Perhaps that was the source of his tension. No, it wasn't that. He suspected the source was Hilary. He was sure she was happy now he could make love to her; certainly he was. But he'd sensed a tension in her whenever he'd mentioned this trip to London, as if she disliked the idea, almost as if she were suspicious of him. He'd begun to feel something disturbing would happen to him in London. Rubbish. She felt he shouldn't be going away so much when he hadn't promised her a holiday, that was all. Well, maybe they could manage one after all.
He glanced up, and discovered that in his preoccupation he'd sat opposite a girl in an otherwise empty carriage.
She was staring at him. Her head swayed with the rocking of the carriage, her glossy black shoulder-length hair swung against her cheeks, but her brown eyes were still. They stared at him in undistinguished challenge. You dare, they threatened. Within the sheath of her thin short skirt her thighs clung together, clipped but rubbing softly, inadvertently. She reminded him—her expression particularly—of the woman in his dream.
He couldn't get up now. That would look even more suspicious. Besides, she had no reason to suspect him: he wasn't going to let her will him to move. He felt uncomfortably hot, frustratingly tense. The wind through the Underground seemed to touch the September heat of the train not at all; the heat pressed on him, oppressive as the grimy yellow light. He toyed with the zipper of his case, gladly aware of the slides within, while the girl gazed at him. He was still distracting himself when, at the edge of his eye, a shape leapt past him and then past the girl.
He stared and met her gaze. She must have seen what it was, although he had seen nothing but movement. But the challenge in her eyes remained unchanged, and he felt she wasn't pretending not to have noticed. Perhaps the movement had been an aberration of the lights. As he thought so, the lights of the carriage went out.
Phil grabbed his case to him with both hands. He was rushing forward, borne by clattering hollow darkness. For the first time he was aware of the girl's breathing, rapid, harsh. It was near his face, too near. He had just realized that when her nails jabbed into his shoulders.
She was struggling with him. She was fighting him off. Yet he knew that if she were genuinely afraid of him she would have groped away down the carriage, however painfully. She was fighting him so that he could find her. The force of her struggles, the jerking of the train, threw him on top of her on the seat. Her arms were flailing at his face, but not so viciously that he couldn't trap her wrists in one hand. His penis was pounding. With his free hand he dragged up her skirt.
He could see her now, could see the welcome in the blue eye and the brown. That wasn't her. It didn't matter. That was the woman he was raping. The swaying of the train rolled her violently on his penis. He came almost at once.
He was lying face down on the seat, and she had somehow vanished from beneath him, when the lights flickered on.
He was still gasping: but the girl was standing at the other end of the carriage, gazing at him in open disgust. Her hand was on the communication cord. It didn't seem possible that she could have moved so far so quickly. At the next station she left the train, or at least changed carriages, leaving him a last contemptuous glance.
He sat with his case on his lap, retrieving his emotions. He was stunned. He'd read of women who needed to pretend to be raped, in Hilary's Forum, but he had never expected to encounter it. It could only happen in London, he thought.
He didn't feel ashamed. Why should he? Once she'd touched him his orgasm had been inevitable; he couldn't have prevented it. If anything he felt self-righteously pleased. Despite her pretense of contempt, it had been she who had approached him. She hadn't been a fantasy, a self-indulgence, but a real woman. He was concerned only that she might have infected him. But he didn't think so; she had looked clean, no doubt she needed to be especially clean to keep up her pretense. When he reached the station for Apollo Books he was smiling. There was no need for Hilary to know; he would be able to satisfy her too.
"Here are some of your covers printed," Damien said. "People have been saying good things about them."
Phil smiled and admired the covers while Damien examined the new slides. "I'm sure we can get some books for these," Damien said. "They're the Phil woman again, I see."
Phil smiled more broadly, amazed at himself. He'd always tried to paint as well as he could, but he'd never realized that he wanted to be recognized for a personal style. Now Damien had shown him—no, the woman of his dream had shown him. He was kissing the slide.
"Will you have time to see a film tomorrow?" Damien said. "I want to get a book out of it, and I'd like you to do the cover. I'll fix it with the film people for you to go. Father Malarkey's Succubus, it's called. It's French."
They went out to a nearby pub. Phil was pleased he got on so well with Damien, despite the man's long hair and mauve silk shirt. Afterward Phil wandered about the shops, buying himself a book of nudes, and an Indian necklace for Hilary; she liked Indian paintings. Then he had dinner at his hotel, after enjoying his private shower-bath.
Oddly, he found that most of all about his room he enjoyed the light which penetrated the pale curtains. Indeed, he left the bedside lamp on that night. He was unwilling to sleep in the dark. Perhaps it was just the strangeness of luxury. He felt too euphoric to spoil his mood by pondering. He lay smiling, remembering the girl on the train, until he fell asleep.
Next morning he misjudged the trains; the supporting film was under way when he arrived at the cinema. He could no more piece a film together that way than he would begin reading a book in the middle; he strolled around Soho, and bought the latest Forum. Hilary wouldn't have been able to buy it yet in their local news-agent's.
"I'm Phil Barker," he told the girl in the pay-box. "You're expecting me." She called a doorman to usher him past the queue, to the manager's office. This treatment pleased him immensely; it was part of his success. The manager, a dapper man with a black moustache shiny as his dress shoes, gave Phil a glossy folder of information about the film, which had originally been called Le Succube du Père Michel and had run four minutes longer, revised in ballpoint. The director had previously made Le Chant des Petomanes. The manager asked Phil about his work. "I'm best known for my women," Phil began. Eventually it was time for the film.
It took place in a small rather featureless film studio, scattered with stateless anachronisms. Father Malarkey, a French priest translated into American Irish, was lusting after the nuns in the nearby convent. Frustrated, he began to masturbate. Stop that, the censor said, snipping. Afterward, when the priest went to bathe, his stained robe started jigging about his room; eventually a girl's face faded into the cowl, grinning gleefully. Bejesus, now what's this, he said the first time she visited him in bed. I want to confess, she said. Not here, he protested, huddling beneath the blankets. But otherwise I'll have nothing to confess, she pouted, slipping her hand under the uncontrollably rising blankets. That's enough, the censor said. Her name was Lilith; she visited him every night, encouraging him to rape her, spank her, and so on. Later, when he succeeded in sneaking into the convent, she forced her way between him and his unseeing bedmates. Eventually the priest entered the cell of two entangled nuns. Now look here, the censor said. Discovered, the priest and Mother Superior were defrocked and, disapprovingly, married. But Lilith clung to his other arm. As far as Phil was concerned she had one blue eye and one brown. He could see the cover now.