by Andy Bailey
“I will.”
At that the car door clumped shut and Derek eased away as Carol ambled up the path to her front door, wondering what she would tell her Methodist mother and father of the night . . .
As they reached the end of Carol’s road, Derek inclined his head back and slightly to the left: “Queens Gardens then?”
“No, I’ve changed my mind, I’ll go to Valhalla Avenue in Kensington, thanks.” Not please but thanks, i.e. a command, not a request.
Their eyes met via Derek’s rear view mirror and what little she could see of his expression was enough to tell her that he was more than a little sceptical. But she held his gaze so, ultimately, his eyebrows shrugged and he simply acquiesced.
"Valhalla Avenue it is."
If there had been any problem with this she’d resolved that her next gambit would have been to remind Derek who her father was, and the likely fuss and unwarranted attention that would follow her call to her father’s security detail to advise them she was being held against her will by a nightclub owner’s bodyguard but, whether or not she had somehow managed to convey any of this – wordlessly – to Derek, she surmised that Derek had calculated that the path of least resistance on this occasion was the easy route to Martin’s new flat in Kensington.
Susan had a hunch.
24.
As Derek eased them into a space on the opposite side of the road, Susan looked up to the first floor to see a light shining behind the orange canvas blinds hanging in the living room. She suddenly felt the sort of nerves she’d suffered from in her time with the Hampstead Players – only amateur dramatics but, because of its location, often attended by illustrious theatre goers and ‘resting’ professionals; her guts would churn and her palms moisten with treacherous sweat in anticipation of an awful humiliation.
She felt that now as she hesitated in the back of Michael’s purring status symbol. She realised that she was going to – hoping to – meet a wholly different Martin from the android she had known and she felt almost intimidated by the persona that Michael had described. (This was, of course, always presuming that (a) Martin was in the flat right now and (b) he was going to let her in.)
She looked across to the building’s entrance door, painted glossy bright red and now bathed in the soft light of the street lamp just a few yards away; the square gold plate screwed into the brick of the surrounding wall housing the black buttons marked with the flat numbers 1 through 6 and perforated with the small black polka dots of the intercom’s speaker grill.
Susan looked forlornly back into the car and Derek’s head was turned back to look at her. He raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Stick or twist?” and then his face softened into a surprisingly warm smile. Susan was grateful for that and fortified.
She smiled back, “Thank you, Derek.”
“Any time, love,” his voice craggy but kind. “I’ll just wait to check he’s in for you.”
“Yes, OK.”
Susan click-clacked across the empty road to stand in the pool of light before the red door as though she was stood in the spotlight on the stage back at The Black and Blue Dahlia, facing the unknown. Taking a deep breath, she pressed the button for number 3. Rather quicker than she had expected, she heard a faint click in the intercom’s speaker and then Martin’s voice transmuted down through the wire, tentative and electric.
“Hello?”
“Hi Martin, it’s Susan.”
Just a moment passed before he replied: “Hi, come on up,” and the gold plate buzzed and the red door clicked. Susan yanked the handle quickly before the buzzing stopped and turned to give Derek a little wave before pushing her way through the door into the hallway. Derek waved back and smiled but did not appear to be in a hurry to drive off. He was obviously going to wait a while longer, just to make sure, and Susan inwardly thanked him for that.
When she got to the landing on the first floor, Susan could see that the door to Martin’s flat was wide open, presumably as an invitation for her to walk in. As she came into the softly-lit living room, she could hear Martin rustling around in the bedroom and he called: “Sorry – I’m just coming.” A moment later he appeared wearing faded blue jeans and just pulling down a plain white t-shirt, his blond hair tousled (not long dried after a shower by the look of it) and his feet bare. Susan couldn’t stop an inward pang of disappointment in the realisation that he’d evidently felt the need to make himself decent for her. At the same time she was forcefully confirmed in the notion she’d already grasped, namely that everything had now changed. Martin’s whole character, the timbre of his voice, the clothes he was wearing – the way he looked at her – represented a wholly different person from the one she had known before.
He looked like nothing more or less than a new James Dean, American-fresh, surprisingly fresh given that he’d been out carousing with Michael Green (and the rest) that night. It occurred to Susan that if Martin felt half the burgeoning hangover that had been creeping up on her for some time now, then he was doing a hell of a job concealing it. Conversely, Martin studied Susan and couldn’t help but note how the evening’s odyssey had left its marks on Susan. On the way, in the car with Derek, she had touched up her makeup and tried to re-arrange her hair but she couldn’t do much about the red stains slewed across her white blouse, the pink graze that strafed her left cheek and the general air of a girl who’s endured a hard night roistering with the town’s rugby team.
Whatever. She was here now and she would have to do. She stood defiantly before Martin Dash (no – Martin Dayton), cocked one hip and planted her hand on it.
“Well?” was all she could think to say at that point. To all intents and purposes, she was Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, literally smouldering and goading William Hurt to smash through a glass door to get at her.
The only illumination came from the lamp next to the window so the corners of the room were dark. Light and shade undulated across her face and body. All was silence save for the muffled ignition of a car outside. Martin realised he could actually hear the sound of blood flowing in his ears. The air around them seemed to get heavier and almost claustrophobic. All of a sudden his legs no longer seemed steady and he felt his thigh muscles twitch and his penis press against his jeans.
Their eyes had been locked together for some time and he felt as though he was going to fall.
He had to do something.
He bent to grab the coffee table that sat between them with both hands and flung it like a Frisbee towards the breakfast bar; it clattered against the step that led to the open plan kitchen beyond. Her mouth opened and her eyes widened as he swiftly crossed the space he’d opened up.
He put his hands on her waist and their bodies touched all the way from thigh to chest – he felt her breasts press into him and it made him sigh. She felt his cock hard against her groin and her hands on his buttocks pulled him closer still so that she was now actively rubbing it.
The floor fell away beneath the soles of Martin’s feet, he felt like he was shaking but could not be sure that this was actually so. He was alive now. Now. He was exhilarated and frightened. They both looked down at the other's lips as they came together to form a sealed dock, within which there was nothing but sensation and, within that blind void, without warning, the tips of their tongues met. An electric spark.
Martin was running his hands through her thick hair – it was like swimming, his fingers caressed by the vibrant currents. He felt like screaming for joy. His lips were now on her neck, the length of her spine was warm from the inside. Her hand was on his jeans between his legs and she could feel him; she moaned and they had to come off.
In an instant, she had his flies undone and her hand inside, all over the full length of stiff, silky muscle. This was more exciting than anything that had ever happened to her, all those times she had gazed at the beautiful but remote Martin Dash, hoping but hardly able to believe that she would ever get to do what she was now doing to him. Her skin shivered with the pure thrill of it.
Her blouse was now unbuttoned and she threw it to the floor, her white lacy bra after it. Martin caressed her full, right breast with his left hand whilst kissing her passionately on the lips. Her left breast was pressed against his now naked chest, the feel of skin to skin utterly sublime. Finally, she peeled her tight skirt to the floor with her knickers, to be left standing before him in her black stockings, suspenders and heels. Martin’s face expressed pure bliss, they pulled close again and looked deep into each other’s eyes.
She smiled: “Martin . . .” and they subsided to the carpet right where they stood. As they lay there, his fingers moved slowly up the inside of her thigh and at the top he touched her. Instead of prompting any resistance, this acted as a spring and her legs opened willingly – she wanted him and they both grinned happily. They kissed silently and slowly, their eyes closed, as he carefully massaged her clitoris with his middle finger. Susan moaned with pleasure as her whole vulva was rinsed.
“Please Martin – please.”
He brought himself up to position over her and, as she felt him enter, she screwed her eyelids down and everything was velvet black for a moment. As they began to move together she had the distinct sensation of flight, free from who they were, what they were, and the sordid details of their earthly existence. They were free together and, as she watched his face writhe with so much joy that it looked like anguish, she saw that he had been reborn like a new creature, cracked out of the husk of a chrysalis that had grown around him by accretion over many neglectful years.
She wrapped her legs around his back to pull him ever closer and didn’t want it to end. But when they came she was squeezed tight in his arms and they both had to cry out simply to vent the sheer power of what they were experiencing. Martin threw himself to one side, onto his back next to Susan, and they both lay gleaming with sweat, wondering what lay in store for them next.
25.
It was now 3:00 a.m. The two young lovers lay naked between the sheets of Martin’s king-size bed, Susan’s head nestling in the crook of his neck, allowing his arm to encircle her shoulder and his hand to stroke her freshly washed skin. They had showered together and revelled in the discovery of their bodies, uninhibited and shorn of any obligation to behave any way other than as they pleased.
“Well – Jesus Christ, Martin,” she had teased as they slipped and squirmed together in the foamy water, “that was worth the wait !” and squealed as he tickled her for her cheek.
As they lay – quieter now – it seemed to her that a thousand questions now needed to be asked and answered but she couldn’t find the first one. Martin had been waiting but also wondering if, in fact, the onus wasn’t properly upon himself?
Ultimately, Susan sat herself upright, pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts (merely so that he would not be distracted from her questioning . . .), and spoke first but immediately put the ball in Martin’s court.
“OK then, where do we start?”
Martin crinkled his forehead, exhaled through his nose and began. The story he told matched the essentials that had been provided by Michael but had rather more detail – and rather more insight – thrown in.
He told her of his early years with Sonia and Jack in St Ives; the picnics on Porthsea Beach and the walks along the cliffs at Carrick Dhu; of the evenings spent listening in wonder to his mother sing the old Cornish songs in their little kitchen (‘Lamorna’ and ‘The White Rose’; she had a beautiful voice, according to Martin – strong but soulful – and would perform in the local pubs) and watching his father paint his haunting landscapes (dark and brooding, Jack said he was trying to show people the hills’ memories); of the days occupied with the hunt for Sonia after one of her periodic disappearances inland (onto Bodmin Moor or above the tin mines of Camborne); and the nights endured under the bed sheets, trying to block out the noise of his father raging downstairs after three days on the piss, smashing the cheap crockery and Sonia’s teeth.
He described the unusually intimate relationship he enjoyed with the Broad family – Michael, Megan and their parents, Victor and Lucy. Martin’s own family environment was clearly bohemian at best, probably dysfunctional and borderline scandalous and he sometimes got the impression that Victor and Lucy (and Michael and Megan, if it came to it) rather enjoyed their self-appointed role as unofficial guardians of the poor boy’s moral and material welfare – it sat well with their image of themselves as prominent local dignitaries and benefactors. Victor’s family had, in the past, garnered considerable wealth as tin and copper mine owners; much of that wealth had been lost with the decline of those industries and a generation or two of dissolute wastrels but Victor had had the good fortune (or tenacity, if you like) to bag Lucy Hancock as a bride, complete with her share of her family’s substantial landholdings.
He recounted the lazy summer afternoons spent playing tennis on the court at the Broads' mansion on the outskirts of the town; sipping lemonade on the wide terrace skirting the front of the house and swimming in the pool that got most of the sun round the back. All like something out of Brideshead Revisited – as undoubtedly intended by ‘Viscount Vic’ (as Megan sardonically branded her father).
As he told the tale to Susan, it occurred to Martin – not for the first time – how bizarre was the life he’d led thus far. He’d survived a murder trial at 19; spent the next 10 years in a wilderness of oblivion, his mind suspended and numbed, known no longer to his family and former friends; and arrived in London at 29 to become acquainted with the Prime Minister’s inner circle, only to find that he was now likely to be tried again in a financial scandal that was, at this very moment, creeping closer to the heart of the country’s Government. Not bad for a lad from a backwater of the country blessed with little more than a brittle psyche and a winning smile.
True, his childhood was, in many ways, not untypical of the experience that many kids had to endure behind closed doors up and down the country but his own always had a peculiar feel to it, somehow, that he could never quite grasp. Right from his earliest memories, he had been plagued with the nagging feeling that there was something not quite right that he couldn’t put his finger on. Thus, the twin torments of self-doubt and paranoia became, in time, his constant companions, to be battled and accommodated and denied.
Into that pot was added the mixed blessing of his looks. Even as a baby, his features were such that passers-by would routinely stop in their tracks and, almost involuntarily, be forced to exclaim: “My goodness, what a beautiful baby !” People seemed to feel that the unique nature of this visitation somehow made the child public property and entitled them to hinder the passage of mother and child while they greedily drank in the full experience of their encounter with what might well turn out to have been an angel. And, whilst there was no doubt that Sonia could – and would – readily feel the pride of any mother who had produced such a specimen, it was equally true that this importunate harrying did ultimately begin to grate on Sonia as she would try to conduct a quiet walk with her son, to be enjoyed by just the two of them together.
His eyes had never really changed colour since then – an electric blue of such an iridescent quality that, when you looked at them, it was all too easy to find yourself entranced, in much the same way that you might lose yourself gazing into the flames of a fire.
Combined with a noble brow, alpine cheekbones, aquiline nose, cherry lips, lean jaw and lustrous pale gold hair, such features meant that he was always doomed to be the centre of attention, whether he wished it or not. Make no mistake – he was human enough to appreciate the gratification that such advantages can bestow but he was also sufficiently intelligent – nay, soulful – to ultimately feel the tedium of people’s stock response to such a proposition.
So he and Michael and Megan ran around the streets of St Ives; across the sandy beaches; along the giddying cliff edges; and through the grassy fields stretching back from the coast as they ate together; sang, danced and drank together; and grew together. It was diffic
ult for Martin to describe to Susan exactly what it was that bound the three of them together, particularly considering that he’d often felt confused about the true nature of the relationship himself.
He tried to explain to Susan the difficulties that Michael had with Victor – a vain, capricious man who barely tried to conceal his contempt when Michael failed to attain some arbitrary level of achievement that he’d imposed. In stark contrast to the unfailing indulgence he afforded his favourite, Megan. How that, in turn, fed the crass and heartless persona that Michael too often presented to the world (including Martin). But how Michael had always come through for Martin when it mattered, including the trial, when Michael refused to believe that Martin had killed his own sister against the faces of those in the town who were only too happy for the young Adonis to be brought down to a more earthly level.
And he struggled to relate the true nature of Megan herself – a living, walking, talking contradiction who knew no bounds when it came to satisfying her own mysterious urges but made your heart burst with pride to see her scattering, like skittles, a gang of thugs bullying a younger boy in the fields, armed with nothing but a riding crop and a righteous fury.
“Did you love her?” Susan interjected, not really wanting to ask the question but knowing that she had to.
Martin considered the question, had he loved Megan? For: she had been a fixture in his life throughout childhood and adolescence, the two of them like Bonnie and Clyde (with Michael their Buck Barrow). Against: she had tried to kill him.
They had been drawn to each other from the first moment they ran into each other as kids aged . . . Martin couldn’t even remember – it must have been 5 or 6. They were both distinctive children – Martin with his angelic looks and magnetic aura and Megan a latter-day Scarlett O’Hara, all flashing temper and coltish allure, wilful and winning. With her midnight black hair, sparkling green eyes and proud bearing, Megan Broad turned nearly as many heads as Martin Dayton and to see the two of them growing up together was to behold a pairing that was generally assumed to be an integral part of the natural order.
