Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan

All this delighted Leslie, of course. "Well well," he said to her, chuckling, "I'd no idea what a filthy mind you had." Although he pretended it was all just a bit of fun that he had thought up for his amusement, it was plain that he really was impressed by how much she wrote and how detailed it was. She could see he could hardly believe his luck in having found someone who was willing-who was, if she was to tell the truth, only too eager-to let him know all the darkest and most disgusting things that went on in her mind. They would lie twined together naked in the narrow bed in the room in Percy Place-that name always made Leslie laugh-and he would read aloud what she had written for him since she had seen him last. While he was reading she would bury her face in the hollow of his shoulder, flushing to the soles of her feet but making sure not to miss a word, hardly able to believe it was she who had written such things. She loved Leslie's voice, his accent like you would hear in the pictures, so that what he read out sounded different from how it had sounded in her head when she was writing it. In Leslie's mouth it seemed serious, somehow, and-and authoritative, that was the word; just like, in fact, it suddenly struck her, just like how the actor doing the voice-over in a film would sound, only not-she laughed to herself-not the kind of film that was ever likely to be shown in a picture house in this country.

Leslie got as excited as she was by what he was reading out, and would stop in the middle of some really spicy bit and lie back against the pillow and twist a handful of her hair round his fist the way her brothers used to do and push her head into his lap. How silky he was there, how hard and hot and silky, when she pulled the skin back from the helmet-shaped head with the funny little slit in the top like an eye winking at her and put her lips delicately around it. She liked doing it that way, liked to make him writhe and groan, knowing that she was the one who was in charge, that she was the one with power.

She would never have dreamt of doing it like that with Billy.

Whenever the thought of Billy came into her mind now she would immediately hurry on and think of Leslie instead. Did that mean she really was in love with Leslie? A girl in school years ago had told her, and she had believed it, that when you thought of one fellow and then immediately of another it was the second one you really loved. But the fact was, she did not know what she felt for Leslie. She was not even sure that she liked him, which was strange-how could you be with someone as she was with Leslie if you did not like him? He was good-looking, of course, in a thinned-out sort of way. In bed, when he had not taken anything, he could keep going for ages. It was easy to tell he had been with a lot of women and knew what he was doing. And he was funny. He would do imitations of Dr. Kreutz and even, though she tried to stop him, of Billy-he had nicknames for him, such as Billy in the Bowl, or Billy the Kid, or the Old Boy-which made her scream with laughing. He would get her down on the floor and sit on her and tickle her, as if they were a pair of kids. Sometimes when he was about to go into her he would stop for a second and raise himself above her on his arms and inquire, putting on the fruity voice of that woman who had stopped them in the street one day to ask directions, "Is this Percy's Place?" Yet for all that it sometimes seemed to her-and this was really strange-that she would prefer him to be not real but a part of her fantasies. That way it would be so much easier. Billy, and their little house on St. Martin's Drive, and her work in the salon, and her mother, who was sick now, and her father she was still afraid of, and her brothers that she never saw-that was life, real life, and though none of it could compare in intensity with what she had here in this shabby little room below street level, with the net-curtained half window looking directly onto the pavement, and the worn lino and the lavatory down the hall and the cracked hand basin and the bed that sagged in the middle, still she valued that other life, the normal one, and wanted to keep it separate from all this with Leslie, separate, and uncontaminated.

Nothing was simple, though Leslie tried to make her think otherwise. She did not believe they were just having a bit of fun together, a bit of a lark , as he said. Sometimes she was shocked by the mixed-up feelings she had for him. For instance, there was the time when he told her there was no danger of her getting into trouble because he and his missus had both been tested and it had been found that he could not make a child. He thought she should be relieved, and happy, even, and she supposed she should be, but she was not. She knew how unlikely it was that a time would come when they could have a baby together, yet the fact that it could never happen, not ever, gave her a sort of empty, hollow feeling in her stomach, as if a part of her had been removed.

No, nothing was simple. And to make it all even more complicated, as well as their very private life together she and Leslie had a sort of a public one, too, in which she had to pretend to be nothing more than his business partner. The Silver Swan was doing well, better than she, or Leslie, either, she suspected, for all his confident talk, would have dared to hope. There were more rich, bored women in this city than she could have imagined. Nor could she have imagined how many of them would be funnily inclined: hardly a week passed that she did not have to fend off the advances of some stark-faced viper with razor-sharp fingernails and eyes like bits of ice. In time she came to think of these women-they claimed to be women, though they were more like men than some men were-as hazards of the trade, and added a hefty premium to their bills.

And how the money rolled in. It had been a surprise to discover what a shrewd head for business she turned out to have, but it was just as well she had, for Leslie, as she very soon discovered, was hopeless-charming, but hopeless. In fact, his sole asset was his charm, and there were many among her clients, she knew, though obviously not the icy-eyed ones, who came to her chiefly in the hope of cornering him for a cozy chat, at least, and no one did cozy chats better than Leslie. She made a point of not criticizing him for his incompetence or his laziness. Why should she complain? For the first time in her life she felt fulfilled. She had confidence, security, money in her purse, and a brand-new Baby Austin to drive, and next winter, if things continued as they were going, she would be able to buy herself a mink coat. In other words, she was no longer Deirdre Hunt-she had become Laura Swan. And she had Leslie, too, into the bargain.

He showed her how to do things that, before she knew him, she would not have thought of even in her most secret fantasies. They were things that made her ashamed at first, which of course was a big part of the pleasure of them, but soon they became a source almost of pride to her. It was like learning a new skill, training herself to new levels of daring and endurance. She had always been shy of her body; she supposed it was because of being brought up in the Flats and having to sleep in her parents' room even when she was well past being a child, with no privacy anywhere, even in the lav, since her father would not fix the lock that had been broken for longer than anyone could remember. Now all that awkwardness had disappeared, Leslie had seen to that. There was only one worry she had, which was that Billy might notice the change in her. One night in bed she forgot herself and guided him into a place he had probably thought she would never allow him even to touch-she had been fantasizing that he was Leslie-and afterwards he had heaved himself off her and flopped down on his belly, panting, and asked in a muffled voice where she had learned that sort of thing. In a panic she said she had read about it in a magazine that someone had lent her, and he had snorted and said that was a nice kind of magazine for her to be reading. The next morning when she looked at herself in the mirror she saw for the first time something in her face, a new hardness, a sort of tinny sheen, and, worse than that, a look she had never noticed before: it was, though it shocked her to have to admit it, a look of her father.