by Primula Bond
With a jolt, I realise it’s the same girl I espied through my long lens when I was walking along the High Line in Manhattan a few weeks ago, the night Gustav presented me with the Serenissima gallery. She was being filmed having sex with an anonymous guy in a rumpled bed. Her CV must be well thumbed by casting directors looking for uninhibited actresses, and boy, she’s perfect for this scenario. Ripe, exotic, and naughty.
She winks at me. She’s a woman, not a girl. Her eyelashes are long and thick like spiders. Her mouth is a juicy honeytrap of thick red lips and I want those lips. I want her. Shockingly. Desire plunges inside me. And she knows it. Sliding her hands down to the boy’s hips, she turns to face me fully, rubbing her bottom against his body like a pole dancer, opening and closing her knees for my benefit.
I return her look, aware that my mouth has dropped open. I lift the camera. That’s my message to her. I can’t have her. Not now, anyway. I’m working.
The boy’s eyes are half closed as she rubs against him. She bends forward, her big breasts dangling like tempting fruit. Showing herself to me. I remember the erotic pop video on its endless loop downstairs. Those hungry open mouths, those girls and boys greedy for each other. My hands are sweaty as I adjust the apertures for more light.
Danceny can’t hold on any longer. As La Marquise fondles her own breasts, pushing them together, running the flats of her palms over the nipples so that they poke through the silky nightie, the boy spins her around, hoists her up off the floor so that her legs wrap around his hips.
‘Cici,’ I whisper, trying to distract her. ‘Could you unzip my tripod bag for me, please?’
The girl bends to do so, still sniffling. She’s been involved with this production for long enough. Surely she knows the score? I can see why she’s possessive over her tasty boyfriend, though. He may be young, but he sure works out. He bears the voluptuous weight of La Marquise as easily as if she’s a fresh baguette and throws her on to the bed. They sink into the whiteness, the pillows bouncing round them as if eager to join in, and I switch to film because the slow motion stills will look fantastic.
When they stop bouncing, La Marquise manoeuvres herself on top of her prey. Her strong thighs grip him. Her hair flies back as she tosses her head triumphantly. She’s in the same controlling position as when she rode on top of her lover in that loft in New York.
‘Ça suffit, mademoiselle. Viens.’ Cici hisses. She’s beginning to annoy me now. ‘We can find other people in the château to film.’
I shake my head. She can talk the talk, but when it comes to her own feelings the poor girl can’t face walking the walk. If Cici has a problem, she has to button it. I’m just here to do a job, and her feelings have to go on the back burner for now. But I can’t tear myself away.
La Marquise is pulling the boy’s boxers down now, kissing her way down his hairless torso and flat stomach. Her face is buried against him, but he can’t help glancing over at us. At me, actually. Is he a brilliant actor or is he genuinely struggling with a mixture of remorse for his jealous young girlfriend and exhilaration at being fondled by the sexiest woman in the film business?
His erection thumps out of the boxers and La Marquise cradles it in her fingers for a moment, twisting her long black hair back behind her shoulder with the other hand. The two of them are perfectly positioned in profile against the slatted window. The light is more diffuse here, perfect for the atmosphere. I’m guessing there’s a courtyard or a more shaded area of the premises beyond. On my side of the room the light through the still-open door is coming through stronger now that the rain has eased.
And so in perfect profile Danceny’s erection thrusts upright, manifesting its impressive proportions. No wonder little Cici wants that treasure to herself. The woman is massaging it, hard, as if she’s throwing pottery.
A long-ago conversation with Polly comes back to me. Actually referring to Pierre, when he was this age. When he was lusting after Margot, his out of bounds sister-in-law.
You know what they’re like at that age. Always hard, and always grateful.
And thinking of Pierre, he fits the Gercourt profile. La Marquise’s secondary lover, employed to create mayhem. But as I watch the couple, I realise that Pierre’s name no longer makes me panicky or anxious. He’s forgiven. Better still, he’s far away.
I’m working. I must push those Levi brothers out of my mind. I peer through the camera again. Danceny is hard enough now. La Marquise is going down on him. She pulls him into those red, shiny lips of hers, her teeth nipping. She’s sucking and he’s responding, thrusting into her face.
My fingers start trembling. Time to screw my camera on to the tripod. Cici is silent, not offering to help. I turn round and realise that whatever nonsense she spouts about the liberating ethos of this shoot, it’s proving too hard for her to swallow. Poor Cici has left the room.
Once the camera’s fixed on I can take the pictures without spoiling the shots with too much shake. I check the apparatus is secure and I’m lifting my meter to test the dimness in here when the light alters, because a door has opened on the far wall.
Danceny notices, and moans with frustration. But he can’t move. For the benefit of the intruder who has just come in, La Marquise tightens her grip on the young man’s hips and sucks harder, then works her way back up to the tip, sucking and licking his sweet length until he jerks and cries out loud.
A dart of desire shoots through me again, stronger this time. I watch the woman’s mouth, working on the boy, and I imagine those lips working on me, kissing my mouth, working down my throat to my breasts, her female mouth on my female breasts, on those other parts of me other women have only really skimmed over in my little experiments.
I could practise on her what I learned with Mrs Weinmeyer.
Look at her! As she leans over the boy, sucking him, her fingers wandering beneath him and jabbing into other parts of him, she works her heavy breasts and nipples against his body, rubs herself against his legs. The moist sound effects carry over the music. It’s changed yet again to an almost monastic humming, accompanied by a drumbeat. The woman’s wide, brown bottom flexes eagerly against her toy boy, showing him how a real woman feels.
Another man has come through the far door and simply merged with the shadows, because he is wearing a beige suit. It’s the character called Gercourt. I look at my watch. I’ve been up here for ages.
The newcomer walks straight over to the bed and stands above the lovers, watching them. He’s close enough to touch them. But he folds his arms, and his face is expressionless.
I take a shot of the curves and shapes of the two lovers on the bed contrasting with the ramrod-rigid watching man. La Marquise gives the boy one last, long suck, letting the length of him, still stiff, slide out past her teeth, along her tongue and into her waiting hand. Without turning her head, she murmurs something to the newcomer Gercourt.
I remember how astonished I was when I saw her in that New York loft, mounting her invisible lover in the bed, all the time offering a running commentary to the crew hanging around her. This woman has to be the coolest thing since red-hot chilli.
As if reading my mind, she glances at me. All three of them glance at me. The boy in fresh embarrassment, rising up on his elbows to push her off. Gercourt coldly. La Marquise with another languorous wink. Then she clambers back on top of her boy, pressing him gently down on his back, tilting herself over him.
‘C’est magnifique,’ she croons at him, showing him the length of his shaft encircled by her fingers.
She grins, not at the boy, but at me, as she rises on her knees and aims him inside her, pausing, letting me focus and shoot, the stiffness about to enter the softness. She lowers herself inch by inch, sighing loudly now, and a muscle twitches in Gercourt’s cheek.
I watch the woman teasing herself, teasing her lover. I know how that feels. That agonising slowness, forcing yourself to put off the delicious moment for as long as you can bear, knowing that you will want to screech
with delight when it’s inside you. And that’s what she does, flinging her arms in the air like a flamenco dancer, sweeping her hair up. Her spine undulates as she alternates between rising up on her knees and falling forwards on to her hands. When her nipples swing over his mouth, her curtains of dark hair conceal them both.
Gercourt can’t hold back. That gorgeous female bottom must be a red rag to a bull. I don’t care if this is rehearsed, or being secretly choreographed by Alain, or being filmed by invisible cameras. Lust runs riot in this château, with no boundaries. The naughtier the better. The more combinations, the better.
It’s perfect material, and it’s perfect for the narrative.
Gercourt unzips his narrow trousers. The boy Danceny’s eyes widen in alarm. Maybe he thinks Gercourt wants him. But La Marquise simply tosses her head and rides the boy more furiously.
Gercourt steps round the bucking bodies and kneels on the bed behind La Marquise, pulling her butt cheeks open, running his hand over her rump. Then he settles himself, angles himself like a weapon, and with no niceties he thrusts up that other part offered to him, forcing a long, low, juddering groan from her as he enters.
She’s not so in control now. She falls forward, and Danceny takes advantage of her distraction by pulling at her breasts, taking one nut-brown nipple into his mouth and biting it, hard, just as Gercourt at the rear rams himself in.
So this is the question answered. The composition of two men and a woman, framed by my viewfinder, showing me what goes where, and into whom.
Somehow I can’t see Gustav agreeing to me trying it.
Should this be happening, or is this going too far even by Valmont’s standards? Is La Marquise being overpowered, or do they all know full well she can take whatever’s coming to her, whoever, whenever? However?
La Marquise starts to mutter to herself as the pace increases, a kind of crooning, puffing stream of consciousness in a language I don’t recognise, but the two men are silent, intent upon filling her.
I take a couple more splendid shots of the intricate threesome, zooming in on a sequence of intimate close-ups.
Now it’s time to retreat. I pick up my equipment as best I can, my legs trembling as I drag it noisily from the room. For all I know, they’ll stop as soon as I’m gone. Someone else I haven’t seen will call ‘Cut’, and either they’ll stop or they’ll finish in their own good time. But so what? I’m not here to shatter the illusion. I’m here to encapsulate it.
Even the music seems to have stopped now. I wander down the wide corridor, back the way we came. Cici’s clipboard has been left on the window seat on the landing. I pick it up and carry it down the stairs and down the corridor she told me led to the kitchen. That’s where she must be.
I can smell garlic and onions and wine as I approach. Maybe the casserole is ready. Something metallic crashes to the floor behind the kitchen door, accompanied by whispered curses.
I push open the door.
Cici is in here all right. She’s half sitting, half lying on a big scrubbed pine table, and it looks as if she’s just knocked an entire plate of steaming vegetables to the floor. Behind her, through a rubber curtain, I can see other white shapes blurred by steam, arms waving, knives flashing, utensils gleaming. I hear the slamming of oven doors.
In this section, the dining area I presume, Valmont is standing between Cici’s long white legs, peeling her dark woollen stockings and tiny white knickers down to her ankles while she unbuttons his faded jeans.
I lift my smaller camera, still slung round my neck, and take a few more shots. I’m well into my stride now. Cici and Alain are kissing. Her young face is so fresh and clear against his greying, grizzled bristles.
The rubber curtain clatters aside, making me jump. The large man from the bathtub, dressed now in a lumberjack shirt and mud-spattered gardening trousers, pushes through. He mutters something at Alain, who nods and then lifts his hand to dismiss us both before pushing Cici on to her back amongst the bread and the fruit and the bottles of beer. She’s ready to be properly skewered.
I grin at Artolan, the dirty gardener, and he scowls back as if he’s never seen me before. Despite the filthy clothes and still-wet, matted hair, he has perfect white teeth and clear grey eyes. I’ll mark him down as the Dickson/Crystal character from my own life. He points towards the door to indicate that I’m to leave the way I’ve just come in. No food for me, then.
I pack up my camera, remember to place Cici’s clipboard down beside her. As I grab an apple from the fruit bowl beside her head, I can see the billet-doux that Alain/Valmont scribbled on there earlier.
In five minutes I’m coming to fuck you.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My work is done. Artolan is ignoring me, stumping through the lobby back towards the salon. Fine. I can’t wait to get my ass back into the city to wait for Gustav.
‘Excusez-moi?’ I call out, trotting after the gardener as he flings open the door to the salon. ‘La voiture?’
He shrugs like the Gallic stereotype he is and leaves the door swinging open. I follow him into the salon. The sun has gone down now but it’s still bright in here.
The music has shifted to the Gainsbourg and Birkin song Je t’aime, with erotic stills spooling across the screen above the fireplace. A different group of people is standing around the fireplace, drinking beer straight from the bottle. The conversation appears to be perfectly polite, judging by the calm modulation of the voices, except that the women are swaying their bodies slightly to the sensual music, rotating their heads. They are all mouthing the whispered endearments, imitating the cracked breathing of the girl in the film.
I take out my small camera, still slung round my neck. I want to know if the group by the fire are quoting the lovers on the soundtrack. Are they inviting each other to enter them, to come, just like those singers? If so, it’s very subtle. They’re not even touching at the moment. They’re just drinking, quite suggestively, from their beer bottles, but otherwise nodding and smiling in civilised mode.
Scanning the group, I zoom in first when I spot La Marquise. She must have rushed down here pretty damn quick. She’s still flushed and tangle-haired from her recent threesome, and still wearing the tiny negligee. She’s thrown a matching navy silk dressing gown loosely over herself. The dirty thought darts into my mind that she must still smell of sex.
I pan over to the nun-like Cécile character. She’s still in her grey coat, but her sandy, watery hair is loosened from the severe grey headband and flowing back from her fine face. She mouths ‘Moi non plus’ at La Marquise, who runs her tongue sensuously over her large red lips in response, before fellating her beer bottle.
There’s a third woman I haven’t seen before and who isn’t singing. Madame de Tourvel, peut-être. Straight out of Sixties sex-bomb central casting with her Bardot bleach-blonde hair backcombed into a puffy bun, her eyes heavily outlined and her lips a shell pink, although incongruously she’s dressed in a severe pink bouclé Chanel suit.
She can’t take her eyes off the only man in the group, who has his back to me and is hidden by one of the cameras pushed up close to the scene. All I can see of him is black hair and broad shoulders. But that’s all I need to see.
The three women are pushing close to him, eyes gleaming, mouths open, tongues flickering as if they want to eat him. Not even bothering to compete for his attention or push each other out of the way. They are all after him, and they’d have him here, now, one at a time or altogether, if no one objected. My God. Are they bored already of the lovers all over this castle who are there for the taking at the drop of a clapper-board? Or is this yet another staged scene I’ve walked into?
Valmont is still humping little Cici in the kitchen. The cameramen in the room are hunched in a corner staring at a monitor and sparking up some very strong-smelling cigarettes.
La Marquise spots me through a gap in the camera apparatus and her big eyes gleam. She gives me one of her long, slow winks, her long eyelashes curved like Bam
bi’s. A fidgety warmth fills me as she starts to walk towards me. The Bardot woman steps into her place as if they’re all part of some kind of roundel dance. She puts her hand up to touch the man’s face, fingering a lock of his curly black hair.
And when I realise who the man is, so unexpected, so out of context, yet so apparently at ease, I’m so shocked that my finger presses the shutter before I’m properly prepared. Goddammit. We all parted on polite, if slightly shaky, terms back in March, but Pierre Levi and I are certainly not best buddies. I’m not ready to see him again, especially on my own without Gustav here. What’s Pierre doing all the way over here in Paris? Why is he standing in this very château?
‘Before your handsome friend whisks you away, I am so glad to meet you at last,’ murmurs La Marquise in a husky French accent with a tinge of North Africa, pouting a kiss in my viewfinder. ‘I am Maria Memsahib. I’ve seen you before, yes?’
‘You’re not allowed to use your real name here!’
‘I don’t give a shit for Valmont’s silly rules!’ She produces a white card with curly Arabic script in gold writing and bites it at the corner. ‘I can use whatever name I like!’
‘I saw you filming a sex scene in New York, didn’t I?’ I keep the camera up to hide my confusion. ‘You were in a loft near the High Line?’
‘Yes. And later that evening I saw you making love with my old friend Gustav Levi in the art gallery.’
She winks again. She has my attention.
‘You know Gustav? How come?’
My hands are shaking as I take another blurred close-up of her then let my camera drop down on its strap round my neck. As the group disperses, my ‘handsome friend’ turns and spots me. He lifts his hand in a mock salute.
Maria Memsahib slides her card into the pocket of my jacket. Her tiny negligee rucks up as she pulls me against her haunch.
