Dalziel fixed me with a look. ‘Displaying a distinct lack of imagination there, my dear Rose.’ He inhaled through the ebony holder with wearied languor. ‘But as you are a Society X virgin, we will forgive your misdemeanour this time, although I might have to smack your bottom later.’
Low laughter rippled through the room and I flushed scarlet, staring at my feet.
‘Now,’ he looked around, ‘is that everyone?’
The room murmured assent. Dalziel whispered to Lena, who went to change the CD as he smiled slowly at us all. I had a sudden vision of us standing before him like lowly acolytes, mesmerised, a strange sense that we were all waiting to bask in his approval.
‘So. It is Commandments One and Seven we’ll be enjoying tonight. We’ve done Four most recently, we very definitely didn’t keep the Sabbath holy. It was most amusing, wasn’t it, Rose?’
I flushed under Dalziel’s scrutiny, nodding fervently, aware of the envy of some of the others. Lena shot me daggers.
‘Although the Bishop of Oxford clearly didn’t think so.’
‘No sense of humour, the bloody clergy,’ Lena was keen to join in. ‘Jesus in women’s underwear was fucking brilliant, I thought—’
‘Anyway,’ Dalziel cut her off, ‘tonight we will begin with Number One: You shall have no other gods before me.’ He cranked the music right up and unveiled a statue under a velvet cloth of a man with an enormous cock, festooned with a garland of thorns. ‘My dear friend Priapus. Let the party begin. Let us make darkness visible.’
Jimi Hendrix’s guitar screamed through the room and I felt a great surge of anticipation and, frankly, terror. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be here any more but I couldn’t drag myself away. Dalziel must have sensed my fear; he came to me.
‘You look very beautiful, darling,’ he said quietly, and he ran a finger down my cheek. ‘Very curvy and delicious.’ He put a pill in his mouth and then he leaned down and kissed me. I felt his tongue and then I realised the pill was now in my own mouth. For a moment I was about to protest but he handed me a glass and murmured ‘Swallow. I always do.’
So I drank and swallowed. Then he leaned down again and kissed me properly, and I felt the lust lick through my body like forest fire, and I pressed myself into his tall form and held his snake hips and kissed him back. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me: my wildest dreams coming true. Dalziel wanted me.
Abruptly he pulled away, grabbed the pink-haired girl and pulled her over to us.
‘Rose, meet Lena,’ and I smiled, and my legs felt a bit trembly in my very high heels, higher than I’d ever worn, and I went to shake her hand but Dalziel said, ‘Don’t be silly. Kiss her.’ I hesitated because I really didn’t like girls, not in that way, but Lena wasn’t so reserved; she leaned in and kissed me, and I just thought her mouth was very soft where a man’s is normally harder and there was no stubble, only soft skin, but it wasn’t so bad. I was starting to feel very strange, like the whole room was moving away and I was growing very tiny and then big again and then Lena was putting her hand on my breast and I pulled away because I felt a bit sick.
‘Don’t worry,’ Dalziel grinned; he’d been watching us lazily, ‘you’re just coming up. You’ll be fine in a sec.’
I stumbled to the French windows to breathe in the cold autumn air and after a moment or two the music started to overwhelm me. It had changed from Hendrix to something tribal, the beat of the drums pulsing through my veins, and I was beginning to feel like I was flying. I was ecstatic, in fact I was surely about to lift off the ground like a bird. The music was inside me, and outside me and then James was there and he held me and we danced and he got nearer and I pushed myself against him and I never wanted to let go.
‘This is amazing.’ I smiled and smiled, feeling my limbs were like liquid and so strange. I tried to articulate it but I couldn’t. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ I shouted over the music.
‘No, well,’ he smiled back, ‘you’ve probably never taken Ecstasy before, have you?’
‘God, no. Is that what it is?’ I forgot even to feel fear; I just felt amazed.
‘It is indeed. It’s gonna break down society’s barriers.’ His eyes were slightly glazed. ‘We will all love each other for ever and indiscriminately.’
And I felt decadent and cool and amazing, and then James was kissing me and I felt so odd, like I actually loved him and I kind of wanted to say that to him but I didn’t, I just kept kissing him. The music had changed to banging house and I wanted to dance now. The beat was in me, I was the beat and I was dancing now, writhing and turning, and I felt like everyone was watching me.
And then Dalziel was talking, far more dishevelled than earlier, his jacket was off and his shirt was unbuttoned, flowing loose from his trousers, exposing his smooth chest, his ribs that jutted out. He stood on the small table and he was asking for quiet and people were complaining, ‘Don’t turn the music off’ but he said it was time, time to do the seventh thing.
I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t care.
A girl was led in wearing a strapless black dress, very fitted around her voluptuous curves. She was short, elegant, olive-skinned, with almond-shaped eyes, long dark hair in a French plait, a year or two older than us, perhaps. She was beautiful in a soft, rounded way. I smiled at her, but she ignored me, and I realised after a second that she was not quite here with us. Her eyes were unfocused and she stumbled slightly. At first glance she looked quite beatific but the longer I looked at her, the more it became apparent that she was in some kind of trance.
Lena stepped forward and blindfolded the girl, who appeared to acquiesce willingly, staggering slightly in her stilettos, a red satin scarf tied around her eyes. Lena ran her hands down the girl, slowly across her breasts, a lascivious smile spreading across Lena’s face. The music was put back on and the girl was led to the divan, her hands held before her as if in supplication or prayer. I wanted to dance again and I grabbed James’s hand, but he was distracted, I could feel that he was waiting for something. He watched Dalziel, who had a spray-can in his hand. In his great looping script he wrote on the wall. I thought that was quite amazing, writing on his own wall.
‘You shall not commit adultery,’ he scrawled, and then he turned triumphantly to us. ‘This is Huriyyah. She is the lover of someone I know well,’ he proclaimed, ‘very well indeed’. He looked around at his minions, challenge in his eyes. ‘And I have –’ he paused momentarily – ‘I have, let us say, persuaded her to help my fallen angels celebrate tonight. So – who will be the lucky taker?’
I was thoroughly confused.
‘Or the first, should I say?’
‘Christ,’ James muttered beside me, and then the door was flung open and someone wearing a demonic goat-mask stood there, horns curling up to heaven like a devil.
‘Azazel, my dear friend, come in,’ Dalziel purred. ‘Join the rest of your clan.’
‘Who the fuck’s Azazel?’ a girl behind us muttered.
‘Goat-demon, seducer of men and women.’ Dalziel gestured to him. ‘Cast out by the Archangels to abide in darkness for all time.’
Whoever he was, he stepped forward. ‘I am ready,’ he said in a gruff tight voice. ‘Please.’
And he approached the young woman, who was being held down now, lying on her back, seemingly insensate, one arm thrown elegantly back, her suspenders showing. The smooth skin above her stockings glistened in the candlelight and on her inner arm were bruises and what I supposed could only be track marks from a needle.
‘Is she up for this?’ I asked James nervously, not feeling absolutely as high as I had moments ago.
‘Looks like it,’ James shrugged.
‘But