Edward Aubyn - On the Edge

Brooke was beginning to think that Drums of Africa might not be the perfect music for the occasion. Thanks to the grey pallor of his complexion, his gaping mouth, his closed eyes, and his appearance of being crucified against the side of the bath, Kenneth looked extremely drunk, perhaps dead. She slid across to the other side of the bath and leant towards Kenneth, not quite daring to touch him. Hearing the water swirl, he opened his eyes and smiled wearily.

‘I’m so tired,’ he said. ‘I mean really tired, tired in my marrow. Not just physically, either. I’m tired of all pretences.’

He’ll be telling me he’s got a headache next, thought Brooke, but she could see that Kenneth was not preparing her for sexual disappointment, he was telling her something essential. His defences were unravelling irresistibly, he was falling apart in the heat of the water. She also sensed that there was more trust in his helplessness than in any sexual act he had ever performed. She suddenly felt touched by the survival of their friendship, despite all the misunderstandings about sex and money. Besides, what else was there to do with sex and money except have misunderstandings about them? They were there to liberate the rest of life for some loftier purpose than bickering, lying and sulking. For the moment she didn’t care whether Kenneth desired her, she just wanted to heal him, to touch him where he was helpless, and to enjoy the trust which his helplessness revealed.

She reached out and pressed her fingers into his shoulders and his neck. Kenneth groaned and sank deeper into the water. She knelt in front of him and massaged his shoulders. She could feel his body shuddering involuntarily under her touch. Kenneth reached out blindly and wrapped his arms and legs around her torso. She felt his beard grazing her chest, the panic in his short breaths, the tension in his arms, the contraction in the muscles around his neck. Poor Kenneth, the booming guru, was just a wreck. Running her hands over his back, she could feel emotional collisions piled up in a scrapyard of twisted muscles, and a thousand knots, each telling the story of an unreconciled contradiction.

Everybody was a wreck, but Kenneth was more of a wreck than most. What could you do but heal and be healed? Yes, we’re all wrecks, thought Brooke, pushing deeper into Kenneth’s troubled flesh, and we must help each other make it through life.

They got out of the bath and Brooke dried Kenneth while he stood swaying with his eyes still closed. She realized that she was in a trance of service. For someone whose napkin was usually caught by a servant before it hit the ground, there was novelty as well as expertise in this role reversal. Stepping through the mirror, Brooke gave away the things she had so often received. The memory of ten thousand massages emerged from her pampered shoulders and rushed solicitously into her hands.

Lying on the bed, Kenneth whimpered pathetically as Brooke pummelled the back of his legs and, finding his exhaustion answered with sympathy, passed through exhaustion into excited gratitude. Brooke, who was by now transformed into the Mother Teresa of Big Sur, was astonished when Kenneth rolled over and presented her with a stubborn erection.

‘I love the way you do that,’ he said, clasping her by the waist with a manly grip.

She leant forward and they kissed.

* * *

‘Tight-arse!’ said Jerome.

‘You’re way outta line,’ said Paul, putting his clothes back on.

‘Poly wants more than one,’ said Sabine in a little girl’s voice, writhing on the bed.

‘And you,’ said Paul, turning to Sabine. ‘You may be attractive but you’re one sick chick. I’m a pretty go-with-the-flow kind of person, but the stuff you guys are into…’

Paul shook his head and started to leave.

‘Poly thinks Paul is boring ,’ sang Sabine, sticking her tongue out.

‘And so does Jerome,’ added Jerome.

Jerome and Sabine rolled around on the bed together, sticking their tongues out and laughing. Paul left with quiet dignity.

‘Maybe Peter would like to play,’ said Sabine.

‘Peter?’ said Jerome. ‘You don’t wanna bother with him.’

Sabine rolled onto her back, bringing her knees up to her ears and pulling her legs open.

‘Poly wants all the men to come inside her,’ she groaned.

‘Yeah,’ said Jerome encouragingly.

He hoped he hadn’t blown it by trying to put her off Peter. Poly was the pure lust in Sabine, a surprisingly separate personality and the hottest lover he had ever known. She couldn’t be bridled and if she wanted Peter she must have him.

The Tantric group, because of the sound they might allow, had their rooms in the same area of the property. Sabine used her intuition to home in on Peter’s room. She tested the handle and, finding the door open, burst into the room.

‘Hello. Who’s there?’ said Karen, turning on the light. ‘Oh, it’s you, dear,’ she said, recognizing the woman she had comforted in the afternoon. ‘I hope we haven’t been making too much noise — I mean, allowing too much sound,’ she corrected herself.

‘What’s going on?’ said Stan sleepily. ‘Are we going to have group sex?’

‘Stan!’ said Karen. ‘I’m sorry, dear, he’s a little overexcited, he just had his first erection in eight years.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Jerome, who was standing behind Sabine.

‘Poly wants to stay,’ whispered Sabine.

‘She does?’

‘It would be kind of original, no? With these old people.’

‘Too original,’ said Jerome.

‘But Poly wants to,’ said Sabine, stamping her foot.

‘OK, OK,’ said Jerome.

‘It’s the woman I was telling you about, the one in my group,’ Karen whispered to Stan. ‘I think she’s upset about something.’

‘Gee,’ said Stan.

‘Why don’t you come and sit down, dear?’ said Karen.

‘Thanks,’ said Sabine shyly.

‘Yeah,’ growled Jerome. ‘Thanks.’

* * *

With gentle bites, Peter traced the tendon that ran from Crystal’s knee up to her groin. She spread her knee outwards and made a hollow in the smoothness of her thigh. He bit the tendon harder as he moved upwards, and then he kissed her in that hollow and pressed his lips to that soft crease of skin, rubbing his cheek against the tangle of her pubic hair.

He gazed up at her. She closed her eyes briefly and then they sprang open again, intensified. All the sadness and all the innocence she had ever known was distilled into a serious delight, and seemed to slide along the thread of her eyebeams and to fall, drop by drop, into his heart.

‘I’ve been waiting for you all my life,’ said Peter. ‘All my longings and all my fantasies have been about you, but I didn’t know you really existed. And now you’re lying in front of me in all your beauty.’

Peter, who usually choked on an ‘I love you’ before falling hastily to sleep, made this speech irresistibly.

He leant down and ran his tongue lightly over her belly until the tip came to rest on her navel ring. As he shook the ring with his tongue, the gold chimed against his teeth. Crystal moaned and rolled her hips.

‘You’re so open, you’re so alive,’ he said.

She smiled at him with unguarded eyes, her cheeks glowing in the candlelight.

She opened her legs wider and his chest pressed against the open lips of her cunt. He drew the wetness into his parched heart and, letting out a sigh of amazement, brought his head to rest between her breasts.

She ran her fingers through his hair.

‘You’re so sweet to me,’ she said.

‘You’re my whole reason for existing,’ he said, looking up at her again. His eyes in her eyes and her eyes in his, resting.