The Tied Man

Royce clearly understood.  ‘The sacrifices we artists make, eh?  I must admit, I tend to abstain if I’m filming.  Can’t have anything affecting the timbre of the V.O.’

‘That’s ‘voice-over’,’ Selena explained to Finn, in the style of an aide to the terminally stupid.  ‘Telly folk. They speak a different language.’

Royce noisily snorted a spoonful of cocaine before reloading and passing it to Selena.  Once she had taken her fill, she offered the spoon to Finn.  He looked to Blaine, appealing for a reprieve, but the subtlest of nods from her meant that yet another chemical began to surge its way around his already overloaded system.

I had never seen anyone take cocaine and not become a self-obsessed arse.  Royce was already there to begin with, so with pharmaceutical assistance he became an absolute beast.  I was no longer needed for conversation: I was reduced to a pair of tits for him to leer at, and a pair of ears to be filled with an extended version of the glorious career of Royce Garvey, as the tortuous meal progressed.

By the time Henry served icy, sharp gazpacho  – chosen to fit in with the strict demands of Selena’s diet – I knew about his infancy as a childhood prodigy; his glorious years at Oxford and his internationally applauded PhD;  local, tender lamb with wild herbs was accompanied by the tale of the natural progression into television: apparently unavoidable for one with such a magnetic personality as his.  Although I set my body language to ‘enthralled’ and nodded in all the right places, the only thing that held my attention was Selena as she began to move in on Finn.

It started with acrylic-tipped fingers casually moving from the table top to his thigh.  At first it was done so softly that it could be dismissed as accidental if she was spotted, but as Royce droned on, oblivious to anyone but himself, she became more brazen.  As I was tutored at length about the influence of Greco-Roman art on modern erotica she began to knead at his leg with fingers that were well-practiced in arousal.  She even kicked off a diamantéd sandal and began to play scarlet-painted toes against his calf, as Blaine looked on.  It was only when Finn finally brought his own hand down to rest in the small of Selena’s back that I forced myself to look away and feign an even deeper interest in the endless problems of filming with an Italian crew.

Royce didn’t stop to draw breath until dessert, and only pure greed at the stack of virginal meringues and fresh raspberries broke his stride.  As he stacked his bowl so that juice overflowed and spilled like blood onto the white linen, Blaine decided to bring Selena into the conversation.

‘I am just desperate to know,’ she began, and Selena’s hand snapped away from Finn’s fly button as if she had been stung, ‘how did the pair of you happen to meet?’

‘Er… I… What? ’ came Selena’s guilty, blustering response, and Royce gave her a reassuring, indulgent smile.

‘Carry on, my darling – as Lady Albermarle so beautifully explained, we are in a place where excuses are not required.’

Selena, not entirely convinced, kept her hands to herself whilst she told her anecdote, although her toes continued to slide around Finn’s leg.  ‘It was just one of those things, really – I was PA to Colin Prendergast: he’s Head of Children’s Programming for Alpha Television – and Roycie had come in to discuss a history series for young people.  Roycie’s very big on encouraging young people, you know.’

‘Such public spirit.’

Royce’s chest expanded just a little more.

‘Anyway,’ Selena continued, ‘I simply thought he was the most interesting, different man I’d ever met, and then on his way out of the meeting Roycie invited me out to lunch, and well, over a bottle or two of champers, let’s just say we found we had one or two rather… adult interests in common.’  She glanced at her fiancé with a coy smile.

‘Really?’  Blaine asked, genuinely interested.  ‘Would you care to elaborate?  It’s been so long since we’ve had the opportunity for candid conversation like this.’

Royce cleared his throat as a clue that he wanted to continue the tale, and Selena’s hand swiftly returned to its exploration of Finn’s genitalia.

‘In that case, Blaine, Lilith, er… Flynn, was it?  Allow me to be frank.  We – that is, Selena and I –  like to refer to it as the, er, the ‘dark side’ – you know, that primal facet of our sexual selves that we seem to have  obscured in sanitised contemporary society.’  Royce Garvey was back on the lecture circuit, with the added bonus of a cocaine-induced sense of his own brilliance.  I wondered what the hell people saw in his documentaries, aside from a cure for insomnia.  ‘We are, after all, simply a higher order of predatory mammal – and we need to remember that our, er, congress, for want of a better word, is inextricably linked with violence – a need to dominate, to defeat before we, in essence, violate our object of desire.’