he pulled her to her feet. “I feel so shaky,” she said and began to wobble. He slipped an arm around her waist and held her steady. Her skin beneath his cold hand felt smooth and warm. He stroked that infuriating hip, that ball- andsocket joint, and realized that he no longer found its prominence disagreeable. In fact, this tall skinny figure had grown on him. “Let me show you,” he said and guided her to the wall.
“The wall, Mr Lawrence. It’s the wall in your picture…in the other room!”
She leant against him, a long streak of Indian amber. She was living in a distant place, a place called rapture. He could see it in her eyes, not that they were slipping for they were wide and fixed on the dusty bricks.
He caressed her slight breasts and tugged gently on the extended nipples.
“Oh, Mr Lawrence, what are you doing?”
“Indulge an old man, just this once.”
He dropped his hand to her behind – that flawed wonderland that had given him so much grief in the painting – and traced between her buttocks until, finally, he cupped that seat of genesis and let his middle and ring fingers slip upward. Unconcerned, perhaps even unconscious of the source of this digital sensation, she began to gyrate and writhe and swell until she ended up on tiptoes.
“Oh, oh, Mr Lawrence,” she said.
He pulled his hand away and her feet came down to earth.
“I think it’s time to find Mrs Harrison.”
“Shall I get dressed again?” she asked, surprising him. It wasn’t simply the way she said it, which was lucid, but what she said as well. That she could put words together that made any kind of sense, was extraordinary.
“Not necessary,” he said. “We would only have to take them off again.”
With his hand gently resting on her right buttock, he directed her to the cellar door.
Chapter 35
Mr Lawrence pulled away the sealing tape then led the way down the dangerously dark and narrow stairway, reaching back to hold her hand as she placed one tentative foot after the other on to the crumbling steps.
“It’s wet. The steps are cold and wet.”
Again her words and observations surprised him. Should he come across a girl like this again he would need to stiffen his cocktails. You could never generalize with women; some were even more difficult than others.
They reached the ground safely and he threw a switch and forty watts from a bare dust-encrusted bulb threw its dim glow on the chamber. Save for a discarded mattress and the dark lumps of rotting rats and cats – some no more than stiff fur shells – it was an empty room. The walls were damp and decaying and clusters of black cobweb hung from the flaking edges. In parts the flooring had given up to black compacted earth. On the far side was the black hole that the wall of bricks had left and, as Mr Lawrence had observed once before, nothing could escape a black hole.
“Be careful now,” he said as he led her into the narrow passage. “There’s no lighting until we get to the end.”
“It smells horrible,” she said.
“I’ll light some joss sticks.”
“I like joss sticks,” she said. Once again he caught hold of her as her legs gave way.
At the end of the passage he pushed open a solid door and threw another switch. The room was bright and reasonably clean. The brick walls on three sides were sealed and whitewashed and the floor, although lumpy, was covered with green linoleum. The other wall was screened from floor to ceiling by a heavy curtain patterned with threads of red and gold. Mounted on a steel tripod a spotlight threw its intense beam on to an examination couch that came complete with thick foam wear-resistant black vinyl top with an elevated platform that avoided finger accidents – or so the advertisement had promised. Next to the couch stood a gleaming portable trolley and a high stool. She steadied herself on one of the twin fixtures at the bottom of the couch. “A bed,” she managed.
“It is. Why don’t you get on board and rest a while?”
She nodded enthusiastically and he helped her. For a moment her feet dangled, until he lifted her legs up over the side. She lay back. “That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll feel better now.”
She nodded again but already he noticed that her eyes had lost their previous lustre. Already he could feel the heat radiating from the spotlight on to her skin as he lifted her legs into the stirrups. “Many years ago this place belonged to the shop next door. It was owned by an old lady, Mrs Meacham, who sold wool and knittingneedles. But her shop was knocked down to make way for the new road up to the council estate. For some reason, perhaps the lack of funding or, more likely, contractors on the fiddle, they only filled in the one room. This was left completely as it was. If some of the bricks hadn’t been dislodged during the building work I would never have discovered it.”
From the trolley he produced a white apron that he tied around his middle.
“I mentioned before how small your breasts are.” As though it meant nothing at all he leant over and stroked them again and gently pulled a nipple between thumb and forefinger. “If we let the pregnancy continue they would fill out and your nipples would get bigger too.” She struggled with the idea and her frown was exaggerated. She turned her face from the penetrating light and said, “I’m so tired.” “I know, but try to stay awake a little longer.”
Her eyes were slipping now; nothing seemed to have a definite beginning or substance, everything was animated. Even his voice seemed distant.
“Gosh,” she said. “That tickles.”
“I thought it might. Maybe it will wake you up a bit.”
He worked a shaving-brush around her groin.
“It’s cold and wet, Mr Lawrence. What are you doing?”
“Nowadays, as I understand it, shaving has gone by the board. Maybe it’s part of the NHS efficiency programme that we hear so little about. But I’m just an old-fashioned man. I believe today’s term is the Brazilian. Perhaps it has something to do with the cutting down of the rainforests. Now, this will tickle again.”
She felt the cold lather and the bristles of his worn brush and then the razor and the slight tug as hair was cut away.
“My goodness, you haven’t been to your beauticians lately, have you? I suppose we could call this Bikini Line, should we require a title. Did you enjoy the show, by the way? I forgot to ask. I did notice you in your box in the Carrington.”
“That feels funny.”
“There we are, all finished now,” he said as he used a towel to dry her. “Didn’t want to get lost in the bush, as they say in Zululand and maybe even Mumbai.”
Her eyes settled again and she smiled sweetly as he bent over and examined her vagina, inserting two fingers into her vaginal canal. He placed his bandaged hand on her abdomen and applied a little pressure while he searched for the position of her uterus. A little smear from the end of his bandage marked her stomach.
He fumbled around in his trolley for it was full of boxes and instruments – forceps, dilators, pessaries, speculums, suppositories and Aquagel lubricating jelly which he preferred – he did like to be up there on the cutting edge. He toyed with the adjustable speculums and tried to recall what he used on Margaret Domey – small, medium or large – but it wouldn’t come back and he settled on small. Once, not long ago, they resembled a duck’s bill but now they were more like adjustable spanners used by filthy plumbers to unblock drains. As he opened her vagina her mouth dropped open more out of shock than discomfort and her frown turned to a grimace as he used the dilators on her cervix.
“Oh, oh, oh,” she uttered and tried to sit up, failing even to rise to her elbows.
Without looking up he said, “It’s true that women the world over are all alike, even women from the subcontinent and that’s a surprise. Only the Orientals are different, so I’m told, by my barber, believe it or not – for everything about them is on the slant and that wouldn’t do at all. As the old Duke of Edinburgh – Philippos the Greek – might say, it would be like putting a round peg into a slitty hole.”
He replaced the gleaming instruments and wiped his hands. “And now,” he said. “You wanted to see Mrs Harrison.”
Mr Lawrence moved to the curtains and drew them apart, first one then the other, fussing with the rope
