Quiver

He made love to her every night; his sexual energy seemed linked to his generally hyper state. She noticed that his body temperature was always higher than her own, as if his whole metabolism operated in a different time frame from the world around him. She was secretly frightened that he might burn out one day, stop suddenly and drop like an insect.

His sexual imagination was limitless. He taught her how to clench her muscles so that she could pick him up, even when he was limp, and make him hard inside her. He taught her how to pleasure him with her mouth. He would pry open every orifice, every part of her body with his butcher’s hands. He would describe the individual beauty and function of each part as if it were an act of God. She grew to love her own body through his eyes. She began to see the long stretches of white freckled flesh as a genetic lux

ury, a largesse of opulence. She started to exercise and lost the characteristic stoop she’d used to make herself smaller. With Jock’s help she discovered the waisted outfits that accentuated her bosom and hips, exploiting the shape she was born with. Stacey was transformed.

She became responsible for running Jock’s social functions, held to promote both his business and public profile. Under her guidance, Motherwell’s rapidly became more of a public institution, renowned not only for its meat but also for its benevolence. With Deidre’s help she would coordinate the catering, the guest lists, the tip-offs to the local papers and decide which charity would hold the greatest publicity potential. Stacey was careful to exploit Jock’s own humble beginnings as a means of transforming the company’s image. It worked.

Soon Jock was called on to open sports centers and visit dying children to distribute Motherwell’s Christmas hampers. Stacey even organized a Jock Motherwell scholarship for educationally and economically deprived children. That landed Jock a fifteen-minute interview on prime-time television. Sales went up sixty percent overnight. Jock was initially overjoyed, but as Stacey’s confidence grew and she became more and more assertive at board meetings, Jock found himself secretly threatened. Behind her back he hired himself a new assistant, then redefined Stacey’s position, limiting her duties to stocktaking and social-diary coordinator. Stacey accepted his decision without question, but blamed herself, suffering silently as she searched through her actions to discover what had caused Jock’s change of heart.

It happened the day Jock had insisted that she entertain their Arab contact Ahmed el Hassam, who was visiting from Saudi Arabia.

“He’s our main man there. Has heaps of cash, brings in over two mil worth of business. So we’d better put on a decent spread. I’ve organized the caterers; all you’ve got to do is smile a lot and look like a blond princess. He collects racing horses, so you two have something in common.”

It was hot, one of those days when the sun beats mercilessly down on everything. Jock had asked her to take the Mercedes for a service. Before she left the garage she decided to check the glove box. She flicked it open. Something glimmered inside. She pulled a tiny shoe out into the light—a miniature version of her own shiny red shoes. She turned the shoe over slowly. Size four, Charles Jourdan, exactly the same style, only smaller, much smaller. Everything around her receded. All she could hear was the pumping of her own heart, drumming loudly in her ears. The shoe sat in her hand comfortably. In fact, it was smaller than her hand.

“Excuse me, Miss, but we need to put the car on the blocks.” The mechanic’s voice dragged her back to reality. She slammed the door shut, hiding the shoe in her handbag, and hailed a cab amid a rain of wolf whistles from the building site opposite.

The trip back to the house was a blur. Stacey gazed out at the passing suburbia, numb. His duplicity burned hard; the weight of the shoe in her handbag was like a millstone.

Back at the house they had already erected a huge marquee in the garden. Inside were tables spread with the most extraordinary collection of cold meats, shellfish, salads and dips. In the center of each was a curious display of long sausages and meat bones, arranged to look like macabre flowers—Jock’s idea of a joke. Dazed, Stacey checked that the right number of plates had been laid out.

Tiny, shining, beautiful. She locks the bathroom door behind her and looks at the shoe. She sniffs along the shimmering patent leather. Jock’s distinctive aftershave intermingled with something else—jissom and a heavier perfume? She wants to slash the shoe, as images of impaling Jock through the eye with the heel flood up behind her retina. She wants revenge. She looks at herself. Her external appearance remains deceptively composed. Grimly she reaches for her lipstick. She puts on the same Chanel suit Jock bought her that first day and goes down to welcome the guests, the perfect hostess.

Many of the visitors are there mingling already: the stock farmers who supply the livestock, bureaucrats from the agricultural department who are unofficially on the payroll, the odd socialite determined to ingratiate herself with the nouveau riche. Stacey murmurs greetings and propels them gently in the direction of the most appropriate circle of chatting people. Fragments of conversation drift by.

“Jock has really trained her well.”

“Lucky to have her. I mean he’s not exactly a paragon of virtue himself, is he?”

She floats by, superficially tranquil, as brittle as glass. She hates him for this public humiliation.

At last he arrives, surrounded by his henchmen. They part like worker bees harboring their queen when Jock steps forward to show off his associate from the Middle East.

“Stacey, this is Ahmed el Hassam.” She realizes that she is staring directly into the stranger’s eyes. Ahmed el Hassam—dark-skinned, high cheekboned, handsome in a gaunt way—is exactly her height.

“Stacey is my partner in crime, aren’t yer, doll?” Jock pinches her bottom. She smiles and extends a long cool hand toward Ahmed. He squeezes it warmly.

“At last, a woman I can see eye to eye with,” he murmurs in perfect English.

“It’s not often that I see eye to eye with anyone.” Did I say that? she thought. How can I sound so calm? She smiles back at him. The novelty of feeling equal, of feeling that this man could physically overpower her, intrigues her. It does more than that. Jock steps possessively between them.

“And there’s someone else I’d like you to meet, Stacey. June Thistlewaite, meet the great Stance.” Stacey freezes as Jock’s new assistant, June Thistlewaite, steps forward. She is under five foot with heels, which, according to Stacey’s calculations, makes her at least four inches shorter than Jock.

“Hi, Jock’s told me so much about you.” A saccharine, high-pitched voice, a tiny triangular face, dark eyes and jet-black hair, pretty in a doll-like way, the exact opposite of herself.

Stacey pulls her aside. “What size shoes do you take?”

“Why do you ask?”

In a flash Jock separates the two women. He steers them both to the buffet table, talking all the time about the export business, tax tariffs, how Ahmed has offered to extend their business further into the Arab countries. She knows she is drinking too much, conscious only of the other woman, her natural grace, the dainty way her tiny hands handle the knife and fork.

She can feel the eyes of Ahmed catching her as she stumbles on the dance floor, bending over to pick up the broken heel of her shoe.

“Come, you need to sit down.” They walk past Jock holding court over a group of cattle farmers, their loud laughter exploding obediently after each of his jokes.

“You are married?”

“Not yet.”