‘What’s pandemic?’ asked Lysander.
But Martha had beaten the butler to the telephone.
‘Oh, hi.’ She was poised between tears and a screaming match. ‘I didn’t want to spoil your fun. No, no.’ She was apologetic now. ‘I wasn’t implying anything.’
Lysander could now hear Elmer yelling. Martha seemed to slump.
‘OK, right, sleep well.’ Slowly she replaced the receiver.
‘Elmer’s over the limit. He’s spending the night at the barn.’
‘Yippee.’ Lysander hugged Tyson. ‘Let’s have another bottle.’
‘And he’s got a dozen guards who could drive him home if he wanted. He’s only drunk with lust. I guess he and that tramp were bouncing around in the Jacuzzi when he called me. That would have given him a charge.’
She burst into tears.
Lysander was a shining example of the continued existence of the age of chivalry. He hadn’t read endless articles in the women’s pages about the caddish chauvinism of his sex, he had never heard of New Man or sexual harassment. His heart entirely ruled his head. Anything in distress moved him and just as he had gathered up poor, miserably disturbed, aggressively insecure Tyson, now he bounded over to Martha.
‘Don’t cry. You’re so beautiful and he’s such a toad.’
Folding her into his warm, tender embrace, he tried to still her trembling body, smoothing away tears and mascara with his thumbs; then, when she still sobbed, comforting her in the only way he understood by kissing her smudged quivering mouth. For a second she fought him off, then, desperate for reassurance, she gradually responded to his wonderful enthusiasm.
Her skin was as smooth and silken as her shirt but, as he started undoing her buttons, she jumped away.
‘I’m too skinny. Elmer says I’m like an ironing board with two buttons sewn on to tell you which the front is.’
Lysander winced, then drew her back into his arms. ‘All the better to press my suit on.’ Then, as Martha smiled, ‘I’m going to kiss every freckle.’
‘You’ll be here for a thousand years.’
‘Wouldn’t be long enough. Let’s go upstairs.’
‘We shouldn’t.’
‘We can’t fight Mystic Meg.’
Tyson, however, in true Dobermann fashion, refused to let Lysander out of the room until his basket had been carried up to the bedroom and he’d been settled in with strokes and Bonios which gave Martha time to undress and hide herself under the ivy-green silk sheets of the vast emerald and white striped four-poster. Books were piled high on her bedside table. On the other side there stood only a digital clock and a silver-framed photograph of Elmer and George Bush.
‘Elmer only reads balance sheets and the messages on T-shirts,’ said Martha with a sob.
‘Hush, don’t think about him.’
Still in his clothes, Lysander waded through a pampas-grass of long white carpet and gently drew back the sheets. Instantly Martha’s thin arms flew to her tiny breasts. But, like Aladdin stumbling on his cave and touching each gold bar, precious stone and rope of pearls with amazed joy and excitement, Lysander slowly examined her body, stroking her nipples and her concave belly and breathing in the remains of Diorella behind her ears and inside her wrists.
‘Christ, you’re gorgeous!’ He ran his hands up the inside of her long slender legs. ‘I freaked when I first saw these in the stands.’
Dropping his clothes on the floor, he stripped off with total unselfconsciousness and rightly so because he was glorious, with a body as white, firmly curved and inviting on those emerald-green sheets, as early morning mushrooms in a dew-drenched field. His well-developed chest with a slight down of light brown hair narrowed to the flattest stomach and more downy hair from which his cock reared up as jaunty and as confident of bringing joy as a conductor’s baton raised for action.
‘I’ve only been married five months,’ mumbled Martha. ‘We really shouldn’t.’
‘We should, too.’
‘Wouldn’t Dolly be upset?’
‘Probably, but basically I can’t help myself.’
His fake tan was turning orange, his bluey-green eyes were crossing with drink, but, as the big laughing mouth came down on hers, Martha was reduced to the same slobbering ecstasy as Tyson.
Wriggling down the bed, Lysander kissed the arch of her instep, each coral-painted toe, then slowly, slowly up the velvet thighs, feeling the increasing tension as his hands grazed her breasts and shaven armpits, never stopping caressing.
‘We really shouldn’t,’ said Martha faintly.
Reaching out Lysander turned the photograph of Elmer and George Bush to the wall.
‘We don’t need an audience.’
Then, plunging his face into her pubic hair, snuffling as appreciatively as a truffle pig, he mumbled, ‘As I was saying to Martha’s bush.’
Feeling him helpless with laughter, she had to join in, but soon her laughter turned to gasps. Only when he knew she’d come did he keep her pleasure on the boil with half a minute of slowly stabbing fingers.
‘Come inside me,’ urged Martha.
‘Just wait a sec, while I slip into something tight,’ murmured Lysander, reaching for a condom from the back pocket of his jeans. Then as joyously as an otter diving into a summer stream he plunged his cock inside her.
‘Oh wow, that was terrific,’ said Martha as they lay back afterwards, sharing a cigarette.
‘I didn’t get a Christmas bonus because I didn’t sell any houses so it’s been worth waiting till January. You are so lovely.’ Lysander kissed her hand.
‘How come you are such an incredible lover?’
‘Basically, Dolly taught me a lot. One of the advantages of having an older woman.’
‘How old is she?’ Martha snuggled against his chest.
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Ouch.’
‘But she started at fourteen, so there’s a lot of mileage. Look, I just adored sleeping with you.’
‘Me too.’ Martha found she couldn’t keep her hands off him.
Noticing polo bruises darkening his ribs, arms and thighs like the purple markings on a white violet, she wanted to kiss them all better and explore in return his wonderful body.
‘You’re a really sweet guy with the softest heart and the hardest cock.’
‘Better than the other way round.’ Lysander dropped ash on the pampas-grass. ‘I wish I was someone who could go on for hours, but I get so excited, particularly when it’s someone like you. Dolly always makes me stay awake afterwards and stroke her for ages. I find that the most difficult part.’ His voice was slurring, his eyelids drooping. ‘Let’s do it again in a minute. Will you come with me to Disneyland tomorrow? I want to get Donald Duck’s autograph.’
Martha removed the cigarette as he fell asleep.
4
Elmer Winterton’s evening had deteriorated. Bonny, having consumed too much champagne and sucking pig, had suddenly lurched out of the Jacuzzi and for want of a bowl had thrown up in Elmer’s fish-tank. Whereupon his piranhas had swarmed up to the surface and eaten the lot which had turned Elmer’s stomach. Feeling a longing for his shy slender wife, he had been prevented from going straight home by Bonny passing out. Not trusting his guards
