Living
with Primula
by
Ted Bond
By
rights Primula Bond should have given me the first fee she ever
earned, because she earned it writing her first erotic story in my
time. She was my secretary, employed by me, and she was using the
one word processor we possessed in the office back in 1995 to write
Man
in a Cage, which
was subsequently accepted by the now defunct magazine For
Women. She
was paid the princessly sum of £150 and was chuffed to bits to be
paid for something that she enjoyed so much.
She
claims she composed, typed, edited and printed the story out in the
space of her lunch hour, but I suspect that the truth is that the
lure of writing about a naked man delivered in a cage as a birthday
present to a lonely, Chardonnay drinking singleton far outweighted
the joys of drafting leases, conveyances and wills.
Every
time after that when I saw her nimble fingers tripping over the
keyboard, I wondered what smut she was composing this time, and
perhaps allowed myself the odd furtive question about what else they
were capable of doing. More poignantly, though, I had to wait
another eight years before was holding those slender fingers in mine
as we walked down the aisle.
Our own story is itself the stuff of (almost) doomed romance. When I
first arrived at a Hampshire practice of solicitors in 1991, Primula
Bond came with the package as my secretary. She was a stunningly
attractive, auburn-haired single mother. I was a battered and
bruised, prematurely grey divorcee. We had a lot in common, and
instantly struck up a very close, humourous friendship. We developed
a habit of writing increasingly risque limericks on telephone memo
pads and leaving under each other's noses when on the phone trying to
be businesslike.
She claims she fancied me almost from the word go, and when she
confided as much to one of her work mates, that mate agreed that I
had that silver fox look of a guy who 'would rip off your knickers
with his teeth.'
Poor
Primula even had one or two suggestive dreams about me in those early
days, apparently, which must have been disconcerting for her when she
had to buckle down to my dreary dictation each morning. I say 'poor'
because owing to a fairly chequered past love life she was too shy to
rush into declaring her feelings for me. She was biding her time to
pounce, in the best traditions of an erotic heroine. Meanwhile my
confidence levels were also pretty low and I was totally blind to her
blushing intentions. I thought I was her boss and friend, nothing
more, and I assumed that at 29 and 13 years younger than me, she
would never think of me in any sexual way.
So
when I upped, dated, proposed to and married another woman in haste,
a few months after we first met, Primula was devastated. She came to
the wedding as a guest and put on a brave face, but developed a
cracking migraine and says it was the worst day of her life. She
could see me but not reach me, and felt marginalised in the sea of
hats and frocks, unremarkable at the time to me and my family, and it
is to my eterntal regret that I didn't know how she felt until it was
far too late. We could have saved so much precious time. Anyway,
having seen me fly off from that wedding reception in a white
helicopter, going on honeymoon with the wrong woman, Primula was
convinced that henceforth I would only ever be the one that got away.
Certainly
she bravely continued working for me after that wedding, even though
I was now living just down the road with my new wife, and something,
life, frustration, longing, galvanised her into writing that first
story under the harsh striplights of my office, with people nattering
around the water cooler. In the calmer times of recent years Primula
still finds inspiration all over the place. She'll find ideas in a
tableau glimpsed from a rushing train, a snatched overheard
conversation, an anecdote, memories of her own travels, relationships
or bizarre temp jobs. Or she'll just pluck a random thought, an
imagined scenario from her over-active imagination. Writing is a
wonderful way of escaping the mundane, a free holiday, while
enhancing our observations.
But
what started it all off back was probably the trauma and frurstration
of seeing me marry someone else (only then to witness my obvious
unhappiness while she could only stand by and watch) combined with
her own vain search for true love in her own life. And they do say
that adversity and heartbreak are what drive the best writers.
What was the loss for those over-priced dating agencies she joined
eventually became my gain.
Either
way she remained working for me for a couple more years before
abruptly uprooting herself and her little son and vamoosing back to
London to get on with her life. When my marriage broke down after
seven years I phoned her up in her little flat in Earls Court, as she
had invited me to do. I expected her to be long gone by then,
married to some dashing City tycoon, but as luck would have it she
was free. I took her out to dinner, we talked until the small hours,
and we've been inseparable ever since. Not wishing to waste any more
time, we married just under two years later when she was six months'
pregnant with the elder of our two boys, and thirteen years on the
rest is a blissfully happy history.
Primula
has an MA from Oxford University in English Literature and since she
was about eight years old her ambition, through a varied career
including teaching children in Cairo, temping in London and, of
course, working for me, has been to write a best selling literary
novel in her real name, but until that dream comes true she is making
her way as a freelance features writer as well as proving to be
pretty damn successful at writing erotica. Her editor has been
hugely supportive of her and her work all through their journey
together from Black Lace through Accent Press to the new 'Mischief'
series at the Avon imprint at Harper Collins. And what could be more
flattering than being periodically asked, begged sometimes, to give
him another story, or another novel?
She also lends something of her more academic side as well as her
experience to providing critiques for aspiring writers of erotica,
feeling passionately about getting the basics of grammar and
construction right alongside any creative flair before submitting
work to a busy editor.
Now
to the nitty gritty of life with an erotic writer. What everyone
wants to know is, do we spend our weekends swinging from the
chandeliers, swinging in other ways, exploring al
fresco options,
dressing as tarts and vicars, investigating fetish clubs, or working
out how various Ann Summers-style contraptions work in order to be
diligent in our research for her next novel? Well, put it this way.
I still think she is super gorgeous and we are a normal, healthy,
close and loving couple who laugh a lot and have busy lives and an
energetic boyish family. Sometimes EastEnders and a takeaway is
about as much fun as we get if we're too darned tired, but we do try
to spend as much of our time as money will allow getting away from it
all, eating, drinking and pampering ourselves in hotel rooms.
Aside from all that, however, my
wife has an extremely vivid, nay graphic imagination which can
transport her far away from the deep, deep calm of the marital bed
right back to the hurly burly of the chaise-longue. And bearing in
mind that as well as all the usual content you would expect ie
overbearing bosses, lusty landladies and inexperienced lodgers,
ingenue photographers, prowling cougars, nuns, even (in her latest
work) vampires, quite a lot of her novels revolve around lesbian sex,
I can honestly say that I have no direct experience of that, being a
red blooded male and all.
Primula's love of food, clothes
and perfume is always indulged in her stories, along with her love of
exotic travel. So she takes great pride in transporting her readers
from their semi in Staines to a slick penthouse suite in Manhattan or
a back-street convent in Venice and so much the better. The
imagination is a great, cheap alternative to travelling.
As for Primula's own experiences?
Well, buy one of her books or e-books and you'll be as convinced as
her legions of fans that she knows all there is to know about
whip-lashing dominatrixes and threesomes!
One of the hilarious aspects of
our life together is that outwardly we are ordinary, respectable, fun
loving people. If you met me at work you'd think I was a typical
country solicitor and because she is tall and slim Primula at the
school gate has been known to be considered a little haughty - until
people hear her dirty laugh. But then there's this other side, the
cool looking wife who writes this explicit stuff on the side and the
husband who supports her fully in her efforts, and this dichotomy is
always a show stopper at dinner parties.
Thanks
to 50
Shades I
really think that erotica will become less and less shocking,
especially if written intelligently and well as Primula does, and
more and more just another successful genre
of
writing. Certainly at the last dinner party, with very good friends,
they women all seemed to have read 50
Shades without
batting an eyelid. So Primula, who before has forbidden her friends
from reading her books in case they never speak to her or look her in
the eye again, feels that perhaps now her books will reach more
people, and therefore make a little more money.
Primula's parents have not and
will not read her work, and would obviously prefer to see her name
emblazoned in the window of Waterstones rather than available only on
Amazon. But then so would she! As for our children, well, my grown
up daughter and son-in-law who live abroad have read her books, in
fact in the German edition (Primula is very big in Germany and
Italy!), and thoroughly approve. Primula's sister is a firm
promoter. Primula's eldest son used to be toe-curlingly embarrassed
and would turn the books back to front in the shelves when his
friends came over, and he still doesn't think it's cool, but now he
sighs and says, 'Mother, when are you going to write something
sensible so we can all retire and go and live on a tropical island
somewhere?'
Hear, hear, I say.
I
wish I could say we are constantly and vigorously researching each
and every scene of her new book, but the truth is that I have barely
seen her in the last two weeks because she has the bit between her
teeth (take whatever inuendo you like from that) trying to emulate
the current craze for erotica, kick-started by the phenomenal success
of 50
Shades of Grey. She
is either up half the night writing or leaping out of bed at 2am to
rush downstairs to get something down before she forgets the idea.
Understandably
she's driven both by ambition and downright fury that someone has
achieved overnight success doing something Primula and her co-writers
have been doing for 20 years or more.
As
for whether I ever remover her underwear with my teeth? Well, that's
for me to know and you to find out!
