Feelings of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Mme Leduc held out her hand so that it slightly drooped, and Vincent realized that she expected him to kiss it. He did so, and when he lifted his eyes he saw that she was smiling at him in amusement. Baubay said, “Let’s go inside. I could do some serious damage to a bottle of cold champagne.”

  They stepped into the hallway and Mme Leduc closed the door behind them, blotting out the sunshine. “The tall one and the short one,” she remarked, and then she gave a brittle, tinkling laugh. Baubay laughed too, like a dog barking, and gave her a pat on the bottom. His shortness had never given him any trouble with women, or so he said, and Vincent believed him, because he was always packed with energy and he was quite handsome in a roughly cut, unfinished way, with a square jaw and thick eyebrows and thick black curls. Apart from being taller, Vincent was much thinner and quieter, with blondish combed-back hair and a narrow, rather aquiline face, and a way of peering at people as if they were standing six or seven miles away. When she had first met him, Patricia had said that he looked like Lawrence of Arabia, trying to see through the glitter of a distant mirage. In the end, their marriage had turned out to be the mirage.

  “So, you’re a great musician, Mr Jeffries?” asked Mme Leduc. “Some of my girls are learning the piano. You will have to give them some pointers.”

  “François is exaggerating, as usual,” said Vincent. “I write scores for television commercials – incidental music, links, stuff like that. Do you know the Downhome Donut music? That was mine. Right now François and I are working on a Labatt’s beer ad together.”

  “You should hear what he’s written!” said Baubay. “Is it dramatic? Is it sweeping? Do bears go to the woods to dress up as women?”

  They entered a large, high-ceilinged living-room. It probably overlooked the garden, but Vincent couldn’t tell because all the windows were tightly covered by bleached white calico blinds, through which the sunlight filtered as softly as the memory of a long-lost summer day. The floor was pale polished hardwood, with antique scatter-rugs, and the furniture was all antique, too, gilded and upholstered in creams and yellows. There were huge mirrors everywhere, which at first gave Vincent the impression that he had walked into a room crowded with fifteen or sixteen girls.

  Mme Leduc clapped her hands and called, “Attention, mes petites! M. Baubay has arrived and he has brought a friend for us to entertain!”

  Immediately, the girls came forward and clustered around them. Now Vincent could see that there were only seven of them, but he still felt overwhelmed, and more than anything else he wished that he were someplace else. He had never been simultaneously so aroused and so embarrassed in his whole life. All of the girls were pretty: two or three of them were almost as beautiful as Mme Leduc. There was a redhead with skin as white as milk, and a long-haired brunette with dark slanting eyes that he could have drowned in. There were three blondes – one bubbly and curly, the other tall and mysterious with hair so long that she could have wrapped herself in it, like a silky curtain. There was another brunette who stood more shyly behind her friends, but she had a face so perfect that Vincent couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  What struck him most of all, though, was the way in which the girls were dressed. He didn’t quite know what he had expected: Fredericks of Hollywood lingerie, maybe, or satin wraps like the one that Mme Leduc was wearing. But they all wore plain white cotton nightdresses, almost ankle-length, and one of them was even wearing white socks. Vincent supposed that Mme Leduc had wanted them to look younger than they really were, like schoolgirls; but even so none of them could have been older than eighteen or nineteen.

  “Mr Jeffries is a musician, girls,” Mme Leduc announced. “Perhaps he’ll be kind enough to play for us while we bring him something to drink.” She winked at Baubay, and Vincent saw her wink. She must have sensed how nervous he was, and, yes, it was a good idea, asking him to play the piano. It would help to relax him. “You like champagne, Mr Jeffries? Or may I call you Vincent?”

  “Sure you can call me Vincent. But right now I think I’d prefer a beer, if you don’t mind.”

  “Anything you want,” she said. She looked into his eyes for almost ten seconds without saying anything. Her eyes were extraordinary, like blue ink that has spilled across the surface of a mirror. He dropped his gaze and found himself looking at the cross that dangled in her cleavage. He could smell the perfume that she exuded from between her breasts. It was very summery and flowery, and for some reason it made him think of – what? He couldn’t think. Something elusive. Something deeply emotional. Something that had happened a long time ago.

  One of the girls came up and took his coat. Another loosened his necktie. “You like this?” said Baubay, walking up and down the room. “This is what I call pampering.”

  “Please, play,” said the redhead, shyly, and pulled out the piano-stool for him. Vincent sat down, flexed his fingers, and played one of his party-pieces, a high-speed version of Camptown Races. The girls laughed and clapped when he had finished, and one of the blondes kissed him on the cheek. The blonde with the long hair, more daring and more sensual, kissed him directly on the mouth. “François is right. You are a great musician. Your music is terrible – but you – you are a great musician.” Bold words, he thought, almost frightening. But he had never had an erection while sitting at the piano before, as he did now. He could feel the warmth of the girl’s body through her plain white nightdress. It was unbuttoned, and he could see the curve of a small swelling breast.

  Mme Leduc brought him a golden glass of beer in a frozen glass. He drank a little, and then he played something slower, more sentimental, a score he had written for a poem. The blonde with the long hair came and sat next to him, and put her arm around him, but he played this song for the brunette who stood away from the others, her eyes lowered, her fingers trailing through her hair.

  “In your arms was still delight … quiet as a street at night;

  And thoughts of you, I do remember,

  Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,

  Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.”

  The blonde girl massaged his shoulders, and then ran her fingers all the way down his spine. The redhead stood behind him and stroked his hair. On the opposite side of the room, Baubay sat with one of the curly blondes on his knee and another kneeling on the floor beside him. He lifted his glass of champagne and gave Vincent a blissful beam. “Don’t tell me this isn’t the life, my friend. This is the life.”

  “Love, in you, went passing by,” sang Vincent. He looked toward the brunette and she was lifting her hair so that it shone in the softly filtered sunlight in a fine net of filaments. He didn’t know whether she knew that he was looking at her or not. He didn’t know whether she was flirting with him or not. She appeared to be indifferent, and yet …

  “Love, in you, went passing by … penetrative, remote, and rare,

  Like a bird in the wide air,

  And, as the bird, it left no trace …”

  He paused, and then he sang, very quietly, “In the heaven … of your face.”

  There was a momentary silence, and then Mme Leduc pattered her hands together like a pigeon trapped in a chimney. “You weave quite a spell, Vincent. You must play us some more.”

  “Why doesn’t one of your girls play? I’d like to hear them.”

  “Well, of course. I’m forgetting myself. You didn’t come here to entertain us. Minette, why don’t you play Curiose Geschichte for Mr Jeffries? Minette’s been practicing very hard this month. And, Sophie, why don’t you dance?”

  Vincent left the piano and the girl with the long blonde hair guided him over to the couch next to Baubay’s, and sat down almost in his lap. She stroked his thigh through his chino pants and then she cupped her hand right between his legs, and squeezed it. He looked up at her but all she did was kiss him all over his face. He had drunk less than half of his beer but already he was beginning to feel that he had lost touch with reality. His cock was so hard that it ached and it jus
t wouldn’t go down.

  Minette was one of the curly blondes. She sat at the piano with her eyes closed and played the slow, plaintive notes with perfect timing and inflection. Mme Leduc was right: she had been practicing hard. She was almost concert standard. But if she could play like this, what was she doing here, in this godforsaken Canadian suburb, selling herself to any man who wanted her?

  Sophie, the redhead, stood in the middle of the floor with her toes pointed like a ballerina. Then she swept her arms down, gathered the hem of her nightdress, and drew it over her head. It landed on the rug with a soft parachute rustle, leaving Sophie completely naked. She was full-breasted but she was very slim, with narrow hips and long, long legs. Her breasts were marbled with blueish veins and her nipples were a startling pink that clashed with her hair. Between her legs arose a bright red flame, although it did little to conceal the plumpness of her labia.

  Sophie danced: fast, and very stylistically, Isadora Duncan on speed. She waved her arms as if she were spinning through a storm and her breasts responded with a wild, complicated dance of their own. She whirled around the room, around and around. Then she covered her face with her hands and knelt on the floor only two or three feet away from Vincent. She swayed from side to side, staring at him as she did so, until he felt hypnotized. Then she slowly arched backward until her shoulders were touching the rug, and the lips of her vulva peeled apart, revealing the glistening depths of her vagina.

  As if this wasn’t enough, she reached down between her legs and pulled her lips even farther apart, exposing the tiny hole of her urethra, playing with her clitoris and sliding her long, manicured fingertips right inside her. The piano music. The succulent clicking of fingers and juice.

  Vincent was breathless. As he watched, and he couldn’t help watching, the blonde girl was gripping his cock through his pants, squeezing it hard and rhythmically, and he knew that if he didn’t make her stop, he was going to be finished before he had even begun.

  Suddenly, Minette stood up and the music wasn’t there any more. Sophie rolled away across the rug. Mme Leduc’s hands pattered together again.

  “Now, perhaps, a little something to eat, before we get down to the principal entertainment of the day?”

  Vincent was trying unsuccessfully to fend off the blonde, who was licking his neck with the flat of her tongue and trying to slide her hand down the front of his pants. “You’re wet,” she breathed. “Your shorts are wet. I can feel it.”

  “Yes, food!” Baubay enthused. “I hope you made some of your crabcakes, Violette! Vincent, you should try Violette’s crabcakes! And her andouilles!”

  “I want to try your andouille” the blonde breathed in Vincent’s ear, and then draped her hair all over his head, so that he was tangled in it, suffocated in it.

  They sat at a long table covered in an extravagantly long white linen cloth that poured over their knees and trailed across the floor. The windows of this room, too, were covered by bleached white blinds. Mme Leduc sat at the head of the table, and the girls sat along either side. Vincent and Baubay sat side by side, each of them being cossetted and spoonfed by the girls next to them. The food was like nothing that Vincent had ever eaten before: not all at the same meal, anyway. Cold spiced beef and fruit-flavored jellies; salads with endive and oranges; crabcakes served with fragments of honeycomb. There was a strange fried flatfish stuffed with peaches, and bowls of clear chilled soup that tasted like women’s sexual juices lightly flavored with cilantro.

  The shy brunette sat on the opposite end of the table, eating only a little and saying nothing at all. Vincent deliberately stared at her while he ate, but she never once raised her eyes to look at him. The blonde sitting next to him reached beneath the flowing tablecloth and started to massage him between the legs again. When he was hard, she jerkily tugged down his zipper and took out his erection, her fingers running up and down it like a piccolo player. He suddenly realized that he was beginning to enjoy himself.

  “Do you think you could love me?” she asked him, in a hoarse, dirty whisper.

  He kissed her on the lips. “You don’t exactly make it easy to say no.”

  “But do you think you could really love me? Or any of us?”

  “What? And marry you? And take you away from all this?”

  She shook her head. “You could never do that, ever.”

  “But you’re not going to do this for the rest of your life, are you? I mean, how old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “There you are, then. One day you’ll meet the right guy, and you’ll be able to put all of this behind you.”

  Again she shook her head. Vincent tried to kiss her again, but this time she raised her fingertips and pressed them against his lips.

  Mme Leduc stood up and tapped her spoon against her wine-glass, so that it rang. “There!” she said. “We have been fed very well … now for some other pleasures. François, have you chosen who you would like to share your afternoon with?”

  Baubay put his arm around Sophie’s shoulders. “I can never resist a redhead, Violette, especially when she is a redtail, too.”

  “And perhaps Minette to accompany her?” asked Mme Leduc.

  “Wonderful! But not on the piano, this time!”

  Baubay got up from the table, and took Sophie and Minette by the hand. Giggling, they led him out of the dining-room, into the hallway, and up the stairs. Vincent could hear them laughing all the way along the landing.

  “Vincent, how about you?” asked Mme Leduc. “Has any one of my girls caught your eye yet?”

  The blonde gave him a dreamy, creamy look, and rubbed his penis again. Vincent didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but he was too fascinated by the shy brunette. He nodded down the table and said, “I don’t even know her name, but if she doesn’t mind—?”

  The blonde immediately pushed his erection back into his pants and tugged up his zipper, almost catching him in it. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I think you’re stunning, but—”

  “But you prefer Catherine, I know. I’ve seen you staring at her.”

  “Catherine?” said Vincent, and the girl looked toward him and nodded, although she didn’t smile. Vincent stood up and walked along the length of the table and held out his hand.

  “This is only if you want to,” he said.

  “It is not her place to say if she wants to or not,” said Mme Leduc, with a slight snap in her voice.

  Catherine stood up, gathering up her white nightdress in front of her so that it was raised above her knees. Vincent had never seen a girl so beautiful or so quietly alluring, and he had certainly never met a girl so subservient. She had a high, rounded forehead and huge violet eyes. Her nose was straight with just a hint of a tilt at the end. Her lips were full, as if she were pouting a little, but that suggestion of sulkiness only aroused Vincent all the more.

  “One girl will be sufficient?” asked Mme Leduc.

  “Am I allowed to come back for seconds?”

  Mme Leduc came up close to him and ran her hand up the back of his head, like rubbing a cat’s fur the wrong way. It was an electrifying feeling, especially since he could feel her breast swaying against him through the silk of her negligée.

  “Perhaps, next time, I can amuse you myself.”

  God, thought Vincent. Baubay was right. I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.

  Without a word, Catherine took his hand and led him out of the room. She walked quite quickly on her pale bare feet, as if she were in a hurry. Her hand was small and cool. She didn’t lead him upstairs, but across the hallway and along a corridor with a polished parquet floor. The corridor was light, but all of the windows were covered with the same white blinds.

  They reached a door at the end of the corridor and Catherine opened it. Inside, Vincent found himself in a large downstairs bedroom. In the very center stood an iron-framed four-poster bed, draped with yards and yards of white gauze curtains, and covered in giant-sized white feather pillows. The o
nly other furniture was a chaise-longue upholstered in plain cream calico, a French-style closet painted in dragged white paint, a washbasin, and a cheval mirror at the end of the bed, tilted in such a way that whoever was lying on the bed could see themselves. On one wall hung a large, vividly colored painting of a woman in a pearl necklace, lasciviously clutching a horse’s erect penis, and staring directly at the viewer as if she were challenging everything he believed in.

  Catherine closed the door. She walked across to the bed and drew back the curtains. Then, without turning around, she lifted off her nightdress, so that she was naked. She had a long, flared back, and very high, rounded buttocks. Her breasts were so big that Vincent could see the half-moon curves of them on either side.

  However it was when she turned around that he had the greatest shock. He saw now why she had gathered up her nightdress when she stood up from the table. She had been concealing the fact that she was at least five or six months’ pregnant. Her breasts were enormously swollen and big-nippled, and her stomach was like a lunar globe. Her vulva was swollen, too. She had shaved herself so that Vincent could see the dark blush color of her lips.

  Pregnant she might have been, but Vincent still thought she was achingly beautiful. In fact, her pregnancy made her look even more beautiful. That was why her hair shone. That was why her skin glowed. That was why she had the secretive, knowing, self-protective look that had attracted Vincent in the first place.

  She came up to him and unfastened the top button of his shirt. He looked down at her – at her calm, perfect face; at the trees of pale blue veins in her breasts; at her stiffened, rouge-brown nipples.

  “How old are you?” he asked her, with a phlegmy catch in his throat.

  “Eighteen and a half,” she replied, unfastening another button, and another, and running her fingernails lightly through the hair on his chest.