Being a Girl (19 page)

Next comes the scene with me waiting for Ricky in the bedroom. It is the first time that the head of the snake is fully revealed and, while the crew took absolutely hours shifting the camera gear, I lay back on the table in the make-up room, my legs gaping and Adam working with a fine brush trying to achieve a lifelike appearance about the snake's head, the gleam in those maroon eyes, the expression on its thin lips. Adam had stopped being embarrassed by my nudity, in fact he seemed to enjoy it, and what with all the attention, and what with my pussy wide open, I was positively oozing.

‘You smell like you're in heat,' he said.

‘I thought you were gay?'

He looked up across my tummy. ‘You have to be flexible,' he replied, and he kept his eyes on mine as he lowered his head and licked the warm juice from my fragrant lips. I was pleased to have made a convert.

Maja accompanied me to the bedroom for the scene where I am standing naked waiting for Ricky.

Roddy Wise was already there, looking dishevelled and excited, the glass of champagne in his hand. Our eyes meet when he appears on the threshold. Again I tell him I won't be a second. As I slide from the room, he undresses and climbs into bed.

Ricky is supposed to be getting sleepy and, when I saw the rushes later, I thought Roddy was brilliant the way he was fighting to keep his eyes open. I re-enter the room looking shy and slide between the sheets. Although we had rehearsed the scene dozens of times, this time it was different. There was an extra element. Two in fact. We weren't wearing any clothes for one thing and, for another, Ricky had stopped being Ricky and had become Roddy. He didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. But a look passed between us, a pulse, a message, a frisson. The camera lifted on the jib high above the bed and as Roddy Wise slipped into my wet warm place it was a thrill knowing that David was watching.

EVEN SHORT FILMS
cost a fortune and they take
forever
. In pre-production you rehearse, tweak the script, drink endless cups of cappuccino and go out looking for costumes and locations. During production you shoot the film. The days are long but it's lots of fun. The hard work begins in post-production.

Francis Ford Coppola said a film is made three times, first by the writer, then the director, then the editor, which was terribly clever and absolutely true. When we first entered the editing suite the scenes on the monitor seemed fragmentary, like overheard snatches of conversation or views glimpsed from a passing train. But Sacha Vance, the editor, could see in his silvery-blue eyes the best in every expression, in every gesture.

When I saw the raw footage of Stephanie Jones bringing me to an irrepressible orgasm in front of the director and crew I was so embarrassed I went red to the roots of my hair. But Sacha had cut the mildly pornographic into something charming and sensual. He did the same with the last scene when Roddy Wise eased my knees apart and slid his celebrity member into the jaws of the snake.

‘You're a very dedicated actress,' Sacha whispered,
and I didn't like to tell him I was about to go up to university and I wasn't really an actress at all.

David needed constant reassurance as Sacha brought the emotional heart of his film to life, snipping out a few seconds from one take and combining it with another, moving from a close-up of a clock showing ten o'clock to the rain-lashed streets to Amanda Marshall striding into the bar, the femme fatale and de rigueur for ciné noir. Excuse my French!

According to Sister Theresa, the role of the writer is to put into words universal truths that will be understood intuitively and, as the writer's work goes through its metamorphosis to film, the editor is the director's conscience. The director has to get the shots in the can, but those gripping moments that send icy fingers running up our spine and bring a tear to our eye are all in the editor's hands.

After the edit, David had the soundtrack to worry about, and Hermann Mann came through by persuading George Trevor to take a sabbatical from his work on a West End musical to compose an original score. He began by asking David to name his favourite film and the velvety piano filling the bare spaces in the background was reminiscent of
Casablanca
and transformed the little movie once again. It had become a morality tale rooted in the zeitgeist, compelling, with something of the titivating, something of the tragic, and good enough, according to Mr Mann, to enter for the Cannes Film Festival, an honour indeed.

David was elated but I was growing bored and a little anxious. I'm sure I even saw a line on my brow one morning and it had never been there before. It was still hot, but as the leaves died on the trees and we entered an Indian summer the turning of the
seasons was a reminder that for me it was time to turn the page.

I had never really had any doubts that I would be going up to Cambridge but still it was a relief when the letter arrived; there's only one place for every forty students who apply, and my parents in their undemonstrative way were terribly proud. Binky, if I knew Binky, would be working hard through her last year to keep up with me. It is the younger sister's plight to be competitive, as well as spoiled, and now that I was growing up I could see these things more clearly. All she had ever really needed was a good spanking, and now that her bottom had received some attention we had become the best of friends.

My life was on course except for one problem: by the time I got to King's at the end of September, there was no space in halls. I was the Virgin Mary without a manger and gratefully accepted a sofa in a flat occupied by Tamara Tucker, who had gone up to university from Saint Sebastian's the year before me and, as an Old Basher, was obliged to play the Good Samaritan.

I had never really liked Tamara's hockey-playing set at school, and now I couldn't bear those cacophonous nights with the headboard in the next room banging out Beethoven's
Fifth
on the dividing wall. Tamara was a fleshy, big-boned girl with a penchant for rugby players and was busy working her way through the college First XV.

Dark rings were forming under my eyes, and when Professor Martin asked me if everything was all right, I felt such a child as tears started rolling down my cheeks. When I told him I was homeless, he produced a big white handkerchief and made me blow my nose.

‘You'll never get ahead sleeping on someone's
sofa,' he said, and I sniffed as he wrote down a telephone number. ‘Give Dr Goetz a call, Milly,' he added, pulling the page from his notebook. ‘He has a very nice attic that's ideal for a girl like you.'

I dried my tears, returned the damp handkerchief, and keyed the number into my mobile the moment I left the room. I told Dr Goetz I had been given his number by Professor Martin and raced through the cobbled streets of the old town when he asked me to call on him immediately. By the time I reached the house and gave a tap on the daunting lion's head knocker, I was hot and sticky, my breasts heaving in the tiny white blouse I had put on that morning not knowing that I was to meet the great Luther Goetz in person. He opened the door and studied me like I was a laboratory specimen.

‘Camilla Petacci, I presume,' he said, and I nodded as I caught my breath.

‘Please call me Milly.'

‘I would be charmed.' He paused. ‘Professor Martin's your tutor?'

‘Yes.'

‘And your school . . . ?'

‘Saint Sebastian's,' I replied, although I couldn't see how this could possibly be relevant.

He stroked his beard as he stood to one side to let me in.

The hallway was big and airy with diffused pastel light falling through the stained-glass panels beside the entrance door. Dr Goetz closed the door and, having given me a close examination while I was waiting on the threshold, did so again while I stood on the shiny black and white tiles of the hall, my gaze drawn as if against my will to the haunting portrait on the wall beside the hat stand.

‘Donatien Alphonse François, comte de Sade,' he said. ‘It's a William Masterson copy of the portrait by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo.'

I turned from the painting and the black eyes seemed to follow me. I smiled and felt silly.

‘Any message from Dr Martin?' Dr Goetz now asked.

‘No, he just said to give you a call. You have an attic.'

‘I do indeed.' He leaned forward and our noses were almost touching. ‘Let's go and take a look, shall we?'

I followed Dr Goetz upstairs to a room with a slanting roof. A big dormer window had a view over the River Cam that ran sparkling with sunshine at the foot of the garden. There was an iron bed with white cushions and an empty bookshelf waiting to receive my tomes of art history and Italian culture. My heart was thumping and I'm sure a faint smile was turning the corners of my lips. As my step-mother had learned from the Polish gardener, when you transfer plants from one place to another some wither and die and others take to the new soil and flourish. This room was the rich pasture I needed and I could see myself sitting there in the glow of a table lamp leafing through my books.

I looked out of the window, at the trees, at the river beyond, at the spires of unknown churches piercing the horizon. The attic was like a room in a fairy tale. I would take it whatever the price, even if I had to go hungry, and was completely taken aback when Dr Goetz explained that he did not charge rent, but I would be expected to serve drinks when he had ‘little soirées', and ‘it would be awfully kind' if I were to give the study a weekly dust because he didn't like the maid disturbing his papers.

‘Would that be suitable, Milly?'

‘Yes, of course, Dr Goetz.'

‘I'm sure you're going to be very happy here,' he added.

I was on a strict budget imposed by my stingy mother and couldn't believe my luck as we descended the wide oak staircase to his study at the back of the house. It was a large, sunny room with French doors and ochre walls studded with sepia photographs. When I realised those photographs were of naked girls a crimson flush moved in a tide over my cheeks and neck.

‘Do you know Man Ray?' the doctor asked, and I shook my head.

‘No,' I said.

‘Wonderful photographer. Such light. Such attention to negative space. The devil, Milly,' he whispered, pausing for effect, ‘is always in the detail.'

As I drew closer to the photograph, I could see that the girl bent over a table being spanked by a bearded man had short curling horns that appeared to be growing from her skull and between the cheeks of her protruding bottom a long tail extended to the floor.

We both turned and I looked into Dr Goetz's deep-set eyes. They were green like pale chips of marble and seemed to shine with an inner light. His precisely-trimmed beard grew lush over the lower half of his face and gave him a distinct resemblance to the gentleman spanking the girl in the photograph. My palms had grown damp and my nipples for some frightful reason had hardened, pushing against the fabric of my thin blouse.

‘You're not embarrassed, Milly?' he asked, and again I shook my head.

‘No, of course not.'

‘It's only art, my dear. Man Ray was the consummate photographer,' he added, ‘really the forerunner of the new nude.'

We continued the tour. There were whips and canes in patterns adorning the walls between polished bookcases and stone sculptures of Indian deities in positions that made me blush once more. We paused at his desk on which there was an open book with a photograph of a faded painting of a naked girl with her arms suspended by a length of rope from the branches of a tree. On each side of the girl were two men with bare legs, each holding a long cane. Alongside the men, like an audience, were two animals.

‘As you probably know, the tiger and rhinoceros have long been revered for the aphrodisiac qualities of their tusks and teeth,' the doctor said, and he reached for another book which he opened at a page containing a black and white photograph of a nude girl tied in similar circumstances.

‘The original painting comes from the walls of the Ellora caves in India,' he explained. ‘Buddhists, Hindus and Jains have been carving temples into the mountainside from as early as the 6th century, but what's intriguing is that their sculptures have an eroticism clearly influenced by the mystical religions from before anno domini.' His eyes moved from one picture to the other. ‘But here's what's interesting,' he added, his voice intense with passion. ‘The plate from circa 1860 restages in close detail the fresco from India. Why and who made that plate we can only hypothesise but, for my money, I'd say it is the work of a missionary who dabbled in photography and made a pilgrimage, as many did, to the Ellora caves.'

‘Extraordinary,' I said.

‘If you look closer, you'll see that the girl in the photograph is practically identical to the girl painted on the cave wall,' he continued. ‘What this means, Milly, at least to me, is that man's idea of beauty and man's aspiration to beat the object of his desire has remained unchanged throughout time.'

I couldn't at that moment see why man wanted to beat the object of his desire, but I didn't think Dr Goetz would have appreciated the question. Instead I asked, ‘Are you writing a paper?' and he stroked his beard as he glanced back at me.

‘I am, yes. I'm in the midst of my research and would dearly like to learn more about the photographer before I publish.' He paused. ‘Perhaps you'll find time to help, my dear.'

As he fixed me with his marble eyes, my mouth was suddenly dry and I could only nod my head in response. The sun was pouring through the open doors and it was so warm in the study, the gusset on my panties was growing damp. The material had worked its way into the lips of my vagina and, what with the array of naked girls and the whips on the wall, I grew shamefully aware of the whiff of arousal filling the room.