BUILDED ATTRACTION 4

HAD SHE KNOWN Bridget Goldsmith planned to descend on London, Clare would never have allowed work to start on the extension. What with all the necessary planning and work the visit entailed, the last thing she needed was to come home at night to a house that looked as though it were in the process of being demolished. 

She could have moved out. She could have gone to stay with her friend Angela. Instead, once the builders had breached the back wall, she had moved her clothes and make-up into the front bedroom, next to the bathroom, and she had made do, eating out, since her kitchen had disappeared, and taking comfort from the fact that George Wickes assured her the building work would definitely be finished in two weeks’ time. 

There were, however, two compensations. The first was that she could see the work in progress and check it was all going to plan. It only took two days to knock out the wall to which the extension would be fitted and after that every day brought new additions, the new walls rising, floors and ceilings gradually fitted in place. She began to be able to imagine what it would look like when it was finished. 

The other compensation was more venal: Gary. Clare had asked him what his surname was. Newby, Gary Newby. He maintained his pattern of being the first to arrive and the last to leave. He frequently worked strip d to his shorts. Although she was not able to observe him as closely as she had from the back bedroom, she still caught glimpses of that magnificent body. 

Exactly one week before Bridget’s arrival Clare had taken a call from Angela, her oldest friend, just as she'd arrived home from work. 

‘Hi, darling, how’s tricks?’ Angela always sounded chipper. 

‘Don’t ask. I’m up to my eyes in building rubble.’ 

‘That’s what I thought. Do you fancy a bite to eat, and...’ 

‘And?’ 

‘A little diversion.’ Angela Barker was a journalist for a glossy magazine, a sinewy blonde whose long hair seemed to attract men like moths to a flame. Like moths too, many had got themselves badly burned. Angela was forthright and down-to-earth and not one to suffer fools, even handsome or rich fools, gladly. Her attitude to men was entirely pragmatic. If they gave her what she wanted at the time they were tolerated. If not they were abandoned. 

‘OK. How long?’ 

‘Ten minutes.’ Angela lived in a mansion-block just around the corner. 

‘Fifteen. I’ve got to change.’ 

‘Done.’ 

Replacing the phone under the dust-sheet that covered the table in the sitting room, Clare rushed upstairs. It was always the same with Angela. Everything was arranged at the last minute. Nothing was ever planned. 

She managed to shower and change into a summer frock in ten minutes, seeing Angela’s Ford Escort Cabriolet draw up outside as she applied her make-up. 

The doorbell rang, but, before she could get downstairs, Gary, who was clearing up after the day’s work and taking two bucket-fulls of rubbish to the skip, had answered it for her. 

‘Hi,’ Angela said, none too subtly eyeing the bulging muscles of Gary’s naked chest. ‘God, Clare you really should stop taking the HRT,’ she added, laughing. 

‘I’m Gary,’ the builder said self-consciously. ‘Just got to drop these in the skip.’ 

‘You can drop me in the skip anytime,’ Angela retorted, as Clare rushed downstairs. 

‘Excuse my friend, Gary; she’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing.’ 

‘Yeah,’ he smiled, heading out to the skip. 

‘He’s gorgeous,’ Angela said. The women kissed on both cheeks. 

‘Got time to see what used to be my house?'

Clare led the way to the back of the house, where a gaping hole was supported by a new RSJ. 

'Oh, it’s lovely,’ Angela joked. ‘Did you do this?'

Gary had come back in, carrying the empty buckets. ‘Some of it.’ 

‘How much longer?’ Angela asked. 

‘Not long now.’ 

‘Two weeks? Looks like it’s going to take months.’ 

‘Naw,’ Gary said seriously. ‘The basic structure’s in.’ 

‘Gary Newby, this is Angela Barker.’ Clare introduced them. 

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Won't shake hands. They’re filthy.’ 

‘You are a big boy, aren’t you?’ Angela commented, unabashed. 

‘Angela, behave.'

‘Such big strong muscles. I like a bit of rough trade.’ 

‘That’s enough, Angela. Come on, let’s go. You have to excuse my friend, she has a mission to be outrageous.’ 

‘That’s all right with me,’ Gary said. Angela was wearing a tight one-piece suit in cream, its low-cut neckline showing a great deal of her ample cleavage and the material clung tightly to her long legs. In the roving eye department Gary and Angela were evenly matched. 

‘Can you lock up, Gary?'

‘No problem. Have a good time.’ 

Clare pulled Angela into the hall. She opened the front door and bundled her out, but not before Angela had said, in her loudest voice, ‘What a hunk!’ 

She repeated it as they climbed into the car. ‘Now I know why you wouldn't move in with me,’ she added. 

‘I hardly noticed him,’ Clare lied airily. 

‘And?’ Angela started the engine and drove away, seemingly at a hundred miles an hour. 

‘And what?'

‘Do I have to spell it out?’ 

Clare rapidly did up her safety-belt as they cornered with a screech of tyres. 

‘Oh, come on, Angela - he’s a builder.’ 

“You’re not a snob, are you?’ 

‘I don’t mean that. I can hardly seduce him though, can I? What am I supposed to do, drift down to the concrete mixer in my black negligée? Anyway, he’s probably married with four children.’ 

‘Still...’ Angela let the word linger in the air. ‘So talking of sex, how’s David?’ 

‘The same as ever. Just the same.’ 

‘What does that mean?’ 

Clare had not shared the secret of David's complex sex-life. ‘Oh, I suppose I should end it really. It's not going anywhere.’ 

‘Why? I thought you liked him.’ 

‘I do. But “like” isn’t “love’’.’ 

‘Oh, keep him on the hook until you get a better offer. That’s what I'd do. Don’t burn your boats.’ 

‘Oh, it’s difficult.’ 

‘Is he good in bed?’ Angela always got to the point. 

‘So-so.’ 

‘Ah.’ Angela sounded as though she had just discovered the meaning of life. ‘Drop him then.’ 

‘A few seconds ago you told me to keep him until someone better comes along.’ 

‘Yes, but if he’s no good in the sack there’s no point.’ 

‘I’ve got to do something.’ 

‘There’s always Gary.’ Angela grinned. She had a large, sensual mouth and a set of very white teeth. 

‘And what about your sex-life?’ Clare asked, glad to change the subject. 

Since Angela’s propensity to consume men at an alarming rate was an inexhaustible topic, her tales of her latest adventures took them through the rest of the journey. 

They fetched up in Streatham. Angela parked the car and headed for an old-fashioned-looking pub on a busy corner of a main road. 

‘I thought we were going to eat,’ Clare complained, quite hungry now. 

‘I’ve got to just do this first. Come on, it starts in five minutes.'

The poster outside the pub was life-sized. It featured an incredibly muscular black man, witha deep barrel chest, and large prominent veins on all his bulging muscles. His head was shaved and his body oiled, the leather pouch that covered his genitals almost grotesquely distended. Mr Macho, according to the Poster was performing tonight, at seven, nine and ten thirty. 

‘Oh no,’ Clare said, when she realised what Mr Macho was likely to be doing. ‘I’m not going in there.’ 

‘Why not?’ 

‘He’s a male stripper, right?’ 

‘I’ve got to write about it for the magazine.’ 

‘It'll be obscene.’ 

‘Oh come on, don’t be so po-faced.’

Angela pushed through the panelled glass doors, their brass handles and fingerplates brightly polished. Inside, the ground floor was packed with people, mostly women. Angela produced two free passes and flashed them at the arge bouncer who arded the stairs to the upstairs room where the performance would take place. He grunted and allowed them to push past the hordes of other women who were buying tickets at the table to his left, which had been hastily arranged to act as an impromptu box office. The women all chatted and giggled and nudged each other with nervous excitement. 

Angela led the way upstairs. They found themselves in a large rectangular room with a circular rostrum at one end. The room was already packed exclusively with women. They ferried drinks from a long bar on one wall to the tables, tin trays laden with gin and tonics and pint glasses of lager, most of the tables exhibiting an array of examples of what had been previously consumed. 

The nervous excitement of the women was more pronounced up here; the heat, the alcohol and the level of noise increasing the women’s volubility, which, in turn, was an indication that a certain amount of bravado was necessary to get them through the evening. 

Clare looked around. She guessed that few of the women had ever been to such an event before. Some, despite the drink and eager comments, looked distinctly uncomfortable. Or perhaps that was just her, reading her own feelings into their blank faces. She most certainly didn’t want to be there, and would have turned round and left but for the fact she knew that for the next ten years Angela would have ragged her for her lack of daring. 

Clare searched for a place to hide and pulled her friend over to the far end of the bar, the furthest point from the rostrum. 

‘Do you want a drink?’ Angela shouted over the noise. 

‘Not really.’ 

There were four large Bose speakers suspended from the ceiling in each corner of the room. Suddenly they produced a loud tapping noise, followed by the ear-splitting wail of feedback, as a woman in a man’s black dinner jacket and bow-tie dragged a microphone on its stand into the centre of the rostrum. The spotlights suspended on a bar above the stage were faded up, lighting the whole area in a rose-tinted hue. 

‘Ladies ...’ the announcer said, as soon as the whine in the sound system was sorted out. ‘Ladies, this is what you've all been waiting for.’ There were cries of ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ from the audience. 'The Freeman’s Arms,’ the woman continued, ‘is proud to present for your entertainment tonight, the one and only, the exciting, the dynamic, Mr Macho!’ 

The scream of approval was deafening. High-heel shoes stomped on the wooden floor as the lights in the room dimmed. 

A silver lurex curtain had been hung on the wall at the back of the rostrum. The curtain twitched. It twitched again; then, obscenely, tented outwards, something poking it from the other side just below waist level. The women roared at the size of the protrusion. 

‘Oh, god,’ Clare muttered, glaring at Angela. 

‘Not exactly subtle,’ she conceded. She had taken a spiral bound notebook from her handbag and was writing notes in shorthand. 

The curtain was thrown aside and a tall black man stalked on to the stage. He was wearing chiffon harem pantaloons over tight, red, satin briefs. His chest was hairless and just as muscular as the plotograph outside had suggested. As he stepped forward the loudspeakers began to play an instrumental version of ‘Goldfinger’. In his hand Mr Macho held a black rod, a larger version of a magician’s wand.