Pierre. Primula Bond
Embellish, embroider, sex it up till he can’t bear it …
I’ll take the file round to them through the garden.
The garden of the clinic is large for central London and surprisingly peaceful, despite the rush and roar of the capital city all around us. There are flower beds bursting with roses, formal dark privets and bays clipped into exotic birds and beasts, spreading or weeping trees. A big pond in the middle of the garden is the favourite spot, where a fountain shaped like a dolphin splashes water gently all day. You know which patients are feeling better because this is where they’ll be sitting as soon as they can escape the confines of their rooms.
In this heat I’m tempted to take my clothes off and dive in, or at the very least paddle, but before my break I’ve got to deliver this file.
The French windows to room 202 are open. I’ll give Dr Venska the notes and as soon as she’s finished with him it will be my turn. I don’t know yet what I’ll say. Tell him another story if I have to.
I can’t hear anything. Not Pierre’s gruff murmur. Not the slightly high-pitched, accented voice of Dr Venska. The others nickname her Elsa because she looks and behaves like the cartoon princess. From her white toes with their white nail polish right up to her ice-blonde hair, coiled and pinned tightly to the back of her small, pointed head, it’s like she’s frozen, carved from ice.
I step closer, waving the file to remind them why I’m here.
The bed has been moved, away from the light. I can just about make out Pierre’s legs, one in the white cast, the other now in bandages, a sheet draped loosely over them. He’s wearing different pyjamas today. More jaunty. Different shades of red stripes.
And there’s Dr Venska, pacing the shiny floor between the bed and the window. For a moment I think she’s walking towards me, but her face is turned to the bed. Her white limbs, white face, bottle-blonde hair are all bleached colourless by the sun falling into the room. I can hear her now, talking in a low voice, running her hands down her sides, over her high pert bottom, stretching her long legs as she walks so that her short skirt rides up.
When she approaches the garden door I lift the folder like a shield, but she’s still not looking at me. She spins round towards the bed, lifting her hands in the air and smacking them against her legs, bending down, her tight white blouse straining across her breasts. Her head is jutting forward.
It looks as if they’re having a row. I can’t hear Pierre, or see his response. His right leg, the bandaged one, rises rhythmically as if he’s doing some exercises, but I can’t see his hands, which would indicate his response. His jolly red pyjamas contrast with the whiteness of his bed and the paleness of his companion. Like blood on skin.
More silence. Hectoring him hasn’t worked. Dr Venska is trying a new technique. My God. She’s facing him, slightly sideways to the window, and she’s unbuttoning her blouse, pulling it open.
I step backwards, still clutching the file. So this is the stage they’ve reached in his treatment. Pierre Levi has opened up to her, just like I told him to. Too successfully. Because she’s about to open herself up to him, in every sense of the word.
Whatever she’s about to do, whatever alternative sexual therapy she’s about to administer, whatever rules she’s about to break, I should know better than to hang around to witness it.
I turn too quickly, and stumble over the bench. The file flutters open, revealing the few sheets clipped inside. I tear my eyes away from the sight of Dr Venska’s blouse slipping off her shoulders and look down at the notes. I wonder if they mention the kind of therapy that involves the psychiatrist stripping for her patient?
They don’t. Because there aren’t any notes. Well, hardly any. On the first page, dated during the week Pierre Levi was admitted to the clinic, Dr Venska has written ‘psychosomatic erectile dysfunction?’ But she has apparently failed to answer her own question, let alone cure the suspected condition, because beneath the subsequent dates, up until the date I first met him, is scribbled the conclusion we’ve all become familiar with: ‘unresponsive’.
I glance back into the room. No wonder she didn’t need the notes today. She doesn’t need a folder or a textbook to tell her how Pierre Levi is doing. Her question has already been answered.
I can’t speak for his mental progress, apart from the fact that he told me he’d talked more to me in half an hour than he ever had to her. But what about his physical progress? I scratch at a peeling corner of the file. I mean, there’s nothing dysfunctional about Pierre Levi’s cock. I’ve seen the evidence. My body tightens at the thought of it, rising in greeting that first quiet morning.
What’s the point of gloating over that? Someone else is about to benefit from it. Not me.
There are one or two other illegible notes that refer to the drugs Dr Venska is prescribing, or that the other medics have given him for his pain relief. The word ‘hypnotherapy’ is scrawled in capital letters on some entries. But following that the remaining pages are blank.
It’s no secret that Venska uses hypnosis as one of her special techniques. Quite the opposite. She boasts about it. None of us has ever witnessed the therapy because she insists it has to be conducted in private, one to one. And I can see why, now. She’s been putting her special technique to good use in their private sessions. Sex and hypnosis. What an explosive combination. But for whom? Who benefits? Hypnotist or hypnotised?
How real is the sex in those conditions? And actually, why resort to hypnosis when I made him hard just by holding him?
Dr Venska stands in front of Pierre Levi. Her white blouse drops to the floor. She reaches behind her back to unclip her lacy bra. She slides it away from her breasts and tosses it towards him. His hand lifts and catches it easily, like a cricket ball.
He doesn’t seem remotely surprised.
No wonder she never has any notes to write up afterwards.
I glance around the garden. There are a few patients and staff on the other side of the big beech tree, and there’s the glass corridor that encircles the rest of the garden like a horseshoe and serves both to let light in and to keep an eye on what’s going on outside, but there’s no one on this side of the tree.
No one else to see what’s going on in room 202.
My sweaty fingers make prints on the cardboard. I can’t tear my eyes away. Dr Venska sits on the bed, perfectly visible from the window, and faces him. Her breasts are high and pert, and I can clearly see the dark red darts of her nipples. She lifts her hands and starts to massage her breasts, pushing them together, licking one finger and rubbing each nipple to make them harder. She’s talking, talking, all the time, in a low voice I can’t quite catch.
I pluck the pen from my breast pocket and dash off my own observations for today’s date.
‘Responsive today. Extremely responsive. See sex therapy. Hypnosis. Recommend introduction of hallucinogenics and stimulants.’
I stand up with the file, turn to tiptoe away.
Venska is still whispering. Pierre is not replying. Either he’s deep in a trance or he’s getting aroused, lost for words.
No wonder the door was locked.
Venska is leaning back and now she’s undoing her skirt. It falls open easily, and she parts her legs. I can see the white flesh sticking slightly before her thighs part. She hooks one finger into the little lace thong and pulls it aside. There’s a glimpse of blue-white pussy. Bare. Totally waxed.
I feel a punch of nausea. I step away, and notice too late that one more blank sheet is on the ground. I pick it up and, as I straighten, something – the whiteness of the paper, my movement – finally catches Dr Venska’s eye.
‘You! How long have you been hanging around out there?’
Her voice is a whiplash, screaming out of the room.
‘I