Verismo Bliss - Chapter 14

14.

‘Pleased to meet you, my good man,’ he said, grabbing Harry’s hand and shaking it the way a man shook his dick at the end of a piss. ‘I am Cornelius Apricot, as you have no doubt deduced. I knew you straight away from Carr’s description. Though, even without that, I think I would have known you; we serious connoisseurs of female gravidity have a certain, dare I say, gravitas about us?’
Harry didn’t feel any gravitas in himself but there was certainly a lot of Cornelius Apricot for gravity to act upon. He was a corporeal man in every sense. If he had been a female he would have been mistaken for being pregnant himself, and expecting twins, at that. His chins could have formed a cricket team and when he laughed, which was often, they rippled like tectonic plates moving against each other.
‘If we become friends, which I pray we will, you can call me Corny. Tell me, when did you first discover your love for the beautiful bounteous bodies of the pregnant form?’
Was Apricot, despite all his bluster and charm, testing him, Harry wondered?
‘I was ten years old. My best friend Bobby’s mum was pregnant. One day she made us tea and she saw me looking at her huge belly that made a tent of her maternity dress. She must have been so close to dropping. She saw me looking and then told me the baby was kicking. Without asking, she took my hand and placed it on her belly. It was so hard. I felt a hand reaching out for mine. I remember his mother smiling at me as she held my hand to her belly, and the baby inside reached up to touch me. On the table was a bowl of strawberry and cream and, to this day, I can’t smell or taste strawberries without remembering that day and…well, being excited.’
The chins rolled and the head nodded vigorously. On Apricot’s lips a speck of saliva. ‘Yes, yes, indeed. Yes, yes.’
They were standing on the steps of the old Lyceum Theatre, off the Strand, which was now owned by the Council and used for transient art and theatre groups. Harry felt it was odd to be standing there talking about maiesiophilia, whilst people milled about them; but he figured most of his words were sucked into the flesh of Cornelius Apricot like planets attracted space debris.
‘Carr said you know a member?’ Apricot said.
Harry knew he damn well knew who the member was. Harry had told Carr what story to spin. The hardest thing was remembering that he wasn’t Harry Reed, but Michael Hopkins.
‘Unfortunately somebody who is no longer a member. Indeed, no longer a member of anything. Luz Noche. You knew him?’
Apricot nodded. ‘Luz was a wonderful man. Such a loss,’ he said, reaching out and squeezing the top of Harry’s arm with fingers that could easily have been put inside rolls and mistaken for hot dogs. ‘How did you know him?’
‘Through the antique trade. I have a shop down in Brighton. We got friendly and, one day at an auction, I found myself reaching out for a Victorian magazine dedicated to pregnant women, at the same time as Luz. We soon discovered we shared similar tastes. He had promised to get me into the club, but then…’
‘Indeed, indeed. So sad. And what of the daughter, Ramona? Eh? What I wouldn’t give to see that one pregnant. Eh? Eh?’ Apricot nudged Harry twice, punctuating the ‘ehs’, and Harry had to stop himself punctuating the fat man’s face. ‘Come, let us carry out Luz’s wish and introduce you to the delights of the Bump Banger’s Club.’
Cornelius Apricot put his arm through Harry’s and led him into the entrance hall of the Lyceum; its gilded pillars and murals were peeling with run down charm and there was a faint whiff of decay, which matched Apricot perfectly. Harry was led downstairs and Apricot talked.
‘The Bump Banger’s Club has never had such a demand for membership as it does now. It has steadily risen, I am told, since this problem with fertility; I can only presume that the more rare a thing, the more it is coveted. But I wonder what these Johnny-come-latelies really get out of it? Are they infertile men seeing something that they can’t provide? Isn’t this drowning in mere melancholy rather than the pure aesthetic eye of the true maiesiphiliacs?
‘We try to keep up the standards of the Bump Banger’s; after all it was started as a gentleman’s club, if you know what I mean, Mr Hopkins. And when I say gentlemen, I of course refer to that particular breed of gentleman that is born in England. We do like the exotic though and sometimes the lower orders add a little spice to the proceedings, as do foreigners. Luz was such a one. He was one of those immigrants who love this country as much as born and bred, indeed they take to our customs with such vigour that they often out English the English, as it were.
‘Of course, I have to admit the daughter was a bit of a plus on his side too. The gentlemen of the club often persuade their wives and daughters to perform if they become pregnant. Of course, they themselves don’t attend those events. We are not perverts, after all.’
Harry felt his fingers moving automatically to the smart in his pocket, as though he could feel the picture that sat within a folder there. He wanted to look at it.
‘Luz himself had a peccadillo for the younger pregnant girl. He had introduced one to us very recently, in fact. A beautiful young thing. My own fancy is for the older woman. I like experience. But many, like Luz, prefer the first timers. They appreciate the innocence juxtaposed against the outward sign of what our ancestors would have termed sin.
‘As I say, not my type, but she was very pretty. Lovely red hair, in what they call a Rita Red shade?’
‘Rita Red? Yes, that’s what they call it.’
‘Lovely clear blue eyes. I’m not sure how far gone she was. She wasn’t huge. Maybe a month to go. I do like it when you see a woman from behind and there is no sign that she is pregnant, then they turn, and, oh, the reveal, as the distended belly comes into view. A fetish upon a fetish, my dear Mr Hopkins!’
They had reached the bottom of the stairs where two large double doors and a gorilla in a monkey suit barred their way.
‘Evening, Mr Apricot,’ the hairless monkey said.
‘Please, please, Colm, call me Corny. This is Mr Hopkins, he will be my guest today.’
Colm gestured Apricot towards an open book on a table at the side of the corridor. Apricot signed it and passed the pen to Harry. As Harry signed he looked at the names that were listed before but didn’t recognize any of them. He passed the pen back to Colm.
‘Do I know you?’ he asked the doorman. There was something about his face.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ he said, staring straight ahead.
Harry remembered a fist. He remembered two of them. Was this the guy who’d given him a kicking after leaving Barry Penny’s murder scene? ‘You sure do look familiar.’
Apricot took Harry’s arm. ‘Come, there are a thousand doormen like Colm scattered through this wonderful city of ours, I’m sure you are mistaking him for another keeper of another door.’
With that they entered the Bump Banger’s Club.
The lightening was subdued, the walls covered with red drapes, that wafted in the slight breezes. There were no windows; above them was the old stage of the Lyceum. In the middle of the room was a circular stage, about 3 feet high, that was covered with plush cushions. There were two divans, one black and one white. In the centre of the stage was a round bed, covered in rose petals. The whole impression was that of a post-tacky boudoir. Situated around the room were three separate bars, each lit by a different colour: red, blue and yellow. In one corner there were tables set up and menus set out. Harry wondered if the food was pregnancy-themed. Lactation burger? Chicken maternity? Preggers arrabbiata?
There were about a hundred people in the room. The members of the Bump Banger’s Club were 95% male but there were a couple of women; they were anorexic model thin and Harry asked Apricot what their kick was.
‘You’re right, they are anorexic. They are women who were damaged by the gay fashion mafia. You know, the ones who designed clothes for their young boyfriends to wear and then put them on skinny, no curves, women. They wanted to skew the world to their vision and destroyed the self-esteem of many young women along the way. But now, thankfully, the fashion shows are banned in most countries. The sad waifs come here for therapy. They see men desiring the larger woman. They see women who, even through their warped vision, are fatter than them.’
The men were mainly middle-aged, or older. They were smartly dressed. Some even wore tuxedos and smoked smokeless cigars. They took their idea of a gentleman’s club from the Victorian era.
‘Cornelius, tell me more about this girl that Luz brought to the club.’
‘Wait, my dear chap, the show is about to begin.’
The lights dimmed and the chatter of conversation and raucous laughter simmered down to a whisper. A spotlight illuminated the round stage. A small light played over an entrance way that led along a velvet roped off, red carpeted, walkway, to the stage.
Five women walked slowly into the room. Harry heard a sound of air pushing through Apricot’s mouth: half whistle, half gasp. Now there was utter silence.
The women were all dressed in white maternity gowns that clung to their breast, hips and bellies like cellophane. Every curve, every bump was accentuated in a Rabelaisian orgy of flesh. They walked down the red carpet like models from the banned fashion shows. Camera flashlights exploded like celebratory fireworks. The five women milked their entrance, taking as long to walk 50 meters to the centre of the room as it took a sloth to get down from his tree and piss. Once they were upon the stage the crowd pushed forward. Apricot pushed Harry forward, using him as a battering ram to reach the front of the stage. Once there, Harry had a good view of the proceedings.
‘Aren’t they wonderful,’ Apricot said.
The women stood around the stage, posing, bellies forward, hands on hips. In the background Holst’s Planet Suite played over the speakers. To the sound of Jupiter the women began to disrobe, sliding out of their white dresses to reveal lacy underwear that managed to cover up their modesty, but little else.
The women were at various stages of the trimester prenatal period, to suit the various tastes of the audience. One of the women, a young Asian girl who didn’t look to be out of her teens, was hardly showing at all, her yellow-brown belly like a burial mound to a minor king on her luscious landscape. Harry had always preferred darker skinned women to the Caucasian and watched the girl parading around the stage, his eyes following the movement of her hips and her breast, which were small and held firm by a black and purple bra. She draped herself across a divan and stared straight at him. And it was then that, just for a moment, he saw the boredom and disdain in her eyes, before a smile crossed her face with such sophistry that Harry could have believed that she had picked him out, of the hundred men there, to favour. What darkness did that crocodile smile hide?
And he thought then that he was one in a hundred. Maybe he was the only fertile man in the room. Maybe he was the only man in that room capable of making women pregnant. Yet he never had. What was the point of being fertile in this medical age, anyway? Women didn’t really need men, not in the old sense anyway. Not in the biological sense. His fertility, his one-in-a-hundredness didn’t make Harry feel special, it made him feel like a relic.
The largest of the women passed in front of his vision, her belly just a couple of feet away from him. It was huge, like a medicine ball, the stretch marks across the woman’s skin like the canals on mars. The belly obscured her Agent Provocateur creamy briefs. From behind, it looked as though she was standing in front of a small man with a massive bald head. She was white, in her mid-twenties, with long blonde hair falling over her very pale skin like soft straw. Harry thought of Lady Godiva. But nobody stared at Lady Godiva, save for Tom, and look what happened to that poor bastard.
The woman leaned forward a little, her blonde tresses falling across her face. Apricot reached out and put his flat hand on her stomach. He closed his eyes, and his lower jaw dropped into the multiple chins. Almost simultaneously all the girls moved to the edge of the stage and the crowd pushed forward in silent murmurs of appreciation. Hands reached out, covering the bellies with fingers and palms, like those prehistoric cave drawings of the artist’s appendages. Everybody was pushing forward to touch. Harry reached up, feeling like he was saluting Hitler, or raising his hand in ecstatic religious fervour. His hand met firm flesh. She was warm. Other fingers and hands touched his hand. And then he felt something. He knew what it was but he wasn’t sure how to assimilate it. The gestating child within the body of the semi-naked woman had reached out with a foot, or a hand, or an elbow and touched him through its mother’s skin.
Harry closed his eyes and felt the movement again under his fingers. A child. An unborn child, reaching out to touch his brothers and sisters. His own kind. Harry knew it was a boy. It felt like a boy. And Harry was reaching back and he wanted to tell the kid that everything was going to be ok. It was ok. The world was a harsh place, but there was good too. And his mother would look after him and he would go to school and make friends and have girlfriends and marry and be happy. Because everything could be alright. Damn it to hell, things could turn out good…
Somebody barged into him and Harry opened his eyes and his hand slipped from the belly of the woman, and he looked up into her eyes. And, just like the other girl, he saw calculated boredom; but her sophistry smile had a twitch of disgust in it. He saw it. She knew he saw it. She moved around the crowd, away from him, hands reaching up to her like Catholics reaching for a benediction from His Holiness.
Had what he felt, if only for a moment, been real? Harry shook his head. Nah, trying to find a real emotion at this Club would be like trying to find your soul mate in a bordello.
After the main show the girls went off and took small groups, or single men, with them. Apricot explained that the women were in big demand from artists who wanted to immortalise them on canvass, but that also men would pay big sums just to spend time alone with the women.
‘And do they have sex?’
‘It does happen, but less than you would think. Most men at the Bump Banger’s are happy just to touch the women. This is a more – what shall I say – artistic place, my friend. If the men want sex with the women then arrangements can be made, but it doesn’t happen on the premises.’
They were sitting at the blue bar; Harry was drinking a Castro and Apricot some hideous cocktail called Mother’s Joy. Harry thought it was the colour of baby puke.
Against the far wall an old flick, Rosemary’s Baby, played, with the sound down.
‘So, old chap, what do you think of our little club?’ the fat man said, slapping Harry on the back.
‘Tremendous.’ Harry replied.
‘Good, good. I think I could recommend you for full membership.’
Harry took a sip from the bottle of his Castro. ‘Is that what this girl of Luz’s did? What was her name?’
‘The redhead? Oh, she called herself Rachel, but I really doubt that was her real name. Sure, she paraded a couple of times. First time she was a little nervous, but most of the girls are, especially when it comes to the touching part. I imagine it can be a little perturbing the first time you see all these hands reaching out to touch you,’ he said, laughing. ‘But the second time she was more prepared and appeared to be enjoying herself. Though I think that was part of the problem.’
Harry looked quizzically at Apricot.
‘Luz. I think the poor fellow was sweet on our little red head. He brought her along on his arm like the cat that had got the cream – showing her off to his new English friends as though she was his girlfriend.’
‘She wasn’t?’
‘Come now, Michael, there is no need to protect your friends reputation. Everybody knew he searched out self-sellers, and the younger the better as far as Luz was concerned. You didn’t know this?’
Harry nodded. ‘Of course, but one has to be discreet about these things, especially where friends are concerned. Even dead ones.’
‘Luz was a lucky man to have you as a friend,’ Apricot said, patting Harry’s hand.
‘This girl, this Rachel, she hasn’t been back since Luz was killed?’
‘No. A club member bumped into her a couple of days after the murder. She wouldn’t discuss Luz. He said she had a haunted look. Maybe she cared more for him than I give a self-seller credit for, eh? Be nice to get her back here, though, she was a big hit, and still had a little while to go, I think, before she dropped. I called her only last week, she wasn’t there so I left a message for her to get in touch if she wanted to earn some more cash.’
‘You have her smart number?’
‘Sure. When they register with us here at the Club they can give false names, addresses, dates of birth, whatever, but we have to have a valid contact number or email.’
‘I don’t suppose…’
‘Sorry, old chap, I couldn’t divulge the number. Only members who have been Bump Banger’s for a year have access to the personal details of our ladies. Mind you, perhaps you could help me in getting her services for the club. Tell you what, I’ll try talking to her again; tell her I’d like her to meet an old friend of Luz’s. I could say that you were keen to meet her, that Luz had often spoken of his fondness for her. Egg the pudding a little, what?’
‘Sure, I could play along with that.’
‘Good, good, I’ll see if I can’t persuade the red head back. We haven’t had a red head for a long while, not even a fake one like Luz’s paramour. Yes, I’ll bring my charm to bear and use you as bait, Mr Hopkins. Now, shall we sort out your membership, I’m sure you’ll find a payment scheme that is suitable to your means, whatever they might be. Talking about money is so vulgar, don’t you think?’
Only to those who love it like a fetish, Harry thought. ‘Sure, Cornelius, but one thing bothers me: what happens to the girls once they have given birth? Are they just dropped?’
‘They are well looked after, don’t worry.’
‘How so?’
Apricot looked about him and then leaned in close. ‘We have a benefactor at this club, somebody who has similar tastes to us. He is well known in certain fields and his patronage of our club is not broadcast. Not that he’s ashamed of this place at all, you understand. Indeed, he uses this place to help the girls. When they are ready to give birth he puts them up in hospital and makes sure they get the best care and attention. I’m told he gives them a generous pay-off and medical care for themselves and the child for life.’
‘Who is this saint?’
Apricot looked around the room. ‘He might be here tonight. He likes to pop in and see the shows when he can, which isn’t as often as he likes. Ah, wait, yes, there he is. See, over there, the man standing between the two heavies in suits. The man with the moustache.’
Harry followed Apricot’s discreet nod of the head and saw a man glad-handing the crowd, protected by two goons in ubiquitous hard man shades and dark suits. The man was Martin Falsham.