Ambition

by Julie Burchill

  ‘I just think it’s a bit much, that’s all – to say these people adore a black man, whereas when they go home from their dirty weekends they’d spit on him if he so much as tried to use the front door.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be able to demonstrate your great love for our black brothers very soon, won’t you, dearest?’

  Tobias Pope bent over his papers with a secret smile.

  Susan sat at the window and thought about Washington Brown while Pope’s lawyers worked in another room to write him off the map. One of the biggest stars of the Seventies, white powders and white wives had made a mess of him. Now in his mid-forties, he was about to be dumped for an unmarked if unremarkable young lightweight who made more money endorsing breakfast cereal than he did singing.

  He was understandably bitter and unmistakably here, standing in the doorway between two white men half his age and swaying like a boxer in his tropic-weight beige suit. They dropped him like laundry as they passed with Pope into the boardroom.

  She stared at him. He had been big before her time, but she had almost comprehended what he meant from the old footage she had seen of him and the old records which, like any lonely, horny teen, she had sought out. Now he was overweight, bleary-eyed, with bad skin and a sour smell. It was the smell of withered success. In the morning, before the shower, she smelled the ghost of it on herself.

  He scowled at her. ‘How long your boyfriend gonna be?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Hey, you English.’ He really relaxed. She saw the muscles move forward, then backward, in his arms. ‘Hey, I always liked England. I like the people, I like the clubs. I especially like Branston pickle. You know Branston pickle?’

  ‘Not socially.’

  ‘Yeah, I like those English clubs – and the English girls! You sure mix a lot in England. Well, not you personally, I mean, I don’t know you. But English girls sure do mix a lot in them clubs. You look at a white girl where I come from, she thinks Black Power’s gonna rape her grammaw!’ He cracked up.

  ‘Mr Brown . . .’ She felt very shy and awkward, and hoped desperately that she wouldn’t be required to sleep with Washington Brown. Not only was he very probably terminally jaded by now and murder to arouse, but he had once been her hero. And it was always a terrible mistake to sleep with your heroes. ‘I know it’s a boring thing to say and you must have heard it a million times this week, but I loved your records when I was growing up.’

  ‘Aw, thanks.’ He looked both abashed and calculating. ‘You tol’ your boyfriend that?’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my boss.’

  ‘Yea, he’s my boss too.’ Washington Brown examined his immaculate nails. ‘And he screws me, so I reckoned he was prob’ly screwing you as well.’

  ‘No.’

  There was a sticky silence. She could tell he didn’t believe her.

  ‘You read this book Revolutionary Suicide?’ he finally asked her, rifling in his briefcase and shoving at her a hardback book bearing a photograph of a handsome light skinned black man called Huey Newton.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m afraid not, too. I’m afraid not I didn’t read it fifteen years ago, when it might have done me some good.’ He sulked. ‘Happen I might not have ended up here in this shithole, getting dumped on by Whitey in his wisdom.’

  She didn’t know what to say. Finally she opened her mouth, and put her foot in it. ‘I did admire Angela Davis, though. For keeping her own name, as much as anything. Imagine answering to Angela Davis, when all your friends were going back to their roots and changing their names to Shotzome Burundi!’ Her laughter was too loud, amplified by her nerves. He looked at her with blank scorn. ‘Apparently Chaka Khan’s real name is Yvette Williams,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘Oh, Washington!’ The youngest lawyer put his head around the boardroom door. ‘We’re ready for you now!’

  ‘Revolutionary suicide,’ muttered Washington Brown, shambling to his feet. ‘How about a bit of revolutionary assassination?’

  ‘Do you mind if I call you Boy?’ said Tobias Pope to the beautiful young black man who stood naked before him.

  ‘Sir, for what you’re paying you can call me girl. That goes for my brother too.’

  Pope looked across the room to where the brother stood fastidiously hanging up a white suit. ‘Identical twin?’

  ‘Yes, but without a hard on. He was a minute earlier, so I’m an inch bigger. Fair do’s.’

  Pope laughed and slapped the man on the back.

  ‘Gad, I like the African! Tell me, how long before you kick the stinking boring Dutch out?’

  The man’s face went stiff. ‘I have no interest in politics.’

  ‘I understand. But not a day too soon, eh?’

  ‘Business will always be good for me, sir.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Pope cast a professional eye over the man.

  ‘And the lady, sir?’

  ‘Lady?’

  ‘The lady I am here to visit.’

  ‘Oh that lady!’

  A prim expression sat strangely on a six-foot-two naked black body.

  ‘I am sure she is a lady. And a beautiful lady at that.’

  ‘She’s a girl, a pretty girl. Nice, too, and smart. English. You like the English?’

  ‘A great people,’ said the man solemnly. His brother crossed the room to join them, flashing a shy smile and a huge penis. ‘You can call him Boy too, if you want.’

  Pope laughed. ‘OK, Boys One and Two. Follow me.’

  Susan Street lay spreadeagled on the bed. She had tied one on and been tied up by an obliging aide of Pope’s. She had drunk so many Bellinis at dinner she’d lost count. Now she blinked rapidly. ‘Oh, hello, Mr Pope. And hello you, too, whoever you are. You know it’s just like they say, I’m seeing double. There’s two big—’

  ‘Silence, imbecile. No, you are not seeing double, though that’s a miracle considering the amount of that disgusting orange concoction you put away over dinner. Meet Boy One and Boy Two.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, miss.’ Boy One walked around the bed. ‘But what is this? You are bound?’

  ‘Don’t you approve?’ asked Pope from the doorway.

  ‘But no. How is the lady to express her sexuality when so restricted?’

  Pope sniggered. ‘You’ve got women’s lib here too, eh? You poor bastards. On top of everything else!’

  ‘It is not enhancing of a woman’s natural beauty, these . . . fetters.’

  ‘I get the message.’ Pope strode over to the bed and untied her swiftly. ‘I thought you might appreciate the irony, but obviously that only grows on three square meals a day and adult suffrage. OK, do your worst, both of you. Don’t forget your tackle.’

  ‘What would the lady wish?’

  ‘The lady’s not footing the bill, I am. And I wish both of you, with the lady, one after another.’

  The first man said a few cryptic foreign words to his brother and they both looked slyly from Pope to Susan. Together they moved towards the bed, fitting short white condoms over long black penises. They reminded her of the magic wands of childhood, the black length and the white tip. Magic wands, indeed! She giggled and close her eyes.

  They lay down beside her. Four hands stroked her head, her face, her breasts, stomach, thighs; it was like being with an octopus who had learned its strokes at Madame Claude’s. She was coaxed like modelling clay and rolled over on top of the silent twin.

  ‘Get up,’ said his brother. ‘Kneel over him.’

  She straightened dizzily over his groin; his brother gripped the huge erect penis and probed her with it. She winced.

  ‘It’s OK. Relax.’ He moved his brother’s cock exploratively over her whole genitalia; she pushed reflexively back and then with one long, smooth, silent whoosh! like a firework leaving a milk bottle and slipping up into infinity, he was inside her – all the way up to her ribcage, it felt like. />
  ‘Stiff upper lip, girl!’ commanded Pope. He was sitting on the bed beside them with his arms folded, looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘Sure you don’t want to change places?’ she quipped.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust myself not to fall head over heels in love with both of these fine fellows. Now stop talking and get going. Good God, girl.’

  She moved on top of the twin, gingerly and with some trepidation. She had never been comfortable this way, and his bigness left her very little room to manoeuvre. She closed her eyes and rotated her hips and was beginning to feel the stirrings of something when the twin spoke in brief and rapid African.

  ‘Excuse me a minute, sir,’ said his brother. ‘He’s not used to this position. He’s got to stop or he’ll come.’

  Tobias Pope clapped his hand to his head. ‘Where, oh where, is a race which lives up to its advance publicity in bed? OK, take a break.’ He was already on the phone. ‘I want Krug, apple pie, and I want it pronto, Tonto.’

  ‘Working for the Yankee dollar,’ the talking twin whispered in her ear.

  Susan laughed weakly. ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve had the pleasure to come to this particular suite. But generally, I’ve been in more hotel rooms than the Gideon Bible.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Warren.’

  ‘I bet it’s not.’

  ‘It will do. You couldn’t pronounce the name I was given.’

  ‘Sorry to break up the tête à tête, children,’ called Tobias Pope as a knock came at the door. ‘But here’s the chuck wagon.’

  A trolley bearing half a dozen bottles of Krug on ice and a huge apple pie on a silver salver was pushed into the room by an elderly black man. Susan and the silent twin still crouched on the bed, looking like a particularly advanced Allen Jones coffee table. Without a glance at them he wheeled the trolley to the bed and stood looking at his feet.

  Pope pushed some coinage carelessly into his hand and he left the room, still looking at the ground. Susan felt her face burn with non-specific shame.

  ‘OK, break,’ Pope ordered.

  Warren lifted Susan slowly and expertly off his brother and sat her on the bed. His brother sat up and began to rub her shoulders.

  ‘Thanks, that’s just what I need.’

  He flashed her a brilliant smile.

  Warren walked to the trolley. ‘Oh, champers, lovely.’

  Pope looked at him, amused. ‘Don’t wait to be asked, do you?’

  ‘Ask and you shall get, sir. That’s the Bible.’

  ‘It sounds more like Dale Carnegie. Damn, no glasses.’ Pope looked around the room, and a sly smile crossed his face when he looked at Susan. ‘Miss Street, can you stand on your head?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said dubiously.

  ‘Right, go and stand on your head over there – you can use the wall as support.’

  ‘But I want my champagne!’ She’d been drunk and she’d been sober; drunk was better.

  ‘You’ll get your champagne, madam, and sooner than you think.’ He popped the first cork expertly and handed the bottle to Warren, who raised it to his lips. Pope put a hand gently on his bare, glossy arm.

  ‘Warren. How do you ever hope to find the lifestyle you seek, which was no doubt inspired by bad American soap operas, while you still lap from the bottle like a kitchen toto? Use a vessel, for goodness sake.’

  ‘But there are no glasses . . .’ Warren looked yearningly at the Krug, beginning to suspect that it had only been brought up here to torment him.

  Pope gestured towards Susan; Warren turned to look at her and smiled. He found the combination of comedy and eroticism – her narrow, luminous body with her dark hair fanning out over the red carpet and her breasts falling into her wide-eyed, determined face as she watched them solemnly – lovable rather than arousing. ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey you.’

  Tobias Pope leaned close to him. ‘One thing you must learn, dear boy, is that champagne tastes best with fish. That’s why it’s synonymous with smoked salmon. And what do we have here?’ He pointed at Susan. ‘A living, breathing side of the stuff.’ He put his mouth so near Warren’s ear that he could taste his tangerine-scented pomade. ‘Champagne tastes best out of cunt. That’s the most essential thing you’ve got to learn about life. That, and the sayings of Karl Marx.’

  Warren laughed and spoke to his brother who took hold of Susan’s feet and spread them. Opening her with one hand, his tongue fitting into the gap between his front teeth as he concentrated on the delicate task, Warren poured.

  She closed her eyes against the slight burning sensation. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened since that death in the Brighton bedroom. She felt liquid trickle icily down her stomach and visualized it forming stalagmites – stalactites? – on her nipples. She was full, and the twin held her firmly as Warren bent down to drink.

  Pope stood smirking at them as Warren straightened up. ‘A pretentious little bouquet?’

  ‘Delicious!’ He courteously grabbed Susan’s feet and gestured to his brother. More Krug was poured, more lips sucked at her.

  ‘A bold little vintage, I should think,’ said Pope. ‘Stroppy, assertive, with just a hint of . . . subservience.’

  ‘You wish some, sir?’

  ‘I’m allergic.’

  ‘Oh, how dreadful,’ Warren said happily, taking a swig from a fresh bottle while confidently supporting her with one hand.

  ‘I don’t think much of your brother’s table manners. Look at him, going at the poor girl like a piglet coming off a hunger strike at its trough. You can drop her now – I think we’ve all had enough.’

  Warren carefully let go of her feet, propping her against the wall; she slid down it, collapsing inelegantly and causing champagne to spray out of her. The three men looked at her as she lay there: the twins still had their erections and Pope still had his smirk. Which was probably as near as he ever got to having an erection, she thought moodily.

  ‘Do you fancy another dip, gentlemen?’

  Warren spoke to his brother and then to Susan with a smile. ‘Kneel, please.’

  The silent twin knelt behind her, entering her champagne-drenched insides easily this time. Warren held her by the hair and guided her mouth to him.

  She gagged and spat. ‘Yeucch! The lubricant on it – it’s like fish oil!’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d object to that after that little performance you gave in Rio, my dear.’

  ‘Mr Pope, I really can’t—’ She screwed up her face in disgust.

  ‘Look at this, you boys, will you? This is a real comment on the morals of the modern girl. They don’t mind putting a foot of throbbing meat in their throats even if they did only shake hands with its owner half an hour ago and have never been formally introduced. But a little bit of aesthetically displeasing rubber and – oh! How could you ask this of me?’ He looked at Warren. ‘OK, I’m speaking to you man to man now. Well, man to boy. You have a clean bill of health in your public parts?’

  Warren drew himself up to his full height and gave Pope a look which expressed all the wisdom, sorrow and indignation of his people. ‘Sir. How can you ask me that? I would rather you had cut off my right hand.’

  ‘OK, I take it back.’

  ‘Cut off my right hand and thrown it to the dogs—’

  ‘Don’t pile it on, boy. Well – I like you and I trust your boss; take the damn thing off. What Susan wants Susan must have.’

  While Susan couldn’t exactly say she wanted the best part of a foot of African cock rammed down her throat, Warren was a sweet kid and she might as well make the best of it. His brother knelt up to get a better look, holding her firmly and pumping professionally, and she felt pleasure stir and build.

  Considering how difficult it is for just two people to achieve a simultaneous orgasm, it was either true love or a tribute to the twins’ expertise that the three of them began to cl
imax at the same moment.

  ‘Good, good!’ Tobias Pope over the three-part harmony of their groans. ‘Now pull it out, boy! Shoot! Shoot in her face!’

  As champagne trickled out of her insides, and sperm trickled out of her mouth, Susan Street couldn’t help reflecting, even as she arched and throbbed in the throes of her orgasm, that the world was turning upside down.

  EIGHT

  ‘Sorry about the time, Bryan,’ said Susan automatically as she stepped calmly into the editorial meeting three-quarters of an hour late. ‘Only Zero needed a little pep talk.’

  ‘Say no more, Sue. We’re only happy to have you back from a taxi ride with Zero Blondell in one piece.’

  ‘She thinks we don’t—’ she said, and gasped as she looked at the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It wore a dark grey business suit, and she was about to register its skin as olive when she realized that olives were either black or green and this skin was the palest beige. Its hair was black, a very Seventies cut which had once been seriously long and still didn’t have the heart to be short, curling over the collar of its white shirt. It wore a black knitted tie, which she immediately visualized gagging her.

  Insomuch as the beautiful thing resembled anything it was Michael Douglas, though the Michael Douglas of the small screen rather than Cinemascope, being no older than thirty-three. When it smiled its teeth were discoloured and cracked; she wanted to run her tongue over them, read their secrets like Braille.

  ‘Sue, this is David Weiss. At long last.’

  It was obvious from Bryan’s tone that she should know who David Weiss was. The name rang a bell; was he some hotshot financial hack, perhaps? He held out his hand and said ‘Hi’ in a low voice. Weiss, as in Vice Squad: how appropriate. He was American; he had to be financial. Best readers were very big on being advised what to do with their money; David Weiss was obviously Bryan O’Brien’s answer to Bob Beckman.

  ‘Hello.’ She shook his hand. ‘Nice to have you with us.’

  ‘It’s nice to be here.’ He was looking at her in a way that made her stomach do things it could have got an Olympic gold medal for if it had been doing them on a high board.