By Janet H Swinney
Navneen loved everything there was to love about women. Everything. He didn’t object to armpits, for example. Unlike many men, and many women for that matter, he didn’t think of them as zones of unwanted perspiration and offensive odour. When a woman raised her arms, revealing the secrets within those hollows, he always caught his breath. Whether what was hidden there was a coppice of auburn hair, a mat of dark curls or a mysteriously blank blue eye, he always felt gratitude. And if those hollows happened to reek of frying tarka, he relished things all the more. He would run his nose along the tendon that defined the outer edge of the woman’s armpit and feel her quiver. This was his pleasure.
Of course, he loved a woman’s nether regions too, and his tastes were catholic. Whether approached from fore or aft, that strange, warm cleft, whatever its exact constitution, its complexion and dimensions; that phenomenon that was best encountered circumspectly with a great deal of coaxing; that subtle shapeshifter was always to be marvelled at, and treated with reverence.
He also liked breasts. But here, he had to admit, he was a wee bit choosier. The fledgling ones were somewhat underwhelming, though they could be brought to attention with the right sort of handling, and with the very large ones, you felt you were juggling cantaloupe melons. So, on the whole, he preferred something just beyond a generous handful with a bit of robustness to it.
In the past, he’d pondered on the strange relationship men have with women’s bodies, first being nurtured by them and then impregnating them, but he couldn’t make much sense of that, so he gave up, followed his instincts and concentrated on perfecting his craft. In fact, women, he had discovered, were great lovers of gentleness. He formed his lips, therefore, into shapes that were soft and sensitive; and he calibrated his touch so that it was finely attuned to his partner’s response. Pleasuring women was his main leisure pursuit and, over the years, he had pleasured many.
He was naturally good-looking. Newly-arrived from India, he had cultivated a pencil-thin moustache in the manner of Raj Kapoor with an eye to Errol Flynn, and had combed his hair back in a quiff. He had also changed his name to Eddy. The girls in the production department had fallen for the rebrand hook, line and sinker.
Now, he was less of a showman, relying more on expensive woody aftershaves, bespoke suits from a Kowloon tailor and the ministrations of a barber in Covent Garden. But he was no snob. His rise from rock bottom had given him no reason to be so. He was a keen observer of social niceties and a pretty shrewd judge of character. He had learned how to approach women of every class. And this was remarkably easy. Most women would respond to an open-ended question about themselves – some, it seemed, never had enough opportunity to talk in this way – and before they knew it, whatever their station in life, he’d be leaning in, doing those things that made them feel they were worthy of attention. Often, there’d be a husband or a boyfriend in the middle distance, dealing with his bar tab or working up interest in a business deal while ‘Eddy’ was busy removing the woman out from under his sphere of influence.
He only had three rules: whatever a woman’s style, she should inhabit it fully and with flair. Two, she should look after her own reproductive issues. He was already maintaining two children in other parts of the country, and while he had been willing to honour his obligations on those occasions, he didn’t really want any more of that. And three, he didn’t have time for prudes. Life was too short: they weren’t worth the effort.
*
And where had he met Milena? Ah yes, at a function at the exhibition centre in Milton Keynes on the future of plastic foam in the robotics industry. There were lectures, demonstrations and displays, but mainly, as far as he was concerned, it was an opportunity to hand his card around to the movers and shakers in the business. Because that was his line. He’d started off as a lowly foam-cutter in the early days, risen to become a star salesman for someone else and now he had a company worth millions with investments overseas.
Apart from the exhibition stands and demonstration areas, there was food, a huge buffet arranged by the sponsors, and Milena was supervising the staff on the line. What struck him was how much in control she was, both of herself and of the situation. She had a trim figure and wore a snug, figure-flattering uniform. Her hair was immaculately rolled, her complexion flawless and her cosmetics painstakingly applied. Even though she was supervising a team of ten, it was clear that she was under-employed. She rejected his opening gambit, but agreed to talk to him at the end of her shift.
He hung around for ages, long after his interest in innovations in robotic arms and supply chain management had waned. He thought she’d played him along, but no, there she was, in the foyer, behind a pillar, refreshing her frighteningly red shade of lipstick.
It turned out she was doing a doctorate on ‘The Struggle for Supremacy in Polish Art’, while at the same time following an online course in accountancy. She worked for an on-site caterer to subsidise her studies.
‘I don’t know where it will end and I must be prepared,’ she said. ‘These days everything is so uncertain. What with your stupid BREXIT and the Polish government turning to the Right. One minute you are free to do what you want. The next minute you are not.’
He was impressed by her resourcefulness. After all, he’d had a sticky start himself, coming to the UK with only the permitted two pounds in his pocket, and sleeping on a damp settee in a distant cousin’s mouse-infested basement until he could find himself a job. He bought her dinner in the nearest five-star hotel where he watched her polish off several skewers of mutton tikka, applying her knife and fork with absolute precision, while he toyed with a generous glass of Nuits Saint Georges, and pushed a few pakoras round his plate. After that she came home with him.
She may just have been sizing him up, whichever way you care to look at it, but despite the significant difference in their ages, he felt pretty sure she found him attractive. She certainly did a good job of keeping him entertained that evening, and if the scale of her orgasm, one of the most disturbing he’d ever heard, was anything to go by, the entertainment was reciprocated.
Over the next few months he made her life easier financially. She resisted at first, making the case for a woman’s financial independence, but when he pointed out that the financial subsidy would enable her to work fewer hours and that would mean they could spend more time together, she eventually agreed. He added her to the retinue of women with whom he maintained a close relationship across Europe and beyond: Isabelle in Spain, Kristien from Copenhagen, Daisy in the Philippines.
She visited him at his home in the country most week-ends. They spent most of the time in bed and the rest at fancy restaurants where he was well-known to the maître-d’. In the mornings, she ran. He was not an early riser, but he dragged himself to the window one morning in a quilt to watch her bob off down the drive, kicking her heels, her narrow limbs working like pistons, her pony-tail swinging, her ear-phones plugged in. He admired her single-mindedness. Whether the matter in hand was food, or study, or running or sex, she went at it hell-for-leather. And her sexual energy was remarkable, as she’d proved again the previous evening. She knew now exactly how to please him and she was adventurous. Women in their middle years had a lot of experience to offer, he reflected, but were often stale of habit. Women in their thirties, on the other hand, were in their prime, still full of inventiveness and passion.
He knew that when he eventually went downstairs, she would already have had a shower and would be standing in the kitchen in her underwear, in the temperate zone of the Aga, making them coffee. She was the only woman he’d encountered on whom jockey shorts looked flattering. The very thought of this was enough to arouse his interest again. But still, he made a mental note to tell her that he wouldn’t be available the following weekend. Isabelle was coming over from Spain. He would make up some unverifiable lie. He didn’t want any complications. He couldn’t be bothered with it. Gone was the day.
*
A few weeks later they were sitting in the lounge of The Dorchester, celebrating Milena’s completion of the Accountancy course, and her astounding results.
‘I wondered,’ she said, ‘if we might go away somewhere for a long weekend. I need, I think, a rest. It has been too much hard work.’
He agreed.
*
They approached the city from the sea, one broad reach of swilling water unfolding after another, the sun casting fleeting points of light on the waves, the city changing in prospect at every thrum of the ferry’s turbines.
Milena leaned into the rails, her hair whipping about her face. ‘Now you can see, I think,’ she shouted, ‘some explanation for this nation’s sea-faring history.’ He nodded. He felt faintly queasy.
He would have favoured the five-star Palácio da Anunciada with its indoor plunge pool, its sauna, its roof-top sunbeds and its view over the city, but she wasn’t having any of that.
‘Air B ‘n’ B,’ he said in horror, watching her as she worked away at the computer. ‘Why are you bothering with that? That’s for poor people.’
‘You are wrong d’you know. Not just for poor people. For everyone. Anyway, you will learn authentically about other people’s lives. Not just superficial gloss.’
Eddy wasn’t interested in authenticity. He had a good idea what that was code for and he’d come to the UK to get away from it. He’d had too much experience of living in broiling rooms that had only a juddering ceiling fan for relief. He was averse to lavatories that were no more than ceramic plates set into the floor where cockroaches carromed around your feet.
‘But I can pay for something so much better. There’s no need to compromise. I can arrange for you to meet the best artists, hear the best musicians, visit the best galleries out of hours – whatever you want.’
‘Pah!’ she said, flicking his credit card over for the CVC code, and pressing the ‘Pay now’ button. ‘You think money can buy everything.’
He looked at her blankly. ‘Can’t it?’
*
It turned out that she hadn’t even booked an apartment. She’d chosen a room in someone’s house in the Bairro Alto. As the taxi driver dragged their cases from the car, it started to rain, heavy plops that saturated his lightweight jacket before they could even draw themselves to the attention of the residents.
The stair door opened, and she shot up the eight flights of stairs to the fourth floor while he lumbered up behind with their luggage. They were met at the door of the apartment by a dour middle-aged woman who herded them down a dark corridor and through a large living-room to get to their bedroom. In the living-room an elderly couple sat silently on opposite sides of a large round dining table draped with a cloth with a deep lace border. They sat, not at the table, but at some distance from it, as though they were anchored there, and were waiting to dock. Only their eyes moved as the press gang and their captive passed through the room. The whole place was filled with melancholy. It was as though some misfortune had befallen the family years ago, and they had not been able to recover from it.
The only furniture in the bedroom was a double bed, the wardrobe – an almirah as Eddy once would have called it – a dressing table and a kitchen chair. All were made of dark timber in the same heavily ornamented style. Over the bed hung a faded photograph of joyless family members, who glared out truculently from a sturdy frame.
Milena, it turned out, was very much into ‘tradition’. She ran her fingers over the white bed cover. ‘Ooh, look,’ she said, ‘It is, I think, hand-worked quilting. So clever. Who knows what emotions went into it, and how many generations have used it.’
The very thought made Eddy’s flesh creep.
She found the furniture equally appealing. She pranced around the room, over the faded rug. ‘Perhaps this timber is, d’you know, teak. Perhaps it has come by ship from Goa. Oh, what history we are living in!’
Eddy had once stayed in the Taj Exotica in Benaulim for the golf, and he liked a damn good Goan fish curry, but that was as much as he knew about the place. However, he didn’t think now was the right moment to say so. Instead, he made a sound that was a bit too much like a groan.
He crossed to the French window and opened it on to a balcony that was too small to stand on. Water was still falling from the heavens as though there was an unstoppable leak somewhere. It slopped in waves down the tiles of the neighbouring building and rattled down the drain into the street below. It seemed as though the whole city was weeping. In the distance, between rooftops, the River Tagus was nothing more than a dirty mark like a smudged insect on a window pane.
*
The following morning, as they left the apartment, the old couple were still at anchor by the table, as though they’d been there overnight. Again, not a word was spoken as they made their awkward exit. Clearly, Air B ‘n’ B was a concept the seniors did not approve of, but which they’d had thrust upon them. It was a long time since Eddy had felt himself so thoroughly disapproved of.
They took breakfast at a pastelaria, grazing on large pastries and intense coffee while standing at the counter alongside harried office workers like beasts at a hayrack, then Milena marched them across town to the church of Sao Roque. An unprepossessing building from the outside, the interior was a different matter, and Milena was fascinated by everything: the vast trompe l’oeil ceiling, the paintings of the clerestory and the numerous chapels, including the chapel of Our Lady of Piety with its corpse in a box. She took many photographs, and made some notes on her tablet. ‘In Poland we are Catholics, of course,’ she explained with bright-eyed enthusiasm, ‘but here history has made a different mark.’
The thing was: everywhere was smothered in an ancient form of bling. Eddie was not averse to bling – he could appreciate a rose gold Cartier watch as well as the next man – but this was not to his taste. He ventured to point this out. ‘D’you not see,’ she hissed, ‘the Portuguese invested the spoils of empire in their churches whereas you British, you spent it on your so-called stately homes.’ And what was wrong with that, Eddy thought, confused for a minute about his racial identity.
As they progressed, Milena continued to whisper a hoarse commentary at him. He did his best at first to pay attention – no harm in learning a little something new – but soon he realised that it was beyond his capacity or willpower to take it all in. By half-past eleven, he’d had enough, and retired to a coffee shop, content to wait for Milena to complete the course. He bought a packet of Camel Blues – he’d given up smoking ten years ago – and smoked the first two from the packet slowly, with affection.
Once Milena joined him, they set off through the back streets of Alfama, stopping for lunch at a small hole-in-the-wall place with not enough chairs, all of which were occupied by short, gruff men in workmen’s clothes. Milena used her skills to command attention and get them seated and served. It seemed that the menu of the day consisted of only two dishes, extraneous items from the sea swimming in a dark brown gravy, and it didn’t matter which you asked for, you got both. Eddy eyed the men smearing the viscous liquid round their saucers with their bread, and found himself longing for a decent plate of rajma with a couple of nice makhni roti on the side.
Afterwards, it was on up to São Jorge Castle. Then across to the Miradouro da Graça to take in the views across the city.
There were a lot of things Eddy had not realised about this trip – his aim had simply been, as always, to indulge the woman who was the current focus of his attention – and one of those things was that Lisbon was a city built on hills. Even with the aid of trams and funiculars and the occasional taxi, the horrible truth was that he found the terrain hard going. Milena would race on ahead of him and then loop back to keep him company as he slogged onwards and upwards in shoes that weren’t made for the purpose, struggling to keep his heart working evenly in his creaking chest, while at the same time trying to maintain an appearance of composure.
Sight-seeing accomplished, they returned to their apartment for a change of clothing, then set off back down to Alfama for an evening of fado, but by the time Eddy toppled like a felled tree into a chair in the designated bar he knew he’d have to have a different strategy for the following day.
That night, although he lay next to Milena’s willing body, he slept like a pig. She told him the following morning that he had had his mouth open all night and had made terrible noises.
*
So today it was Art. Specifically, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum Modern Collection and the Christina Guerra Gallery of Contemporary Art, a private gallery with exceptional ratings according to Milena’s guide book.
Once down at street level, Milena set off at an athletic lick. Eddy followed after her at a convincing pace for fifty yards, then stopped in his tracks. ‘Oh, wait! I think I feel my phone vibrating. Bugger!’ He took the phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear: ‘Hmm… hmm… hmm… No, I said forty units… Well, tell them straight. We’ve been through this twice already… So where’s the duplicate? … Oh, all right then… I’ll see what I can do…’ He finished the call.
‘Business matter, darling. Needs attention. You go on ahead. I’ll catch you up.’
Milena frowned, ‘Do you really have to? Didn’t you tell them you’d be out of the office?’
‘I really have to.’
‘Well, if you have to. See you later, then.’ Milena turned on her heel and sprinted off.
As soon as she’d gone, Eddy found a café with a decent outdoor seating area, collapsed into a chair, ordered a pot of coffee and smoked a couple of Blues. Then, when he judged that enough time had passed, he summoned a taxi and asked the driver to drop him off round the corner from the gallery.
The ploy worked well, so he adopted it for the second location too. In fact, he wouldn’t have minded if there had been more opportunities to wander in at the main entrances of a galleries, saunter around a couple of the rooms, pick out a couple of pictures that had something striking about them, and say afterwards something like, ‘What did you think of that one with the bands of red?’ or ‘What about that one with all the things like fingers?’ because Milena always answered him with an eagerness that he found rather sexy and a little bit amusing.
In the circumstances, he thought the stage was set to bring their holiday to a very pleasing and triumphal conclusion. But he was wrong. For hours that night they ploughed to and fro among a tangle of bed clothes without reaching a satisfactory outcome. For the first time in his life, he was having difficulty acquitting himself. Every time he seemed to be making progress, an image of the old man sitting in his chair in the adjacent room, listening, listening, and disapproving entered his head. ‘Fuck him!’ he said at last. He kicked back the bedclothes and went to the toilet, but even peeing seemed to be a challenge. He waited for an age with one hand pressed against the wall until he’d managed to release a painful and pathetic dribble into the bowl.
When he inserted himself back into the bed, Milena was either sleeping or pretending to sleep. He spent the remainder of the night wrestling the sheets – whipping them here, flinging them there – and doing interminable battle with the ghosts of the relatives whose picture hung above them.
In the morning Milena was up well before he felt able to surface. He pulled up the bedcover and watched her with gritty, cakey eyes as she sat in front of the mirror brushing her hair. Slowly, he remembered what had happened or, rather, what hadn’t happened the night before, and he pulled the bedcover up a little further to conceal his embarrassment. But, busy with the brushing, Milena said nothing. Then suddenly she did that thing where she rolled her hair up into a neat pleat that appeared to have no means of support. She raised her arms. He was viewing her from the side. He could see the protrusion of her nipple and the slight eminence of her breast which shifted a gradient with the movement. But that was it. There was no significant change in the outline of her chest. Nothing major, really, to behold. And, ah yes, that might have had something to do with his problem.
So, so it was that, when they were on their way to the airport in the taxi, he brought forward his proposition.
*
The row they had about it lasted a couple of weeks.
‘You think that’s all right? To tell a woman that she’s unsatisfactory, that the manufacturer hasn’t turned her out properly, that she’s like some old Skoda in an East German factory? That she’s not ‘to your taste’, as you say? After all these months, taking advantage of my body, to tell me I am a sub-standard woman? D’you know, it’s offensive, and I am very, very offended.’
‘All I’m talking about is turning two chaffinches into two pigeons,’ Eddy cajoled. ‘Nothing gross. I’ll pay: the accommodation costs, the air fares, the consultant’s fees, everything. You’ll have the best. I’ve looked it up. Sweden seems like a good bet. Latest materials. Highly rated surgeons. Top of the range is about five thousand Euros.’
‘You’ve looked it up? You bastard!’ It was the first time he had ever heard her swear.
‘It’s a gift, a present. You don’t have to do anything for it. Don’t you want to make the most of yourself? Don’t you want, at least, a cleavage?’
There was a slight hesitation then, ‘You’re sick,’ she said. She rammed her things into her sports bag and several minutes later he watched her stomp off down the drive. He had no idea how she got herself back to London.
*
But several uncomfortable phone calls later, he sensed that the mood was changing.
‘All right,’ she said eventually. ‘If that’s what you really want, I’ll do it.’
‘But is it what you really want?’
‘It is a mockery to ask me this now. It was your idea. I’ve said if you really want it, I’ll do it.’
*
It was another six weeks before Eddy saw her again, allowing time for scars to heal and bruising to disappear. In the meantime, he summoned his personal trainer and gave him a damn good bollocking for the dreadful level of fitness he’d displayed while he’d been away. The trainer took matters to heart, turned up the settings on the treadmill and increased the loading on the weights machine.
He also spent some cosy evenings in online conversation with Daisy, planning a golfing tour of the Philippines. He would pick her up in Manila, hire a car with a driver and they would carry on from there. He didn’t like travelling on his own.
The first opportunity he had to examine his investment was up in town when he and Milena stayed overnight at the Dorchester. He sat on the edge of the bed and spun her round, inspecting her from every angle. No doubt about it: the contours of her bosom were significantly altered, the nipples placed towards the upper slope of each breast, two small, pink berries perched on two pale, moonlike mounds, the moon being full of course.
‘What do you think?’ She showed him the lines that curved across her rib cage, now no more than fine red silken threads, where the incisions, had been made.
‘Wait!’ He drew her closer to him, moulding a cupped hand around each breast, closing his eyes and squeezing slightly. ‘Mmm,’ he sighed. ‘Magnificent! Two perfect pigeons. That surgeon was an artist.’
That night there was nothing wrong with his performance although he took his time about it.
*
There was no doubt that the operation had changed her. She comported herself differently. She swung her hair more self-consciously over her shoulder, and bowed her head in acknowledgement when people glanced her way. She changed her style of dress. Her blouses and dresses had low-swooping necklines. She wore higher heels. Her uniform looked ridiculous on her now, the jacket rumpled and bursting open at the front. Her employer had failed to provide a bigger size. She was no longer the slim, trim streak of lightning he had first encountered. He wondered whether he minded. He didn’t think so. He felt more than proud when he ushered her into any restaurant.
One day, he took her to his local golf club where he had sponsored enough trophies and paid enough in fees over the years for skin tone not to be an issue.
‘Morning, Eddy,’ called Gilbert from the depths of a massive sofa where he was reading the Telegraph. ‘New filly?’
‘Morning,’ said Eddy. ‘Keep your eyes on your crossword, man.’ And he steered Milena over to the bar, where a gloomy-looking gent clad in the colours of Desert Storm had one buttock hitched on a bar stool and was musing over the dregs of a pre-prandial single malt.
‘This is Basil.’
Milena nodded in acknowledgement. Basil fixed his eyes on Milena’s body, particularly the spot where the soft folds of her satin blouse lapped across her chest.
‘What’s the score?’ He addressed Eddy. ‘India giving South Africa another pasting?’ His gaze wandered down towards the crotch area of Milena’s leather pants. She flicked her hair over her shoulder defiantly.
‘Yes, Kohli was racking up another century when we left the house. The man’s a genius.’
‘Remarkable batsman,’ said Basil.
‘Plays some phenomenal strokes,’ Eddy agreed.
Basil’s gaze remained fixed. ‘No doubt about it. Phenomenal strokes.’
‘Can I fix you up with a little something, Basil?’
‘By all means,’ said Basil. ‘Fix me up with whatever you’re having.’
Milena took him to task afterwards: ‘Who are those awful people?’
‘D’you mind? Those “awful people”, are my friends. Gilbert got me a great deal on my security system.’
‘They have creepy look.’
‘And Basil knows a good supplier of venison and pheasant.’
‘I said, they have creepy look.’
‘You didn’t meet Bryan.’
‘I don’t want to meet Bryan.’
Eddy sighed. ‘Look, Milena. That’s just the boys. They don’t mean anything by it.’
‘They are not boys, they are men, old men. They should not behave like that.’
‘For goodness sake! Have you not seen the way you look? You should learn to accept that men will want to look you over now. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s a compliment.’
‘It doesn’t feel like compliment. It feels like invasion. And I did not give them permission to look at me in that way.’
*
A few hours later, after he’d finished a conference call from his study, he found her upstairs in the bedroom packing, but this time the Audi A6 that he’d bought her stood down on the drive.
‘What’s up?’
‘That’s it. I’m finished. Leaving.’
‘But why?’
‘Do you think I don’t know what’s going on here? Do you think I don’t know about your other women? I have checked your phone many times. Do you think I don’t know what you did in Lisbon? Sneaking about in taxis. You are out of shape, Eddy. You have a prostate problem, but you won’t admit it. You are full of bullshit and lies.’
He sat down heavily on the bed. ‘But what about…?’ He nodded in the direction of her chest.
‘These? I am not sure that they are such a good idea. They have ruined my running. My split times have dropped. I might have them removed, d’you know, if I could be sure what I’d be left with.’
‘But…,’ he protested. Because though he didn’t begrudge spending money on a woman, he didn’t like to waste it.
‘You are Old Boy, Eddy, with old ideas. Our time, I think, is over.’ And with that, she dragged the zipper round on her case and left.
*
He remained seated on the bed. If he were being truthful, he knew that if ever he stopped sponsoring trophies, that would be the end of deals arranged by Gilbert and deliveries of game, whether fowl or beast, from Basil. Then there was Daisy who had just announced that she had won a design contract and was too busy to entertain his golfing plans, Kristien who was in thrall to a new husband, and Isabelle who wasn’t returning his calls.
He remembered the distant cousin whose sofa he’d slept on so many years ago, a relative from his mother’s side of the family whom he'd lost touch with on purpose soon afterwards. The guy had made nothing of himself; had moved to Bradford in the Sixties and still sold teabags and tampons from a corner shop as far as he knew. Perhaps it was time to look him up.
One thing was clear: he had made an error of judgement where Milena was concerned. She had been a prude after all. To console himself, he went down to the cellar in his carpet slippers and brought up his best bottle of Balvenie.
Janet H. Swinney’s writing straddles Britain and India. Widely anthologised, her story The Map of Bihar was first published in the UK (Earlyworks Press) and in the USA (Hopewell Publications), where it appeared in Best New Writing 2013 and was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose 2012. She has been placed in numerous national and international competitions, and in 2014, was runner-up in the London Short Story Competition. Her debut collection of short stories titled, Map of Bihar and Other Stories was published in 2019 by Circaidy Gregory Press, UK. She is currently working on her second collection, and has recently returned from the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai, where she presented her work. You can purchase Map of Bihar here.
The banner image is by JP Valery and is downloaded from unsplash.com