Fifty-Minute Hour (19 page)

She checked her watch. Nearly ten to seven. Nobody would call now. It was the suburban dinner hour, sacred to husbands and to families, when no bells rang except the oven-timer. She crept back to her bedroom, scrabbled through the bottom drawer where she kept her sanitary towels, drew out not a small soft pad, but an eight-inch hard vibrator. Well, she'd had to hide it somewhere, and James so hated periods he would no more touch her Kotex than approach a nuclear reactor with a leak.

She felt much the same about that plastic monster. Even James's was not as big or ugly, and did at least deflate at times, folded down quietly after use; wasn't labelled ‘Super-Stud' around its rampant rim. ‘Super-Stud' came complete with batteries, also labelled ‘super'. In fact, everything was super – super-power, super-thrust, super-satisfaction. The catalogue had quite appalled her. Up till now, she had more or less ignored the existence of vibrators – known (vaguely) people used them, but only hardened people like prostitutes on clients, or perverts on themselves. She had regarded them as something rather shameful and obscene which went on far away, in another world from hers, like those brutish men who killed elephants for ivory, or turned tigers into hearth-rugs. But that catalogue had sold them like cereals or slippers – cosy everyday things which any normal woman needed. And even John-Paul seemed to champion them, saying with a little smile (which she couldn't see, but had picked up from his voice) that an artificial penis was often more obliging than the flesh-and-blood variety, since it wouldn't let you down. He'd told her a vibrator would be under her exclusive control and would go at her own pace: as long, as short, as fast, as slow, as she could cope with at each practice-session. It seemed incredible to her – to derive satisfaction, ecstasy, from something with no hands nor heart nor voice. James rarely talked himself, but he did at least make noises, or sometimes grunted ‘Lovely tits' when she first removed her brassiere.

She'd spent two whole mornings goggling at the pictures – yes, huge full-colour pictures with descriptions underneath, and such a wild variety – vibrators in soft latex, or gold, or rigid plastic; matt black ones, shiny silver; some with studs, or nobbles, or light-up tips, or ‘thrill-frills'; or with several different screw-on heads which rotated or gyrated, or flexible extensions to reach something called a G-spot (which made them sound like carpet-cleaners); some shaped like little grinning men or even teddy bears. And those dreadful punning names: ‘Wonderbar' and ‘Joy stick', ‘Bully Boy', ‘Banana'. If she'd been cool before, that catalogue had frozen her completely, sent her sexual temperature plunging below zero. But penance was another thing entirely. The more you hated something, then the better as a penance, like their soft-boiled eggs at school, which were actually more raw than soft, and had little bloody specks in, which her best friend said were the beginnings of new chicks. From the age, of seven to the age of seventeen, she'd swallowed every nascent chick she could, marked them on her spiritual bouquet. At least she'd learnt willpower, developed a strong stomach.

She got up from her knees, concealing the vibrator beneath the jacket of her suit, still vaguely anxious that someone might be watching – if not an actual neighbour prying with a telescope from the house across the street, then the Blessed Edwin Mumford, s observing her from heaven, and distinctly disapproving. She lit the candles, removed her tights and pants again (left her other clothes I on, which made her feel less blatant), then lay back on the bed. She wished she had some flowers, or even music. Ritual was important – she knew that from the Church. But at least the candles cast strong shadows, gave a certain atmosphere, and she'd set up a small photograph of John-Paul, like an icon. She had snipped it from the dust-jacket of his latest publication:
Eros and Thanatos: a Re-examination
. The book was very difficult – made
Psychology Today
seem as painless as the
TV Times
– but she'd bought it for the photograph and the blurb about the author, which made him sound so busy and so brilliant she'd felt quite overcome to be allowed the privilege of paying for an hour each week of his time and genius.

She opened her legs a grudging inch, positioned the vibrator. You were meant to use a lubricant – some cherry-flavoured sticky stuff called ‘Joy Jelly', which had arrived with the vibrator (and also with its ‘supers' – ‘super-rich, super-sexy, super-lubricating'). It would hurt more without the jelly, especially as her burns had not yet healed. Even using just one finger for five minutes, as she'd done at five o' clock, had made them twinge and shock. The vibrator had a setting like an oven – high for roasts, ‘simmer' for just stewing. She turned it on to high, rammed it in, violently and suddenly. Her Pain Score soared to nine, jumped higher still as she directed it specifically against the largest of the burns. She closed her eyes to concentrate on pain, take it up to twelve, or even over.

‘It's for
you
, John-Paul,' she whispered. ‘All for you – the pain.' One burn had even festered, was throbbing, really griping, as she stabbed it with the rigid plastic shaft. Pleasure he had called it, but what were words so long as she obeyed him? ‘As fast, as slow, as long, as short, as you can cope with at each practice-session.' She took it slower, turned the pressure down, let it almost idle – in and out, in and out, like a finger in a … It felt different from a finger, seemed to go in further, hurting still – oh, certainly – but a restrained and rhythmic pain now, which was soothing, almost kindly. The noise had changed, as well – no longer a harsh skirl, but a gentle droning purr, which seemed to calm her, reassure her. She had never known that pain could be relaxing; that she could want it to continue, not just for John-Paul's sake, but for her own. Maybe that was wrong, though, and she was being far too lax. Angrily, abruptly, she turned the power to highest, reeled back to her Pain Score, tried to tot it up again, as her burns cried out for pity. Thirteen, was it, fourteen? Still not high enough. She could hear the vibrator screaming now, as she reached twenty, twenty-one.

Perspiration was sliding down her breasts, sticking to her slip. She'd have to take it off, remove her skirt and jacket too, so she was less hampered, less restricted, could concentrate on pain. She put the vibrator down a moment, as she struggled with her clothes, tried to force the zip. The silence seemed unkind, and there was a strange ache between her legs – an ache for that lost rhythm, which had become part of her, had sprung from her, and which she felt she'd known from way back, known in dreams, or even in past lives. She drained her sherry first, dark sweet sherry, like John-Paul's rich brown voice. He was talking to her now, his voice very close and intimate from his seat behind the couch; his words warm amoroso dribbling down her body. ‘You're doing very well, Mary. Just relax a little more – that's it. Now turn it on again and let it throb between your fingers, to try to get the feel of it, establish the best rhythm. That's good, that's very good. Now stroke it down your body – yes, slowly, very s-l-o-w-l-y, right across your breasts and down your belly and your thighs, until you reach your …'

‘Genitals,' she said out loud. She had to practise all those words: forbidden words, exquisite words, words which made her hot and so ashamed. Her legs were opening wider, opening for John-Paul. Yes, of course she longed to open them – open them and please him, split apart and bleed for him. ‘Vulva,' she said lingeringly. ‘Clitoris.' ‘Vagina.' Nobody could hear her. The vibrator was too loud. The noise was whirring out again, gasping, almost panicky, laboured like her breathing. Why should she be panting when she was just relaxing on a bed? Why drenched with sweat, why feverish? Had John-Paul switched her on, pulled some giant lever like the one in the Steam Museum where they'd taken all three boys this last July – a lever which set flywheels into motion, started rods and pistons, mobilised huge pumping-engines, which had all begun to thwack and thrust, drowning conversation, dwarfing even James?

She'd felt threatened at the time, alarmed not just for the boys who might get trapped in all that dangerous machinery, but frightened on her own account. It was so masculine, so violent, that powerhouse of trapped steam, those bursting throbbing boilers and swollen cylinders; that overwhelming beam-engine rearing to the roof, its gigantic metal beam weighing fifteen tons at least, heaving up and down as it drove its frantic flywheel (which the man had told her would plunge straight through the solid wall if it ever broke off from its bearings). She had watched the pressure-gauges slowly rising, rising; the shiny oil-slicked piston-rods thrusting in and out; had felt some strange excitement suddenly curdling with the terror, longed to be connected to those wildly pulsing engines, part of that machinery – a feed-pipe or a blow-valve which could share its pounding rhythm. ‘DANGER!' said the notice in huge red capitals. She'd deliberately ignored it, stepped closer to the piston-rods, even slipped inside the barrier.

She shut her eyes. She could feel the heat again, that stifling claustrophobic heat which reeked of oil and steam; could hear the steady rhythmic slam of the engines pumping pumping; see the scalding water-drops swelling on the glistening pipes, bursting, running down; could almost taste the clogging grease on the inflamed and sweating metal. Her own body was inflamed, running with hot oil, spurts of steam condensing into droplets, leaking down the insides of her thighs. She had forgotten pain completely. Did wheels feel pain? Or piston-rods? She just had to keep on thrusting, driven on, driven on – yes, right to danger-point.

She had reached that point – and passed it – could feel her axle cracking up, wrenching from its bearings, her rev-counter so fast now it was spinning out of control. She was breaking off, flying free, plunging through a three-foot solid wall. She felt the crash, the impact, yet experienced no pain – only elation and amazement as she blasted into heat and light, heard John-Paul's shout behind her, a shout of triumph, sheer relief. He seemed to have arranged some celebration in her honour. She was aware of voices, noises, reverberating bangs; glimpsed a sudden hail of rockets snipering the sky, exploding in a shower of coloured sparks – laser-blue, throbbing-pink, strobing knife-blade silver.

She could hear another noise, coming from much nearer – footsteps on the stairs, an angry voice she knew too well.

‘Are you deaf or something, Mary? I've been shouting for five minutes and you haven't heard a word. The dog's gone mad as well. It's those damn-fool bloody fireworks they're letting off next door.' The footsteps tramping closer, right up to the door; the handle slowly turning. ‘Mary!' The voice lower now, and scandalised, almost disbelieving. ‘What in God's name are you
doing?'

‘So how d'you like the pictures?' a young girl asks me, a so-called friend of Seton, and dressed rather like him in obscene-tight jeans and a skim-the-navel sweater (and with the sort of Ogen melon breasts John-Paul would want himself).

‘They're shit,' ‘I say. ‘I mean literally. That's the new fashionable medium in art, I'm told – warm faeces.'

She stalks off in a huff. Who cares? There are at least thirty others like her – all gorgeous girls of seventeen or under; all what the ads call ‘feminine', with huge blue eyes and tiny feet, morning-gathered dew-kissed skins, and eyelashes which double up as besom brooms. I assume they're John-Paul's patients, all those tiresome Marys who come at times I'm not around myself. They don't let on, of course, introduce themselves as Cressida or Amber, and a lot of other crappy names – all ‘feminine', of course – some
doubly
feminine: hyphened names like Anne-Marie or Lisa-Beth, which probably means they're aping John-Paul's hyphen and are obviously hung up on him. I haven't got a chance. Oh, I may have waist-length hair (‘Fantastic hair,' Seton actually called it just last night) and pretty decent teeth which are even reasonably white – though thanks mainly to Euthymol Smokers' Toothpaste – but why should John-Paul notice me with such dazzling competition?

He's not even here tonight. It's his private view, his evening, his so-called triumph as an artist, his biggest show to date, the culmination of five years' secret slog, yet he has to hide away, can't face the press (if any), can't face his fans, his groupies. Even his signature on the paintings looks shy and noncommittal – just a small black JPS at the bottom of each work, the initials almost swamped by swags of excrement. He's probably keeping a low profile because he's nervous of the medical establishment, scared they might protest, censure him for dealing with his
own
shit rather than his patients', or perhaps he's just embarrassed that the work is so inferior. Actually, no one's really looking at it, but that's standard at most private views. Don't tell me people come to see the pictures. They come to see each other, and guzzle the free wine (or bubbly, if it's Bond Street or environs). This is grotty Kilburn, so the wine is quite unspeakable – sub-Spanish plonk in plastic cups, with a few anorexic Twiglets to stop us getting pissed; no chance of that, alas. My cup's been empty a good half hour and no one's filled it except ever-thoughtful Seton who's used it as an ashtray.

I suppose I should be grateful he's still around at all, when he knows girls like Cressida who comes complete with baby (yes, fair; yes, cute; yes, female). Babies are the in-thing at the moment, especially when they dangle from those natty designer-slings with a bulging Filofax and/or portable computer balancing them the other side, to prove the woman is a loved and fertile Earth-Mother, yet also a whizz-kid Richard Branson clone, giving (Virgin) birth to airlines, record companies.

‘Darling,
wonderful
to see you!'

I swing round gratefully, but it's not me they're thrilled to see; just another stunning female with an Adonis in tow. Kiss-kiss, yak-yak. ‘Yes, we've just come back from Hamburg, and it's Singapore next week. I'm so frightfully busy I've hardly time to pee. This is Adam, by the way.'