Peter Corris - The Washington Club

We didn’t talk much on the drive back to Kirribilli. Claudia asked if I minded her smoking in the car. She could have lit three at once as far as I was concerned and I almost told her so. She wound down the window and blew the smoke out discreetly. After stubbing the cigarette she opened the CD player and took out the disc.

‘Edith Piaf,’ she said. ‘Is this yours?’

‘It was in there when I picked up the car.’

She found the case in the glove box and laughed. ‘I remember this. It was a Nescafe give-away. You had to answer some dopey question. The first prize was a trip to Paris but they gave these away by the hundreds.’

‘Did you enter?’

‘No. I mentioned it to Julius. He said we could go to Paris anytime we wanted to. The next day he went out and bought a couple of Piaf CDs.’

She put the disc in the player and pressed the right buttons. The strong, vibrant voice filled the car as we turned into her street. I parked outside and she touched my arm.

‘Don’t turn off. I want to listen.’

Non, rien, rien

Non, Je ne regrette rien

‘You’ve got it all inside,’ I said.

‘Shush, this is better.’

Her head moved down onto my shoulder and we sat there on the looks-like-leather seats, listening to the music that evoked Paris in the rain and the incredible voice with all its hopeful spirit demolished by sadness and dashed hopes. By the end of the record her hand was lying between my legs, gripping my erection, and I’d cupped her right breast and was breathing in her perfume from her hair. It was probably French but could have been Serbo-Croatian for all I cared. There was a faint touch of mentholated tobacco in the mixture and there was nothing wrong with that either.

Somehow we got out of the car when the music stopped and somehow I remembered to set its state-of-the-art alarm system and steering locking device. We were joined at the knee, leg, hip and shoulder as we went through the security gate. In her high heels, the height difference between us was minimal and the arm I had wrapped around her was enclosing warm, firm flesh under smooth, silky fabrics. Rampant erections are rare events for men in their late forties, but I was having considerable difficulty in walking.

By unspoken mutual consent, we kissed before she used her card to get through the door to the building. She tasted of wine, spices, tobacco and that other flavour that you’ve either been lucky enough to encounter or you haven’t. I ran my tongue over her big, thrusting teeth and then I felt her catch my lower lip in them and bite gently.

‘Claudia,’ I said with the whisper of breath I had at my command.

‘Don’t talk. Just come inside and fuck me.’

I held her hand as we went up the stairs and suddenly there was a kind of innocence along with the erotic charge, which only made it all the stronger. We went straight into the bedroom-big and minimally furnished with a queen-sized bed. A dim bedside light. We kissed until it hurt and then started to take our clothes off. She kicked off her shoes and pulled down her pantihose. She wore a skimpy white lace bra and lace panties to match. When I had my shirt, trousers and socks off she advanced and slipped her hand inside my underpants. I groaned and had trouble standing.

‘I haven’t got any condoms or anything,’ I muttered.

‘It’s all right, I have. I like your cock. Do you want to fuck me?’

‘Jesus, yes.’

She worked the underpants down and freed my hard cock. ‘How?’

‘Any way.’

She unfastened her bra. She had a light tan but her full, brown-nippled breasts were white. I slid my hand down her rounded belly past her navel and felt the soft hair beneath. Then my fingers were probing into her, opening her and feeling the heat and moisture. Her pants slipped down but whether I did it or she helped I don’t know. Then she was lying on the bed with her legs spread, with her hand still on my cock, pulling me down towards her.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Soon.’

Soon was a long time in coming but I didn’t object. We did most of the things with our hands and mouth that are available to do. She was eager and it had been a long time since I’d fucked and we almost blew it several times but managed to delay the pleasure and slow the pace. Eventually she crouched over me and lifted my hands onto her breasts.

‘I want to be on top. Do you mind?’

I was incapable of speech. I shook my head. She got a condom from a drawer in the bedside table, opened the package and rolled it on. She was in control, holding me in the right position and at the right angle for her to slide down onto me. The sweetness and warmth of it made me close my eyes. It was like being bathed in honey. Her breasts were firm and smooth in my hands and I had the smell of her in my nose and the taste of her in my mouth. She moved up and down, slowly at first and then faster, dropping her weight onto me. I pushed up, wanting to meet her out there somewhere in that place where two people fucking happily go for a little stretch of time. I came in a hot rush that ran through me and made me shout something up at the ceiling. I heard her cry out too, but whether it was with me or before or after I didn’t know or care.

We lay with the sheet half over us, both sweating, with our legs mixed up and our hands still exploring and enjoying what we found. Her hair had come loose and was lying on the pillow around her head in a dark mass. I ran my finger along from her small ear lobe to the point of her jaw, feeling the soft hair.

‘What’re you doing?’ she murmured.

I brushed the hair up and down. ‘What I wanted to do from practically the first minute I saw you.’

‘I thought you didn’t like me. You were so stern.’

‘Me? Stern?

‘Yes. Mr Rock Jaw. Mr Broken Nose. Mr Hooded Eyes. Do you know when I decided to trust you?’

Flippancy and banter had become the common currency in my relationship with Glen Withers. I only realised this some time after she’d gone. Now I resisted the impulse to joke. ‘Tell me.’

‘When you said you wanted to believe me.’

‘I’m glad I said it then. I meant it. And I mean it all the more now, of course. If that’s not pressuring you. Maybe this is just an episode for you, but I’m old-fashioned and…’

‘Next time you allude to your years I’ll hit you in the balls.’

I kissed her and let my tongue play along the gap in her teeth.

‘You like that? My gappy teeth.’

‘It’s wonderful.’

‘Julius wanted me to have them veneered. They could fill it up.’

‘He must have been crazy.’

‘He was worse than that.’ She took my hand and put it on her breast. I plucked at the nipple and felt it stiffen. ‘Are you ready for your surprise, Cliff?’

I grunted. I was getting aroused again and words didn’t seem to matter.

‘I hired Robert Van Kep. But I hired him to protect me from Julius, not to kill him.’

Claudia wasn’t into cliches. She didn’t put on my shirt, leaving the buttons undone, or wrap herself in the top sheet. I pulled on my shirt and pants and she wore a black and silver kimono-style dressing gown. With her hair down and her make-up disturbed and her big mouth puffy from our kissing, she looked older and younger, more naive and more experienced, a walking contradiction. She had beautiful feet, shapely with high arches and straight toes. Odd what you notice in a heightened emotional state. My mind was buzzing with warring reactions: I felt that I’d go the distance for her, tell any lies, destroy any evidence, just to get back to where we’d been. Against that was the scepticism of twenty years of handling people with problems, my knowledge of their deviousness, delusions and capacity for self-deception.