After that a sound like rushing water, then another like a didgeridoo, a vibrating haunting sound, and then the keys of a piano are tinkled… I know this song… Of course… Rihanna’s unmistakable, silky voice cuts through the dark, ‘Shine bright like a diamond.’
Inside the spotlights, Blake curls one large hand around Lana’s delicate hand and his other hand goes to rest on the small of her back, and then he is whirling her around and they are dancing their first dance, a beautifully choreographed paso. Their movements so perfectly matched it’s like a real life Come Dancing.
No one speaks. No one moves. Everybody is staring at the splendid sight of two very beautiful people dipping and whirling round and round the dance area. Their movements fluid, effortless, perfectly matched and undeniably majestic.
He raises her in the air. Time stops. The notes hold, shimmer, she is returned to the ground; they glide along, moving as if they are one body, two people making graceful, magical circles. Blake twirls Lana and while she is spinning he catches her and kisses her. I stare at the sight. It is not possible to describe the beauty of that moment, that dance. Then the dance is over, and as if released, the crowd comes alive and spontaneously breaks into applause.
I tear my eyes away from the couple and look for Jack. I find him and my heart stops in my chest. Irish is standing frozen across the dance floor, his face a mask of terrible longing. His eyes are trained on the kissing couple. He is still madly, deeply, head over heels in love with Lana. The unfairness of it hits me like a blow in the gut. I actually experience pain at the core of my body.
Three spotlights hit the stage and—oh my God—it is Rhianna standing in the bright lights, a star in a tight sequined costume clapping and smiling. The crowd gasps and goes wild with pleasure and surprise.
‘Yeah, it’s me,’ she says and laughs.
She holds her hand out in the direction of Lana and Blake. ‘I dropped in to congratulate the new couple. Give a hand, everybody, to Mr. and Mrs. Blake Law Barrington.’
Everybody claps and cheers. I turn to look at Lana’s face and she has her hand over her mouth, but not with horror—delight. She had not known. Blake has his arm around her waist and is looking at her indulgently. At that moment Lana is no longer the humiliated bride at her own wedding. Just by the simple act of raising his hand the billionaire banker has turned everything around. She is once again wearing the coveted shoes that every woman wants to be in.
‘Thank you,’ Rihanna shouts into the mic. ‘Shall we get this party on the road?’
‘Yeah,’ the guests reply.
‘I don’t think I heard that.’
‘Yeah,’ comes the louder, more definite reply back.
She makes the horned symbol to the crowd, six dancers surround her and begin gyrating as she starts her next number, Don’t Stop The Music.
I look away from the stage and see Billie go up to Lana and Blake, and as if they have rehearsed this beforehand, Blake lets go of Lana and Billie links the fingers of her right hand through Lana’s, and gently kissing her cheek leads her away from the marquee. From where I am standing their unshakable bond tweaks at my ancient envy. I damp it down. I guess they will be going back to the house so Lana can change. Perhaps she will change into that beautiful white dress with the jeweled cut-outs.
I turn my attention to Blake. To the stony expression on his face as he watches his wife leave with her friend. Someone comes up to him, says something and he inclines his head to listen, his eyes still on Lana. The poor guy is still talking to him when he strides away in the direction that Victoria has been dragged to, his mobile held to his ear. Beneath the tightly controlled man, an implacably angry, raging beast. This is not a man to cross.
I wish I could follow him and see what happens to Victoria. Will he slap her, the sound reverberating? I am electrified by the thought of that slap. It will be the slap that I wish I had delivered.
On stage Rihanna and her dancers are strutting their stuff. I scan the room. It is now full of dancing people. An elderly lady in a soft gray suit is dabbing her eyes and reaching for her box of earplugs.
I know I should have just left it. Let it go, but I couldn’t. I go up to Jack. I wanted him to see and acknowledge the new me. Maybe if he saw the new me he might change his mind, slowly fall in love with me. I edge along the sides of the room until I am standing beside him.
Thirteen
‘Hi.’
He looks down at me, and for a split second I see a slash of annoyance, then recognition and genuine surprise. ‘Julie?’
‘Mmmm…’ I gaze innocently at him from under my lashes, the way Lady Diana used to. I hope I come off as vulnerable and flirtatious as she used to.
‘You look different.’
‘Different better or worse?’
‘Definitely different better.’
A fierce flash of pride and pleasure go through me at his words. My heart starts beating really fast. I am determined to have this man. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. Come with me,’ I say, and, grasping his arm, lead him into the corridor and down it. I open the first door to my right, look in—it is empty. I pull him in with me.
‘What’s up?’
I turn to close the door and my heart is in my throat. The room is in semi-darkness with the drapes pulled halfway across the tall windows and two lit corner lamps. I am glad for it. My cheeks are burning up. In the dim of the soaring ceiling amongst the grand furniture, I try frantically to remember exactly what I had planned to say, and fuck me, nothing comes into my head.
My mind is blank.
I feel dread crawl up my spine as I turn to face him. He is looking at me curiously. I swallow hard. The blood is pounding so hard in my ears I hear it like a roar. All I can think of is how much I love him. I have loved this man for so long. I love everything about him. I love the bewilderingly silent pauses he lapses into. There will always be a part of him that can never be known, not by his mother, not by Lana and not by me. But I even love that he will never wholly be known.
I love the way he holds his jaw in that aggressive slant. I love the way everybody respects him. Or the way his hair is slicked back without any parting. And his tormented blue eyes. In my dreams they are hot and passionate. I laugh when he laughs. I love, love, love everything about this man. He has to love me back. In the end he must fall in love with me.
If only he would take me in his arms. If only there was no need for words. I squeeze my eyes shut. Where, oh where are the words that I have so carefully planned?
‘Are you all right, Jules?’
Jack’s voice cuts into my confused thoughts. I don’t like to swear, but fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! My eyes snap open. His face is puzzled but interested.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I gulp.
‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
I open my mouth and close it again. Thousands of unfinished sentences pass through my empty head, each one as incoherent as the one that had gone before.
‘What is it?’ he repeats, this more urgently. He reaches out a hand and takes mine in it.
At the touch of his hand I begin to tremble violently. Oh my God, Oh my God, it is going to happen like it happens in my dreams. He is going to take me in his arms.
‘Jules?’ He takes a step closer, and it seems to me that his whole radiantly clean heart is concerned. Even in this dim light I know he can see how tense my body has become. I am a nervous mess.
I open my mouth. ‘I love you,’ I blurt.
The room becomes so deadly silent that I dread to expel the breath I am holding. He looks like a nine-year-old boy that has had a bra thrown in his face. The incredulity in his dear face would have had me rolling with laughter in different circumstances. He frowns. A quick flash of some emotion crosses his eyes. I cannot understand it. Before I can even properly register it in my mind or its implications, I am swamped with that famous Jack smile. The smile that made all the girls in school swoon. He does not drop my hand, but gallantly, and in an oddly old-fashioned gesture,
raises it to his lips and kisses it.
‘You will never be happy as the wife of a poor man.’
‘But I love you.’
He lays his fingers on my mouth. ‘One day you will find someone who is perfect for you, perhaps even the rich man of your dreams. And that day you will thank your lucky stars that nothing became of this day.’
I do not like the tone he has taken. This is wrong, all wrong. Even if he had said he loathed me it would be preferable, but this tone, as if I am a hurt child that needs to be soothed. I won’t have it.
‘She’s married now. You can never have her. Have me, please.’
It is as if I have slapped him. He draws away from me. Never before have I seen so much misery in anyone’s face except maybe that one time with my father.
‘You have your love and I have mine,’ he says sadly, and turns away to leave.
I grab his sleeve. ‘Wait, Jack.’
He turns back. His voice is dull. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Jules. Please, let’s just pretend we never came into this room.’
‘You can learn to love me.’
‘I could never love you.’
My mouth drops open. Maybe later I will feel shame. Now I just know I must carry on. I have come this far. ‘Yes, you can,’ I insist stubbornly.
He shakes his head.
‘How do you know?’ I demand, my voice rising hysterically. ‘You haven’t even tried.’
He stares at me with that pitying look. He doesn’t want me. He won’t even give me a chance. Even if it is just to prove that I am not good enough for him. Somewhere in my brain a fire splutters and rises up. I gather up my dignity and let loose the rage of hurt pride. I will turn this into a liberating experience even if it kills me.
‘I hope you’re not waiting for her. Because Blake is never letting her go. You’ll never have her,’ I cry vindictively.
His face pales in the gloom. ‘I am not waiting for her. I’m leaving tomorrow.’
‘What? You arrived today and you’re leaving tomorrow?’
‘Yes, I am needed in Africa. I am not here.’
‘You are needed here. I need you.’
‘I am here to keep a promise to dance at Lana’s wedding,’ he says, and depressing the door handle, quietly leaves.
‘Oh, you, you…’ At that moment I cannot think of a word that is bad enough. My hands are clenched tight and my breath comes in hard bursts. ‘Fool!’ I holler at the closed door.
There’s a chair nearby and I sink into it. The reaction to my wild outburst has made my knees weak. I feel so bewildered. He did not want me. Was it all for nothing then? I no longer feel furious, just a strange, cold emptiness. I place the palms of my hands against my humiliated cheeks. Oh! The vile things I had said to him. He must hate me. Forever, I will be haunted by that stricken look on his face when I flung at him that he would never have Lana. How I regret those unkind words that I can never take back.
My eyes fall upon a painting of a seated crone in a thick white shawl, her deeply lined face enclosed in a full and heavily ribboned white cap. I look at her puckered mouth and for some insane reason it makes me want to scream.
‘Damn it to hell, I’ve ruined it. I’ve lost him,’ I wail, and, burying my face in my hands, mourn.
‘Nothing drives a man away faster than desperation,’ says a deep male voice from the depths of the gloomy room.
I spring up in startled confusion and whirl around in the direction of the voice.
Fourteen
The best man is hanging his head out from the side of a huge sofa. He has very white teeth, which gleam in the darkness. Shame runs up my throat and flames into my face. Can it get worse? Now Grandview has witnessed my total humiliation too.
‘You were listening to a private conversation. You should have made your presence known,’ I accuse angrily.
‘I would have, but the conversation took a turn for the worse before I could announce my presence.’ He says it reasonably enough, but his eyes are laughing at me.
‘Oh! How dare you mock me?’
‘I’m not mocking you. It just seems to me that you are going about your process of seduction the wrong way.’
For a moment I consider turning around and sailing out of the room, my head held high. But…in spite of myself I am intrigued. I march up to him.
‘What do you mean?’ I demand haughtily, looking down at him as disdainfully as you can to someone who has witnessed you make a complete fool of yourself in the most cringe-worthy way possible.
He gestures towards the high-backed chair opposite him, and I perch on him. I don’t plan to stay long. Up close he has very strong features. He looks like one of those Australian surfer boys. It must be his light hair. Good-looking, I suppose, but nowhere near as fine as Jack. My Jack is so beautiful it sometimes hurts me just to look at him.
Fine wisps have escaped his ponytail, and hang about his face. He sits up and pushes them back. He places his fist on the armrest—it is full of golden hairs, and I am struck by its resemblance to a lion’s paw. Not in the sense of shape but in sensation alone. It looks so cuddly, ineffective and harmless, and yet one swipe could rip out the contents of a man’s belly. He has been lying stretched out on the sofa and has taken his shoes off.
‘You have a hole in one of your socks,’ I say.
He grins shamelessly. ‘I left my knitting needles in Paris.’
A hippie and a smart Alec. Whatever. ‘What did you mean just now when you said I was going about it the wrong way?’
‘When outnumbered by the enemy, a stubborn or simple-minded man will fight face to face in the open until he is killed. A smart man will react differently. He will strategize, find the weakness of his opponent and exploit it. As in war so in love. The sexual encounter, they say, is a flowery battle between a man and a woman.’
‘A flowery battle?’
He nods. ‘Every night the last Emperor of the Manchu dynasty turned over an ornate jade name plaque next to his bedchamber and a new concubine from his stock of three thousand girls would be brought to his bed. In 1856 the Celestial Prince picked a plaque that carried the name Yehonala.’
Yehonala—a concubine called Yehonala. The idea is intriguing.
‘As was the custom, the odalisque was carried on the back of a eunuch, covered only by a red silk sheet. He laid the twenty-one-year-old virgin at the foot of the bed, and to symbolize her complete subjection to the will of the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, she had to crawl on all fours towards him. All the naked girl had to become the mistress of her own fate was that one night.’
Grandview pauses. I lean forward. When he speaks again his voice is soft.
‘One night with which to bewitch a dissipated god-king whose tastes were varied and, according to some, perverted. Beauty was of no use as every girl in the harem had been chosen for her good looks. Intelligence: he could find a hundred other scholars to discuss worldly affairs with. Humor: he had the Court’s professional comedians.’
In spite of myself I am utterly fascinated. I strain to catch his words, to enter the foreign world he was weaving.
‘No one knows what she did that first night, but whatever occurred was what the ambitious girl had learned during the five years that she had been languishing within the vermillion walls, virtually a prisoner, not a functioning man in sight, and while the Emperor was not even aware of her existence. She had tirelessly learned everything she could of the arts of love. Every closely guarded technique and all the secrets and practices of feminine allure became hers. That knowledge and sexual prowess made her irresistible to the pleasure-sated Emperor, and from that night on no one could usurp her place as the Imperial bed-partner. She let the Chinese poet Chang Heng speak again after two thousand years: “No joy shall be equal to the delights of this first night, these shall never be forgotten, however old we may grow.”
‘The Emperor became utterly besotted with her and remained so until his death. In that one night her skills set in motion the events
that ultimately led to the collapse of the centuries-long Manchu reign and the rise of a woman to power. Yehonala claimed the throne and became China’s last and most famous Empress. She became known as the She Dragon of China.’
Vann stops speaking and looks at me. My eyes travel down to his hands. They too are sprinkled with golden hairs. Big. Squarish. Well shaped. Masculine. Nice. Very nice. My mind goes blank. What the hell am I doing? I sit back, turn my voice disbelieving. ‘How could a virgin with no previous sexual contact with a man do that?’
He smiles. ‘Perhaps sex is not what you think it is?’
I frown. I am sixteen again, sore, the ejaculation leaking out of me. I remember he had gone out of the room and told his friends, ‘Like fucking a pillow, man.’ They had laughed. I had wiped myself and gone out, and pretended that I was not dying inside. The memory brings acute pain. I bow my head. ‘Well, what is it then?’
‘Sex is in the head.’
I frown.
‘Here, let me demonstrate. Close your eyes and do not open them until I tell you to do so.’
I look at him carefully. He appears relaxed. He has not moved a fraction of an inch from his position on the sofa and does not appear inclined to do so. What harm can come from a little demonstration? I close my eyes.
‘Imagine a white lotus bud. Do you know what a lotus looks like?’
I open my eyes and look at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘I’m a florist.’
His lips lift upwards, his hand waves down. I close my eyes.
‘Imagine that this lotus bud is very special. It can enter you…’
I squirm internally, a little, at that thought.
‘I take the lotus by the stalk and I hold it against your forehead. Instantly your forehead opens to allow the tip and slowly the entire bud into it. I pull the lotus out and place it at the base of your throat. Once again your body opens and welcomes it in. I do the same to the middle of your chest. In and out. Slowly. Next your belly button. The lotus disappears into it and out again. Now it is poised over your pussy. I gently insert it inside. First the tip and then, as your body learns to accommodate it, the whole bud, even the widest part. It feels tight, but you can take it. I pull it out and now it is hovering over your anal cavity.’
Seduce Me Page 8
