Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Cunt!’ she whispered wantonly; knew he loved to hear her repeat those naughty words, as well as the exotic ones which he himself had taught her. He’d taught her everything, had made her Woman – Empress, not a slave-girl, with him as Emperor-Consort. ‘Cock,’ she gloated, reaching down to grasp it as he unzipped his bulging flies. ‘Cupid’s torch, connecting rod, fowling-piece, Aaron’s rod, arbor vitae, holy iron, goose’s neck, hanging Johnny, fiddlestick, tickle-tail, middle finger, womb-brush.’ Her voice crescendoed through the list, yet lingered on each one, giving it its due, its appreciation, reverence. She had learnt those words just recently from a book of Sexual Folklore, and there were at least six hundred more – six hundred different names for one tiny towering organ. Some were very ancient, and ‘cock’ itself dated from the early seventeenth century. She was making up for her lack of education, learning new delicious facts each day from her vast library of sex-books (all hidden in the outhouse, where she’d once kept her home-made chutney).

  Not that she could concentrate on history or statistics, not just at this moment, with John-Paul’s arbor vitae swelling in her mouth, feeling almost as stupendous as in the dream she’d had last night, when she’d seen her ardent doctor as all prick – one engorged and thrusting organ from his ankles to his scalp. She smiled as she remembered, sucked him in still deeper, knew exactly what he liked now – her lips pursed tight and stiff, massaging the shaft, her swift tongue flicking back and forth across the swollen tip, then forcing down inside the tiny slit, exploring it and filling it until he overflowed.

  Oh, she’d made such marvellous progress in just the last few weeks, had tossed away beginners’ books, and moved on to advanced; changing John-Paul’s coital outfits from dapper suit to morning dress, to tails and white bow tie; or sometimes having him examine her in a long white coat and stethoscope. The stethoscope was always stiff, always probing into apertures she didn’t know she had, listening to her body, its private passion-noises. It was making noises now – wild uncensored noises, which she knew he’d hear amplified as he delved and groped and scrutinised, scribbling down his case notes about the swelling of her clitoris, the moistening of her vulva. She admired his sheer professionalism, his eager concentration – even now, with splashings from the bathroom, the traffic roar outside, the bray of a pneumatic drill throbbing through the square, a gang of raucous workmen yelling over it.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she said boldly. No need to pretend now, to play passive bashful maiden, so as to boost James’s flagging fiddlestick. John-Paul liked her predatory, saw her passion as a compliment, an enhancement of his manhood, not a threat or put-down. ‘Harder,’ she implored him, as he slammed between her legs. He was wildebeest and tiger, top buck of the herd. She loved his savage rutting-cry, loved the din outside: the discordant clash of church bells, hooting, drilling. No, the racket wasn’t outside – the workmen had burst in and were drilling her own hole, their horny calloused labourers’ hands chafing on her skin, their powerful tools ramming deeper, deeper. Their cries had changed, as well – no longer yelled instructions or cautions to the gang, but lewd and lustful Italian words bellowed in her honour as they stripped her down and filled her.

  There was a second’s startled silence as drill and church bells ceased, traffic thinned or jammed, and the men themselves switched off their brazen voices. She could hear the frantic fountain, overwhelmed before, now plashing in her room; gods and satyrs fighting into bed with her, water gushing everywhere from fecund mouths and nipples. She had never been so wet and hot, nor enjoyed such scores of ravishers; could feel herself exploding as tigers, satyrs, workmen, gods, all climaxed at the same astounding moment; John-Paul himself a fountain spewing out an arc of shimmering sperm. She came with him, with all of them, arching up her body, screwing up her face, gasping out that number she’d been so desperate to reach: ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine!’

  ‘Mary!’ hissed a frantic voice. She flinched, uncoiled her sticky fingers from her cunt. How did satyrs know her name, or a gang of Roman navvies? She was too flaked out to care, too sated-glutted-blissful even to find out what was wrong; just had to He recovering, eyes shut, skin flushed and damp; replaying each sensation, exulting in John-Paul, hearing his wild compliments chiming through the church bells, his heavy gasping breathing a tribute to her skills.

  ‘Mary!’ slammed the voice again, sounding still more agitated, and closer to her head. She squinted through her eyelids, glimpsed James’s stripey dressing gown trying vainly to protect her from the prurient gaze of three young sons, two old and startled fathers, all gawping at the door.

  ‘You told us not to yell last night,’ primmed Simon. ‘And you’ve been screaming out yourself, making so much din you’ve woken everybody up. And anyway,’ he added, voice shrilling in reproach, ‘it’s extremely rude to sleep with nothing on.’

  Chapter Thirty Two

  I walk slowly down the nave of St Paul’s Outside the Walls, the fiery choke of sunset flaming through the alabaster windows, turning me to gold. Everything is gold – mosaics, frescoes, soaring granite columns – as if I’ve somehow got to heaven and left grey and gloom behind. It’s been sunny every day since we first arrived in Rome; not a sickly schizoid sun like you get in grudging England, but a passionate and brazen one, wooing the brisk mornings, ripping off the frail blue mist which veils and blurs the city at first light. I’ve seen twenty churches, so far, but none to rival this. Its size is frankly dwarfing, the nave stretching to infinity, the gilded panelled ceiling as far above my head as the heavens from the earth. I know nothing of religion, yet as soon as I stepped in here, I felt I had to kneel. It was completely otherworldly, as if built by gods for God.

  Many of the other churches left me somehow sated, as if I’d gorged myself on marzipan, washed down with double cream. All that elaborate decoration felt more like swank and swagger – man showing off his riches, or proving just how skilled he is, a rival to his deity. St Peter’s, in particular, seemed to be screaming out its grandeur, insisting I admire it – admire its famous architects, its pride of peerless artists. Here, man is left behind. There’s no glass to let the world in, just those alabaster slices which alchemise the light, and the golden blaze itself seems to make the columns tremble, the rich mosaics writhe. Everything is moving – apostles pointing heavenwards, angels’ stone wings fluttering, the vast ceiling lifting off.

  The church is called St Paul’s because apparently he’s buried here, just beneath the altar, but it should be renamed Lazarus, since it rose again, from death. Almost the entire building was destroyed by fire in 1823. Thirty years later, it triumphed from the ashes, restored almost exactly as it was in AD 391, when it was the grandest church in Rome. You can feel the boast of resurrection shouting from the walls – which is perhaps why Seton likes it. He first brought me here yesterday, stopped outside the main façade, gazed up above the columns to the panel of mosaics throbbing in the sun. I could see a lot of stringy sheep grazing in the foreground, and then two shadowed cities, one on either side.

  ‘Bethlehem and Jerusalem,’ he muttered rather irritably, as if I’d asked him what they were and he didn’t like my question, though actually I hadn’t said a word. ‘The beginning and the end.’

  I shivered suddenly, despite the fact it was blazing noon, and warm. ‘The beginning and the end’ sounded somehow ominous, especially after Seton had been talking guns all night, with Giuseppe, Marco, Stefan, the three guys we’re living with. They may be crooks or thugs (or Mafia) for all I know about them, and since none of them speaks English, I’m not likely to find out. Stefan’s wild and angry-looking with a coarse black beard and black fingernails to match. Marco’s very thin, as if whoever made him gave him bones but forgot about the flesh. Giuseppe is my favourite and the only one who smiles; a handsome, charming, jokey type, who’s only in his twenties, but has one long strand of pure white hair startling from the black. At first, I thought he dyed it, but then I realised it was natural, as if just that lock had age
d, or suffered some bad shock. It makes him slightly comic, like a two-tone tufted duck.

  They were all a shade suspicious when Seton brought me in, Marco’s frown a shutter closing off his eyes; Stefan chewing gum, only pausing for a moment to scrape it off his teeth, deign me a brief nod. But Seton introduced me as a member of the gang, someone useful and important who had to be respected, and would never blab, betray them. They took a while to thaw, but now they’re pretty decent, share their food and wine with me, save me the best seat (a chair with broken springs), even lend me clothes. Seton claimed he’d packed for two, but the truth was rather different – all he had in duplicate was size eleven shoes. Giuseppe’s the same build as me, so I’m dressed in his black cords (with balding zippered fly), a heavy short-cropped lumberjacket which smells of sweat and paint, and a pair of Stefan’s Y-fronts, which only lack a prick. I rather like the outfit, which has somehow made me powerful, transformed my walk and bearing, given me new confidence, as if my dead father’s looking down on me and finally approving.

  I strut towards the heavy door which leads out to the cloister, a square of sun and shadow with barley-sugar columns and roses in the flowerbeds – yes, full-bloom scarlet roses in the tail end of December. The four men are still out there, huddled round the fountain, still jawing, jawing, jawing. They truly are a gang. Seton’s bid to kill the Pope isn’t just a personal vendetta, or proof that he’s a nutter, as I assumed myself at first. The whole thing’s far more complex, involves many other interests – political, financial, even moral. Seton seemed completely compos mentis when he started explaining it the evening we arrived. It was me who was confused as I tried to take on board the clash between the Communists and Catholics, the scandals in the Vatican, the involvement of the Masons and the Mafia, and why Stefan (who’s Bulgarian) should be even more fanatical than Seton, want to bomb St Peter’s, blow up every cardinal in Rome.

  It didn’t really help when the other three kept butting in, which made Seton switch immediately to very fluent swift Italian and left me still more flummoxed than before. But confused or no, I was still impressed with Seton, saw him in a completely different light. He’s labelled ‘mad’ in England, whereas in Rome he’s a skilled linguist and leader of the gang. The others all kowtow to him – I saw that from day one – and because he’s my lover, I get to share his status.

  The love is going well. We haven’t got a proper bed, but that never hampered Seton, and it excites us both to know the guys are listening through the walls. They don’t have any choice. The walls are just partitions, paper-thin and tactless, and if Giuseppe’s sneeze or Marco’s cough re-echoes like a bomb, then Seton’s angry climaxes must all but knock them flat. He seems to need anger to get him roused at all, and I find it quite a turn-on – the violence and the ranting, the fact the Pope is there with us, on floor or rug or sofa, stripped naked, bound and beaten as Seton storms his name, mocks his flaunting titles; all his pomp and holiness reduced to sweat and sperm. I suppose sacrilege excites me, but it isn’t only that. Even hate is proof of passion, and Seton’s hate is consummate.

  I drift towards the fountain, so I can see my lover’s hands. They’re gripping the stone basin, as they gripped my flanks last night. He’s angry still – I can hear it in his voice, though I’m too far away to catch a word he’s saying, and wouldn’t grasp it anyway. All I’ve mastered in Italian is ‘yes’ and ‘no’, ‘toilet’, ‘prick’ and ‘aubergine’; a few names of wines and pastas, which I picked up from a menu, and the brand name ‘Crodino’, which a girl crooned fifteen times or more on a television commercial (and which sounds obscene, but is actually a non-alcoholic drink). And ‘Pope’, of course – II Papa. Giovanni Paolo, Santo Padre, Sua Santità. Seton mocks him in Italian, so I’ve come to know his titles, sometimes yell them out myself when we’re heaving in our sleeping bag with II Papa as a threesome.

  In fact, I know all the statistics now – the nine hundred million Roman Catholic faithful, dictated to by a mere few thousand piddling Roman bureaucrats, all male, of course, and celibate; the seventeen thousand priests who’ve walked out on the job in America alone (while Santo Padre calls for even greater strictness, to chain them to their ministries); his forty-one international journeys, visiting seventy-seven countries, many several times (which Seton sees as a bid for power and showmanship, and a flagrant waste of money – though it pales beside the thousand million lire squandered by the Vatican Bank on the corrupt and murderous Mafia). I also know the adjectives – despotic and tyrannical, reactionary, oppressive. (Or fossilised and fraudulent, if he’s bawling out the bureaucrats.)

  Anger is infectious. I march back to the church, confront Giovanni Paolo, who’s actually inside – gazing from a small gilt-framed medallion high above the columns. Every Pope who ever reigned, commencing with Saint Peter and ending with John Paul, is depicted in this church, each in a roundel of mosaic, with precious stones as eyes, and extending all along the aisles. I’ve counted them already, which took a bit of doing since the grand total was two hundred and sixty-three. I went prowling back through history as I paced up and down the nave, remembering not just tyrant Popes, but promiscuous ones as well – Popes with strings of mistresses, children by the score; Popes with violent bloody hands who poisoned, strangled, slaughtered, as they bumped off all their rivals, battled for new spoils.

  ‘Your Holiness,’ I say with heavy sarcasm, as I gesture down the aisle to Alexander VI, the most blatant of the Borgias, who spent half his papacy engaged in plots and scandals to enrich his bastard children (when he wasn’t sleeping with them).

  Silence. The church is empty save for Popes, and one devout (or drunken?) woman spilling like a sack on the patterned marble floor. I turn back to Pope John Paul, crick my neck to peer at him. ‘So are you proud of all your predecessors?’ I ask him, with a grimace. ‘Do you all plot and fight and fornicate once the church is closed to tourists and the doors are locked and barred?’

  He doesn’t say a word, just gazes back with his supercilious face. I think of all the beggars I keep passing on the street, some kids of only six or so, some toothless crones, in rags. These Popes are robed in velvet edged with ermine; gold leaf on their mantles, gold ingots in their bank-vaults – wealthy wimps in fancy dress, laying down the law about women and the poor, when they’re ignorant of both. John Paul looks smug and chubby, his jewel eyes hard, his narrow mouth set merciless.

  I stand stock-still where I am, a rush of heat exploding through my body, as if I’ve received a revelation. I suddenly know I have to kill him, do the deed myself, save Seton and the others from jail or execution. If I die or get imprisoned, it makes hardly any difference. I was already dead a week ago, and my bedsit is a prison. This is liberation – to free nineteen million faithful from tyranny, corruption, and not just Roman Catholics, but idealists like Stefan, who are fighting scandals, burning for a cause. Okay, I don’t quite grasp that cause, but if I espouse it as my own, then I’ll become another Lazarus, kept alive in history like marble or mosaic, preserved in people’s memory. I’ve always longed to achieve some perfect act, do just one thing successfully, to leave as a memorial, a present to my own John-Paul – not one he can return this time, or spurn as some base bribe. If I kill his namesake, then I prove my worth and selflessness, escape the mess and failure of my life (and death) to date, escape those endless sessions on the couch.

  I grope towards a column, lean against it, dizzy; see John-Paul in my prison cell, an admiring awe-struck visitor, paying tribute to my courage; maybe even watching as I coolly pull the trigger at some solemn papal mass. I’ve been desperate to lay eyes on him since the moment I arrived, trudged to his hotel each day – one of the grandest in all Rome – braved the braided flunkeys who try to debar anyone who isn’t dripping mink, or arrives on Shanks’s pony instead of chauffeured Rolls. The conference hasn’t started yet, but they still insist he’s busy, won’t divulge his room number, just shoo me out contemptuously, as if I’m a dangerous vagrant who’s
somehow fouled the air. The place is like a palace – chandeliers and marble, and a sumptuous curving staircase with cherubs on the balustrade entwined with languorous mermaids. (They ought to see Giuseppe’s flat, where we all five camp and huddle. It’s dark and mean and shabby-looking, with dust as decoration and half a rusting motorbike abandoned in the foyer.)

  I struggle to the door again, so hot I need fresh air; relish the sharp slap of cold which reminds me it’s still winter, despite the dazzling sun. The sun is dying, actually, dying in this cloister which was once an ancient cemetery and has fragments of old tombstones embedded in the walls. I can hear a siren shrilling from somewhere in the street. Even in Italy, I can’t escape the sirens – in fact, they’re louder here. I edge up to the group of men, who’ve forgotten I exist, touch Seton’s arm a moment, keep my fingers on his sleeve while I tell him my decision.

  Suddenly he’s kissing me, and the kiss is part of sunset – blazing, bloody, dangerous, as we’re merged with dome and palace in one furious scarlet pyre, which is kindling the whole sky from Ostia to Anzio. The other men are watching, encircled in that same fierce glow, which seems to gash their faces, frets their hands and hair. Seton frees my hurting mouth, turns back to his friends, who all nod and grin and gesture as he speaks swiftly in Italian, links his arm through mine. Giuseppe takes my other arm, Stefan on his left, Marco next to Seton, so we’re all joined, arm through arm. Our shadows fuse as well, long dramatic shadows, which leapfrog walls and buildings, as we leave the cloister, surge on down the street, goose-stepping and laughing, blocking the whole pavement.

  ‘Vino!’ shouts Giuseppe, as we stop outside a noisy bar, claim a pavement table.

  ‘No,’ says Seton, tipping back my face again so he can run a finger down it, trace my open lips. ‘Champagne!’