Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Monica Belle
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Copyright
Sultry and mischievous Angela McKie loves dressing up in fetish clothing inspired by Victorian decadence. Perfecting an air of occult seciness, she enjoys teasing men to distraction. She attracts the lustful attentions of two very different people: Stephen Byrne is a serious young politician with a bright future; Michael Merrick is a cartoonist for a horror comic. Both want her and set out to get her, but quickly discover they have bitten off more than they can chew when they allow themselves to be suduced by the maverick Ms McKie.
Monica Belle is an Oxbridge graduate and the author of several successful Black Lace novels, including Black Lipstick Kisses, Bound In Blue, Noble Vices, Office Perks, Pagan Heat, The Boss, The Choice, To Seek a Master, Valentina’s Rules, Wild By Nature and Wild in the Country.
Noble Vices
Valentina’s Rules
Wild in the Country
THERE WAS A man in my graveyard.
He had to be over six foot, because he was at eye level with the inscription on Lisbet Stride’s tomb, and I have to look up a little to read it. It was hard to pick out detail from forty feet above his head, but he was slender, pale, with a mop of floppy black hair, and dressed entirely in black, save for a tie-pin that glinted in the brilliant sunlight: intriguing.
For a while I was content to watch, simply admiring the lithe, easy way he moved among the monuments and wondering what he was up to. He had a small pad, and would pause occasionally to sketch a detail: the grotesque black iron faces on the gate of the Braidault family mausoleum, the rusting semaphore installed by Major Inkerman Goodwell in case he woke up, the entwined angels lifting Lisbet Stride to heaven. Very intriguing.
I still wasn’t going to do anything about it, not until he’d finished drawing the green man over the main door and began to investigate the corrugated iron sheets blocking it off. If he came inside, Lilitu was going to get him, and he was much too good looking for that. I had to stop him, but that was a problem. All I had on was a layer of factor 50. No clothes, no shoes, no make-up. Lilitu would have finished him before I was ready, bones and all. I pulled my head back a little, making sure all he could see was my face and a lot of black hair, and called down.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
He looked up, startled for just an instant until he realised that there was a woman’s head among the row of gargoyles on the parapet. I smiled. He spoke.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘My dog will attack you.’
‘Ah. What sort of dog is he?’
‘She is a Doberman.’
‘Ah.’
There was a pause as he stepped back from the sheet of corrugated iron he had been trying to pull free. When he spoke again his tone was rather different, enquiring.
‘I was hoping to do some drawing inside. There are supposed to be some heads on the rood screen, which is the high wooden partition . . .’
‘I know what a rood screen is.’
‘Well, this is Victorian High Gothic, with seven heads representing . . .’
‘Representing the seven deadly sins, carved by Isaac Foyle. I know.’
‘You do? Maybe you’ve heard of me then. I’m Michael Merrick. I draw for Illuminatus, Black Dog.’
‘Cool. Don’t move.’
I drew back. This guy I had to meet, but not stark naked. Stark naked was better than casual, so he was just going to have to wait, and I was hoping he would. I’d seen his art, beautifully drawn pictures that pulled you right into the page, usually dark, sometimes disturbing, occasionally arousing, always immaculate. I’d read his work too, and loved the way he could turn a conventional idea completely on its head. People like that don’t turn up at All Angels every day. Graffiti writers maybe, but not bona fide Gothic artists.
In two minutes I was down in the vestry, my ‘flat’, once reserved for priests and choristers to don their robes, now just right for me and Lilitu. The deal is simple. I keep out the vandals and taggers, the drunks and junkies, the lovers and perverts: anyone else who thinks an abandoned church is a good place to disport themselves. In return I live for free, company water provided.
In twenty minutes I was dressed, heeled black boots, black fishnets, black skirt, black belt, black top, black collar, black gloves, even little black silk panties. After all, you never know, and the idea of seducing a man only to have him discover I’m in granny pants is too much. I decided against a bra, determined to tease at the very least. A touch of rose attar served for scent.
In twenty minutes I was made up, my eyes large and dark, the lids touched with deep green, my lips glossy black, my face pale. For jewellery I went for silver set with green tourmaline, not my birthstone but a match to my eyes, and not too much, just four rings, a necklace and ear-rings, pentacles and black suns. A green lavabell for my tummy button and a plain stud for my tongue were the final touches.
I left by the rectory door to find Michael still at the front, sketching. Rather than speak to him, I perched myself on the flat top of Eliza Dobson’s tomb and rested my chin in one hand, waiting. He must have sensed me, because he turned almost immediately, smiling as he fixed me with piercing steel-grey eyes. I let him come to me, unmoving as I took him in.
He was certainly six foot, cool and handsome, but with his loose hair and the large amethyst tie-pin giving him a faintly louche touch. I’d thought he was about my age, but a trace of line at his eyes and mouth suggested a little more, while he certainly seemed to have the confidence of maturity, arrogance even. He spoke as he reached me.
‘Here lieth the mortal remains of Eliza Dobson, 1827 to 1895. You look remarkably good for a woman dead over a hundred years.’
‘She would not have been amused. Eliza Dobson, spinster of this parish and a noted philanthropist dedicated to the cleanliness and chastity of London’s poor. Quite mad too; apparently she used to sit the drunks and dollymops in leg irons while she lectured them on their vices.’
He nodded thoughtfully.
‘Are you going to let me inside? Introduce yourself maybe?’
‘I’m Dusk.’
He gave a nod, maybe of appreciation, maybe sceptical. I was not going to disillusion him. Angela I keep in reserve for the mundane. I slid from the top of the tomb and walked to the main door, not wishing to take him through the vestry and shatter any hope I might have of maintaining my mystique. He followed cautiously, a sensible choice, as the moment I’d slid the lower section of corrugated iron aside Lilitu’s toothy snout poked out, followed by the rest of her. Her eyes immediately fixed on Michael, but I’d taken a firm grip on her collar and begun to scratch her behind the ears.
‘Michael, meet Lilitu. Lilitu, meet Michael, who is not prey.’
Michael stepped a little closer.
‘You named your dog after a Babylonian demoness?’
‘It suits her.’
‘Well, yes.’
I ducked in through the hole, pulling Lilitu behind me. Michael followed, into the cool dimness of the porch and then the nave, to look around with an expression of rapture. I let him take it all in, and for all my familiarity it was hard not to stare myself. Above us great Gothic arches rose to bosses carved as angels, demons and green men high above us. The shattered stained glass produced a dozen rich colours, with bright streamers of sunlight breaking through the holes to illuminate dust motes in the still air. Ranks of decaying pews lined the nave, with the striking black and white checkerboard of the floor tiles now spattered with pigeon droppings. Nearby, the arch that led to the tower and crypt, the interior chapels and tombs, each individual, each familiar.
‘Wonderful.’
He didn’t speak the word, but sighed it. I immediately felt a touch of pride, for all that I had contributed nothing to the place, and only held its picturesque decay in check. It was still mine, at least for now, and it was impossible not to feel good when a man I had so long admired for his Goth art seemed awestruck by where I lived. To have him awestruck by me would have been better still.
If he was, he wasn’t showing it, very cool an instant after he’d got over the initial image. He didn’t speak as he began to explore, taking in everything, and occasionally shaking his head in delight at some particularly fine detail, and also pieces of picturesque decay. Only at the sight of the scaffolding inside the tower did he frown, and he spoke only to ask if I had a torch so that he could explore the crypt. I obliged as best I could, with two of the big altar candles from the vestry, and finally found something I could say without looking silly as we descended the stair.
‘Don’t expect to be too impressed. It got a make-over sometime in the 60s, to try and bring in some money by hiring it out for meetings and stuff. It’s pretty awful.’
He had stopped at the bottom of the stairs, peering in at the decaying hardboard facings, the broken fluorescent light fittings, the false ceiling sagging down to reveal black gaps. A plastic chair lay on its side at the centre of the space; otherwise it was empty, our candles barely reaching the far end. Michael shook his head, but not in delight.
‘How could anyone do this? It’s vandalism, pure and simple.’
‘I agree.’
‘Some people have no sense of history, or aesthetics for that matter. Do you mind if I do some drawing? Not here, of course.’
‘Go ahead, whatever you like.’
We left the crypt and he immediately sat down on the charity box by the door and began to sketch, his eyes flicking from the paper to the body of the church. I watched as the picture grew, soft lines, then hard, an image building quickly on the page. He was capturing the atmosphere with extraordinary skill, maybe even exaggerating it, adding melancholy to the angelic faces, malevolence to the demonic, infusing the green men with an eerie mystique. With the main image in rough, he began to add details around the margin of the page, the faces of imps and angels, of beasts both wild and mythical. I wasn’t going to interrupt him, but he finally spoke of his own accord, still drawing.
‘This is perfect. I’ve a commission for a piece, the Goat of Mendes it’s going to be called. There’s a cabal of Satanists attempting to summon the spirits of an earlier, Regency, cabal.’
‘Cool.’
‘I can just see this as the interior of the ruined temple, the one the earlier cabal used. OK, so the period’s wrong, but for me it’s visual effect that matters.’
‘I can see that. I love your work. I’ve got a poster of yours, with a demoness and an angel fighting over a soul.’
‘“The Balanced Scale”? That was years ago, one of my first commercial pieces. I’ve never been that happy with it.’
‘It’s great! Just so . . .’
I stopped. I’d been going to say ‘erotic’, because I’d often seen myself as the beautiful female demoness in the picture, and let myself go over the fantasy more than once. Admitting to masturbating over his drawings seemed a bit much, but I felt a stab of annoyance for holding back as I finished, somewhat lamely.
‘. . . evocative.’
He went on: ‘Thanks. It certainly sold well. I was exploring ideas of good and evil then, trying to show how sometimes it can be a matter of which side you’re on.’
‘I’ve read your essay on evil forces in science fantasy, the one where you show the story as propaganda by the good guys, because they won so they get to tell the story, with the bad guys as defeated rebels. It gave me a whole new perspective.’
He grinned, flattered.
‘It was a bit tongue in cheek, but yeah, it works, for Tolkein especially. I feel that’s been done though, and I want to move away from it, to take a less black and white perspective, even an irrational one.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I want to get away from the idea of building a main character to suit the reader’s preconceptions, which is what the magazines always want. Now I’ve got a bit of a name for myself I can afford to be somewhat bolder, to make people think, even disturb them.’
‘I think you manage that already!’
‘I try. I didn’t in that sense though. I’m doing one at the moment, where my main character’s a typical anarchist eco-warrior type, but at the end he’ll turn out to have been telling the story as he looks back at how he came to be an executive in the very corporation he tried to defeat. That’s when his ex-buddies burst in, but I’ll leave the ending open.’
‘Well cool.’
‘It’s not new. Have you read Clockwork Orange? Not seen the film, but read the book?’
‘Sure.’
He shrugged, looking a touch embarrassed, as if he had revealed himself as a charlatan, and went back to work. I felt myself warm to him, something in addition to simple physical attraction and the fascination of meeting somebody I admired. For a moment he had let his defences down, and it prompted me to do the same, allowing my mind to wander to more intimate possibilities.
As the drawing grew he paid more and more attention to the margins, filling them with fantastical details. The picture was centred on the nearest of the great roof pillars, but he had left it as a faint outline, despite the real thing being decorated with a column of grotesque little faces, which I’d have thought irresistible. At last he spoke again.
‘I might even make this a cover. What do you think?’
‘Sure . . . great . . .’
‘It just needs a focus, perhaps not one of the characters, but something to get the essence of the story across.’
He turned to me with a disarming grin.
‘Would you mind posing? You really look the part.’
‘Sure. How do you want me?’
I’d tried to be cool, hiding my instant rush of girlish glee at being asked to pose for him, but my voice had cracked a little as I answered. He’d really got me flustered, in no time too. As he pondered my question, my wicked side was hoping he’d suggest I would be best naked – for all that my shy side was dreading exactly that. It felt nicer to be naked, shy or brazen. Finally he spoke.
‘I’ll have you as a spirit, I think, brooding on her fate.’
‘I can do brooding.’
‘Great. Lean against the pillar. Put your cheek next to the stone . . . yes, like that. Raise your right arm. No, with your palm flat against the stone . . . yes. Put your left hand at the front of the pillar, fingers splayed, as if you’re caressing the stone. Yes, perfect, just under a face. Now closer, and stretch up a little, onto your toes.’
‘Like this?’
‘Yes, ideal, but it wouldn’t work if you were even a fraction less slender.’
Flattery, which from him nudged the balance of my feelings further towards taking my clothes off, at least some of them.
‘My clothes don’t spoil your line, do they?’
‘Don’t worry. I can work around that.’
He began to draw, his eyes narrowed in concentration. I stayed still, horny, wanting to impress, yet feeling something of a fluffy girlie for doing so. That’s just not me. I like to take charge, to be the one getting into another’s head, the desirable one. He should have been the one getting slowly steamed up, not me. Bollocks to modesty. Sometimes a girl just has to do it.
‘It would be better with my top off, wouldn’t it?’
Before he could answer I’d pulled my top up, and over my head, leaving my necklaces. I resumed my pose, now with my bare breasts pressed to the cool stone, giving him no more than a brief glimpse of my nipples, hopefully not enough to show just how perky they were. His response was a cool nod, but he had gone ever so slightly pink. Again he began to draw, his concentration more intense than ever, only to stop suddenly and speak.
‘There, I don’t think we can improve on that until I’m in the studio. Thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’
I stepped away from the pillar, pointedly indifferent to my partial nudity. He watched me come towards him, calm and appreciative, without a trace of embarrassment as his eyes moved down from my face. I stepped close, allowing the side of my breast to press onto the lean muscle of his arm as I inspected the picture.
It was me, but transformed into an impossibly slender creature, half merged with the pillar and with the tiles of the floor, naked beneath a gossamer shroud. The contours of my body, the lines of the pillar and the black and white check of the floor blended, light and shade. Even my hair seemed to flow into the surroundings, my face alone distinct, with an expression hard to read, maybe grieving, maybe remorseful, maybe defiant. At first glance my breast had seemed to show clearly, yet looking closer it was hard to pick the lines from those of my shroud, while another fold might or might not have suggested the lips of my pussy.
It was beautiful and flattering, yet I felt as if he’d stripped me bare, and again caught the need to exert myself. I stepped away, wondering what he’d do if I simply pushed him down on the tiles and ravished him. My wicked side wanted exactly that – him inside me as I rode him on the floor, amusing myself with his body, taking orgasm after orgasm until he was begging to be allowed to do the same. Drunk, I might just have done it, even if I did have a suspicion he’d have rolled me over after a minute or two. Sober, my shy side came to the fore and I found myself walking away from him, towards the rood screen.
He came behind, with Lilitu trotting after, now as seemingly indifferent to his presence as Michael was to my nakedness. The rood screen was extravagant even by the standards of the Victorian craze for the high Gothic, the seven faces yet more so. Isaac Foyle was said to have taken a cup of laudanum each day before beginning work, and I could believe it. The rood itself was unusually macabre in detail, and supported above eight arches rising to over twice my height, the central two joined. Each was fantastically carved, the pillars six slender caryatids, supposed saints but looking more like demons, with their hair rising in asymmetric coils from which six of the faces peered. The seventh, wrath, peered out from among flames, directly beneath the rood itself, a Hell to the Heaven above.
I admired them as Michael began to sketch, immediately impressed by his understanding of what had been going on in Isaac Foyle’s head. His wrath projected fury, hatred, fear and pain, surely enough to terrify any sinner, but among the others there were hints of less orthodox attitudes, or so it seemed to me. Pride and avarice flanked wrath: the one a long, haughty face, the great hooked nose lifted high in disdain, pompous but also comic; the other shining with greed and normal enough save that it was known to be a caricature of his own father. Sloth showed a somnolent, drooping expression, the least human of the seven, but had one eye cocked slightly open, as if the slumber were merely a pretence. Envy radiated spite and yearning, but was shown with a necklace of sovereigns and skin marked with the ravages of disease. Gluttony was huge, twice the size of the others, a great moon face with bulging cheeks and pig’s eyes, food running out over the lower lip. Lust was finest of all, a beautiful female face, the mouth slightly open to reveal tiny, pointed fangs, twin horns protruding from among luxurious curls. I had always wanted to be her, at least to have her fearsome sexual aggression, something I imagined Foyle, and his audience, had feared the most.
Michael had never seen them before, and was fascinated, sketching the whole screen then each face individually. I watched, delighted, yet soon biting down a growing sense of pique as he maintained his indifference to my half-naked state. Yet to dress would have broken the moment, and I stayed that way, as if it were quite unimportant. Only when he finished the last page of his sketch book did he stop and turn to me, in doing so revealing his watch. It was ten minutes to four, far later than I had realised. At four o’clock I had to be at the community centre, urgently. He smiled, and reached out, to very gently run one finger up the curve of my breast to the nipple. I felt myself flush hot, and my mouth came open in reaction as instinctive as the sudden hardening of my nipples.
His smile grew a little broader, arrogant and certain as his fingers fanned out across my breast, each one flicking over the nipple. I stood still, letting him touch me, although I wanted to throw him to the floor, unleash his penis and feed him into me; to hold him down as I rode him, to make him beg for release, to punish him for treating me so casually and for being so damn cool. I didn’t, but gently detached his hand from my breast, speaking as I did so.
‘Sorry. I have to go. I mean, I’m late already, for something really important. Sorry.’
It sounded pathetic, the reaction of a scared and insecure virgin, but my excuse was genuine, for all I badly wanted sex with him. My protests didn’t stop him either, and his voice was wonderfully gentle as he took me in his arms, his fingers going to the nape of my neck and the curve of my bottom. I pulled back, embarrassed and thoroughly cross with myself as I tried to explain.
‘I’m sorry, not now, Michael. I mean . . . I’d . . . can we take a rain-check on this? I really do have to go.’
‘Now? Really?’
There was just a touch of temper in his voice, no more than that, but it was there. I shrugged and kissed him, then made a dash for the vestry door, praying he wouldn’t follow. If he did I would have given in and had him then and there. As it was he simply slipped a card behind the carved ear of St Peter. His voice followed me as I closed the door.
‘Call round if you want to.’
I was really cursing as I struggled on a new top and substituted my boots for my rollerblades, angry, bitter and very cross with myself. It was not the mood I needed to be in. We had a new MP, Stephen Byrne, some up-and-coming junior minister determined to ‘do his bit for the community’. Being a politician, and therefore both soulless and a busybody, he was not content to allow All Angels to continue its elegant decay. Instead he was proposing a scheme to bid for Lottery money to have it converted into a community hall, in which people would play bingo and watch big-screen football. It was unthinkable.
Unfortunately it was all too likely to become reality. He was just the sort of person to get it done, pushy, smarmy and above all self-righteous. I hadn’t met him, yet, but I’d read enough, and seen his fatuous physog staring out from enough local papers. He was a clone, undoubtedly manufactured in a factory somewhere in the Midlands, handsome but as cold as a fish: grey-haired, grey-suited and grey-minded.
I wasn’t at all sure what I could do, when I was sure to be a lone voice against the creeping blandness. Even the local anarchic types weren’t likely to support me, not when I’d threatened to set Lilitu on so many of them. My only real hope was that there would be objections to the desecration of the interior because it was Grade Two listed, but the council were firmly on his side. It looked hopeless, and I even considered making a detour through the market to see if I could pick up a few rotten tomatoes. It would not have helped my cause.
My intention had been to spend a couple of hours on the roof to achieve real calm, then dress sensibly, or rather, dress as he would expect a sensible young woman to. At the hall I’d have done my best intellectual young student impression and put a clear and well thought-out case for the preservation of the rood screen, the pew ends, the panelling behind the altar and other fine details of Victorian Gothic carving. Thanks to Michael Merrick and my own capricious nature, I was now going to have to make my case as mad Goth girl on rollerblades, not an image a stuffy politician was likely to be impressed by.
The community centre was as bland as All Angels was glorious, a concrete box built where a string of bombs had taken out three terraced houses in a row, dull and unimaginative as Stephen Byrne’s ideas, a temple to conformity and dumbing down. It was also only two streets away, but even with my blades on I managed to be late, pushing through the heavy double doors with my head full of determination, to find it very nearly empty.
Well, not that empty, but it was a big hall and the dozen or so people there looked pretty lost among the ranks of bright-red plastic chairs. Most were nondescript suits, local councillors or something, and they were milling around any old how. A group of three were together at the far end of the room. One had the look of a site manager or something, in a blue boiler suit with a big bunch of keys in one hand. The second was a smart young woman, looking somewhat offended. The third was Stephen Byrne.
I was either very late or very early, because I’d got the time wrong, because Michael Merrick’s watch had been wrong, because the meeting had been changed, whatever. It didn’t matter. I was going to speak my mind anyway, even if a firm decision had been taken. Ignoring the caretaker and the woman who was presumably a secretary, I rolled straight up to Stephen Byrne. He fixed me with a bland smile, just as one blade slipped sideways on the polished floor, to put me in a whirl of arms and legs and hair, clutching madly at the air. Then I sat down hard on my bottom, right in front of him, legs splayed, skirt up, the crotch of my black silk knickers on show.
My face was burning as he helped me up, but I let him, feeling a complete idiot and very sorry for myself. I could see he was trying not to laugh as he stood back, and it was impossible not to smile in response. He mastered himself very quickly though, and as he did, so did I. When he spoke, it was with exactly the neutral, carefully controlled tone I had expected.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine. Thanks.’
I’d tried to sound cold and formal, but it had just come out as pitiable. It was not a good start, and worse for the unexpected effect the brief touch of surprisingly hard muscle beneath his suit had had on my already keyed-up nerves. I struggled to get a grip on myself anyway, remembering that was exactly what he was, a suit, and everything that went with it. As I met his eyes I realised that the effect of rollerblading all the way from the church in about a minute flat was beginning to tell on my mascara, but I spoke anyway.
‘Have I missed the meeting about All Angels Church in Coburg Road, or has it been postponed?’
‘Neither. This is it.’
‘It is?’
‘There is a core of people here, but yes, I had anticipated more interest.’
So had I. I looked around the half-empty hall. He went on.
‘You know who I am, I suspect?’
‘Yes. Stephen Byrne MP. I wanted to talk to you about the project for All Angels.’
‘I would be delighted, of course. May I ask your name?’
‘Angela McKie.’
‘Well, Angela, as you no doubt know, I am a strong supporter of regeneration in the local community, with a specific focus on those most in need. In the case of All Angels, we intend to provide an important multicultural, multi-able facility, something I’m sure you appreciate as a young woman living in the borough, and which . . .’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t. I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do with All Angels. It’s all bollocks and you know it is. All you want are votes, really, and to get them you’re prepared to sacrifice a unique interior, which is listed, and to replace it with . . . with this!’
I swung an arm out to take in the plain, square hall, with its flat surfaces and right-angles, ranks of identical plastic chairs and stark fluorescent light. My intentions of remaining unemotional had given way in seconds, far too weak for the feelings inside me. For a moment he looked genuinely surprised, then he went on, his tone no different than before.
‘I see. As a young person I would have hoped for your support in this matter, but yes, I can see that there are valid objections from the perspective of architecture and heritage. Still, these are really matters we should be discussing as a group . . .’
He stopped. I’d leant forward to massage my ankle, which hurt from my fall, and it took me a moment to realise that when I’d snatched a top from my pile of clean washing I had made a bad choice. He could see right down the front. I straightened up quickly, blushing again and feeling a bigger idiot than at first. He had gone ever so slightly pink, but managed to carry on.
‘Here, let me help you to a seat.’
I let him take my arm and steer me to a seat in the front row of the chairs set out in front of the stage. The efficient looking secretarial type had finished talking to the caretaker and was arranging notes on a lectern, which the other people there took as a cue, seating themselves in twos and threes in the first few rows of seats. Stephen Byrne took the stand and gave a brief but unctuous self-introduction before beginning on his speech.
It was complete bollocks-speak, full of phrases like ‘maximisation of utility resource’, ‘holistic urban progress’ and ‘zero tolerance of the brown-field wastage cycle’. For a while they just let him speak, presumably either because they agreed with him or because they couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but finally a man in a buff-coloured suit and a lilac tie managed to get a word in.
‘Do you feel that the site is appropriate with respect to local transport infrastructure, particularly in consideration of differently abled access buses?’
They spoke the same language. Stephen Byrne considered a moment, consulted the efficient-looking woman, then answered.
‘The intention is to take due consideration of the needs of all sectors of the community while prioritising those designated in the council’s priority target consultation paper. Indeed, the scheme is designed around those specific prioritisation issues. However, as this is an area of high urban density we are obliged to optimise . . .’
I’d had enough. I interrupted, struggling to exert whatever authority I could muster after more or less flashing him.
‘No, you’re not obliged to optimise, or prioritise, or anything! In ten years time it won’t make any difference at all, much less a hundred. We’ll all be dead, but All Angels would still be there. Can’t you just leave it, for once!’
He began to speak again, some new piece of drivel, more meaningless even than before. I struggled to make sense of it, but before I could get a sensible answer together somebody else began and the discussion went off on a tangent. Twice more I attempted to put my objections across, and twice more he gave me a piece of spiel before neatly avoiding the real issue. The third time I tried somebody else spoke over me, and inevitably it was his question that got answered. I could see how they thought of me, as some pushy kid full of ideals that didn’t work in the real world, their real world. I gave up at that, but determined to speak to Stephen Byrne alone after the meeting. Then at least I would have a chance to say my piece, even if it obviously wasn’t going to do me any good at all.
For another half-hour they droned on, not one single other person questioning the scheme from any but a practical viewpoint. When they finally did finish, the secretary tried to hustle him away, but I had already rolled up to the lectern and short of cutting me dead he had to acknowledge me. I got a bland smile from him, and the secretary was about to make an excuse when the caretaker tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and I had my moment.
‘Look, can’t you see that what you’re doing is . . . is just pointless. You can have your community hall anywhere, but All Angels is unique. Foyle’s rood screen alone is worth more than a thousand faceless community centres, and the pew ends, and . . .’
‘Nevertheless, we must consider these things in the light of modern community needs, particularly with respect to vulnerable minorities such as the differently abled. As I was saying earlier, the All Angels project allows us the possibility of installing state of the art accessibility . . .’
‘Oh please! What, do you think you’re going to make me feel guilty? If you want your “state of the art accessibility”, build new, and you can do just as you like!’
‘Unfortunately the prioritisation for brown-field sites does not allow for special projects. The ministry directive . . .’
‘So you’re going to tear the heart out of All Angels because of some here-today-gone-tomorrow government directive? Hang on, does “state of the art accessibility” mean you’re going to tear the floor up? You are, aren’t you?’
‘Well, yes, but surely the floor is of no particular importance?’
‘Of no importance? Don’t you realise you’ll be committing desecration? The first priest of All Angels, Father James O’Donnell . . . he had his heart buried somewhere beneath that floor!’
‘Er . . . how unusual.’
‘Yes, very unusual, unique even, like the rest of it, and you want to turn it into some soulless box. Isn’t there anything I can say that will make you see common sense, just for once?’
He began to reply, another torrent of bollocks-speak, then caught himself. For a moment his eyes flicked to my chest, and lower, then back to my face. When he spoke again his tone was very different, more human.
‘Well, I can see you feel very strongly on this issue, Angela.’
‘I do.’
‘In the circumstances then I’d be happy to talk it over in detail, at the very least explain the good points of the project. You can make your own points, and who knows, you might just convince me. Perhaps I could buy you dinner?’
He was making a move on me, and it took a moment for the sheer cheek of it to sink in. It was outrageous, but I had to go. More likely than not he was just going to string me along in the hope of getting into my pants, but two can play at that game.
‘I’d love to, thank you.’
I gave him a little coy glance, sure that he would have an image of me as vulnerable, naïve and more than a little ditsy building up in his head. That was just how I wanted it, for the time being. Later on he would learn otherwise. I took the card he was offering me and gave him a shy smile as he helped me up from the chair.
‘Write your number on the back.’
‘I don’t have a phone. I’ll call.’
Rather than wait for the obvious question as to why I was the only person in the known universe, or East London anyway, not to have a mobile phone, I skated off, spinning as I reached the door. It was just fast enough to make my skirt lift and give him the briefest flash of stocking tops and sheer black knickers, and he was staring openly as I gave him a little wave, and left.
He thought he had me, or was going to, but I already had him, well and good. That was if I wanted him, but it was my choice, no question. It was impossible to keep the smile from my face as I skated back to All Angels, my mind full of the possibilities raised by the last few hours. It had been quite an afternoon. I’d shown two men my breasts, one intentionally, one not. Both were good looking even if one was a suit, and both wanted to see me again.
I could play it any way I wanted, have one, have both, have neither. Stephen I wasn’t sure about. I liked the game, which had an edge of danger, but he was just about old enough to be my dad. Michael I wanted, if only to break his cool and have him begging me for release. If he was still at All Angels I was going to do it too, because I was right in the mood.
He wasn’t; there was only Lilitu dozing in the shade of the sycamores, which made me more determined than ever. I’d run off, sure, but it was outrageous that he hadn’t bothered to wait. The idea of him lurking among the tombs, crazed with lust, really appealed, but I knew he wasn’t or Lilitu would have known. It was a nice idea anyway, and it stuck in my head as I went inside to take my blades off.
I could have come to him, cool and in control, just as he had been in the church. He would have lost his patience, deciding to masturbate over what might have been, in among the yews and sycamores behind the church, his cock thick and hard in his hand. I wouldn’t have spoken, but watched from close by, as silent as the wraith he had seen in me when I posed. He’d have been aching with frustrated lust, his eyes closed, picturing me in his mind, naked for him. I would have come forward, to take him in my hand, quite silent, never speaking as I eased him down to the dank earth, my mind heavy with the touch of the souls around me, mounted him, slid him into me . . .
It was going to be me taking out my own frustrated lust on myself if I wasn’t careful, and there was a wry smile on my face as I fixed sweet coffee and toast, the first thing I’d had since the morning. I had turned Michael on, obviously, for all his cool, and Stephen too. Both would be thinking of me, I was sure, imagining what might have been, and what might still be. Stephen’s fantasies I was sure would be quite plain, straight sex with him on top, maybe a little bondage or something else mildly kinky. Michael had imagination, and would want something dark, maybe with me in restraint, or something ritual, even a little vampirism, inspired by the fanged image on the rood screen.
The thought of expressing myself as Isaac Foyle’s lust to Michael was just too much. Foyle would be shocked, but I could commune later for atonement. For now I needed my head filled with thoughts of a live, hot-blooded man, and to come as he burned in my mind. By the time my coffee mug was empty I knew I had to do it. Nobody was going to catch me, not with Lilitu on guard, and I pulled my skirt up as I sank to the floor, kneeling, my knees wide apart, imagining myself on top of Michael, beneath the rood screen, about to feed him inside me. I lifted my top, freeing my breasts to the air, my necklaces suddenly cool against my skin, my nipples hard and sensitive as my fingers found them.