'I take it this wasn't a formal party?' I pour the wine.
'Sort of fancy-dress; I went as a loose woman but I got tight.' She holds her hand up in front of her mouth as she laughs. She curtsies when she takes her glass.
'Well, you look stunning, Abberlaine,' I tell her soberly (another curtsy). She sighs and runs a hand through her hair, then turns, walking away with measured steps, tapping an old tall cupboard of some dark, heavily varnished wood, running her long gloved fingers over it; she drinks her wine. I watch her as she moves round the covered and uncovered furniture of the room, pulling open doors, looking in drawers, lifting the corners of sheets, rubbing her hand over dusty glass-fronts and stroking the lines of inlays, all the time humming and taking small sips from her glass. I feel forgotten for a moment, but not insulted.
'I hope you don't mind me coming here," she says, blowing dust off a standard lamp's shade.
'Of course not. It's nice to see you.'
She turns; that smile again. Then she looks, frowning, at the grey sea and rainclouds beyond the long windows, and puts her hands to her bare upper arms, still holding her glass. She sips from it; it is a curious, oddly touching action; a small, snuggling, almost childish gesture, quite unconsciously beguiling. 'I'm cold.' She turns to look at me, and there is something almost mournful about her grey eyes. 'Can you close the shutters? It looks so cold out there. I'll put the fire on, shall I?'
'Of course.' I put my glass down and go to the shutters, slow-slamming the tall wooden boards over the dark day; Abberlaine persuades an old, hissing gas fire to light, then squats down on her haunches in front of it, gloved hands held out to it. I sit on a sheet-shrouded chair nearby. She watches the flames. The fire hisses.
After a while, she seems to wake from some daydream, and says, still looking at the fire, 'Did you sleep all right?'
'Yes I did, thank you; very comfortable.' She has left her glass lying on the tile fire surround; she lifts it, drinks. Her stockings have a criss-cross design, small Xs within larger Xs; a stretched lettering of sheer material, moulded to her legs in curved patterns of stress; pulling here, lightened by the shown flesh beneath; relaxing there, where the stockings go dark, the compressing grammar of those Xs and Xs densed over the girl's pale skin.
'Good,' she says, quietly. She nods slowly, still fire-fascinated, the red dress reflecting the yellow-orange flames like a ruby mirror. 'Good,' she repeats.
The warmth of the fire heats her skin; the smell of her perfume builds slowly in the air between us. She breathes in deeply, holds it, then sighs out, still staring at the hissing fire.
I drain my glass, pick up the bottle; I go over to the girl and sit beside her to fill her glass and mine. Her perfume is sweet and strong. She comes down from her haunches to sit on the floor, legs to one side, one arm behind her, supporting her. She watches me fill the glasses. I put the bottle down, watching her face; her lipstick is slightly smudged in one corner. She sees me looking. One eyebrow arches slowly. I say, 'Your lipstick ...'
It is the handkerchief which she had monogrammed I take from my pocket. She leans forward to let me wipe the offending red mark. I feel the breath from her nose on my fingers as I touch her lips through the fabric.
'There.'
'I'm afraid,' she says, 'I left some on quite a few collars.' Her voice is quiet and low, almost a murmur.
'Oh,' I say, mockingly disapproving, shaking my head, 'I wouldn't go kissing collars.'
She shakes her head. 'No?'
'No.' I come closer to her, to gently touch her full glass with mine.
'What, then?' Her voice does not go quieter; it takes on another resonance instead; conspiratorial, knowing, even ironic. This is invitation enough; I haven't exactly thrown myself at her.
I kiss her, just lightly, watching her eyes (and she kisses back, lightly, and watches mine). She tastes faintly of wine and something savoury; also a hint of cigar smoke. I press forward a little and put my free hand to her waist, feeling her warmth through the smooth red satin; the fire hisses busily behind me, warming my back. I move my mouth slowly over hers, tasting her lips, brushing her teeth; her tongue comes out to meet mine. She moves, straining away to one side for a moment so that I think she is drawing away (her brows crease), but she is just reaching for a place to put her glass down; then she holds me by the shoulders, eyes closing. Her breath comes a little quicker against my cheek and I kiss her more deeply, abandoning my own glass on a chair-arm.
Her hair is fine and smells of that musky perfume, her waist feels even more slim than it looks, her breasts move within the red dress, held but not confined by something she wears beneath the satin. Her stockings are smooth to the touch, her thighs warm; she hugs me, grips me, then pushes away, puts her hands to either side of my head and looks at me, her bright gaze going from eye to eye. Her nipples form little red mounds under the satin. Her mouth is wet, smeared red. She gives a little shuddering laugh, swallows, still breathing hard. 'I didn't think you would be so... passionate, John,'she says, through-her breath.
'I didn't think you would be so easily fooled.'
A little later: 'Here. Here. Not the bed, it'll be too cold: here.'
'Is there anything you have to do first?'
'What? Oh, no, no. Just ... oh come on, take that damn jacket off, Orr ... Shall I leave this stuff on?'
'Well, why not?'
Abberlaine Arrol's body is encased in blackness, strapped and ribbed with obsidian silks. Her stockings attach to a sort of front-laced silk corset; another pattern of Xs form a cantilevered stripe from pubis to just below where a separate brassiere of sheer silk, transparent as her stockings, cups her neat, firm breasts; she shows me where it unfastens in front; her cami-knickers - black gauze over the deeper black curls - stay on, loose enough. We sit together, kissing slowly, not moving yet, after I first enter her; she sits there upon me, stockinged legs round my rump, long-gloved arms beneath mine, gripping my shoulders.
'Your bruises,' she whispers (I am quite naked), stroking the places where I was kicked and punched with a tantalising softness that raises my hairs.
'Never mind,' I tell her, kissing her breasts (her nipples are almost carnation-pink, quite thick and long, with little indented creases, pink puckerings, at the tip; the aureoles smooth, raised and round), 'forget about them.' I pull her back so that I lie on my pile of discarded clothes and her red dress.
I move slowly under her, watching her, outlined against the flames of the hissing gas fire. Abberlaine hangs in the air above me, riding me, her hands on my chest, her head down, the parted brassiere dangling like her thick, black hair.
Her whole body is contained by the lingerie, an absurd trapping on her, who could need nothing else to make her more desirable save breath itself; just a moving force behind those bones, that flesh, and the mind that wears and inhabits all she is. I think of the women in the barbarian's tower.
Xs; that pattern within a pattern, covering her legs, another rneshing beyond our own. The zig-zagging lace of her camiknickers, the criss-crossing ribbon holding the silk across her body; those straps and lines, the sheathed arms like stockinged legs themselves; a language, an architecture. Cantilevers and tubes, suspension ties; the dark lines of the suspenders crossing her curved upper thigh, under the knickers and down to the thick black stocking-top. Caissons, structural tubes, the engineering of these soft materials to contain and conceal and reveal that softness within.