by Primula Bond
‘This is my commission, not Gustav’s, and it’s important to me, Mrs Weinmeyer, but I’ll understand if you want to cancel our association because I’ve rejected your advances. I can give you the prints of today’s shoot for free, or I can wipe them from the memory if you prefer,’ I stammer, realising that I’ve forgotten where the door is. ‘You’re lovely, both of you, and I admit it felt a little thrilling, but I can’t have sex with you. I’ve never–’
‘Tried it girl-on-girl? Or in a threesome?’
‘Both. Neither.’
They both tip their heads back and laugh, shake their heads, and to my astonishment give each other a hearty high-five.
Mr Weinmeyer pulls his boxers on and stands up. Once more he’s the towering businessman. ‘You are lovely, too, and we wouldn’t change a thing. Relax, Fräulein. No harm in trying it on with you, was there? I hope you’ll forgive us, but you must accept the lion’s share of the blame because you really are good enough to eat, and you looked, deep down, as if you knew exactly what you were doing. Mr Levi was right to snap you up in those wolfish jaws of his.’
‘I suppose it’s common knowledge that we’re an item?’
They nod, still chuckling and nudging each other like a pair of kids. ‘No way a cute piece of ass like you would pass by a connoisseur like him.’
I smile weakly even as my stomach lurches again. Of course he’s had other women. Lots of them. Maybe even Mrs Weinmeyer herself! ‘Right. But what matters now is my behaviour towards you. Please tell me there’s no harm done!’ I can feel the sweat pouring down my back. My neck under the long thick plait is sticky. ‘You won’t think me insolent or unprofessional?’
‘You are a consummate professional as well as consummately faithful, and don’t worry that pretty English head of yours. We have every intention of singing your praises to all our friends!’
They are both beside me now, guiding me up the stairs. There is no door, after all, just the staircase gliding up through the red walls out of the dungeon towards the surprising daylight. Of course. It must be about midday by now, yet it feels like the middle of the night.
‘Ernst, what we should be asking the girl is, does she want anything more to do with us? Depraved creatures that we are. We might have scared her witless down there.’
They both stand at the bottom of the Gone With The Wind stairs as I collect my other clothes from the drawing room. They match the dark-pink walls and the gilt furnishings. She is wrapped loosely in her pink chiffon again. He is in his boxers. They look as if they’re posing for a lingerie shoot.
‘She’s like one of our tasty Titians. We can’t help wanting a piece of that.’
‘A little crude, Ingrid. But I agree. It’s her fault for being so beautiful.’
I gasp with laughter. ‘That’s what Gustav said to me this morning!’
‘He’s so right,’ nods Mr Weinmeyer. ‘But then, he always had impeccable taste.
‘We’re teasing you, Serena.’ Ingrid runs her baby-pink fingernail down her husband’s cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter what you think of us, or who you tell, because no one will be shocked. Everyone knows we like a threesome and we’ll chance it whenever we find new blood. Usually money talks, but not in your case, evidently.’
Mr Weinmeyer glances up at the golden sunburst art deco clock above the mantelpiece. ‘The only downside is that you are forced to see us again, Miss Folkes, because we’ll need another meeting when you have the proofs. Would you prefer to come here with Gustav as your chaperone next time?’
Mrs Weinmeyer checks her reflection in the mirror, patting her blonde helmet. ‘Oh, please do! I’d be the envy of the ladies who lunch. Probably a fair share of their pretty young lovers too. Everyone longs to know what he’s like between the sheets. Please bring him! It would be like taking tea with Dracula.’
Mr Weinmeyer lifts his eyes heavenwards as if to say, these girls are a lost cause. ‘Or you could come to my office if that makes you feel safer?’
His elbow is on the newel of the banister. Hers is draped up the handrail. Another perfect composition of limbs. The tilt of their chins, their quiet demeanour, makes it impossible to remember what they did downstairs. I can’t take seriously the implications of what she is saying. That she wants to get my boyfriend naked in her ‘bordello room’.
I zip up my jacket. It’s not until I shove the beret down that I feel secure, and clothed, although the swing of my bra-less, unsupported breasts and the resulting rub of my tingling nipples against the fabric is disconcerting. I pick up my camera bags, and look them both calmly in the eye.
‘I’d be delighted to see you again as soon as I’ve edited the proofs. Gustav can come if he likes. He’s obviously in demand, but I think I have the advantage for once.’ I smile, turning to the door. ‘I’m the one who knows you both a whole lot better after today!’
They clap their hands and laugh again.
‘Indeed you do. This is the start of a wonderful partnership.’
I catch a wink passing between them before Mr Weinmeyer steps away from his wife and comes to open the front door for me. As the light floods in I fill my lungs properly for the first time since I entered this mansion.
‘That locket,’ Mr Weinmeyer says. ‘Come and see this, Ingrid. It’s exquisite. Like something your grandmother would wear before the First World War.’
Mrs Weinmeyer moves to stand next to him again. She lifts the golden locket, turns it, sees the silver clasp, the little S inscribed. Hears the mysterious rattle of the object inside, tapping its golden prison as if asking to come out. ‘How much?’
I smile generously, let her touch it for a moment. ‘It’s not for sale. It’s a present from Gustav, and it’s mine for life.’
Mr Weinmeyer puts his arm around his wife’s waist to protect her from the elements as he opens the front door wider. A cold blast of air invades the hallway, along with a flurry of wet snow.
I step onto the doorstep, the air rushing over my skin.
‘It must be serious,’ both Weinmeyers murmur with one accord. ‘And who can blame him?’
I feel like flinging my arms out to embrace the city. ‘What can I say? I’m a lucky girl.’
‘And he’s a lucky man. Don’t ever forget that.’
I grin at them. ‘That’s a lovely thing to say. I’ve really enjoyed today. And thank you for this opportunity, because it has been the next step on a very long ladder.’
‘Believe me, honey,’ smiles Mrs Weinmeyer, showing her expensively perfected teeth. ‘The pleasure will be all ours.’
They each lift their right hand to wave from the doorstep. Despite their kinky tastes they are the perfect couple, an advertisement for matrimony, sturdy yet fragile.
I retrace my steps across Fifth Avenue to Central Park. I have a spring in my step, like Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout. And no wonder. I’m in New York. I’ve just finished my first commission with the smartest, naughtiest, richest couple in town. My cousin Polly and I are on the same continent and in the same city, at least for a while. My gorgeous rich lover is taking me out to a posh dinner later.
My mobile phone rings. Another commission comes my way, booked in a few days’ time with a family who live in a Chelsea brownstone and have the very English name of Robinson. The father wants me to take some group portraits of the clan before his kids all leave home.
‘Sounds an interesting challenge,’ I remark as I take down the address. ‘What made you choose me for the job?’
‘Your range. Your classic way with composition and lighting.’ Mr Robinson gives a low, surprisingly sexy chuckle. ‘I’ve seen one of your, ah, more tasteful Italian photographs at my friend’s house. The one with the girls on the beach? But I’m after something nice and wholesome as a family memento, if you get my meaning.’
I am trying, and failing, to picture this family. Respectable and preppy in chinos and tea dresses is what I’m coming up with, arranged on the stairs or grouped round the piano like the von Trapps. One
or two tasteful nudes on the walls. Mr Robinson going to the house next door, trying not to ogle his friend’s newest acquisition, my photograph of topless bathers smoothing themselves and each other with suncream on the island of Capri.
I giggle out loud as I hurry down the east side of the park. I circle the open-air ice rink and then my footsteps slow as I reach the zoo. A clutch of penguins pace fretfully on a big grey rock and in another enclosure a polar bear bats gloomily at a blue plastic bag. There are very few visitors today, probably because the wind is icy. As I come through the gate to the south-east side a strong corner wind blows me back against the railings.
I have a weird feeling of hands on me, pinning me there as I watch the smart shoppers on Fifth Avenue for a moment. Straight down there is the towering Empire State Building, still iconic enough to make you catch your breath even though it’s no longer the tallest building in the world. In 1931 it took 3,400 workers 410 days to build it. Four and a half storeys a day. Imagine constructing something as fast as that now.
My mobile phone sings with the arrival of a text from Gustav.
Change of plan. Meet me at the restaurant an hour earlier. Developments with Pierre today – it’s all good.
I shiver with excitement as I reply yes, yes, yes to him, then I zip my jacket up against the Atlantic cold, cover my face with my scarf and hurry south to explore my new city.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Christ! What’s he doing to her in this one? They were touching each other up in front of you?’ Gustav is trying, and failing, to keep the disapproval out of his voice. ‘I never thought they’d go right ahead and try it on with you after I’d warned them off.’
Gustav’s face is illuminated by my camera as he scrolls through the Weinmeyer images. The initial deceptively formal poses in the drawing-room window. Mr Weinmeyer’s hand slipping inside Mrs Weinmeyer’s dress. Gustav zooms in until the only part of Mr Weinmeyer in the frame is his long, clean, white fingers, prising his wife open like a conch shell.
‘Luckily for you I’m going to forgive you for discussing my commissions with my clients. But just this once. They took your dismissal of the idea as a challenge. You probably made it worse, because there was much more than touching going on, it transpired.’
I reach over and transform the image to monochrome: monochrome fingers, monochrome lips, Mrs Weinmeyer’s white bottom with the darker grey flash between her cheeks.
‘Get in any closer and these would be like that 2003 Bailey exhibition of all those vaginas. Pussy pictures he called them.’
‘You wait until you see the Weinmeyers migrating to the dungeon of delight.’
I wriggle on the banquette as Gustav studies my camera. I twist my empty plate and nibble on a leftover green bean. I’m unaccountably nervous all of a sudden. He’s seen my work before. He’s seen equally if not far more graphic images. He looks up at me, apparently not yet understanding what dungeon I’m referring to.
Gustav and I are in a cosy, intimate and very select restaurant in the West Village, tucked below street level. It’s so discreet it looks like a kind of muted tavern and only has a small sign outside the glowing windows. I feel really special sitting here. I’ve seen one or two celebrities schmoozing in corners and a group of beautiful people who look like they must be models or the cast of a play carousing genteelly, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms, in the glass garden room at the back. For a brief, blinding second I wonder if they are actors from Pierre’s show.
‘No need to obsess about the detail. They said it was for their private collection so I don’t know if they’ll want me to crop the pictures quite so brutally down to her private parts,’ I murmur hurriedly as Gustav stares at the next picture. ‘They were asking me to capture the moment. It’s just that the moment they were referring to was when the two of them decided to get seriously naked.’
‘You’re telling me!’ he splutters, bringing the camera close to his eyes. ‘I knew the Weinmeyers were experimental exhibitionists, but these are practically pornographic, Serena! You’re only just starting out in this business. What were they thinking of, dragging you into their dungeon and making you do this?’
‘Teaching you a lesson, I reckon. Not to discuss me and my working methods behind my back, and not to dictate what goes on during a commission they’re paying good money for!’
I try to take the camera off him, but he snatches it back and puts it on the red leather seat by him, out of my reach. His mouth has drawn into a line and a muscle flashes in his cheek. He sits back, loosening his tie still further. His stretches his arms out in an effort to look nonchalant, but I can tell from the way his fingers are drumming that he’s agitated.
‘So, after all that, you didn’t entirely pass the resistance test, did you, Miss Folkes? You let them have their little feel.’
I start to shrink back in my own banquette. The leather squeaks under my bare thighs. I dressed up especially tonight. I’m wearing a very flimsy mint-green silk dress and some heels, and I’m not wearing any knickers. The leather is hot and sticky beneath me.
I’m caught on the hop by Gustav’s sharp questioning. He’s wearing his authoritarian, headmaster face. I know it’s a thin skin over the bubbling passion beneath, but it still unsettles me. Makes me eager to please.
His frown furrows deeper when he sees a smile creeping round my mouth.
‘You going to cane me for my misdemeanour, Gustav?’
He shakes his head slightly. His features are still carved in granite. ‘It’s not your fault for getting into a dodgy situation, Serena. I’m blaming them. They should have known better than to ask you to undertake a task like that.’
I part my legs slightly on the seat while I think how best to reply to him without wrecking the atmosphere. I allow the leather to rub against my tender private flesh until the friction starts to work on me and I have to stop.
‘Give me some credit, Gustav. They asked me because I was the right person for the job. As you know, they saw my London exhibition and liked it. They’ve got my Paris lovers series on their wall. I’m a big girl. Just like you said this morning. I fulfilled my commission to order. Yes, I was embarrassed at first, and then I admit I was downright shocked when they enticed me down these stairs into this red room and started writhing around on a gigantic bed and all that, but hey! Two consenting adults pleasuring each other under the watchful gaze of Venus in a sexy cosy nest, plying me with delicious punch. A little slap and tickle, maybe. As Mrs Weinmeyer herself said, what’s not to like?’
His fingers stop tapping. I see his mouth twitching then with a hint of amusement but there’s a tinge of sadness in his eyes. ‘My country bumpkin. What’s happened to her?’
‘She’s still here. But I was always a voyeur, Gustav. That’s the first thing you noticed and liked about me.’
I put my hand on his leg, and when he doesn’t move I start to slide it up his thigh, squeezing the muscle which is all the sexier for being hidden under his formal business trousers. He shifts in his seat, his eyes half closing. ‘Hey, baby. Let’s not fall out,’ he murmurs.
I move my hand into the warm fold of his groin, lean closer to whisper. ‘I don’t ever want to argue with you. But you’ve got to get this into your handsome head, Gustav. I want to be a famous photographer. And that means never saying never. To anything.’
The waiter approaches to take our plates and refill our glasses. He hesitates, eyes flickering over where my hand is massaging my man’s thigh. I give him my best seductress stare back, followed by a deliberate flutter of the eyelashes. Lower my left eyelid in a slow wink and see the flush creep up his thin neck.
Then I take a real twisted delight in pressing my hand against Gustav’s zipper, showing the waiter how my elbow and arm are moving while he tries to clear the plates and lay spoons without dropping anything in his eagerness to see. I rub my palm between Gustav’s legs and feel the hardness growing.
The plates rattle as the waiter balances them up his arm. He
backs away, and I see him retreat to the corner of the room where he nudges a fellow waiter and jerks his head over towards us.
Gustav is in my thrall now. He presses his hand on top of mine, moving it faster and harder over him. The calmer he remains, the more determined I am to break his cool. If I take him all the way to the edge there will be the jump of his Adam’s apple, the black-molasses glaze in his eyes that tells me he’s about to come.
His voice is husky now. ‘“Never say never” could be a risky adage.’
‘Risky is where the fun is, don’t you agree?’ Under the table I continue to massage him until he starts to buck gently against my hand. I glance over at the waiter. He’s still staring at me, his hand moving in his trouser pocket. I twiddle innocently with my wineglass before lifting it, puckering my mouth slowly, and taking a long sip.
‘Oh, you’re transforming before my very eyes, Serena,’ Gustav murmurs as I fondle and drive him to the point of no return. ‘What have I done to you?’
I laugh softly as he bucks against me one more time then slumps back. I remove my hand, tuck it under my chin thoughtfully. Glance over at the waiter and mouth at him, ‘Show’s over.’
‘I was already a twisted little thing when we first met, but you’ve taught me everything you know. Take another look at these pictures, Mr Levi. They turned you on, didn’t they? And that reaction made you cross with yourself. Hopefully you feel better now.’
‘I was cross because I was jealous. The thought of someone else touching you, their hands on you.’
‘Even if it’s a female?’
‘I could get my head round that, I suppose. But only if I was there to watch. Get myself the best seat in the house and see all the action up close.’ He shakes his head, a smile spreading over his face, softening the edges, giving a new sparkle to his eyes. ‘You’re an incorrigible little madam.’
