But at the moment this is much more fun and with Bob thrashing gently beneath her, making half-hearted feints at escape, it seems as if they are in a different time; the morning has shanghaied them.
Sam slows down, grinding in small, clockwise circles, screwing him down to the lavish mattress, and it is then she sees it is snowing again outside. She sees the shadows on the curtains, dropping almost lazily, their soft penumbra touching now and then.
Bob gives her an impatient nudge with his pelvis and unthinkingly she reaches beneath them both to provoke him, squeezing a finger up his arse. The policeman’s eyes go wide and inside her, his cock goes off abruptly in a spasmodic fit of surprise.
MARK AND RICHARD WERE CAUGHT THIS MORNING WHEN THE SNOW
came down again, tripping and sliding their way through a series of alleys and abandoned streets. The junk and bursting bin bags set out after Christmas were half disguised by now and thrust themselves out like mantraps.
“Really,” said Richard, “I wanted to show Sally the bookshop. But we’ll buy her a present there. I must show it to you, though.”
Dully Mark reflected that he could now hear the snow. It stripped Richard’s voice of echo and all Mark could hear was Richard. In all the frost Richard’s voice was pure and uncontested.
More alleys, more tripping.
“Are you sure there’s really a smart bookshop here? It seems a bit unlikely.”
But there was, and it was open. The doorway was low, into one of those buildings constructed for a smaller working class than the present one.
Inside, dust and greyness and that insinuating smell of crumbling paper. The woman at the desk stacked high with newer books gave them a quick look, then ducked her head back into the span of honey-coloured light from her lamp. Her fingernail scratched down each page as she read.
Mark and Richard went to look at the shelves and when they had something to say they said it in whispers. In here, dust sapped them almost into silence. Mark found the books disordered and dirty to the touch, some of them jammed backwards, or upside down, into any available niche. He shivered as he browsed and his legs were shaking. Just the aftershock of good sex, he realised, and remembered those sensations of anti-anticlimax.
Mark had almost given up poking around and peered over the top of his shelf to see Richard, who squatted by the art section with a picture book of tattoos from all around the world. Sighing, Mark prepared to return to his unenthusiastic perusal—the whisper of covers’ withdrawal from close-packed shelves, the aromatic flipping of pages—when he saw one particular book at the top of the pile. The mottled golden cover suggested itself to him, slyly drawing him away from Richard and his thought that it was time to leave.
A hardbacked novel, the span of his hand, perhaps sixty years old, with Art Nouveau stencilling and design.
‘Three Cheers for Retrogression: A Novel by Iris Margaret Wildthyme, Author of The Youngest Monkeys.’
Mark’s heart bossanovaed as he looked for an author’s photograph and sure enough, in the back flap, there was Iris, looking quite bohemian and yet not much younger, draped upon a deck chair on what seemed to be the Queen Mary.
PEGGY USED TO HAVE A DOG WHOSE LEG HAD BEEN SHATTERED IN A CAR accident. It could no longer scratch behind its own right ear and was grateful when Peggy did it, the ruined leg making useless, sympathetic kicks.
When she made Iris come with her own right paw, it always reminded her of that poor dog. The way Iris bucked and jounced irresistibly suggested Sheba’s compliance.
They lay clasped for some time afterwards. Peggy was constantly astonished by the heat coming off Iris. Maybe that’s why she’s so small—she burns everything off with the heat of her cunt. The word ‘metabolism’ popped into Peggy’s head. Metabolism: the archaic, chthonic goddess of the fevered morning. Peggy had had God knew how many years of cool, distant couplings with a dying husband. Since being with Iris she had never known such heat, and never become used to it. She lay still touching Iris, unwilling to leave the warm centre.
When she did she found a loaded, steaming tea tray left outside their bedroom door. With a glance up and down the passageway—no one was in sight—Peggy picked it up and they settled down for a gentle breakfast before their frozen window.
“Richard must be back on houseboy duty,” Iris said.
“I can’t see that, somehow.” Peggy took her tea black, or rather a deep orange. When she sucked at the cup’s rim, its heat stung her mouth. “He was in an extreme state last night. I expect this is from that little man we scared out of the way last night. Simmonds, or whatever he’s called. It looks like he’s decided to like us.”
“He gave me the bloody creeps,” Iris said.
“It’s not like you to take against someone.”
“No, it’s not, really.” Iris considered. “I think it’s because he’s a bit of a rogue element. It’s the novelist part of me speaking. The Valkyrie in me. Simmonds gives me the bloody creeps because I don’t know yet what part he has to play in this. And he looks weird wearing hi-tech trainers.”
“I see you’ve dropped the Orlando business and you’re sticking to the Valkyrie stuff?”
“It’s all the same. It’s all about having a long enough, wide enough view to see how people work and fit in.”
“What makes you think Simmonds has a
