The Pleasure Quartet (18 page)

Temperance posters had sprung up all over the kitchen and the hall. Of course, Gladys wouldn’t have any of that. ‘She’s not your mother,’ she said, ‘or
mine,’ and she pulled a dainty silver hip flask out from a clever little pouch that she had affixed to her garter. She tossed it to me and I took a swig and nearly choked – it was
brim-full of sloe gin. ‘My Uncle Ted’s Christmas brew,’ she confessed with a wink, ‘and he couldn’t give a damn what I drink.’

The way she said ‘Uncle’ made me suspect that Ted was not a bona fide relation.

She continued to empty her pockets.

Kohl liner, powder blush, and even a strange black gloop that she told me was Vaseline mixed with coal dust to make our lashes long and black.

We were beautiful, and the show, it was every bit as wonderful as we had hoped.

Even the coating of snow that had fallen while we were inside, melting and causing such a jam on the footpaths as we made our way home, slipping and sliding in our Mary Janes, didn’t
dampen our mood.

March 25th, 1922

Gladys has met a man. Another one – but this time, one that I like. His name is James, and he works in the theatre, of course, and has bright raisin eyes and lashes like a doe and lips
so full and red they could belong to a woman. He laughs like a horse, but I could forgive anything in a man with those dimples. Gladys is infatuated with him, and I think that I may be, too. I
think I may be in love with them both.

Whatever am I to do?

Sometimes I tell myself that she must feel the same way – when, without guile, she undresses in front of me and shadows from the candlelight play across her skin, just so, it seems to
me that the cold has disappeared and spring has landed already, even if only in my bedroom.

I dare myself to kiss her, every day.

June 30th, 1922

Oh diary, to think that only a few short months ago, I worried you might think me immoral for reading a romance novel.

Tonight, we made love, the three of us. I almost dare not write the words, for fear that somehow they will seep from the page and into the minds of my landlady or one of the other boarders
– or, heaven forbid, the old woman who continues to stalk me up and down the stairs and down the corridor.

Gladys you know already, diary. I felt as though I knew her before, but now I feel as though I have barely begun to know her – to map out her whole body and memorise every inch of it,
not with my mind but with my fingertips and my tongue, so that if I were ever to lose her I could blindly conjure her up again. I cannot even begin to grasp at the right words that might convey the
honey taste of her lips or the soft silk of her throat. The way that we feasted on one another, as though throughout our whole lives until that moment, we had been starved.

And James – how avidly he watched us, and how I luxuriated in the knowledge that the sight of us together like that must be driving him into a frenzy, and yet he must abide by the
agreement that Gladys had struck with him. That he could watch us together, but he must not touch us. There was such a strange sort of power in knowing the hold we had over him. It made me feel so
alive.

Sept 18th, 1923

Tonight, diary, I flew.

James held the whip and I let him and with each blow that fell my soul lifted until I felt that I no longer needed a body, and all the games we played before seemed like nothing. How I
imagine each time that we have travelled together to pleasure’s epicentre and can go no further, and then the next time, I find that we can go further again. There is no end to pleasure, no
point at which the end is reached.

Some appetites can never be sated.

February 1st, 1924

How cold I am, diary. Winter has come, not just in the wind that blows through every crack in the walls of this dreadful place but in every corner of my soul.

What a fool I was to think my little window at Mrs Moorcroft’s too small. She would smile to see me now, and tell me that I have got nothing more than I deserved. A drunk and a slattern
who could not be allowed to live any longer with Christian women, confined to a cellar room in the worst part of Whitechapel. How I hurry to and fro each time I must leave home – if I can
call it that – in fear of the men who huddle together on every dark corner and call out to me as I pass.

Did I ever feel happy in London?

Gladys has married Harold Butler Jnr, and she will no longer look at me.

She carries a child – a child that I think of as ‘our’ child, for I am certain that it was conceived on one of the nights that the three of us spent together, James and
Gladys and I, feeding one another’s appetites with a lust sweeter than wine.

I have quit work at Butler and Butler. I cannot be near her and not able to touch her. My desire for her consumes me. It seeps from my every pore and I know that if her new
‘husband’ (I cannot bear to think of him that way) were to suspect anything then he would treat her badly.

I do not see James. We tried, once, but without Gladys we are nothing together. We agreed that we would each come to despise the other for lacking the power to bring her back. That we would
spend every moment together thinking of nothing but the space between us that she filled.

I am nothing without her.

I do not know what I will become.

Edward returned from the shower wearing a silky navy blue dressing gown that I presumed belonged to Clarissa. It had oriental-style wide sleeves that draped down from his
wrists like a wizard’s robe, and a lace trim along the bottom that reached halfway down his thighs. He had tied the belt into a bow at his waist, so loose it looked as though it would fall
open at any moment. He was a little taller and broader than Clarissa, though not by much. The pale, smooth expanse of his bare chest formed a sharp V, outlined in inky satin. His legs were more
muscular than I had expected and covered in a coating of fine black hair. I guessed that his pubic mound would be thick and lustrous.

It occurred to me then that I had not yet seen Clarissa’s cunt. I wondered if she would be hairy too, to match Edward, or if she might be fully shaved like one of the two good-time girls
at the pool by Thomas’s mansion. What were their names? Mandy and Christine.

He stood in front of us and briskly towel-dried his damp locks, rubbing his head furiously as one might dry off a wet dog. The belt that barely secured his modesty loosened the more vigorously
he moved his arms.

‘Couldn’t you at least wait ten minutes before scaring the poor girl?’ Clarissa asked him.

He laughed.

‘She doesn’t seem to mind,’ he told her.

Clarissa looked over at me and raised an eyebrow, seeking confirmation.

I shrugged, feigning indifference, but truth to be told I was curious. Perhaps my increased exposure to nudity lately had made me more interested in the bodies of others.

I noticed that I had crept forward towards the end of the futon and was lying on my belly, apparently hoping for a glimpse of Edward’s cock and balls. I tried to guess at his size. Long
and thin, like him, and perfectly straight, I predicted.

I was wrong.

He walked back towards the bathroom and slung the towel over the door to dry, then returned. Clarissa took the bottle of wine from the low table at the end of the bed and topped up my glass,
then poured the remainder into her own and held it out towards Edward. He stepped towards her and grasped the stem. His shins pressed against the futon’s wooden base. Clarissa reached up and
parted Edward’s robe with her finger, caressed his shaft, and then cupped his ball sack in her hand. She seemed mesmerised by the sight of his dick, as if discovering it for the first
time.

‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,’ he said, between mouthfuls of wine.

‘It’s your best feature, dear, why should I not wish to show it off?’

‘Sometimes you can be such a bitch.’

He threaded his fingers into Clarissa’s pixie crop and pulled her head towards his cock, holding her against him until she drew back, laughing.

I watched his face. His earlier expression of interest had morphed into something more. Hunger. Next time, I thought, he would not let her shift away so easily.

His erection jutted out between the flaps of the robe, hard and long, and thicker than I had imagined. He had the sort of cock that belonged on a much larger man.

Clarissa tugged one end of his belt’s bow. The satin slipped open easily, exposing his ball sack.

A memory popped unbidden into my mind; the men on leashes huddled at Matilda’s feet, her encouraging me to clutch their testicles and squeeze them. How that must have hurt. I bet, too,
that had Tilly been in my place, she would have dished out an awful lot more punishment than I had. Yet they were evidently cowering below her of their own free will.

There was something of the same power dynamic in Edward and Clarissa’s relationship, but rather than one lording it over the other, they seemed to toss it like a ball between them. The
ultimate give and take.

‘You don’t mind, do you, darling?’ Clarissa asked me.

I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to her husband’s nudity, or to the public display of what appeared to be a private ritual in each humiliating the other.

I shook my head, no.

‘Good. In that case, come closer.’

She wriggled forward and grabbed my hand, and I took her place directly in front of Edward’s substantial package.

‘Have you ever seen a cock before? Close-up I mean. In detail. Really looked at it.’

I hadn’t, but I was doing so now.

The skin was stretched so tightly that it seemed thin, and as smooth as satin. His head was bulbous, with a thick ridge, like a mushroom. I remembered hearing once in the schoolyard that the
underside of the head was the most sensitive part, and I guessed that must be the soft piece of tissue that ran down from the tip to the shaft, like the cleft of a small peach. If I were to lick
him, then I would lick him there.

He appeared to grow even harder under my steady gaze, his already pink skin turning a deeper shade of plum that grew darker towards the ridge. I watched, mesmerised, as a milky droplet pearled
at the end and clung to his centre, defying gravity.

If Edward had considered forcing my face against him, he didn’t indicate as much to me. He stood as still as a reed on a windless day, without making even the slightest motion of
encouragement.

Clarissa, curled up by my side, was like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, luring Eve.

‘Would you like to touch it?’

Doing so would at least assuage my curiosity, I reasoned. A tiny spark flickered inside me. I wanted to see if touching Edward would smother that spark, or if it would grow into a flame.

‘May I?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, please do.’

I shifted onto my knees and stretched one hand out towards him, grazing just the tips of my fingers from the base of his shaft to the tip, feather light.

He groaned.

I repeated the same motion on the underside, and heard him inhale, a whisper of breath whistling between his teeth.

His balls, a soft weight against my palm. His pubic hair, silken beneath the scrape of my fingernails. His tip, wet against the press of my thumb.

I lowered my head and opened my mouth.

Clarissa leaned forward and pulled me back.

‘No, don’t let him have that yet. I must admit, I didn’t expect you to be so eager. You do get into the swing of things quickly.’

Edward groaned again, this time with an obvious note of frustration.

He bent down and took hold of Clarissa by the chin, forced her mouth open and just as I felt I ought to protest against his violence he released a mouthful of wine between her lips and they
kissed. Clarissa’s caught the liquid, swallowed, and wiped any stray drips with the back of her hand.

‘Don’t you dare spilling anything on this trouser suit,’ she said.

He lowered his glass and waved it over the vivid white of her neckline.

‘You had better take it off, I think. Not like you to keep your clothes on so long.’

‘I think Moana should go first,’ Clarissa replied. ‘She hasn’t yet seen me naked, and I want to make her wait a little longer.’

I felt acutely aware of my dowdy usher’s uniform, creased and worn after a whole afternoon and evening’s work.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘do you mind if I shower first?’

‘Be our guest. But only on two conditions.’

‘Yes?’ I enquired.

She spoke in a hushed tone, directly into my ear as if she was imparting a secret, though I knew perfectly well that Edward was listening.

‘First, you must return to us quite naked. Second, you must be prepared for anything.’

I agreed, and headed for the bathroom.

A large round mirror dominated the tiny room, and its frame, patterned like a flower with mosaic petals in shades of lilac, blue and indigo provided the only flash of colour against the spotless
white of the walls and floor. It was all so spotlessly clean that I hung my blouse and skirt over the towel rail, to avoid soiling the shining tiles with my dirty clothes.

I washed quickly, eager to return to Clarissa to Edward and in their company, avoid experiencing the emotions that threatened to well up inside me again. If I thought of Iris, I might cry, so
instead I concentrated on the physical action of lathering my body with soap suds. I ran my hands over my breasts and the hard, pointed tips of my nipples.

There was no mat to stand on, and having forgotten to ask where I might find the clean towels, I used the one that Edward had draped over the door. His scent lingered in the damp folds,
something beyond the neutral odour of shower gel. A pungent, slightly bitter, masculine aroma.

Faithful to Clarissa’s instructions, I left the towel, and my clothes on the rail and padded back into the living room naked.