Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk (35 page)

The paparazzi took to Lydia. She was photogenic and had the
phwoar!
factor. Hers was the name they shouted loudest at red-carpet events, hers the cleavage that captivated their zoom lenses.

Soon, opinion pieces were appearing in the middlebrow tabloids with headlines such as “Singing The Praises Of The Fuller-Figured Woman” and “Is Our Obsession With Skinny Finally Over?” The articles, all penned by female hacks, couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or not that Barnaby had dumped the waifs and plumped for someone statuesque and Rubenesque instead. On the one hand, it gave hope to larger girls everywhere. They, too, might be able to bag a handsome billionaire. On the other hand, there was a distinct undertone of resentment and chagrin. It seemed that all this time women had been exercising and dieting like mad, thinking that thinness was what men found attractive, only to discover that they might as well have ditched the Zumba classes and splurged on the Chardonnay and chocolate biscuits all along.

When a bestselling chick-lit author went on Twitter and referred to Lydia as “that jammy heifer,” she was deluged with indignant comments and trollish accusations of jealousy and gender-betrayal. The truth was, though, that many of her sistren secretly agreed with her. How dare Lydia Laidlaw be so voluptuous, so comfortable with her curves, not to mention so damn
lucky
?

One byproduct of this minor media frenzy was that it drowned out the carping commentary on Barnaby’s round-the-world PR tour. Dorothea, OwlHenry, Isaac and Aletheia could barely get their views noticed. Lydia had stolen their thunder. She had eclipsed them all.

Then
Brava!
magazine came calling, requesting an interview with Lydia for its regular
In The Limelight
slot. The editor, Marlee Whitgift, conducted the interview herself, while a photographer snapped pictures of Lydia at home in her modest Battersea flat.

Brava!
Magazine, August Issue

Interview Excerpt

Brava!
:
Lydia, you’ve made a career out of crusading environmental journalism. Now you’re going out with GloCo oil magnate Barnaby Pollard. How do you reconcile the two things?

Lydia Laidlaw:
They’re not incompatible. I don’t see the problem. Just because Barnaby does what he does, it doesn’t mean I have to stop doing what I do. We’re both grown-ups. I’m an independent woman. I’m not going to change my worldview just to please my boyfriend.

B!
:
But don’t you think some people might find it a bit hypocritical, you enjoying the rewards of his industry, an industry that’s about as environmentally-unsound as it’s possible to be?

LL:
The money’s there. Barnaby’s made it. If he wants to spend some of it on me, that’s his choice. It’s not as if I could stop him.

B!
:
How did the two of you meet, anyway?

LL:
GloCo needed to raise its profile in the eco-media-sphere after a string of industrial accidents, and that whole unfortunate, but still quite amusing, seagull affair. I was one of the journos they targeted. Barnaby and I just clicked.

B!
:
I’d have thought, to someone like you, he’d be the Devil himself.

LL:
But you can’t help who you’re attracted to, can you? And he is, let’s face it, a very attractive man. I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to like him at first. I tried not to. I gave him a pretty hard time, as a matter of fact. But Marlee, haven’t you ever fallen for a wrong ’un? Someone you know you shouldn’t fancy but you just can’t help yourself? I doubt there’s any woman who hasn’t, at some time or other.

B!
:
Are you hoping to tame him? Is he a challenge? A project?

LL:
A handful, maybe, but tame him? Why would I want to do that?

B!
:
Change him, then.

LL:
Again, why? He’s not broken. He doesn’t need fixing. He is what he is.

B!
:
But someone like you, in a position to influence his decision-making...

LL:
I’m his girlfriend, not his wife.

B!
:
You could do so much good for the planet. You could be the Melinda Gates to his Bill, the Jane Fonda to his Ted Turner.

LL:
I can do good with my writing. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Marlee, but women these days can exert power directly. They don’t have to work their wiles on their menfolk in order to have influence, not any more. Like the song says, sisters are doing it for themselves. Barnaby’s a king of the world, for sure, but I’m a woman, and that means I’m in a whole different league.

B!
:
No argument here.

LL:
Let me tell you something. There’s a lot of talk about women having an “inner goddess.” About how we’re all of us connected in some way or another to the source of things. We give birth – create life. Our menstrual cycles echo the lunar cycle. We’re natural, elemental beings. Now, some would dismiss that as mystical poppycock. Sentimental nonsense. But there’s still some truth in it. You can’t deny that, in the ways that count, in the areas of life that really matter, women are and always have been far superior to men.

B!
:
Again, I’m not going to dispute that for a moment.

LL:
Here’s what I think. We may not individually be goddesses, but collectively, as a gender, you might describe us as a goddess, as aspects of a divinity, multiple parts of a much greater whole. Compared to a man like Barnaby Pollard, I might appear to be nothing very much, not in material terms or the effect I can have on society. But I’m linked to something larger than me, something he’s excluded from by virtue of his Y-chromosome, something no amount of money can ever buy him, and that gives me strength. Infinite strength.

B!
:
Mother Nature? Is that what you mean?

LL:
A bit simplistic, but yes. “Mother Nature” always sounds so kindly and caring, doesn’t it? I think it’s stronger and stranger than that. Fiercer. Nature is not necessarily a cosy, cuddly thing. So there’s my counterpoint to Barnaby’s status, how I’m his equal.

B!
:
Much as I hate to round things off on a “cosy” note,
Brava!
readers I’m sure will want to know if you and Barnaby have any plans. What does the future hold for you two?

LL:
Who knows? It’s still early days. Are we going to get married, you mean?

B!
:
He is eminently eligible, he seems serious about you, he’s in his mid-forties so he really ought to be settling down – and there’s no question you’d make a terrific wife...

LL:
It depends. I haven’t got to know him properly yet. There are layers to him. Many layers. I feel I’ve only just scratched the surface so far.

PREJUDICE AND FREEFALL

S
HE RODE ON
top, her pendulous breasts swinging just inches from his face. She was gripping his cock tightly inside her, her vaginal muscles slowly clenching and unclenching. It was exquisite procrastination. She was holding both of them on the brink of climax, drawing the moment out as long as she could. He thrust upwards with his pelvis, urging her to go quicker, to finish things. She resisted. She pinned his shoulders to the bed with her hands, reinforcing her control. Her mouth was a full-lipped O of anticipation, her eyes squeezed shut.

He almost couldn’t bear the delay. He could feel the orgasm swelling up inside him, begging for release, ready to explode, but she kept the tension going, moving only enough to bring satisfaction that tantalisingly tiny bit closer. His cock seemed so engorged, it was a wonder she could fit it in. There was nothing separating them. He filled her.

He seized a breast in each hand. His groping fingers found the nipples, which were erect and proud, big as his own thumb tip. He pinched them experimentally, and when she gasped with approval, he pinched harder.

It had the desired effect. She started to rock faster on him. She tossed her head back. He felt tremors begin to shudder through her. Her hands clawed his shoulders. Her whole body became one massed effort of pleasure, with no function now but to take them both over the edge of the precipice and into the freefall of ecstasy.

They came as one, like a single organism, bucking and bending, bellowing.

PARADISE LOST

“B
LIMEY,
”
SHE SAID
afterwards. “I think the whole of bloody Kensington heard that.”

“Soundproofed glass in every window,” Barnaby said. “Keeps the traffic noise out.”

“And the shagging noise in.”

“Pure coincidence, I’m sure. A happy byproduct.”

She lay on her back, gazing up at the moulded ceiling. On first seeing Barnaby’s bedroom she had remarked that it was larger than her entire flat. Yet it occupied only a quarter of the second storey of the house. In a crowded city like London, Barnaby’s wealth bought him the one thing that was at a real premium: space.

“Did you read my
Brava!
interview?” she asked. “I sent you a link to the online version.”

“Hmm. Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“I liked it. You came over well. Smart, composed...”

“But?”

“Why does there have to be a ‘but’?”

“Because of your tone of voice.”

“Okay.” He grimaced comically, like someone about to undergo a body cavity search. “The goddess stuff. That Mother Nature bit. Really?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I just would never have expected it from you. I thought you were more grounded than that.”

“Obviously you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

“Unless you were simply giving them what you thought they wanted.
Brava!
’s pretty right-on and feminist, isn’t it? ‘The Magazine For The Woman Who’s Special.’”

She rolled over, leaning up on one elbow. Her breasts pooled weightily against each other. “What is it about that sort of thing that bothers you so much anyway?”

“Feminism?”

“No. Spiritual matters.”

“Nothing. It doesn’t bother me.”

“You seem dead set against anything that isn’t empirical, straightforward, factual, practical.”

“Are we having a row?”

“A genial postcoital discussion.”

Barnaby reached for the wine glass on the nightstand. They had been drinking Domaine Ramonet Montrachet Grand Cru immediately prior to tumbling into bed together.

“Right,” he said, taking a swig. “Since you broached the topic... I don’t believe in nature as this sort of
entity
, this sentient, holistic super-being. I don’t subscribe to that point of view. Never have. When I look at a bunch of trees or a mountain or a valley, I don’t sense some sort of spooky magical presence there, the way a lot of people do. I just can’t understand that at all. Trees, every kind of plant – they’re just organic machines. Animals and insects too. There’s nothing to them other than their basic imperatives, which are to consume and survive and procreate. And to see the hand of God – or whatever – in a landscape or a pastoral scene, that’s just absurd. It’s rocks and grass and earth. It can be pretty, yes. Dramatic, even. It can have aesthetic appeal. But to come over all misty-eyed and reverent and talk of ‘majesty’ and detect a living intelligence buried within... Well, I find that airy-fairy and foolish.”