The Bishop in the Massage Parlour (2)
The first time, when he gingerly pushed the door and came in the parlour, I was completely fooled, had no idea that he was that important man Magda had arranged to come see me. She had told me that he was a very distinguished man, but had not revealed his identity. He looked like a lay-about, scruffy and rather fearsome. Another drug baron, I had wondered. Magda who was at the desk scarcely smiled at him, and unostentatiously called me.
‘Jodie, your visitor has arrived, give him a towel and take him down, will you.’ In an attempt to make this sound casual and ordinary, she used a dry tone of voice which sounded a bit authoritative, which is unlike her. With a mechanical smile, I handed over a towel which I had taken from the cupboard to him, wondering who he might be. None of the other girls noticed anything unusual. Just another Joe. I cast an oblique glance at him as we were going down the steps, and noticed that his moustache was askew. He came in the cubicle, and I showed him the shower. All of a sudden I noticed that he seemed unsure of himself. I suspected that he might even be considering changing his mind and beating a retreat. Then he took a deep breath and aimed the exhalation at the ceiling. Right, he said, call me John, not my real name.
‘Jodie,’ I said ‘not my real name either.’ He took his dark glasses and his cap off, then took his clothes off, by which time I had got the shower going. He was on the point of going in when he remembered his moustache, and with a smile he peeled it off.
‘I am sorry, but I assure you all this charade is necessary.’ I helped him dry himself and invited him to lie down on the bed. I took my lingerie off and approached the bed. I noted that he was quite handsome, had strong features suggestive of the position that I would soon discover to be his.
‘This is my first time,’ he said. I misunderstood and thought he meant that he was still a virgin.
‘Don’t worry John,’ I said, ‘I’ll show you the ropes.’ He laughed. He asked if I kissed and I said that it depended on the customer, and offered him my lips. He was not very expert, I thought, for he didn’t even try to open my lips to force his tongue in , but he was a quick learner. He did not believe me when I said that I had had a great come, and I rather impatiently grabbed his hand and placed it on my pussy to feel its wetness. He seemed delighted. Although by law we are not supposed to smoke in our alcove, nobody checked on this, and I offered him a fag and he took it, saying that he was strictly speaking a non-smoker. We smoked facing the mirror on the ceiling, his arm around me, and I felt very cosy like this. Suddenly I recognised his face as one I had seen on television. A minister! You’re a minister, I said, I recognise you. It was funny to watch the blush appear suddenly covering his whole skin, like I had switched it on by pressing the right (or wrong) button.
‘Not a government minister, but _’ he said with a smile. Suddenly the truth hit me like a cold slap the moment you go outside the door on a cold winter morning. He was the Bishop of X. I had seen him on Question Time. I stared at him wordlessly, and he knew that I knew.
‘Your secret is safe with me, I have given Magda my word of honour.’
He said nothing for a minute or so, then nodding to himself, he said, ‘I am sure my secret is safe with you.’
That was the first time.
He came regularly every six or seven weeks after that, and we soon developed a sort of friendship. Sometimes I wonder whether I had not fallen a bit in love with him. I really looked forward to his visit. It never ceased to perk me up when I was told that John McNab was due for a visit. Maybe I was just flattered that a man of his calibre wanted to spend time with me, albeit in bed, as his sex object, but he certainly did not treat me as one.
Ours was a relationship based on equality and mutual respect. We talked about everyday things, we joked _ he had a great sense of humour and a great sense of fun _ sometimes we talked dirty. I could see that this did not come naturally to him, but that he was enjoying it the more for all that, as he was clearly a man who liked to challenge himself.
We had good sex, but most of all I liked putting him on the spot by asking difficult questions. He was my confidant, but at the same time he told me things about himself which I doubt that he would have told anybody else, certainly not his wife. I will just give one example: whilst shopping at Marks and Spencer’s, something he did with his wife, once in a while to keep abreast of everyday life, he had thrown some sticky tape in his trolley and it had accidentally rolled into his bag, and he had pretended that he had not seen it, and had effectively committed shoplifting. He had felt no guilt at all. I wanted God to know that I was no saint.
Over the years, the friendship developed, our feelings for each other became warmer. Mercifully he never preached. Not openly that is, although very tactfully he would slip in a few words of advice. He was pleased to learn that I was a reader, if not an avid one, at least I always had a tome on the go. He introduced me to authors that I had never heard of, and when he learnt that I had been in India, he recommended some books and films. Few films, he said, encapsulate the soul of that mysterious subcontinent as Renoir’s The River, based on a novel by Rumer Goden, and he would later give me a cassette of the film which he said he had bought for ten pence at a Church Bazar. I have first refusal, you see. I have to admit that I found it boring in the extreme, but I did not tell him. He gave me a luxury edition of The Jewel In The Crown, three volumes in an attractive box, which I read from cover to cover in less than a week. It was so much better than the TV series. He brought me tapes of programs on Indian Railways, Indian Maharajahs’ palaces and what not. He gave me books by Ian Dalrymple which I devoured. And he would ask about what I had thought of these books and films, and we would discuss them like we were Jeremy Isaacs and Germaine Bloody Greer.
‘I am so pleased for you,’ he said once, ‘that you have a hinterland.’
‘Wot’s an ‘interland when e’s at ’ome?’ I ask. We often indulge in that sort of banter, using mock accents. He shakes his head in mock disapproval, but it makes him laugh when I talk ‘common’. Although I grew up in the Manchester slums, I did well at school and learnt to “talk proper”. Sometimes he tries to use slang and swear words, but fails miserably. He pretends not to be prudish by using the f word, but it always rings false. He loves saying, let us fuck or I will turn it into a sperm bank (I had told him about Sally who in all innocence coined that iconic phrase). I know he makes a great effort to do this. To which I would sometimes reply, Yes, Father which art in Eden, harlot is my name, have a condom come. His faint blush does not escape me, but he laughs. He says that I have one of the sharpest minds he has ever come across, the wittiest, and believe him, he has met the most learned in the land!
I suppose I have a perverse nature, and although as a rule I do not really enjoy bad language, I try to cultivate it in the Bishop. The technique I developed came quite naturally. Let’s have an après-shag fag, I said tentatively once, and in order to prove to me that he has been gained by the spirit of his illicit adventure, he started using the expression too, although again I can see that he forces himself. After our après-shag fag _ he only smokes when he visits me _ he tells me that he is never more relaxed in his life, and he will ramble on. Oh yes, your ’interland, he says. Too many people have one goal in life and it’s everything. ‘He pontificates’ I usually cut in, although he does not really do that. He says we all need to have other things to interest us. He says that in my case, my interest in Indian culture kept me sane. I seemed knowledgeable about the place, I obviously liked it. He was delighted to hear that I had been to the Mela at the Meadowbank Stadium at the end of the Edinburgh Festival last year to listen to a concert of Indian music. Yes, he said, India is very much your ’interland. I nod, and his face lights up, ‘It’s more of an ‘obby, almost a passion, init,’ he says merrily.
‘I wish I dared organise an event in my patch and invite you to come and talk to my flock about it, show them pictures, make them listen to the music, and get the local Indian restaurant to cater. But I’d have to explain who you are.’
‘No you’re not a coward.’
‘The guilt I feel, Maria,’ I had told him my true name, ‘is almost palpable. Sometimes I think I want to be caught and exposed for the fraud that I am,’ he says.
‘You are the least fraudulous chap I know,’ I tell him, realising that I had coined a new word, but knowing that he would not think any the less of me for that, ‘you should not feel guilty, just enjoy the moment. You ain’t harming nobody, certainly not me.’ I am sure you’re right, he says. It’s the same every time. I can anticipate what he’s going to talk about, like a wife her husband after many years of marriage. It is funny how very much like a marriage our relationship with a chosen few of our regulars becomes. Often, with no effort on my part, I find I can remember things someone has said, the names of their wives and children, their problems at school, and they are surprised that we seem to care. Not that we do really, once their back is turned, it’s bye bye, see you next time, and ‘Au suivant !’, as says Jacques Brel.
But I do think of John McNab quite a lot, wonder when he is due for another visit.
He likes to talk about his wife. They are obviously good friends, but from what he says, I don’t think there was ever any great passion there. Still, he confides, however much he enjoys these furtive sessions with me, there is nothing he can do about feeling guilty. I have repeated to myself a million times, no exaggeration, a million is a million, that the crime I am committing is a victimless crime, but guilt is like the smoke from a fire of carnal passion, he says. No way to stop it rising. They shared many interests obviously, he told me, music, matters theological, philosophy, books, walks and hill-walking. He could not live without her and wishes he would be the first one to go, because he could not imagine outliving her.
‘I suppose if we had children things might have been different,’ he sighed once.
Anyway, when I find that John is coming, I despatch Bill to go buy a can of McEwan’s lager and ask him to keep it in the fridge, and set about doing the various things one does on arriving at the parlour, like tidying up the bedroom, emptying the baskets of leaky condoms if the last girl did not do it, as happens sometimes, spraying the place up a bit if it often smells musty. I change the sheets on the bed, try the tap in the shower. In the last three years, this has been a constant source of frustration to all the girls, and Tim keeps promising to get it fixed. I change into my pale green flimsies which he says make me look very sexy, and make myself up, but too much.
Although I am a worshipper at the altar of Mammon, I resent it when other
clients ask for me earlier on that day. I am like a teenager waiting for a phone call from her first boyfriend. I have to try hard to act professionally and not say no to the random caller who wants me. It is as if I am trying to keep myself pure for the man of God. When the time of his arrival is drawing near, I alternate between rushing into the yard to consume an inordinate number of fags and sitting in the front room with Magda and Bill (who hasn’t the faintest about what’s going on), have a wee natter, although I usually am too absent-minded to listen to them. I look at the tabloids vacantly and drink Perrier for want of something to do. If Magda and Bill both happen to be doing something else, I answer the phone. Usually they just want to know who’s working and which shift, and we tell them. We do have the malicious calls, people who take their chances and want us to talk dirty to them, or who hope to jerk off at the sound of our voices. Usually the moment it becomes clear to me that that’s what they are after, I just bang the receiver down, but on these special occasions, I fire a salvo of ‘Piss off you fucking pervert’.
That afternoon, I suddenly notice an empty can of lager in the waste paper basket, and check the fridge, and find that the Bishop’s can had gone. Bill, who is not supposed to drink at work _ Tim has threatened to sack him so often that he pays no heed _ admits that he felt tempted, and says he was going to replace it later. Make sure you do Bill, or I’ll show you my tits, I tell him. He hates dirty talk.
Anyway John turns up at half past six on the dot. Sometimes I wonder if he doesn’t hang outside for a few minutes so that he would be spot on. I know he prides himself on his punctuality, it is almost a religion with him. Even when we are at it, he cannot help casting an oblique glance at his watch. I realise too late that although Bill had bought a replacement, I had forgotten to put it in the fridge, and would you believe it, the sauna is a hot place. The moment he comes in, he pays Bill and hastily rushes downstairs. The old codger’s eyesight is worsening by the day and the other girls think that the Bishop is a rough ’un and pay no attention to him. Besides they all know he is my regular. The wonder is that nobody wonders why I never talk about him. It is quite usual for us to exchange a bit of gossip about our punters. Little did I know that this particular visit would be his last one.
(To be continued)
