Club Crème Read online

  ‘My man turned out to be married,’ I told him. ‘With six wives.’

  ‘Henry the Eighth, was he?’ he chuckled.

  My laughter shook the towel right off me.

  ‘Oh, that’s the best therapy of all,’ I said. We laughed again. I tried to be serious. I stared out of the window at the grey sky. ‘But he really did have all those wives. Some of them were girls I was mates with. All nationalities. None of us knew about the others.’

  ‘A regular harem. Nice!’ Mikhail smacked his lips.

  ‘Yeah. It sounds sexy, doesn’t it, and exciting? But when you’ve been told you’re the special one, and then you find you’re next in the queue, it stops being quite so funny. Anyway, it was time to move on. I always have to move, in the end. I thought I’d be happy to come home.’

  ‘And you’re not?’ he asked. He was folding the towel in half, lengthways.

  ‘It’s only temporary, but it isn’t working out too well. It’s too cold. I’ve got no money. English men all seem so bland . . . You’re not English, are you?’

  ‘Well, don’t tell anyone, but I give myself this Eastern European name to match my Aryan looks and to please the ladies. I am English, yes. I come from Bristol. And I can assure you we Englishmen are not at all bland.’

  ‘Well, the jury’s still out on that one, though you’re proving a remarkable exception,’ I said. I’d discovered one or two other exceptions recently, I reminded myself. You didn’t get much more English than Sir Simeon, although you couldn’t say the same of Merlin.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mikhail, busy with oils and body buffs. There was something slightly camp in the way his great big hands flew about. ‘Part of our therapy is to listen.’

  I did some stretches on my legs. ‘It’s not just the weather and the men,’ I went on slowly. It was good to be able to bounce my thoughts off him. ‘I think I’ve already cocked up my new job. And I don’t know what to make of my new boss. Or his mistress, who is also my boss. Or his son.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t know what to make of you, either. Now, you need a massage,’ Mikhail stated. ‘Life doesn’t have to be complicated. You should be like me. Just do the next thing that comes your way.’

  I laughed again and, taking advantage of my distraction, he stood up, holding the towel ready. Then, he flipped me like a pancake on to it and started pumping a concealed foot pedal under the lounger, which raised it to hip height.

  ‘No one leaves any part of this building until they are relaxed and pampered,’ he said. ‘Now, I’m just going to wheel the massage bed behind this palm, for a little more privacy.’

  ‘Why do we need privacy?’ I asked sleepily, face down in the towel.

  ‘Because –’ and he had my leotard rolled down to my waist as quickly as peeling a banana.

  I struggled to stop him, but his hands were on my shoulder blades, pressing me hard down on to my front. It felt as if he was going to press me right through the bed, and my resistance evaporated. He squirted some oil on to my back, and started to rotate the heel, the palm, the knuckles of his hands. My cheekbones dug into the towel, my body rocking, and I bit my lip as the surface of my skin started to tingle in places he hadn’t even reached yet. The oil slicked up and down my arms, back to my shoulder blades and along the knobs of my spine. The blood started to drum again in my ears. It sounded like the hoof beats of that chestnut horse, galloping across the frost-hard fields around Symes Hall.

  ‘Too tense. So tense,’ Mikhail tutted, pushing me down hard again. ‘You are going to be a tough nut to crack, I can tell.’

  ‘Not tense,’ I said. ‘Just remembering something. Someone.’

  ‘If you are remembering something, then forget it. Please just concentrate on the pleasure I’m about to give you.’

  His hands continued over my back, over my hips and down the backs of my legs. I did as I was told, but my sexuality wouldn’t let me forget it. Every so often, my lower parts twitched, as if I was still gripping Merlin’s penis.

  My whole body had become ridiculously sensitive. When Mikhail touched the crease behind my knee my foot jerked up. I expected to meet thin air, but I met the solid muscle of Mikhail’s back or buttocks. He had climbed on top of me, light as a cat, and was kneeling astride me. He deliberately tickled the back of my knee until I kicked him again and, this time, I could tell I was kicking at his buttocks.

  ‘Not much control, have you?’ he remarked, as if making notes. ‘Like a race horse at the starting gate.’

  He bent himself so that he was lying on top of me, but still almost weightlessly. I enjoyed the feeling that I was like a pinned butterfly. He could have squashed the life out of me just then, if he’d chosen.

  His hands were still working. He had edged them under me, so that they were round the front of my hips, and I felt him arrange himself across me so that, when he stopped moving, I could feel, resting between the cheeks of my bottom, a long, hard shape. His hip bone? I wondered frantically, wriggling myself around it. Or the bottle of oil?

  All around us were the distant sounds of people diving and splashing in the pool. With nothing but a few fronds of palm separating us from the other drifting bodies, this guy was arousing me. He’d got me halfway into a trance, and I had no strength to move away from him. And what was more, I didn’t want to. I didn’t know what kind of massage this was. He was massaging me into a jelly. A jelly with no arms or legs but who was being steadily aroused as he massaged my spine and his groin rubbed very carefully up and down the crack of my butt.

  Automatically, I arched my back, raising my bum to meet his burgeoning cock, pressing its hardness into the soft crevice. He blew sharply on my neck, raising the hairs into tiny prickles of growing desire. Then his weight was off me: cock, thighs, hands, everything.

  I stifled a groan of frustration and opened my eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ I croaked. ‘That was great.’

  ‘Now your front. We have to do you all over.’

  Once again he flipped me over and now I was lying on my greased back. He sat astride me and this time I had a good look. I examined his crotch. His cock was trying to get vertical, tenting his tight trunks like a schoolboy getting a hard-on at his first topless beach. I didn’t know whether to laugh or reach up and grab it. My whole body was fizzing with a mixture of arousal and anticipation about what he would do next. He calmly balanced himself astride me. I could see how strong his legs were as they supported him a few inches above my stomach. Too late I realised that the leotard was halfway down my legs and I was totally naked, but instead of alarm I felt a sharp surge of excitement. This guy was as clinical as a doctor. His friendly face had closed in with concentration. I couldn’t tell if I had imagined the cock-rubbing moment, imagined his tangible excitement. My bare breasts appeared no more interesting to him than a pair of water wings. That should have quashed any remaining lust in me, but his impassive face only fired me up more. My nipples stiffened as his hands began to massage the area just above them.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ he murmured, squirting a spunk-like jet of different cream on to my chest and rubbing it slowly in circles over the plump flesh, but avoiding my nipples, which were standing out like acorns. ‘Carefully concealed, these were. Most people would never have thought, seeing you coming in here dressed like a skateboarder.’

  ‘Thought what?’

  ‘Thought that you had the body of a goddess under those baggy clothes and that dreadful hat. But it was your eyes that gave you away.’

  ‘Go on,’ I urged him, shifting restlessly under him. ‘Make me feel like a goddess, then.’

  My pussy brushed the thick bulge in his trunks, and the contact made me realise how damp my crotch was. I couldn’t believe myself. Aroused by some cheap masseur with a line in chat up as old as the hills? I’d come across endless people like him in Egypt, when the prince’s back was turned, and I’d never been interested. But there was no denying it – Mikhail was good at this. Maybe I wanted him to go on just because he wa
s an anonymous masseur, not a ‘client’ or a secretive member of the club, or a past love. I strained myself upwards again and, instead of moving away, he pressed down so that once again the thick shape in his trunks was lying along the crack of my sex, nudging the lips apart. Once again he started to move his hips back and forth, but so gently you would barely notice.

  He stared at his own hands as they circled my breasts.

  ‘Your eyes. They’re green and they flash, like a witch’s,’ he said calmly, rotating his hands. ‘You might look like Huckleberry Finn, but it’s your witch’s eyes that give you away.’

  He walked his fingers past my breasts, suddenly businesslike, and seemed to be counting my ribs. Instantly, I felt my neck and head loosening. I hadn’t even known how tense they were. I was ready for more of this. But then he jumped off me, shaking out his legs and arms as if he’d just been lifting weights. He hitched up his trunks, and then I saw why. The two blonde girls had appeared and were standing beside the palm tree, tapping their bare feet, and jerking their heads towards the clock. God knows how long they’d been there.

  ‘That should make you feel like a new woman. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have an engagement upstairs,’ Mikhail said. He pulled my leotard up briskly and pumped my lounger back down so fast that I almost lost my balance trying to get my arms through the straps.

  ‘Well, thank you anyway. I feel a whole lot better now,’ I said, standing up. It was true, though my legs were shaking. ‘I think I’ll have another swim.’

  As I stood at my little window that evening and watched the lights come up over the city, there was a knock on the door. Miss Sugar was there, wearing a floor-length grey raincoat and holding out a couple of carrier bags.

  ‘Your clothes,’ she sniffed, thrusting them at me. ‘There are various outfits in there to tide you over for the next few days. I’m to take your others away for burning.’

  ‘No chance,’ I said, folding my arms over my T-shirt. ‘Won’t you come in, Sugar? It’s getting dark. I’ve not even turned the lights on yet. I’m a bit lonely up here in my ivory tower.’

  She looked tempted for a moment, then shook her head, her pale-grey eyes sliding away from me behind the glasses.

  ‘No. I’ve not been instructed to stay.’

  ‘Who cares? It’s after hours now.’

  She poked her head through the door and could barely conceal her disdain at the poky studio room.

  ‘I had a flat a bit like this when I first came to work at the club,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve been given a room there with a fascinating view over Shepherd Market. It’s high up, like this, but instead of the tube station, I can look straight across the rooftops into the windows of the flat opposite.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit like being a prisoner?’ I asked. ‘Living above the shop like that?’

  ‘It’s just the way Sir Simeon and Mimi operate. And don’t get me wrong. I love living there. You just get used to their whims. The perks are worth it, if you play your cards right.’ She allowed herself a private smile, which faded just as quickly. ‘Now, if you won’t give me your clothes, you’ll have to bring them to the club. That wasn’t a joke, about burning them. They like us to throw everything away which connects us with our past lives.’

  ‘They can whistle,’ I snorted, tossing my new glossy hair. ‘They don’t own us.’

  ‘For as long as we work for them, they do. Which brings me to my second reason for bothering you. As long as you work for Club Crème, you can expect to have your spare time invaded as well. You’re required to work this evening, after all. One of the members is holding a private party there and they want you to go. He’s a pretty flamboyant character and they want you to keep an eye. Mimi’s even left a note about what you’re to wear. And don’t say they can whistle!’ she added quickly, as I opened my mouth to protest. ‘This isn’t negotiable.’

  ‘I still have a job, then?’ I said, reluctantly taking the designer bags off her.

  ‘Of course. Why else would they have rewarded you with a brief like this?’

  Despite her brave words I thought I saw her glance enviously past me at the sunset glowing through my window. Then she turned to go back down the stairs. She was hardly best mate material, but I could have done with the company, I thought, pausing in my doorway.

  ‘Don’t you feel a little imprisoned living there, Sugar?’ I asked, stopping her in her tracks. ‘Doesn’t it feel like a kind of demotion? A punishment for something?’

  ‘Quite the reverse, Miss Summers. Believe me. Moving right in to Club Crème was very much a promotion. But, sure, they like to test our loyalty from time to time,’ she said, the inscrutable smile reappearing briefly. ‘And they knew that I would always be loyal to the club, no matter where I live. Have an interesting evening.’

  I shut my door and walked slowly over to the tarnished mirror in the bathroom. I studied myself. My clothes were awful; they were right about that. And one of the reasons the clothes looked awful was that my face didn’t fit them any more. I wrenched the T-shirt off and looked again. That was better. Now my face was floating above pale shoulders and breasts. I could imagine Mimi standing beside me, grinning with approval, snaking her hands up to cradle my breasts, and I felt a twinge deep inside.

  Although I’d been swimming, my hair seemed to recognise the new shape Mimi’s hairdresser had given it because instead of springing away from my scalp in horror, it coiled gracefully in two very slightly wavy sheets on either side of my face. The witch’s eyes were big in the dying light. I switched on a lamp and the pupils shrank in the glare so that they were wicked points, the green irises gleaming in the mirror. My normally pale cheeks had a flush of colour in them, and my lips were parted as if I’d been running.

  I recognised the look. I used to see it in the early days, when the prince first installed me in the flat near his palace. I used to see something like it when he had been to see me, and my thighs were still bruised and sticky from our exertions. I was ready to rock. I would put all my energies into doing exactly what Club Crème required of me, blowing life into the lust that Mimi had coaxed from me, the recklessness that I had uncovered in the bar last night, the restlessness that had seeped through my leotard beside the pool. Anything to welcome the new horny me.

  I looked through the bags that Miss Sugar had deposited and read Mimi’s bossy note. She wanted me to wear the sort of dress that two days ago I would never have considered buying. It was a diaphanous black sheath, with tiny spaghetti straps, ankle-length but slashed to the navel both front and back and covered in sequins. I tore off my combat trousers and left them in a heap, and slipped the dress on. I held my new obedient hair off my face and wished someone – Mimi, Chrissie, even Sir Simeon – was there to admire me. Perhaps I would seek out Miss Sugar in her humble little room when I got to work. I could show her my new image.

  8

  So far I hadn’t ventured upstairs at the club. The stairs curved enticingly up from the hallway, lit by gas torches flaming up in front of gothic, arched mirrors. At intervals, the stairs paused, tipping the visitor through an archway leading on to an unexplored landing studded with closed doors. I imagined that the higher you got, the quieter everything would be, but tonight, when I reached the topmost penthouse landing, I could hear loud music.

  As I looked up and down the landing, there was a sudden burst of giggling. I half expected to see Miss Sugar scuttling to her humble little cell. But she wouldn’t giggle like that. To my astonishment, the two blonde girls I’d seen at the swimming pool emerged from what looked like a set of lift doors at the far end of the landing. The health suite obviously had its own entrance to the upper levels of the club. They didn’t see me, but jostled each other excitedly as they knocked at one of the closed doors. They were dressed identically in sleeveless black dresses, so tight and short it was a wonder they could breathe, and what looked like pointed witches’ hats. Under the hats, they both wore dark glasses. The door opened, coughing out a blast of rock music,
and they were drawn inside.

  I hesitated, still with one foot on the stairs. Surely this wasn’t the party Miss Sugar had directed me to? I’d been expecting a sedate sherry party, perhaps some ballroom dancing. I caught sight of myself in one of the arched mirrors. My reflection flickered spookily in the torchlight. The smoky eye make-up and blood-red lipstick Mimi had also supplied made me look as if I was exploring Blue Beard’s castle. I stuck my tongue out and gave myself a kick up the arse. I had a job to do. I tottered after the two blondes and knocked at the door.

  A man dressed as Dracula opened the door. He wore white tie and tails, a black cloak, mirrored sunglasses and had fake blood dripping down his chin. He smiled, revealing a fat cigar clamped between vampire fangs.

  ‘I hoped you’d come. Welcome to the lion’s den!’ he yelled above the noise. The lighting in the room was bright, almost dazzling. ‘But you’ll need to wear these,’ he added, handing me a pair of Jackie Onassis-type sunglasses but, before I put them on, I suddenly recognised him. It was Mikhail, the masseur from the health club.

  ‘How did you know I would be here?’ I yelled back, flying after him as he pulled me through the black-and-white crowd. ‘And why is everyone dressed up?’

  ‘It’s Halloween or hadn’t you noticed?’ he said as he handed me a tall glass of vicious-tasting punch. ‘These are the rules. We all have to be in some sort of disguise. There will be a terrible penalty for anyone who removes their shades. I see this evening you’re disguised as a beautiful classy woman with no name. Unlike your rapper’s persona this morning.’

  It was a fair enough comment. If I didn’t recognise myself when I looked in the mirror just now, all dolled up in my finery, why should anyone else recognise me? And the last time he’d seen me, he’d been dripping oil on my boobs.

  He slipped away to talk to a man who was leaning against the huge attic window of the penthouse and staring out over the rooftops. This man was dressed as a matador, with a cape, a sombrero and high-waisted trousers with a scarlet stripe down the sides. Beneath his sombrero, his eyes were concealed, like everyone else’s, by dark glasses. I wondered if this was the host of the party.