Surrender to Mr. X Read online

  Loki was sent for; I was bundled up and taken home in the taxi, in disgrace. “Whore! Slut!” said Alden from his wheelchair. Well, I was glad he cared. “Alden, be reasonable,” pleaded Ray from beside me. “She does as I say,” says Alden, “not what she wants.” And still I thought it was funny.

  I was to learn otherwise.

  “Find a dark street,” said Alden over the intercom to Loki. We made a detour here, a short cut there: we ended up somewhere behind the British Museum where the streets are quiet and a parked black cab will attract no attention.

  Loki seemed to know what was expected of him. He got out of the front and came round to Ray’s side at the back. Ray got out to let him in—suddenly panicked, I made a dash for it—and it was Loki who caught me and hurled me back in while Alden helped drag me around until I was sprawled opposite him with my neck cricked into the corner of the cab. Loki, my friend, always punctual, always polite, who gave me a sandwich when I was hungry, now pushing up my long red satin gown with businesslike hands as if he’d been thinking about this for some time and had every move worked out.

  “Only business, Joan,” said Alden. “This way we recoup some transport fees.”

  But what he meant was that I should see that he controlled even my friendships; that Loki thought more of getting his bill paid than he did of me. See how I liked that! And he was right. I didn’t. Not one bit.

  I struggled some more. Ray was somewhere in there too, bleating in my ear. “Joan, enjoy: Joan, enjoy,” and Alden was saying “Why the fuck should she enjoy, the disobedient little bitch?”

  But then I thought, well, at least I’m getting to fuck Loki, who is much better looking than either of you two, and almost certainly better at it: that’s what I did, that’s how I won, I decided to enjoy. I stopped struggling—a matter of indifference to Loki, I thought: he was so strong and lithe he probably didn’t notice I had been—and of annoyance to Alden, who was bending his face into mine, only inches away. My white skin, Loki’s dark torso—Alden trapped there by his stupid legs, no Lam to help him: he was pitiable. Loki, silhouetted in the light of the antique gas street lamps which they have in the British Museum area, was gorgeous. It is a softer light than halogen, almost romantic. He didn’t kiss me when we had finished—and I didn’t come—of course he wouldn’t: this was not kissing territory; but he did thank me, as though I had given him a really good tip.

  And then we all went on home as if nothing had happened, except that Alden was really quite frighteningly furious.

  Lam was waiting up for us.

  “Joan not behave?” he asked.

  “Joan very, very bad,” said Alden. “Joan taught lesson.”

  Ray went straight upstairs to the studio. No doubt he got at least two or three more squares done. It must have been quite an intense evening for him too, from his voyeur’s viewpoint.

  “I’m not responsible for what happened tonight,” he said, as he went. “I won’t be. Joan, please consider yourself no longer under-will.”

  “She soon will be,” said Alden. “But my way, not yours.”

  There were two of them, and one of me. One might be in a wheelchair but the other had big strong hands and was from outer space. Being “under will” is not a one-sided game. I was enough Vanessa now to be kicking up a storm, but I still had many residual Joan beliefs, including that Lam was from the Dog Star Sirius, and not only that: Ray was on the Seventh Path down in Southgate, treading the way of the mighty which meant seventh level as well as seventh path, and trod in the steps of the holy Tathgata, whose face was the rising sun of thought eternal. What nonsense it all was, yet here I was, crouched on the floor of the mirror room, the cuff which had adorned the pegs of the easel back round my left ankle, and the chain—nasty rusty old thing it was—fixed to a thin metal ring in some smart new metal on the smart new bed post. The new bed was not going to be all that different from the old.

  And I had been left alone to contemplate my sins. The mirrors threw back a sorry portrait of a willful, disobedient, ungrateful girl. I had endangered everything by a single, lustful, vengeful act. The reputation of the Divan, the ego of the smug man, the contentment of his wife: I had betrayed and upset both Ray and Alden, abandoned the power of my dependency, complicated my relationship with Loki, and there was no health in me. And I had tried to damage The Blue Box. And—now I could see—what was almost worse, that I had damaged the quilt with the ninety-three patchwork squares. It was too big for the new bed and its hems trailed on the floor. Three of the squares were coming adrift; they needed to be mended. My fault. I had been told to take it down to the cleaners but I had thought that was a waste on money and wedged it into the washing machine and put it through. Another thing to be guilty about.

  Lam came in, the alien from Sirius the Dog Star—the follower of Tathgata, who is universal. And oh God, not again: I’d thought she had improved, but Vanessa was in full agitated flood again as Lam padded around, fetching props, selecting whips, waving his tentacles: Vanessa was now quoting from the Great Parinirvana Sutra, the gospel of the four paths, in which the Buddha talks about the noble truth of suffering, an eternally abiding, unchanging, fine and essential awareness. Suffering is bad enough, shrieks Vanessa, but if they say Lam is on the Seventh Path then it’s Dark Zen he’s into, the worship of the self (Satanism) plus pure productive energy (The Blue Box) and once that ties in with Crowley mania and modern technology—The Blue Box being the outer and visible form of the triumph of the infinite complexity of all things, in other words representing the computer—why then, says Vanessa, we’re in real trouble. It’s bound to end up with someone wanting a human sacrifice—because this stuff is escalating: they’re children, children, playing with fire like Alden playing with fireworks, and the black mass in the chapel was a mere early rehearsal—why won’t I realize? She snaps away in my head. But what can I do about it? All I know is that this bed has a steel V-frame to which I am tied, facing the door, and a spreader bar for my feet and all directional mikes are pointed my way. Again I am left alone to contemplate. If that was Lam with the tentacles than I am definitely under will again. Vanessa doesn’t save me, she makes things worse.

  Perhaps now was the time to really talk? I could tell Alden all about Vanessa, how she tormented me with her over-active mentation, so I’d had to take refuge in Joan. Explain how I hadn’t really set out to deceive Ray and himself, just to entertain them. I must persuade Alden that actually Vanessa might bring more to their lives than Joan ever could; Joan could stop babbling and chattering and engage them in a proper conversation, on their own level. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Meet Alden fact for fact, reference for reference? I must convince them that they were better off with the vocational girl, Vanessa, than with the (mostly) willing whore, Joan. That once I could be true to myself Alden mightn’t get the feedback echo which so annoyed him. His dreams for Thelemy—The Murmur of Eternity, would at last be realized.

  But even as I tried to formulate the right words in my head I realized that it was hopeless: Alden and Ray would not believe me. I only barely believed myself. Vanessa was only Vanessa if she behaved like Vanessa. If Joan claimed to have a double first, a rectory for a family home, and be called Vanessa, Joan was lying or deluded. Vanessa was a figment of Joan’s imagination: the girl from Little Venice with the good boobs and the easy, smiling ways, the thick reddish-brown hair which could be grabbed and pulled, the girl with the low self image that made her so ready and ripe for defilement, was simply Joan the tart. She was now the real one. Why make trouble?

  Lam pads back in and out again, bringing me a pill and some water.

  “Paracetemol,” he says. “Joan needs.”

  Joan would have to be punished, I realized that, and Alden meant to, unless he was just scaring me to death. I looked up at the mirror above, and could see the evidence of my crimes in three unstitched squares of white velvet and one of damask. I had put the quilt through the delicate wash; I’d had to stuff it in because it was
so bulky but it was on gentle spin, and the cold water wash. But to no avail. I had also by mistake put in some red thongs. The quilt had come out palest pink. I put it through again at 30°, with bleach, and though the fabric returned to white well enough, it had lost body to a different degree in different of its patchwork squares, and where square joined square it had either stretched or wrinkled. Ninety-three squares. Bloody cabalists! All I could hope was Alden would not choose to notice now.

  Ten minutes later Alden came in, without Lam, and chose the whip I least liked the look of, with the red lacquered handle, and nine thin red leather thongs.

  He thwacked the whip through the air so as to frighten me with the sound. It did, but I pretended not. To cower and whimper would not help me now, rather the contrary.

  “You mustn’t mark me,” I said, “that would be stupid.”

  “You’re the stupid one,” he said; “You drive me mad with your stupidity. Now see what you’ve made me do.”

  He actually laughed, with a maniac laugh which would have impressed a horror film director, and I wondered what drug he was on. He turned on the hum, painfully loudly. He would be adding another track. He stroked between my legs with the tip of the whip and I squealed. He poked it a little in just to show he could. Then he took it out.

  “You’ll ruin your ears with that noise,” I said. “You probably have already. You’re probably as deaf as Beethoven by now. I hope you are.”

  “You talk too much,” was all he said. “And hear too much.”

  It was a helmet I was familiar with. The sweaty black latex ruined your hair and the mouthpiece held your mouth open and held your tongue down and stopped you speaking and the padded prongs of the ear-pieces went into your ears and plugged them and stopped you hearing. It intensified sensation in other orifices and on a good day made you orgasm all over the place but I did not think this was going to be a good day. And with Alden with the lash in his hand and in the mood he was I did not need any sensation to be intensified. He put the helmet on, hurting my mouth as he stretched it wide with the metal bar, the scolds’ bridle, as it’s called, which fitted from ear to ear across the front of the helmet.

  I was now in no position to answer back, explain, speak at all. He raised the whip, held it there to the count of ten, and brought it down across both breasts. I lost all composure but it did me no good. He waited a minute or so, standing over me, whip raised until my muffled squealings died away.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now that was a real response.”

  He unbuckled and removed the helmet: my mouth went back to its proper shape, though I could taste it was bleeding a little at the edges. I breathed, I heard, I could speak. I spoke.

  “Radio 3 may accept it,” I said. “Daisy O may play it at her opening because you blackmail her. But no-one in the world is going to want to listen to it.”

  I shouldn’t have said it. It was just too much of a temptation. Fury, usually diminished by the spirit of scientific and artistic inquiry, swept up through him. He caught me with the lashes on the ribs, over the breasts, under them, across my thighs. I screamed. I lost all sense of irony. The touch pads glowed, the steel V became a wheel, folded, turned me, bent me; now it was the cane across my buttocks, where at least he could inflict no real damage, only pain and humiliation. I screamed and wriggled but Lukas’s ingenuity kept me in place. And then again, and again, streaks of pain, until I forgot there’d ever been such a state as pleasure. Pain alone was real, and all consuming.

  “That’s enough, Alden,” said Ray’s voice, “that’s enough. I can’t stand this bloody noise. Are you mad?”

  The sound suddenly ceased and the cane did not come again, and I was unbent, turned, but still held. I was conscious of my tear-swollen face, my muddy, mascaraed eyes, my sweaty hair, my reddened body, and I hoped he was sorry. At the same time I felt purged, quiet, content and punished. The sin, though I could scarcely remember what it had been, was atoned for. The smarting was already fading, just so long as I stayed still.

  I wish I could give you a better account of myself. How I plotted to murder him or burned the house down: have him exposed as an art fraud, a pornographer and a drug peddler. I didn’t. I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. I was just the more anxious to please him. Vanessa was so disgusted with me she went into a deep cover which at least allowed me to sink into a languid submission without her alarmist interruptions. Though I may have been deceiving myself, and she too was simply cowed and terrified. We shared the body, after all.

  I was released from bondage, the fine metal struts were retracted, my poor stiff body laid on my side on the bed, and Alden lay behind me. Once again he thrust and thrust, while my bruised flesh cried out in protest, and once again he almost, almost came, and didn’t. And once again I thought it was my fault, and all I could be grateful for was that nobody had noticed the state of the quilt, where it trailed inelegantly on the floor.

  I think Alden wept a little and apologized and said it was his love for me that had driven him to do this: and it was the first time that he had mentioned the word. I was so happy to hear it, I turned and clung to him, and kissed his strong, solid torso all over and felt so sorry for his poor legs I cried for him and no longer for me. He said I was never going to the Divan again, and I was so grateful.

  Quiet Seas

  WE SETTLED DOWN: WE healed: we were quite domestic and cozy now the storms had passed. Work on The Blue Box went slowly, but it went. Ray reckoned that if the art movers could come on September 21st, the Autumn equinox, the piece would be ready for installation in Daisy’s gallery on the 24th, the day before the official opening. Alden accordingly booked the best, and most expensive, specialist art movers in the business.

  Alden spent a lot of time holed up in his Bluebeard room working on his acoustics. In response to general demand the hum was played no more than once or twice day. It triggered a quite strong reaction in me: that is to say my bum began to hurt and twitch, and also under the ribs where a particularly nasty lash had got me. I didn’t need Vanessa to tell me this response was Pavlovian.

  “Cat o’ nine tails,” Lam said. “Nine unlucky.”

  Arts-Intrinsick was on schedule with the gallery opening: Daisy had not insisted on the parquet floor being re-laid. She had not nagged or bothered Ray at all as to the completion of The Blue Box. She trusted Alden and she trusted Ray. Invitations had gone out. She brushed away little problems: it would all be all right on the night.

  I had quite gone off sex. Whether this was the fear of the lash, or Alden and Ray deciding they didn’t want to risk any more freelance action on my part, I don’t know. I shopped though: Ray handed me cash and I just got on with it. Loki would take me, wait outside the shops or circle the block, and bring me home again. We only referred once to the British Museum incident, as I had registered it in my mind; and to tell the truth what happened afterward had obscured a lot of its detail in my memory.

  Loki remarked lightly that Mr. Alden was running up quite a bill again, and I said I’d mention it to him, and Loki said no, don’t do that, I could pay in kind any time: but I didn’t follow it up as once I would. Just thinking about it made my bum hurt. But it was wonderful to be able to spend again—the feeling of shopping bags stacked up against one legs in a taxi, the rustle of tissue as one shifted on the seat seemed so satisfactory.

  Lam went away for a week: he was teaching an advanced course in Portsmouth. Ray and I between us performed the carer’s duties. We managed without Lam. Indeed, we could almost have been said to be living normal lives. Other than that I was summoned up to Ray’s studio from time to time, and he would lie me naked at the foot of his canvas, and study me until another of the thin lines went on the canvas. Every tiny, tiny stroke a person, an act, an excess, laid one against the other in complexities only he understood, mirrored to infinity if he got it right. No wonder his spirit sometimes failed. Sometimes we went to bed and just slept. I felt very mature. I was looking good these days: earl
y bed, restful nights, and I was glad to say my eyes were as bright, my hair as glossy and my skin as glowing as it had ever been.

  We were doing well, I suspect, the three of us, without resort to Ray’s magic words and Alden’s he-who-must-be-obeyed stance. They weren’t needed. Alden had found a timeless way of subduing me. And without Lam it seemed there was no excess. His apparent passivity egged others on.

  My room began to look rather like my place in Little Venice only without the books. I went on paying my rent: Alden said I should. I had rather hoped he’d tell me to give up the flat and move in with him properly but he didn’t. But I thought if I just hung in there it would happen in the end. After mid-September, perhaps, after the En Garde gallery had opened and Alden could concentrate more on matters of the heart. They seemed to have forgotten about my family photographs, and I was glad of that.

  Sometimes I would go down with Alden to the warehouse where Daisy’s artworks were accumulating, flown in from all over the planet, and I would make lists, check off inventories, and help work out whether any tax was applicable. Though these were simple enough tasks, Alden seemed quite impressed that I could do them. He himself, when it came to lists and forms, was a terrible muddler.

  When I bumped into Lady Daisy in the warehouse she didn’t recognize me. She was wearing a good plain cashmere jumper beneath through which the shape of her nipples showed and an asymmetrical skirt, its hem elaborately and annoyingly uneven. She was relaxed and looked far prettier than she had when first I met her. She walked hand in hand with Lord Toby O, her husband, who was much older and much shorter than she was but they seemed fond enough of each other, and I was glad. I didn’t suppose they had much of a sex life, but no doubt she had her women friends. It would be a waste if she didn’t. One of the warehousemen told me that though the project had got off to a hellish start, the Lady Daisy had turned out to be a pleasure to work with. I felt I’d achieved something.