Pierre. Primula Bond

Jeannie stops talking and bends to her task with the soap and sponges. She directs me to hold the bowl while she runs the cloth over Pierre Levi’s eyes, behind his ears, nose and mouth, pushes his thick hair off his forehead so that it stands away in tufts. She squeezes the water out and takes a clean sponge to continue washing down his neck, over his chest. As she moves it slowly round each pec the nipples stiffen. She brushes the sponge across each tip, making it darken. His fingers curl into fists, but otherwise he doesn’t react.

      It looks as if we are torturing him.

      I stretch out and touch her hand, wet with soap and water.

      ‘Maybe we should stop this,’ I whisper, gulping on a ridiculous rush of tears. ‘He’s hating it.’

      Nurse Jeannie’s face softens, but she shakes her head. She lays her hand on Pierre Levi’s chest.

      ‘You’ll feel better when you’re clean,’ she says quietly. ‘These restless nights you have.’

      She squeezes the sponge, dribbles water playfully over his stomach, and starts to massage it in circular movements. My sister used to do that with her babies when they had colic.

      With those long lashes fanned out over his cheeks and the hair pushed away from his eyes, Pierre’s face is more open and boyish. I long for him to catch me watching him. Maybe I could coax out another snuffle of laughter.

      I look back at Nurse Jeannie. Now she is the one watching me. A glimpse of understanding crosses her round blue eyes as she rolls Mr Levi’s torso, turning him as far onto his side as his legs will allow so she can wash his back. Now he’s facing me. Still his eyes remain closed. Screwed tight shut again, as is his mouth. It really is as if he hates us.

      Nurse Jeannie strokes the sponge over the mound of each buttock, up the crack between, down his thighs, then lays him gently on his back. She raises the sheet to do his feet and toes, smoothes the sponge back up and then dries him with the towel.

      In any other situation there’d be more sexual response by now, however immobile the rest of him. Pierre Levi must have a will of steel to stop himself groaning under this feminine touch. His cock has plumped up slightly but it must be yearning to lift, straighten, stiffen, in anticipation of pleasure. Any other patient would offer a smutty joke or a muffled apology and get soothing amusement from the nurse. But not this one.

      I know I’m supposed to be detached. I’m a care assistant. Pierre Levi is vulnerable and badly injured.

      But to me he’s also an attractive, naked man lying on a bed.

      I lay my hand on the mattress and stare past Jeannie, out past the neatly clipped topiary shapes decorating the clinic’s parched garden, up at the hot, blue sky hanging above the city. I’m barely aware that my fingertips are touching Pierre Levi’s hip because a memory from last summer, July in another hot city, another shadowy room where another naked man was lying, is searing through me.

      The day my heart was broken.

      I thought it would be a nice surprise. I had returned to Rome two days early from a jazz festival in Edinburgh. My boyfriend Daniele hadn’t been able to join me in Scotland, so I thought he’d be pleased to see me home so soon. Silly me. It was still dawn when I got off the airport train. The church bells were ringing over the domed and tiled rooftops. I could hear faint choral singing from the nuns up in the Trinita chapel as I crossed the Piazza di Spagna towards our apartment …

      ‘She’s gone off somewhere, nurse. Some nostalgic journey. Bring her back.’

      ‘Rosa? Would you like to have a go?’

      I stare blankly at Nurse Jeannie and then down at Pierre Levi. While I was reminiscing his eyes have opened again. They are searching my face as if he can read exactly what is written there.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ I answer, shoving the bowl at her so roughly that the water slops over the edge. ‘Just the genitals left to do, was it?’

      She nods, frowning at my tone. Pierre doesn’t blink, but he bites down on his lower lip. I refuse to meet his gaze. I tweak a fresh cloth from the dispenser, squirt on a big blob of soapy wash and thump the cloth onto Pierre’s lower abdomen. It lands too hard. The muscles tense beneath the blow. Rock-hard muscles. So he has been working on his physio.

      My hand in its surgical glove rests there for a moment, letting the anger at what Daniele did to me seep out. I start to make circles over Pierre Levi, moving lower with each circuit, until I reach his groin. I pause. He’s not paralysed. Nothing wrong with his arms. He could easily stop me doing this at any point if he really objected. His velvety penis is no longer soft. Quietly, no doubt reluctantly, it’s coming to life. It’s unfurling, straightening along his thigh. I take it into the palm of my hand, lift it away from his leg, run the cloth firmly from the base to the tip, down again, smooth the cloth over the strip of perineum, feel it grow, balance the heavy balls in my hand.

      Daniele’s cock was thicker than this. Shorter. Some might have said it was small. But since when did size matter? It used to batter its way greedily inside me. Oh, God. In the early days of our relationship, those nights of unadulterated lust, the moment Daniele thrust into me stars would explode in my head.

      ‘A little more gently, Rosa.’ Nurse Jeannie halts my train of thought. ‘It’s a fine line, isn’t it, Mr Levi? Making sure such a personal activity is conducted with total professionalism.’

      To my relief he doesn’t reply. Just lies there with a tight, agonised expression on his face as if I’m about to slice him open without anaesthetic.

      Daniele’s cock seemed to be permanently ready. Permanently hard. But then again, he wasn’t recovering from a near-fatal accident, was he? Pierre Levi may not be fully erect but it most definitely is not, as Dr Venska’s notes claim, entirely unresponsive. It has flushed darker and a pulse deep inside is shifting it in my hand.

      I swallow. If this was Daniele lying here at my mercy I’d be lowering my face into his groin by now, feeling the heat beating off it, opening my mouth, flicking my tongue around the base of the warm shaft.

      I try to hide my impure thoughts by giving Pierre a quick smile. I don’t mean the smile lasciviously. I hope he gets that. I mean it as reassurance, and I hope he gets that, too. Although I don’t really care either way. I may not be the good little professional, but I’m aware of patient protocol, of keeping that essential distance, and it works to my advantage, too. I’m more than capable of withdrawing behind my own protective barrier when life gets too intrusive.

      Pierre Levi isn’t the only one with that privilege.

      His cock sits in my hand, harder now. But a stiffening cock is the last thing I need to handle. What Daniele did with his, what I saw him doing that misty morning, nearly finished me.

      I’ve been celibate for a year. Another year will do me absolutely fine.

      Nurse Jeannie’s pager bleeps just as I’m rolling back Pierre Levi’s foreskin.

      ‘Sorry, I have to get down to admissions. Can you finish off alone, Rosa? Not normally our procedure with the newer girls, but I think you can cope. Is that all right with you, Mr Levi?’

      ‘Whatever, Matron. I’m just counting the days when I no longer have to submit to this humiliation.’

      ‘Rules is rules, Mr Levi.’

      Nurse Jeannie puts the bowl of water down on the table-trolley and leaves the room.

      There is silence for a moment. I’m still gripping his cock between my finger and thumb. It has grown while I’ve been standing here daydreaming. I can feel it swelling and hardening in my fingers, through the latex of my glove.

      Bravo, Mr Levi. Your tackle is thicker now than Daniele’s ever was.

      I puff air through my lips, meaning it to be silent, but it comes out as a low whistle.

      ‘Now the sergeant major’s gone, how about we break those bloody rules?’

      I