Read Maestra for Free Online Page B

from the future I needed to make.
    ‘Hello, lovely.’ Lawrence was wearing blue velvet trousers with a grosgrain stripe and an ancient white shirt, the frayed cuffs gaping over his skinny wrists.
    ‘Hey, Lawrence. Who’s here? Who’s pretty?’
    ‘Well, darling, you, now.’
    ‘Are you coming in?’ From the length of Lawrence’s vowels I thought he was probably going to nod out right there on the doorstep.
    ‘No, darling, not yet. Off you go. Amuse-toi .’
    The party was in the basement but I went for a wander first, imagining, as I always did, how I would live if such a house were mine, how I would change the rooms, colour and furnish them. There was no one to see me run my hand over the sensuous curve of the eighteenth-century banister, the solid certainty of its polished mahogany. I had learned from the smarter interiors magazines that it was wrong for houses to look too ‘done’, that the hideous Seventies green corduroy sofa squatting in Lawrence’s drawing room was as much an ineffable mark of his class as his voice or the way he wore his fraying shirts, but I imagined how the room would look rewashed in Trianon gris , with just a few perfect pieces, spare and exquisite, and myself serene amongst them. Chester Square was a much better antidote to Colonel Morris than my snotty little pep talk earlier. Desire and lack, I told myself, and the space between them, was what I had to negotiate. I sometimes saw my life as a web of tightropes to be walked, stretched between what I could give, or make believe I gave, and what I would possess. I wriggled out of most of my clothes and slipped on a pair of black suede Saint Laurent pumps, then I stalked round the room, trailing my fingers over Lawrence’s lovely, neglected antiques, touching them like talismans. You, I thought, you and you and you. I practically skipped down the basement stairs.
    As I stepped through the black shantung curtain I saw a blonde girl I recognised from other parties going down on a fortysomething guy, professionally sweeping her hair away from her face so he had a good view of her mouth, taking the whole length of him in one smooth swallow. I’d seen her around; she was Russian, but she called herself Ashley – Lawrence usually mixed a couple of rentals with his guests to keep the party going. I walked past them and took a drink from Lawrence’s barman-cum-bouncer, who stood formally against one of the glossy black walls with a tray of champagne flutes, as imperturbable as if he were serving canapés at a diplomat’s cocktail party. I tried a sip, but I didn’t need it.
    ‘Is Helene here?’ I asked. Another regular at Lawrence’s.
    ‘Over there.’ He cocked his head.
    Helene was lying on a black velvet chaise longue, her breasts spilling like syllabub out of an embroidered corset.
    ‘Hey, Judith darling.’
    She lifted her face to me and I bent down to kiss her, taking her tongue, slightly sour with champagne, into my mouth.
    ‘Lawrence said you’d be coming over. We were waiting for you, weren’t we?’
    A boy looked up from where he had been kneeling between Helene’s generously rounded thighs. I wouldn’t have wanted her body myself, but I had a little kink for her belly, the soft pale spread of it. I ran my hand luxuriously over the full mound, exploring its give and sheen.
    ‘This is Stanley.’
    ‘Hello, Stanley.’ He stood up and swooped down again to kiss me too quickly for me to have a sense of his face. His mouth was wide and not too sloppy; he had that young man’s smell of wet hay underneath his cologne. I ran my hands speculatively over his naked back as he pulled me closer, feeling the muscles winged under his shoulder blades. Nice.
    Helene was idly dangling a pair of handcuffs, bright steel, proper police issue. ‘I said to Stanley you might like to double dip?’
    ‘Sure, lovely. Where would you like me?’
    ‘Underneath. Will that be nice, Stanley?’
    He nodded. He didn’t look as though speech was