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Chapter 4: Rochelle
I stepped off the Eurostar into the most beautiful station I’d ever seen – Paris stations can be beautiful, but always in an old-fashioned way. St Pancras is so different, with lots of metal and glass as well as the older Victorian parts. It reminded me of a modern cathedral.
A friend in Paris told me that the champagne bar in the station is good, but it was early still, and anyway I’d promised myself I’d be a good girl for once. This was a fresh start for me, a chance to make a break from the Rochelle who ran herself ragged around Pigalle, always getting tangled up in new adventures in spite of her best intentions.
And in any case, Rachel’s friend Kyle was meeting me off the train. I didn’t really want that – I wasn’t a child, after all. But Rachel insisted. She kept telling me how easy it was to get lost and taken advantage of.
I saw someone waving at me and headed over. No doubt Rachel had shown Kyle my picture on Facebook, and in fact I thought I recognised him too – he was probably on her Friends list as well. I waved back, tentatively, and he strode over.
‘Rochelle?’ he hazarded, and when I nodded he reached out and we shook hands. ‘Welcome to London,’ he added, and as he spoke I noticed his eyes flicker up and down me – not in a wolfish manner, but perhaps with a flicker of amusement in their brown depths. Judging by his own conservative appearance – brown cord blazer over a navy V-neck, jeans – he probably didn’t know anybody quite like me.
Not that I’d made any special effort for this journey – as with just about everyone, it’s important for me to be comfortable when I’m travelling. But I do have my own unique style – a bit Gwen Stefani in the ‘It’s My Life’ video, a bit early Courtney Love … A mash-up of vintage pieces and costume jewellery with silk baby-doll dresses, fake fur, underwear as outerwear. Flapper-girl hair, cherry-red lips, spider lashes. I don’t do dressing-down. I stand out from the crowd. Maybe that’s why I’m so good at getting myself into trouble.
‘Thanks.’ I looked at Kyle expectantly, wondering exactly who he was to Rachel, that he would do her bidding like this – escorting a stranger across London.
He smiled. ‘Let me take your bags,’ he said. ‘You seem to have brought plenty of things.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t travel light,’ I said, and I wondered why I had brought so much stuff with me. It’s not as if I was planning to party the way I did in Paris – quite the opposite. Although I wanted to explore London, part of me wanted a rest from the kind of lifestyle I had been leading in Pigalle. For anyone else, a couple of pairs of jeans and some sweaters would have sufficed. But I’d have felt lost without my disguises. For that, it occurred to me for the first time, is what they were. Even when I wasn’t dancing, I was playing a part.
Kyle led me out of the station, seemingly choosing the routes where there were the least people. Outside, he had us join the back of a queue for taxis.
‘This is on me,’ he said, and when I started to protest, he held up one hand. ‘There’s no finer introduction to London,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s not very far.’
The line disappeared quickly and we climbed into a black cab.
***
Rachel lived in Bayswater; that much I already knew. Until this point, though, I’d never been to that part of London.
Her flat was on the top floor of a creamy white building with views over the treetops of Hyde Park. In direct contrast to mine, it turned out to be rather spartan, the only ‘decoration’ being some of Rachel’s own photos in dark-wood frames. Otherwise, there were a few pieces of utilitarian furniture and a kitchen with the basics but nothing more. Above her desk, a few shelves held some photography manuals and a few art books. I browsed the spines: Richard Billingham, Nana Goldin, Tierney Gearon. I took a few down and wasn’t surprised by what I found inside, given what I knew of Rachel’s own work: rather grim social realism, with occasional flashes of transcendence. Outsiders, the neglected, the marginal. A kind of subversive beauty found in squalor or deprivation or disarray.
Rachel and I were very different, that was clear. But it wasn’t a bad thing. I wanted a change of scene, and I had very definitely got myself one of those. This elegant tree-lined street leading up to the vast green space of Hyde Park couldn’t be more different from rue Chaptal in the Pigalle, while the flat – though not at all to my taste – brought welcome relief from all my baggage. Because that’s what much of it was, at my place – props, in both senses of the word. Artefacts to create an illusion of life, and things to shore me up. But shore me up against what?
I’d never really asked myself the question, but as I did I realised just how lonely I had been in Paris, despite all the people crowding in on me, crushing me.
***
Kyle sat with me for a while, as if he had picked up on my unease at being alone. That was the thing about me – externally, I was strong and outgoing, brash even. To many, I was loud and even obnoxious.
But of course it was a classic attention-seeking thing. Inside I was weak, and I needed other people to build me up into something coherent and ongoing. Leaving Paris was yet another attempt to get away from myself, but now that I’d fled, what was I going to do? What new me was to emerge? Or would the old one linger on, like a skin that I couldn’t quite shed?
Kyle seemed very nice, and from his conversation I suspected that he and Rachel had been together and that he was still smarting from the break-up. He was a musician, it seemed – a violinist in an orchestra – and while often he was away touring, at that time his schedule was relaxed. He said he’d take me round all the sights, and when I didn’t enthuse, he looked a bit hurt.
‘OK,’ I said, as brightly as I could manage. ‘But I need a few days to settle in. I – I need to think a few things through.’
Kyle frowned at me. ‘Are you OK?’ he said. ‘Are you homesick?’
I waved a hand airily. ‘It’s not that …’ I tailed off. ‘I mean – well, no, it’s not homesickness. It’s just … well, it’s just that I don’t really know what I’m doing here.’
‘But Rachel said it was you who suggested …’
‘I did. But I don’t really know why.’
Kyle smiled. ‘Impulsiveness,’ he said. ‘I like that.’ He studied his fine, long fingers. ‘It’s something I don’t have enough of.’
‘Oh?’ I cocked my head to one side.
‘In the orchestra my nickname is “Mr Unspontaneity”.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I have to weigh everything up from every angle before I can make a decision or commit to something. It’s like – it’s like a disease.’
I looked at him, intrigued. ‘I couldn’t be more different,’ I said, wondering what it was like to be so configured. ‘I guess at least you don’t get yourself into trouble that way.’
Now it was Kyle’s turn to look intrigued. ‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’
‘Oh … you know.’ I shook my head, try to laugh it off. ‘Just stuff.’
He stared at me. ‘What do you do, in Paris?’ he said.
I hesitated. ‘Didn’t Rachel tell you?’
He shook his head.
‘I’m an exotic dancer,’ I said.
He stared harder. ‘A … An exotic … You mean a stripper?’ he managed at last.
I shrugged. ‘There’s a lot more to it than that.’
‘But you – you take your clothes off for men.’
I nodded. ‘Mainly for men, yes.’
For a moment he sat there, looking intently at the tips of his brown brogues. I looked away too, out of the window towards the treetops of Hyde Park, fluttering in the breeze.
When I looked back, he’s was staring at me again. ‘I’ve never met a … an exotic dancer’, he said.
‘Then you’ve not lived,’ I countered quickly.
A half-smile flitted around his lips. ‘Clearly,’ he said, and his eyes held mine. He’s was good-looking, I thought, and yet not at all my type. As I stared back, my mind turned to Konrad and I wondered what he was doing. It was earlyish, still – he was probably in bed after another night at Queen with his model pack of pretty boys, some of them gay, some of them straight, and some of them swinging both ways. That was unless he had a job, of course. But he seemed to have taken a bit of a step back from modelling over the previous few months. He loved the lifestyle but not the discipline, and for the moment he had amassed enough money not to have to worry about going for jobs. He wasn’t the kind of guy to worry about the future.
Kyle was still looking at me, and in his eyes I saw the first fire of obsession. I knew it so well – I know the effect I have on guys. And for Kyle I must have been like a creature from another planet – unattainable, and thereby exquisitely fascinating. He’d torture himself about me, he’d wank with images of me in his head, all the while knowing that we were about as far apart as it’s possible to be.
As if he had access to my thoughts, he stood up. He was still looking at me, but suddenly his eyes were far away.
‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘But just give me a call when you’re ready for me to show you around.’
I nodded and smiled, and I saw him out, wondering if he’d ever be back, in spite of his offer. He was interested in me, but he knew it was an unhealthy interest. He was terrified of me too. He’d never met anyone like me before and he was afraid.
I headed for the bathroom, where I stood in front of the mirror, eyes appraising, trying to imagine what it must be like to see me for the first time, to try to get to know me.
You’re trouble, I said under my breath. And then again, with relish: Trrrrouble.
Chapter 5: Rachel
I was crouched on the bathroom sink when the intercom beeped and I nearly fell off backwards. Only the thought of my expensive camera lying in pieces on the bathroom floor kept me from plummeting to the floor.
I climbed up here when I realised that the bathroom window of Rochelle’s apartment has one of those classic Rear Window vistas into a courtyard surrounded by people’s windows. Since then, I’ve been mesmerised by the glimpses of life in this Parisian apartment block that I can get from this vantage point. In the last half-hour alone, I’ve witnessed – and photographed – a gay guy shaving in a wash of sunlight while his much younger lover talks earnestly at his reflection in the mirror, and in another window an elderly lady feeding her dog expensive-looking chocolates as she talked on the phone in an agitated, distracted manner.
I didn’t photograph – but I did watch – as a pretty young girl with shiny golden hair came into her apartment with a boy of around the same age. They were in their late teens, I’d say; probably, from their attire, students. At first their body language was stilted, self-conscious – it was clear that the boy hadn’t been to the girl’s apartment before and that they were finding it hard to relax in each other’s company. It was clear, even from a distance, that they had the massive hots for each other. Normally I might have taken a few snaps, but for once I was too caught up in their ‘dance of love’ to think to do so.
It was like watching some pre-ordained ritual, some choreographed display. The couple knew all the moves but couldn’t skip any – they were in thrall to convention and to the idea of what they expected of each other. It would have been so much easier to just grab each other, as they so obviously wanted to do, but that would have taken some of the fun out of it. For a while, it was all about the anticipation, about the deferral.
They shared a pot of tea, the sunlight filtering in and over her patchwork bedspread. She was in an armchair beside the bed, he was on the bed itself – but on the very edge. He seemed to be trying to lighten the atmosphere with jokes; through the open windows I could hear the tinkle of her slightly over-eager laughter. Her honeyed tresses, pulled up at the nape to reveal a slender brown neck and delicately freckled shoulder, glinted in the sunshine. Her teeth flashed when she laughed, mouth open.
The boy watched her closely, awaiting his moment, anxious not to blow it. I found myself becoming wet, and where I was kneeling, one leg either side of the sink on the wooden surround, I slipped my hand into my knickers and rubbed at myself, softly to begin with and then more vigorously as my excitement mounted. I put my camera on the windowsill and clutched the wall for safety, not wanting to get down and lose myself in my pleasure, causing me to miss theirs. For their pleasure and mine was inextricably bound together. I hadn’t felt this horny in ages.
As if my act had unleashed something in them – as if it had changed something in the very air itself – the girl, suddenly decisive, brave, wanton, stood up and stepped towards the boy. For a moment he looked almost frightened. And then, as the girl placed one hand on his cheek, he smiled and relaxed into her seduction.
Pulling her skirt up around her hips and pushing the boy back onto the bed, she placed herself astride him. Astride the sink, I let my eyelids flutter closed for a moment, imagining it was me atop this handsome boy with his closely cropped blond hair. I didn’t miss Kyle, and I hadn’t thought I was missing sex. But it had been two months, and in all that time I hadn’t even wanked. This was long overdue.
Opening my eyes again, I stared as the girl circled her hips over his. The boy’s head was thrown back – he was enraptured, bewitched. Women’s power over men, I thought, is unbounded. Get them to this point and they will do anything – anything. It was almost frightening to have this power. I thought again of Rochelle, like a spider catching men in the web I imagined her to weave nightly out of her sex magic.
The girl started to fiddle with the flies of the boy’s jeans. Finally getting him unzipped, she released his cock like a caged animal and grasping it in her fist began to move her hand up and down it, slowly at first but gradually building up a more dynamic rhythm.
I started to lose control. Wishing I knew where Rochelle kept her vibrators – she must have one, I reasoned – I massaged the hot nub of my clit while looking around me for something to go inside. My fingers wouldn’t do. I wanted a cock, a big, hard cock. On the window I spotted a plastic shampoo bottle that looked as if it would do the trick. I grabbed it, ran it under the hot tap for a few moments, and then eased it inside myself. A moan of pleasure escaped me. I gritted my teeth at the almost unbearable ecstasy that began to flood my veins. Climax wasn’t far away, but I wanted to ride it with this couple, not before them. I wanted to be part of their union, even if from afar.
Again, as if there was something in the air or as if he heard the whisper of my thoughts, the boy, losing control, grabbed the gusset of the girl’s knickers and pulled them roughly aside to reveal the golden fluff of her public mound. Even from where I knelt, I could see the glisten of it. My knees started to quiver. I couldn’t hold off much longer. I tried to slow down the pumping of the bottle inside me but it was as if a force greater than myself had taken possession of me. Lips parted, I moaned and moaned.
‘Fuck … Fucking hell … Oh FUCK FUCK FUCK!’
Taking hold of his cock, the boy rammed himself inside the girl, who jerked backwards, puppet-like, at the force of his intrusion, eyes wide as if in shock and awe. Then she fell back over him, strands of hair sneaking loose from where it was tied and falling about her shoulders like a golden rain.
Backwards and forwards, gyrating round and round, she rode him. His hands, on her hips, pulled her tight to him. On the sink unit, I rocked backwards and forwards to meet the bottle as I thrust it into me, the fingers of my other hand pressed tightly against my clit. I glanced down every now and then, delighted by – fascinated by – my own pleasure, but then I looked quickly back up, not wanting to miss them coming.
And then suddenly they did, at the same time, or almost. She threw her torso and head back and began wailing like a she-wolf, and that must have unclenched his pleasure, for all at once he started bucking on the bed, hands still clutching her hips as he came with full force.
As he did so, his head also thrown back, chin tilted up towards the ceiling, his eyes opened wide and met mine across the courtyard, through our respective open windows. And by now, I was coming too, mouth wide open, breath fast and frantic. From where he lay, he wouldn’t be able to see what my hands were doing, but it must have been pretty clear that I was getting off on what they were doing to each other.
But it was too late – I was lost to the orgasm flooding me, unable to shrink back from the window much as I wanted to. And so our eyes stayed locked on each other, and I got my wish – to be part of their union – after all.
***
Hopping down from the sink, I sought out a clean flannel and gave myself a quick soapy wash. Then I stood up, straightened my clothes, and risked a peep out the window in the direction of the couple’s flat.
The girl was kneeling on the bed now, in the window, looking out. From across the courtyard I heard snatches of her words:
‘Weird … Could have sworn … Didn’t you hear anything?’
Christ, I thought. Did I really make that much noise? I felt my cheeks burn red. This wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t know what had come over me.
I’ve always had voyeurism in me, and it was obviously a factor in my ‘choice’ of profession, although sometimes I do wonder if I ever had any say whatsoever in my career. Neither of my parents had any photographic skills or interests, but from very early childhood I was obsessed with cameras and making images. Even when I wasn’t taking photographs, I was creating albums or cutting images out of magazines and making collages. In early teenagerhood, I graduated to buying up faded old photographs I found in charity shops, and going to photography exhibitions. It became inevitable that that would be my choice of degree
But I never thought my voyeurism would bring me to this – to watching other people fuck and getting so bloody turned on by it that I have to give myself a good seeing to. I’ve never done anything like this before, but now I wonder if this isn’t the natural outcome of my tendencies. Has my photography always been about spying on people? And hasn’t it always been about my being on the sidelines of life, looking at it but not daring to get involved – a way of keeping my distance?
In an effort to halt my thoughts and the self-doubt they engendered, I climbed back onto the sink and reached for my camera. I was just looking out of the window again, noticing that the boy and girl had disappeared but that the elderly lady and her pampered pooch were back, and thinking they would make a good shot, when the intercom went.
Climbing down, feeling sheepish, I went to the door and pressed the button.
‘Hello?’ I said, and then: ‘Bonjour?’
‘Hi,’ said a deep male voice in English, with a heavy French accent, and for a moment my heart thudded. It was the boy from across the courtyard, come to bawl me out for spying on him and his new girlfriend. But then:
‘We’re friends of Rochelle’s. We thought you might be lonely. We’d like to show you around town.’
I paused for a moment, and then I took a deep breath and spoke into the intercom:
‘Come up,’ I said.
Chapter 6: Rochelle
Kyle did come back, though I didn’t phone, and when he did, I was glad. It was hard, not knowing anyone, but I didn’t dare go out alone, for fear of myself and getting into scrapes. It was the story of my life, but this was a new start for me and I was determined not to blow it.
I kicked my heels around Rachel’s flat, looking at her books, mucking around on my laptop, chatting to a few friends back in Paris on Skype, trying not to sound as lost as I felt. I went out, of course, but not far – for brief strolls in Hyde Park, to a bookshop in Notting Hill, and – one day – through Portobello Market. There, trinkets and baubles glittered on stalls, winking at me lasciviously, as if they knew me, knew my lack of willpower. I bought a vintage purple paste ring that was going for a song, but I resisted the rest – the silk slips, the feather boas, the aubergine ruched-velvet elbow-length gloves. I had enough, I kept telling myself. Why gorge myself on stimulation, and why fill Rachel’s apartment with more stuff? Why not try and just be? Only then might I find myself.
I was beginning to get bored, and that’s when Kyle called – as if hearing my unconscious call. He said he was still at a loose end, that a mini-tour had been cancelled after a soprano had fallen ill. He said he was missing Rachel, and that it’d be a real pleasure to show me around.
When he picked me up, he suggested – given my lack of knowledge of London – that we get tickets for one of those hop-on hop-off sightseeing buses. It would give me some sense of where things were in relation to one another, he said – something one remained remarkably ignorant about if one travelled about by Tube, as most people did. And getting one’s bearings, he said, was crucial.
I agreed – it was a sunny day and it sounded like fun to sit on the open-air top deck and see the sights with minimal effort, especially since he’d offered to pay for the tickets. We could get off, Kyle reminded me, if I wanted to see anything in greater depth.
We climbed aboard and headed upstairs, his hand at my elbow. I admit I wasn’t wearing the most sensible shoes. In fact, I don’t have any sensible shoes, period. But his gesture seemed a little over-intimate. I remembered his face of a few days before, when he’d suddenly seemed to take interest in me, a girl so ostensibly different from him she could have been from another planet. I wondered if I’d done the right thing in accepting his invitation.
We sat down, and the bus rumbled along the Bayswater Road towards Oxford Street. It looped around Marble Arch and began to go down Park Lane. I clutched at the side of the bus, staring at the luxury car showrooms but mostly at the hotels. The Dorchester, The Metropolitan, The Four Seasons – all were places of almost mythical significance for me. Within them, I thought to myself, deals were made, marriages began and ended, affairs were committed, and a thousand debaucheries took place. Night after night after night, the beautiful, the bold and sometimes the damned come to this stretch of road to play out their dramas against a background of wealth and glamour. But it was an allure that had a seedy side to it, something grubby, and that was what made it fascinating to me. The rich, I knew from experience, were dirty bastards too – in fact, they could be the dirtiest bastards of all.
Kyle’s hand on my shoulder startled me from my reverie. He was gesturing over to a pair of elaborate stainless steel and bronze gates giving access into Hyde Park.
‘… the Queen Elizabeth Gate,’ he was saying, ‘built in honour of the Queen Mother.’ He gestured in front of him. ‘And now we’re coming up to the Wellington Arch, which was …’
His words – together with those of the live onboard commentary – faded in the buzz of traffic as I turned back to ogle the hotels. I wanted to be inside them, not sitting next to this well-intentioned but ultimately rather dull violinist, listening to him crap on about London’s history. Who really cared about that? What I wanted to know was what was going on in those hotel rooms and bars, and what exactly I was missing out on.
As we halted at the bottom of Park Lane, waiting for a break in the traffic before continuing our tour, I looked at Kyle a bit sheepishly. I hoped he didn’t think I was rude. I was grateful that he was making time to take me in hand like this, whatever his motive. And perhaps I was just being vain and presumptuous, thinking that he was at all interested in me.
I smiled at him. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Were you and Rachel an item?’
He blinked at me, surprised more, I imagine, by my directness than by the question itself.
‘We were.’ He stared off into the distance, seemingly unwilling to divulge any more. I didn’t push it, but after a few minutes he spoke again.
‘We were together for a few years,’ he said. ‘I did think it would be for good. But then suddenly it was over – pffff’ – he mimicked the action of someone extinguishing a candle with both hands – ‘and she didn’t want to know any more.’
