When I sat up I had to search my mind for a due to where I was. I felt as if the lights in my mind had been turned off. But I did see a couple on the far side of the room, illuminated only by the light from the hall. And by the door an Irish girl stood as if by invitation, watching the strange couple kiss and rub their hands on each other. The man was pushing the woman back on the sofa. She had taken off the black suit and red shirt, for some reason, though she looked her loveliest in them.
Marlene and I tumbled on the floor. I had been in her already, and noticed odd things, like how she had strong muscles in her cunt, which she utilized to grip the end of my prick as professionally as my own pinkies. When she wanted to stop me moving inside her she merely flexed her cunt muscles and I was secured for life.
Later, when I looked up, the couple had separated and Pyke’s body was carrying his erection in my direction, like a lorry sustaining a crane.
‘That looks fun,’ his voice said.
‘Yes, it –’
But before I could complete the sentence, England’s most interesting and radical theatre director was inserting his cock between my speaking lips. I could appreciate the privilege, but I didn’t like it much: it seemed an imposition. He could have asked politely. So I gave his dick a South London swipe – not viciously, nor enough to have my part in the play reduced – but enough to give him a jolt. When I looked up for his reaction it was to see him murmuring his approval. Fortunately, Pyke pulled away from my face anyway. Something important was happening. His attention moved elsewhere.
Eleanor came over to Pyke; she came over to him quickly and passionately, as if he were of infinite value at this moment, as if she’d heard that he had a crucial message for her. She took his head in her hands as if it were a precious pot, and she kissed Pyke, pulling his somewhat corrugated lips towards her, as she’d pulled my head spontaneously towards her that morning when we were eating our grapefruit in the front room of her flat. His hand was between her legs now, his fingers up to the knuckle pushing inside her. As he frigged her she spoke to him in incantatory fashion. I strained to catch everything, and heard for my pains Eleanor whisper how much she wanted to fuck him, how she’d always wanted it since she first admired him and then spotted him in the foyer of a theatre – the ICA, was it, or was it the Royal Court, or the Open Space, or the Almost Free, or the Bush? – but anyway, however much she wanted him then, she was too intimidated by his renown, by his talent, by his status, to approach him; but at last she’d come to know him precisely the way she’d always wanted to know him.
Marlene was transfixed by all this. She moved around them for a better look. ‘Oh yes, yes,’ she was saying. ‘It’s so beautiful, so beautiful, I can’t believe it.’
‘Stop talking,’ Pyke snapped, suddenly.
‘But I can’t believe it,’ Marlene went on. ‘Can you, Karim?’
‘It’s unbelievable,’ I said.
This distracted Eleanor. She looked at me dreamily, and then at Pyke. She withdrew his fingers from her cunt and put them in my mouth.
‘Don’t let me have all the fun,’ she said to Pyke, pleadingly. ‘Please, why don’t you two touch each other?’
Marlene nodded vigorously at this constructive suggestion.
‘Yes?’ Eleanor said. But it was difficult for me to reply with a mouthful of Pyke’s fingers.
‘Oh yes, yes,’ said Marlene.
‘Calm down,’ said Pyke to her.
‘I am calm,’ Marlene said. She was also drunk.
‘Christ,’ said Pyke to Eleanor. ‘Bloody Marlene.’
Marlene fell back on to the couch, naked, with her legs open.
‘There’s so much we can do tonight! ‘she cried. ‘There’s hours and hours of total pleasure ahead of us. We can do whatever we want. We’ve only just begun. Let me freshen our drinks and we’ll get down to it. Now, Karim, I want you to put some ice up my cunt. Would you mind going to the fridge?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I was in my usual state; I had no money. Things were so desperate it had become necessary for me to work. We were in the middle of a few weeks’ break while Louise went away and tried to construct a single coherent drama around the improvisations and characters we’d created. The whole process of putting on a show with Pyke took months and months. We started in the early summer and now it was autumn. And anyway, Pyke had gone away to Boston to teach. ‘We’ll work on it for as long as it takes,’ he said. ‘It’s the process and not the result that matters to me.’ During this waiting time, instead of going on holiday like Carol, Tracey and Richard, I started to work as a wheel-barrow merchant – as I was called by Eva – on the transformation of the flat. Reluctantly, I started to shift the debris myself. It was hard, filthy work, so I was surprised when one night Eleanor suddenly said that she’d like to share the job with me. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get out of the house. Being here I start to think.’
Not wanting Eleanor to think, and wanting to draw her to me after that evening with Pyke (which we never discussed), I went to Eva and told her to employ Eleanor as well. ‘Of course, she’ll have to be paid the same as me. We’re a co-operative,’ I said.
By this time Eva had acquired a new sharpness, in all senses. She’d started to get as well organized as any managing director; she even walked more quickly; she was sleeker, crisper. There were lists of everything. No mystical vapours obscured the way things like clearing flats were actually done. Flowing and sensual intuition didn’t mean practical foolishness. Eva spoke directly, without dishonesty. And this frightened people, especially plumbers, to whom it was a new idea. They’d never had anyone say to them, ‘Now tell me exactly why it is you’ve made such a mess of this simple job? Do you always want to be fifth-rate? Is your work always shoddy?’ She’d also added cachet to herself by being Charlie’s mother. Twice she’d been interviewed by Sunday newspaper supplements.
Now she was getting sniffy with me. ‘I can’t afford to hire Eleanor too. Anyway, you told me she’s mad,’ she said.
‘So are you.’
‘Actors, Karim, are convivial company. They put on funny voices and do imitations. But they have no personality.’
‘I’m an actor, Eva.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot. So you are. But I don’t think of you as one.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Don’t look so severe, darling. It’s only that you don’t have to throw yourself at the first woman to open her legs for you.’
‘Eva!’
Since The Jungle Bunny Book I’d learned to fight back, though it cost me a lot to take on Eva. I didn’t want to frighten off my new mummy. But I said, ‘Eva, I won’t work for you unless Eleanor does too.’
‘All right, it’s a deal, if you insist. The same wages for both of you. Except that now your wages are reduced by twenty-five per cent.’
So Eleanor and I did all the shitwork in that big roomful of white dust, ripping the place apart and tipping volcano-shaped piles of the past into skips outside. It was a busy time for Eva, too. She’d been commissioned to redesign the flat of a television producer who was away in America. This was Ted and Eva’s first big outside job, so while Eleanor and I worked on our place, she and Ted would be at this other flat in Maida Vale, working on the plans. Eva and Dad slept there, as did I, occasionally.