Black Lipstick Kisses Read online

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi, babe.’

  He went back to reading the magazine, pausing only occasionally to take a sip of beer. Finally, Michael spoke up.

  ‘Chris, I am trying to work here.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but there’s this guy coming round to view the flat later.’

  ‘You have to be joking!’

  ‘You know the deal, Mike, and you’re doing well now. You said so yourself. We better get some of your shit out of view and all.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  He put his pencil down, carefully, but I could sense his frustration as he began to tidy his work area. I was feeling the same, but there was nothing I could do and it felt silly just standing there. So I began to help, stacking the magazines and moving the chairs in an attempt to create some sort of order. In half an hour we’d succeeded, more or less. When Michael went into the kitchen Chris followed, and I was sure he was dropping a hint that I leave. I took it, dressing as best I could under my robe and making my excuses to them, only to have Michael quickly tag on. I was feeling pissed off as we went down in the lift, and in the street asked him straight out.

  ‘So what’s the deal with the flat?’

  ‘Chris is in property, buying to let or sitting on places until he reckons he can get the best price. He’s pretty generous, as it goes. I’ve been there two years, rent free, but he’s getting a bit impatient with it.’

  I nodded. It was a feeling I knew well, my own occupation of All Angels being more or less on sufferance. The difference was that if I lost it I’d be looking for squats. Technically I was already in one, but there are squats and there are squats. Feeling a bit more sympathetic, I took his arm. He accepted the gesture and began to steer me, not towards some conveniently lonely alley, which was where I needed to go in my belly if not in my head, but to a wine bar.

  It was further down the dockside, a trendy new place built of polished wood and glass. Across the dock was a rank of cranes painted black, not functional, but a sort of industrial sculpture, really quite Gothic. He ordered a carafe of wine, and my irritation began to slip away as we sipped and chatted, the funny side of what had happened slowly coming to the front, and I found myself smiling.

  ‘Lucky your brother didn’t come in a few minutes later.’

  ‘Lucky he didn’t bring the clients in with him!’

  ‘Nah, that way you get to hang onto your flat for longer.’

  ‘Yeah, true. He reckons it’s bad enough with my pictures on the walls. Apparently what really sells a place has nothing to do with practical things. According to Chris it’s all down to ambience. He’ll be making toast and coffee about now, to make it smell homely.’

  ‘What could be more homely than a woman’s pussy?’

  For one tiny moment he actually looked shocked. I found myself smiling and blushing, embarrassed but pleased with myself at the same time. He was cool, but not that cool. There was no longer any need to act, at all.

  ‘We could go back to All Angels?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He drained his glass and I did the same. We rose as one and left, arm in arm, all pretence gone. We were going back to All Angels and we were going to fuck, plain and simple. It was a good way, half an hour on skates, and I was in no mood for small talk. ‘Have you ever had sex on a grave?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well you’re going to. I like to imagine the person’s ghost watching me, maybe pleased, feeling that I’m honouring them, maybe angry at me, for committing sacrilege or for mocking them with my vitality.’

  ‘What was the name of the tomb you were on when you came down for me, when we met?’

  ‘Eliza Dobson. Yes, I have. Think how she’d rage, so angry yet so impotent, when in life she had all that power. I love to think of her, watching me bare, watching me enjoy a man’s cock, watching me fuck, all the things she tried to suppress.’

  ‘What if she appeared to you? Screaming at you, clawing at you with ghostly hands.’

  For a moment I wondered if I should tell him, but decided it was better to keep it as fantasy, for the moment.

  ‘Oh, yes please! I wish, I really do. I’d just fuck all the harder, put on a good rude show for her.’

  ‘I really think you would.’

  ‘Oh, I would, you’d better believe it.’

  ‘That I have to draw. You in the throes of passion, underneath me . . .’

  ‘No, on top, riding you with pride.’

  ‘OK, as you like, naked.’

  ‘No, not naked. Not stark naked, anyway. With some clothes on, a skirt and top maybe, but pulled up so that I’m hiding nothing.’

  ‘Your knickers would be off though, maybe dangling from a piece of carving.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘And her ghost rising from the tomb, maybe swirling up from under the lid . . .’

  ‘. . . her face set in fury and shame and anguish . . .’

  ‘. . . her fine clothes decaying tatters . . .’

  ‘. . . her hands clawing at my body . . .’

  ‘. . . but only bringing you more pleasure.’

  ‘Yes, and the wilder she got the more pleasure we’d take, feeding on her rage and spite, until we came, together. That would banish her, and soothe the souls of all her victims.’

  ‘Her victims?’

  ‘Oh, she used to do some horrid things, all in the name of propriety of course. The Victorians were like that.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read Acton. It always seemed so sordid, nothing to really get a grip on for a story. I like the way you see it though. You’re an inspiration.’

  ‘Just weird.’

  ‘You’re not weird.’

  ‘Trying telling that to my parents, the other kids at school and my teachers.’

  ‘OK, you’re weird. So am I then.’

  He laughed, and I grinned in response, feeling closer still. Like me he was an outsider. Like me he knew how it felt not to fit in and to refuse to try. Like me he had never gone under, and was now free from all the stifling social constraints we had to put up with. I wanted to talk, to tell him everything, and to know about him.

  ‘You had a hard time as a kid?’

  ‘More odd, but yes, hard at times. I’m not complaining, because without it I’d never have the richness of experience I rely on for my work.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, I’m adopted, for a start, which didn’t help, but it was down to my mother, in the main. She’s one of these people who is always searching for an answer and is never satisfied with what she gets. My grandparents are quite sane, but she caught religion in her teens, a bad case. I can’t remember what it was when I was tiny, High Church Anglican I think, but I remember being converted to Roman Catholicism at about four, especially the candles, hundreds of them, burning in this huge church. Candlelight fascinates me, and I’m sure that’s where it comes from.’

  ‘I’m Catholic, or I was, and I know exactly what you mean about candles. I still go to confession sometimes, just for the atmosphere. Do you?’

  ‘No. I’m not a Catholic any more, I haven’t been for years, as such. I suppose I could be considered Christian, but only in the broadest sense. My mother changed her mind when I was maybe six. When we went to Scotland for a holiday she caught Calvinism. Suddenly nothing would do but we come to understand our basic wickedness, and all the candles and incense and stuff was so much popery and a sin in itself. I remember being made to feel dreadfully guilty for wanting to go into a church and light a candle to a great-uncle who had died, when just a couple of months before the same action would have earned the highest praise.’

  ‘Confusing.’

  ‘Just a bit. It happened again a couple of years later. I can’t even remember what to, but it was another Low Church sect, and even more severe. Then there was a brief spell as Mormons, some American thing she saw on TV with lots of shouting and waving our arms about, and an evangelical group largely dedicated to harassing people on Sunday afte
rnoons. The last lot had a particularly strong anti-sex message, remaining a virgin until marriage and all that shit. You can imagine how that went across with my hormones starting to kick in.’

  ‘What about your dad, and Chris?’

  ‘Dad was foreman at the local factory, and where home was concerned he’d do anything for a quiet life. My main memory of him from childhood is that he was always tired. Not mother, she never stopped, sampling different creeds as if they were brands of washing powder and never satisfied with the results. We couldn’t just be part of the congregation either, she always had to try and take over the whole thing. Every time it happened it was always the great life-changing event, the crucial revelation that immediately had to be preached to the unenlightened, and of course everyone else in the family had to tag along. I’ve been anointed, dipped and dunked. I’ve been a choirboy, an altar boy, an acolyte, a supplicant, and several other things I can’t remember, one of which involved kissing the toe of some seedy old sod’s sandal.’

  ‘You’re lucky that’s all you had to kiss. You rebelled, yeah?’

  ‘Inevitably. It used to scramble my brains at first, but by the time I left school I had come to understand who I was, and my creed. School was another problem. It changed every time mother’s religion changed. I kept myself sane by drawing, first mixing up all the imagery I was picking up, with pretty much the entire range of Christian myth at my disposal and some very peculiar ideas about priests, death and ritual. When I hit puberty I started to explore the dark side of it all, revelling in everything I was told was wrong, devils and sins expressed as anthropomorphic beings especially. I can’t have been more than thirteen when I bought Isaac Foyle’s biography. I loved horror comics too, and anything dirty of course, but as much because it was utterly forbidden as for the thrill. Mother used to burn them if she could find them, and I was for ever being sent to priests to discuss my “problem”. It only made me keener.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘By the time I was seventeen Chris was doing well for himself – he’s ten years older than me – and so I moved in with him and began to try my hand at professional art. Then there was the flat, and well, here I am. And you?’

  He was being very open with me, and for once in my life I felt I could be equally open. For one thing his mother sounded worse than anything I had put up with, and I could guess that the casual way in which he had said it ‘scrambled his brains’ hid a lot of very real pain. It was a pain that had been echoed in myself.

  ‘Where shall I start? Like you my mum’s religious, and she had converted, but only once, to Catholicism. I suppose new converts always tend to be more zealous than those who’re born to it, because that was a long time before I was born but it hadn’t worn off. When I was little it seemed like we were always going to church – St George’s on the Island?’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a great church, but I hated it then, or at least I hated the services. It was so boring, and I’d spend my time staring at the architecture and making up little stories about the gargoyles and angels and saints. The big stained glass of St George and the dragon behind the altar was my favourite. I always sided with the dragon, and wished he could have eaten stupid St George. I never really used to take in what the priests were saying until I was maybe nine or ten, and when I did it was terrifying. There was this dreadful place called Hell, where you got tortured for ever and ever unless you were good. It wasn’t just good, either, but very, very good, far better than I could ever be. I used to get terrible nightmares, imagining myself spitted on a pitchfork for pinching biscuits from the cupboard, or tossed into a lake of boiling blood for pulling another girl’s hair at school.’

  ‘Oh, Hell’s not all bad, it just gets a bad press. You hadn’t been reading Dante, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Yes. That was another problem, I used to read too much. I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover, and there’s some pretty heavy stuff there . . .’

  ‘. . . stoned to death, burnt to death . . .’

  ‘. . . “their blood put on their own heads”, I never did understand that one, but it conjures up a gruesome picture.’

  ‘I’ve drawn it.’

  ‘That I must see. I didn’t understand most of it, it just sounded awful. So I began to read other texts in the hope of it all becoming clearer, but it didn’t. Mum thought it great that I was so keen, and I was always top in Bible study, but they didn’t know what was going through my head. Then there was confession, but I could never understand why if you could be forgiven your sins so easily you shouldn’t do them. As I got older and sex started to get involved it got worse. I wanted to do all these dreadful things, and I knew that the thought was as bad as the deed, so I did it anyway, and when I confessed one time I caught the priest tossing himself off . . .’

  Michael burst out laughing, a full-blooded roar of delight. I shrugged and smiled, blushing slightly and well pleased with his reaction.

  ‘That was my defining moment. I realised it was all bullshit and hypocrisy, just crap designed to keep the proles down, even when the priests believe it themselves. I rejected the church, but I felt I needed something to replace it, some abstract temple in which I could be honest with myself. For instance, I felt that as a woman I should be able to acknowledge the Mother openly, not behind a veil of pretence the way the Catholics do. I realised I’d always been clawing at the temple door, but from that moment I was within. I still believe in God, or at least the idea of deity, but nobody is going to make me believe that lot speak for him. Besides, there are so many different religions, all claiming to be the only one with the real truth, and they can’t all be right.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly, but deity? Why worship a deity, God, or the Mother, or even Satan, if they provide nothing tangible in return? How can you even be sure they exist?’

  ‘There must be some sort of spiritual force, surely? Haven’t you ever felt the change in atmosphere when you go into a church or a graveyard, or even into an old house, on a battlefield perhaps. The first time I went to Northern France, on a school trip, I kept getting these sensations of melancholy and fear, so strong I was shaking. Nobody else seemed to feel it, and I swear I’d never heard of Armentieres. There has to be something . . . No, there is something. You can feel it if your mind is open enough. Maybe some day I’ll show you.’

  We continued to talk as we walked through the East End, along streets Michael seemed to know better than I did. Sometimes it was deep, sometimes shallow, usually strange and frequently dirty. By the time we got near All Angels we had stopped several times to kiss. In one alley Michael slid his hand into the front of my panties, only for a door to open unexpectedly just feet away from us. We ran off laughing, leaving me more ready than ever.

  I heard Lilitu barking before we could see the church. It was her angry bark, and gave me an instant stab of apprehension. I ran forward, Michael following, reaching the gates just as a pair of kids carrying spray cans burst out. They fled, and no surprise, with Lilitu right behind them, her teeth bared and her chest and neck brilliant red. For one moment I thought she’d got one of them, or worse, that she was hurt, before I realised it was spray paint.

  That was the end of my plans for sex with Michael. We had to find something to clean her fur safely, then do it, which took ages. The incident had completely spoiled the erotic high I’d been on, and while we might eventually have got around to it, the moment was gone and it could never have been so good. He was also keen to get back and find out if his flat had been sold from under his feet. I didn’t complain. I was to be his model, and there would be a next time.

  4

  I’D PUT MYSELF in a fine position, not for the first time. There’s that old joke about men being like buses, none for ages and then they all turn up at once. It certainly seems to be true for me, because there had been nobody significant in my life for months and then both Michael and Stephen had appeared on the same day.

  The sensible thing to do w
ould have been to gently but firmly dispose of Stephen and concentrate on Michael. It was the obvious choice, and what every friend, agony aunt and busybody would have told me to do. Michael was single, more or less my age, unattached and shared a great deal with me. Stephen was old enough to be my father, married and we had very little in common.

  It was not that simple. Stephen and I had fucked, and it had been good. I’d really enjoyed my feeling of power and his uncertainty as I’d pulled him into the graveyard and mounted him on Eliza Dobson’s grave. He licked me too, well. I had also promised to be in touch, with the implication of more sex to come, and I knew that I wanted it.

  Michael and I hadn’t fucked, but from what we had done he seemed less mature in his outlook, which was hardly surprising, but almost more needful of being in control, and I do like to call the shots. Bossy or not, he shared my fantasies, and it was great to imagine the sort of ritualised sex we might get into. I’d done it with other men, fucking on tombs, in churches and once in a pentacle with black candles burning at each point, but it had always been to oblige my desires rather than to share them. It had been the same with Stephen, but with Michael it would be mutual, and so much stronger for that.

  Had Michael laid any claim to me it might have been different, or not, because I hate the idea of being any man’s ‘girl’ and exclusive to him. He hadn’t, though, and he seemed pretty liberal, especially the way he’d jumped at my suggestion of a male virgin getting one up the bum from a priestess. Most straight men get pretty hung up about that sort of thing, getting it up the bum that is, not sex with priestesses. Then again, I wasn’t sure he was one hundred per cent straight, something I also found exciting.

  In the end I promised myself I wouldn’t ring Stephen and that if he didn’t come around that would be the end of it. It was an easy option, a bit of a cop out maybe, but the only decision I knew I could stick to. Michael was off to Brussels to see a bandes dessinées publisher for the rest of the week, but I was going to be modelling for him on the Sunday. Both of us knew what was likely to happen, and I also knew it might make a difference to my attitude to Stephen.