Ménage (17 page)

I stared at the sight of him repeatedly tapping his temple with the yellow washing glove.

— Well, no, I mean, as you say she’s probably just a bit overexcited by your books.

— Dammit, you’re right! I should never have told her about the Duchess. God knows, she might be out there tying people up and pissing in their eye sockets.

He stared at the soap bubbles then turned to me.

— I know it’s been hard for you to endure, old chum, but I can assure you the game’s over, so you needn’t be
planning
on leaving . . . You weren’t, were you? I mean, you’re not? I couldn’t bear to be left alone with her.

I couldn’t believe he’d got everything so wrong.

— No, no, I’m going nowhere.

— Nowhere, fantastic! Best place to be, been trying to get there all my life.

And, quite remarkably, he hugged me, splashing bubbles everywhere.

— By the way, I am awfully sorry about all the . . .

I was dumbfounded. He was apologising for the first time and still holding me.

— Sorry, you’re sorry about the . . .?

He quickly withdrew and resumed his pretend washing.

— Look, you have to promise me one thing, OK? You’re not to leave me alone with her. OK?

— OK, I suppose.

— Christ Almighty, look lively! he shrieked. — I think she’s coming.

As the door creaked open and Dot’s smiling face appeared, she must have witnessed a scene of surreal domesticity. Two tramps in the kitchen doing a whistle-while-you work routine.

— Don’t worry about us, my dear, Saul said, — just doing a spot of ethnic cleansing.

The coming night, at Saul’s behest, I was sat directly between him and Dot on his fungal sofa (‘To keep the heated bitch at bay’) while we rewatched
The Rizla Game
on telly. After a while he winked at me, as if to say, Shh, don’t let her know, we’re best off without her. Then within minutes Dot secretly touched my knee and winked, as if to say, Hi, lover boy. I was literally trapped in the middle.

‘An excessive tendency towards mediocrity and diplomacy is your failing,’ Saul had often said of me, so I decided I had to be decisive and stretched my arm round the back
of
the sofa to reach for Dot. Our fingers met, her thumb circled mine. Saul jumped up suddenly.

— Ye gads! How now, a rat!

We both jumped, hands separating.

— The bastard, back there!

I pretended to search for the beast behind the sofa. My hands running over dust balls, an old sock, some long-fossilised pasta, many fag ends and what might have been one of Dot’s fake moustaches.

— Nothing back here!

— Let me see, Dot said, and soon we were behind the sofa stealing another kiss, tongues circling.

How do you feel towards the one you are betraying? I had started to pity him. If only he knew, every one of his sniping little put-downs over these years was now overruled by the greater truth – ‘I have her now and you are a fool, my master.’

But also some small hatred grew. He could not see the anxiety my minute-by-minute performance was causing me. I was lying right to his face and getting away with it, and the world looked none too friendly from that perspective. The cost of getting caught was living in constant fear over the tiniest slip. It was impossible to keep going at that intensity, that degree of attention to detail. That was why people broke down and confessed – not because of guilt or morals – it was simply too exhausting to commit adultery.

That night, Dot waited by my bedroom door. Car headlights outside my window threw her shadow across me. Lit up her eyes.

— Can I come in?

I shook my head. — He’s going to find out. We have to pretend like maybe you should give me less attention, spend more time with him, you know, just to throw him off the scent.

She stepped away, her head to the floor and would not turn as I whispered after her.

— Dot? No, I didn’t mean that. Dot. Dot! Shit!

The very next day I had to endure the hell of my own making as she ignored me almost completely. They were in the kitchen together and she was tickling him as she cooked Heinz Spaghetti. I was livid with jealousy and furious that both he and she could be so fickle in their allegiances. We all sat in his darkened room listening to Nirvana while I had to endure the humiliation of witnessing her pick the spaghetti that dropped from his drunken lips and feed them to his reluctant mouth – like he was a child refusing food, spoiled brat.

He threw spaghetti at her, she threw it back; within seconds the thing had escalated to both of them grabbing handfuls and slinging them.

— Stop it, I screamed, — this will end in tears.

And so it did, with the entire two plates up-ended on the floor and Saul demanding that Dot clean it up and she him. And I was the one who got the pan and brush, while she slammed his door and went back to her room.

— You see, Saul whispered to me, — she’s a bloody loony, total liability. Do us a favour and keep her the fuck out of here, would you, there’s a chum, I’ll roll you a spliff if you do.

When I went to Dot’s room she was staring at her floor, streaks of tomato sauce on her hair and cheeks.

— What was that all about? I asked in whisper.

— You . . . ignored . . . me . . . all . . . day.

— Me? You think I . . . Look, we can’t do this here, come outside with me.

— Who cares if he hears us? Dot shouted. — Why do we have to sneak about at all?

— Please.

— OK, she said. — Meet me on the stairwell in half an hour.

I paced around anxiously. I did not know if this would be our moment but that day I had bought a packet of condoms
especially
, with Sensareeze lubrication – to prolong ejaculation. I heard Dot slip out, put the pack of three in my front pocket, waited a few minutes, then called out to Saul.

— Just popping out for some fresh air! You coming, Dorothy? No? OK then, well, I’ll see you later, I suppose. I sounded very am-dram.

I stepped out and the bare walls and piss-smelling linoleum stared back at me. She was nowhere to be seen.

— Psssst!

I looked up and there she was – up the steps by the door of the boarded-up first-floor flat. I climbed up and she kissed me. We were not well enough concealed behind the metal banister so I tried to work out where we could go to be alone: the library – no, closed – the subway – no, too public. The roof of the flat – if there was a ladder – the disabled public toilets on Old Street, the park, in a bush – no, not at night, too many gays in there doing their thing already – our empty warehouse, the back of Dario’s Pizzeria, behind the Portakabin by the jobcentre.

She ran her hand up my inner thigh, felt the bulge in my jeans, laughed.

— Sorry, I said. It’s not what you think, and took the packet out. She giggled.

— Silly, I’m on the pill.

— Really? But what about . . . well, you know, the dreaded . . .

There had been that horrific advert at the time with the iceberg with ‘Aids’ written on it. The tip of the iceberg must have been the metaphor.

— You ever had unprotected anal sex or shared a needle?

I shrugged.

— There’s worse things, she said. — My other pill – it makes babies come out with two heads and no arms and . . . My dad slammed me on the pill even before I knew
what
a cock was, just so I wouldn’t make mutants. Bodies are disgusting really. I’ve always been a bit erratic on the boyfriend front. You know – binge and purge.

— Sorry, binge and . . .?

— Don’t worry, I’ve taken my pill today already. Anyway after my bulimia I think my ovaries gave up. I don’t even get proper periods. You can probably spunk gallons into me and nothing’d happen.

Somewhat shocked, I asked if it was OK if we just cuddled.

— Oh, just kiss me, you silly sausage!

She grabbed my face and smothered me in her lips.

At that moment, I heard a noise below. I pulled Dot back from the banister and pushed her down. — Shh! I peered over, trying not to be seen, and watched as below Saul stepped out and looked round furtively. I feared he was searching for us. Dot tried to stand but I held her firmly back. I counted the seconds. In my mind he would climb the stairs and catch us hiding. I glanced over again and Saul was releasing an arc of urine against the steps. Looking around, he tucked himself back in and snuck back into the house.

Dot stood up and started laughing.

— Holy shit, so it’s him! I wonder why.

She started walking back down, tiptoeing round the puddle.

— Come on. Why are we hiding anyway? She laughed. — What’s the big deal? You think he cares how you feel?

— It’s not that simple. Look, if you hadn’t started sleeping with him in the first place then –

— You think me and him have been –

I asked her to please, at least, continue this conversation outside. She let me march her through the front door. Round the corner by the jobcentre she was walking ahead of me laughing to herself.

— He hates it when I run off to talk to you or when I
get
excited and forget him for just a minute. She squeezed my hand. — He gets horribly jealous.

I really couldn’t believe it.

— Him – the king of indifference?

— Oh all that – a bloody sham! He’s as insecure as a child, always pawing at me, trying to get his little kisses, God knows why. He has a humungous cock but won’t let me touch it. And those noises he makes.

I pretended not to know.

— God, you must hear us, all that screaming and groaning for ages.

— Well, maybe once or twice.

— It’s not what you’d think. It’s me trying to wrestle him off, and him scratching me, we do this silly play-fighting wrestling stuff, it goes on for half an hour sometimes. He’s never really touched me, you know, not in that way. I mean, he just sort of wanks off beneath his kimono as he stares at me and I do the same . . . well, without the kimono of course . . . it’s utterly bizarre.

— Really?

— Then he feels guilty and wants his snuggles and then I fight him off, it’s this silly game, if I hurt him for real or scratch him too much he goes off in a huff. She pulled up her sleeves, showing scratch marks. Laughing.

— And he’s horribly possessive, did you know that? He talks to me all the time in baby language . . . seriously . . . Snooky, he calls me, Snooky-bum, things like that.

— No way, God . . .

— May He rest in peace.

— God, but I thought you two were . . .?

— God, no, I kind of thought he was like some kind of, I don’t know, paternal figure sort of, but no, he’s just, we’re kind of like twins or something. It’s rather sick actually.

— So really . . . I ventured, — do you think he’d mind if we told him we were . . .?

— That we’re . . .?

I wanted to say ‘in love’ or ‘having sex’, but the latter was certainly not true and the former increasingly doubtful.

— You’re too, sweet, it’s no big deal, and we’ve done nothing really anyway. Anyway, right now I have to focus on the important thing, she said, — my art.

She walked away, back towards the flat, but then I saw her flash me a smile.

So we tried to focus on art. But beneath that respectable pursuit and behind the back of Saul, stranger perversions grew with art as their alibi. Whether or not Saul suspected our secret couplings at that point, I do not know for sure, but the threat of being caught by him aroused us incredibly.

So it was on a certain day, in Saul’s bedroom, that he was reading aloud a chapter from his little book on the Duchess, about an orgy in Manhattan in the twenties, with Duchamp and Man Ray present if I recall, while Dot stood resting her elbows on his desk, so as to support her camera, as she filmed him. I had been sitting on the floor behind her, sorting through records, listening to Saul’s voice, amused at how the frigid man loved his naughty book.

— ‘She was before me then, whipping the two naked girls beneath her with strings of pearls, while Johnstone smeared her anus in pâté de foie gras. The only thing I could hope to do was to try to exhaust her every urge. Bring her slaves to piss on, money to burn. Anything to save her from herself.’

Perhaps it had been the words, for I had become aroused. From where I was sitting I could look up and see directly up Dot’s skirt. I checked round the edge of the desk and Saul could not see me. Just then Dot must have realised that another little game was starting as she readjusted her camera position and put her feet wider apart, thus presenting me with ample opportunity to feast my gaze on her freshly shaven cunt. I lay gazing up at the tight panties pulled
between
the labia lips, under the tent of her skirt, as she kept on filming. I slowly moved my hand up her inner thigh, feeling her tremble as Saul read on, oblivious to our antics, his voice sounding surreally from the other side of the fabric.

— ‘I begged her to vomit on me, to sodomise me with any available object. She inserted the head of the champagne bottle into my torn anus but it gave her no release. Trite bourgeois, she screamed at me, capitalist corpse!’

With my fingers, so slowly, so secretively, I parted the panties from flesh and circled her salivating cunt lips and the mouth of her anus. A shiver ran through her as I teased her tiny clit, and pushed a finger inside her. As the wetness spread over my hand, with my soft movements, I brought it back to my face, feeling the texture of her juice, inhaling its scent, while Saul read on.

— ‘I am death, the redeemer, she shouted. Sign a blank cheque for me, open your veins for me.’

I caressed the inside of her thigh, as my thumb fucked her and my forefinger circled her clit. She started shaking and gasping.

Saul paused momentarily in his reading.

— I’m not boring you, am I? I heard him say.

— Nuh, no, no, I’m filming, don’t stop! she replied. — Please.

And so Saul went on reading as she went on filming him and although my cock was aching in my trousers and I was close to coming, I denied both her and myself the pleasure of a conclusion, got to my feet and stepped back from her. Dot seemed confused and disappointed, but I stood behind her, looking down at Saul, there, just ten feet away on his bed, raised her skirt and bared her buttocks. Her eyes shot at me to stop, but I did not. There, just feet from him, I stood back to feast on the shocking view: to my right, Saul, sat, as small as a mouse, studious with his spectacles on, reading from his book, while to my left,
filling
half my vision, was the immense close-up of my fingers sliding in and out of her tight pink lips. His face and her cunt like two obscenely different films running side by side.