The Pleasure Quartet Read Free Page B

besides the lighthouse, and we had expected no formal venue as such. Joan had told us that we would
easily find the Ball once we arrived. The venues were always designed or located in such a way that the uninvited might walk right by them, but to anyone who was destined to be a part of it, the
Ball would prove unmissable.
    I heard the Ball before I saw it. We had left the car parked on a grass verge near the point and as soon as we stepped out of it and my bare feet touched the grass I knew where we were headed.
The sound was a strange keening, like whale song. I took the lead, and together we picked our way carefully down the steep embankment to the sea that stretched out on all sides of us.
    My mind leapt – it was exactly as I had imagined. Like standing on the end of the world. And there, by the headland where it was said that the dead begin their journey to the afterlife, a
hundred or more large white birds flew, their wings beating in unison, diving off the edge of the cliff and then reappearing moments later, twisting, turning, joining with one another in mid-air,
frolicking on the strong wind that blew across the Cape. But they were not birds, I realised, and I brought my hand to my mouth in shock. They were people dressed in elaborate feathered costumes.
Both men and women and all of them naked besides the luminous paint that covered their bodies and reflected the light of the setting sun in a million coloured shards so that they were almost too
bright to look at.
    I could have watched these creatures endlessly, knowing that they appeared to be floating free from the burden of any kind of harness or suspension device, but I was aware that Iris and I were
expected in the kitchens so we continued onward, still following the whale song down to the shore line.
    At first, the beach appeared to be empty. But as my eyes adjusted to the rapidly dimming light I realised that what I had at first thought were rocks were in fact people clad in a skin-tight,
silvery grey and glistening fabric and curled up on the sand as still as corpses so that they resembled sleeping seals. As we approached, two of the grey creatures unfurled and stood to greet us.
They were women, or at any rate they both had large breasts and erect nipples that were so prominent I found it difficult to meet their eyes as they spoke rather than staring at their chests.
    ‘Welcome,’ the women said in unison, before taking both Iris and me by the hand and leading us a hundred yards further down the beach to a screen of ferns which appeared from the
outside to be a flat covering over a cliffside. But as we all approached, the canopy of plants parted like a pair of curtains, revealing a high-ceilinged tunnel, as wide as a roadway. The sides of
the tunnel were lined with lit candles which stood in hollowed-out skulls set into the rock. Whether human, or animal, or realistic fakes, I wasn’t sure, but the effect was more restful than
ominous. It made me feel as though we were stepping into another world as we followed the dimly lit pathway.
    Music reverberated so loudly through the rock walls that when I ran my fingertips along the damp stone I could feel vibrations as if I were inside a giant beating heart. I caught only fleeting
glimpses of the Ball’s guests through openings that we bypassed on our way to the kitchen and the sights that caught my eyes were so bizarre I could not be sure whether I was here at all or
if this was all part of some elaborate and mad dream.
    Like the two attendants who escorted us and the acrobats who flew over the clifftops outside, the revellers were not properly garbed but seemed to be painted in such a way that their skin
appeared almost transparent, as if they were ghosts, travellers who had already been to the afterlife and returned. They were unashamedly naked and some of them were joined in passionate embrace, a
tangle of arms and legs and a corresponding cacophony of moans that were sometimes an utterly