Our Kind of Cruelty(39)



George put his head round my door just after six, when the thought of the Tube was defeating me. I had already decided not to go to meet V that evening as I didn’t want her to see me in the state I was in. ‘A few of the chaps are going to this club,’ he said, with a wink. ‘Wondered if you’d like to join.’

‘A club, at this time?’ I said, my brain beating against the side of my head.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’ve got a really bad headache.’

He came into the room, closing the door behind him, and walked towards my desk. He put his hand in his pocket and held out two red pills on the palm of his hand. ‘These’ll perk you up.’

The pills were no larger than the head of two pins fused together and the thought of anything making me feel better was too delicious to refuse. I reached for them and swallowed them in a gulp.

‘Good lad,’ he said, laughing. ‘Come on then.’

There were five of us, all walking purposefully through the old streets of the City into the East End, an area at once totally and not at all changed. I have always thought that the history of the East End is still written in the buildings and streets. The air hangs heavy with death and poverty and sex, however many grey coffee shops you plant along its highways.

We turned down a cobbled street with the houses so close together I could imagine people passing things to each other from high-up windows, or washing lines stretched between rooms, or mothers shouting for dirty children far below. My mind felt loose and my internal organs fluid in my body, as if suspended in liquid.

George knocked on a black door, which was opened by a man who was almost as wide as the door, his nose smashed across his face, his head shaved, his eyes wild. But he smiled incongruously and opened the door wider, ushering us inside. All the other men had clearly been there before and they peeled off up and down dark stairways and into dimly lit rooms. George beckoned for me to follow him, up a narrow flight of stairs towards a thumping beat which seemed to be part of the stone and plaster of the house. We climbed ever higher and the beat turned into music, which rested in my stomach like something primal. At the last door George turned and winked at me again before opening it and releasing the heat and stench of the place into my face. It took me a while to figure out the space, which was surely much larger than the house allowed, but when I did I thought it was fantastical. It was clearly the top floors of most, if not all, the houses along this street, an endless stretch of cavorting degradation.

The space had been sectioned into hundreds of booths and the walls were all mirrored, so it was impossible to tell what was real and what was simply a reflection. The air hung heavy with smoke and the musty, salty stink of semen. The carpet underneath our feet was sticky and the backs of the chairs looked greasy and grimy. The lights were off, apart from ill-placed spots which stabbed the air, blinding you if you looked too closely. Only the music felt natural, as if it had become part of me, lifting and guiding me towards something I could almost remember.

George pulled me forward and I realised as we got closer that we were heading towards a round stage on which twenty women, maybe more, writhed. Their bodies glistened like plastic, their feet distorted by the sort of heels even Kaitlyn would draw the line at. Some were completely naked, but most were wearing a sparkling V over their vaginas, with a corresponding line cutting through their buttocks, like an electric sign announcing their wares. They danced as though they were in a trance, dropping often to the floor and opening their legs, licking their lips and closing their eyes, their hands never far from their breasts.

There were lots of men just like us standing round the stage, some not even looking at the girls, but instead at their phones which illuminated their faces and made them look dead. One or two men were cheering, reaching out to grab at passing legs and breasts, saliva dripping from their mouths. Every so often a man would step forward and motion to a girl, usually by a click of his fingers or a well-directed point and the girl would stop her dance and step unsteadily off the stage, following the man to one of the rounded booths.

‘Which do you want?’ George asked, his voice hot in my ears.

I turned to look at him and I could see his face was puce even in the dark. I almost expected his hand to clench round his dick as we stood there. The air was close and heavy and I thought the floor might be tilting. I shook my head. ‘No. I have a girlfriend.’

He laughed, exposing his perfect white teeth. ‘Don’t be a poof. I’ve got a wife and two kids.’ The floor was undulating now, as if an earthquake was shaking the building and I could feel bile rise up into my mouth.

He leant closer to me, so I could hear every word he said. ‘You don’t have to worry about them.’ He jerked his finger at the stage of women. ‘They all love it. Sex mad, they are. Not like normal women. They’re like some sort of witches or something.’

I tried to take a step back, but another man was pressed close up behind me. I could imagine George at boarding school, masturbating an older boy, drenched in fear and loathing. I looked back at the women. ‘I have to go.’

But George took my arm. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ His voice was harsh. He clicked his fingers at two women standing next to each other. ‘Mine’s the blonde,’ he said as they teetered off the stage.

The woman assigned to me took my hand and led me to a booth, where she ducked under the curtain, pulling me with her. There was a fake leather seat which took up half the booth, and she pushed me on to it. I felt my buttocks slide on the fabric and wondered whether, if a fire broke out, anyone would get out alive.

Araminta Hall's Books