The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (20 page)

‘Email it to me and we’ll have lunch to talk about it. How about that?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I’ll buy lunch.’

‘If you insist.’

He hugged me close and kissed me on both cheeks. It was the strangest thing, to be kissed on the cheeks by a man who had once known every inch of my body as well as he knew his own. It was stranger still to breathe in his oh so familiar aftershave, Chanel’s Egoiste. Long after we parted that afternoon, I could still smell that Chanel and it made me confused. It awakened part of me that I thought I had long since put to sleep.

Steven always wore too much aftershave, I thought to myself as I got ready for bed that evening and found that his scent was even then still lingering in my hair. It was remarkable that such a brief contact had left such a lasting impression. Annoying, even. But later I found myself pressing my hair against my face to intensify the memory. Proust was not wrong. The slightest whiff of a familiar odour can take us back in time more effectively than a face or a song.

When I lay down in bed, I was still thinking about Steven. He had been pleased to see me. He must have been, or he wouldn’t have insisted on joining me for a drink. And he said he wanted to see me again, but was I ready to make the transition from estranged ex-lover to friend? On the one hand, I should have been glad. It was the grown-up thing to do. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wish he’d seemed more troubled after the way things ended between us.

I suppose it was inevitable that I dreamed about Steven. He was at the forefront of my mind and his distinctive aftershave enveloped me as I drifted to sleep.

Chapter 27

Steven’s body was so beautiful to me. It had always been enough for me just to be naked with him. To make love in the most ordinary way. Face-to-face. With affection and respect. Kissing. Sharing eye contact. But the passage of the years had eroded our passion for one another and then the night in the sex club had changed everything in an irrevocable way.

It was my fault. It was my idea. I don’t think he would have suggested it first. I’d wanted to give our relationship the equivalent of an electric shock. A little surprise to reset us, back to the way we were. I thought we would just go and watch.

I was shocked when Steven bought me a set of underwear that looked like the kind of thing a hooker would put on for a night with an oligarch. A bra without cups and a pair of panties with a string of pearls that was intended to drive me wild by rubbing against my clitoris when I walked. And when we got to the club, I couldn’t help noticing what caught his attention. Women dressed in little more than leather straps, which cut into their skin. A girl in an actual dog collar.

It was an uncomfortable realisation to think that Steven might be more turned on by my body in this get-up than he was by my naked flesh. Bondage was not something I had ever thought about in great detail. I was not entirely naive – I had seen the pictures and understood that a black leather basque and a pair of pointed stilettoes were shorthand for sexy in many a language – but there was something demeaning about it that I thought I would never find sexually appealing. Yet, that night in the club, part of me had definitely enjoyed submitting to Steven’s fantasy. We’d gone to a party before the club and while I’d worried that the other guests might guess what I was wearing beneath my demure black dress, it was a moment that I’d returned to several times since in idle moments. Remembered and embellished.

I dreamed about that moment now. I was walking into a room full of people, dressed in my black dress with the high collar. It wasn’t a short dress; it reached almost to my knees, but it was close-fitting and left little to the imagination with regard to my curves. The fabric was thin – too thin – a fine knit that demanded I choose my underwear carefully. It required something seamless to keep it from crossing the line from stylish to sluttish. That night, I was breaking all the rules.

In my dream, the party host, politely attentive, asked if he could take my coat. I let it slip from my shoulders and handed it to him, watching him try and fail to conceal his delighted surprise when he saw what his courtesy had revealed. I glanced down and saw that my nipples were erect and clearly outlined by the flimsy fabric. Lower still, the beads that rubbed against my crotch were visible too.

The host caught my eye. I regarded him steadily. He blushed and hurried away to put my coat in a bedroom.

I circulated around the party. I took a glass of champagne from a fellow historian. He was a man I did not much like in real life. In my subconscious fantasy, however, he was an object of desire. He licked his lips as I looked at him, in such a way that made it clear he would like to lick something more. I felt my nipples pucker at the thought.

Responding to his subtle signals, I followed him into the bedroom. He closed the door behind us. He didn’t bother with any preamble. There was no kissing and no caressing. A jumble of coats was piled high on the bed. He stripped me of my dress as though it were a burning rag, then lifted me and half-threw me so that I landed on the soft coat mountain.

He stepped towards me and started to rub the beads on my G-string against my clit.

‘You like it like this,’ he said.

I didn’t disagree. I let him press the beads harder and even moved my pelvis up towards him to increase the pressure still further.

With his free hand, he undid his trousers and loosened his cock. He rubbed at it frantically until it was hard. He didn’t bother to try to make me wet before he entered me. He pushed the string to one side and I could feel the beads digging into me every time our bodies came together in a thrust. I looked up at him – this person I didn’t really like – and found the revulsion turned me on even more. The more he grunted and gurned, the more I wanted him. I felt myself growing wetter. He pinched my nipples until I winced. My discomfort inspired him. It inspired me too.

He came with an animal groan.

While I could still feel his cum seeping from me, someone else walked into the room. It was the party host. Another man I wouldn’t have said I found attractive in a million years. He was skinny and balding. His face was mean and fox-like. His eyes were darting and furtive. He saw me on the pile of coats and rubbed his hands together in glee.

I did not try to cover myself from his scrutiny. I let him position himself between my legs just as his colleague had done. He dropped his trousers and unleashed an angry-looking cock. I closed my eyes and offered myself to him. He slipped into me easily. His colleague’s cum made me wet, I suppose. And by now I was definitely aroused. Embarrassingly so.

He fucked me almost angrily. He came quickly, throwing himself against me.

Then came another. And another. The fourth man turned me over and fucked me from behind, not caring that my face was stuffed into someone’s leather jacket. A popper left an imprint on my cheek. I got another imprint on the backside from my thoughtless lover’s hand.

Hands came from everywhere. I let them roam wherever they liked. I felt fingers all over me. Fingers inside me. A stranger poked his tongue into my mouth. Moments later, another stranger was licking at my clitoris, making me squirm with uncontrollable desire. I didn’t try to stop them. I didn’t want to.

The men – most of them strangers – took it in turns to come inside me. They laughed and encouraged each other. The guy who had fucked me first recovered enough to have another go. He lifted my legs and draped them over his shoulders so he could go into me harder and deeper.

I let myself go with the flow. I was no longer Sarah. I was an object. I was merely a conduit for the desire of these men I hardly knew. They could do whatever they liked.

It never took me long to climax when I remembered the sex club and the staid academic party beforehand. Afterwards, however, I couldn’t help but think of myself with a slight sense of shame. It wasn’t right, was it, to fantasise about being fucked by so many men at one time? When I woke up in Paris, having orgasmed myself into wakefulness, I felt extraordinarily exposed. Though I was entirely alone, I couldn’t shake the sense that I had a secret audience.

Which was the real me? The part that kicked against the idea of wearing such uncomfortable things to please a man, or the part that revelled in the thought that Steven got hard just seeing me in the scraps he’d bought? The woman who thought she wanted a ‘vanilla’ sort of sex life or the one who indulged in cybersex with Marco Donato? Or how about the woman who’d let a girl she’d never met before make love to her in a London sex club?

I’d blamed Steven for that. That night in the sex club, when I thought we would just watch, I’d ended up doing so much more. I’d let a girl dressed in a cat mask, calling herself Kitty, undress me and bring me to orgasm. Afterwards, when I discovered that Steven already knew my sexy stranger – that he’d actually suggested this particular club because she’d told him about it – I’d flown into a rage. Though I was the one who’d ended up with her, I felt betrayed and couldn’t see any way to deal with the situation but to break off my relationship with Steven. But she still seeped into my fantasies. Had I got it wrong? Was I suppressing a set of darker impulses that might actually bring me greater freedom and happiness than I hoped?

The following morning, I sent Steven an email, attaching a copy of my thesis on Luciana Giordano. I told myself that all I wanted was his opinion as a fellow academic but, of course, I felt a guilty frisson of pleasure when he wrote back to me almost immediately, saying that he had been worried I would not remember my promise to send the thesis over. Better than that, he ended his email with an invitation. Since I was researching a woman from the nineteenth century, how would I like to go to the opera that weekend and have a Saturday night out courtesan-style?

I responded that I would be delighted.

Chapter 28

Paris, 1840

Arlette was true to her word. On Thursday evening, she took me to meet Clemence and her friends at the Opéra Comique. Of course, I couldn’t go in my maid’s clothes, so in the afternoon she called me into her dressing room and decked me out in a pink dress I had once admired. She told me it looked far more striking with my glossy dark hair than with her own fairer locks. I was worried that people would know it was a cast-off but she assured me, ‘No one will remember it’s my dress. They will be mesmerised by the woman inside it.’

I could not comprehend at the time why Arlette was being so kind to me, but later on, as my naivety fell away, I would understand how she could only benefit from my rise. She must have known all along how her generosity for us poor orphaned girls might pay dividends if we eventually followed her into her profession. Especially if we hooked someone wealthy.

Unknown to me that afternoon as I twirled in front of Arlette’s mirror, I was being groomed for greatness. Clemence Babineaux was well-known for making introductions between members of high society and the low professions and she had told Arlette of a man who was looking for someone just like me. He would be at the Opéra that evening. Arlette didn’t hesitate to take her up on the plan. Clemence was a queenmaker and I was the most promising princess she’d encountered in years.

So, when we went to the opera that evening, Arlette and I were almost equals. I was no longer her maid. If anyone asked, I was her young cousin from Brittany and she was keen to show me the very best the city had to offer. She even suggested that I change my name from ‘Levert’ to ‘du Vert’ to give me an extra touch of class. I said I would think about it.

Along with her dress, Arlette gave me an Indian silk shawl so gossamer-fine it could be threaded through the eye of a darning needle. It was a present from the general. She had also offered me the choice of her jewels. I chose a modest string of pearls. Arlette pronounced them perfect for the tableau of blushing innocence I was to create. And, of course, she let me borrow one of her fans.

‘In case you need a moment of anonymity,’ she explained.

Clemence Babineaux agreed that I looked just perfect.

Clemence had her own box at the Opéra, paid for by her lover the Prussian count. Arlette and I joined her there. The count was not in attendance but several other men were. Clemence introduced me to them all and they greeted me as though I was a true lady. I almost felt myself become one as a result of their polite attentions. But the man Clemence thought might like to meet me was on the other side of the theatre. She pointed him out to Arlette. He was the Vicomte de Chanteduc. He was at least four times my age and he looked like a tortoise.

Clemence nodded a greeting in his direction. Arlette smiled broadly. Then both women gestured towards me as though I was a pig they’d brought to market.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Clemence to Arlette. ‘She’s absolutely what he’s looking for.’

I affected not to know what they were talking about.

Arlette and Clemence kept up a running commentary throughout the opera. I tried to concentrate on the stage – I had never been in a theatre before – but for my friends the much more interesting performance was taking place in the audience.

‘The Vicomte’s mind is not on the opera at all. He cannot take his eyes off you, dear Augustine. Every time I look at him, he’s got his opera glasses trained right on you. Give him a show. Sit up straight,’ said Clemence.

There was no other way to sit on the hard gilded seats. Who would have thought the opera would be so uncomfortable?