The attendant smirked and raised his eyebrows at Adam and Eve clasped in ecstasy. ‘Is that art, then?’ he asked James.

‘God no,’ said James, ‘pornography.’

Matt and Otter both knew why Fen had refused sandwiches with them. They knew exactly what her prior arrangement was. And, though they knew that she obviously wanted to keep her lunch-time lecture secret, they couldn’t resist going.

‘We’ll keep out of sight,’ Otter reasoned.

‘We’ll be silently supporting her,’ Matt justified.

‘We’ll be fleshing out the audience,’ Otter continued.
‘We’ll sit at the back and sneak out before the lights come up,’ Matt concluded.

Only Fen’s lecture was of course conducted not in an auditorium but in the sculpture hall, so Matt and Otter found pillars to hide behind.

‘My God!’ Otter exclaimed. Matt, though, was speechless.

There was Fen, sitting on the lap of a large stone man whilst a stone woman pressed her back against his, her head thrown back, one arm extended down with her hand firm over her pubis, the other arm stretching above, her fingers enmeshed in the male’s hair. Fen sat very still, having positioned herself so that the male form seemed to be nuzzling her neck, his right hand masked from view by her body but apparently cupping his cock. Or wielding it. Or touching Fen’s bottom. Or delving right in. The sight was quite something. Quite the saucy threesome. Matt’s jaw dropped. Otter giggled involuntarily. James felt his trip to London was already proving well worthwhile.

Judith St John arrived late. She coughed when Fen was about to speak. Fen swiftly told herself that perhaps Judith simply had the beginnings of a cold. Judith St John had no interest in Julius Fetherstone, whom she considered a second-rate Rodin. But she was interested to hear just what this Fen McCabe had to say. Bloody double distinction from the Courtauld Institute. The true distinction was that she was deputy director of Trust Art. And look at Matt Holden, all mesmerized. Oh for God’s sake.

‘Julius Fetherstone,’ Fen started, stretching her arm above her, stroking the male’s cheek before placing her hand over that of the female, ‘was obsessed with sex.’

Fen slid from the lap of the sculpture and, with her hand on the male’s hand which, it transpired, was indeed lolling over his cock, she ran her fingertips up his arm while she continued. ‘Fetherstone seemed to delight in capturing in stone, or bronze, and in a frozen moment, all the heat, the moisture, the movement and, most of all, the internal sensation of the sex act.’ She brushed the cheek of the man with the back of her hand and then rested her head gently on his shoulder. The women in the audience wanted to be where Fen was, wanting to touch and clasp and grapple with the awesome sculpture. Many of the men in the audience, however, just wanted to touch Fen. Apart from Otter who was transfixed by the male sculpture. And by a rather athletic-looking tourist a few yards away.

‘This work is called Hunger,’ Fen said, standing back from it though it meant her all but pressing herself against two young women listening. She gazed at the stone and then faced her audience. She made eye contact with all of them, with Otter and Matt and James and Judith. ‘But the couple themselves seem quite sated, don’t you think?’ The audience bar James was staring at the sculpture. ‘Don’t you think?’ It was a question. James wanted to answer but could not establish eye contact and didn’t really want to raise his hand. Anyway, the lecturer was staring directly, almost at point-blank range, at the two young women near to her. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Definitely,’ one whispered. The other could only nod. They were both flushed. Not from humiliation or embarrassment. But from the effect the mass of copulatory stone had on them.

‘Just look at them,’ Fen implored, turning back to the sculpture, ‘just look at them.’ She gave her audience a tantalizing few seconds of silence. ‘Now, this portrait bust of Jacques Lemond,’ she said, moving to a plinth nearby, ‘is not just conventional in conception, it was staid and boring even for the time in which it was executed.’

Fen’s talk ended ten minutes later, after a look at two oil sketches by Fetherstone (which James was most pleased to deduce were inferior to his in execution and subject matter). She’d answered the obligatory questions and then she’d left the gallery. Briskly. She knew well what would be going on in the sculpture hall. Most of the audience would remain. They’d potter about half glancing at other works. Some would linger at Rodin’s The Kiss. But all would gravitate back to Hunger, however long it took. For a deeper look. To feed their hunger.

Judith had left noisily midway through the Q&A. Matt left the gallery unseen, leaving Otter to chat up the athletic young tourist. Matt’s semi hard-on disconcerted him.

It’s not just the look of her. Not the sculptures, for Christ’s sake. I think it’s that she’s so damned passionate. I don’t know!