William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“Could you turn to your left slightly? Perfect.”

Lysander turned, trying to think of himself as some kind of Greek Olympian, a discus-thrower or javelin-hurler, stripped off for the games. What was all the fuss about the naked body, anyway? Especially in the context of art — think of all the nudes ever painted, the unclothed statues in public gardens, Michelangelo’s David, the innumerable Venuses and bare-buttocked gods and gladiators. He took a deep breath, allowing his fingers to graze his thighs. Relax, relax, relax.

“Could you put your hands on your hips?”

He did so, clenching his buttocks involuntarily, suddenly chastened by the thought of Udo Hoff, crossing the meadow from his own studio to see how his mistress was getting on…No, don’t let your thoughts go there. Think of a parallel world, your parallel world…He shut down his mind.

He heard the legs of the wicker chair scrape back and the wooden clattering sound of Miss Bull’s footsteps — walking away and then returning.

“Shall we have a break?” she said. “You’ve earned another glass of Madeira.”

Now he could look at her. She stood there smiling, holding out the glass for him. He stooped and picked up the towel, holding it casually in front of him, and stepped down to the floor, taking the glass from her. But now he couldn’t tie the towel around him, he had no hands free — but what the hell, he thought. He was enjoying the sensation — they might as well be standing at the bar of a café, chatting. Miss Bull seemed totally unperturbed. It was just another life-class to her, of course.

“You stood admirably still.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyone would have thought you’d done this before.”

“It’s a definite first.” He took a huge gulp of Madeira and then another — too sweet for his taste but he needed the rush of alcohol.

“D’you want to see what I’ve done?” Miss Bull was holding out the sketch pad, a strange smiling expression on her face. It seemed both absurd and yet entirely natural that he was standing here naked in this room with only a hanging towel ‘to protect his modesty’, as the saying went, three feet away from a young woman, fully clothed in a muslin blouse, a serge skirt and wooden clogs. She took the glass from his hand and replaced it with her sketch pad.

Lysander looked at the drawing. Very detailed and three-dimensional, the charcoal shaded and blurred by the rub of her fingertips. A strong confident hand, a very capable draughtswoman. He felt his throat close and a nerve-tremor run across his shoulder blades.

He cleared his throat. “What would you call this? ‘A study of male genitalia?’”

“You have a shortish foreskin, I noticed,” she said, lowering her voice confidentially. “For a moment I thought you must be circumcised, like Udo.” She took a step towards him. “But as I looked more closely I saw that you weren’t.”

“No. I’m not circumcised,” he managed to say, feeling a warm flush spread across his neck and chest — the gulps of Madeira only now working on him. He felt his penis stir and thicken, as though aware it was being discussed and responding.

Miss Bull allowed her gaze to drop below his waist and with one hand moved the hanging towel aside.

“Now that’s what I call a study in male genitalia,” she said. He felt her other hand run softly down his back making him shiver. Her fingertips scraped across his buttocks.

“Shall we go to bed?” she asked, leaning into him, looking up, smiling, her big hazel eyes full of laughter.

Dr Bensimon looked at Lysander quizzically.

“Well, that’s somewhat extraordinary. I have to say.”

“I know,” Lysander admitted, shaking his head in similar bafflement.

“Everything functioned?”

“Absolutely problem-free. As normal. In fact I did it again — just to prove to myself that it wasn’t some kind of fluke.”

“Twice?”

“Within the space of forty minutes, say.”

Lysander thought back — two days after the event he still felt bemused and marvelling. They had gone into the small bedroom and then, in a maelstrom of his clothes being flung off the blanket and Miss Bull ridding herself of blouse, skirt, camisole, shift and knickers, they found themselves in the iron bed, her little slim lithe body tense and squirming in his arms, his arousal insistent and demanding. Certain details initially printed themselves on his mind — her dark hair spread wide on the pillow, her surprisingly full breasts with perfectly round small nipples, her fingertips sooty with charcoal — but from then on he seemed to go into a form of sexual trance, everything blurring as he concentrated. And when the release came and his orgasm arrived it took him by complete surprise, so much so that he shouted — “ MY GOD! ” — in astonishment and pleasure, that made her ask him if he was all right.

They separated, rolled apart and Lysander buried his face in the thin pillow, feeling tears in his eyes as Hettie — Hettie, now, no longer Miss Bull — went to fetch the Madeira bottle and the glasses. They drank, they caressed each other, they talked.

“This was all a devilish plan, wasn’t it?” he accused her.

“Yes. I admit — I confess. Ever since that first day when we met in Dr Bensimon’s rooms. When I was in such a state, remember?”

“Yes.”

“But, even so, I found I couldn’t get you out of my mind, for some reason. Maybe because you let me barge in and were so understanding. Not horrible, but kind. And pretty.”

“And so you plotted and planned and came up with this diabolical scheme.”

“But I was worried it might not work. You might have stormed off in a fit, outraged. But, I thought, seeing as you’re an actor —”

“How did you know I was an actor?”

“I asked Dr Bensimon what you did…I thought, seeing as you were an actor, you might rise to the challenge.”

“No pun intended.”

“I can call you Lysander, now, can’t I?” she said, kissing his chin and reaching down for him.

“I think you’d better.”

And then they made love again and Lysander experienced and enjoyed his second orgasm, somehow even more satisfying than the first because it was prefigured and if his mind was going to interpose itself it had had plenty of warning. Miraculously, he climbed steadily to a second climax of sensation and duly climaxed.

Dr Bensimon was tapping the end of his pen on his desk pad of blotting paper, thinking hard.

“Who was your partner? A prostitute?”

“Ah…No.”

“Was she someone who conformed to your sexual preferences, your ‘type’, I mean.”

“Actually, no…Not really my type at all.”

“Most intriguing. Can you explain it?”

Lysander thought again. “I don’t know. Perhaps you helped in some way — all our conversations. Perhaps it was Parallelism…”

Hettie Bull — who would have thought?…But how to explain it? How to describe and understand the effect she has on me? I was attracted to her from the outset, I now see, which defies logic — or my emotional logic, anyway, as I know my eye veers towards those tall rangy girls and women, with long necks and thin wrists — tall rangy women like Blanche. How and where do these sensual tastes generate themselves? Why does one respond to dark hair rather than blonde? To plumpness rather than slimness, say? What is it about the configuration of a face — of eyebrows in relation to a nose, the height of a forehead, the fullness of lips, the changing geometry of a smile — that makes me, in particular, and not someone else, quicken and react? Is it the stirring of some atavistic notion of the ideal mating partner, our primitive sexual nature superseding the rational civilized mind — “That’s the one, that’s the one” — and thereby leading us astray?