Carrion: A Story of Passion (2 page)

Memories of the night swim lazily around. There is no narrative and so it is pointless searching for comprehension. I give my hand permission to touch her. I stroke her from shoulder to thigh. My touch disturbs her and she stirs. I go to snatch my hand away but, despite her half-sleeping state, her reflexes are quick and she grasps it, holding it against her warm skin.

The bed pitches reminding me of a ship far out at sea, and Alexander sits up, muttering something about putting coffee on and going to the bathroom. I turn my head, press my cheek into his pillow, take in his scent and watch him walk out of the room. The girl next to me shivers and pushes her body further into mine, searching for warmth in the cold autumn air. I pull up the layers of sheets and throws. I stroke her hair and she twists her head around until our lips have no choice but to kiss. And whilst we kiss, she pirouettes until her body is over mine. We are a play of light and temperature. She is textures that are as familiar as my own body; an extrinsic embodiment of my own feminine – and yet she is alien.

When Alexander returns, I hold out my arm, inviting him in. A touchstone.

The three of us make love until the coffee burns and the fire alarm goes off.

Our lover leaves mid-afternoon. She has a dinner date. The three of us have spent most of the day sitting at the plastic kitchen table smoking, and drinking coffee. We talked about Paris and Budapest, of the collapse of the country and the oppression of liberty. We talked about how nothing is real except for the unreal, how nothing is sane except for insanity. Alexander is impressed by my knowledge of the Surrealist Manifesto and promises me that we shall visit Paris in the spring.

Our lover recommends that we visit the,
Musée de Erotism
. I smile at the thought of sending my mother a, ‘Greetings from Paris!’ post-card with a giant dildo on the front.

I notice how the four chairs around the table do not match. Mine is a salvaged chapel chair, the kind with a bible pocket on the back. It is empty, so I guess that if I'm searching for redemption then I'm out of luck. The random pieces of ancestral furniture dotted around Alexander’s flat, belie its slowly decaying state. It is rented and so there's little he wants to do about it. Two of the kitchen wall-cabinets have lost their doors. I tell him that he should take off all the doors and have open shelves, as if it were an actual choice.

Alexander cooks us brioche, scooped out to accommodate an egg before being put into the oven. He sprinkles them with truffle oil and chopped flat-leaf parsley and serves them on mis-matched crockery. Celia (for we’ve now learned her name) eats it mostly with her fingers, which both Alexander and I approve of, although we do not follow suit. She sits at the table in one of Alexander’s office shirts and her cream French knickers. The sight of her nipples through the fine oxford cotton entrances me. I wonder if she can see mine. The thought makes me feel slightly shy. I’m wearing the silk pyjamas we brought from the boutique around the corner yesterday. This has been Alexander’s solution to my captivity - we have brought as I have needed. His wardrobe now plays host to a small essential (designer labelled) set of clothes. His bathroom now stores my toothbrush, a bottle of my favourite perfume and a Dior compact travel set. There is something liberating about stripping down to the bare materials in life. I apply this new found thinking to my family as well as goods.

I really should really ring my mother.

I sent her text a couple of weeks ago informing her that I was going away for a few weeks. In a way it wasn't a lie.

When Celia leaves us, we split to different parts of the flat. Alexander starts taking down the doors of the kitchen cabinets and I sit, curled up on the end of the large leather Chesterfield, reading a gloomy novel by Camus. He has a very intense taste when it comes to literature. His bookshelf is full of dusty old volumes that he has picked up in charity shops; it’s like a miniature Battersea for dead, miserable and mostly forgotten authors. He doesn't have a television; he streams everything he wants to watch - although I don't get the impression that he wants to watch much. He says, “Fantasy is for living, not for watching.” He says that most television is stupefying: Soma for the masses.” I don’t entirely disagree, but sat in the quiet of the flat with nothing more than Camus or watching raindrops race down the window for entertainment, I crave a bit of Soma.

Every now and then there is a clatter from the kitchen (he's not really the D.I.Y type) I look at him, working in his grey sweats, his naked torso, tightly, precisely defined. He's wearing his hipster Prada glasses so that he can see the screws. His hair is still holding from the amount of oil in it last night. He is irreducible complexity; each component beautiful and singular that should it be removed he would cease to be anything other than ordinary, yet together... he is a rare and pretty specimen. There are some people who walk into a room and everybody instinctively bows to the new emperor – this is Alexander. I am his subject, and I am devoted.

Sunday afternoon slides by in rain and grey light: in silence and in beauty. The real world is knocking on the door. Tomorrow the alarm will go off, and the routine will begin. I will go to work and dream of this place until the clock hits the hour and I can come back.

"What are you thinking?" he asks, handing me a cup of fresh coffee from the stove pot. He has sweetened it with honey and cream.

I look out of the small, dirty window onto a grey sky and sigh. "I'm thinking I don't want to wake up, because waking is death and dreaming is life."

He chuckles and bends down to kiss me, slipping his hand under the silk of my pyjamas. It travels over my shoulder and down onto my breast. His lips brush my ear and I think that he will lead me to bed but he doesn't and I'm left suspended by desire. I read. Alexander sits at the kitchen table on the MacBook with his headphones in. Hours pass.

At eight. o. clock, he tells me to dress as we are going out for dinner. I'd been thinking about bed and the six-thirty morning alarm call. There isn't time for protest as he's already left the room and the shower is running. I break the spine of his book purely out of rebellion and leave it on the sofa.

Deciding what to wear isn't a challenge; I have a choice of two dresses (not including the Marie Antoinette number) and one pair of evening shoes. Back at my flat the process would have involved at least an hour rummaging through mountains of cheaply produced, high-fashion decisions. I would have choice of colour, of cut, of connotation. Here, I have the choice between a black lace long-sleeved number, and a deep red velvet shift dress. Technically, I have more choice about which underwear set to choose and all at once the decision seems too complex. I squeeze past Alexander who is standing over the sink applying shaving foam with a badger brush. I slip off my pyjamas and flick on the shower. I catch him stealing glimpses of me in the mirror and I smile. I wonder if thinks about loving me.

"Would you mind putting my clothes out for me?" I ask.

"What do you want to wear?"

"You choose," I say shrugging as I step into the shower.

I see how his eyebrow rises with an element of curious satisfaction.

There are still residual effects from the Molly, and the sensations of the shower are so overwhelming that before I know what is happening I'm crying. When I ask myself why, I don't have an answer, just a sudden and profound feeling of loss.

Suddenly, I remember that tomorrow is my birthday. I am going to be twenty-two. Alexander has no idea.

I walk into the bedroom to see him putting the final touches to his dress in front of the mirror. He looks impeccable – as always. Paul Smith navy pin-stripped suit, thin navy tie, white Oxford herringbone shirt. On the bed he has lain out the red velvet dress and the pink Agent Provocateur box containing the satin corset set; knowing how almost every other set with its lace would show under the smooth velvet. Alexander understands the importance of details.

He puts on his watch and shakes out his sleeve.

"Is that okay?" he asks.

"Perfect." And of course it is. "Where are we going for dinner?"

"I've booked us in at
Exhibit
." He says this like it should be explanation enough but I still have no idea where we are going. He registers my look. "You'll like it. It's... relevant."

"What type of food does it serve?"

He grins. "Wait and see!" He sparkles with playfulness and it is these mercurial moods that fascinate me about him.

It's raining but it barely needs noting. We've got to thinking that it might never be anything other than raining. This is the backdrop to our new apocalypse. We've heard rumours that outside the Capital the rest of the country is drowning.

The red illuminated double-decker whirs by, kicking a splash of water onto the pavement, narrowly missing my seamed stockings. We see it pull up at our bus stop and judging by the amount of people herding on, we make a run for it; Alexander bangs on the door as it closes. The driver looks pissed but then Alexander flashes him his Emperor-smile. We swipe our Oyster cards and head along the bus. There are no seats left, so we are left swinging from the poles breathless and giggling as the driver weaves in and out of the traffic, slamming on his brakes with the pure purpose, I'm sure, of trying to fell us over. Our giddiness attracts glances from some of the other passengers but they neither disapprove nor approve.

"Where’s our stop?" I ask.

"On the Strand. It's a short walk from there." He salutes me with the umbrella that I hadn't realised he'd brought with him. I reach out my hand and take his fingers in mine, loosely entwining them in a bid to hold his hand, but they are reluctant prisoners and he moves his hand to his inside pocket and checks his phone. This rejection stabs like a small pin in my consciousness and I look up at him. My face must convey the wound because he winces a reassuring smile that tells me that, “
we
don't do holding hands
”.

The bus stops before I have time to consider all the terrible things attached to this lack of intimacy; of the damage and hopelessness that it promises.

We dance across puddles, his arm locked in mine as he holds the umbrella. We head down a side alley, past some wretch who has made camp in one of the retail doorways. He is mostly hidden in a pile of rags and cardboard. I squirm with the thought that my underwear alone is the month rental price of a room; my dress, a whole months average salary, my perfume, a weeks worth of family shopping, the meal we are about to consume enough to...

I'm distracted by the giant fibreglass Zebra head protruding from the wall and I guess that this is our destination. We stop outside the black painted Georgian frontage. The name
'Exhibit'
has been painted in gold flowing letters across the signboard. A bell tinkles over the door, and a waitress pulls back the heavy velvet door curtains. 

A glimmering chandelier hangs low over the reception table, sending out prisms of light. Underneath it, two entwined stuffed swans wear golden crowns and swim on waters made from blue hyacinths. It is hard not to gawp; the whole restaurant is full of taxidermy, and flowers, and crystal.

I wonder if there is a secret guide book to
this
London; the London that hides behind the Gap stores, the Pret a Manger sandwich bars and the glass corporate temples. It's as if a ribbon of timeless decadence runs playfully through the alleyways and under the railways, down the stairways and behind the shop fronts. It's intoxicating; it's a drug all of its own.

The maître de comes forward and holds out his gloved hands to remove our coats before handing us a plastic tablet printed with our cloakroom number.

"Mr and Mrs Hughes?" The reception asks and Alexander nods his head, gifting her his smile. I play the sound of Mrs Hughes over in my head on loop. The girl next to her glances down at the reservation book and invites us through the dining room to a small table in the back corner. As the waitress prepares me for dinner, it gives me the opportunity to study the innards of the glass dome that decorates our table. It contains three tiny humming birds, skilfully arranged around a wire and wax tropical flower. The candlelight reflects off the green and blue feathers giving the impression of petrol. I look intensely into their glass eyes and see nothing but death.

Two glasses of champagne arrive and Alexander hands me the menu.

"So what do you think, darling? I thought we'd better put some research into this whole taxidermy thing before our lesson on Wednesday."

I clear my voice and nod. "Well it's certainly different. Have you been here before?" 

He nods his head but doesn't elucidate. I stop myself thinking about whom he has brought here before; the poisonous thought that maybe this is just another scene in his well-rehearsed play flutters in my thoughts but I do not let it fully form. Instead, I focus on the menu and laugh at the collection of dishes; crocodile wrapped in vine leaves, honey poached plums and pickled Samphire, Zebra Jerky and Serengetti mix, Marinated Kangaroo skewers with candied beetroot & guindilla salad, and so on until the menu begins to read like a perverted guide to the London Zoo animal houses. Twice in my dating history I had been taken to London Zoo. Both times my date had thought himself very avant-garde: at the time I guess I had thought so too. The danger of tasting divinity is that it makes you feel newly made. There is nothing of value from the time before.