Under the Vulcania

by Maureen Freely

  By now the in-house emergency squad had arrived to treat the victims of the swing accident, and a different woman was performing fellatio on the beau confessor. But before Roland could get to the scene, he had to deal with a client who wanted to lodge a service complaint. Apparently, all five of the events she had purchased with her ‘hard-earned money’ had ended in premature ejaculation. Roland was trying to placate her when he happened to glance in the direction of the showrooms to see that the disgruntled fantasist had tied both of her trainees to examination tables and was now about to pretend to castrate them.

  Except that it wasn’t a pretence. The knife was real. Apologizing to the unhappy customer, he rushed over to the showroom. The door wouldn’t give, so he and two bar-beaux had to approach the showroom from the show side and break the glass. He rescued the trainees, whose teeth were chattering, called the guards to detain the fantasist, and called Ingrid on reception to do a police check.

  This reminded him of the off-duty policewomen. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that they had no eyes for the English tea now spread before them, as they were kissing each other passionately. Their robes had fallen open to reveal fold upon fold of cherubic flesh. So! he thought. All’s well that ends well. Except that his own tragedy of errors was far from over.

  For when he got back to the unhappy customer of the five premature ejaculations, he found that she had been joined by two others of her ilk. One had contracted for an hour on the rack. The other had contracted for an hour of discipline. The room numbers had got confused, and now the one who had been needlessly detained on ‘those tedious bars’ wanted a refund, while the one who had been mercilessly disciplined was threatening to sue.

  Raul! Wake up! Roland wanted to say. Instead, he got back in touch with Ingrid on reception to find out if there was any way of getting into the Inner Sanctum. But she was far more interested in telling him that the police had checked on Madeline Magenta, to discover that she was not the famed journalist at all, but a dangerous sex offender who had been using her name. A police van was now on its way to the Vulcania.

  But so was the shop steward of the MPU (Male Prostitutes Union). There were a number of irregularities he wanted to make a formal complaint about. (a) Why were the men in with the sex offender trainees? (b) Why had reception not run a police check on the sex offender before admitting her to the establishment? (c) The emergency cord in the showroom was defective. When was the last time these cords had been routinely checked? Roland’s efforts to give the shop steward his answers were hampered by a second complaint – this one from the Chastity Beltway, where someone else wanted her money back. ‘I didn’t come all this way to watch a bunch of airheads breastfeeding.’

  The crowd standing outside the management office was now coming to resemble a vigilante society, so he ought to have been relieved when the woman who had been accidentally whipped put one hand over her mouth and pointed the other in the direction of the Roman Baths, from which a large, middle-aged man in a three-piece suit was now emerging. ‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Hide me! It’s my husband!’ The shop steward obliged by throwing a towel over her head and leading her into the nearest empty cubicle. It was all very obvious – the only reason the husband didn’t see her is that he had also recognized one of the women who was comforting the beau confessor.

  By now a number of other women had recognized him, too. ‘There’s the father of one of my pupils!’ ‘My next door neighbour!’ ‘My chiropractor!’ These women also dived into the nearest available cubicles. Alas, it soon became apparent from the screams that some of these were occupied.

  Trying very hard now to simulate calm, Roland advanced on the angry man. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises quietly.’

  ‘And if I don’t agree…?’

  ‘Then I’m afraid I’ll have to eject you by force.’

  ‘Force! Hah! What a joke!’ he exclaimed, laughing unpleasantly. But then, for once, things went Roland’s way. At that same moment, the jealous husband’s attention was diverted by the arrival of the two policemen, there to take the sex offender into custody.

  Their attention was, in turn, diverted by the spectacle of their two off-duty female colleagues, who were still locked in a desperately amorous embrace over their untouched English tea.

  Happily, deliverance appeared in the form of the handyman, who now had the combination for the door to Raul’s inner sanctum.

  It was so quiet inside that even in his harried state, Roland regretted having to arouse the slumbering pair. But! All dreams must come to an end. Gently, he shook his employer’s shoulder.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘What time is it? How long have I been asleep?’ Raul withdrew himself from Fiona’s sleeping embrace to check his watch.

  ‘Not very long, I’m afraid, but long enough for all hell to break loose.’ As Roland ran through the disasters, Raul returned to his controls and typed out a few notes to himself. ‘Before we go any further, Roland, I want you to rest assured that I take full responsibility for all the mishaps that occurred while I was asleep. You need not worry about consequences. In fact, I would like to thank you for your resourcefulness in the face of spiralling crisis.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Please. No formalities,’ Raul said. ‘Now let’s figure out the order in which to deal with things. I think the sex offender first, don’t you?’

  ‘Either her or the husband.’

  ‘Maybe we can find a way of killing two birds with one stone. But first, let’s make sure we have given …’ He looked up at the chaise-longue where, a few seconds earlier, he had been asleep in the arms of Fiona.

  She was gone…

  Chapter Eighteen

  … and hurriedly showering in the Roman Baths. Catching sight of the travelling hologram clock, she noted, with some relief, that it wasn’t quite as late as she had feared. It was only half past four. She had half an hour to make it to her daughter’s school.

  She had been hoping to stop off in one of the boutiques upstairs to buy something for a black-tie dinner that was coming up. She had noticed a pair of silk harem trousers that would have been almost but not quite inappropriate, as well as an intriguing asymmetrical hat. A pity she hadn’t the time to browse, she thought: a dress purchase would have been a discreet way to hide the expenses of the day. But she discovered, when she got to the check-out desk, that she was to be charged nothing.

  ‘Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?’ she asked.

  ‘It was an explicit command direct from the manager that overwrote your file.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I like that. I don’t like to be beholden to people.’

  ‘I could take it up with him now, if you like.’

  ‘No, no, I’m afraid I don’t have the time. Which reminds me. I was going to buy something but I think I’m going to have to put it off. Is it possible to visit the boutiques up here without paying a visit downstairs?’

  ‘Of course, Madam. Here’s a brochure setting out the full range of our overground services. Most of our shops stay open until ten in the evening, so you may find it more comfortable to do your browsing later, after the rush.’

  Certainly the reception rooms were packed at the moment. All the other women with school-age children were also on their way out. There were so many women buying chocolates and flowers for their husbands at the stall near the front that Fiona could hardly make her way through the door.

  Outside were the usual scenes one associated with school gates – toddlers refusing to be put into their car seats, slightly older children leaving behind them a trail of cardigans and lunch boxes, a mother and child retracing their steps as they looked for the child’s security blanket… except that these mothers had a glow to them.

  Fiona wondered how they made the transition so quickly.

  She herself needed the emptiness of the fifteen-minute drive to her daughter’s school. But… she could not control her thoughts quite as skilfully
as usual. What exactly was she to make of that last episode? The question kept coming at her from unexpected angles. Each time she told herself that there was nothing to make of it at all. It was just part of the schedule of entertainments.

  She was glad to see her daughter, instead of numb like she had been for the better part of a year. She was interested for once to hear the details of her day. No one had played with her at lunchtime, Ruth complained. She had, however, received a merit badge for her drawing of a cantilever bridge. Someone had taken her peg off the wall and so she had been sent to the headmistress for untidiness. This wasn’t fair because it wasn’t her fault.

  Ruth’s sense of unfairness was further exacerbated when they arrived at Daniel’s school and Daniel insisted on his right to the front seat. After hitting each other in their usual way, they asked Fiona, ‘Why are you smiling?’ She did not tell them she was smiling because so many of the other women on the same school run had just come from the Vulcania too. That one in the blue Peugeot – Fiona had seen her at the bar, sharing a banana split with a bar-beau. That woman in the new Volvo – she had been in the showroom with the fourposter bed…

  For once, she was glad, too, to see her house. It didn’t seem so tired this evening. The rebelliousness of the colour scheme pleased her. Surveying its impractical layout, she remembered, for the first time in a long time, the joy with which she had deliberately made it so. And that – she told herself – was the point of taking a day off – to cleanse your mind and your body of all its poison so that you could enjoy the life you had made for yourself, instead of succumbing to listlessness and depression…

  Except…

  She was halfway through cooking supper – a potato omelette – she had no idea why – the idea had just come to her out of nowhere – when she felt her husband’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Darling. You’re overtaxing yourself. We could have had lamb chops.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Back at the Vulcania, Raul had finished the changeover meeting with the night manager and was just taking his last stroll through the subterranean labyrinth. Workmen were hosing down the bar and pool area, while another team was putting a new sheet of plate glass into the damaged showroom. The nets and swings hanging from the central pool dome had been unravelled. The husband had been placated with a voucher for an afternoon at a brother institution. The sex offender had been taken into custody. The accidentally whipped woman, grateful to have been saved from her husband, had withdrawn her complaint. The victim of five premature ejaculations had agreed to a repeat visit, on the house, to be taken up before the end of August. The distraught beau confessor had been granted humanitarian leave on condition that he pay six visits to a counsellor. The policewomen had been too wrapped up in each other even to notice the presence of their colleagues. The other clients had not complained about the noise or the disruption; possibly they thought that the emergency vehicles and personnel were just part of the show.

  Upstairs, Veronica was just beginning her first evening acting class. She was lying on a bench on the stage, while one of her (less promising) tutees practised telling her she had beautiful breasts. Raul noticed with some disappointment that there was not a single face in the student audience that was trying to hold back a snigger. He surveyed the bulletin board outside the classroom. It, too, was terminally earnest. ‘Make Your Own Certificate X!’ exclaimed one poster. Another advertised Karaoke practice, while a third offered brush-up dance lessons for a forthcoming Sixties Night.

  The cocktail lounge was full of young men dressed up and powdered to look like sugar daddies, and clients dressed up as B-girls, while in the main hall, the band was practising for the evening strip show. The dancing beaux were already beginning to flit and prance their way through the service entrance. A few had stopped to exchange notes and jokes with the last exhausted-looking stragglers from the day shift. Meanwhile, a steady stream of delivery men carrying crates and champagne and boxes of lobster filed past them.

  As Raul let himself out and shut the door behind him, he decided also to put behind him all the events of the day.

  Especially the most perplexing one.

  These next few hours were the ones he lived for. His four little girls, craning their necks at the front window, awaiting his return… jumping into his arms shouting, ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ as he walked through the door… the housekeeper, finishing her last cup of coffee while she relayed the day’s messages, but remaining largely unheard because his girls were all talking to him at the same time… ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and help with supper?’ asked the housekeeper. ‘No,’ said Raul. ‘The girls and I will manage fine.’

  ‘Get me nine eggs,’ he told his eldest, the sombre and delicately pensive Rosa. ‘Emmeline, you get out the bowl and after your sister has broken them, you may do the beating. But no arguments, do you hear? Or else I’ll change my mind.’ Emmeline was a good girl, but she didn’t like to take orders, so it was always wiser to start out by setting limits with her, while Teresa, his third, needed to be talked up to – or else she was crushed. The greatest insult was to be taken for her age. So Raul was careful to let her pretend she was in full charge of washing and steaming the new potatoes, while he helped her out invisibly. He gave little Eva the job of finding him a Spanish onion, which he cut and sautéed in olive oil while she went back to search for tomatoes for the salad.

  He was making a potato omelette. He knew exactly where the idea had come from – it was the first thing he had ever made for Fiona, that first night so many years ago when she had turned up to talk about sharing his apartment. What he didn’t know was why it was so urgent to repeat the meal again tonight – or why, having succumbed to this whim, it was making him so unreasonably cheerful. Chores that usually weighed on him now lifted his heart… he actually enjoyed the childish bickering over unfair portions and the eruption of bad manners… even the clean-up seemed quick and effortless. Surveying the immaculate kitchen afterwards, he allowed himself a rare moment of self-congratulation. It had been a difficult year, but he had succeeded in making his family a team. He let bath-time go on for an hour. Then he allowed the girls to talk him into reading them twice as many stories as usual. As they huddled around his rocking chair, he told himself no one else mattered. They were a world unto themselves.

  So why, when he had sent them away to put on their pyjamas, did he find himself taking out the phone directory, and looking for her name? Why, having dialled the number, did he just as suddenly hang up? It didn’t add up, he told himself as his daughters’ laughter filtered in from the bedroom. He needed nothing and nobody. He dialled her number again.

  She sounded annoyed when he identified himself.

  ‘If I’m calling at an inopportune time, just pretend I’m a phone bank, selling insurance.’

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘It’s just an idea that came to me. Please do say no if you think it’s inappropriate. I just thought, for old times’ sake… perhaps one day next week, on my day off perhaps, which is Monday… we could meet for a coffee.’

  There was no answer forthcoming.

  ‘And when I say coffee, I mean coffee and nothing else. I think, now that you know the background, you can appreciate how rare a treat that would be for me, and how sincerely I wish to meet you for a coffee with absolutely no strings attached.’

  ‘I was sure you were going to say ropes,’ Fiona said.

  Raul could not find it in him to laugh and so remained silent.

  ‘Well…’ said Fiona after a pause. ‘Well, I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm in it. I already know the worst of it, don’t I? I suppose that’s one way to feel safe.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Raul without much humour, ‘I could say the same about you.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s what I meant.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m not too quick on the uptake at this time of day.’

  ‘I can certainly understand why.�
� ‘So. It’s agreed for Monday, is it?’ ‘Monday it is.’

  ‘Ten o’clock at the Phoenicia?’

  ‘Ten o’clock at the Phoenicia.’

  Raul put down the phone, went to look out of the window at the hill where he deduced her house was. Then he pulled himself together and settled himself down once more on the rocking chair to read to his daughters. He fell asleep in the middle of singing them a revolutionary ballad. Soon afterwards, he was adrift in his favourite recurring dream, about sitting in a rowing boat in the middle of a lake, with a fishing rod that remained… for ever… idle…

  Chapter Twenty

  … while a few miles away in the park at the centre of their beautiful city, two couples sat admiring a stately man-made waterfall from opposite shores of the river.

  Jacqui and The Wife were perched on a low stone wall. They had run out of stories to tell each other. They had long since established that the man they had been sharing was, to all extents and purposes, two different people. They had also decided that this didn’t matter, as both were bastards. In Jacqui’s words, the man was the personification of Hobson’s Choice.

  What they hadn’t decided on yet was a fitting punishment, but The Wife was sure they would come up with a good one if they first allowed themselves the luxury of a few double margaritas. ‘I know a place that has excellent nachos,’ she said. ‘If we go now, we can even hit Happy Hour.’ She put her arm around Jacqui’s shoulders as if to shepherd her. Why, Jacqui wondered, was this the most titillating thing that had happened to her all day?

  Meanwhile, on the opposite riverbank, Roland and Sonny contemplated the floodlit waterfall in silence. What a relief, after a day of amicable insincerities, just to sit here without trying to read anyone’s mind. What a relief, also, to know that Sonny was safe, his pursuer behind bars. How cool Sonny had been about it all. How rattled Roland was by the intermittent thoughts about what could have happened if… but it hadn’t happened. God’s gift to Roland was still in one big, deliciously muscular piece. Without stopping to ask for permission in his ususal self-deprecating manner, Roland reached out and slipped his hand down the front of Sonny’s shorts.