The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

The Exhibitionists He needed this; God, how he needed this. It had been almost a whole year since the day Julie came home unexpectedly while he was having sex with Katie. For about thirty seconds on that histrionic afternoon, he’d entertained the fantasy of being like Picasso, who (according to a biography he’d once read) would stand back in macho amusement while two jealous women rolled around on the floor fighting over him. Instead, Julie and Katie had both dumped him, and one of them (he would love to know which of the bitches it was) had stolen his phone and contacted all the numbers stored in it, telling everyone that he was scum. Even his bank manager, sister and mother got messages warning them never to fuck him.

Since then, he seemed to have lost the seduction knack. Every woman he tried to chat up said she could smell that he only wanted her for sex. He didn’t know whether they meant ‘smell’ literally or metaphorically but, just in case, he washed frequently and used heavy-duty deodorant. He dressed in style, and was still exceptionally handsome. He had a high-paying job as a Human Resources Manager, was well-read and interested in culture. Really, there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to persuade some posh babe to take her knickers off for him, other than that he was a creep.

Then finally he met... what was her name again? He would remember it in a minute.

Something foreign, like her facial features and accent. But here she was, sitting opposite him in the Royal College of Art café, and he could tell that she was up for it. She’d chosen the red sofa, to match her low-cut red dress. Her nipples were perched on the neckline, poised to jump out. She had about twenty kilos of immaculately tousled black hair, which must surely have been augmented with hair extensions but looked bewitchingly natural.

‘Your hair is amazing,’ he said.

She ran her red-nailed hand through it, hard. Holy mackerel, it wasn’t a wig! What a voluptuous mane!

‘Do you wish to touch it?’ she said.

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

‘I hope we get an opportunity,’ he winked. ‘Your opportunity is now,’ she said. ‘Touch it.’ He glanced around at the other people in the RCA café. They seemed preoccupied with each other or with their sandwiches. He reached forward and plunged his hand into her inky coiffure. It was the most thrillingly luxurious feeling. She did something with her head so that her flawless cheek brushed against his forearm. Adriana: that was her name.

‘You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll die if I can’t sleep with you.’

‘I never sleep with men,’ she said. ‘Twenty minutes is sufficient and I expect to remain awake for that time. Unless I am very bored. You’re not boring, are you?’

‘That’s for you to judge,’ he said, hoping this struck the appropriate balance between humility and self-confidence that a woman might admire in a man.

She picked up her latte and drank it as if it were a beer, then licked the brown milk off her lips. He sipped his cappuccino.

‘The RCA is always worth a visit,’ he remarked, in a tone that implied that he came here more often than he did. ‘Especially when they have one of their secret postcard exhibitions.’

‘Secret?’

‘They put hundreds of postcard-sized original artworks up for sale. Most of them are by students but some are by famous artists. So you could conceivably pick up a Tracey Emin for less than fifty quid.’

The concept failed to impress her. ‘Art should be like a woman’s favours,’ she said.

‘Either free, or very, very expensive.’

He thought fast, and was relieved when a suitable quip came to him. ‘I prefer a straight swap. I give you your orgasm, you give me mine.’ She nodded, unsmiling. ‘I like you. I am having an interesting day. Take me to more places.’

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

By sheer luck, he was able to kill two cultural birds with one stone, so to speak: an ensemble from the Royal College of Music happened to be playing a lunchtime gig at the Royal Albert Hall. It was in the Elgar Room and there was cake as well, plus cello, viola, violin and – nice touch, this – Theremin. It was perfect: if Adriana liked cake she could have cake and if she liked classical she was getting classical, and if she liked avant- garde, the Theremin would tick the right box. The chairs were all red, again matching her dress. The Lord really wanted him to get laid, that was obvious. And it was only ten quid each.

They sat watching the music. The girl playing the viola was quite a hot babe. He could imagine her doing better things with her hands than sawing away at catgut.

‘Put your hand on my bosom,’ said Adriana, not loudly but also with no particular effort to keep her voice low.

He froze, embarrassed.

‘Put your hand on my bosom,’ she said again. A murmur of annoyance came from the seats behind them, and he imagined that an aggressive edge crept into the ensemble’s playing. Worried that Adriana would keep repeating her request if he didn’t obey, he laid his palm on her chest. She seized his fingers and massaged them across the fabric, sharpening her arousal. On stage, a doleful-looking, anorexic music student made gestures around the shaft of the Theremin, coaxing eerie wails out of it. Adriana breathed in harmony. At the end, there was applause and he stumbled out into the sunshine with her, stupefied with desire.

Next, he escorted her to the Institut Français, a place he hadn’t been for years. He could speak passable French and figured that if les dieux were smiling upon him today, the institute might be hosting some sort of exhibition which would give him a chance to show off his bilingualism.

Outside the building, he paused in front of a large banner that had a pictogram on it symbolising a man and a woman standing side by side, their heads simplified to dots, their torsos simplified to columns, hers sprouting a sharp spike and his divided in the middle. He stared at it for a few seconds, wondering what it was trying to convey (was the woman reaching out to decapitate the man or embrace him? – and what made him

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

assume they were male and female in the first place?) when suddenly he realised he was looking at an I and an F, the initials of the institute.

‘Look at this,’ he said, self-conscious about having spent so long puzzling over a logo.

‘It’s one of those... uh... I don’t know what they’re called. When your eye sees something one way and then you make a mental adjustment and you see it another.’

‘Trompe l’œoeil?’ Her French pronunciation was perfect. As was her hauteur.

‘No, it’s to do with... uh... the tension between positive and negative space. Like that famous image where you think you’re seeing a wine glass against a black background, and then you do a mental switch and it turns into two faces silhouetted against a white background.’ Her expression was inscrutable, so he added somewhat desperately, ‘You’ve seen that picture, haven’t you?’

‘I have not seen that picture,’ she said. ‘I thought everybody had seen that picture.’ ‘I am not everybody,’ she said. ‘I am a unique body.’ They entered the venue. The chairs were not red, which he took as a slightly unfortunate omen. They’d arrived at the wrong time of day for a movie and there didn’t seem to be any art à propos of which he could deliver bons mots. There was a semiformal debate going on in the Café Philo, discussing whether all human intercourse was selfishly motivated or not. Adriana dawdled in the doorway, as if considering joining in.

Then she braced her back against the doorjamb, hooked her fingers in her neckline and pulled her dress off her breasts, exposing the hard nipples.

‘Suck them,’ she said.

He blushed to the roots of his pubic hair. He almost said ‘Are you crazy?’ but he was loath to offend her. Two middle-aged ladies walked past her to get into the room, steering clear of the magnificent protuberances as best they could.

‘We’re in the way here,’ he hissed, hoping this would simultaneously reassure Adriana that he would adore nothing more than to start sucking her tits there and then, while warning her that it was impractical.

‘The others are in the way,’ she said, sensuously stroking her own flesh. ‘This is our

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space to claim. If we wish it. If you wish it.’

He leaned forward and bent his head to her left nipple.

‘Attention!’ said a loud voice. Two minutes later, they had been escorted from the building. As they emerged onto the street, they passed the IF pictogram again.

‘The word you were looking for,’ she said calmly, ‘is optical illusion.’

Next was the Natural History Museum. It made a big impact on her and seemed to quell her ardour somewhat, which was a relief, in a way. His game plan was to give her a huge dose of culture, all of it within the convenient environs of Exhibition Road, then take her to a restaurant and finally nail her in his apartment. Or maybe even skip the restaurant. She’d had two large pieces of cake already, and a woman with an hourglass figure like hers surely had to be careful with the calories.

She wandered, childlike, through chamber after chamber populated by massive skeletons. Dinosaurs, fish, amphibians, mammals –she was intrigued by them all. At one point, she became entranced by the skeletons of primates (orangutans? gibbons?) hanging from the vaulted ceiling, and he had to take her by the hand to stop her blundering into other people.

‘Their bones are so clean,’ she marvelled. ‘Not a shred of flesh left on them; not a fleck of blood. How could anyone be so tidy?’

She was hungry again, so he bought her a hot dog from an unlicensed street vendor. It wasn’t what you’d call a chic dining option but she’d signalled that it was what she wanted and she seemed delighted with it. Then she expressed interest in the Serpentine Gallery and he hailed a taxi, but en route she found out that the gallery was not, as she’d imagined, devoted to serpents, so they ended up strolling through the park instead. Boy, this woman could walk! Most of the women he’d gone out with could barely totter half a dozen steps from a car to a restaurant on their ridiculous shoes, but Adriana wore weird sandal-like things with laces that encircled her bare calves. She obviously found them very comfortable, judging by her tireless pace, whereas he was getting footsore. He decided they would do the V&A (she wanted to see some ancient jewellery) and then that would be plenty for one day. The V&A was handy for his flat in Brompton. And if he had reason to suspect she wouldn’t accompany him to his flat, he would invite her into

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

the men’s toilets at the museum. That might be just the sort of kinky stunt she’d go for.

‘I like this stream,’ she said, as they followed the waterline for a while.

‘Not bad for a man-made one,’ he conceded.

‘I like man-made streams,’ she said, brushing the front of his chinos with a slender finger. ‘Very much.’

‘Actually, it’s a memorial fountain to Princess Diana.’

She nodded her approval, then began to speak with a fervency she hadn’t displayed before. ‘It is a rut in a field, a sex furrow, a carnal channel. See how the vigorous, vital waters course through it! Make love to me, manling, in this stream. The white froth of the waves will swirl around our naked bodies, mingling with our own fluids!’ And she grabbed his wrist, pulling him towards the edge.

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘You are afraid of getting wet? He who wishes to remain dry will never know the ecstasies of love.’

‘My worry is actually... uh... getting arrested. Or pelted with rocks by outraged Diana fans. Lots of people are still very protective of her, you know.’

She shrugged her mane dismissively. ‘She is the Goddess of the Hunt. She needs no protection.’

‘That’s a different Diana,’ he informed her. ‘This one was a girl from Norfolk who married a member of the British royal family and then died.’

Adriana stared down into the burbling waters, disappointed. ‘I wish to see the old jewellery now,’ she said, audibly straining to keep a sulky tremor in check. ‘Then we will make love.’

The Victoria and& Albert Museum was her favourite so far. She flitted from room to room in a state of bright-eyed enthusiasm. The thousands and thousands of meticulously ordered exhibits did not induce in her (as they induced in him) a cumulative

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

despondency, a crushing sense of how many lives had crumbled to dust, leaving behind a pathetic miscellany of fragile artefacts for historians to catalogue and label. To her, it was all fresh produce. Ceremonial daggers, axe heads, candlesticks, alabaster virgins, medieval lutes, rust-speckled blunderbusses – she cast an appreciative glance over them all. She ascended and descended staircases at a speed that left him breathless.

The sole outward sign of her exertions was the sweat that darkened parts of her dress, manifesting as sickle-shaped patches on her shoulderblades, a sword-like line along her spine, and the damp delineation of her buttocks, which gyrated provocatively with every step she took. His lust, which had waxed and waned a few times during their afternoon together, throbbed back into life. He followed her into the Islamic Middle East section, Room 42.

‘I like what you’ve shown me,’ she said when he was at her side once more. ‘You are an excellent guide.’

‘You haven’t seen the best of me yet,’ he whispered into her ear, then swept a handful of her hair aside and kissed the nape of her neck. Maybe she was onto something with this exhibitionism thing. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the other people in the room – a man – shrink back in discomfort, and he understood, in a flash, the true reason for that discomfort: envy. This guy was jealous of them. Jealous of him. The poor slob probably never got laid, or was married to some ugly, inhibited creature who fulfilled maybe three per cent of his yearnings, if that. And here were two lovers in the prime of their potency, two lovers who declared their intimacy without shame or self- deprecation.

Propriety, respectability, decorum, scandalised disapproval: what were these posturings, if not masks for envy? Strip off the masks, and the human race was neatly divided into two kinds of animal: those who take what they want and those who must stand by and watch it being taken.

‘I like this bottle,’ said Adriana, pointing to an item in display case number 16. It was a slender, elegant and quite phallic flask, made of glass but embellished with enamel and gold. A relic from the centuries-long reign of the Mamluk sultans, guesstimated to have been made between 1300 and 1350. Despite its Arabic origin, it featured Chinese- style phoenix and dragon motifs.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he agreed.

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

‘I like this bottle very much,’ she repeated. ‘It would make me happy to own this bottle.’

‘Well, we can wish, can’t we?’ She turned to him. Her eyes were such a dark brown as to be almost black. ‘I do not wish to wish. I wish to own. Make a gift of this bottle, for me, please.’ He felt the blood drain from his face. ‘You want me to steal it?’

She shrugged. ‘It belongs to no one. See the inscription? “‘Maker unknown”’. The museum doesn’t even know whether it came from Egypt or Syria. Who would miss it?’

‘I’m sure the V&A’s curators would miss it very much.’

‘Perhaps it is time,’ she said, ‘for you to decide who you want to make love to: the curators of this museum or me.’

He snorted incredulously. ‘I can’t just go around smashing glass cases.’

‘You only need to break one,’ she pointed out. ‘The one with my beautiful bottle in it.’

‘I can’t,’ he pleaded.

She drew herself fully erect and lifted her chin. He could see she was angry. He could also see – since he was considerably shorter than her – that her stretched posture had lifted the dark halos of her areolas over the edge of her neckline, and might, with the next breath, expose her nipples too.

‘If you were a man worthy of your seed,’ she said, ‘you would have done it already. Just one blow. Half a second to seize the prize. We could be out of the room – out of the building – before the guards even realise that something has happened.’

‘But the other visitors would see,’ he hissed, looking over his shoulder. Inconveniently, there was no one in the room with them just at the moment. ‘There’s people everywhere.’

Her contempt was profound. ‘You think they would challenge you? You think they would throw themselves through the air and tackle your legs? The mass of humanity is nothing more than furniture. They stand there, inert and brainless. You could demolish this entire building and they would barely muster a squeak of protest. Are you frightened of such semi-sentient footstools? Come, manling. One decisive blow and the prize is yours.’

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

He took a deep breath and delivered a decisive blow to the glass case, which almost broke his knuckles. Then he kicked at the case with all his strength, and his foot smashed through the lower part of the pane, scattering various mosque lamps, bowls and jugs. The higher shelf on which the bottle stood was still shielded by a jagged wedge of glass and he felt a nauseating shock of pain. He extracted his leg gingerly from the hole, striving to minimise further damage – to himself. He hobbled out of the room, leaving shoeprints etched in blood. Adriana had already made her exit.

Outside, she seemed to have softened towards him, as if he’d earned Brownie points for effort. She lifted the hem of her skirt and, with a practiced motion of her powerful hands, tore off a long strip of the fabric, then bound his wound with the soft red bandage so that they could continue their walk without being hampered by arterial bleeding.

‘The marks of battle,’ she mused as she tied the knot. ‘Oh, how they excite me.’

As they walked along Thurloe Place, it occurred to him that he might have lost more blood than was good for him. He had bouts of dizziness and a hankering to hail a taxi even though his apartment was barely three minutes away. It was early evening, and the light was sublime. He was happy, wasn’t he? It had been a marvellous day, hadn’t it?

Damn right it had. And it wasn’t over yet. Here he was walking down the street with a drop-dead gorgeous woman at his side, and everyone was seeing him do it and wishing it were them instead. Damn right they were. And soon, he would lay out that drop-dead gorgeous woman on his bed and spread her legs and enter her, and the only pity was that all these losers toddling around London couldn’t be forced to stand by and watch him doing that, too.

‘I would like to go to a church now,’ she said. ‘Church?’ ‘Yes, a church.’ ‘Any church?’

‘A beautiful church.’

He took her to Brompton Oratory, the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which mercifully was just round the corner. She was well pleased. Some sort of mass was about to begin, called Exercises of the Passion. They slid into a seat near the back and he was relieved to take the weight off his feet.

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The Exhibitionists by Michel Faber

‘After this, we really have to... you know... get down to it,’ he said. ‘I am grateful to you,’ she replied solemnly. ‘Well, you can show me how grateful you are,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘I will show you.’ And, without further preamble, she unfastened his trousers and pulled his prick into view. He looked around anxiously, but the lighting in the church was subdued, the other visitors had their gazes fixed on the altar, and he and Adriana were tucked away in a position of relative privacy. And in any case, his nakedness was soon obscured by the lavish black coverlet of Adriana’s hair. She took him into her mouth. She took all of him into her mouth.

Twenty minutes later, Adriana left the church, alone. She had been tidy, and the few drops she’d spilled blended inconspicuously with her dress. Exhibition Road was shutting down for the night, its stained-glass windows and Gothic apertures winking into darkness, its cafés bolted shut, its music silenced, its treasures shrouded over, which was a little sad. But it would all begin again in the morning. And so would she.

ENDS

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