William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Any luck with Lockwood?’ he said to me one day.

‘Greville! Please!’

‘He’s a nice lad. Strong but gentle.’

‘You make him sound like a shire horse.’

‘You know what they say about shire horses don’t you, darling?’

‘No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know.’

But because Greville kept talking about him, kept introducing Lockwood and his charms into our conversation, I became aware of Lockwood in a way I hadn’t before. I realised he was in fact always looking at me, covertly; I began to notice how he would take every opportunity to stand as close to me as propriety demanded. I saw that Greville was right: Lockwood was obsessed with me.

We were closing up the darkroom one evening, a few weeks after my fiasco with Greville. The red light was on and we moved about our business limned by its unreal thick luminosity. I was hanging up strips of developed negatives and I could feel Lockwood’s eyes on me, like an invisible beam through the redness, playing on me. I thought — why not? It has to happen sometime — and the sooner the better. And having allowed the thought to enter my head I felt the concurrent physical consequences: that bowel-stir, that bone-weakness of pleasant anticipation.

Lockwood reached to turn on the main light but I caught his wrist before he could. We stood there looking at each other.

‘What is it, Miss Clay?’ His voice was dry, hushed.

‘Would you like to kiss me, Lockwood?’

I RAISED MY CAMERA — my little Ensignette — and took a photograph of Lockwood Mower lying on the bed, sleeping, naked. He was hot, he’d thrown the sheet and blankets off and his pale long flaccid penis, lying over his upper thigh, was both pliant and semi-engorged. The pinched bud of his thick foreskin made his penis look tuberous, vegetal, somehow — not like his sex, his member, at all. It was a great photograph — so I say, my ‘Sleeping Male Nude’ — and I kept a print of it for years, secretly, in a seldom-consulted English — Portuguese dictionary, where I could easily look at it and think back, remembering him and those many months of our affair. And then I lost it, annoyingly, when I moved house after the war.

I put my camera away in my bag, slipped on my coat and left quickly without waking him. I had a job that afternoon and had to make my way to West Sussex for a garden fete hosted by Miss Veronica Presser — daughter of Lord Presser the iron-ore millionaire — at the village of North Boxhurst, which the Presser family owned, every brick and hanging tile, part of their vast Boxhurst estate which lay between Chichester and Bognor Regis.

I took the Tube from Kensington High Street to Walham Green, trying to concentrate on the job ahead and stop thinking about the last few hours I’d spent with Lockwood. Greville had passed on the Presser commission to me — it was for Beau Monde — and I knew it could prove to be a significant moment in my erratic career as a professional photographer. ‘Do this Presser job well,’ Greville had said, ‘and all my Beau Monde work will come your way. Guaranteed.’

I now lived in a shabby one-bedroom flat in a converted house on Eel Brook Common. No bathroom, just a small kitchen and a lavatory off the long, thin bed-sitting room. I still used the Falkland Court mews as my darkroom; Greville had given me my own set of keys, an arrangement that suited me as I was able to see Lockwood as often and as discreetly as I wanted. Which was quite often, so it turned out.

I packed up my two cameras in my leather grip (the ‘Excelda’ quarter-plate and the Goerz), stuffed a dozen business cards in my handbag, hoping for further commissions, and headed for Victoria station. Change at Hayward’s Heath for Amberley and then a taxi to North Boxhurst. It was going to be a long day.

*

THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977

I suppose we all — men and women — remember our first lover, like it or not; good, bad or indifferent. However, I’ve a feeling that women remember more, remember better. I can still bring to mind that first night I spent with Lockwood, after we’d kissed in the darkroom, with near-absolute recall. Lockwood had been both kind and controlling. Once the future course of the encounter was clear — that this was to be no simple kiss — and as soon as we were naked in his narrow, pungent bed upstairs, all lights switched off, he asked me if this was my ‘first time around the houses’. Yes, I said. Then he asked me if I used sanitary towels or ‘them tampon things’. Sanitary towels, I said. But why? Then I felt his finger inside me, pressing, and a sudden sharp pain that made me yelp. ‘That’s that sorted,’ he said. He spread my legs and positioned himself. ‘Wait a second,’ he said, and left the bed. I heard him go into the little kitchen at the top of the stairs, then he returned and slid back in beside me. I felt him rubbing something on me. And then he entered me with a small wheeze and grunt of effort but I didn’t feel much. ‘I won’t go mad, Miss Clay,’ he whispered in my ear as he began to push rhythmically at me, ‘seeing as it’s the first time.’ Right, I said, clenching my fists on his back. ‘I can’t rightly believe this is happening, Miss Clay. Happening to me, Lockwood Mower. Like I’m dreaming a dream.’ He was as good as his word. He exhaled noisily and rolled off me after about five seconds and we lay in each other’s arms.

I was expecting to feel more pain — all the speculative talk at Amberfield had been of blood-boltered sheets and agony. Carefully I reached down and touched myself — some sort of clotted waxy substance was there. Lockwood’s emission? ‘What’s this, Lockwood?’ I said, holding up my gleaming coated fingers. ‘Just lubrication,’ he said. ‘It’s an old trick. I remembered I had some soft lard in the kitchen. That’s why you never felt a thing.’ Have you done this before, I asked? ‘Well, you know, once or twice,’ he said. I could sense his grin widening. He kissed my cheek, gently, and whispered, ‘My chum slid in like a greased piston, Miss Clay. Feel it. Go on.’ He took my hand and placed it on his ‘chum’. Now it was my turn to smile to myself in the darkness, feeling not sensual pleasure — that had never really arisen — but relief, enormous happy relief. It was over; it was done; everything had changed, now. ‘You can call me Amory,’ I said, kissing him back. The bed smelled rank and I felt my back itching. Lockwood had a reek of sweat and his cheap pomade about him. I breathed in, filling my lungs, telling myself to remember everything. I’ve never forgotten — and I’ve never cooked with lard since.

*

Miss Veronica Presser was entirely happy to be guided by me. She was a big enthusiastic girl with a gummy smile. I met her by the lawn tennis courts at Boxhurst Park where there was a one-game, knockout charity tennis tournament going on. I said that something casual and sporty would look so much more interesting than the usual bland portrait shots we’d all seen a thousand times before.

‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Whatever you say.’ For someone already reputedly worth several million pounds she was very easy-going.

‘Make it as natural as possible,’ I said, focussing the Goerz. ‘Be yourself. Pick up another racquet. Yes, that’s it! Perfect.’ Click. I had her.

‘What fun!’ she said and gave a loud neighing laugh.

The next day, in the darkroom of the Falkland Court mews, I printed my portrait of Veronica with her two tennis racquets. I liked it a lot. It was high time, I thought to myself, that we moved away from the standard images of these society girls — the beauties and the fiancées, the debs and the heiresses. Let’s make my first Beau Monde commission a photograph to remember, not just so much forgettable social wallpaper. However, I decided to lie when I sent it in to Beau Monde , such was my enthusiasm: I told them it was Miss Presser’s personal choice, her favourite — and it was duly published, the following week, as a full-page lead to the society gallery.