Wildwood (13 page)

Then I tried the dress on and stopped worrying about the shoes, because that fitted perfectly too and it took my breath away. Looking in the mirror I could hardly believe the reflection was my own. From the narrow shoulders down the dress fitted like a second skin, all the way to a softly flared skirt with a gypsyish hemline. The cream fabric brought out the warm tones of my skin and hid nothing, flaunting my long lines and my strong shoulders and my flat belly; the sides were slashed to reveal yet more skin. I stared and stared. I haven’t got the biggest boobs in the world but they’re quite cute and this dress made the most of them. But it was only when I turned my back and looked over my shoulder that I saw the real genius
of
the design: this dress gift-wrapped my bum, cupping and framing it shamelessly. This dress
existed
to present my buns to the world. Even I was surprised at the effect that so much climbing had had on those pert cheeks.

The only fly in the ointment was that the fabric was so clingy that my panty-line showed up, rather spoiling the effect. I tried on several pairs before settling for the knickers that were least visible through the slashes in the side panels.

I was wearing his gifts when I opened the door to him on the Friday night. He was wearing a dinner jacket cut like a Victorian frock coat. Theatrical, but it looked just right on him.

‘Well, hello, Mr Darcy,’ I said, letting him in.

He walked around me on the living-room carpet, his eyes twinkling, while I tried not to feel like a doxy he’d just purchased. There wasn’t much I’d been able to do with my thicket of hair but I’d found a spray of cream silk flowers – in fact they were left over from Emma’s wedding bouquet – to pin there and I was wearing a moonstone necklace which my gran had left me.

‘You look lovely,’ he said, moving in to take my fingers gently in his. His voice was low and soft. ‘But the knickers are ridiculous. Take them off.’

I was speechless. If he’d hit a note just a little bit more peremptory I’d have gone up like a flare and told him where to shove it. But somehow he’d managed to make the order sound so reasonable, so conspiratorial, that I couldn’t take offence. Not enough offence, anyway. I swallowed. ‘OK. Turn around, then; don’t look.’ My tone was far brusquer than his had been.

Smiling, he obeyed. I pulled up my dress and pulled down my panties, not daring to take my eyes off him. Then I threw the knickers behind the sofa to put them out of his sight. I couldn’t
afford
to lose too many pairs to the men of the Kester Estate, I reasoned.

‘All done.’

When he turned back the smile was still there. He ran the very tips of his fingers down my side from my waist to my thigh, his touch moving feather-light across slivers of exposed skin. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered.

Well, men will say anything when they think sex is in the offing.

‘Shall we go?’ I asked.

‘If you’re ready.’

I didn’t have a coat remotely good enough for this occasion so I took my red pashmina – a fake one bought from an Exeter street stall – as a wrap and let him steer me out to his Range Rover. My bare pussy tingled at the touch of the cool evening air but I was determined to ignore it.

The journey to our dinner destination was more pleasant than I’d anticipated. Michael drove with a proper respect for the narrow, sunken Devon roads until we hit the main highway into Cornwall. Traffic was unusually light. And we talked for nearly an hour, not about work or the estate or each other, but just casual chat about things in general. It was genuinely nice to converse with him, to my surprise and relief. He was relaxed and good-humoured, and I was enjoying it so much that I nearly forgot where we were going, until we turned off the A391 and down past the Eden Project signboards. We ignored the empty car parks at the top of the slope, dropping in a wide sweep down towards the visitor centre instead. I twisted in my seat but could make out little in the gathering dusk except the glow of lights. The Eden Project is sited in a disused china clay pit and the hole is simply vast.

At the entrance building two stewards in evening dress were waiting to open our car doors. I suppressed a giggle as I stepped
out
, thanking the young man who was being so polite and wondering what he’d think if he knew I had no knickers on. Maybe he could tell. I felt self-conscious but also deliciously daring. Even the wobbliness of my narrow heels was provoking. And Michael’s patronage somehow lent me legitimacy.

As we passed through the building to the door on the far side I looked around avidly, trying to read the banners and catch a glimpse of the exhibits. Michael took my hand and wrapped it round his elbow to encourage me to keep moving. Beyond the far door was a balcony and we stopped to look over. We weren’t even at the floor of the pit yet, I realised. The ground fell away yet further. All the lower slopes of the old quarry were planted up in distinct areas, living exhibits in a project telling the story of human dependence on the plant kingdom for food and drink, medicine and clothing and building materials. Artificial lighting added a glamour to the landscape as did the multicoloured pennons fluttered from myriad flagpoles, while overhead the perfect blue twilight was a vast bowl mirroring the earthen one in which we stood. And on the far side of the lowest level stood the two famous biomes – vast polyhedral greenhouses so futuristic that they looked like sealed moon-base environments. One was, I knew, filled with a tropical rainforest created from equatorial plants from all around the Earth’s girth. The other was a warm temperate glasshouse where plants from the dry lands of the Mediterranean and South Africa and California thrived. I felt like an eight-year-old waking on Christmas morning and getting her first look at the presents at the bottom of her bed.

The whole landscape seemed to hold its breath.

‘Oh, it’s huge!’ I said. Then, ‘Where is everyone?’

There was no sign of any other human being on the site. The only movement was from the flags. I turned to Michael.

‘We’re here,’ said he, leaning on a railing.

‘Are we too early? What about the others?’

‘Well, you made it clear you didn’t really enjoy that sort of party.’ He spread his hands. ‘So I thought, better just the two of us. I had intended for us to eat in the rainforest biome but apparently there are rather too many bugs there after nightfall, so our table’s in the temperate one. We can look around afterwards.’

My face must have been a picture. ‘Just us?’

‘Just us.’

‘You’ve hired the whole Eden Project?’

‘Until dawn.’

My heart crashed into my stomach. ‘Are you completely out of your mind?’ I demanded.

‘Look upon it as a donation to a good cause. I thought you’d be flattered.’

‘Flattered?’ No, I wasn’t flattered; I was frightened. ‘Just how far are you prepared to go for a fuck?’ I asked. ‘I mean, do you draw the line
anywhere
?’ I turned back to the glass doors. ‘I want to go home. Call me a taxi. You can afford it.’

‘Avril.’ He stepped between the exit and me. ‘Please. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ I met his eyes and saw that for the first time since I’d met him he looked rattled. ‘I’m not trying to bully you or … buy you.’ He shook his head helplessly. ‘I just thought you’d like it.’

‘Like it?’

‘It’s all for you. To do whatever you want.’

‘And what if,’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘that doesn’t include sex with you?’

‘Well, it’s your choice.’ He looked pained but contrite. ‘I’m not intending to force you into anything. It’ll always be your choice, Avril.’

I glared, but he’d drawn all the fuel from my ire. I’d never seen him like this. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Dinner?’ he suggested gently.

‘Maybe,’ I growled. ‘But I’m telling you right now, no sex. You still want to waste your time on me?’

‘It won’t be wasted.’ He was recovering fast and the familiar confidence was back.

‘OK.’ I clung to my reluctance a moment longer. Then I turned to survey my temporary realm and kicked off my fancy shoes. ‘Well, if we’re on our own I’m not going to be walking round in these.’ Holding them in one hand I set off down the zigzag path, the concrete cool beneath my bare soles.

By the time we reached the biomes I’d more or less forgotten to be mad with him, mollified instead by a night scented with lavender and the awe-inspiring sight of the biomes awaiting us like glimmering fairy palaces. Every step made their huge scale more apparent. By the time we entered the Warm Temperate Biome and I took my first look around at the succulents and the cascading creepers, the bright exotic flowers and the wicked spines springing like fireworks from the dry soil, I had a huge grin on my face. Overhead the huge panes of hitech plastic gleamed, reflecting the soft lighting from lamps at our feet.

‘Do you like it?’

‘It’s amazing.’

Michael steered me down a path, past displays on floral perfume and the growing of tobacco, through garden plots laden with gourds and spices and a grove of cork oaks, their rugged bark peeling like roasted pork rind. Then we were walking through a vineyard and I stopped, captivated by a cluster of bronze sculptures which rampaged in frozen frenzy among the low vine clumps.

The one that had really caught my attention was the biggest: a rearing bull, its rugged splendour reminding me strongly of my night encounters with my own bull. But it was surrounded
by
maybe a score of others, some half-hidden in the landscape. These were human, or almost so: scrawny revellers who beat upon drums and blew trumpets and shook tambourines. They wore animal masks and headdresses, but no clothing. They crouched and leapt and shook themselves, captured by the sculptor in the midst of an ecstatic and completely uninhibited dance.

‘What’s this?’ They reminded me of Ash’s mates, actually.

‘
The Rites of Dionysus
. What do you think?’

I didn’t know what to say. The revellers looked enraptured, but when you looked closer there was a dark edge to their joy. The dancers’ genitalia were clearly visible, both male and female, which surprised me in a family tourist venue. And one pair were holding a dog between them, pulling with all their might upon its paws, frozen forever in the moment just before the animal was torn in half. Its jaws gaped in a silent scream. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘It’s … powerful.’

‘Dionysus is the god of ecstasy and the vine. His followers, the maenads, roamed the hills of Greece in packs. Respectable women would join his retinue and in their frenzy tear apart wild animals and any man who spied on them, or who wouldn’t submit to them – even their own husbands and children. Those are the gifts of the vine: pleasure and rage; conviviality and madness.’

‘I’m going on the wagon,’ I said wryly.

‘Oh no. You misunderstand the point. Dionysus, like all the gods, must be propitiated in small things if you wish to avoid being destroyed by him.’ He pointed down the path. ‘His altar awaits.’

His altar was a table laid for two in a grove where ancient, twisted olive trees spread their grey-green leaves. A side table nearby bore the actual food, in heated or chilled compartments. Several wine glasses stood upon the snowy linen cloth. I wrinkled
my
nose as Michael drew out a cloth-wrapped bottle and began to pour into a champagne flute, but the liquid turned out to be a dark amber-brown with a thick head.

‘What’s that?’ I asked, pulling a face as he handed me the glass, then took a cautious sip. ‘Beer?’

‘Theakston’s Old Peculier,’ he said. ‘As requested.’

I had to laugh.

‘You will drink wine, though?’ he chided, pointing back up the path. ‘In honour of Dionysus?’

I was glad we were out of sight of those wonderful, disquieting sculptures. ‘Only if it’s red.’

‘Red it is.’

At his request I sat and he served from the side table. The first course was a mozzarella salad, heavy on the basil, which I have a passion for. ‘Good guess,’ I said, spearing a sliver of tomato. He didn’t rise to the barb in my tone. For a few minutes we ate in near silence, the occasional comment passing between us about food. Michael was really only toying with his salad; his attention seemed to be entirely on me, which was disquieting. I started to worry I was going to drop something down the lovely dress. ‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you eat? You’re not a vampire or something are you?’

‘God, no.’ His face was alight with pleasure. ‘I just … I’m enjoying watching you eat. That’s all.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Can you go ten minutes without thinking about sex?’

‘Not around you.’

He was enjoying this, the sod, and it was hard not to smile along with him. ‘Well, it’s going to be a difficult evening then.’

‘I’m particularly looking forwards to the main course.’

‘Which is?’

‘Sausages,’ said he, without blinking. I raised my knife,
preparing
to plunge it into his quivering heart. Quickly he threw up his hands. ‘Duck! It’s duck!’

‘Uh-huh?’ I was only slightly mollified. ‘You’re not planning any “fancy a bit of a duck” jokes, are you?’

‘Do I look like the sort of man who would stoop to puns?’

‘No comments about “breast or thigh”, then?’

His gaze settled very deliberately on my breasts and he bit his lip. ‘Perish the thought.’

I sat back, dabbing at my lips with my napkin and giggling. ‘You’re impossible.’

‘Thank you. It’s something I’ve been working on. More wine?’

I nodded. ‘Is that your Plan B? Get me wellied?’

‘Would it work?’

I wrinkled my nose and decided not to answer that. ‘Wouldn’t be much point. I fall asleep too easily when I’m drunk. Unless you find snoring a turn-on, of course.’

‘No, I usually go for fully conscious. The more responsive a woman’s body the better, I find.’

My own body reacted to his words with a shiver of pleasure. I was annoyed with myself, but not really surprised. I’d already demonstrated what a walkover I was, after all.

‘There’s nothing more exciting than the betraying signs of arousal in a woman: nothing. The darkening of the eyes. The way her breath flutters and her blood comes to the skin, and the little involuntary movements she makes …’