story?’ she suggested with a meek smile.

One I would look forward to hearing, I knew. I enjoyed listening to stories as much I liked to tell them.

London was vibrant.

There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air, as if the whole word were slowly changing and a new era was about to begin. ‘The Age of Aquarius’ if one was to believe in all
the infectious enthusiasm rising from the ink-stained pages of
IT
,
OZ
and other ‘underground’ publications that Thomas was always bringing home.

The three of us had settled into some semblance of normalcy, sharing his flat, and reached a modicum of peace and compromises. Iris and Thomas were evidently a couple, and, because of my own
feelings for her, I was reluctant to do anything that might disturb this fragile equilibrium. The sexual dynamics between them still puzzled me at times, and were further complicated by the regular
instances when they invited me into their games and Thomas willingly offered to switch and be ‘used’ by me, if ‘used’ was the right word to describe what we got up to. I
went along with the flow, always acutely aware, though, that I formed the extra wheel of the carriage, and could easily be dispensed with at any moment.

I would watch with a knot in my throat as Thomas mounted Iris in my presence and I would hold her hand as she opened up for him, listening to her soft moans as the sounds rising from her lungs
conjugated with his vigorous thrusts. Later, with Thomas now an agreed voyeur, I would hold Iris in my arms and shelter her warmth and frailty and then lower my head to her delta and nibble, bite
and play with her in an attempt to multiply the intensity of her reactions, extract more authentic sounds of pleasure from her soul than he had. And then there were the nights when we brought out
the toys, closed the curtains tight and abandoned ourselves to a cornucopia of excess where, by morning, everyone had taken advantage of every other and back again, and we could barely look each
other in the eye over the breakfast table. We knew what we were doing was far from normal and that other more conventional friends would never land on these dangerous shores, but the compulsion to
experiment held us in its thrall.

I also grew closer to Matilda during those months, although not enough to find out all her own secrets, which she fed me on a drip, deliberately holding back information until she felt I was
ready enough, I reckon. She appeared to have been forgotten, considered just a minor character in the small scandal that had arisen from her very particular parties, and was ignored by the press
who had larger beasts to stalk. As to the shadowy authorities who had taken an unhealthy interest in her, she hinted that they had beat a retreat after a male admirer of hers in a high place had
consented to speak on her behalf.

I saw little of Gwillam, though, as he was preoccupied by his final bar exams, and as for Clarissa and Edward, they were now overseas, having left the country for a lengthy break in the Indian
Ocean after Clarissa had completed all her freelance assignments. She had sent me a pleasant note, apologising strenuously for her lack of availability and promising that we would spend time
together when she and Edward returned, tanned from head to toe as she mischievously put it. So, our hunt for the Ball was for now on hold.

The musical
Hair
opened in a theatre at the far end of Shaftesbury Avenue and Thomas, through a client of his law chambers, was able to obtain sought-after complimentary tickets for a
performance just weeks after the controversial play debuted. We all tramped along in a high sense of excitement and watched from the top tier of the balcony. You could feel a buzz in the air at the
end of the first half when all the actors stripped off and were momentarily glimpsed in the buff as the lights slowly dimmed and before the curtain fell. Breath was held back in the audience,
although the four of us (Tilly had joined us for the occasion) were disappointed. We had all witnessed so much more nudity and liberation and at closer quarters over the past year and wondered
aloud, over the interval, what the fuss was all about. But the music was nice. The rest of the audience seemed more impressed and conversations sizzled in the bar and the lobby.

There were free concerts at Hyde Park, Crystal Palace and Primrose Hill. When the sun was out, the loose-limbed music rose through the air alongside the bubbles we blew, reaching for the heights
where the multi-coloured kites flew and we all lazily sprawled out among the soft grass, munched on home-made sandwiches and often partook of marijuana cigarettes that Thomas or friends of his had
brought along.

By now I had left the part-time employ of the Princess Empire and was working as a waitress in a newly opened Italian bar in Covent Garden, where I could chose my shifts to suit myself; the work
was always available and the tips plentiful as long as I wore short skirts, which I didn’t mind. It also meant I had a plentiful supply on coffee on hand, a newly acquired taste that made me
regret all those years when I had been wary of the drink. I quickly became an addict.

At the beginning of the summer, we all took an extra few days off work and travelled down by train to the coast and caught a ferry to the Isle of Wight. A huge new rock ’n’ roll
festival was taking place there. Thomas had offered to get us a room in a local bed and breakfast but Iris had read about similar open air events that had taken place in America and insisted we all
stay under a tent. We took a one-hour hike from the port to the actual site, following a caravan of folk moving onwards like lemmings seeking the promised land. It took us twice as long as most of
the others to erect our borrowed tent, as the fragile construction kept on collapsing when one of us got the geometry wrong or failed to dig deep enough for the pegs to properly take hold, and we
all burst out in hysterical laughter over and over again. It was at this point that Matilda took umbrage and left us in the field overlooking the cliff and went in search of a hotel room. I had
never thought of her as suited for camping anyway. It diminished her mystique.

That first night it rained heavily and, inevitably, water seeped into the tent and we all woke up damp, the insides of our sleeping bags disagreeably clammy. We were still struggling with the
pleasures of camping in adverse weather when, simultaneously, the sun finally came out and Matilda arrived with a welcome basket of croissants and minuscule jars of jam she had picked up at her
hotel and unfolded a blanket for a most welcome feast. Unlike us, bleary-eyed and wet, hair lank and grumpy, Tilly appeared pristine, smartly pressed jeans, new hiking boots with nary a scuff,
man’s checked shirt and make-up all meticulously in place.

We somehow cleaned up as best we could. Down the hill, which overlooked the gerrymandered concert arena, sounds of laughter, guitars being strummed, wispy notes from flutes and the distant
clatter of tambourines reached us.

‘The first band is not on until after lunch time,’ Iris said. ‘Maybe we could climb down and go to the sea?’

Unlike Matilda, we had come unprepared and not brought any swimming suits but reckoned we could get away with swimming in our underwear. We struggled down the chalk face of the cliff alongside a
narrow path and emerged onto a wide beach.

Everyone was naked.

And skinny dipping.

It felt like a vision of paradise. So natural. Simple. Normal.

Laughter sailed between the waves and the wall of the cliff as we all stripped and joined the clusters of other youthful groups scattered along the shore, sprawling loose-limbed on the beach or
gallivanting in the water.

I felt so liberated.

If the nudity in the theatre had felt forced, contrived, here it was exhilarating, like a cartoon book vision of life at the dawn of time, free of morality and sin. I relaxed. Watched Thomas and
Iris running into the water, dodging the low waves and laughing their heads off, splashing each other like unruly kids. Matilda sat by my side.

‘Not swimming?’ I asked her.

‘Maybe later,’ she said.

Around midday, the distant sounds of the first band on the festival’s slate began to percolate across the hill and down towards us, and a steady migration began away from the beach and
back towards the concert area. But many of us preferred to stay here. None of the main bands we had been looking forward to would be playing until the late afternoon or evening anyway. Thomas and
Iris were still in the water.

A small group of other pleasure seekers, too cold to swim but not yet ready to leave the sea behind, gathered next to us. Two beautiful young men with long light brown hair that clung in damp,
salty locks over their shoulders crouched down on their haunches to my left. A tall blonde woman, her toenails painted purple, a strand of multi-coloured diamante jewels hanging from her pierced
belly button, sat cross legged between them. Another girl who looked younger than the first, probably in her late teens, stood behind them. She reached up and began pulling pins from the loose knot
of auburn hair piled on top of her head. We were all huddled together gazing at the receding tide.

Daydreaming. Silent. Content. Statues of skin observing the horizon.

One of the brown-haired boys wandered his hand over the blonde’s breast.

Her fingers moved from her own thigh to his dormant penis. Grazed it. The cock jumped, swelled, she took hold of it, gently, lovingly until it unfurled to full length, the foreskin retreating,
exposing the darker shades of his glans.

His hand negligently descended towards her opening.

Both Matilda and I watched in silence.

‘Fuck me,’ the blonde whispered.

They shifted.

She lay back, sprawled, inviting him in. He now squatted over her and with deliberate slowness lowered himself and she guided his girth into her. They began making love.

More men and women walked out of the sea ahead of us and noticed what was happening in full public view.

They stood there, eyes agape. But smiling.

‘Beautiful,’ one of them said, a tall androgynous girl with almost no breasts.

‘Yes,’ one of the men said and took her by the hand, turned her around and gently positioned her on all fours and mounted her.

There was a palpable change in the air, as if our pheromones had formed into a low-hanging, invisible mist, affecting us all with the lustful energy of the group.

Faraway over the hill, I thought I could recognise a meandering, plaintive tune by the Incredible String Band rising towards the cloudless pale blue sky.

Tilly turned to me. She leaned over and placed her lips against mine. We kissed. The other brown-haired boy stroked Matilda’s hair as she embraced me. She did not object to his intrusion.
Her companion stood by me, her strong thighs apart, her auburn hair cascading over her shoulders. She wore glasses.

Matilda rose and went to join the man. I buried my face in the woman’s welcoming bush of thick curls. She smelled of the sea.

Within minutes, as I took a pause to catch my breath and look around, the whole beach had become a mad stage, with couples, trios and moresomes all kissing, fucking, loving.

We never saw much of the bands that week-end.

I spent a night at Tilly’s after we returned from the festival. Iris and Thomas had been so close-knit during our trip away that Tilly and I had almost by default formed
a pair, neither of us wanting to unduly intrude on the couple further.

She was staying, temporarily, back at her parents’ house in the Chilterns, while they were away holidaying in Europe.

‘Shall we come in for a drink, Till?’ Thomas asked as he dropped the two of us off. He seemed to know instinctively that something was wrong with his sister, but was unsure of the
problem. I was equally in the dark. She had invited me to spend the night with her just moments before, and her expression was so woebegone that I couldn’t turn her down.

‘Oh no, you two go on,’ she said, hastily exiting Thomas’s car and grabbing both of our bags from the boot. She seemed decidedly unwilling to have them join us.

Iris shrugged, and bid us goodbye, evidently not in the slightest bit bothered by Matilda’s rebuttal.

I followed her across the gravel driveway, up the steps and through the corridor to the kitchen.

It was a mess.

Empty champagne and white wine bottles were strewn across the bench top, on the long white dining room table and in the sink. Dirty crystal flutes were scattered over all the flat surfaces.
There was even a mug of something alcoholic but unrecognisable on the floor by the telephone. At least she had not yet resorted to drinking straight from the bottle. There were empty candy wrappers
and half-eaten chocolate bars all around, empty supermarket ready-meal plastic containers and takeaway cartons bursting out of sagging rubbish sacks waiting to be taken out to the trash. A white,
gilt-edged ceramic saucer was overflowing with old cigarette butts. Fruit flies gathered in a cloud over a bunch of black bananas and a shrunken apple piled in a glass bowl.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ she mumbled, standing in the doorway and staring at the mess of dishes as if amazed that they hadn’t managed to clean themselves while she was out.

‘Not to worry,’ I told her. ‘Have you had a party?’

Even before she shook her head I knew that the answer was ‘no’. The shambles that surrounded us was reminiscent of the state of the bedsit in Hammersmith that I had shared with Iris
in the days immediately following her departure. A landscape of depression rather than celebration.