Sex in the City--London Read online

  I went back out into London a few hours later but still as dishevelled as when she left me. I thought if I walked along the Thames for long enough I would find her again. I looked up at Bankside Power Station protruding into the grey sky. It had been transformed into the Tate Modern now and was considered a thing of beauty. That was where I would start my search for Catherine.

  About the Story

  LONDON HAS ALWAYS BEEN a city I’ve felt attached to. I’ve walked its streets with men who have been born, bred and worked their whole lives there, and can transform all its grandeur into an everyday story; with men dissecting it with giant cameras into postcard pictures; with men who fall in love with it, and with men who are indifferent to it. Each time I’ve felt the same wonder of being in a place where each landmark is engrained in my mind as part of my childhood legacy but I still feel like a lost stranger. My story was inspired by this sense of dislocation which I thought could be reflected in the complexity of an internet relationship where people can reveal their greatest passions and most intimate selves without ever being certain of each other’s true name.

  The freedom and release of being with a stranger can be directly connected to the atmosphere of London, a big city where no one cares about you or what you do as long as it doesn’t interfere with them. The easiest way to traverse London is by the underground, disappearing into the airless false light, bodies packed together but no eye contact socially permitted and then a few minutes later emerging somewhere completely different but permeated with the same feeling of London. My London is a place of darkness and shadows. Whether walking in the sun in Hyde Park, listening to the soaring human beauty of opera singers at Convent Garden, or staring up at the green-blue majesty of St. Paul’s Cathedral, for me London always has a greyness, a sense of the mystery behind millions of hidden consciousnesses living in close proximity.

  In London history and modernity are forcibly juxtaposed, a Tesco’s Metro next to a quaint old building calling itself a boulangerie in its current incarnation, the Neon lights of Piccadilly overlooking Eros, and winding through it all the murky River Thames, a natural wonder, somehow unchanging despite all London’s history of pollution. There is something in the way it is all bound together that states ‘this is what man was, this is what man is’.

  Being in London is knowing how small and insignificant I am and this sense has lit up some of my greatest liaison in anonymous hotel rooms which will hold no memory of anything I do.

  West End Girl

  by Carrie Williams

  DINAH CIRCLED THE AD with her pen then placed it back on the table and took another sip of her pint. She would need some extra cash for Christmas presents and parties, and this sounded like it might be easy money. It had to beat selling mail-order organic turkeys, at any rate. She sat back, lit a cigarette and scanned the words once more:

  ‘Actors required for living tableaux, prestigious central London store, December.’

  Dinah couldn’t imagine what a ‘living tableau’ might be, but the term intrigued her, somehow conjuring up decadent scenarios in her mind’s eye. It sounded like it might even be fun. Taking a long drag on her cigarette, she reached for her mobile in her coat pocket and, glancing back at the newspaper, punched in the number and secured herself an audition for the following week.

  Two months later she was being frisked by a handsome security guard at the staff entrance of Paley’s. It felt strange, going behind the scenes of this upmarket department store where she had spent so many hours browsing the rails of designer clothes she couldn’t afford, or ogling exotic goodies in the food hall. Almost immediately, a lanky, bug-eyed girl with blonde hair slicked back into a supermodel-esque ponytail introduced herself:

  ‘Erin March,’ she said. ‘I’m in charge of window displays. If you come this way, you can meet the others.’

  She strode purposefully across the room, in a corner of which a gaggle of young men and women stood chatting. Even if Dinah hadn’t known it, she would have recognised them a mile off as fellow aspiring actors – markedly more attractive, in the main, than the usual run of mortals, they had the studied, rather self-conscious gestures and overloud voices common to thesps.

  She turned to Erin. ‘How will we be assigned?’ she said.

  The girl shrugged. ‘This first evening we suggest you go in random pairs, to whatever window takes your fancy – first-come, first-served. We did intend to make a detailed plan, but it never happened.’

  Dinah’s eyes moved over the assembled party. Should she move in now, she wondered: find someone who looked her kind of person and scoop them up? Or should she be a little more relaxed, just go with the flow and see who she ended up with?

  ‘Depending on how that works out,’ she heard Erin continue, ‘you’ll either stay with the same person in the same window, stay with them but change window, or there’ll just be a huge swap around to keep things fresh.’ She flicked at a loose scrap of varnish on the end of one of her talons. ‘The important thing,’ she concluded, ‘obviously, is that you don’t get bored.’

  Dinah nodded. She’d been excited about this ever since the audition, when they’d explained to her that Paley’s was planning special Christmas window displays featuring live models in place of mannequins. It wasn’t to be a living tableau in the strictest sense of the word. Dinah had looked that up on the Internet in the interim and discovered that it was a translation of a French term, tableau vivant, denoting theatrically posed groups who don’t move or speak during the display, as if they were in a painting or a photograph. It had been popular just prior to Edwardian times, both in upper-class drawing rooms and proper theatres, and sometimes – using naked or semi-naked actresses – as an erotic entertainment at private clubs or fairground sideshows.

  No:in Paley’s displays the actors would move and talk, as if they were in their own living rooms or in bars or nightclubs. Basically, Dinah had decided, she would get paid to sit around doing bugger all for entire evenings, dressed in designer gear, some of which she might even get to keep afterwards. It was the kind of kooky job she loved.

  Erin clapped her hands to snare the attention of the small crowd.

  ‘If you could please separate out into guys and girls,’ she rasped, ‘there are clothes here waiting to be chosen. Find something you like and then, when you’re dressed, select a partner with the same kind of look – casual with casual, couture with couture, and so on. That’s how we’ll play it this evening at least.’

  Dinah stepped up to one of the rails, picked out a silver Versace mini-dress. She had little interest in fashion, and almost invariably wore blue or black jeans teamed with a dark polo-neck sweater. But tonight she thought: To hell with it. This might not be the Adelphi, but if she was going out there to play her West End role, she might as well try to lose herself within it.

  As she was turning away from the rail with her hanger, she felt a hand at her elbow.

  ‘Dinah,’ came a familiar voice. ‘It’s been yonks.’

  ‘Suzy!’ she exclaimed. ‘How are you?’

  They kissed each other lightly on the cheeks, established that they hadn’t seen each other in about five years, since graduating from Goldsmiths, and agreed that, yes, didn’t time fly?

  ‘If you haven’t chosen a partner yet,’ said Suzy, ‘why not come with me? I’m sure we’ve got plenty to catch up on.’

  Dinah readily agreed: she’d always liked Suzy and often regretted that they hadn’t stayed in contact. Happily, since Suzy had picked out a slinky black Moschino dress, the pair were sartorially compatible. She followed her friend over to a corner, where they changed and checked their belongings in with Erin’s assistant. Then they, together with their fellow actors, followed Erin out through the shop.

  At the front of the store, Erin drew back a dark curtain behind one of the perfumery counters and gestured inside.

  ‘How about you two first?’ she said, jutting her chin towards Dinah and Suzy. ‘Versace and Moschino would go great in here.�
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  The pair followed her in. A chaise longue stretched the length of the window, swathed in aubergine velvet and littered with cushions in chocolate-covered silk. In front of it was a low chrome and glass coffee table set with two margarita glasses full of a deep red liquid.

  ‘Pomegranate juice,’ said Erin at Dinah’s raised eyebrows and hopeful expression. ‘Sorry girls, but there’s no drinking on duty. Now, if you could just drape yourselves elegantly over the chaise longue and look as if you’re guests at a glamorous cocktail party, that would be fabulous. I’ll check in with you later.’

  She let the curtain drop behind her on her way out, and Dinah and Suzy looked self-consciously out at the shoppers streaming up Regent Street. A few of them had already noticed the girls and were shooting them quizzical glances.

  ‘So is that really it?’ said Suzy. ‘We just plonk ourselves down and chat away for a few hours?’

  Dinah let herself tumble back onto the chaise longue, glad that she wouldn’t have to stand a moment longer in the Perspex stilettos she’d chosen to match her outfit. Suzy plumped herself next to her and reached for the glasses on the table.

  ‘Cheers!’ she said with a little peal of delighted laughter. ‘This is the life, huh?’

  Dinah was already giggling: as her friend had leant forwards, her not-inconsiderable cleavage had spilt forth, and already a small fan club had congregated at the window – a group of three or four teenage boys, ties loose, rucksacks pulling their school blazers out of kilter.

  ‘Christ,’ said Suzy, when she saw where Dinah was looking. ‘That didn’t take long, did it? I don’t think I’ll be wearing this little number again tomorrow, somehow.’

  They didn’t need the margaritas, as it turned out: within an hour the two were drunk on talk and laughter and were wondering aloud how they could have ever drifted apart. After two hours they had declared themselves best friends and were talking about the possibility of sharing a flat together. At eight they clocked off and made up for the fruit juice with a bottle of red in a wine bar just off Carnaby Street.

  Afterwards, as she jumped on a bus at Piccadilly Circus, Dinah waved her friend goodbye.

  ‘Roll on tomorrow night!’ she shouted as Suzy threaded back into the mêlée of Christmas shoppers.

  The second evening, Erin declared she had decided that everyone must swap both partners and windows, ‘to keep things interesting’. Dinah was disappointed, but the feeling dissipated when the most gorgeous of the boys in the group – and there were a lot of gorgeous guys – approached and asked if he could team up with her.

  ‘Why not?’ she said, smiling coolly, but her pussy pulsed a little. She looked over at Suzy, who was gazing at her enviously.

  ‘Threesome?’ Dinah saw her mouth, and she had to purse her lips hard to stop herself laughing out loud.

  She was led, together with her new partner – whose name, she learnt, was Rupert – to one of the large corner windows. She was dressed a bit more casually this time, in a black rubber dress that ended just above the knee, with short sleeves and a high neckline. Judging that it was posh clubbing gear, she had matched it, with Erin’s consent, with some black designer trainers, Rupert was wearing brown leather trousers and a simple white shirt, open at his muscular throat. The trousers were a very snug fit, and Dinah was embarrassed to keep finding herself sneaking glances at his ample crotch.

  This time the window contained a bar area at the back, in front of which stood two white-leather stools. In the centre a mirror ball revolved slowly. Several people were already almost pressing up against the pane of glass from the outside, peering inside curiously. Dinah pulled herself up on one of the stools and sipped from a highball glass of fruit juice.

  ‘So what have you been in I’d know?’ she heard Rupert ask, but before she had drawn breath to answer he had begun to reel off his own achievements.

  After half an hour, Dinah wanted nothing more than to go home. What Rupert had in the looks department didn’t translate into any form of personality, and she was bored. She’d counted the glitter ball around so many times she was dizzy, but she couldn’t look at Rupert’s smooth, tanned, glib face any more, and over and over in her mind she heard Erin’s admonition:

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t hold their stares – the punters’,’ she’d said. ‘Cause then you’ll laugh and it will all be over.’

  Dinah inspected her nails for the umpteenth time, wondering if she’d ever met anyone with an ego the size of Rupert’s. OK, she knew that thesps were a self-regarding bunch – it came with the territory. But this guy had talked of nothing but himself since they got in here: his walk-on parts, his role as an extra in a soap opera, his voiceover. It was driving her berserk. Suzy was welcome to him.

  She shifted her weight on the stool, jiggled her shoulders to loosen them. It was uncomfortable here, too, and she pined for the spacious chaise longue with its deep cushions. For a moment she closed her eyes and succumbed to blackness as she moved her head from side to side. It was when she opened them that she saw him for the first time, eyes blazing into hers.

  Afterwards, she realised how strange that was, given the number of people who had been standing much closer to the window. He, by contrast, was a good twenty paces away, leaning against a streetlamp, a curious half-smile flitting about his lips.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him, and Rupert’s words became mere background noise. In comparison with her colleague, the observer was plain, physically unremarkable, with regular features set in a pale complexion, and clad in jeans and a dark corduroy jacket. But something about the way he was looking at her made her suddenly want to touch herself in her most secret places.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Rupert’s voice jolted her back to the display, to her role, to her job.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m just – I need the loo.’

  She stood up, pushed her way through the curtain, heart pounding. What was happening to her? she wondered as she rushed for the staff toilets, where she doused her face with cold water. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Was it someone she knew but hadn’t recognised right off? If not, why was he staring at her that way, with that weird smile on his face? And what was it about him that agitated her so?

  She spun round, marched into one of the toilet cubicles and, sliding the bolt behind her, yanked the rubber dress up around her waist and thrust her hand into her panties. Her pussy was sodden, had been for a while now, and her fingers slid easily over her aching clit and the frill of her lips to her hole. She slipped two fingers inside, then three; with her thumbs she massaged the hard little bead of her clitoris.

  Her legs began to tremble as she felt her climax approach. Turning around, she lowered herself onto the toilet lid, then raised both legs and pushed her feet against the door to steady herself. By now she cared little whether there was anyone in one of the other cubicles: her desire to be sated was all-consuming. As she felt all resistance give, she threw back her head and yelled out as pleasure jagged through her like an electrical storm.

  She’d gone back – she’d had to – but he wasn’t there any more. Perhaps, she told herself, he’d never been there at all. Perhaps her brain, desperate for relief from Rupert, had made him up just to give her something else to think about.

  Still, the orgasm-swoon was still with her as she climbed onto the stool again. It pleasantly numbed her, so that Rupert’s noise was just a susurration beside her, like the sound of the sea. The remaining hour and a half passed relatively quickly, and then Dinah caught the bus home to Finsbury Park and dreamt of eyes, thousands of pairs of eyes, all of them on her. When she woke the following morning, she felt a strange mixture of fear and elation.

  That night, Erin announced that, having had chance to get to know all of her ‘living dolls’ and observe them interacting, she had come up with some pairings of her own. The following evening, it would revert to choice. She’d chop and change at will, after that, to keep things ‘buzzing’.

>   Dinah was looking out for Suzy when Erin led a tiny Japanese-looking girl over to her.

  ‘Dinah, this is Michiko,’ she said. ‘I’d like you two to take the Babyfoot window tonight. So I’ll need you in jeans and trainers – there’s some Diesel and Pumas over by the rails.’

  The girls changed and headed for the window. For the first time since she’d started, Dinah wasn’t to be on one of the main windows facing out onto Regent Street but on the side street running left of the building. She bit her lip: she imagined there’d be less chance of seeing the man again there.

  Almost as soon as the thought had presented itself, she shook her head. What was she talking about? A passer-by had caught her eye but there was nothing to make her think he would return – unless, of course, he always walked that way home. She bit her lip again.

  The Japanese girl was ducking under the curtain, holding it open behind her. Dinah had already established that her colleague had a limited command of English, and she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to repeat her experience of the previous evening with the garrulous Rupert. She smiled back at Michiko as she stepped into the window and positioned herself behind the table football machine so that she was the one who faced the street. Just in case, she said to herself. You never know.

  It was fortuitous that they had the table football, as Dinah and Michiko soon found that they didn’t have a great deal to talk about even taking the language barrier into consideration. They just didn’t hit it off, somehow. Not like Dinah did with Suzy. She wondered which window her friend was in, whether she was having a good laugh with somebody else, and felt the pang of a little girl missing out on a birthday party.

  Every so often, the pair would halt their game and sit on the brown suede sofa behind it and face the spectators gathered at the window, taking care not to catch any of their eyes. It seemed that the novelty value of these live window displays would never wear off; even positioned where they were on this side street, Dinah and Michiko drew a constant crowd. Scrutinise it as she might, though, Dinah didn’t see the face that she sought.