Now it was Laura’s turn. She undid the buttons on Finn’s shirt and tugged it down his arms like a child unwrapping the first present of Christmas. She ran her hands across his exposed chest, then she must have asked – ordered – him to undress because he suddenly stepped away from the bed and unfastened his trousers so that they fell to the floor and he stood, lean, smooth-limbed and naked, before her. The same candlelight that had given such softness to Laura’s pinched face hid his scars and bathed him in a gentle radiance, and I began to draw.
Finn became my unwitting mannequin, and every pencil-stroke felt like an intrusion as I captured his image: the long fringe of hair that fell and veiled his face, the concave curve of his belly and soft, golden curls of pubic hair that reached from his navel to his stiffening cock.
Laura let her dress fall to the floor, kissed him hungrily and entwined her thin hands behind her new lover’s head, holding him close as if he might vanish without her selfish grasp. I kept drawing as Finn laid her tenderly on the bed and slipped two dampened fingers inside her, gently rubbing her clit with his thumb as she arched her back in pleasure.
Finally he parted her legs and slid his erection easily into her, moving in long, languorous strokes until she came, greedily pulling him further in with each thrust, and then the performance was over. Laura released her grip on Finn and he rolled away from her, already reaching for his clothes.
I dropped the closed sketchpad onto the velvet seat and let my tensed breath out in a long, weary sigh.
*****
Blaine let herself into the viewing room, her porcelain face hidden in shadow. ‘So, what did you think? Do you still assume that Finn’s some poor, disabused ingénue? Admit it, Lilith, you were impressed. Maybe you even allowed yourself to become just a little aroused? Just a little damp between those ascetic, principled thighs?’ She sat down next to me to inspect my work. ‘These really are superb. Now, if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll see if I can persuade Laura to be a touch more adventurous. You can go to bed now if you like – I’d hate to invoke your disapproval after such a rewarding day.’
*****
In the early hours of the morning, I cleaned my bathroom for two hours straight. I raided Henry’s cupboards for cloths and scourers and disinfectant, and scrubbed every surface until I could see my reflection in the marble, and still sleep refused to come.
Finn
‘So, how does it feel to be the one getting fucked now?’ Laura Fenworth, pissed as a rat, slurred into my ear.
I lay tied face-down to the bed frame with the silk scarves she’d wrapped around my wrists and ankles, and was only too glad the question was rhetorical.
‘Take this.’ She held a tiny silver spoon piled high with coke under my nose.
‘No…’ I turned my head away and she made a petulant sound.
‘Blaine said you would.’
I snorted, feeling the acid bite at my sinuses, and kissed goodbye to any decent rest for the next two days. Laura scooped up twice as much powder for herself and took it in one sniff, before checking that I was securely restrained. I sincerely hoped she didn’t expect me to screw her again: even Viagra had its limits.
Cocaine and temazepam began a tug-of-war in my system and my heart began to hammer its way out of my ribcage. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on not freaking out and had a fleeting image of Lilith’s tranquil, ordered bedroom and more than anything I wanted to be back there. Then my focus was nowhere at all, because Laura Fenworth was all over me, and not in a good way.
The woman went berserk. She started with her fists, screaming abuse that I simply stopped hearing, and pounding me on my head and back. I knew what she wanted now: she wanted me to cry out, to beg her to stop, to plead with her just so she could tell me to shut the fuck up and hit me even harder. But the trick was in the timing: if I sang out too soon clients sensed that I was faking – guilty of spoiling that precious ‘real’ experience – and if I left it too long they invariably went too far and I got to spend the next couple of days feeling like I’d been kicked downstairs.
The decision about when to make some noise became void when she bit me. At first I thought she was stopping to kiss me again, which would have been bad enough, but Laura suddenly decided to sink her teeth deep into the soft flesh of my lower lip and I yelped before I had time to check myself. Blood poured unchecked down my chin and onto the pristine linen pillowcase, and that really got her going.
As my cry echoed into the dispassionate night, my client grabbed a leather-handled dog chain from the range of implements that Blaine had thoughtfully arranged on the dresser. I braced myself against the sting of the strap and found myself hollering again as Laura laid into me with the metal-clipped end and my back became a sea of fire.
I lost count of the number of times she hit me. The blows merged into one and she began to moan with exertion instead of pleasure. I didn’t hear the door open, but the amused voice that cut through the pain was all too familiar.
‘I see someone’s been having fun,’ Blaine observed. ‘But I think he’s probably had quite enough for now, haven’t you, Finn darling?’
I didn’t answer: I was too busy remembering how to breathe as Blaine untied me. She ran her fingers efficiently across my shoulders and momentarily felt sick. As I sat up, sweat ran in streams down my spine.
Laura let the dog lead fall to the floor and stared at me in horror. ‘Oh my God,’ she stumbled. ‘I didn’t… I mean, that wasn’t…’
Blaine placed a comforting arm around her shoulder. ‘You know, it never ceases to amaze me just how much aggression we store up in our day-to-day lives. Now, why don’t you help yourself to a brandy then settle down to a good night’s sleep? We can have a chat over breakfast. Say, seven-thirty?’
‘Breakfast?’ Laura frowned, still in shock from getting in touch with her inner nutter. ‘Oh. Of course. I’ll be there.’
Blaine turned to me. ‘And why don’t you get yourself cleaned up? I’d be most grateful if you didn’t ruin the bed linen.’
It was then I realised that it wasn’t sweat running down my back. It was blood.
I grabbed my discarded clothes and pulled them on, wincing as my shirt met the raw welts, then stumbled out into the corridor, ready to turn left and return to my room as ordered. Instead, as my heart suddenly renewed its attempt to leave my chest, I turned right and ran blindly into the darkness.
Lilith
I emptied out my drawers into a pile on the bed and began to refold every single item. I returned them according to colour, creating a spectrum of jeans, tracksuit bottoms and t-shirts.
When I had finished I remade my pristine bed and collapsed onto it, finally ready to sleep. Just minutes later the hammering on my door dragged me awake.
‘Lilith? Lili? Are you there?’
Finn stood in the corridor, a wild-eyed vampire with a trail of blood running down his chin. He was dressed in his dinner suit and shirt, but they had been thrown on, and he was barefoot. ‘Dirty fucking evil bitch!’ He staggered into my room.
I stepped aside to let him past, and he threw himself onto my bed. ‘Fucking bit me! I mean, who the fuck looks at someone and thinks that’s their fucking idea of a good time – Jesus, it fucking hurts – and bites them? Not some lovebite shit either – bit me like a sodding dog. Bitch.’
I must have looked more than a little stunned, because he broke off from his tirade. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think – just needed… somewhere. Fuck, I’m some fuckin’ stupid twat, I must’ve kinda freaked and this was the only place I could think of.’ He wiped at the dusting of white powder around his nostrils and smeared a little more blood around his face. ‘God, I hate this shit. Wires me for fucking hours.’
I stared at the car-crash that had just landed on my freshly-made bed. Right now, he managed to represent just about everything I had banished from my life for the last ten years, and I had absolutely no idea where to start.
Finn’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry. You said
… ‘Any time’, and, fuck it, I’ll just go...’
‘No. You won’t.’ I knelt on the floorboards. ‘Come on, let me see your face.’
Finn
I tried to pull away. ‘No, it’s fine.’
Lilith shook her head. ‘It’s not fine, and that’s why you’re here. I made an offer and you took me up on it, and now here I am standing around like some bloody idiot. So, face. Now.’ She gave a soft laugh. ‘Listen to me – English upper class. Born to rule.’
‘Irish pikey class. Born to be fucked,’ I said through clenched teeth. I let her take my face in her cool, clean hands and Lilith ran a careful finger under the gash in my lip.
‘It’s not too deep, but she’s certainly decided to get her money’s worth. Hope you’ve had your rabies shot.’
‘Nah. Doesn’t matter anyway. M’probably gonna get tetanus first, off the mess she made of my back.’
‘Would you like me to take a look?’ Lilith asked.
‘No. No offence n’ all that, but it took me all my time just to get my shirt on. The lunatic ended up whackin’ me with the clip end of a dog lead.’
Lilith stood and leant against the wall. ‘God, what kind of madhouse is this, Finn?’
In my time at the Hall, I had never done such a thing. Here I was, sitting uninvited on a guest’s bed, hurting and coked up to the eyeballs and reeking of sex and Laura Fenworth’s cloying perfume. I was a mess, and my driving need that night had been to seek out the order that Lilith must have represented in my reptilian brain. ‘Would you mind if I used your bathroom?’ I asked. ‘Need to wash some of this off.’
Lilith simply nodded, watching me from the shadows.
Her bathroom was like a shoot from one of those home magazines that Henry devoured. The kind of place that you’d glance at and reassure yourself that no-one’s bathroom could be that immaculate in real life. If anything, it was even cleaner than when Henry had scrubbed every surface with a toothbrush in preparation for Lilith’s arrival, and a neat row of potions stood to attention, labels outward, at the sink.
‘Are you okay in there?’ Lilith called through the door.
‘Just marvellous.’ I took a towel that appeared to have been folded with the aid of a set-square and draped it over the mirror, then reached past the cosmetics counter and picked up the bleach.
I didn’t notice the door open until it was too late.
Lilith
‘For fuck’s sake, Finn!’
My bathroom sink filled with pale pink water as Finn poured bleach over hands stained with the blood from his mouth.
‘You want to give me that?’
‘No.’
‘O-kay.’ I winced as he took a scouring pad to his knuckles. ‘I understand. You want to get clean. But that stuff is good for getting shit off a toilet. Not for handwash.’ I picked up a bottle of ridiculously expensive cleanser that I had bought in another life, on a weekend trip to Barcelona. ‘Here. Swap you.’
For what felt like forever Finn stared at my outstretched hand, mistrust clouding his face. Finally, he took the bottle and turned his back on me.
As I stood outside my bathroom, waiting for my guest to complete his savage ritual, Henry padded into my room in his carpet slippers, as dapper as ever in paisley pyjamas and a navy blue silk dressing gown. ‘Lilith, I don’t suppose you’ve seen Finn? Only there’s been a bit of a to-do, and Lady Albermarle was a little concerned as to his whereabouts.’
‘Would this ‘bit of a to-do’ involve him being coked up to the eyeballs and getting beaten with a dog-chain?’
‘She didn’t say,’ Henry began, then winced. ‘Oh goodness, is that what happened?’
‘I’m here, Henry.’ The voice from the bathroom was laden with threat.
‘Finn, what the hell are you doing in a guest’s room?’
It was the first time I had heard Henry swear.
‘Fuck off,’ Finn growled.
‘He’s here by invitation,’ I explained.
Henry shook his head. ‘Finn, this really isn’t a good idea.’
‘Yeah, whereas tyin’ me to the bed in the company of some nutjob is a work of towering genius.’ He stepped past me. ‘Go away, Henry. I hurt, I’m knackered, and to be perfectly honest with you I’m right in the mood to hit someone.’
‘Come on, son. Let’s get you back to your own room. You haven’t got like this in a long time,’ Henry pleaded.
Finn glowered at him. ‘Yeah, well it’s been long time since it hurt this much, little man. And I’m not your fuckin’ son.’
‘He’s fine to stay here for a while,’ I assured. ‘It’s not a problem.’
Finn was so nearly calm enough to reason with, when Henry messed up everything. ‘Why don’t you just come with me?’ he asked, and put his hand on Finn’s arm.
‘Don’t touch me!’ Finn howled and lashed out. I thought he was about to deck Henry, but instead he swung his fist across the dresser and brought everything on it crashing to the floor. An empty glass and a crystal vase exploded across the floorboards, and my ears rang with the noise they made against the silence of the night.
‘Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!’ Henry moved to catch Finn’s arm again. This time I knew the smaller man would join the pile of broken glass on the floor.
‘That’s enough.’ The words were said with a firmness that I really didn’t feel. ‘Finn, sit down over there until I’ve got the glass cleared up. I really don’t want to add a couple of amputated toes to the carnage.’
To my relief, Finn mutely obeyed and dropped into the armchair. The dull grating click of his lighter heralded the fact that he had managed to produce a cigarette from somewhere. I turned to Henry. ‘Give him a little longer here.’
‘Well… How long? Ten minutes, perhaps?’
‘As long as it takes. If you try to move him now you risk the whole mess flaring up again.’
Henry hesitated, but I could see the temptation on his face. ‘I mean, what if, you know…’ he gestured at the wreckage and then nodded in Finn’s direction. ‘When he gets like this, things can get a little unpredictable.’
‘The storm’s passed. Look, I did this more times than I could count with my mother, and she was completely barking. Finn’s a rank amateur compared to her.’
‘I’m really not sure about this...’
‘Look, I’m assuming that Blaine’s going to want to know where you found him?’
‘Naturally.’
‘So we’re all already in the shit. Unless she turns up on my doorstep, another hour or so isn’t going to make much of a difference now, is it?’
‘Well, when you put it like that… And I don’t seem to have had much success in sorting things out so far, do I?’
‘You did what you could.’ I managed to muster a smile of encouragement. ‘Go to bed, Henry. Someone’s got to be in a state to do breakfast.’
‘Thank you.’ Henry finally stepped back into the corridor. ‘I feel rather like I’m abandoning you, but thank you.’
‘I’ve really fucked up your night, haven’t I?’ Finn asked. ‘I mean, you get up at God knows what time, and you’ve got work to do and -’
I began to pick up the larger of the shards of glass and place them in the bin. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Sorry for twatting your stuff.’
‘It’s okay, Finn. Really.’
‘Could have been worse,’ Finn added. ‘Last time I got like this, I twatted Henry. Broke his wrist.’ He sat in silence for a while. ‘Hm. Shouldn’t have told you that, should I? It was an accident, though. I wasn’t aiming for him – he just kinda got in my way. I mean, I wouldn’t hit you, y’know?’
‘Yeah, I know. You’re not that dumb.’
He smiled for the first time that night. ‘Too fuckin’ right I’m not.’
*****
When I was satisfied that the last fragment of glass had been removed from the floor, I finally returned to my bed. Finn had sat motionless throughout, silently watching me, coming bac
k to himself.
‘I’ll go soon, honest.’
‘Take whatever time you need. How’re you doing now?’
‘Well I don’t feel like I’m about to go on a massacre anymore. But my back’s having a proper fight with my face to see which one hurts most.’
‘Help yourself to codeine. They’re in that top drawer.’ It was a simple offer, but I must have been exhausted to say anything so stupid. All I could do was lie still in the half-light and hope I hadn’t just made things a million times worse.
Finn
Two hundred and twelve breaths.
That’s how long it took me to risk moving again.
I hadn’t intended to take up Lilith’s offer, but as I hauled myself to my feet, I felt the deeper of the gashes across my shoulders re-open. The next day promised to be real fun, and I knew my meagre supply of ibuprofen wouldn’t begin to touch it.
I picked up the small amber bottle and turned it in my hands. Lilith’s name was on the label along with some stuff in Spanish, probably telling me not to mix this medication with other drugs or alcohol, which was actually pretty funny, all things considered.
Dos… Two, I figured. I tipped two tiny pills into my hand. There were perhaps another fifty left in the bottle and I tapped the side until they all tumbled out and formed a haphazard pyramid in my palm.
A thin film of sweat covered my face. I had trained myself not to do this with my temazepam. Not after the last time. But this was a whole new challenge.
Codeine. Not one of the big guns, like smack or morphine, but I guessed I held enough in my hand for a peaceful night’s sleep without the added complication of waking up.