Bob Hinshelwood's Other writing
   Life lived within is also lived without. 

** 1  The drifting angel of the forest

The bark is the excrescence of the tree recorded as biography.  Its living sap and cells have coagulated into hard armour against the weather.  But the trees themselves are a separate expression - the antique stale essence of interminable years of staying put.  They are a living growth of the spirit of the forest - its existence always demands the unknown.  Where did it all come from?  What are we, in the nature of things?

I was not walking anywhere.  This patch in the forest was, as it were, the place to arrive at, and I, the only arrival. When I moved on, each new place became in turn the only place to arrive at too.  As if time and motion had ceased.  What started in this dream-filled space will die of course. By its own hand, as you will see. But here, for the moment, time was denied its future, denied transitions.  That stand of still verticals stretched above me to those endless fan-vaults.

The stillness of the colours in this 'thing' we call the forest.  Its brown hues and decaying yellow leaves are the deadness of it which pours the gentle still tones in the space around. These browns give the atmosphere to the life of this place.  Those darks are shadows that make shapes in this place.  The dark which gives the silent stillness is an absence of light, but the conditions of peace and inspiration.  Nothing is flat beneath my feet; no path wanders in front of my slow passage through this undergrowth.  The sun I left outside, juggling and playing with the clouds in the sky, is only a filtered essence beneath these trees, a flickering glow like the damp of a long-squeezed orange.

I was not rambling, hiking across a route of well-trodden vistas, as I might at other times.  In the midst of this silent growth, I had entered the confident silence of another living entity.  I was life entered into another life, its livingness and its deadness was the proof of itself.  To be an organism is to be not alone.

            Just as that silent stillness seeped monotonously by me, there was movement amongst the big trees.  Had I myself moved so that the dark lines of vision between the trunks had changed – some closed off, some opened a way through?  No.  Distantly, a figure crossed one of those deep chinks.  Momentarily a glimpse of faded colour that was not of the forest.  I cannot, in that darkness, say it was a flash of blue.  It was a soft pulse, a sky colour blended with the surrounding brown.

            She – I say the movement was a ‘she’, because she passed much closer – came through the trees, gently swirling the ferns underfoot. She did not pass close by.  But I could see her fair, ruffled hair, a fresh blue summer dress, a light burr - a determined tread, a similar enjoyment of the same lights and darks of our forest.  I did not move, so as not to spoil the motionless shadows for her. She may not have seen me, seen only more of the solid trunks I had melded with.  We seemed together for ever in that soundless presence.  As she moved across my vision, a dozen trees away, the flecks of blue, and of pale hair, of a noble chin and (perhaps, if I had truly seen her) smiling eyes, youngish trip in her step as she trod over the foliage, and a pert confidence in the set of her shoulders, as she moved in and out of the forest pillars, there was no motion.  Her movement had joined the stillness in their own marriage.  Till, inexplicably she faded like light, and was gone.  A clump of trunks huddled and blocked her from my view as I watched.  A simple lingering rustle joined the silence.

            What remained was the trees, their forest organism. And a pattern burned there in my memory system.

 

I saw her again.  Not that day, not that year, but later still. I recognised her by the quiet of that forest which she carried wrapped around her as a cloak might have been.

            There was a bustling this time, people.  They moved each way as I stood to watch.  I was on holiday far away, and offering myself, once again, the chance to swirl in this melee as if a swimmer entering a torrid stream. I could stand my ground in the swirl and watch (no, listen and feel) its relentless life.  Its continuousness suggested a seamless eternity.  Without community, people interweaved an endless pattern.  No contact, no words, only the noise of movement.  The noise of feet, stepping with purpose, as the crowd slid unknowingly past each other.

            I first became aware of a patch in the crowd that exuded an unusual warmth.  She moved more slowly than the rest, a kind of spot of silence standing out in the hectic press.  I could sense the peace of that forest on her, or rather as if it wafted like a delicious scent to my senses.  There was that still eternal quiet we had had together.  I saw the light trip of her movement and recognised her instantly, the strong features of her face as she passed where I stood.  She barely looked ahead of her.  Eyes, calm with reflections, saw little around her.  The breeze ruffled her fair hair in the sunlight, and smoothed it with one hand in an infinite slowness.  She was closer to me than before and I thought her on this occasion smaller than I had remembered.  Her movement through the crowd created a pocket, an unfilled people-free pocket of her own sunlight and prettiness.  I knew once again as I watched that it would go on for ever. Once again burned into my mind. Her infinite presence with me. Even when she was gone I knew it would last for ever.

            As if she had no body, no substance, she left a presence within me – a presence as solid as my flesh, a presence that I believed once again I had been seeking for ever.

            To understand this ethereal proximity a second time, entails divulging those in-between months – or years.  If I open my heart to you, you may, I fear, enter with less respect.  I require you to visit it as a temple, a hallowed ground, a place to treat with chastity.  That dew that looks like quicksilver, or even fresh, sprayed silver itself, glistens over the surface of the place inside me, where she is kept.

 

* * * * * * *

 

After the first serene moment of blue, I had held that freshness, a permanence all my own, which my soul concealed in a secret hiding place.  I had a quick ‘fling’ with Gwen, a rough struggling student of physics who also ran the students union welfare fund.  She told me I was regarded as creepy but I relaxed and became quite normal after she had let me have it with her.  So, she blithely said.  She was from the north of England and never more often was a spade a phallic object than with her.  Though I never told her that all the while of our feverish, over-humid wrestling in bed, I was preserving in the business end of my mind, that drifting angel of the forest I had captured in a wood. 

            Had I remained faithful to that sylvan sprite, things might have been different.

Gwen led me astray.  Students in those days were prone to demos and sit-ins in the offices of those in power. Because I went along with her and her council members I lost my lecturing job.  Oh dear.  I knew I should have stayed with the flitting pale blue shadow.  I had betrayed it.  I had lent my passions – no, only lust – to bouncy Gwen.

I had closed over that place in my mind, which had been burned as it were with that sacred peace.  I had sealed it with cool dew.  I intoned to it passionately as to a tomb, as if to a bare altar, an eternal being that has been.

            Later Gwen, having cured me of my creepiness perhaps, dropped me for a burly Australian surfer.  I drank a bit, and still without a job, agreed to form a business with a friend, grinding lenses for opticians.  Unfortunately, to find my share of the business funds, I was forced to perform a theft from the museum of scientific instruments at the University that had sacked me.  They fetched a lot on the second-hand market, and did us well as a share of the company. But another museum that had scraped around to buy from the dealer, discovered they were stolen property.  I was forced to travel – as far as possible. You will not credit how difficult it is to set up an export trade in prescription ground lenses.

            How could I descend to such a corrupt base, though it is my nature.  But she was there to see I rose above it.  The silver film I had wrapped her in became a gold filigree capsule untouchable by one such as me.  Those memories remained untouched, embalmed in adulation, removed from storage on a daily basis and polished with love, and then stowed in the softest tissues again in the secret heart that I had protected from Gwen and others.  It was a true home she had made me.  A biography of blue I held within.

 

The third time I saw her, it was back in my hometown, thousands of miles from both those earlier sightings.  It was in fact truly just around the corner from our workshop.  I saw her getting out of her large car and disembowelling from it two small children.  The vigorous tension of her movements, the proud set of her head on determined shoulders, the light spring of her legs.  I knew every sign so perfectly – as I had preserved them with such accuracy and relished them each day of my life all these years.  I could have touched her as I walked past.  But so engrossed was she with landing her precious little cargo that she never noticed my passage sliding by.  We did not touch, but it was one of the two little ones, probably twins, who brushed my legs.  Its little arms were so stretched from its minute body by over-weighty clothes that he turned like a slow top into my path.  I felt the real presence of substance – nearly her substance.  She squealed a little to bring her young one to safety without a glance at me.  Then I was passed – with new pictures: of her calm and broad eyes, the openness of her face, and its natural skin.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Regularly, that still creepy man sauntered down that road, round the corner from my workshop.  And from time to time I would encounter a radiance in the vicinity.  The air pulsing with electric forces, when I saw her there (I had become a battery, a capacitor, an accumulator).  Sometimes I strolled past, maybe quite close and she would float as if unconnected to the mundane - and oblivious of me.  Sometimes I would shelter at a distance and watch from between the shoulders of other passers-by, as she fussed with her schoolchildren, walking them forward, or strapping them into the safety of her car.  And later I would see them stumbling around, as a strong boy or a loose-haired girl.  Both children so actively busy with life in this world, could not see the aura of gods around their mother’s being.

 

Later they were independent finding their own way round the streets, through the neighbourhood. Though her family grew and her substance changed, I found her presence as identical as ever, haunting, magnetising, eternal.

            On one occasion the little boy, probably coming home from his first school, in smart grey flannel suit, short trousers, dropped his lolly – a vigour of green and lemon yellow.  It landed, plop, on the pavement in front of their house.  I picked it up quickly. The boy startled by the presence of this silent man, stopped.  He had started to go for it, pick it up.  Then froze.  I explained to the child he should not have it now, it was dirty and he should not suck it. A sullen quiet stare preceded the beginning of fear.  The nanny took charge and agreed as the little boy’s stunned panic changed to protest and anger at her.  She smiled and bustled him on into the house, to mummy.  I was left, as it were the street cleaner following up the holy family.

            Back in my own home, I peeled the sticky lolly from the folds of my pocket lining.  I pinned a large piece of paper to the wall – the back of a poster.  With pins and cotton thread I attached the lolly to its middle.  With a felt pen I drew a red circle around.  A perfect circle.  How could it turn out a perfect circularity!  Without being an artist.  It was the reach of the goddess in my soul.

            On another occasion the young daughter suddenly came out of the house as I passed.  She had a friend behind her, a tense ferret-faced thing.  But the daughter with the flaxen hair and in her pert pre-pubescence, was alive with light and grace, a little wand of vitality, enough to make spells.  She rushed past me as if I were street furniture.  The firm virgin vigour of her body rubbing momentarily by me.  The material of the trouser leg she had slid beside, smouldered all day, its burning had been scented by the loins from which she had come.

            And finally, the young lad, now healthy, his reddish hair cropped short in a bristly fuzz came down the road towards me and swung into the gateway, his sports bag covered in logos in one hand and a meek crumpled-looking girlfriend in the other, appearing as decoration to his soon-to-be manhood.  It was summer, perhaps the year he went off to university.  His features were now distinctive, a tall broad forehead that rose in dignity above the small but perfect features of his face.  He would remain thus, a reminder of her perfect poise, until in middle-age perhaps prosperity would fill out his jowls and his paunch above the belt.  It was merely a glimpse, a momentary portrait to be frozen with others in my feverish and foetid memory.

 

Then, a few years later the house was for sale.  On one occasion a slim distinguished woman gazed from the window as if expecting someone to arrive, someone to look over the property.  Her calm eyes, open natural face, pert confident set of her shoulders (I could see the silver and gold I had wrapped her in).  As I glanced at her the light shimmered, the earth itself vibrated with untracked energy.  The pane of glass in front of her melted.  The intensity and temperature of the sun and the moon thrust through the gap that was left.  It grabbed at my heart.  It almost got me, as if there was, for a moment, a truth and worship located within the distance between us.  Was this the first time that she had let her eyes glance actually upon me?  I looked back, riveted in a horror as if a vile defiling might have occurred, as if a hope had come too near to being real. Time itself wrinkled in the heat. But, in reality, I walked on, frozen in a continuity of pace and stride.

            One day the new people had moved into the house, clad it in scaffold, and imprinted their own obliterating mark upon it.  She, the divine, retreated once more to the immaterial shrines of memory.

 

* * * * * * *

 

I had lost her to an oblivion I could not even remonstrate with.  She was gone, and left me with the imprints and shadows, and stains on the sheets. I could only struggle with their agony. There were times when imagination was more terrible than the real.

 

I caught my flight from London with time to spare and more.  Her large eyes hauntingly followed me – every inch of the taxi journey. They reproachfully hung in the air before me , a landmark in my psyche, a spirit manifest in ectoplasm.  My live soul too vulnerable to resist, began to swallow in the frail wafts of hers.  I imagined, as I slumbered in the aircraft cabin’s seat that she was concealed in me.  No, I determined, not so. In my baggage, secreted in the icy climate of the aircraft’s hold.  She would shiver, gasp at the slender air pressure. Two hours to half freeze the life from her.  She would crawl from the hold when we arrive, grey with a deadness flowing in her skin, her joints stiffened to unbending, her large eyes shrunk into a smallness inside her head where a half-awareness still flickered groggily.  A body as cold as iced metal, she would be too painful to protest, only to grovel forwards for help.

            I was familiar with these contents of my mind, familiar as child’s toys.  She had entered this unseemly area and laid a new responsibility upon me.  A voltage too intense to use – a discharge that could only rend and twist and suffer.  When I visited the slight rim of the volcano, she was there to be pushed forward, screaming and clinging to the crumbling edge of earth, and then turning over in a gathering fall as if given up to a rape.  The bright glowing ponds of fire below, her limbs a slow turning wheel as she spun with force towards the cindering surface.  Only my eyes, only my own eyes, as if the line of my sight could be reeled out as elastic lines to offer any safety.  At the last moment she could clutch them, and as if my concentration were a spool I might winch slowly up, little by little, her seared skin, now white ballooning blisters in some places, and wet tatters and shreds in others. Should I heal her with a caress?  Did I have one left?

 

On my journeys I never knew if it was to the hinterland of these obsessed fancies, or to the brutality of real occasions.  But she now accompanied me, her thumb in her mouth as if a knife, her degradation to be worn as a permanent mourning garb.  If I had sought all that time to purify her, she had now seeped corruptingly into me, as the cesspool pollutes the well.  I could no longer exorcise that mouldering stench from myself.  She was chained to a black rock, this bleached girl with beauty like an arc-lamp. The tide rushing forward had already engulfed the strict elegance of her ankles, her calves.  The monster was leaning forward over the cliff-edge above her, its teeth snapping for more than hunger, for pain and blood itself.  My sharp sword snick-snacking, steel through butter.  Her bonds and shackles succumbed to its whistling sweep.  And she was free, freed by her hero’s hands.  I had rescued her purity and her sublime being.  I carried her as a radiant-skinned trophy, free from the dragon’s snarling jaw, the foaming tide.  I was wide-awake in this dream.  I savoured lost youth.

 

* * * * * * *

 

A number of years later, I was in trouble for the second time in my life.  I had for some while been a leading figure in the local history society.  So when an impoverished provincial museum decided to sell an Anglo-Saxon battle harness they came, discreetly to our society, and it was me that dealt with the request.  I found a buyer, a handsomely rich buyer.  But one on the other side of the Atlantic.  It was me, as agent, that the customs and excise pounced on when they intercepted the export of this priceless national treasure.  Ironically, I would in fact have given all my fees on that occasion to the benefit of our small society.  Ironically, the only beneficiary of the whole deal, in the end, was the British Museum who got the glittering object for a much reduced price.

            But worse than this, the customs and excise decided to prosecute – their one-in-ten decimal policy.  And it was me they picked on as the evil go-between, the middle-man, who had fooled two innocent little organisations – the museum and the Society.  I was tried in court and without much ceremony I was easily convicted.

Well, I was spellbound by the prosecuting barrister and admired his articulateness enviously.  He was young, a child to my generation by then.  After this short trial, I sought him out in the corridors of the courthouse, and approached him.  I asked bluntly and without preamble how his mother was.  I noticed the tall broad face, like hers.  He had those small but dignified features, reddish hair; and as I spoke, a wrinkled surprise crossed his pleasant expression – just as it had when his lolly had dropped.  He was uncertain about my approach, I thought.  As if an opponent in court might be an opponent for ever.  I might be seeking a perverse revenge.

            He was noncommittal at first, ‘I don’t think we have much to say to each other,’ he started.  ‘Were you a friend of hers?’ he continued, nevertheless.  He wished to remain polite as well as cautious, but I picked out a secret hint of curiosity, even alarm.

            ‘I have tried to look for her over many years,’ I admitted, choosing candour and, maybe, recklessness.

            He stared at me.  I had a sudden premonition that the light had gone out. That she had died.

            ‘My parents had divorced,’ he said simply.  ‘I don’t believe they were really in love.’  He retained his poise.  But I had troubled him in some way.  He had abandoned his haughtiness in favour of being frank. The corridors bustled with people, and the echoes redoubled the numbers as if a crush of humanity was escaping. The walls were stone, regular lines of vertical piers reaching high above the humanity like an arching sentinel, a bland fan-vaulting of plaster stretched over us.  All magic was leeched from this pale imitation of a holy shrine.

            ‘What was she lacking?’  I asked anxiously, ‘What was she looking for?’  Blurting it out as if choked to overflowing.

            ‘She was always looking for something.’  He talked absently, but continued to look at me intently. Suddenly he swallowed and looked briefly at the toes of his well-made shoes.  ‘I have no intention of talking to you,’ he said inconsistently as he started to tell me something about her.  ‘But if you want to know of some reason why it happened, she never knew what she searched for.  I think she simply gave up.’  He looked up, at me, taking in my ragged and defeated image.  I saw something in the young man’s stare.  Something in me.  Perhaps it was my sacred shrine I kept her in.   ‘Were you one of her lovers?’ he asked without suspicion.  I realised he was fond of her, troubled by her purposelessness.

            ‘Perhaps,’ I said – I lied, in fact, ‘that is the problem.’  I confirmed it to myself.  Then I wanted to know, ‘Has she died?’

            His head bobbed just perceptibly.

 

He opened his mouth to speak and I knew he was going to tell me darkly. I turned on my heels and walked away. The corridor filled with a cloud of thick blood, a thunder.  So, I would not have seen him, heard him if I had looked back. 

 

This thing I am looking for, it is a stale essence of interminable years of staying put.  Like trees themselves are each a separate expression.  Those barks are the brown biographies the trees leave upon themselves.  This forest has abandoned itself to those gentle brown hues, the yellow-green dust of ancient leaves and lives.  Where is that new blue haze?  I stretch forward, looking for it.  I do not see it.  And I will not look back at him, her son.  It is the forest that shelters her remains.  Cast out from sacred ground, she would silently drift to our own brooding forest.  I believed that the method she had used was to hang herself from the branch of a tree. It was the only symbol that would make sense.  The only way she could have found me at last.

 

*****

 

 

** 2 Seduction

He emerged from the bar with the three colleagues he had come to meet at the airport. They had met as soon as he had arrived, They had chosen the bar of the departure lounge for their business meeting before his immediate return flight. The Mediterranean sun was shining as he walked them to the sliding exit-doors. He noticed the woman standing near the doors. Her large eyes were gazing at him, steadily. He returned his attention to these colleagues in Venice and said goodbye to them. as they reiterated their decisions on the art exhibition to be curated. The brief visit to the city of this business well=known authority was probably quite widely noticed by the art community here.

            She was still looking with her large dark eyes. Her small son was standing next to her, maybe three or four years old.

            He felt almost compelled to move towards her after the three had disappeared outside. She was statuesque, her gaze unwavering. He was smiling as if welcoming her, but her dark hair and relaxed pose made her seem at home more than he was, as he considered his return flight to England. She remained still and engaged with what she saw as he approached. However, he did not know what to say when he had approached within a few feet. She was tall, and in her high heels nearly his height. She wore a trim but ordinary frock with buttons down her chest and an ornamental belt that suggested a curve at her waist. He was aware he had noticed her body, and slightly embarrassed he refocussed on her face with the eyes that disturbed but drew him to her.

            She held out her hand for him to shake. He suddenly wondered if he should have recognised someone he had met before. While holding her hand, he said, “Have we met before? I am sorry if I should have recognised you.” He let go of her hand which dropped to her side and the small child reached out to it too and held it.

            Disconcertingly she said nothing. He looked quickly at his watch as if checking for his return flight, but he knew it was not for a few hours. “Would you care to have a quick drink with me,” and he nodded to the bar he had just emerged from. She nodded with a welcoming smile now. But they both remained standing. He then crouched down to greet the little boy. “How are you, young man?” he said in English. The child looked seriously at him, then turned to the woman and looked up into her face as if anxious about the attention from this stranger.

            She picked him up in her arms, and with his little head on a level with hers, there were four beautiful large eyes looking at him, one pair as if taking him over, the other with a suspicion that was trying to push him away. He then touched her arm on the other side away from the boy, and he started to steer her towards the bar. “Thank you,” she said. And at last she looked ahead, where she was going, and not at him. He was quite surprised as the two words she spoke indicated an English accent, not at all Italian as he had expected. He brought a couple of glasses over to the table she had chosen and then went back for a small glass of coca-cola for the boy. He sat down opposite her with the boy on one thigh as he stared in earnest at the stranger.

            He sipped his glass, looking into her face, “You are English,” he said, as if it were a question,” She nodded, smiling. The slight movement of her head shook her dark hair slightly which was shoulder-length and full and wavey. It framed her pretty face. She was actually quite attractive he realised. But modestly dressed, hardly with make-up, and a still but elegant posture. He felt stirred. There seemed to be a powerful message communicated to him by her quietness which contrasted with the insistence in her gaze. “Have we met before?” he asked, feeling a little lost with her determined but silent engagement. She shook her head slightly, indicating ‘no’. The mixture of discomfort and fascination was unfamiliar to him. He was unsure what was expected of him. He decided if he did not know what she expected then he should proceed as he felt.

            He put out his hand to touch her face, to stroke it momentarily, and then dropped it to rest on her arm. She moved to put the boy down on the floor and he stood against her with his arms in her lap and continuing his anxious stare at the stranger engaging his mum. He watched the movements and looked back into her calm face. The skin on her arm which he was touching felt electric. He was stirred. He nodded to the boy, “He’s a bit anxious about me.” And he added foolishly, “Is he your son?”

            Surprisingly, she said, “He’s my brother.”

            He raised his eyebrows in an expression  of curiosity, “Oh, you must be younger than I had thought.” She smiled at the less than fulsome compliment. He touched her cheek again and the corner of her smile. She did not move away. “My name is Paul. Paul the pal, some people call me, because I am friendly.” He smiled, but she did not respond to that.

            “Mine is Ginny.” She put out her hand to touch his face in a matching way. He was stirred. “Do you need a taxi?” he was surprised at this practical question. “I have mine outside,” she added. She took her hand from his face. And he dropped his to her arm again.

            “OK”

She stood up, gathering the boy in her arms. So he stood up too. They left the bar; and the airport. The sun had just finished setting, and the day was cloaking itself in dark. She walked along beside the water to a small motor-boat and got into it. He stepped in too, sitting quickly as the boat, wobbly in the water, bumped against the concrete bank where it was tied. Where are you going?”

“Well,” he said, “actually I was expecting to get the next flight back.” 

She said nothing but started the engine, cast off the rope and started away from the airport. He waited to see where he was being taken. He remained perplexed but excited. At the same time, he had the extraordinary thought that this was an abduction. Was there some kind of trade in humans based at Venice airport? He knew he was being ridiculous.

They arrived at a small key and  got out. The three of them walked across an ancient square to an ordinary building which she unlocked and invited him in. He entered straight into a living room. She put the boy down, invited Paul to sit in a comfortable chair and told the boy it was his bedtime. She left the room to put him to bed. He looked around the room and noticed a small cupboard. He walked across to it and took a wine bottle standing on the top and poured two glasses. He took them over to the chair he had been invited to sit in. sitting down he put the glasses on a small coffee table. It was a bit rickety but safe enough he thought.

After twenty minutes, she returned and sat opposite him. She noticed the glass of wine and picked it up to sip it. They looked at each other. She said, “You’re a handsome man. I liked looking at you.”

“You too,” he said. And they continued looking at each other.

“Are you married?”

“I have a partner. We’re splitting up at present.”

She shrugged and waved her glass slightly as if to say ‘well, it happens.’ And then, “You don’t know me, and you can say ‘no’ - that’s OK. But would you like to go to the bedroom…” she hesitated, and waved her glass again as if it was obvious what she meant. “well, to get on with something together.”

He was not surprised at what she wanted but surprised at her blunt manner in going about it. He felt hesitant. “Well, you are extremely inviting, beautiful, exciting. I would like sex with you. But…” he didn’t want to sound reluctant, because he wasn’t, “I like some love with my sex. If I can put it like that.”

“OK. You’ve got it.” She got up and came to stand beside his chair. She learned over him and kissed him full on the mouth, with some passion, and not quickly. When she moved her lips away she left a smile on his. She went back to her chair and sat down. “I think I could fall in love with you,” she hesitated, and then continued, “Knowing I could fall in love with you, means perhaps that I am already in love. Does it?”

He nodded encouragingly without necessarily agreeing with her deduction.

“But you want to know a bit more about me? I am not a Venetian tart. Come,” She stood up and indicated he follow her, holding his hand. She went out of a door into the back of the house and into another room, which was set out as an artist’s studio. She waited for him to say something. There were various paintings. A few were of naked men; some were of the little boy in various active postures with toys, a football, and so on. Some were of mysterious maze-like vistas with small naked people peering around corners of the hedges.

“You are creative. You have a talent.”

She shrugged, “I know.” And after a pause, “I like people naked. If you would be willing, I will paint you. If you take off your clothes.” She looked at him with inquiry, as if she didn’t mind if he accepted or not.

“You want to do it now?”

“If you like. Or we could go to bed first, and then I’ll paint you.”

His first confused thought was that he’d miss his flight. And then he looked at her large dark eyes looking at him with a big question mark.

He quickly decided that the flight was hardly a priority when he had such a fascination to explore here. “Well. I’d say let’s go to bed then we can concentrate on the painting.

She was standing in front of him. She chuckled and prodded her finger in his chest, “So sex comes first, after all.”

“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But, actually I know you a lot better now than a few minutes ago.”

She then looked serious and felt for the belt on his trousers to undo it. He began to undo the buttons on her chest. “We’ll go to the bedroom,” she said, and turned him around towards the door.

After their first sex together they lay for a minute looking at each other. “I don’t use contraceptives,” she said.

He was a bit startled. “You mean you want to be pregnant.”

She nodded, and she was gazing again with her large eyes into his. “I want another little one. It is time now. He is over three.”

“So this is not sex; nor love. This is making a family?” He asked, a bit dazed, and she nodded. So he continued, “As I said, you are creative.”

“Let’s get on with the painting.”

            But before they moved, the door swung open and her little brother in his smart pyjamas came into the bedroom. He climbed assertively onto the bed and thrust himself uninvited between the naked couple. They unhooked their arms that had claimed each other and she hugged the boy, “I love you Mummy” and he gave her three smacking kisses on her face. 

            “He called you Mummy?” Paul enquired curiously.

            She turned her attention away from the boy and to Paul, “He does that,” she said with an enigmatic neutral look on her face. The boy paid no attention to Paul but clung to Ginny. She then held him as she climbed out of the bed to take him back to settle him to sleep again. When she returned after ten minutes or so, he got off the bed and they faced each other, touching body to body, skin to skin.

            “Come,” she commanded again. They both went to the studio. Both naked. They were able to have a conversation. Ginny was much more communicative, verbally, while she was working.

            “Do you think, you might get pregnant?”

            She was sorting out her material by her easel. She shrugged. “It is about the right time. I am usually very regular.” He was confronted by the unexpected thought that she could have his child. “Have you had children?” she asked.

            “No,” it was a new thought. What would it be like to be a father?

            “You’ve never thought of being a parent, have you?”

            “No.”

            “It’s mixed. But overall, it’s worth it. Very worthwhile.”

            He nodded. She was posing his limbs and body as she wanted. “Perhaps I’ll be finding out.” He was perplexed. “You told me that the little one is your brother.” He stopped and there was a silence, she continued her preparations for painting him. “But you talk as if he is a child of yours.”

“Yes,” she said nonchalantly. “I didn’t say he was not my son.”

            “You mean….” He stopped not knowing if he should enter such a raw subject. But he needed to know. “You mean he is your son and your brother? You mean your father made you pregnant?”

            She continued as if nothing significant had been said, “Yes. When I was very young, my Dad had a kind of sex with me. Mostly with my mouth, you know.”

            “Is that why you’ve moved away to Italy?”

            “Oh, no. He’s Italian. He lives in Venice too.”

            It was hard for him to know what to say. She was silently at work, beginning on a canvas. Eventually she said, “We were in England, then. He did a jail sentence for what he did. Then he came back here.”

            “And you came to find him?”

            “Well, I never lost him.”

            “And you had sex with him again.”

            “As you said, love is more important than sex. So yes, we had a baby.” She came over to him to re-arrange his arm for the pose she wanted.

            His mind was whirling through all kinds of thoughts.

            “And is he still your lover?”

            “Oh no,” she said as if it was inconceivable. “Not since little Gnossi was born.” There seemed to be no shame in her. There seemed to be nothing to be explained. “My mother died when I was five years old. I had a brother, but he was too young and went to a grandmother – that’s my mother’s mother. I never saw them again. My mother became very angry with my father, because she knew I was so close to him, so intimate. Some people would say it was a mess, but I think I have come to be a very mature grown-up. My father did quite a few years in prison for what he had done. But my father has made me a good person.” Paul had begun to feel almost faint, a dizziness he had never felt in his life before. He wondered if he should be telling her what was going through his mind. “You look a little dazed, Paul.”

            “I am.”

            “And I probably know why.”

            “Do you?” It seemed significant suddenly. “So you came to the airport to look for me?” She did not speak. “How did you know I would be there?” She stopped her work on the canvas and looked at him. Her eyes gazed with that now-familiar kind of longing she had engaged him with. “You knew?” he said in that vague, dazed way. She looked with sympathy at what she had done to him. “You knew, then. I was brought up by a Granny, I think I was only about three. I know my father was in prison for a few years. But I never met him.”

            “And you had a sister.”

            And the painting she quickly did of him captured brilliantly that stunned expression of confusion and dread.

 

*****

 

 

** 3 The park seat

He sat down at one end of the park seat without looking at the person at the other end. In fact they were only a few feet apart and he knew that whoever it was, they were there, probably looking at him. But he was taking Charlotte for a walk, quite a shaggy hybrid sort of spaniel.

It was only moments before the other person’s dog was growling. He looked at the woman, and noticed as he usually did if she was attractive. She had long legs now uncrossing as she turned to her dog to calm it. “He’s called George.” she said. About his age, they were both in their mid-fifties. She was slim, about his height, and hair immaculate and already grey.

            He decided he’d reply to her, given there was a degree of appeal in what he saw, “Mine’s called, Charlotte. She’s docile. Don’t worry.”

            To his surprise she replied in a friendly sort of way, “Hmm – George and Charlotte. A royal match.”

            For the first time he looked her directly in her face, “What?”

            She smiled with some amusement, “George, the Third, he was married to Queen Charlotte. Remember?”

            He grunted, as if both ignorant and uninterested. “You’re a teacher, then?” he asked.

            “That’s it,” she said with a similar amused smile. Her hand was still on her black-and-tan Alsatian. “He’s got a bit of spirit.”

            “He’s German?” he said as if it mattered. “A German sheep-dog, right?”

            “Right again,” she said still seeming amused. There was a church bell tolling in the background as it was Sunday. “Do you walk her usually?”
            “Every Sunday. We (meaning his dog and himself) watch the old folk going to the church.”

            “Might see you again, some time.” And she stood up walking off with her dog that was still interested in the spaniel.

            He watched her behind, and her striding with long steps which he decided was elegant. Then he called out, “You left your glasses case here.” She looked around and came back for it. Her usual smile crossed her face again as she thanked him. He stood up deciding to accompany her for a little. They walked side by side. 

She was looking down at the path as she stepped out, and with an expression suggesting she was pleased to have interested him. “What do you do, then?” she said eventually to break the silence in case it became less friendly.

“Oh, I manage the garage. On the by-pass. It’s a petrol station, really.”

She looked at him, “I know the one. Yes,” she said, “perhaps I recognise you. What’s you name if I may ask?”

“Reg.” But he did not ask hers. He was feeling suddenly nervous. Though he often noticed women in the street and the park, and sometimes would follow behind them for a few yards, he’d never got into conversation with one before. In fact he was more at ease with dogs.

She was smiling again at his loss of composure which was sufficient to have communicated itself to her. “I’m Grace.” She was quite entertained by this awkward man by her side. His awkwardness made her feel she could control him. She felt comfortable, even if he was awkward. Perhaps because he was! The dogs were pulling at their leads as if to get at each other. “Let’s meet again,” she said as if dismissing him for today.

“OK,” he nodded, but kept on walking by her side which amused her. Why she wondered did she not feel threatened. In fact as they continued and left the park she asked if he’d like to have a cup of coffee, to which he also nodded. His nervousness continued. The dogs were happily interested in each other exploring with their noses. She took him to her small house just outside the park.

When they entered he stood nervous and still, and as if waiting to be told to sit – which she did in a teacher-like way. And he obediently sat where she indicated. That little-boy quality of his still amused her. But now she was feeling a but nervous too. She never entertained a man in her house – apart from her brother who was always popping in. She left him to go to her small kitchen to make coffee in her best jug – two of her best cups and saucers as well. When she sat down on the other side of the room with the low table in between with the refreshments on it they were both silent. It was as if both were out of their depth and yet they felt they should be of an age when ordinary friendliness should have been quite automatic. He leaned forward as if he had something important to say to her, “You lived here long?”

She remined amused at his fumbling for something to break the silence. It relaxed her if she could see his nervousness, because then she could see about relaxing him. She remained sitting up straight and told him it had been her parent’s house but they were both gone, and had left her the house. She had a brother and he had been left a little cottage a few miles away on the coast. She sometimes stayed there for a day or a night. And then amazingly, she found herself saying that he might like to take his dog to stay there briefly.

He didn’t jump at the offer. And she began to feel her nervousness again. The dogs were now lying calmly on the rug in front of the fireplace. He said, rather clumsily, “Do you think we could become friends?”

Her ready smile bloomed again, “Looks like we’re going in that direction.” And she pointed at the dogs, as if it depended on them.

He nodded, and she wondered if he ever smiled. 

“They look as if they like each other. You know, I never got him doctored. I couldn’t.” He looked blank.  “It seemed so unkind. So, he gets kind of… fresh. You know.” But she didn’t know why she was telling him; perhaps it was to warn him to protect his Charlotte.

He looked intensely at her, “Sorry, love. I forgot your name.”

“Grace,” she said, But this time she did not smile. It seemed to be increasingly heavy going.

“Ah. Grace. That’s a nice name. Mine’s, Reg.”

“I know. Are you married, Reg?” She felt now she had no idea how to carry on a conversation with this unnerved man. It didn’t seem to matter what she would say.

He shook his head, “No, I’m not.” But he did not elaborate. And he continued to look rather lost with her.

“No, nor am I,” she said, briskly. “Never wanted to,” and she shook her hair back with a flick of her head. “But sometimes, I wonder what it would have been like.” She looked down at her dog and stroked its head. The dog moved slightly in response.

He looked at her, and said in his incongruous way, “Well, we could try.”

She looked up sharply at him, and burst out laughing. “What?” she said impulsively, so surprised she didn’t think what she was saying, “Is this a proposal.”

He then blushed, slowly, all over his rugged face. And she cut her laughter short. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.” No-one ever proposed before. Not to me.” She was flustered. “I suppose we could try.” She didn’t know whether to take it in a humorous way as if not serious, or if she should respond to his seriousness.

“OK.” It was almost as if she was just buying petrol at his garage.

“Let’s be serious for a moment, Reg. Are you really thinking about this? We don’t know each other, do we. Perhaps we should get to know each other, We only met half-an-hour go.” Her mind was trying to take in what was happening. Just as she was finding ti boring, he had now turned her upside down. “We’d better get to know each other properly, I think. Let’s spend the rest of the day together, tell each other everything about ourselves.”

“I’ve got to go to work this afternoon.”

“Oh, OK. Come back afterwards and I’ll cook us a nice meal. What time will you finish.”

“Eleven o’clock.”

“Oh, that’s late, isn’t it?”

“It is the shift I’m on.”

“Yes, OK. Well, we could have a bedtime glass of wine, if you like.”

“Yeah,” and he stood up as if being dismissed. “I’ll come back later, if you like.”

“Yes, come back later.” And he put the lead back on the dog and left without saying goodbye. Her first thought was to question herself viciously about why she had agreed to see him at 11 o’clock in the evening. She couldn’t ring him with excuses to cancel as they had not swapped phone numbers. She could just not answer the door; be in bed; be asleep. She sat down again, poured some more coffee and told herself  to think, think hard, what she was doing. Perhaps she could welcome him with a bottle of wine. She could go and get one from the little shop down the road. ‘Fuck,” she allowed herself to say, to herself, ‘it is the last thing I want to have myself turned upside down and inside out like this.’ She decided to go and get a bottle of wine, just in case and come back and decide what she really wanted to do. Was there something nice enough about him to spend a little time with him? But why dd she agree to 11 at night. She had to get up for work tomorrow. She had never known how to handle relations with blokes. It was only boys in her class at school who she had any connections with at all. Men, she told herself, are grubby. She went to have a shower.

He meantime was wandering back with Charlotte, the spaniel. He walked slowly feeling dizzy to the other side fo the park. Od course he did not have to go back to the woman after his shift. Best to forget all that silliness. What does she want to marry him for. What could she want him for? For once his curiosity perked up. What were women really like when you got close to them? He had never had the opportunity. Suddenly his life had changed direction, completely. Like going into reverse gear. Or perhaps he suggested to himself it was more the other way. After going backwards away from everything all his life till he was fifty he could not change into forward gear. He had no idea what on earth that would mean, what he would have to do. What would she want? What does a woman want? They don’t want men with no experience. He shouldn’t go back. That’s it.

She waited at 11 pm listening hard for the doorbell as if it might be difficult to hear, still not knowing if she would answer it. 

But it didn’t ring.

Nevertheless, the next Sunday he was out bright and early with Charlotte, and sitting on the park bench as the week before. She too was curious to see if he was walking his dog, but was careful not to walk past their bench seat. After all she’d had a proposal of marriage! As she walked around at a distance behind and out of sight, she could see him sitting there. ‘Now what!’ she thought. And no answer came to her, none at all. So she just stood. It was George who gave the game away, because, off the lead in the park, he suddenly realised his new friend Charlotte was over there by the seat. He went racing over before she could move or stop him. When he came up to Charlotte, she noticed him and jumped-up straining, still on her lead. But Reg let him off not realising what was happening and just wanting to give her a bit of freedom on her walk. They sniffed at each other for a moment and suddenly George was up on her and they were copulating – in public, George and Charlotte. Immediately Reg heard the disturbance and started to shoo them apart. But the dogs were not too keen to part. Grace was now running to control her dog and came up to them lashing George with the leash to distract him from Charlotte. In fact, George was not easily distracted. But as the situation came under control, Reg found he was facing Grace, and she was practically in physical contact with him. They stared at each other. The situation seemed extremely personal.

Perhaps it was as close to intimacy with a woman that Reg had ever been. He backed away, and then sat down on the seat. He had thought about her a lot during that week, a lot. She was standing looking down on him sitting there, not sure whether to flounce away with her anger, or to stay and have it out with him. After a moment of doubt she sat down on the seat with as much distance from him as possible. “You stood me up last Sunday.” She was not exactly haughty but did convey her sense of being completely in the right.

He stared at her, not knowing what to say. But blurted out painfully, “You don’t want a man like me.”

She wondered what he meant, was he referred to something awful he’d done in the past or whatever. But found herself saying,  “Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?” and realised that she could be considering him as a man she wanted. “I mean, I hardly know you.”

He turned to her and, in a brave sort of a way, confessed, “I’ve never been with a woman before.”

She was struck very forcefully by the shame in him about his lack of masculine experience. But what could she say to that? She decided, also bravely, to follow suit, “Well, all I’ve done was play around with a boy in my class. When I was about twelve. Once, my father saw us. He was so cross, he whipped me. He had never done anything to me like that. He was so cross. I cried for a wehile, I think. I wouldn’t look at him for ages afterwards. One day he held me in his arms again and told me never to do that again. And I cried again and told him I was sorry. And I’ve never done anything like that again.”

“What did you play around at?”

“Oh, just looking, and touching… you know…  our parts.” Reg looked at her, wondering what he could say. “Now you think I am disgusting. You look just like he looked at me. My father. He was disgusted with me.”

He continued looking at her distress, “No, Grace. No, no I’m not.”

“I was disgusted with myself. I am. I think I am still. I went to a group for women who had been abused. But they told me I had not been abused. I think they were right and I was just being dirty with the boy.” She looked very sad and even hopeless; and she added irrelevantly perhaps, “He was called John.”

“I never played with anyone. I don’t know anything about a woman,” he said as if he wasn’t actually talking to one of that category.

Her mood seemed to lighten immediately, “Coo, we are much the same, I reckon, Reg.”

He looked curiously at her and then his face darkened with tension and anxiety. “Are you saying we should play around together?”

“Oh,” she laughed loudly, “Oh, of course not.” And she laughed almost hysterically. Two people walking by looked and wondered if she was being molested by the man on the seat next to her. “Of course not. Nobody should suggest that, unless they wanted to. Unless they both wanted to.” She put her hand out to touch his arm, trying to relax his alarm. 

And he did calm a bit. But the dogs were now pulling at the leads as if they’d been stirred by the tension between their owners. He stood. “You’re a bit of a funny women, aren’t you Grace.” And then he added hurriedly, “But I like talking to you.”

Grace, too, had calmed when she had seen how tense he had become. But he now walked away with Charlotte, who kept pulling back and turning to look at George.

The next time they met was when Grace decided to fill her car at the petrol station on the by-pass. She didn’t usually go there. But she just thought she might, for a change. There was a bit of a queue, so she got out of the car to wipe some bird dirt from her windscreen. The women driver in front of her was filling her car, and said, out of the blue, “I often come her, don’t you? Because the bloke who runs it is a bit gorgeous, isn’t he.” The woman had a lot of make-up and had tight jeans. “But he’s a bit nervous, isn’t he. He gets all nervous when I look at him.” She laughed in a slightly scoffing way, but also an admiring way. 

When Grace had filled and went in to the cash desk to pay, she was not at all surprised to see it was Reg at the till. He did not look up, and she realised he must have spotted her through the window. When they had finished the transaction  she said thankyou, and as there was no-one waiting behind her at that moment, she added, “Let’s go and see a film together.” He did not look up but shook his head slowly as if he was caught off balance and didn’t know what to say to her invitation. But she took his shake of the head as a ‘no’. So she added with a degree of silly abandon, “Well, come round and we can watch some tellie together.” And she chuckled hesitantly.

There was a moment or two of hesitation and then to her surprise he said, “OK”. She immediately thought of the woman outside saying she thought he was a bit gorgeous. Indeed he could be gorgeous, and had a good physique under his work clothes. She knew what she liked in men – would like in a man.

She left and he watched her go through the window. He always said it was the best view. As they walked away they could not see him looking.

He went around to her house after he’d finished at 6.30. Not on till 11 this day. It was a weekday. She heard the doorbell go, and was astonished and flustered to see him on the doorstep. She let him in. They hardly spoke, but standing in the hallway, she said, “I’d better cook. I need to go around to the shop to get something. Come with me. You can hold the basket. Is there anything you don’t like to eat?”

When they got back, she sat him in the same chair, and he watched the television news without much interest while she spent the time actively in the kitchen. She spread the table, served the food and they ate. There was not much to say apart from ‘pass the salt’ etc. Neither of them knew what to expect. As they finished, he said, “I should have brought Charlotte, she would have liked to see George again.”

“They’d have got up to no good.” But actually, she was wondering actively what they would get up to themselves. And so was he; the meal was good, but…. now what? She gathered up the plates and took them into the kitchen. And then returned to sit down across the table again. She looked as though she was expecting something from him. She lay her arm on the table in a relaxed sort of way as if inviting him to touch it. So he did; he put his hand on her wrist. It felt warm and also exciting to touch this object of desire. She smiled at him and he gazed as if spellbound at her welcoming face. He looked so serious. “Please smile at me,” she asked. And so he did. “You look so gorgeous when you smile,” she said, repeating what the tarty women had said to her at the petrol pump earlier. She seemed to be egging him on to do something, initiate something with her. But he didn’t know what he should be doing. And then with inspiration he picked up the wrist he was touching and kissed the back of her hand. “That was lovely,” she said. So he held it to his lips again. She  said rather matter-of-factly, “I think we could be romantic together.” And now she was tense, having broached the subject that neither of them really understood. 

He could feel the tension in her hand as he held it against his face, and lips. He put it down on the table and cupped it in both of his hands. “Do you really want to try with me?” he said earnestly. 

“We’ll have to teach each other what to do won’t we?” She was trying to be practical to manage the rising tension and excitement between them. 

He nodded, “Yes. Do you mind?” 

She laughed and relaxed a bit at his anxious concern. “Mind? No more than you.” And she took her hand away from his so she could put it to his face and feel the beginnings of stubble. She had not felt that before. She stood and pulled on his arm to follow. When they were together in the bedroom he looked around as if it were some strange forest in the middle of Africa. A woman’s bedroom looked so tidy. He looked at the single bed; it seemed very small. He was feeling terrified again at what he’d have to do to her. She said coyly, “Perhaps we should undress first.” He began to take his clothes off, while she watched. He was naked when she said. “It’s easier for a woman isn’t it. She can see what she’s got to hold,” and she was looking at his penis which was feeling like a growing sausage, “and what she’s got to do with it. But a man can’t see anything much of what a women’s got.” Then she thought of her previous conversation of her forbidden escapade as a schoolgirl. “Would you like to see my parts, so you know what they look like. And what to do with them? I’ve never shown them to a man. I mean a grown man. Like this.” She was feeling devilish and wondering what her father would be thinking now. She felt she was defying everything good. “Shall, I undress now?” she asked.

He nodded and mumbled, “Yes.” 

“Or touch your penis?” he shook his head But she did touch it and held it. It lay in her hand like the crown jewels. He was so familiar with his erections, but only when it lay in his own hand. To feel her gentle grip around it now chased away every single thread of tension. She let it go and began to undress, watching him watch her as her body slowly revealed itself. She wondered if he approved of it. It became important that he liked it. “Tell me,” she asked, or demanded. He looked puzzled. “Tell me it is nice. Tell me you want to see my parts, to find them, and find out what they are.”

He was at a loss, “You are a very beautiful women,” he said, or even recited from the last love-scene he had watched on television.

“You are nice to me,” she smiled. And her panties came down to her ankles. He was looking at her nakedness and stepped forward to give her a powerful hug. She yielded to him, and their bodies swayed gently together for several minutes. He could feel the touch of her skin on his penis which increasingly felt the centre of his body, of the universe.

“Let’s get on the bed. Then you can find out all the parts that a woman has got. Please be gentle with me.” She got on the narrow bed. And spread her thighs to give him space so that he could see what she had got between her legs. 

He looked carefully at her groin. “You are beautiful,” he said with more sincerity.

“So are you,” and she was looking at his penis in its semi-swollen state. “Can I feel your balls?”

“Yes,” he said. She held them. She noticed that as she touch them and held and fondled them, his breathing changed. It was deeper. And his eyes changed as if he was not seeing anything. 

“Look at my parts, Reg.” And while she held on lovingly to his balls, he looked.

“Can I touch you there?”

“Yes, dear Reg. I  want to feel you touching me. It’ll make me feel just like you feel now as I hold you.” So he put his fingers on the wrinkled skin between her thighs. “You can find a slit if you part those folds. Your finger will slip in.” So he did what she invited. And with some fumbling found the slit that was the entrance to her. And now her breathing changed, just like his. “Now,” she said, “there’s a hole you can find. And just in front of the hole I want you to rub it there, Very, very gently. That’s the clit. Ah, you’ve found it.” She lay back to enjoy the rising energy that spread through the skin all round her thighs and hips into every inch of her body it seemed. Her breathing was getting stronger. “Now, Reg, you must do something else. I want to find out what it’s like. You feel that spot you’ve touched with your finger, I want you to lick it. Soothe it with your tongue.

He moved back and withdrew her hand. Hers slipped away from his balls. “Lick it?” he asked.

“I want to see what its likc.” She looked up into his face. “Shall we try it? We don’t have to.”

“OK.” He put his head down between her legs and tried to find his way towards her slit with his face and lips to lick her. He didn’t mind so much from a hygiene point of view, but he could feel his erection declining. With some care and difficulty he found the right spot and to his amazement her breathing changed abruptly to a gasping which quickened and quickened and in no time she was crying out as if in a kind of delicious pain. He knew what it was, but had never realised a women reached an orgasm as he did. Moreover, as she came, his erection seemed to respond as well. She told him when he had licked enough. And as if in a daze she asked him to get into her hole. It did entail a lot of nervous fumbling again, but he did it, to his surprise. And the automatic body movements took him over till he too climaxed, dizzyingly, inside her.

They both relaxed together, having discovered what life is all about, it seemed. He lay back nearly off one side of the little bed and she buried her face in his neck, kissing the stubble. They lay for five minutes without moving, then minutes more. No movement as if they were one, and any movement would snap them apart. There were no real thoughts in his mind apart from going over the experience again and again. He had accomplished what a man can accomplish with a woman who was, as he now knew, as beautiful as any he had every watched and followed.

 

*****

 

 

** 4 A wail in the countryside

It wasn't pique.  It was something deeper.  The flight was miserable because of it.  All her life she had been beautiful, had enjoyed such admiration for it.  Now she had just reached her 30s, so many years of longing eyes upon her had lost that special thrill.  It was an accident of birth she now told herself.  To be beautiful is not a moral worth.  She had realised that recently.  Those women without natural gifts who make themselves attractive, they have the virtue.  Hers was merely luck, good fortune.  She stepped off the plane.  The sun was hot outside the airport.  It scorched her white suit, blistered her dark glasses.  Her relaxed, erect pose was neutral.  People seemed to leave a space around her. 

            She would wait for ‘them’ to come to her.  If ‘they’ were among the sparse throng waiting for bags, she would leave ‘them’ to spot her.  But they must have taken a different flight.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

Sitting briefly in the small garden of the hotel after arriving, waiting for the waiter to bring her a drink she felt as out of place as she looked. But for different reasons.  Her natural exotic features looked out of place anywhere - in her native east London, or in this frantically watered garden in the Dordogne.  But she was out of place too because she felt different.  And she had been feeling so different lately.  Was it something other people called jealousy?  This was not a holiday; she had brought some sort of emotional baggage along with her.  ‘They’ were the ones on holiday.

            She was not spying or intruding on them; yet she was not on her holidays.  And yet again, emphatically, she was not on business.  So, she told herself.  On and off during the whole flight she had told herself so.  How come she felt like elastic?  Between her and Gregory.  He had told her it was just holiday time.  And she, no reason, had come along.  Their hotel was only a short distance away.  She knew its name.  The waiter gave her directions to it.  He spoke in abbreviated French to make it easy for her to understand.  Now she knew all she needed to know.  In fact, in the event, she would not ever go to their hotel.

            What was that continually rising confusion about? What did she actually want?

            The waiter stuttered on proudly, trying to be kind to this splendid English guest.  Her French was fluent, but she did not embarrass him by showing his efforts were unnecessary.  Her considerate manners had been acquired like one of the accessories she carefully chose.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

The business she had with Gregory in England was a secret from that other one, that ‘her’ in his life.  It was entirely legitimate, though questionably moral.  As a beautician she was her own advertisement.  Her face had peered out from thousands of adverts - photographed through rose-covered trelliswork, from under a motorbike, couched in a pile of silk underwear.  But always Jane's perfect features.  Those adverts proclaimed her animal-free potions - for beauty and potency.  ‘Momtaz’, she called her range of products, after the beauty of the Taj Mahal - the most fabulous in the world.  Then she had become Zena-Jane, to complement the plain syllable she had been assigned by her grandmother.  ‘He’, that is Gregory, had put up the money for Jane's business, linked it to his own business, a clinic for cosmetic surgery.  He did not do the surgery himself.  He was not a doctor, though he was willing enough to allow people to honour him with that title.  He had his young specialists, teamed up in relays like an athletics match. It was on the supermarket principle - off-the-shelf nose, cheekbones, jaw and so on.  Jane ran the health farm where the customers relaxed, scanned the catalogues, met the surgeons, chose their faces and convalesced in luxury till the skin wounds had faded.

            Not that Jane had been a beneficiary of the treatment; no more had she needed her own spurious potions.  Her beauty rose above that.  But Beatrix had been through it.

            At the time, Beatrix had probably been the wealthiest client of the clinic.  So, it was only partly her new jaw-line that had made him - that is, Gregory - fall in love with her.

            Gregory was significantly older than either of the women - Jane his mistress, or Beatrix his wife.  His steel grey hair met an equally steely eye that sometimes broke into wrinkles.  It did so at unexpectedly tense moments sometimes when he wanted to put you completely at your ease.  Disconcertingly, it always felt like his ease, composed and imposed by him.  He was swarthy and conveyed a purposeful energy, in his movements and his severe expression.  He portrayed a pointed single-mindedness which was alluring to women and captured a loyalty from younger men.  That is what made him plausible, regarded as a doctor, a top surgeon; and none of his young doctors minded. One of his assets was that he never fully concealed that roguishness; it was always peeping out like the corner of a handkerchief, casual but self-conscious.  There was self-apology in his manner which gave the necessary charm.  But he was not all assertive, self-centred bluster. Beatrix - that is, his wife - could spot sincerity in him as well.  He genuinely believed he could make everyone happy.

            Beatrix, a long, willowy, blond, could almost have passed for Scandinavian, had she not displayed the characteristic demandingness of the wealthy and educated English.  Coolness of appearance, stiffness of movement; and that apparent air of command in her slightly complaining voice marked her as separate from Gregory or Jane.  And therefore fascinating to both.  She had inherited that lofty stooped posture towards those who served her.  And yet it did not sit easily.  Her evident docility appeared as a deference to her husband. In so far as Gregory was able, he loved her.  He had rescued her from depression.  He was flattered by her loyalty.  The new petite jaw he had arranged for her was clearly more in keeping with her personality than the previous more Germanic jut.

            Gregory and Beatrix complemented each other grandly. They created a presence in the small village hotel snuggling into a fold of the Dordogne River.

            Beatrix loved him dearly and was grateful to be able to bring out the softer and sentimental side of him - his devotion to re-organising her stables; his passion for small animals, those small enough to pick up and cuddle, from snakes to apes and even caged birds. With her seemingly unlimited wealth, their home could spread into ever larger tracts of deep Surrey countryside. She was immensely proud of him. She was proud of his success, of his tenderness to animals, and indeed in his own pride in managing her life and wealth.

            Because of her devotion, as loyal as the animals, she was blind.  So, Gregory had no difficulty in deflecting small sums, a permanent rivulet, drained from her wealth, and into Jane's luxuriant enterprise.  Beatrix, quiet and unsuspecting, never even wanted to question Gregory's use of her inheritance.  His management of it merely proved his care for her.

            Jane, business-like, knew exactly where the money came from, exactly how the channels were carefully covered.  And exactly what deal he gave her.  They had a discreet chalet in the corner of her health farm; private entrances; nights she gave him by arrangement; other girls provided occasionally when he needed one.

            Now this.

            Here she was in this boiling cauldron, simply because he had asked her to come.  Had she really believed she had to say yes; even to this escapade?  Her contempt for herself was obvious - and justified, she muttered.  Did she believe he would stop seeing her?  If she had refused?  Shun her work, stop off the vital ‘rivulet’?  She had not even considered saying ‘no’.  And now she was here.  Without properly knowing why.  If ‘they’ wanted to go off on holiday, well, good luck to them.  Jane did not care.  But suddenly, it was madness to come along too.  Someone's apparently maiden aunt, alone and stashed away in the hotel down the road!  She was exasperated at the thought; she suddenly knew her discomfort all day on the trip; let herself get drawn along into someone else's plan.  All her life she had learned the foolishness of being blindly led.  You had to know what was in it for you; that was it – principle number one.  She could have haggled with him; struck a bargain. And he would remain a businessman. Never forget, she told herself, head turned to the camelias, and hand discretely over her mouth as if burping: his business depended on her.  His clinic depended wholly on her clientele in the health farm.  She was the one - not him - who could play on their temptations. Jane's clients.  She could supply those whose cheeks he could make blush as with an air-brush.  His beauty-surgery needed just those she could tempt with self-love.

            Was it her business that required her to agree to be here?  No.  It was not.  No.  Yet she had said: yes!

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

When he arrived in the garden to greet her he said he had no more than an hour. The hesitant waiter hovered with a half-bottle of champagne till they started to drink; then vanished.  They then rehearsed their moment of meeting. They had devised their long-standing ritual.  Passion emanated from that moment they closed in together.  They had learned to heighten it; how to condense it, to compress that passion.  They recited their ritual poem, inane to the outside observer - it was theirs.  Partly the catholic mass, partly passages from the story of `O', and partly words that they had charged with a personal meaning. After their soft stuttered murmuring, face to face, they arose and went in from the garden, up to Jane's room, shut the windows and shutters against the afternoon sun.  Their bodies completed an immaculate completion.  Then Gregory left for his hotel, a little late and a little pink, but with his perfectly constructed composure.

            Again on her own.  It was not just pique she felt.  Something ineffable was left in her heart.  Why did she let him do it to her?  And - she vowed - it was going to stop. She must as she so often resolved, move on from being his fine ornament.

            Jane had had a hard life when young, when merely plain Jane.  She had always looked after herself, driven herself on with vows of revenge.  It had not just been the beatings from one of her step-fathers.  That was common enough.  The girls at school who also knew that kind of life had huddled together.  They made mischief to compensate; and understood each other.  It had been her other step-father, who had inflicted ambition on her.  He forbade her meals if her homework marks were not good enough.  He locked her in her room if she had exams.  And, the trouble was, she was bright enough to warrant the ambition.  She could achieve what he wanted.  And that did set her aside.  There was no-one then to huddle behind the school hedge with and plot mischief.  She could only keep her own company, harbour her vengeance against the intruder in her family, vow to unburden her brain.  By flaunting her body instead, she pained this step-father tragically. And in the end, she had defeated his intention, effortlessly, with that chosen weapon, her physical beauty.

            She folded away her white suit carefully. Her dark complexion, she caught it in the mirror from the corner of her eye, a shadow that strode across her room. The texture of her skin was unusually fine for someone dark, and it seemed to clothe her shape in a special glow, a dusky sheen.  She was now aged enough to begin to wonder when its gloss would begin to tarnish. And what then for her?  All her life she had inhabited this beauty.  and how much had it amounted to?  She had a full day before he would be with her again. She planned it in segments, those for reading, the time for her meticulous body-care, the gentle excursions in the little town, the church, the local museum.  She would seethe in the meantime. And she would be ready for him when he returned.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

However, in fact, she did not have to wait completely uneventfully until the next visit.  Sitting at supper on the vine-covered terrace overlooking the river, the meal ordered, her aperitif in her hand, a sleek young man came up to her table and spoke to her.  His English was ‘public school’ and his shallow smile equally so.  She had known young men like this ever since she had grown out of her own background.  They could be so immediate but, ultimately, so passive.  He was a fine example of England's cream.  He offered her his hand, stood beside the table.  Jane was leaning forward, elbows gently resting gracefully on the white table-cloth, her glass pressed to her sun-rosed cheek.  It was a pensive posture, the straight back alerting the observer to a hidden concentration.  She had been interrupted.  She did not move except to turn her head, a slight bend of the neck and her eyes looking up into his open face.  Otherwise motionless, an unfriendly stillness.  She was reluctant to emerge from her dream.  He asked if he might be invited to sit down, to eat supper with her.  Equally motionless something changed in her.  There was suddenly a full attention.  Perhaps her eyelids tightened very slightly, or the muscles of her shoulders tensed beneath the thin cloth of her shirt, the weight no longer on her elbows. His hand fell away as she did not respond to him.  But his face remained as open and as simple as ever.  Where, someone would wonder, did he keep his intelligence, if not in his face?  She refused without emotion, without response; a response in itself.  Some would have taken her as hostile.  She merely stared back into his face.  Its jovial pastiness nodded good-naturedly, and he moved away to another table.  She spent the time of the meal staring ahead of her, over the terrace to the distant valley, much of the time the wine-glass pressed to her cheek pensively, like an insecure child might clutch a favoured toy.  She wondered at this resentment she lived all the time, like a drunk with alcohol.  There was something else too; like jealousy - that bitch Beatrix.  Something like a pity - was it that sponge-like boy.  She observed herself with a distant amazement.  Something was happening to her these days.  A cruel curiosity made her pick over these feelings, like specimens.  When necessary, she knew she would shut them away and get on with her mask, her stainless-steel beauty.  But in this brief incredulous moment on her own she lost herself in a foreign country in her heart.  It would soon be over.  Had she looked she would have seen that the boy spent most of the meal looking at her.

            In the morning he tried again.  He managed to follow her into breakfast.  She refused his request to sit at table with her. Finally, he encountered her again mid-morning sipping coffee outside the small bar in the central place de la village.  Her cool loose blouse was brilliant green.  It blended with a very slight reddish streak in her dark hair. The blouse rode above the top of her grey linen jeans.  Her appearance was compelling, as always.  He did not invite himself to her table this time but sat at the adjacent one. Slightly behind her, he was in fact closer than if he had faced her from the chair opposite.  She had not changed her pose with his arrival and in her characteristic posture, lightly resting her graceful arms on the table-top, he was facing her, inches from her left shoulder, by her side.

            There was not much about the boy, she thought. “Peter”, he told her, “I'm called”. Tall, slightly awkward with youth, his hair was surprisingly fair, and a little lank, threatening to intrude on his face so that he pushed it back with a thumb and forefinger either side of his forehead in a repeated mannerism.  It tended to make his full face fuller and more present to whoever spoke to him.  She did not.  For him her silence emphasised a quality that he called ethereal. No longer youthfully uncertain, she was not yet old, even by Peter's young standards.  He saw her beauty in a perpetual interlude, never growing, never fading, like the confident endurance of classical marble. Indeed, like a statue, she seemed all surface, and untouchable, and still magnetic.  He began to tell her a few things, hesitantly at first and uninvited: his college; the school he had been to previously; his recent 21st birthday which had culminated in this trip; a girl he had liked but knew he was too young to take seriously; his hopes for a future as a manager for some national opera company where he had connections...

            Without meaning to, Jane idly listened, but never responded, never encouraged this advantaged, callow youth.  Only once did she turn to look into his pleasing face. There was not much to see; except... except one thing.  There was that same plausible earnestness in there, which conveyed that though you would get honesty willingly from him, you were most unlikely to get the whole truth. A plausibility she recognised in all the smart men who pursued her like this.  Reminiscent slightly of the aging man at the hotel up the road. “By any chance,” she enquired at last, “do you know a businessman by the name of Gregory Belgrave?”

            “Of course,” he smiled and, relieved that at last she had addressed him, “how else would I be here?  Why else would I be talking to you?”  He nodded with significance as if scornful of her naivety.

            He got up to go, offered to carry her parcel back for her.  She did not reply; but also did not stop him lifting it and carrying it.  She had bought a piece of local pottery, quite heavy. He continued to smile and chatter away as he walked beside her: about the girl he had just finished with; playing rugby for his college last year; the quite good degree which his father had been proud of.  It was not clear if she listened to any of it.  He accepted her as a challenge, a refusal to be deflated.

            If she had not been so angry, she might have wondered more about who this associate of Gregory's really was.  When they had crossed the bridge and turned up the ancient path to the hotel. he told her he would be ‘trotting off’ now. She stopped and looked at the boy. He smiled a slightly cheeky grin; he gave her a mock salute as if a messenger; but really, he mocked the angry authority her silence asserted.  He turned to go.  “And listen to me,” she snapped, calling him back, “I don't want you hanging around, eyeing me all the time.”  She was deliberate in her intention.  She thought that her blunt command was the best insult to his couthness. She felt insulted and was intent on demolishing him. And she succeeded; for the first time he became somewhat crestfallen. This woman his father had brought him to see was no fading violet awaiting his lavish attentions.  If his father had fixed him up with this companion, Peter did not mind too much who she was, but she could enthuse her job a bit more.  If he thought about it, he would have assumed his father had paid her.  It was why, perhaps, he found it too delicate to refer to his father.

            She noticed him begin to sag, “Get out of here,” she added as if throwing out a piece of crumpled litter.  She turned to go into the hotel.  He offered the parcel he was carrying.  She took it gravely letting it hang from her hand in a gesture of casual disregard.  She was resentful, felt affronted by being subjected to the boy's interest.  She felt insulted by his adolescent drool, but also by his chatter to her as if she were his mother; and above all by succumbing to being made so cross by his presence.  Gregory was no different from these casual predators trying their luck - except Gregory always brought it off.  Damn.  Damn him.

            In her room she went to the mirror and stared at what she saw.  As always, the sight was the one thing that would make her feel better about herself. She noticed a warmer feeling swell up inside her.  Ugh, kids. Even big ones.  She gazed on her mature body - no longer a child herself. She believed she had become a person. She forgot her brutal dismissal of the boy.

            Peter too bounced back easily from his rebuffs. Within a 100 metres he had forgotten the beautiful ‘old bag’.  He padded along in his shorts and espadrilles but remembering his view of her chest. He prided himself on how courteous he had remained.  He formed in his thoughts how he could tell it to his father as an amusing story.

            It was not a long walk through the lanes from one hotel to another.  It was a surprisingly green little valley.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

She had never heard that Gregory had a son.  And nor had Beatrix; but that is by-the-by for the moment.

            Peter identified the acacia trees, some ancient and some young yet standing to the same height along the road in front of the rough stone walling.  There were many exotic plants, but many grew in England, and he could imagine again the countryside where he was at school.

            His father would fix it, as everything else in Peter's life; and as Peter would one day fix everything for his own children. Whatever was eating that woman, Dad would set it right, for her, and for Peter.  Dad would know when it was some money that was needed, some flattery, when a good ticking off - and so on.  He looked forward to seeing how his father would deal with it.

            He had not heard of Jane until a couple of weeks ago when Gregory proposed the trip for Peter's wider experience.  He was not, he could tell himself, completely ignorant about women.  But what his father intended was to give him a proper grounding.  In truth his world of women had really only been the female servants at his schools, and the anxious girls at university as ignorantly complacent as himself.  There was a little vegetable garden now, on the right.  Asparagus, he recognised; rosemary, he thought; and smart little rows of leaves for the salade vert.  The road twisted up towards the hotel.

            Beatrix he had heard of and knew a lot about. His father waxed prolific about her at times.  Peter had resented her without meeting.  Some might say she was a rival to him; some might say a rival to his mother.  Though, to be honest, his mother had been rather cool and he felt little for her.  He preferred his school from an early age and paid little attention to regular though dull letters to him. It had been decided, too, that it was best he should not meet Beatrix.  He knew it had all been worked out for him by his father.  Sometimes it was a puzzle why he felt so against Beatrix when his father talked on about her. He had for as long as he could remember enjoyed a suave composure towards everyone he met.

            It had been a kind of joy to learn of the secret Jane.  A mean laugh at the deceived Beatrix.  Perhaps, for Gregory, his unacknowledged son was the one person he could talk to about his secret mistress.  It seemed a prankish joke if his father brought them both on holiday as well.  In his own mind it would be Beatrix who would be left the odd one out.  Though he relented a little and could allow Beatrix to have his father in their hotel together, Peter found his tolerance of his parents' holiday was only on the basis that he would be fixed up himself in the hotel with Jane.

            He sat on the wall for a few moments.  The road had risen to a few metres above the river here.  Did it flood in this valley?  Everything can be too full once in a lifetime - it was a rule he had once heard.  It had come from the careful girl-friend he had had at university.  They had spent a couple of years at college going to social occasions together. They were good friends, and still were; and they had had good friends.  But she had been cautious, and they'd only groped in the car.  He hadn't really minded. But wondered sometimes if he ought to.  She told him she had been traumatised when her parents had died in a fire, an atrocity committed on the farmstead in South Africa. She had been eleven and it happened shortly after she had been sent to school in Zimbabwe.  She had never been back to South Africa because it had not been good for her.  Her uncle was a psychologist in Kings Lynn and had helped her to understand how she must help herself.  She had needed, she said, his understanding.  So, he had given it.  Recently she had conveyed to Peter that she was strong enough if he wanted to break off the relationship with her when they both finished their degrees.  So, he had decided to.  Whatever the effects of her trauma, he knew there was a lot on his side of the relationship for him to learn as well.  He judged it by the way his father had talked to him.  And indeed, that was why he had talked to his father.  Gregory had been confident how to handle the problem.  Peter felt relaxed sitting on the wall, reviewing the reasons for being out here; the experience his father had promised would be forthcoming from Jane. At last, he was being invited into the world where others lived so happily.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

Beatrix did not consider where her husbnd disappeared to. Reclining on the lounger by the pool's edge, the hot sun was dripping inertia onto her body. Beatrix was 37, her muscles were toned to the condition of a 17-year-old, and her skin had been tanned in regular doses under the commercial UV machine at work; her life cared for her in every respect.  Yet she knew she had to fight off that lethargy before it permanently got the better of her.  She was old enough to know that risk.  That state of ennui would come on her slowly; there had been points all through her life when it seemed to pop up compellingly, temptingly.  And if she did not get up off the lounger, find the next paperback to read, get a mid-afternoon drink, plan a shopping trip, then it would flood back into her heart.  Such life activities did not seem to arise smoothly.  They required an energised will.  Why did life not seem more natural?  Distractions were the essence of life for Beatrix.  She barely realised the difference.

            Nevertheless, she had come to be puzzled.  She had everything, material provision in every respect, a loving husband, even an indulgent priest hanging over from her school days (so long ago now) if she were ever to need one.  Her marriage was cruising along absolutely perfectly: the dinners, the theatres and concerts, the house parties (given and invited to); and in just two years time, as she had planned, and Gregory had agreed, she would have reached the point to start their family.  Her health was good, wealth never a problem.  There was no reason for that sinking emptiness, like a bruise in the tummy; no reason for it to open up under her whenever she stopped busying herself.  And she told herself carefully, it didn't!  It did not happen; no.  And why? Because, from long ago, she could control it.  If her mind was busy - reading, planning, arranging - then it never came upon her. And, therefore, it never existed. She was quite content with her logic. She looked at the locker beside her on the edge of the swimming pool - the extra pair of sunglasses, the tumbler of cool water, the comb, the packet of cigarettes with lighter neatly parked on top, the hair-band in case she went in for a dip, the suntan tube, and the insect spray - the last two stood upright together as if guarding the rest.  It was all there as she glanced, as so often, to take it in, to check it; a kind of Kim's game that she was always winning. It reminded her of the locker in the school dormitory when she had gone away at fourteen.  It had been the tidiest and best kept locker in the school. Her parents had been proud of that before they died - even if they had been troubled that she could not keep up with the lessons.

            As she was reminiscing to herself about her childhood and its perfections, a slightly hot blond head emerged, climbing the steps from the road, then his long gangling body, and, last, a pair of white thin legs below the baggy shorts.  The head looked around, and glanced back at the long sleek body on the lounger.  Someone must be inside that body but he wondered whether to pass it by as a statue. Beatrix had a swimming costume cut very high over the hip bones and pulled tight in her crotch.  Peter noticed.  She was quite old, he thought, neutrally.

            With his arrival, she had something outside her own head to concentrate on, to distract.  “You, from England?”  The familiarity of her tone was as a girl of his own age.  He felt uncomfortable at having examined the body so closely.

            “Yes, actually.  Absolutely.”  He chuckled slightly and felt suddenly at his ease with her.  “I'm looking for my father,” he said inquiringly.

            `Where is he?' she asked purposelessly.  As if she thought he were silly enough to have mislaid something, the key to his room, his bathrobe.

            And then a slightly hard look came across her jocular face.  There were no other English in the hotel.  Who could his father be?  “Who is it?” she asked, sounding more puzzled than she intended.

            He told her.  There was silence.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

The scene took place in “their” room on the first floor of the hotel, some mock mahogany and a wide high window showing a lot of sky and the dark green mountains rather near.  Gregory had been shaving.  His bathrobe was open and bathing trunks of several sharp colours crossed his stomach. He turned as Beatrix entered. “Ah”, he said, absent-mindedly and with his usual abbreviated sentences, “Was about to join you.  Missed my chance? Hey?”  Then he saw Peter entering the room behind her. 

            “I'm early, Dad,” he announced unnecessarily with abandoned guile.  “Sorry.” He noticed a moment of apprehension on his father's face. “It's OK.  The hotel found me a room here. I thought I’d prefer to be with you for a couple of days. I’ll move over here tomorrow.”

            “That's good.”  It was a matter of pride for Gregory not to show he was ruffled.  His mind had whizzed around a few things; not so much Beatrix's stern face, but Jane who yet knew nothing of his plans for her. “So.  Gentleman, Pete!  How good to see you.  Good journey?” His genuine pleasure at seeing his son began to win through the momentary alarm.  The smooth sound of his own urbanity calmed him.  It also brought Peter's wide grin back to his face.  Beatrix in striking contrast was not smiling, the thunder on her face reached at least to her waistline.  She was keeping her mouth shut for fear of what would come out.

            “I've met her, Dad.”  Peter beamed as if he was announcing an ascent of the Matterhorn.

            “Indeed you have.”  Gregory had caught sight of his wife's frown.  It was no less conspicuous than the sham Louis Quatorze wardrobe.  “What a happy meeting,” he gushed.  More in hope. Jovially, he waved everyone into the room.  They were already there.  And it was now rather a cramped room, so no-one moved.  Gregory was not one to admit a change in the weather till he had to; and Beatrix had been too dumbstruck at the news of Gregory's unknown son to make her sulk audible, yet.  But he could see the moment coming when he would need to dodge the bolts of lightning. “I remember, Peter, when your grandmother first saw you.  A baby.  In arms. Before your time, my dear,” he addressed Beatrix, as an aside. “Peter's twenty-one, now.  Three days ago, right?”  Peter nodded.  Beatrix glowered.  “She took one look at you – ‘Orang-utan’ she said.  ‘Long and lanky.’”  He guffawed. Peter laughed.   Beatrix wisely made no comment still.  “She had not known anything about you till I dangled you in her lap – “Wild man of the bungle” she said.”  His infectious joviality came powerfully from the increasing loudness of his voice.  “Oh. Twenty-one years.”

            “She knew what his father was,” Beatrix suddenly added bitterly, “Bungler.”  It was the beginning of the insult which something in her believed would pay him back for the jolt to her sanity she had just received.  With a world that was as carefully groomed as her make-up everyday, an unknown step-son had been a slap in the middle of it, smudging and stinging. The news that Gregory had had a preceding life before her, deflated her dignity.  She felt as crumpled as a discarded bra.  She had never paused to consider any prior relationship in his life.

            “What's that?”  Gregory inquired looking round as if inviting her to join in the joking.

            “A bungle,” she repeated, rather overloud, “You're pretty familiar with that sort of thing, aren't you?”  And she turned suddenly to sit heavily on the end of the bed in a heap.

            “Let's all sit down,” he said managerially; and put himself on the other end of the bed. The room seemed surprisingly small, but with a veranda outside, too hot to venture into in daytime. He was looking relaxed as his robe flopped beside him.  Peter looked around the room and decided to lean his bottom against a convenient chest of drawers, an imitation of something priceless.  So far, he was satisfied that Beatrix had been left to smoulder uselessly.

            Gregory had not finished with his happy reminiscences, “You did look pretty wizened when you were born.”

            “Has he got a mother,” Beatrix asked in mock sweetness.  “How many more kids have you got hidden away?”  She turned to sarcasm, “How many mother's?” And then to hate, “What do you think I feel?”  She felt he had not thought about her at all. Hearing the sound of her own voice she was in danger of getting worked up into a tirade.  “You're the father of a monkey!  What's the mother?”

            Gregory spread his hands in an appeasing gesture, as if she was being entirely unreasonable.  “Look,” he said and paused while he thought out what she was supposed to look at.  “It was long ago.  He's twenty-one.”  He swept a hand around the tight room towards Peter, as a car salesman might display his wares. “That means it was twenty-one years ago,” he added in all seriousness as if she needed the explanation.  She was about to resume the crescendo that had begun to build up, but he continued, “A kind of birthday occasion.  For him to come down here.”  He appealed for reason as if to a jury that could not possibly convict him.  “What do you think?”  But he did not have a sympathetic audience.

            Beatrix wanted to know why she had not been told. Peter wanted Beatrix to shut up. Gregory was half enjoying the rumpus that only he could sort out.  He stood up and leaned against the window frame.  The afternoon air came through it like a flame-thrower.  His excitement in this temperature brought beads of perspiration to his face.  He looked the part of a manic impresario.  Everyone and everything in sight had been bought with his money and his energy.  All he had to do was dominate them.  Except, of course, the money was hers; and all Peter wanted was his father to himself.

            “Let's all sit down, and take this calmly,” he repeated in his excitement.  Nobody moved as he beamed more desperately at one and then the other of them.  He looked like a conjuror concluding a trick that would amaze his audience.  Beatrix felt tears welling up noisily.  Peter held down his impatience with her by staring blandly at his father. “He's a fine boy,” Gregory said looking round at Peter as if checking for himself.  “The mother,” he started, as if this was a new thought, and continued in a confidential tone to Beatrix, “The mother's in a bit of disgrace.”

            “Quite so,” she added bitterly.

            “I haven't seen her for... Ooo.  A long time,” he announced vaguely. “When was it, Pete?”  He decided to specify a time for her. “When you were seven.  A bit of a disgrace,” he added as if musing to himself on a memory that pained him.  Then, very quickly he brightened up and said, “Well, we don't want to talk about that in front of the boy.  That's that,” and he rubbed his hands together.  Peter stared intently at the sobbing figure of Beatrix.  Not with compassion, nor without. Simply curious at the kind of woman his father had married.  Gregory, familiar over the years with his wife's moods, spread his hands again in his usual gesture, “C'mon, darling.” He reverted to a more vernacular accent that referred back to long ago in his childhood origins.  There was a kind of self-mockery in it, “Let's have a smile.”

            The effect on Beatrix was hardly a cessation of her tears, more a sucking them back inside her as she drew herself up into a queenly pose.  Without lifting her head, she could still give the immediate impression of looking down her nose.  “Handkerchief,” she announced in her own accent that had moved up the scale with an equal and opposite force.  “Handkerchief, my dear.”  And Gregory humbly offered his.  The restoration of her aplomb had been cleverly engineered by his descent into a momentary servility.  All of this, a tiny drama they seemed to have accomplished many, many times before in their marriage, was a slick collaborative performance, smoothed and oiled with years of performing together.

            Peter felt a scarring ire in his belly, as if a ball of barbed wire was working its way through his system: Beatrix preening her ego whilst Gregory suddenly cringed.  Peter wanted to send a clenched fist winging its way through the air at her head; but what he said was: “I've met her Dad.  Not Beatrix.  The other one.  Jane.” Despite the innocent air of a lad telling his Dad some news, it was obvious he meant more.  It was truly as if a fist had landed with force on the top of Beatrix's head!  She bounced. Her startle reverberated on the bedsprings and she shot up a couple of inches.

            Gregory, too, labouring to restore Beatrix after Peter's first bombshell, was himself caught unawares by the second.  He mumbled ruefully, “You've really got your timing right today, haven't you, Pete?  We need to get better co-ordinated.”

            Peter looked at his father seriously.  He had already written off Beatrix as unworthy of his father.  She no longer counted for any consideration. “Come on, Dad.  Let's leave her for a minute.  I need to talk it over with you.  Come down to the bar.”  He mooched out of the room.  His quandary was the jaundiced Jane.

            Gregory now torn between the two of them, had every right to be angry with his son who had stirred poison far beyond any reasonable limits.  But instead, he turned rather sharply to Beatrix. “See what you've done,” he snapped inexplicably.  He followed his son.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

But Beatrix was no longer going to preserve her role of frail victim wreathed in sobs.  Hampered by her need to redo her make-up, she flounced into the hotel lounge some ten minutes after father and son had reached there.  Peter had explained his predicament; the welcome that had not been forthcoming from Jane; the humiliating rebuffs she had delivered like letter bombs.  Gregory had soothed.  The party in question being not present he refused to believe that she was so obstinately unfriendly.  He sustained his familiar wishful thinking and advised persistence and stamina.  And Peter knew no better.

            Beatrix entered, unusually with a presence the size of a mountain like the lion emerging from the cage in the big top. Both the men held their breath. If only she had remained standing, their apprehension at her fury would have prolonged their sudden shrinking. But she sat down suddenly like a pocket-knife snapping shut.  She looked immediately reduced, as reduced as she felt. “Now, she said thickly, “who's Jane. It's not her, that health farm woman. She's not here, is she?”  Suddenly she seemed to be pleading, pleading for an answer.

            “Right.”  Gregory glowed with a hopeless smile.  He swallowed and recovered his garrulousness.  “Well. Jane, of course, is an old colleague,” he turned to Peter as if they had not been having the talk they had in fact had.  He continued as if explaining to Peter. “She is an old colleague, a friend really of Bea's and mine.  We've known her for years.  For years and years.  She works closely with us.  In an associated company, actually.  I've helped her a good deal.  You know what it's like.  In business; scratch my back, scratch yours, what?”

            Beatrix watched him.  The stinging energy she had so recently felt had nearly evaporated. What had happened; why had that woman turned up?  What had Gregory brought her here for, into the midst of their holiday together?  For that matter, what had he brought this spindly illegitimate kid for? “What is going on?” A madhouse. “Where's she staying? Here?”

            “Oh, Bea!” Gregory reacted as if unreasonably taxed. “Of course not. She wanted a holiday. I told her where we were going to be. She found a hotel somewhere around here.”

            “About a kilometre down the road,” Peter added helpfully.

            Beatrix had judged that a tearful performance again so soon would not get the same result.  In that case she could do nothing but express her perplexity, and her deep, deep sense of suspicion.

            “Don't be suspicious.  My dear heart.”  Gregory remonstrated. “It's not like you to get ideas in your head.”  The ambiguity in what he had said was lost on him at that moment.  And on her too.

            “Everybody knows she eats men,” she said to Peter as if he had asked. “Gregory is the only one who has stood up to her temptations. That's right, isn't it Gregory? You've always told me that.”

            “Sure.  I have always told you that.”  This time he was aware of an evasive meaning.  “You have always believed me.  I told young Peter here to come on out to France and he...” even Gregory had to think for a moment what words to use, “he could keep her company for a bit.  Since she is here.  On her own.”

            “I don't see it.” She was close to whining; begging for Gregory's reassurance, “I don't understand.  Why has she come here on her own.  She could get anybody to come with her - from Prince Charming to King Kong; they'd follow her like dogs.” She looked at Peter and before she had a chance to continue, Gregory pounced on her words.

            “But you see, of course, she wants to be alone. That's the problem.  Flies around the proverbial honeypot.  She can't get away”.

            “So you fixed her up with the boy here?”

            “Yup,” he said defiantly, “She is not going to be bothered by him, is she?” Peter blanched.  Gregory did not look at him.

            “Let's pack.  We're going,” she announced as if to Peter.  And she stood up, once again to her queenly height.  But there was no longer the angry flush on her face, no longer the command in her stride.  She posed this time.  Both the men looked at her without movement.  She stopped before she left the lounge and with a revealing hesitation looked back.

            Gregory's astuteness gave him all the winning advantages. He knew she would not go through with leaving unless he sanctioned it.  He allowed the indignity in her hesitation to last for a moment.  And said, “Okay, love.  If you want to.  But I for one will be sad, yes, sad, if we do not have your company here.” He used the term ‘we’ carefully.  She noticed it. Her defeat seemed complete.  She returned to sit beside them again. “Your a good sort,” he said consolingly. “I knew you'd realise there's nothing to be suspicious of. She's not a bad type, Jane.  She wouldn't do anything behind your back either. Would she?”  Peter looked on at this blatant lying.  He studied Gregory's effect; how he handled a woman being difficult. Plenty of tips to tuck away for future use and gain.

            “I'd like to ring, heh?” Beatrix said, ingenuously. “I'm sure she would like to hear from us.”  She gave them a brave smile, as if adjusting the chairs after a dinner party had left. Anger, suspicion, fear for her marriage, all must be put behind them. “Shall we ring, and give her a surprise?”

            “Sure,” Gregory said relaxing. “Later”'

            “No.  Let's invite her over here for dinner.  And you too,” she said to Peter.

            Peter looked at his father.  His father looked at him.  “It's a lovely idea, my darling.  Peter, never forget the kindness this woman can show.  But Bea, honestly, I know that Jane wants to be away from it all.  She has enough of me at work.  Know what I mean.”

            “Oh, no, Gregory,” she said flirtatiously and perking up. “I don't know what you mean.  I could never have enough of you!”

            “That's a dear,” and he put out his hand to pat her knee leaving it there just slightly longer than necessary to convey a possessiveness; a suggestiveness.

            Her knee felt to her like meat, its skin, dead paper.  It did not belong.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

Whilst Peter walked back down the lane, Gregory nipped ahead in his brash Porsche, his phone to his ear.  Peter rehearsed in his mind all he had learned.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

Even Jane realised she could not spend so much of her time looking in the mirror searching her form for any emerging clues to the decay and decomposition to her perfect image which was bound to start someday.  So, she was relieved when the phone rang.  She slumped down with it in front of the wide window.  Even her underwear seemed to be overdressing in the heat.  From the earpiece came the familiar metric rhythm of one of their favourite poems. “John Donne,” she said sulkily.

            “J.D., quite right.  Good girl,” he responded breezily.  “Us - we're just like that.”  It was the old formula they had grown up with.  Two people like one.  “Love and poetry, they're symbiotic.  L-and-P.”

            “L, little-a, P,” she recited in response.

            “Love and poetry, like twins who feed each other.”

            “You, little-a, M.  You and me, we're the same”' she continued sing-song fashion.

            “You and me.  My Love.  We go together, always have done.”

            She always thought of way back, at that young age. Gregory and his lanky friend, Len, kids of thirteen, had chased her into an alleyway, scared her half to death, and had cut off one of her pigtails.  She had been five.  Then her violent stepfather had scared her to death too when she got home, with his belt. Forbidden ever to meet those ruffians again. And in fact, still it seemed in hiding from them today.

            “So,” he continued now conversationally, “how goes it?”  Just the question she could not answer for herself.  So, she was silent.  He picked up the tension and wariness, “I'm coming over.  I'm in the car now.  I got away earlier today.”

            “So.” The moment he got to her room, he began again, “You've met Peter, have you?” He spread his remark with a nonchalance he was not feeling.

            “Your weedy office rat,” she enquired.  At first there was some humour, added to the grating displeasure. “What did you send him spying for?”  They sat together on a tiny terrace outside her room, no more than a window ledge.  The hotel shaded them from the afternoon sun. “You - are you getting jealous in your old age? Want to see what I get up to? He's a bit obvious, isn't he? Your office boy.”

            “Come on, GJ,” he appealed to their secret childhood past again.  The closest he could get to her.  The old taunts he and Len had thrown at her - GJ; Gypsy Jane; Gypsy tipsy Jane.  Later they had become daunted and bewildered by her sudden beauty as she emerged as a woman.  It had frightened their unsure manhood.

            “Don't call me that,” she shouted, as she had all those years ago, too.  Now she no longer frightened him, but yet she still sensed he had to work at keeping her on his side.  “He's no bloodhound.  You're wasting your money.  Send him home.”

            “No.  My love. Be nice to him.  In your usual way.  Just be nice.”

            “Oh no,” she said, or wailed, as if she could not believe she was being asked for something so preposterous.  “What the hell does ‘usual way’ mean?  I know what you usually mean.  But he's a boy.  Not with him - what's his business.  He can't be any use to us.”

            “Don't be like that.  He's a good lad.  Needs bringing on a bit.”

            “True,” she said bitingly. “Who is he?”

            “Haven't you guessed?” He kept a pause to convey significance, but she was not having that.  She sparked.

            “Guessed!  Guessed what? Of course, I have.  You've dragged me all the way out here to this wine-spattered nowhere.  The scenery's like wallpaper, the weather is a furnace; the people are cardboard.  And you want to start a quiz-show!  Guess what?”  Gregory gained a thrill when she got into her imaginative outrages.  “And you, fucking love winding me up,” she concluded as she caught the triumphant smile in his eye.

            Gregory audibly swallowed, “Okay, okay.  You win.  A long time ago,” he swallowed again. “Twenty-one years, to be precise, I became a father.  Know what I mean,” he added, hesitant - in a coy way.

            She thought she had a few sudden sarcastic comments bursting into her brain; she prepared to crank up the decibels.  But thought better of it - in these abrupt circumstances.  Silence was dignified.  It will leave him guessing, she thought.  Let him swim in an empty pool.  She said nothing. “You still there,” he asked.  She said nothing.  He decided she was.  “It's just... a helping hand - for the lad.”

            Now he remained silent, a counter-silence.

            He put his hand to her face and kissed her on the cheek.  “I've got to go this time,” he said ambiguously.  She did not ask him to stay.  Her familiar anger had rendered her dumb.  Despite his apparent assured manner, in the car he phoned her back, again. “You're a good girl, my love.  I love you.”

            Still driven to silence, in the end she spoke, “I might.  Help your lad.”  She patted the place on her head where her plait might have been.  “I might,” she repeated sulkily.  “If I feel like it,” in a louder voice.  Then more shrilly, “But I don't.”  She slammed the phone down.

            Gregory switched off his telephone more calmly. He turned. “She'll be okay,” he said reassuringly to the embarrassed boy curled up around his own centre of gravity in the passenger seat.

            Peter unwound himself at the hotel and got out.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

Puzzled by the mosaic of interactions he had witnessed, and not alert to most of them, he admired his father's command.  He returned to the hotel to claim his rights with Jane.  The goddess, he believed.  The opposite pole to the beastly Beatrix.  She had shed her loose clothing unceremoniously and sat on the edge of the bed in his room as featureless as he was.

            Furious - with Gregory, with herself - she had confronted the hapless youth with a wooden stare.  She still had on a pale blue silk bra with black lace, which pushed her parts into a deep cleavage.  He slowly took off his clothes, staring hypnotised at her motionless flesh.  He lay on the bed beside her.  No words were spoken.  She looked down at his long, white, slender body.  The unfriendliness of her gaze frightened him.  Mixed with the long excitement it did not seem to be having the expected effect on him.  She picked up his limp organ between thumb and forefinger as if a dead cigarette from an ashtray.  Incensed with everyone and feeling manoeuvred into this, she let it drop again, and said with contempt “You won't get far with that, will you?” She turned her head away. As if reluctantly waiting for him.

            He put out a hand to bury several fingers in the crevasse in her brassiere.  “Can I?” he mumbled, and he started to say something he did not finish.  She let him fumble with the clasp till the straps fell away.  She neither moved nor spoke.  Her breasts came free from the cups.  In other circumstances he would have drooled, would have settled in his mind how he would describe them to his mates.  But at that point his mouth was dry, his stomach trembling with apprehension, every thought about imitating his father had abandoned him.  One palm clutched a globe.   He touched as if it were the most fragile bubble.  Its weight surprised him.  The heavens should have opened; but they did not.  Only an effort of concentration made her breast seem different from a large potato, different from a bag of tepid water.  Her wooden immobility controlled all of him.  He felt an imposter, an intruder, inadequate in the moment of violation.  Furiously, her immobility attacked him.

            But at the same time, it represented her humiliation, the ignominy in Gregory's demand for his son.  The whole of her life she had worked for him, worked under him... screwed under him!  Her thoughts could not be completed, could not be vulgar enough to describe herself. Her time had been one long degradation by Gregory from her earliest years.  She fumed.  She found herself obediently putting out one slender elegant forearm to feel between his thighs for his sensitive parts again.  They rested in the cradle of her strong fingers.  The balance between gently soothing them and ripping them off was an exceedingly fine one at that moment.  She found herself beginning to squeeze, she felt the temptation to crush this lad's maleness into paste.  The desire to destroy the father through macerating the son was almost irresistible. Almost.

            In turn he looked in alarm at her arm bearing his trophy.  He was not sure if he was being offered excitement by this steely woman. In his innocence he uttered “Aagh...!” thickly and as if acquiescing to her powers.  But his fear told him he was in danger. “Ouch. I say.  That...”  She let go. “That hurt a good bit.”  Her mercy reprieved the father; and the boy.

            She looked down at his organ again.  And he looked down at it too.  It was stubbornly limp.  In a moment of brief conciliation, she leaned herself across his chest, lowered one shoulder onto his and lay for a moment in contact with him, her face turned away, his arm pinned so that he could not do any foraging or fumbling. After a brief while she said, “I don't think you and I are going to get very far, are we, boy?”  Then she suddenly sat upright, squared her shoulders back so that her breasts hung above him, “Why don't you just rub yourself, and we'll call it a day.” She knew how to hurt. “Perhaps women are not what you are into.”  He obeyed. He would not let her see tears fall. She turned her head and fixed her eyes on the wall in the stiff pose of an artist's model.  Afterwards she climbed silently into her jeans and, buttoning her blouse, she closed the door behind her leaving him wiping himself with a dirty sock.

            She padded barefoot down the stone corridor, her gold sandals in one hand, and her humiliation, unmodified, in her heart. On his bed he allowed himself a few gasping sobs.  He had not cried since his first fight in his school.

            There was the whine of a curlew whistling through the country lanes in the distance.  But neither of them noticed.

 

                                                          ---------- <^> ----------

 

Unlike Jane, Beatrix was not so much humiliated by Gregory.  It was a numbness, her grisly emptiness.  It had come back.  She could only pretend.  She was a million miles from his confident belief that he had smoothed everything out for her; had settled her ruffled feelings; had, in the process, convinced her of the silliness of her feelings.  Tragically his confidence was unfounded.  They were sitting close together on the hotel terrace in the lateness of that afternoon. The sun was calming towards evening. A tiny lapping sound came from the river some 15 metres below.  Gregory's hand was proprietorially on Beatrix's thigh.  He believed in total possession.  And that was what Beatrix gave him.  Helplessly, she did.  It left her no escape, no room to manoeuvre.  There were no words that could form her predicament, no appeal to him about the hurt that burned like a ruthless acid in the place where she wanted love.  He required only that she pretend; a pretence that he had made everything alright for her again.  Her loneliness was all the more vast for the silence it occupied.

            She could bear it no longer.  She knew she must do it suddenly.  The moment came, the most silent one she had ever heard. She lurched from the chair to the balustrade at the edge of the terrace.  As if in perfect slow motion, one foot on the top of the rail, a super-human stride into the air, and she threw herself from the terrace.  She briefly noticed the rocks innocently lapped by the gentle water, her wail was not fear, merely a sad defeat.  She hit them head-first.  The water accepted the body.  And carefully rippled around it.

            Gregory was already on his feet leaning over the rail, arms outstretched.  A small knot of hotel guests gathered instantly to gaze down with him at the sudden corpse.  One man was over immediately clambering down, slipping and gashing himself.  Another had miraculously found a rope, and was throwing it down to the climber; making it fast on the rail.  The receptionist had already rung for the ambulance.

            It made the countryside echo with its wail.

 

***** 

 

 

** 5 When I did fall in love

 

When I was 14, I was raped one evening by six men from the barracks. It was quite horrid. But I did not tell the police, or my parents or anyone -- and afterwards I felt that my secret was a piece of my life that at last was my own. One of the men came back to see me a week later. He had been the most hesitant of the six and I don't think he did it properly, only pretended, anxious for what the others would think. But I was not sure, as I did not concentrate much on what was happening to me. In fact, he was the only one I remembered really. I remembered his rifle still half-dangling from his shoulder, the metal clinked on the metal buckle of my belt. He came back to see me because he wanted to make amends somehow, he said. I asked him what his name was. Later I wrote to the barracks and asked them to punish him. Looking back, I think I quite liked him; and I rather think it was because I liked him that I wanted them to punish him. But I don't know what happened.

            I wasn't very interested in boys when I was a teenager. Later on, when I was 20 or so there were a couple of women, one after the other. I let them teach me things, but I didn't know where it was leading, and I was a bit frightened -- about the unknown. I told each of them about the other, and when they eventually met, they fell in love. I was relieved and also felt a warm pleasure that I had brought them together. I liked to think that when they made love they were both thinking about me!

            It was not until my late twenties that I let a man make love to me. It was very passionate indeed. I had for some time begun to have daydreams about love making with men -- no-one in particular, no one man at all.

            We met at a party. I hadn't really noticed him until I burst into the lavatory when he had not bolted the door properly. I retreated. When he came out, he saw me watching him and he was a little pink in the face. I felt oddly embarrassed too -- but it was just one of those things. It didn't mean anything.

            About two years later we met again and were introduced. We both recognised each other. -- though I made out that I didn't. Because it seemed so inconsequential. He was again a little embarrassed and awkward to remember the first occasion and then find that I did not remember him. I was again unusually embarrassed too.

            I let him talk to me for a while and then I got away but at the end of the evening, I was leaving at the same time, and he took me home. I sat in the back of the car whilst his wife sat next to him. Two days later, on Monday morning, he rang me. To ask me out. He told me he had been thinking about me over the weekend. I had not thought of him but decided it was better not to say so. I suppose I must have wanted to see him again. He told me he was falling in love with me and insisted I meet him, just once. He was emphatic that he did not do this sort of thing regularly. It was special. He would take me to a pub at lunchtime, he needed to talk about some things. I didn't know what to say on the phone. I wanted to get back to reading the newspaper, snipping out the cuttings. I said I would meet him at midday at the swimming pool. It was not that I like swimming but know I look good in a swimming costume. I take great care buying them and have quite a lot.

            Half an hour beforehand I was there sitting at the side of the water quietly, composing myself. I arranged my body in a way that I hoped looked relaxed, and my mind so that it should be as blank as possible. When he emerged, he looked good too. He noticed me and came across to where I had prepared myself, propped against a low wall. He did not sit down at first and I looked up with a smile, but I’m afraid I still looked serious. It did not seem easy for either of us to say anything. Perhaps he had been a little cross with me for dragging him there, but at that moment my thoughts were as disturbed as the water with boys plunging in and out. I said nothing and waited for him to bargain for what he wanted. His face looked tense and red. Then he decided to move and bending down he picked up my hand and pressed it vigorously to his lips. I held it up and kept touching him to preserve the contact longer. I could not help noticing the thought that my mind decided to produce at that moment: this was the hand that I used to hold the flannel for wiping myself in the lavatory. My hand still held onto his as he straightened up. And I decided to say that I was too confused to stay with him for long today. My body, I added, could be his but I did not yet know about my heart. I said I wanted him to go away and to write to me; tell me what he felt and what he wanted, to put it in writing because my mind was not working face-to-face. I still held his hand as I spoke and this time I pulled it to my lips. I pressed it there for minutes feeling the full veins on the back of it with my tongue. I caressed it with all the surfaces of my face, my cheeks, the hollows of my eyes fitting round his knuckles, my forehead, my small nose gliding across his palm, the tip of my chin on the tip of his fingers. Then I pressed it against the top of my bare shoulder and the side of my neck, which I discovered, had become electric. My body felt very naked, and I thought he might reach out with his arms to take it. He felt like the radiance of the sun. I said I was in too much of a turmoil to be with him, he must go and write what his feelings were, what his dreams are. I told him to go but not to keep me waiting long for his letter; and truly I was already longing and waiting for it. I told him I was so confused but in those moments my logic had become as sharp and clear as ice.

            When he wrote to me it was very passionate, he was suddenly a slave to love he said, his body and his soul were racked with agony. He left me no doubts that he was head over heels and nothing would tear his devotion from me till the end of time. Indeed, by now I had no intention of dampening his devotion. -- neither before nor even after the end of time. Yet even though love is a wonderful emotion, a tidal wave of emotion is like standing in front of any other tidal wave -- it can drown you. So I did not reply immediately and when after a few days of agonies he telephoned to ask me what my decision would be, I said I was disappointed. I would have expected him to arrange to see me sooner if he really meant all that he had written in those wonderful things in the letter. He was suddenly agonized anew, because I should doubt him so. I wanted him to come and see me immediately, but he said it was impossible, he had his visits to make. But I shall be one of them I insisted. -- how else could I tell if he was someone I should give my heart to. He must show he would let his patients wait a little for their visit from the doctor, otherwise it meant I was no more than his patients to him.

            When he arrived, I had waited twenty minutes or so; it was cold and damp in the drizzle, standing waiting a few houses up the street from where I lived. I insisted we went to the corner and had a drink in the pub. The person in the flat below me in my house would be going out late. -- I did not want to give any chance of anybody knowing I had brought a man back. He was not very pleased to find himself in the pub and kept looking at his watch, and sipping his drink and eyeing my drink which I kept safely undrunk in the glass till I thought enough time had passed for the downstairs prying eyes to go out on her afternoon routine. I took the time to ask about his wife. She would skin him I gathered, she was trained as a lawyer he said, she was very hard and independent, she insisted on the best for their children. He was unhappy at home, only at work was there satisfaction, and that is not enough for a full life. He saw in me some new opportunity, he smelled freedom, the oasis in a parched desert. He glanced at his watch. I said calmly he must take his watch off and give it to me while we waited. He could not. I said we would go in a moment and insisted he gave me his watch. As, he said, I was a little younger than he was, actually ten years, I was, he said, a new flower that would blossom in his life. I told him I sensed his power, a power in his emotions. They frightened me but he fascinated me. I could feel warmth in my genitals. I told him I had never made love with a man before. I said we would go back to my flat and make love for the first time. I said we could go now.

            In the few yards down the road, I told him I was frightened. I swallowed hard with a dry throat, and I told him exactly the way I wanted to do it. He nodded. When we got to my flat, we crept up the stairs -- just in case of prying-eyes. In the flat at last I pulled all the curtains and in the dark bedroom I laid him on the bed. It seemed a little cold I said but I assumed we would warm up. He said nothing as I had asked of him. As I tied his hands out of the way so that he could not touch me, he frowned a little. I didn't want to know what he was thinking. Then in the bathroom I removed my panties, looked in the mirrors, brushed my hair. I looked at my fingernails and decided to wash my hands but the water was cold, so I was quick. I arranged myself kneeling astride him as I had done so often and so carefully in my daydreams, with my skirt and my raincoat covering our union like a tent. I put my hands beneath my clothes to find his zip and undid him. I was unfamiliar with a man's trousers and underclothes. He smiled as I rummaged around. Eventually I got hold of him and found an aperture in the folds of material to pull it through. He made little jerky movements with his hips, and I put his thing up into my vagina and held it there to expand into me. But it stayed rather soft. I didn't know how men made themselves stiff, and I smiled at him. But my mind was racing and I suddenly felt I had gone too far, that I was out of my depth attempting this. I asked him what the matter was, but I did not really want to know. He said I would have to make him stiff. My mind raced on, but I asked him coolly how do I do that. He told me I had to get off him, caress his thing with gentle fingers, with my lips up and down it, from end to end, with my tongue searching right down to his balls. I smelled his warmth and sweat and the slight smell of lavatories too, and also soap. He told me when to get back on top. I arranged my tent of clothes again. Then he came into me properly and worked his way right in. He was very vigorous. I had wanted to do it myself but I let him push up. When he had come himself, he seemed to be quite out of control. As he fell back still, I pulled off him and he winced, but he lay still. I slumped in my chair by the mirror, and lifting my skirts I thought, as I always do when I rub, of a soft trickle of blood warming my vagina. I came quickly because it was so slippery and afterwards I dozed off as I always do into a short sleep. I woke with him calling to me and asking the time. He wanted to be released from the bedhead where I had tied his hands. I looked towards him for the first time. His thing was soft again, a last drop of juice had run out onto the crisp material of his trouser-leg. As I leaned over him to untie the string, he tried to kiss me and I smiled at him. Then he was gone quickly to continue his visits. Please, please write to me straightaway to tell every single thought that had gone through his head at every moment of our love-making. I did not know if I craved for him or never wanted to see him again.

            He rang me in the early evening and I told him off because he should be writing to me. I expected a letter in the post the next day. He said he was desperately short of time especially as he could do little else but think of me. But I insisted he must do as I say. He claimed he was no writer, but I silenced and said true love if it was really true would turn anyone into a poet.

            When the letter came two days later, he had laboured hard to tell me everything. It was true he was no writer and love had not turned him into a poet but he had made a huge effort. Curiously, I was not very interested any more in what he actually wrote. I was already thinking of the next time. I had fantasies all the time of what we might do. I stood in front of my mirrors imagining the feelings in every bit of my body if he touched it, stroked it, kissed it, scratched it.

            I decided to write it all to him. I bathed and washed my hair, dressed in the most ravishing evening gown I had in my cupboard and sat in my chair facing the mirror and wrote to the image he had made love to, as if I were him. I did not spare him any of my intimate thoughts on the possibilities ahead of us. Next time I offered him to tie me to the bed in any position he wished. My thoughts whirled ahead to what he might do to me once I was helpless. Any bit of me whatever could be touched by another person's flesh -- and there would be nothing I could do about it. It excited me even though I knew I could never let it be different from that first time, never let him free in my bed. I told him stories about the use of all my orifices. When I finished, I felt satisfied and once again saw myself in the mirror. I was shocked by what I had written, what had come out of me. And I realised I wanted to shock him, to disgust him. I eagerly went to post it to him -- I decided to send it to his home, to the midst of the family into the midst of his marriage. Running along the road in such extravagant clothes, I felt them rustle, my skin scoring on the fine material. I returned equally quickly from the post-box and stood in front of my mirrors. Now, pink and a little short of breath.

            He told me after that, I must stop. I had gone too far with my letters and my suggestions. He thought it had become an obsession for me, he was worried about me. I told him I wished only to be discreet -- as he must have realised. I am a private person. I wish for total privacy.

            He reassured me he loved me, he mentioned various parts of my body. He only wanted to get all the passions in balance, stabilise our affaire, so that it would not shake itself to bits, he said, and us with it. I thought he was talking to a naughty child -- a nuisance child that needed a threat.

            I explained he must love me my way, that he had created a strange new woman inside me. I said I must be able to see him, I would become his patient so that I could call to see him any day, so that I could ring for a visit from him.

            He turned his hands over with a tried patience. I felt my eyes widen with an enquiring curiosity, like a little girl's, pleading. He announced that doctors could not have their patients for lovers. But I quickly stopped him with the fact that it was not that way, it was the opposite, having his lover become a patient. I said it was best to arrange things through his surgery otherwise his wife might find out. I began to imagine if she did. Her red-faced anger, her white knuckles gripping his hair, her teeth straining to get into his flesh; her screeches of purified protest hanging in our ears; poured pain, the glee of it... He hushed me and assured me his wife would not find out under any circumstances, if we were careful. But I was already beyond careful. I would not be careful. I won't.

            The moment was a very delicate one. I calmed down of my own will. After a silence, we spoke of something else. The next evening, I went to the surgery -- to register as a patient. The receptionist went away to find out if the doctor would agree -- she came back to tell me that he was not, she said officiously, taking any more onto his list. She'd agreed a little later to find out why, when I made the kind of fuss that I am so good at. I knew he would make an exception for me; but there was a thin moment of excited anticipation as I waited for her to come back from checking. I was relieved, too, when she nodded from her glass office.

            He said he did not know now if I might make trouble. He was concerned I would tackle his wife in some way. He was not sure if I was playing a game. I was so strange, a woman enclosed, he called me. All my fantasies stretched me beyond his view. I said I noticed he had not risked calling my bluff. He had accepted me into his practice. He smiled. He was relaxed. He shook his head to agree as if he was resigned to my whims, and half-liked being pestered by them. Would she leave him, throw him out -- he could not come to my flat I told him. Would she throw saucepans?  I was so curious, I wanted to find out, I said. I laughed.

            I had grown to know that resigned shrug of his shoulders -- an amused father in a lonely generation.

            One day I played a trick on him. I went to his surgery, waited my turn, and went to his room, sat down in the chair. I demanded that he kiss me, between the legs. He refused with that torpid resignation and told me to run along. I refused. He explained that his partners or his receptionist could walk in at any moment, I should leave now. I refused again and pouted with my small but full lips he had so often admired. I explained I had come to get money out of him. If he wanted to avoid disgrace, he would have to pay. He looked rather blank. He was not sure if this was, or was not, one of my games again. He always thought of me as a gamester, a jester, the glint of the magpie as someone had called it. I said that he did not believe me. It was true, I told him, that I did not need the money -- not as money, to spend. I simply wanted his money. I took a digital memory stick from the pocket of my fur coat. I showed it to him. It was a stick. It is a record, I said, of love-making. Ours last week. It is quite clear. I asked if he wanted me to play it, would someone overhear. Alright, he said, alright. But he wasn't -- not all right in himself. He looked grey. He wanted to get me out at any price. He was beginning to think I was serious, my game was another mad artifice, a vulgarity beneath him. I was beginning to win -- if he became convinced it was not a game then I had won the game.

            Suddenly he accepted he was a victim; I was winning this real, malign stratagem. He drew out his chequebook. How much did I want. I could see he still felt he could play along, really felt the abused and innocent lover. Is a hundred pounds enough for you, he asked. No, I said. No cheques, I want ten pounds, just a note. He looked at me surprised again; how often had I achieved that? Only ten pounds. He closed his cheque book. “I am surprised” I started to say with a little pout re-forming, “You think I am worth only one hundred pounds. If you had quoted a true value, then I would have let you off. Now I will have to find out what the value is, slowly, bit by bit, ten pounds to start. A little more next time, a little more, how far will you go.”  His perplexed relief clouded a little. He wondered if I would go on. He had tasted my power over him. And so, candidly, had I. He took a ten-pound note from his wallet and said I should go now. He was cold and shaken. I too was cold; a damp loss seemed to have come out of this. But I had won this game.

            I had won the game. I put the valuable piece of paper on the desk and smoothed it with my hand. I looked up at him from the corner of my eye, he looked ever so much older. I picked up the note and tore it in two, slowly, then again, and again till it was very small pieces in the palm of my hand. I dropped them into the bin where he throws the discarded swabs stained with pus or blood.

            Out in the street I waited for him by the car. Perhaps an hour later I was sitting on the bonnet of his car looking cheeky, when he came out to go home. He was furious I was still hanging around. I presumed he was anxious people would wonder what I was doing. I supposed, I said, he'd have some explaining to do to his partners. I got in with him and he drove me home. We were silent. I demanded that he come in with me. I knew he would not. He reached across me in an unromantic way to release the car door and shoved me out with his shoulder. I held the door open so he had to come round to close it again. He told me I was a child. Then he took hold of me by the shoulders and gave me a vigorous kiss on the mouth. I didn't know if it was love; or if it was in hope of silencing me.

            I went up to my flat alone and settled down in front of my mirrors. The digital stick had nothing on it but I put it in the machine to record the sounds I was about to make.

            That evening, I wrote to him the amount of money I wanted, a hundred pounds every month for as long as I still kept his letters. Perhaps, I began to think, it hadn't been such a game; it was real money. But actually, I did not want the money. I don't know why I did it.

            It was the blackmail that could then let him present me to his wife as evil. He could tell her now without her being too threatened, or without her destroying their marriage completely. I would not want that after all. She came round to see me a while later. She came on her own -- but brought some bottles of ink. She opened one and threw it at me, over me. Before she opened the next, I had shut the door. When she had gone, I looked at the stain on me. I had spoilt his love for me. I had spoilt a passionate love. I don't know why I did that. It felt like the satisfaction of revenge. But revenge for what?

 

 

***** 

 

 

** 6 My nurse

Lying in bed, the rucks in the bed-linen like a rock to lie on, my future is a composite of past times. In the present my skin is a furnace, alive with its own nature.  My member is the centre of the fire.  It goes up and down like Tower Bridge.  My immobility is agony as it flags constant demands that I do something for it. Sometimes my nurse looks under my bedclothes and will see it saluting her.  'Oh,' she says, always, 'I'm surprised at you in your condition.  We don't want that, do we?' - and drops the sheet back on its throbbing tip.  How to catch her attention, how to tell her.  Only my eyelids work now - apart from my member hoisting itself with a life of its own.  If she would only touch it with the coolness of her fingertips, a fire brigade job, to staunch the firebrand.  If only those long, elegant fingers would grip its shaft to establish a control. But never, she never once glanced in the direction of my frantically blinking eyelids.

            They were worried about my eczema.  Common, they say, in such cases of paraplegia. Para-bloody-plegia from the neck down, that's what I'd got.  The doctor stood gazing out of the window, my nurse stood next to him gazing into him. His well-scrubbed very pink face, well-shaven and smooth as her bosom, betrayed no interest.  How could he know the fight I had with my surging skin, humming like the national grid.  My struggle did not involve my muscles, my joints, it was a tournament between my mind and its feelings - one that never ceased.  I could tell him the prescription I needed - it was standing next to him, resting her long hand in a lingering moment on his folded arm.  He was a dapper man, silver hair, still playing squash in his fifties, the healthy and wealthy type.  I had known them, sold insurance to them - in those gone days. And she, his nurse, was pure radiance. What a couple, a heroic tableau at the end of my bed.  My member addresses them.

            In the end it was an ointment for her to rub into the eczema.  Why could she not rub it into the places I want her to rub!  All I can do is let my thoughts run; I imagine her in all sorts of ways - the nakedness, the flexible writhe of her curves as she moves, the moaning for me at night-time... oh dear.  My mind, no match for this fever, retaliates/ Often instead, it constructs her in the most absurd antics - wiping her buttocks, picking the wax from her ears... brushing her teeth.  I ask you! Shaving her calves.  Always the intimacy of her flesh.  My charged skin won't let her go.  And - I tell you - this is a stout fifty-year old matron, with a sour expression, and who ties her waist into a nasty groove between pads of fat above and below. This is not a lithesome 25-year old, dangling a sumptuous cleavage before my eyes as she soothes my paralytic limbs.  What more - I ask you - can I do.  I see only an angel, feel only the tongues of desire caressing my skin.  So, I hate her, my love.

It is solely the desire of the mind's eye before me.  And it is only with a mind that I can fight it.  I try to imagine the mathematics of her girth, the hydrodynamics of excess lipids, the chemistry of sweat glands.  I try the driest of academic puzzles, the most ditchwater-like affairs of the hum-drum.  But to no end - the caverns of my soul have no limit - endless niches and passages in which can be secreted the loathed longing of my skin. Thoroughbred honest thoughts can never hunt them out to the last one, can never dint my body's soaring temperature. When one day I shall be taught the mastery of typing with one toe, or with a stick strapped to my forehead, then the first thing I'll ask for is a massage girl to take me off to a sauna and lay me out and deal with that subcutaneous layer that itches, every Everest-like moment of my libido.  Then I will be released for ever.  So, I do believe.

            Until then...  I love my nurse, and fight her in my helplessness.

 

 

***** 

 

 

** 7 It was not from looking at him

 

It was not from looking at him. Her love came instead from looking inside herself at what he made her feel.  He was lanky and had a good physique not yet turned to fat. Perhaps he looked after his body. She imagined him in the gym, weights in his hands, or running on that relentless conveyor belt thing with music pounding a rhythm in his ear buds. But he was not hunky handsome. It was two weeks ago when he had come down from his office he shared with one of those power-dressing executive chickens. The junior office girls called them that, and were jealous and confident that they could out-preen those female executives. Sylvia looked at the young man in his trim suit and genuine leather shoes tapping briskly on the stairs as he descended. 

In the reception area there were a number of girls at their computers, maybe as many as twenty and he looked around. Sylvia looked up at him and he noticed, so he came over immediately, to ask her help to locate an ancient cardboard file. Nice to be distracted away from the boringly unamusing keyboard she had as a companion all day. She led him briskly down the corridor to the old file store, the files she and the girls had not yet copied onto hard-discs. As she inserted her key, she turned to him, “What is your name, love?” He did not answer. But he came to an abrupt halt as she had suddenly stood in front of the locked door. With her sudden stop, his hand went out to touch her shoulder as he stopped himself. She felt herself shiver. And yet she thought immediately that his hand was not cold. Nor was he one of the more creepy executives. The door opened outwards, and she moved back against his body. She almost gasped at the contact as she looked in his eyes and excused herself. His apologetic smile had its impact, too. Oh, she thought, was she going to get slapped into another of those cheap romances in some impossible role as an office tart, again. He was new, and probably had not heard about the pathetic little drama that Bernhard had dragged her through last year. This one was new since then and office gossip replenished itself quickly.

But perhaps he had heard and might try something in this dark quiet space, shrouded by ancient files. He seemed confident but efficient and directed. Yet his smile said something. She moved into the filing room, and again asked his name. He told her, Jonathon, but modified it to Jon as he looked around at the surprisingly large array of shelves and boxes and folders. “So, you are all getting this lot typed in, are you?” he said impressed by the task. 

            “Can I help you find something, Jon?” And added, “I’m Sylvie.”

            “I know,” he said, “you’re Sylvie. “And, no; I’ll have to dig out what I need. It is a letter from a long-ago author. Someone who’s just died and they want to write an obituary about him.” He was looking round the shelves and seemed to be locating what he wanted. “The more they write about him, the more books we sell.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Sounds a bit commercial, doesn’t it?” He seemed a bit apologetic and smiled at her again, and looked towards her in the shadowy room. He gave her his engaging smile. She was leaning against the doorpost looking at him, wondering how he knew her name. What did he know about her. And her indiscretions, if that is what you would call them. And, of course, the gossip would have made something out of her indiscretion last year. As he turned his smile on her, he hesitated, “No, I don’t know much about you.” And then added surprisingly shyly, “I have just noticed you behind your computer screen, sometimes.” She felt embarrassed; or was she a bit anxious in this dark room with a young man who had been noticing her?

He turned back to a shelf that he seemed to have quickly located and in a moment took down a box. Turned back towards the door and towards Sylvie, he passed close as he left the room. “I’ll take this to the canteen and look through it,” he said.  She nodded, locking the door. “Come and have a cup of tea,” he invited.

            She looked down embarrassed at her shoes, “OK.” It was not actually the time for her tea break, but she could be excused for granting the wishes of an executive of the company. Oh, she thought, is this another discretion coming up.

            There was no one serving tea in the canteen, only a line of four machines along part of one wall - coffee, tea, snacks. They sat together at a table, with no-one else in the large room. He rummaged through the box of papers seeking the facts about the deceased author and sipped his tea. She looked at his calm, quiet, well-dressed presence. What was she doing here with him? Was he just being friendly, or polite; were there vibrations between them? She excused herself to go to the toilet, and he grunted an acknowledgement.

            She locked the door. And she took some deep breathes.  She began to tell herself that this means nothing. She could go down to the disco and find some stranger to make friends with for the evening. But somehow this seemed different. It was their workplace, so, was there a different and more serious bond to be established. Actually, she told herself, this means nothing; what was she looking for.  She must, she thought, be a lonely woman and searching. It wasn’t the way she saw herself. She wandered back to the table. “Do you need me anymore? Shall I go back to my jolly computer,” she said, sightly cheekily. 

            “If you need to.” He seemed to be stashing the papers back in the box, “I think I’ve got as much as is necessary.” So, she sat down again, opposite him. “How long have you been here, in this place.” And he looked at the wall and the ceiling as if he needed to indicate the building and the company they worked for.

            “Oh, since I left school,” she said, almost as if she were in an interview. Was he awkward with her, she wondered. She was feeling awkward with him. “And that was quite a while ago,” she added.

            He was looking at the floor on the other side of the canteen. “Here’s the office cat,” he pointed out inconsequentially, and there it was stalking elegantly and slowly across the room, taking no notice of them.

            “Do you like cats,” she asked inanely. It was not an exciting conversation. So far.

            He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I live alone and I’ve been told to get a cat to keep me company.”

            “Well, that’s an option.” And then she said cheekily, as there was nothing to lose, and as he was moving his chair back to go. “Why don’t you get a girl-friend to keep you company?”

            His chair stopped moving back. But he stayed with his head looking down and his arms on the table.  Then he looked up and said, equally cheekily “Is this an offer.” And he gave her his winning smile again as he began to stand up.

 

....o.000000.o….

 

She went home wondering about Jon. He certainly dressed well, but his conversation was dire. But at least there was no feverish and sweaty indiscretion for the office to laugh about. He made no appearance for a week or two, and she had to assume that all her anxious wondering for those twenty minutes or so, had been completely made up in her mind. Good, at least there were decent blokes about.  Good that there were even decent executives around, who didn’t assume they owned you.

She didn’t often go to the disco to pick up strangers, and certainly not on her own. But on the Saturday three days later she seriously wondered if she was a lonely girl. A sad thought that. In the end she did not go. On the Monday a letter came. She had enquired about a course at the Open University, in philosophy. She wondered, ironically, which would make her less lonely – a stranger at the disco or a course on philosophy. That is, if she was lonely. She would have a talk with Amelia. Sylvie had known Amelia since school. They were those best of friends who listened well to each other, but always thought the other one was getting a better deal in life. Amelia was certainly not lonely. She had boyfriends all the time, though a different one every time Sylvie heard about them. Perhaps, that was just as lonely. They needed to chat about what they each wanted in their not-so-young lives now.

So, they arranged for a pub drink later in the week. Amelia had always been against that ‘indiscretion’ last year. Even before it became one. But to Sylvie’s surprise she was all for Jon. It was impossible to convince Amelia that there was absolutely and completely nothing there; they’d had tea together, that’s all, and he had not said a word, just looked at the papers in his box, and pointed out the cat. And of course, when it came to discussing the purpose of life, Amelia was all for forgetting about university and philosophy – and to go for Jon. “Much better for the hormones,” she advised. And she stuck to it.

Philosophy had been her father’s interest , besides his union activities. He had died five years ago, and she had heard about Emmanuel Kant, and Freud, and Wittgenstein drove her father mad with incomprehension. She had been good at arty things, she liked pottery. But she had also begun to notice that if she saw a young baby in a pram in the street, she found herself looking longingly. Her Mum had always been adamant – do... not... be… a… one… parent… family. And she could not agree more.

            Amelia had said she would take Sylvie out shopping. The important thing is to wear something striking, “What you must wear are clothes that make men want you to take them off. So, they don’t have to be beautiful clothes in themselves. They just need to hint at what is underneath.” Amelia, no doubt, knew exactly what sort of clothes they were. From what she always related, she was always taking her clothes off. Do, I want to go through all that, Sylvie wondered, just to get a baby perhaps. She thought that, really, she wanted someone who wanted her for what she was. And to be fair, for all Amelia’s adventurous dress-sense and clothes stripping, she had not got much further than Sylvie.

            It was weeks and weeks, literally weeks before she even caught a glimpse of Jon again. And he had obviously not been snooping around looking over the girls typing all day. He just was not around. It was not exactly that he was a good-dresser, nor that he was an executive, he was only an average good-looker; nor even that she knew he had his sex organs, just as she herself did; they had only had tea-time fun momentarily cheeking each other, and that was… fun, it counted for something. It was his honest decent smile she kept seeing in her mind. And that could win anyone, and it probably did. He lived alone and with, or without a cat, but she bet in her sinking heart he had an address book of girls he could choose from. Her mind was becoming silly; perhaps she should take to drink. And she bought herself a bottle of wine for a Saturday evening. It became weekly, but not more. She knew how her brother had got into that for a year or so in his teens. She did sign up for a course at the University, distance-learning and part-time. It was on business studies, and the first thing she learned on the course was its boredom. But quickly a tutor got her interested in co-operative ownership structures. She didn’t know what they were till she was enthused about such co-ownership. Just right for the daughter of a philosophical Union man!

Such an enthusiasm tweaked a lot of hormones in her. But then what? One Friday midday, Jon came wandering into the digitising room of girls. He was looking around. He sauntered over casually and stopped by Brenda, patted her on the shoulder and gave her one of his very-decent-bloke smiles. It was exactly what she had not wanted, as all that from a couple of months ago was fading fast. Now, it leapt again, a captive animal trapped inside her, leaping about with eager frustration. Lucky Brenda, but she said she didn’t care, and may have even said it out loud to herself. Astonishingly, more than astonishingly, he moved on from Brenda and headed for Sylvie. It was exactly what she didn’t want to have to deal with again. There was just nothing about him really…

            But he stopped by her desk as she insisted on finishing the sentence she was keying in.  There was nothing she could do. And she just looked up at him. It seemed the whole room must be looking at her.  This was seriously bad, and she choked back her will to live. And said, “Do you want the filing room again?  Someone else died?” She thought it might have been amusing.  But he was not smiling and in fact looked tense. 

            “No,” he said, “come up to the canteen for a cup of tea.”

            After the last wordless teatime with him, this did not seem a particularly thrilling invitation. But she found herself getting up from her keyboard and saying, “Yes.”

            She was feeling nervous but telling herself she was not. On the way to the door. she managed to trip on someone’s litter bin, and he had to put out his hand to hold her steady. Now, definitely, all the girls must be looking at them.

 

....o.000000.o….

 

They sat down opposite each other. And she looked at him silently. “What can I do for you?”

            “I don’t know. Perhaps quite a lot.” He looked awkward. “It is not really about work. I wondered if we would like to be…. Friends.”

            “Friends, “she spluttered without thinking. “I need to know what you are thinking of.”

            “I just thought we might get to know each other better.”

            Sylvie was finding it hard to process this.  It was not like the approach of a stranger at the disco! She sat back and took a deep breath which calmed her – a little. “Look, Jon. I might like to be friends with you,” she started, but shook her head, “No, I’d like to be more than friends.” It seemed, rightly or wrongly, that something straight needed to be laid out between them. “I need to get clear what you are suggesting or thinking. You know, this is a standard company, executives often thinking the admin girls on the computers are there to play with.” He winced slightly. “Sorry, but I’m nervous and not being good at this. It is not that I am suspicious of you. Definitely not you Jon. You are as decent a man as I have come across, I think. And that may be why I am nervous, simply that you are decent that makes me want more than friendship.”

            He put out his hand as if to say that she did not need to say all this.  But she did need to, which is why it came out all in a rush and clumsily. She tried to explain all this. He looked her in the eye. There had been no smile from him yet, “I am nervous, too. Perhaps what we both want could mean a lot to us both. A great deal to us both.” There was a question in his eyes, and in his tone of voice.” She sat back. Was she reassured. She left her hand where he had put his hand on hers. There were people on another table watching them. Perhaps listening in. 

She said more quietly, almost without thinking at all, “If you are free perhaps you could come back to my place and we could talk about this. We need to be more relaxed.”

“Yes, we do,”  he squeezed her hand very, very gently. “I am a cautious man, perhaps. I think we need to learn more about each other. I will be working till six…”

She quickly said, “I will wait behind till you are free.” Without saying any more, she stood up to go back to her station. She looked at the couple of women on the other table. One of them smiled at her.

 

....o.000000.o….

 

She stayed on after her usual time of 5 pm. She had her arrangement with him. It could be important, massive. But he is cautious. It is not, she knew, a question of making him like me, but of whether he will like me as I am. When they left at 6, it was raining. Neither had umbrellas. He decided they should take a taxi. She knew she should have said ‘no’. She did not trust her judgement. Despite her knowing he was a decent man, she could not trust her judgement. 

            But true to her judgement, he got the taxi to take them straight to the address she gave. Her conflict though had not relaxed, but still she let him in and they settled in her flat. He expected her to offer him some coffee, tea, perhaps something more relaxing. They were silent for two or three minutes. “We have to relax,” she said, feeling her turmoil. 

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “I can go round the corner to that convenience store and get a bottle of wine. Would you like that?” 

“No,” she said abruptly. “Let’s be cautious, as you say. No alcohol tonight.” She felt she was being pedantic, perhaps tedious.

“OK, that’s fine.  This is the getting-to-know-each-other phase, Right? And he took off his expensive jacket.

            “If you say so.” She agreed, wondering how she could explain the things she had to.

            “I don’t know how to say this. People talk, don’t they, and I heard about some story from last year that involved you.”

            “So you know about me? Is that what you meant about getting to know each other.”

            “No, not at all,” and he stopped, “Well yes. I can see it must take a while to get over it.”

            “Is that why it took so long for you to come back to speak to me? I have been churning inside for months, Jon.” She was protesting.

            “As I say, I am a cautious…” But she suddenly interrupted.

Something was building up inside her - Oh, stop being cautious; stop being cautious – she silently screamed to herself. And suddenly tears began to spill. “I’m sorry but let’s get on and talk about this.”

            “Yes, let’s get that over with if you can talk to me about it. I have some things to say as well.” He leaned forward and seemed earnest and sympathetic. “The chap who did it was sacked, Wasn’t he?”

            There was then a long pause. Her tears flowed silently and she had her hand over her mouth, as if she could not bear to speak it out. Eventually, she blurted out, “But it was all my fault.”

            He looked surprised, and he sat back in the armchair.  “But, he should not have done it?”

            “I don’t know, don’t know. I was drunk. If you want to know. I touched him, we were in a taxi and he was supposed to be taking me home. But I wouldn’t tell him my address. And he couldn’t take me home to his wife and family. I touched him, you know I was drunk and I worked him up in the taxi.so he told the driver to take us to a road by some woods. I was thinking it would be fun. I was so drink. He took me into the woods…. It had been a beautiful summer evening” She was sobbing. “Do you want to know all this?” But as he was going to speak she went on. “He took me into the woods and… he was brutal to me.  You know… raped me.”

            “Yes, that’s what I heard, Sylvie. I am so sorry, sorry. What an experience.”

            “I didn’t cry out, I should have yelled. Everyone says so. I should have. But I was the one… who started it. In the taxi I was kind of raping him. You know.” She was calming as she could see he was listening, was interested.

            “I can see you could be too desirable to resist, but it didn’t have to be rape did it. Not brutal.”

            “No, he shouldn’t have been brutal, of course not. But when I started pushing him away, he couldn’t hold back and he forced me and hit me. So it was me, you see. I keep thinking how I worked him up, I thought it would be fun, then I changed my mind and he couldn’t stop.” 

            “No, Sylvie. Whatever you did, he should have kept enough control of himself.”

She quite quickly began to recover herself. “I should never have got so drunk. That is what started it. But yes, however other people behave we always have to control ourselves. I know. Everyone has told me that.” And she looked down shamefacedly. He wanted to comfort her, hold her, but she was on the other side of the room. He got up slowly, not to frighten her, perched on the arm of her chair and put his arm around her. He felt fatherly, a long way from being a lover.

“What a way to get to know each other, Jon. I’m sorry. My brother overused drink, for a while. I too was just getting back to it a little in the last few weeks.”

            He stroked her back to comfort her. But wanted to clasp her to his chest. He wanted to unite his sadness for her with her own sadness. “Do you want to lie on your bed and let me cuddle and hold you?”

            “Do you want to? To go to bed with me?”

“No, I am not saying sex. Though sex with you has been on my mind for a long time. No, I mean there are other things partners need from each other.”

“Hmm,” she looked at him curiously, “You don’t want sex with me – a man of caution and control, eh?” She smiled for the first time since he had wandered past Brenda to her station in the office.

He did not smile; he was feeling perplexed. “If we decide it, we can have many years of sex together. We can take it cautiously.” 

She laughed at this point, “Don’t you see, I am someone who will charge in. I would go for sex when my hormones are high.”

“Oh, I do indeed, I see it. But I think for tonight we will not jump without looking. Tonight, we have the powerful experience of last year. I think I should stay with you tonight. I think I should lie with you in bed. I think we should see tomorrow how we feel.”

“Oh, now you worry me. By tomorrow you may have decided - on what you know of me – that we will not become lovers.”

“We both do want it. We are charging in that direction.”

“So, you are teaching me caution! Looks like we could have plenty of clashes on that score, maybe?”

And, at that moment he smiled his cautious male, decent smile. In that moment she knew he was in love. Properly.

 

 

***** 

 

** 8 Long-serving

I was sitting on the bed in my cell in the prison in Birmingham, waiting for Luigi. I stood behind the door when they allowed it to be open in ‘freedom hour’ as I called it, waiting for him to sneak in for a few minutes. I like women really but there were none about in a men’s prison! In fact, I love women rather than men. Luigi was just a convenience while I was here. Well, I was here for fifteen years, and his was only five. I guess he had a better lawyer. He had killed his lover, kneeling on her throat. He claimed he was in a frenzy because of all her insults, but of course she was not around to deny it (or confirm it). And I got fifteen, when I had done nothing; my girlfriend had been with a bloke she was cheating with, one night. I think it was for money. Well, the money was because I wasn’t working and lived off her, and  that was precisely what them send me down for so long. I never knew who he was – the one who had really done it. Me sponging off her didn’t go down well with the judge and his jury. Nor with my mum, who believed the police. What was their evidence? It was a squashed condom beside the body when I got home that evening.; I was a bit worse-for-wear from the pub; well, a bit more than worse. I’d had a fight, lost as usual, and came home with some scratch marks. The police couldn’t even be bothered to do the DNA from under her fingernails; nor in the condom. They always check DNA in TV crime stories. I think the Pollies had a budget for lab tests, and I didn’t rate as worth the money. All I saw was some bloke leaving the exit as I came back into the building, but I couldn’t identify him, couldn’t describe him for the policeman. There was twenty-five pounds, in notes, under a vase on the kitchen shelf. It hadn’t been there when I went out. All I saw was my dead Laure. And there she was, no longer in her body. Alive only in my heart.

Well, that’s my story. People always say I have a chip on my shoulder. 

Even my solicitor believed the police. I am the only one who knows the truth. There is something about that that buoys me up; I am the only one who knows the truth. I would lose something, wouldn’t I, if someone else believed the truth too. I am the ‘truth-man’, I tell myself. It is a bit silly, isn’t it, but it keeps me going in a strange sort of way.

It was thinking of that now, the time the Poo fell down the stairs (that’s what I called the POs on the wing – prison officers). I was present at the top of those stairs when he fell. He wasn’t the worst of the POs. He smiled at me once, when I had a black eye. But the rest of the squirms (the prisoners – I call them squirms because they wouldn’t like to be called worms) pointed at me. So, I was the one who’d given him the shove. Because he’d died, with a smashed in head, he, the poor Poo, couldn’t confirm if he’d been pushed. I was up in front of the Governor who questioned me as if I was already guilty of a second murder. Well, I’d done one, hadn’t I? (Well, no I hadn’t, but only I knew that.) 

“You’ve got a record haven’t you, my fine one,” he said without much question in it. 

I nodded my head. Perhaps I was keen to conceal more truth that only I knew. But I knew better than that. So, I explained, “No, sir. It was someone behind me. I didn’t see who. All I saw sir, was someone’s arm, smash his metal dinnerplate into the side of the Officer’s head, just above the left ear’ole. He went down like a sack of potatoes, sir. Right down the stairs”

He looked blankly out of the window as if he knew I was just making it up. “I don’t know why we bother with the likes of you, Smallthorpe.” And that moment I remembered again my father’s constant judgement that I was a-bothering him. “You’ll be dealt with.” 

So now I had another secret truth I could harbour for the next fourteen years. Well, there is remission, so it could be less. But perhaps not much remission if I have killed a Poo! 

“You don’t like me sir,” I said with more protest than cheekiness.

“True.” He didn’t bother to look at me as if I was just a rat found in one of the cells. “You’ll be moved to Strangeways – that’s in Manchester. There’ll be another trial.” And I was dismissed. This time my cell door was kept locked so I would be ‘safe’. 

But later, after I was in Manchester and months later after I was moved there, I was given a lawyer, who said he was unfortunately in a hurry but wanted to hear my story. So I told him again what I’d seen. He nodded and apologised for hurrying off. Eventually, after a few more months I was on trial. The judge listened to the stories and added ten years to my sentence, 25 altogether. He too expressed his exalted view that I was not something the country should be bothered about.  And once again I knew I had nothing to be proud of, except…. I now had a couple of truths no-one else knew. 

I loved my Laure, even though I used her money, and l left her on Saturday nights to go and get drunk. It was my one treat of the week. And I did not care if she had her ‘types’ into our flat for their fun with her. She deserved that. To be honest, I did not know why she bothered with me. But we had sex when we wanted. Or perhaps when I wanted. She was quite generous to me in that way. Her name was Lauren. And I called her Laure; so I thought it was a little amusing when, after she died, the real ‘law’ came after me. In a way, it was then a relief I did not have to sponge off her, and the prison kept me fed and looked after me well-enough.

After a while, they sent me back to Winson Green. And I met up with Luigi again. He was not too keen to see me. I was a killer of Poos, so it put me out of favour with the prison officers. And so, anyone who befriended me was out of favour with them too. Luigi was a big man, and he had a big stomach; I often asked him if he was going to have twins. He didn’t like it. Perhaps he didn’t like me. But to be honest I was somewhat more likable than almost anyone else in the high-security wing. I didn’t know if perhaps he was, as it were, in love with me. It could have been so.

One day, I had a visitor and was taken to the visit-room. I had never been there before, because I’d had no visitors – well once the lawyer visited, but that was at Strangeways. I entered and there were various people sitting around waiting for the squirms who they’d come to see. I did notice a very striking woman standing silently by one of the tables. And it turned out she was visiting me! I hadn’t seen a woman for, say three years. So I was a bit nonplussed and even nervous, and especially as she was B-U-tiful. But then perhaps any woman would have knocked me over as a beauty, after three years of enforced doing-without. I was taken to her table, She looked at me as if I was something special. I knew I was special as I knew truths that no-one else knew. But it turned out I was not that special. She had come to tell me that she knew I had not killed Laure. She was Laure’s sister.

“I’m Ellie,” she said. “was there, you know?” I was puzzled at what she said. But I couldn’t fully listen when I was looking at her long blonde hair. She wore a blouse which had the shape over her chest that I could only dimly remember that women had. Her mouth was wide and with luscious lips that I could hardly hold back from kissing. But Ellie looked serious, and this was going to be a serious conversation. She had a story to tell. I tried to concentrate. 

“She rang before he arrived. She had known Stephen for a while; Strongsteve he had been known as. But she had got a bit anxious as he seemed to become violent at times. So when he was going to come for his Saturday evening ‘thing’, you know. She called me, and I was there. I sat in the kitchen while they were in the living room chatting and laughing and then getting cross about what he wanted her to do, I think. I heard them getting violent, Tommy.”

This was the first time I had met Laure’s sister. I hadn’t known she had one, and it seemed so familiar when she used my name - Tommy. “I was frightened, and I didn’t do anything. I’m sorry. I let her get killed. And then I didn’t say anything when they arrested you.” Ellie seemed almost in tears. I put out my hand to her, but a Poo came up, in case we were exchanging drugs or something. So I pulled back, and didn’t know what to say. I wanted to hug her and make her feel it didn’t matter. But, of course it did because she had let her sister be killed without doing anything. But perhaps she was right; what could she have done against him.

“Who was he, Ellie?”

“Well”, she started, and swallowed as if nervous. I wanted to tell her not to be nervous. I was OK about everything she had done. But I didn’t say that, as I was not thinking in words at the time. “She saw him sometimes. She saw other men sometimes. When you were out. Getting drunk, you know.”

I nodded. I had often guessed all that. “I used her money, didn’t I? So she made money her own way. I know.”

She looked at me with a little relief. “Well, this one was a bit dangerous, she thought.”

“She was right, wasn’t she.”

“She was right, Tommy. And she paid for it.” I thought I, too, was going to have a tearful eye or two. But she went on. “So I’ve come to say sorry to you. As well as to her. I should have done something to save her. And I should have said something to your lawyer. I should, shouldn’t I?” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. My secret truth was now shared. “I want to make it up to you. I can’t make it up to her, can I? But I might make it up to you.”

I wondered whatever she meant. I looked at her desirable body. I did want it. After three years. But she didn’t mean that. Of course. “You don’t have to do anything for me,” I said, and added, “I’m OK.” It was not entirely untrue. “It is nice someone else knows I’m innocent.” I felt I was sharing something with this wonderful woman. I wanted to tell her she was wonderful.

“I owe you. And I think I can help you now.”

I wondered how on earth she could help me. Would anyone take any notice of me and my sentence now. If she went to the police, would they be likely to believe her? They’d not bother to re-open the case just for me. I was sure. “I don’t know how you could help, Ellie. It is really awesome you want to. But no-one is going to be interested now, are they?”

“Listen Tommy. My brother, Jack. He was always the bright one. Laure and I hated him for it. But he did well. You won’t believe this, but he made it to being a lawyer. And he’s keen on looking into all these miscarriages. He works for some charity that looks into these things” I wondered what she meant by ‘miscarriages’ but realised she meant it was when the judges got something wrong. Like mine had. “We don’t meet much. But over Christmas we met at our Mum’s, and I told him – in secret. About my secret. And he got really interested and wants to work on it for you. So, he said I had to ask you if you wanted him to look into it.”

I had to think for a bit. She was sighing and breathing deeply as if full of something she was feeling. But it made her chest move up and down in a way that was driving me crazy. “You don’t have to do this for me. But of course if you can help. Yes, of course. And you are a really lovely person. I think you’re, er, smashing,” I said, using that old-fashioned word that my father used. “I don’t know why you’d want to be bothered with it all, now.” Her eyes did water then and she found a tissue in a pocket. I looked and wanted to hug her to make it all better. But I guess she was wanting to make things better for me. It was a new moment for me. Someone did want to be bothered about me. I was confused.

She stood up, “Good, I’ll see to it.” She looked at me, as I stood up too. 

“Will you come and see me again?” I didn’t want to lose her.

“Of course. You’re looking good. They keep you fit here.”

She was complementing me! I could not believe I had made some impression on this hard-to-believe woman. “I work out,” I lied, as if they provided us squirms with a gym. I wanted to hug her, again. But one of the POs was moving towards us as we stood, and obviously there is a rule against touching visitors. I said, as she was starting to walk away, “You look good too. What’s your brother’s name?”

“Jack, but now he likes to be called Jake. Laure and I used to call him ‘Joke’.” But she was several paces away. And gone. I had never known anything about Laure’s family; she never met them, so I didn’t.

One of the squirms was coming out of the room with me and said, “She fancies you, mate.”

I smiled, “Just tell ‘em, they’re gorgeous.”

“Is that how it’s done?”

“Easy.” I said as if vastly experienced.

“I’ll try it. When I get out.”

“It won’t fail.” But he was bloated and old, with sagging cheeks.

I felt good – floating on honey, as they say. News gets around, because the next day Luigi said, “So you’ve got yourself a tart, it looks like. Who was she?”

I didn’t reply immediately, but then just said, “Lawyer.”

“What? Lawyer? Going to get you off? She must have the hots for you….” I turned away, and he repeated his question. “She didn’t look like a lawyer?” But I didn’t want to discuss it.

Nevertheless, Luigi kept on and perhaps he was a bit jealous as he had the hots for me, too. As you do in a prison. So, after a few days, I swore him to keeping it secret and told him the story. He listened quite fascinated and told me it would make a good story. I thought about that. So a day or two later I asked him if he’d write it down for me, because I can’t write. Or read. 

So that is what you are reading now.

But the story goes on. A week afterwards, the lawyer came – Jake. He looked a bit like my poor lost Laure, dark hair and largish eyes. I could see her in front of me when I half-closed my eyes and imagined. I could feel what I had lost – my Laure. I wished he had not come. But he had good news, he said, and he listened to my story. He knew of an excellent lawyer to represent me in court, a barrister. But the basic issue was whether they could appeal and get the case reconsidered. You see, Ellie’s testimony could not be corroborated now; the leads she would give must have changed totally. His name, where he came from, his appearance and so on, Steve whats-his-name wouldn’t exist anymore – vanished as much as my poor Laure. They’d never follow any leads on him now. 

So, to appeal had to be a complaint about the non-investigation of me. I agreed to everything he said.. It seemed quite out of my hands. It didn’t even seem to be about me. So I thanked him and went back to the wing. Supposing I won the appeal, what would I do on the outside? Who would bother about me with Laure gone. Perhaps Luigi would. I laughed to myself.

The day came, and I was shuffled off to the court in my handcuffs, a criminal let out for the day. The barrister came to meet me briefly in the corridor outside the courtroom. And to my surprise she was a woman. Just as disorienting as that moment when Ellie had visited me in prison. She was smart, brisk, the most impressive being I had ever met. It took me back to all those previous years when I had known I was not really fitted to the life out there, like everyone else was – so, kind of relieved when I was put away. I was a sad fumbling idiot. But she looked at me as if I deserved her efforts and attention. She told me it was an important appeal. Both the original conviction without proper investigation, and the second occasion with the PO – both without evidence, she said. They weren’t interested in Ellie’s testimony, so she wasn’t even, there. The whole court spent a lot of time discussing me! And I did my best to tell my story and they tried so hard to get it all clear. The upshot, on the third morning took only ten minutes. My convictions had been ‘quashed’. I wasn’t stupid. This was the moment when I had to think whatever would come next for me. I was taken back to Birmingham to collect my things, not that there was anything much of value there, and then they let me go. I had my freedom, they said sullenly as if I wasn’t worth it, and had wasted all their time looking after me in prison for three years.

I had no job, no skills, no home. I did have a probation officer, Jim Jones. I’d seen him once, and then briefly when I got back after the court case, the previous day. He didn’t seem keen as he had to ‘fit me in’. I apologised for bothering him and he explained I would be let out immediately, probably that afternoon. And I had nowhere to go. He asked about friends, and of course there were no friends. And no relatives. Then I thought of my mother. Jim told me to ring her, but I no longer had her phone number. He told me surely, I could go straight to her after I left the prison. I agreed to that, and he told me I’d get some money, and I’d get the fare to my mother. He arranged the fifty quid and a train ticket back to London. 

I wanted to contact Luigi, who had left the prison a month or so before, with his remission for good behaviour. I wondered if my mother was still at her house, and I could remember where it was, and how to get to it. I was leaving the heavy prison door in the afternoon. The door slammed shut and I felt as capable as a learning-disabled dog, but as good fortune would have it, a car on the other side of the road, hooted. The door opened, and Ellie got out. The other door opened and Jake got out. Lucky wasn’t it? – what do you think? Apparently Luigi had followed what had gone on with me and invited me to stay with him. So they thought it the best thing for me. I agreed. They took me back to London; it seemed a long journey and they swapped over the driving between them a few times. 

It was late evening. Ellie helped me out of the car as we stopped outside Luigi’s house. It was a big house, and I couldn’t help being suspicious where he could have got the money for it. Ellie took me by the arm, and I felt like a boy being taken to school on his first day.

Luigi gave me a big hug when he greeted us, and a bit of a thrust with his pelvis. I was careful about retaliating – or, I mean, responding. But it only took him a moment or two before he noticed Jake. I think his attention suddenly changed. My attention was, of course, fixed on Ellie, and on her attention which she was giving me. Ellie and her brother left soon, saying they were tired after the drive up to Birmingham and back. But they’d see me tomorrow. And so they did. There was a bit of extravagance at a restaurant to celebrate my release, in fact the overturning of my conviction.

When we walked back, I hung back after the meal with Ellie. I wanted to ask why she had bothered. Not just with the crime and the sentencing, but with rescuing me when I felt abandoned outside the prison. She didn’t say a word. But she turned her head and kissed me on the neck as we walked slowly behind the other two. It felt like a happy ending, as the other two streaked ahead to get back to the house. I think Jake may have stayed the night with Luigi – I didn’t really notice as Ellie occupied me all night. Perhaps it was a really happy ending. And, in a sense, it got happier. Before it got worse again!

They explained to me at breakfast that the police had been so remiss in their investigation of both the crimes I had been convicted of that I was due some compensation. Maybe, they temptingly said, a half a million. I didn’t believe it. I really did not. 

It was about at this point that Luigi wanted to get on with the story we had written together in the prison, me telling him, and he writing it down. I was not too keen, so I was quite relieved that in fact he had something else to say about it. It wasn’t that he wanted to continue writing about what was happening now. He had taken the trouble to go over what he had got, and that was up to the quashing of the conviction. He said it was a good story with a happy ending. So he had sent it off to an agent, a literary agent. And what’s more the literary agent knew a publisher who was putting together a book of stories, an anthology of contemporary stories. What could be more contemporary than a miscarriage of justice, Luigi said, spreading his hands as if demonstrating the obvious.

I told him I would do what he thought best. I had not, I told him, ever thought of being a literary writer. Luigi agreed – he had not thought of me like that either.

“So,” I asked him too, “have you ever thought of being a writer?”

“Well, my mother used to write scripts for TV documentaries. I suppose you always think of what your parents do.” 

Mine had not done anything like that. My father just dug the garden until he died in his mid-forties of lung-cancer because of his heavy smoking. And my mother took in washing and ironing, and was a barmaid three evenings a week, seeing that the locals got what they wanted. There were stories that went around the housing estate about her pub work. I’d never given much thought to doing the work they did. 

I asked him about his mother, “So is that where all your money came from?”

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s come from various things.” He was indicating, I wasn’t going to be told any details. Then he said, I suppose because he had to, in case I noticed in some way, “That story I wrote down went to the publishing company, but they didn’t pay much for it.”

“Oh, we’ve got money for it, did we?” I had immediately wondered if he was going to hand over something for my story.

“Not much,” he said, “not much.”

He didn’t say anymore, or how much we were going to get, so I asked him, “How much do I get then?”

“Oh it’s not much.” And then he sat back and looked at me in a frank way and said, “Because my name is known in the business, the writing business, because of my mother, I sent it off to them with my name, Luigi Cartwright.”

I looked at him, in a resigned sort of way, with a sigh, “Come on, Luigi, that’s not your name, Luigi Capalbo - that’s your name. What’s Cartwright got to do with it.”

“Cartright? No, that’s my mother’s name. She’s the one who is known.”

“I see. So what are they paying me? I could do with some sort of an income.”

“They’re paying me of course. Because that’s the name on the story.”

“And you’re not giving me any of it? What did they pay you?”

“It was only about fifty quid or so.” It seemed he must be lying. I resigned myself. As usual, I had this resistance to fighting for myself, for my rights. Perhaps if I got drunk. But I always lost. I shrugged. But he went on; he cleared his throat, “Actually, the agent has got a deal with a TV company. They’ll turn it into a drama for television. For Netflix actually.” He made it sound unimportant. But the very underplaying of it made it seem he must be concealing something big.

So I asked, “And how much are they paying?”

“Oh, they’re paying a bit more.”

“How much exactly?” and because he was hesitating to answer, “It is my story after all.”

He sat forward again, “Yeah it’s quite a bit. They’ll give us ten thousand.”

I was astonished. “Ten grand. I could do with that.”

“No. It’s got my name on it.”

“So how much is going to come to me? I could do with that,” and I looked around at his expensive house. “It is my story,” I repeated.

He was definitely looking uncomfortable. “Well, we can discuss, if you want to. I did the writing you know,” he added in a slightly threatening way. 

I couldn’t believe he’d take my story and give me nothing. I wasn’t going to leave it there. “I know I can’t write things down. Or, I can’t read either. I know. But you’re taking my story.” He got up to get another beer from the fridge. He sat down with the bottle and gave me one. He didn’t say another word. And after a few useless protests, I stopped speaking as well. 

On the other hand, Ellie spent no time on protest. Very soon she came to talk to me, and more or less singlehanded removed me from the pristine cavern of Luigi’s house to the tiny rabbit hole of her own flat. It happened quickly. I just went to the door with her when she left Luigi’s house, hopefully to give her a kiss on the cheek, and she grabbed my arm, taking me down the three steps, and we hopped into her car. “You’re coming with me, young man.” And she laughed as if it were some kidnapping kind of joke. I laughed too – “I’d never resist being kidnapped by you, Ellie.” Life after prison could still be fun.

So, no protest at that. I was merely perplexed that she could bother herself with my fate. I suppose I knew I was a sort of trophy from her sister’s life, and we often spoke memories of Laure. “I was always a bit jealous of Laure, you know. She was the oldest of course, and always had the best,” she confessed. And when she talked of the best, she couldn’t have meant me, but she quickly added, “not with you, I mean, not jealous because she had you.” Then she looked confused. “No, I didn’t mean….” She didn’t know how to continue. But she meant I was not a bloke she could have been jealous of Laure having.

So, I said, “Well, we never met, did we Ellie. I was only with her for a couple of years, till she….” I paused “….died”. I had nearly said, ‘till I killed her’. It was so automatic to think I murdered her. I had done three years as her murderer, hadn’t I. In prison you become your crime. And nothing more.

“I never found anyone for myself – not like she did.” She looked at me in the passenger seat.

“You’re lovely, Ellie. I can’t say you’re lovelier than her – I couldn’t say that about someone dead. But you are such a beautiful woman, I’d be happy all my days, Ellie.” She looked across at me again, as if she was checking the real me, more or less an escaped prisoner. Just following the advice that I always gave other blokes in prison – ‘tell ’em they’re beautiful’. So I added, for her I suppose, “I don’t know why you’re bothered about me. I’m a slob.” She flashed another look at me, which seemed to say as it were ‘you’re a bit of a slob, but we’ll see to that’. I felt relaxed, there were not going to be secrets between us. We said no more for twenty minutes till she got me to her little flat on the first floor, at the back. It was virtually a single room with cupboards for a kitchen and bathroom. But if this was going to be home for me, it needed nothing more – only her. It was as if nobody had lived here before, but that didn’t matter – we could make it ours.

Immediately we entered, she apologised and told me as she was an actor – I hadn’t know that – she could only afford a small place to live. She made cups of tea and we sat down, looking at each other. Were we going to start a new phase in each other’s lives? She started off. “I’m a bossy type. You’re going to have to get used to that.” I looked blank and nodded slightly. I had never been used to anything else. “Good,” she said and then went on with her plans, “I don’t know what Laure did with you. But I’ve done some thinking.”

“I didn’t do much. I did the housework.”

“I know,” she said as if I had interrupted her. “I’ve got something to tell you. I know what Luigi has been up to. He’s not been fair, has he?”

And because she seemed to be asking a question, I answered. “No. That’s right. he’s a crook. You meet them in prison.” I laughed. 

“Right. He’s a real murderer,” and she looked at me. “Not a sham one.” And she laughed. “Jake will take on your case. There is money in it for him, he thinks.”

“What case is that, Ellie?”

“His stealing your story. It’s a kind of plagiarism. Isn’t it?”

“Oh I’m not so worried about it. If anyone is interested in the story, I’ll tell them it’s mine. Maybe he’ll give me half of the ten thousand.”

“Is it that much, Thomas? Ten thousand. I didn’t know it was so much.”

“That’s for the film rights.”

“The film rights? I didn’t know.”

“So he didn’t tell you everything?

“No.”

“He’s a shit. You rescued me from him.” I wasn’t so worried about money in the longer term. “And don’t forget,” I  reminded her, “Jake thinks I’ll get a lot more than that for compensation. You know – the miscarriage of justice.”

“And don’t forget I rescued you, Tommy. From Luigi. Don’t forget that.”

“I’ll never forget it Ellie. The beautiful Ellie.” There I was doing it again, telling a woman how beautiful she is.

She looked at me hard. “You’re a beautiful man, too. I want to have sex with you. Right now.” 

So we did. The sofa let down into a bed, and one part of me began to stand up for sex with her. Again it was good. After we finished, she lay silent for ten minutes or so. She seemed satisfied. “How can I bloody think what, I’m thinking? I’m so lucky she is out of the way and I can claim what she had.” But what she said confused me. It couldn’t make sense. “I’m a selfish shit, I am,” and she was speaking as if she had stolen something good from her dead sister, stolen me from here sister! 

“You’re a fantastic love-partner, Ellie.” I said, to reassure her she was not a shit. Then, what I said then seemed awkward. “Don’t ask me to compare you two – you and Laure. I did love her so much, Ellie. And I am sure that in a little while, I’ll love you just as much. Just as much, Ellie.” I looked at her. And she looked back. She smiled. And it wasn’t just jokey. It was love. I knew it. “I don’t know how I can deserve you.”

She looked up at the ceiling and said, “You know, every man I’ve had got fed up with me telling them what to do. I think that was how Laure was too, wasn’t it. She wanted to be in charge. It was what got her killed as far as I could tell.”

“It’s OK, Ellie. You can tell me what you want.”

“But it is not just about sex. I take charge all the time.”

“That’s OK. I won’t mind, too much. I can be in charge sometimes.”

“When we’re here, in bed.”

“That’s a deal,” I said jokily. But I knew she had given me a bit of a warning.

“I’ve worked out a plan, I’ve got for you.” She said it apologetically, knowing I might baulk if she was to plan my life.

“OhKaaaay,” I was cautious. “You’d better tell me.”

“No, let’s get up, now, and I’ll cook for supper. You are going to stay here for a while. Over the meal I’ll tell you what we’ll do.” It sounded a bit like going back to prison. Which in some ways I half liked. We folded the sofa away. And while she cooked, I watched her –lythe body, its curves I had just loved with all my passion. I really did want to tell her how beautiful she is. And I could see how amazing she must be on stage. Then, I thought of Laure, and what Laure would think. And then I thought how Laure played with all-sorts and not just me. Would Ellie get tired and fed up with me and go and find playmates elsewhere too? At this point I could not care less. I just enjoyed watching her beautiful movements and gestures, the sex in her body as she moved, and careful and lively as she constructed our supper. “Are you doing some acting at present?” I asked, but she didn’t answer that.

She didn’t lay out her plan either. But later in bed, she sat up, “Listen, I think you ought to let Jake take over a bit and get those sloppy lawyers of the government to pay up.”

“OK, Ellie. Half-a-million sounds, err…. Ok-ish.” I spoke modestly, and laughed at my silly joke. But she didn’t. She really wanted me to come off rich. And so Jake did get moving. It was out of my hands. I signed a few papers as they required, practicing holding a pen and making a scrawl. 

She did teach me a bit about letters and words on paper. But I never got to being able to read competently. “I keep being bothered, Tom, that you’ll get fed up with me organising your life.” And she added, “But you don’t seem to mind.”

”I don’t mind,” and I shrugged my shoulders. 

“This is a small little place.” She looked around.  It was untidy. “There are so many papers to be gone through. It’s good you are happy with me looking at them. It is looking hopeful. A quarter mill!” She looked at me and smiled as if she were very pleased for me. I still struggled after six weeks to believe I had fallen into such good fortune. Heaven knows, I had not committed murders, but I was not worth much more than someone who had. Now, I told myself I must stop griping on when suddenly I’d become God’s blessed. 

Over the next months Jake and his company pursued my money through the various stages. It took longer of course, and Ellie became impatient. She decided I should get a job and help pay the rent until we were all settled. So I worked in a bar. They were not too choosey about a ‘jail-bird’ as they called me. And I did quite a lot of hours. I liked the work, like my mother had. It was simple, and it was satisfying to satisfy the customers, most of them. And behind the bar I did not get into the usual fights that had punctuated my weeks when I had been with Laure. I grasped the challenge of paying all the rent for Ellie’s little flat. She complained at being left for longish periods in the tight little living room, and we discussed what I had put Laure through and why she liked to go and find her fun on her own. Apart from that, everything seemed to be going swimmingly as my Grandmother used to say.

Until, and now I had to tell Luigi to tread carefully as he listened and wrote down this monotonous account. I told him I could get fighting now. Something happened. Well, everything happened! 

I had come back from work on a Saturday night, my belly  well-filled and my heart still full of happily loving Ellie as she would greet me when I came in. But I didn’t come in – the door was locked, with a new lock. My key did not work. And the battering I gave the door with my boot did not bring anyone to open it. Ellie was not there. I was dreadfully concerned that something had happened to her. Having spent years with Laure’s murder in mind, of course that was my first thought. Though I did have a second thought. Possibly she was entertaining herself with someone else right now, hence my enthusiastic kicking of the door.

I backed away, helplessly. My only recourse was to go to Luigi even though it was late on Saturday night. He was intrigued by my predicament and listened sympathetically. Also, he made notes and script for our book. Then after a fitful night, I went back to our flat which remained steadfastly inaccessible. The last thought, which came at the end of all the possibilities was to call the police. But that I’d never do – of course. Even if it was likely Ellie was a corpse inside. I knew she was not, as the change of the door-lock indicated some specific planning. I was reduced then to waiting till Monday morning when I could storm Jake’s offices to find out what his sister was doing. So Luigi had to listen for the rest of the weekend to what my fighting rage would do when I found out what was actually happening. 

So, when I arrived at his offices at nine am on the dot, I was not in the best of moods. And I demanded to see Jake. Immediately. Of course, he never arrived till ten in the morning, I was told. I think his office got the message that my mood was not friendliness, and they told me to come back later. I did – at ten o’clock. On the dot. I was coolly told he was in an interview with a client!

Seeing red, does not describe it. It was years since I had been this angry. So I marched in. As Luigi is copying this down, he is telling me to calm down. But I had no intention of calming. So I charged through the lawyer’s office scattering their papers. A rather large young man, a trainee perhaps, stood guard at the door from the office to the interviewing rooms. He barred my way, and one of the office staff who was not hesitant, like me, rang the police for immediate help. That brought me to a halt.

I scrammed and briskly fled down the street before the ‘Pollies’ got there. I don’t have much more respect for a Polly than for a Poo. But I watched from a hundred yards away as they arrived and entered the building. Soon, they left again, switching off the blue lights. I was no longer their entertainment for the day. I  waited around for half-an-hour and then went back to give my sly apology. I don’t think they believed in its sincerity but were politely accepting. I notice a stiff and upright uniform standing over the desk of one of the girls. He looked up at me and came over. I began to  explain that Jake was in fact my solicitor. The receptionist nodded and looked at the lists of appointments on her screen. She told me a time in the afternoon when Jake would be free. So, as nonchalantly as I could, I left the solicitor’s. I looked back after a few moments and the lanky Polly was also leaving as if his job was done in scaring me off.

I had some time to wait so I sauntered back along Willesden High Street to the old flat that Ellie had just abandoned. I was not surprised to find some man, an agent, showing prospective new tenants around it. I can say that red was again what I saw, but this day was for practising restraint. I had always needed practice at it. I watched while they helped to carry out the possessions that Ellie had not emptied from the flat. Mainly, I presumed, they were my possessions.

Innocently I asked the agent, “It looks like you are letting the flat, could I see too?” He refused of course but told me to go to his office to book a time. That was my plan. At the office of his agency, I asked for my possessions back which they had confiscated but of course they would not do that for some shabby type straight off the street. But that was my plan. They told me where they would be sending the possessions – to Ellie at her address. So, of course, now I knew where she had gone! Was I going to go and check – you bet!

And you can bet, too, on how it turned out - just as I had begun to suspect, and as you had begun to suspect as well. It is the strange case of the punchline being an anti-climax, actually a sucker-punch line. When I went to the address given, of course there was no answer, and after hammering on the door as if it would open to save itself the stress, the next-door neighbour came to see what my commotion was about.

“I am looking for…. Ellie,” I said quickly, finding I didn’t even want to say her name.

“Oh, Ellie and Jake. They’re a lovely couple aren’t they. So gentle and sweet.” I stared at the woman, she was middle-aged, maybe a bit beyond middle-age, spreading around the mid-riff, and a bosom like a cradle any infant would swoon for. “Jake’s at work of course, and Ellie’s been away touring with her theatre,” she paused, “oh, six months or so, I should think it is.” She muttered on to herself, and then said. “You a friend of Ellie’s? She’s a wonderful lass, isn’t she. You could trust her with anything.” 

I just stared at her, and felt this whole business was become an exercise in staring blankly, blank as an idiot. Then she started staring at me, as if I was someone to be wary of – wary of me, do you believe it? At that point, I turned and made off. And I was sure she was looking at my fleeing heels. Luigi was chuckling as he recorded my scorched and dying heart.

I realised my appointment time was coming up, back at the solicitor’s. So, I sauntered back, collecting myself as they say, as if I have lost dribs and drabs of me all over the place. Actually, I think I had. It was no surprise, when I reminded the receptionist of my appointment, that she looked at me in a casual off-hand way, “Oh, he says he’s very sorry. He had to go off, quite urgently he said and asked me to cancel the appointments for the afternoon. But I didn’t have a contact number for you. I’m afraid, he said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.” That was no surprise, not the slightest. I stalked out into the street.

But in a moment, I stalked back in again, to ask about why he had rushed out for the afternoon. The receptionist was a bit cautious but confided. “I think he’d gone to see about some business he had with you. He had to go to the bank, then on somewhere.” What could he have done in the bank with my money – not hard to guess. No, surprise, to me, or to you. Or to Luigi and his pen.

I came out into the street. They’d made off together those two; I’d lost my woman (no, she had never been mine), I’d lost my money which they’d obviously run off with. Now I had not even that mousehole of a flat to go home to. What was left for me? I decided there was only one thing left for me in my life – such as it had been. I would commit a murder and go back in prison, a proper murderer for the rest of my years. I could almost welcome that.

But one last question to be asked, and I have to say that this was not something I asked Luigi to write down. The reason? Well, I’d been cheated by Ellie,  the non-sister, and Jake who was her real love-partner. They had gone off into the mists of oblivion, where I had no means to follow. So the other cheater could be my victim. Who is that? Well Luigi cheated on my first story. So he could carry the can for all three of them, couldn’t he? 

*****

 

** 9 Taken In

The two girls, Maria and Karin, left in the late autumn to find their fortune in London. Erroneously, they thought that to get on in London, they had to put their best assets on display. For both girls that had meant scouring clothes shops for fashions they could afford which resembled the pictures in music magazines. Thus they stood together by the slip-road onto the M3. Each had a battered case, but springy new jeans-and-blouse outfits with enough chain and metal bits to allure motor-bikers, and enough shiny silky bits to allude to a promising femininity. They did not have to wait long for a lift. A huge lorry picked up the two girls. Karin flopped lumpily into the seat next to the gear lever. Maria came after and sat by the window watching the country pass away behind her. Their four tight legs in jeans were a constant attraction for the driver’s eye. His grubby T-shirt was stretched across an expanded tummy, but he was quite a young man with muscular arms, long dark sideboards and a glint in his friendly face that matched his chirpy wany of talking.

“Why’n’t you girls ’n school?!

 Karin flashed a cocky smile at him, “What? Nah, we left school. Long time ago. Going up to London,” she paused in case the momentous event that they talked about, and planned for so long was not so impressive to him. “I suppose you’re always going up to London.”

            “S’right.” He was reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket hanging behind the window. “Al’as in London. Portsmouth- London, London-Portsmouth. Tha’s the job. I done it three year now.”

            “I bet you know London pretty well.”

            “Yea, s’right. There’s some good bits, a’right. S’bad news taking an’old trolley as this un aroun’ the streets.” He had found his packet of cigarettes. “Y’not been afore. T’London?”

            “Oh, yes – course. We’re going to live there.”

            “Ah! Leavin’ ’ome, eh? I’m still with my Mum,” he smiled at himself. “No reason t’leave, is’t?” Scept, I go drivin’. Friend in Isling’on. Sleep on ’is floor. What about y’ friend. She’s leavin’ ’ome too?” He looked around Karin’s bouncy form at Maria’s pretty face, steadily looking at the road ahead.

“My name’s Karin. Hers is Maria,” Karin nudged Maria as she spoke her name and looked at her.

“My Mum lives in London,” Maria said turning to look at them.

“Yeah, but she hasn’t seen her Mum for a long time. What about your friend in Islington – could he put us up, too? “ Karin’s commanding presence turned away from Maria who subsided gratefully into her solitary trance again, numbed by the jolting rhythm of the lorry.

“Cou’d be.” He said noncommittally.

“What’s your name then?” Karin asked it with a tone of personal invitation.

            “Gary,” he said shortly. He offered her a cigarette.

            Karin took one and handed the packet back, “She dun’t smoke?” referring to Maria. “Give’s a ligh’, then.” And she chuckled as he handed over the matches.

            “You got a girl-friend/ “ She glanced at him in an innocent way.

            Gary concentrated on the road. Eventually, “Plenty,” he announced to the girls.

            “I bet,” she admired. There was a silence after that. Karin sensed that she’d made an impact, that he was thinking about her.

            In south London, Gary turned off the main road and into a narrow side street of low poor houses and into a warehouse at the end of the cul-de-sac. “It’s far as I go.” He said bluntly, and jumped down from the lorry, disappearing into the cavernous dark.

            “Where is this?” Maria asked, sitting still in the seat.

            “Dunno. Looks like the backside of London, if you ask me. He’ll take us on to his friend in Islington.”

            “Do you think?”

            “Come on, get down.” She pushed Maria towards the door, and they climbed out stiffly in their tight new clothes. Karin straightened her blouse and brushed the denim of her jeans downwards to stop it cutting her underneath. “He’ll take us on to his friends. He’s got an eye for us. I could see him, all swivelling under his eyelid.” She chuckled proudly in her own way. “You’re looking not too bad as well,” she added patronizingly.

            One thing that Maria had learnt was that, bubbling, inviting and eager though Karin was, she herself was nothing short of stunning, one good step on from Karin in turning men’s eyes. She said nothing and left Karin to continue. “Cor his cigarette was a bit of a pong, wasn’t it. Did you notice it? I took a puff. It was like breathing in hot curry or something. I expect it was a high tar.” She pondered with an assured knowingness. They stood beside the lorry, chattering till Gary returned.

            “You’d better get on yous ways, girls. It’ll get dark soon.”

            “Aren’t we coming on with you?”

            “I’ve gotta get back. Get this unloaded,” he patted the lorry. He moved to the back of the lorry. Karin followed him.

            “I thought we were coming to your friend – the one in Islington, with you?”

            “I’m on me way back a Portsmouth. Haff an ’our take, t’unload ‘er. A cuppa tea. Then, off.”

            “But we thought we could sleep on his floor, something. We’ve got nowhere to stay tonight. Where do we go?” As her sudden helplessness grew, his face began to darken with anger.

            “I dunno. Go an’ ask the boss, if y’ want.” Gary waved towards the inside of the warehouse.

            “Thanks.” She said sarcastically. “Give our love to mummy,” and she flounced off the towards the dark interior. “Come on,” she said sharply to Maria. “He don’t know anything about London.” It was the cruellest insult she could think of at the moment. They minced down the aisle between the mountainous cardboard cartons. The office was a wooden cubicle at the back of the warehouse. Karin went straight up to the open door with a brisk defiant step.

            “Are you his boss, “Karin snapped as if she was about to make a complaint.

            The man was a little older than Gary, and also a bit seedy. He wore a grey suit in a gesture towards the image of a manager. The double-breasted jacket was crimpled and hung open beside his knees as he sat forwards at a large low shelf that functioned as a desk. He didn’t look up. “You came up with Gary?” he continued to mark a sheet of paper with a pencil stuck in his left hand.

            “Yes.” Karin paused. “Now he’s dropped us.”

            “Up to you, love. We carry goods.” He sighed and sat back wearily in his chair. “You want a room for the night?” It was half a question, half a statement. He looked at them. When he did look he was clearly surprised. His eyebrows raised fractionally, and he caught his breath slightly through his open mouth. His teeth were rather grey. You’re a young couple of ladies,” he explained as if they were about ten years old. The man stretched back in his chair as if satisfied with a fine catch. Karin turned to Maria, too angry with humiliation to continue.

            “Well, Mister.” Maria said flatly and quietly, “You want to help us? We haven’t got much money. Have you got a room here?”

            “No money?” He looked Maria up and down slowly; and then his mouth stretched into a tight grin, thick and greasy and suggestive. “Not much money. Plenty of something else. He let out a long gulp of air which seemed to have built up in his lungs. “Well! It is a very long time since a couple of stunners like you wanted to stay with me. I may have cause to be grateful to Gary, for a change.”

            Karin and Maria both stared at the man, hypnotised by a frightened amazement. They were like rabbits caught in headlights. At that moment the warehouse filled with the sound of a fork-lift truck as Gary began to unload the heavier boxes. They both turned to look at him as a relieving distraction.

            The man stood up, “Come along.” He was very big, tall and wide-framed and well covered with flesh. “My name’s Ben,” he said loudly over the din and held out his hand to Maria. She shook it compliantly. The moment of distraction when they could have run, seemed to have closed. And they were drawn into his domineering presence again. Karin meekly shook his hand next.

             “I’m Karin. And she’s Maria,” The man moved through the door of his tiny cubicle and stood between them. “Isn’t Gary coming too?” Karin asked anxiously as if she wanted him as a guardian angel, now, “Will we be alright?”

            “Course you will, my dears.” His attempt at overbearing paternalism only deepened their sense of the sinister. “Come along.” He took them out and to one of the mean houses next to the warehouse, through its unkempt garden of nettles and bushes. He took them in through a filthy kitchen and up to a first-floor bedroom. It was bleak and grubby. A couple of beds filled the room. “Drivers sometimes sleep over. But it’ll do you, won’t it? A couple of girls with no money,” and he laughed. Reaching inside his jacket he pulled out a wallet, took a ten-pound note for each of the girls. And handed the notes to them. Neither Karin nor Maria moved and he dropped the notes at the end of one of the beds. He laughed again. “I’ll be back in a moment. With a bottle,” and he raised his eyebrows in enquiry. He moved out of the room and down the stairs to his grubby kitchen,

            Karin fingered the notes. She looked at Maria, who looked back. Neither of the girls had words for it. Indecision, fear, disgust, a sense of their most excited hopes crashing into this mangy reality. They spoke to each other through their dismayed looks. The man quickly returned, bounding up the stairs. The sound of the fork-lift had ended. They heard the sound of Gary shutting the rear of the lorry. In a moment he started the engine, manoeuvred the vast thing and it roared gently down the little street. It seemed like the last hope of rescue was abandoning them. It turned into the main road with a burst of its diesel engine and was gone.

            “Our case,” Maria turned to Karin with quiet alarm.

“Oh. Our cases.” Karin’s contrasting shriek turned into a sort of accusation as she faced Ken.

“OK, okay, girls. He took ’em out of the cab. They’re behind the door, all locked up. Safe.” Ken’s soothing reassurance took the wind out of their alarm. But it set them back into the enclosing prison that Ken was constructing around them. “They’ll be good and safe for tonight. So are you my dears. Call me Ken…”

            “Call me Ken,” he said again, arranging three glasses on the floor in a bare corner. “It’s some bubbly,” he announced, and the cork flew off with a bang. Karin jumped but Maria was still transfixed in immobility with the confusion inside her. “Let’s get comfortable.” He folded his long legs up as he descended onto one of the low beds. “You,” he said, “come and sit here.” He padded the bed next to him. Maria sat compliant and stiff beside him. His arm went around her shoulder. It was not unfriendly. It was gentle, like a slowly coiling snake, as his fingers searched over the curve of her shoulder, her arm and neck, the softness of her breast. He commanded Karin to bring the glasses and she held them as he poured the fizzy wine with his other hand. Karin stood like a waitress beside them as they sat on the bed and he drank deeply from his glass. “Drink up, girls. This is my big night. I’m a happy man tonight. Come round here.” He gestured to Karin to sit on the other side of the bed. Maria looked at Karin as she sat down, and she looked back. They both confirmed each other’s helplessness, Maria set herself to endure what was to come. London would still be waiting for them tomorrow.

In the morning Maria was watching the growing light beyond the window. All night she had kept track as the clouds began to split up, the chill glare of the moonlight for a few moments at a time flooded the wall beyond the other bed. The temperature had fallen steadily but she did not notice the cold. She lay on her side, at her back the grunting form of his body taking up two-thirds of the little bed. Karin seemed fast asleep on the other one. Maria felt dirty. It didn’t seem likely she could get a bath. Anyway, she felt dirty inside too, right through her. Why did it have to be her she pondered grimly. She had known he would choose her. She thought of her mother’s condemnation. Her mother loved her and has always protected her. Karin was different. Now it was getting a bit lighter she couldn’t let her thoughts go on and on around her misery. She carefully slid out from under the bed clothes, woke Karin gently without too much noise. She slid on her jeans carefully. Her new panties and bra were no use anymore. Ken had thought it fun to slice the strings as he had undressed her with his pocketknife. She kept the blouse outside the jeans hoping that way it wouldn’t show the outline of her breasts so clearly.

            Ken was stirring and grunted, “Help yourselves to breakfast,” he said turning to the pillows. “I’ll be with you in ten minutes. We’ll have a great day today, girls.” His eyes hadn’t opened and he slid into the regular breathing of sleep again. They crept from the room down the stairs, opened the front door, put on their shoes and tripped as quickly as their high heels would allow, down the road and out of sight of the house. Around the corner in the main road, they stopped and looked at each other. Maria said gravely. “We can’t get our cases now, can we?”

            “No.”

“Perhaps, we could sneak back when he’s opened his warehouse.”

“No, it’s Saturday. Remember. We’d have to wait till Monday.”

“But, perhaps he’ll go in there today. We could keep an eye on him.”

“Perhaps.” Karin was looking into the distance. They were both cold. Her watch showed 7.15 in the morning. The clouds were racing as if there was a storm in the upper atmosphere. “It’s a bit risky.” She put her hand out to show Maria something, “Look.”

            Maria starred, “What you take that for?” she said stupidly in amazement. It was Ken’s wallet, Karin had slid it from his jacket on the floor, when he had been otherwise occupied with Maria. “What’s in it?” Maria felt a vengeful rise in her spirits. The girls looked eagerly at a wadge of notes.

            “Let’s go and get a cup of tea.” Karin looked around her. There seemed to be the beginnings of a row of shops in the distance.

            Over cups of tea and some plates of toast, they cautiously disembowelled the contents of Ken’s wallet. The waitress in the tired-looking café looked suspicious but didn’t say anything. “There’s a credit card here.”

            Maria looked. “But it says ‘Mr’. That’s no good for us.”

            “Course it is. I can say I’m the wife. See his signature, doesn’t say ‘Ken’. Just K something. ‘K’ – that’s for Karin, too.” She laughed.

            Maria was sitting with her arms folded. She remembered she had no bra. She hoped she could hide the outline of her nipples showing through the cotton blouse. The man at the next table across the aisle just kept looking at her chest. “I want to go and get some proper clothes. I’m cold. I need a new whats’it.”

            Karin laughed, “I’ve got a couple of good whats’its.” She had also become aware of the man at the other table. She sucked in her breath and straightened her back as if proud of what she too had in front. “You need something as well, Maria, that you can show off with.” She leant across the table confidentially, “That man over there, he’s got an eye for me.” Maria glanced at him. He seemed to be staring straight at her own chest. She felt embarrassed. She looked down at the table and shrugged her shoulders. Karin said, “He’s got a filthy mind that one.”

            “Let’s get out of here. I feel all dirty. I haven’t even done my hair. Her rich wavy dark hair was tangled in all directions as it had come off the pillow next to him.

            “Yeah, you don’t look too good.” Karin stood up. As they left the table, Karin turned to the man. “You want to keep control of your eyeballs, mate.” And she swept grandly to the door and left. “Where do we find a taxi in these parts?” she said demandingly as she passed the woman at the till.

            The woman in her black linen uniform stopped counting the change. Her clothes were baggy on her thin old body and her cheeks were pale and drawn tight on the bone. “Dunno,” and she returned to counting the notes, hardly looking at Karin. Then the old cashier said, “E’s got a taxi,” she nodded weakly across toward the man Karin had just abused.

            Karin darted a look in that direction. At first, she seemed uncertain. Maria tugged her elbow to get her out of the café as quickly as possible, “Come on.”. The waitress had turned away from the girls and went to sit by the counter. She seemed tired so early in the day.

            Having raided Selfridges they stood, in the midst of the milling Saturday crowd with two new pigskin travelling cases.  The shop had been the one that the girls had heard of as the acme of London sophistication. It hadn’t disappointed them. Ken’s credit card had taken a beating. Maria’s strong slender writing had practised a passable simulation of the signature; while Karin’s soft paw had given up and she had turned away aloof from these technical accomplishments.

            They had found miraculously a cruising taxi and lugged their cases inside, “Where to, ladies?” the cabby said brightly.

            Karin as usual took the lead. “We want the best hotel. What’s the best hotel called. He looked around through his glass screen at the two girls. Karin in luminous yellow jeans with assorted zips in pointless places, a strong studded belt with a padlock device for a buckle; her frantic red blouse of some kind of man-made silk was smothered with bright blue and green rocket motifs. Her pale hair had been creamed up into a spikey halo. Maria on the other hand found a shapeless long dress in a drear colour. Her hair had been cut nondescript short and curled out slightly at the ends in a style that was fashionable but not loud. Her attempts at modesty had not quite come off. She looked almost like a voluptuous nun. The cabby stared at Karin’s cheap appearance, “What you looking at, fellow? Eh?” She said aggressively. He said noting but turned back to his wheel and waited. “What’s it called?! And she nudged Maria.

            “It’s called the Hilton, I think. Like in America, isn’t it?”

            “Yeah, take us to the Hilton.” Karin’s grand manner looked down on him like a failed music hall turn.

            When they had been shown into the large room overlooking the park by the unimpressed porter, Maria sat on one of the twin beds. She slowly began to cry in silence. Karin stood at the window, and said, “There’s a lot of creeps in London, aren’t there.” Maria lay back on the bed and curled on her side and sobbed. Karin came and sat beside her, put an arm across the heaving shoulder, “What do we do now?” Both girls were sunk in a momentary despair, bur Maria began to relax. “Maria, do you want to go back?” Maria shook her head. She sat up and wiped her eyes with her hands; the expensive make-up smudged. “Is it the man last night? Karin asked. Maria nodded. Karin stood up. Her face tightened up into her hard look again, “I wasn’t going to let the bastard get his dirty fingers on my legs.” She said as if she had been convinced herself she had been in command the night before. “You should have done the same,” she snapped, and heaved her case onto Maria’s bed next to her. She rummaged through the assorted contents and retrieved the lipstick and powder compact. She went to the dressing table, dabbed st her lips and face, “War paint,” she said confidentially and seriously. “We’ve got to do something!”

            Their question was what?

“We’ll keep on with what we planned, then?” Karin proposed.

“Okay. Let’s go now.”

“But let’s get dressed up.” Their shared belief that life in London was all about wearing the best clothes at the right time had been developed from months of joint study of teenage magazines.

            When Maria had left the closed world of the fairground, she expected the outside world to treat her in the familiar way as a privileged but deprived, beautiful little girl. That the outside world proved to exploit her and ravage her beauty was a shock that she had not expected and did not know how to deal with. Not so for her companion from the fairground, Karin, with whom Maria had travelled that orange autumn day to London, not so pretty, but more forceful in her personality. She took to the world with the gusto of a hungry man. If she was to be exploited, she was going to make it mutual. She just knew that she had never let her mother get away with anything Karin decided was unjust. 

Nor would the man Ken, get away with it either, she decided. While they sat in the hotel lounge drinking a gin-and-tonic each, Karin looked again at the wallet she had stolen, this time for his address. There was no address in it, but she found a card with a phone number written on it, and the name Ken Wallis. “Must be him,” she announced confidently. Maria nodded with an indifference she felt. She was concentrating on her abused body, as the reality of her ordeal continued to emerge as an enormous obtruding thought like a vast boulder blocking up a river. “I know what we are going to do,” she announced with a sense of liveliness, that failed to enliven Maria., “Go and ask that barman if he can give us a pen and some paper.” Maria tiredly did so, only to be refused and told to go to their room as there would be a pen and paper there for the use of guests. Karen had heard the exchange and when Maria returned to sit down, she said to Maria, “Let’s get it from the room. But she did not move, so Maria, carrying the vastness of her violation slouched to the lift to fetch what Karin was asking for.

When she returned, Karin who had been musing thoughtfully, took the pen and began to write on the paper.  Maria asked quietly, “What you going to write?” 

“I’m writing him a letter.” Maria did not need to ask who, but waited till Karin finished what turned out to be a laborious task. Maria waited silently and eventually Karin showed the paper to her. Here is what Karin had written:

Dear wife of KenWallis, this is from two girls, Karin  Grove and Maria Hedger. Ken forced us to have sex with him in his flat next his waerhouse. It was rape. He raped us. I tell the date it was 16teenth Novembre. He was a bastard, because we could not stop you. You got to make him pay for what he dun to us. Karin and Maria

Dear KenWallis. This is from those girls who you forced us to have sex with you in the flat next the waerhouse. We sure you know how to sell stuff from your wearhouse on the black, don’t you. Were sure. So you better do it, and we want 100 pouds each week. Get it. 100 nice pounds for us. We are expensiv, see. If you don’t do it, we will tell you wife. Right. See the other letter in here. Shell give you hell. Karin and Maria

Maria looked at the two letters, noting how Karin was included in Ken’s attack. She handed it back. “We don’t know where to send it.”

            “We’ll find out. Here’s this phone number, see.” she waved the bit of paper from the wallet. “Go and do this for us, Maria. Ring them up and say we found a wallet in the street. We found the phone number and it was Ken Wallis. Say we’ll go round to them and give the wallet back.” She flicked her hair back from her face, and looked confident. “Say we’d like a bit of a reward, too, if they could afford it. Makes it sound like its all true. ”

            “But he’ll see the money’s all gone. And his card.”

“Don’t be silly. We won’t go and give it back. We just want the address. You have to ask for the address for us to go and give it back.” Maria nodded. “Go on then. There’s a phone somewhere. You can ask the bloke over there, where it is. Him at the bar.” Maria obediently went.

When she returned, Karin looked at her expectantly, “Well, what she say?”

Maria looked shaken. “It wasn’t her. I think it was him.”

            “Oh well, it doesn’t matter, if you got the address. Did you get it?” Maria handed over the paper, showing the address, and the pen as well to Karin. “Come on, let’s go out and get some proper paper and an envelope and a stamp to post it.”

            So, the girls went off to shop for their blackmailing trick. 

            Back in the hotel, Maria wrote out the letters. And put them into better English. Karin didn’t object and went out to post the letter. Then they sat in the bar with another gin-and-tonic. And then they had another, and began to feel that things were not so bad. “When, d’you think he’ll get the letter? Karin, what will he do?”

            “Can’t do anything, can he. Not till we contact him and tell him to pay up.”

“How do we get his money? I mean, we can’t just go to his house. We’re not going back to that warehouse, Karin.”

“Nah,” Karin looked thoughtful, “I dunno. Haven’t got that worked out.” She looked intently at Maria. “What do you think? Tell him to come here? The bar? Bring the money to the bar. He can’t cause trouble here, can he.”

            Maria didn’t know; she didn’t want to think about the man. She knew she was somehow linked to him, in her soul because of what he did. But she didn’t want such creep to be there steeled in her most private place. She didn’t reply to Karin. “You can tell, Karin. He makes me sick.” She shifted in her seat. She could see her self in a mirror attached to the wall opposite, her black hair, her dark eyes wide and broad, her voluptuous mouth. She knew she looked pretty, but she could only think of how he must have seen her. She moved so she was not looking at herself in that mirror. 

            “That’s not much help,” she said protesting, but she did not pursue it. “I will ring him in two days. I think the letter will have got there, then.” She looked reflective as if already planning what she’d say to the creep.

            “We’ve got to get out of here,” Maria said with some concern.

            “Why?”

            “Karin, it’s too expensive.” She kept turning away from the mirror. “He’s going to cancel the card. Then we won’t be able to pay the bill. We’ve got to get as much money out of it as we can. Let’s go and find one of those cashpoints.”

            “OK. Good idea. I wonder how much we can get out of it?”

            “We’ll find out,” And they giggled like two girls much younger than their age, up to mischief. Karin turned to the mirror realising Maria had been avoiding it. Karin’s hair was blonde, long and straight to below her shoulders. It was her best feature. Her face was narrow, and her skin showed a few pock marks where her unfortunate adolescent acne had flourished. She pushed out her handsome and attractive bosom as she looked. “I look good in that mirror,” she said to Maria. “There’s one of those cash machines out near the entrance. Let’s go and see what we can get.” To their surprised dismay, the card had already been cancelled. More to their dismay was their discovery they needed a pin number.

            “So, we got nothing to pay our bill with.” Maria said hopelessly.

            Karin looked anxious too for moment. She looked occupied in thought for a minute or two, while Maria waited for her to solve the problem. Then she told Maria what they’d do. Maria nodded and added a few things to which Karin nodded. They went to the restaurant and in the mid-afternoon, they ate the biggest meal they could each manage, as if they may not eat ever again – which may be the case. They laughed a bit, mischievously, at the plan they were working out together. The waiter took their room number to add to their account. He watched the back of Maria’s body as the girls walked out. They went quickly to their room and collected just  on their essentials. Maria had forbidden them to take their nice new cases and the treasures they had just bought. They left the Hilton Hotel quietly and inconspicuously as if they’d be back shortly.

A hundred yards down the street, they both suddenly discharged their tension in guffaws of laughter as they realised they’d done it. They walked on. Maria was feeling bloated; Karin refused to admit it. “Now what?” Maria looked expectantly at Karin, who shrugged her shoulders. They walked on. Maria was concerned that if they did the same again they’d need posh looking bags again to convince the hotel they were the posh types that could afford it. They simply walked for a while through central London, hoping for inspiration. They entered a large railway terminus, St Pancras. It had a bar-restaurant, and they went to sit for tea, which they noticed was expensive. Maria put Ken’s now-useless card on the table to reassure the waitress. Then Karin began to talk about, how they would get out. Karin was looking around and wandered out to the toilet. On the way back she passed a table with a couple of middle-aged ladies – in the girls’ term, posh ladies. She arrived back with Maria clutching under her sweater, a handbag that had once hung on the back of the chair of a posh lady. She kept it in her lap under the table, and began to bring out the cosmetics and lady stuff. Her purse this time was a bit swollen and they were in luck. Several hundred pounds. Karin stood up leaving the purloined possessions (minus the money) on the spare chair, and she went off to the toilet again, explaining to the waitress as she passed that she was troubled with the ‘monthly’. The waitress nodded considerately. Meanwhile, Maria took off her cardigan and placed it on the chair to hide the unwanted stolen goods. Ten minutes later, as the waitress passed, she said she’d go an rescue her friend who had a bit of trouble down below, and left the cardigan on the chair, again to reassure the waitress. She joined Karin and the hundreds of pounds outside the station and around the corner where she was slouching against a wall. Again they laughed out loud to break the tension. 

They scrammed away from the station in case someone came looking. The waitress would remember them. They wouldn’t go back but there are a dozen or so London terminuses, they could work through. They found not far away, a hotel, a cheap one this time. Two days later they argued about who would ring Ken to arrange for him to hand over the money. Maria stubbornly, even frantically refused to speak to the bastard. Karin n]knew she would have to, but protested nevertheless – Maria she believed just had to get over it.

It was morning, so she rang the warehouse. “Speak to Ken, please.”

“Yeah,” Ken said.

“This is the girls you raped. Last week.”

“”Wha’. Whatya talking about.”

“We want our money. We told you. We sent a letter. And we’ll send one to you wife. You got it didn’t you?” There was a long silence. “You want your wife to know what you do in your flat?”

“You can tell the wife if y’ wantta. I ain’t got no wife. never had one. Hard luck, luv.”

Karin was taken aback. All middle-aged creeps had wives, didn’t they? “Don’t believe you, mate.”

“Go ahead, kid. Which one are you anyway?”

“That don’t matter, does it.”

“Maybe it does. You the blonde one aren’tya. I can tell. Well listen, here, luv. You tell the one with dark hair, Maria she was called. She was a bit of a’right. Tell, her if she comes round for a bit more of the same, she’ll get the money. Go’ it.”

Karin was silent, bit her lip and thought. “Two hundred.”

            Ken, knowing he could send them away with whatever he decided to give, said. “OK. But she’d better be good – okay?” There was silence at both ends of the phone for a minute. “And I don’t want you. I want the other one. Right.”

            Karin put the phone down. She didn’t leave the phone box immediately. She had to consider how to put it to Maria. That wouldn’t be easy. It could be impossible; the way Maria is. When she came out Maria was standing looking at her enquiringly. “He says we’ve got to go to hi warehouse.”

            “No,” she looked pale. “I can’t go. You go. You’ve only got to pickup the money.” But she knew Karin couldn’t go alone. She knew she should support her friend. She knew she should go too, but she couldn’t face the filthy creep again. But somehow she knew she had to. As Karin kept telling her she had to get over it.

            When a little later, they got there, Karin sent the taxi driver away. Maria was trembling, “You should’ve told him to wait.” And she added, imploringly, “It’s dangerous here. With him.”

            Karin said nothing. She held maria’s hand, gripping it tight. And they advanced into the warehouse. Maria hanging back, and not looking where they went. Karin advanced down the aisle to the little office. Jen was at his desk but noticed the movement and looked up. He looked surprised, “Ha, you here, girls.” 

Karin clenched Maria’s hand tightly. “Start with the money. Give us two hundred.”

“Nah, luv.” He was looking at Maria’s terrified face, hanging back behind Karin. “She OK?”

“She’s OK,” said Karin, and kept tight hold of Maria’s hand in case she started to run.

            “Right,” he said Ken seemed as if he couldn’t believe his luck. I’ll go and shut the doors. You,” said to Karin, “take her up to the room.” Maria stared at Karin.She looked completely in shock. She looked like a zombie. 

She let Karin lead her out and in through the house to the room. “Don’t leave me this time,” she whispered.

“Alright. Don’t forget. It will soon be over.”

When Ken arrived in the room he told Karin to go down and sit in the office in case anyone came. Karin obediently left. Maria was at the mercy of Ken again. She was less compliant this time, but Ken overpowered her. Enjoyed doing so.

Maria laid back defeated, dirtied and extremely dead right through to her bones. She had no life to make her move. In fact, Ken had to drag her out of the room , down the stairs and in through the side door. He threw her at Karin. Maria stared, but Karin looked away. Ashamed. Karin took over, she said, in her conniving way, “Give me hand with her. You’ve had what you want.” So they each took an arm and led Maria onto the street. Halfway down the street, Karin told ken, he could go back. As soon as he turned back she whispered to Maria, “We’ve got to run, and as she hauled maria forward and out of earshot, she said, “I’ve got his cash from his office.” And after, they’d got to the end of the road, she said “We’ve done well. Thanks Maria.” Maria stumbled on, and they found an alleyway to hide in till Ken had come racing past and after some time he wandered back resigned to having lost all the cash box.

Maria said nothing till they got back to the hotel. As she got out of the taxi, she had recovered her will to survive and moved of her own accord. There was little conversation between the girls that evening. After they went to sleep in their room, Maria opened her eyes, listened for Karin’s heavy breathing and while she slept, took all the money and silently left. Maria felt like the filthiest piece of womanhood that had ever existed.

 

 

*****

 

 

** 10 Meeting herself

 

Laughter infected her.  She looked for its source.  Her thin pale hair moved with nervous flicks of her head; her face was pale, too.  A couple of teenagers, a slender boy in tired clothing, faded denim, and a buxom girl with a white tee-shirt with crude slogans; they were holding hands, laughing together.  It was as if they wanted to infect the rest of the station concourse, bored, waiting, people.  They wanted to make everyone feel left out of the joke.  Her pale face looked towards them, a small smile emerging, half conveying that she approved and encouraged them.  The long line of her nose wound itself, as it were, through the intervening air and prodded exploringly into their space.  But she was also beyond, outside their entangled gaze.

            Then she moved.  The angle of her direction swung, like a searchlight, picked out a man way beyond the line of battered seats.  He was solemnly and studiously looking in a book by the bookstall, a relaxed traveller looking for a cheap novel for the journey.  Her inviting half-smile winged towards him through the air, but unnoticed.

            A curious observer, observing her wan smile and the distant concentration of her sight, would by now have sighted her small toddler pulling at her fawn linen skirt.  He reached wobblingly to put his hand in the large linen bag hanging from her shoulder.  He could feel something there.  She brushed his chubby hand aside as if it was an invading insect.  Her distant line with the bookstall began to falter.  The perturbations broke into it as the hopeful book reader moved away to find his train.  She turned, slightly sharply, to her toddler, repulsing his more demanding efforts to get onto her lap, to explore her inviting bag.  He perched unsafely on his stumpy legs clinging to her knee with his hand and looking perplexed at the wooden response from his mummy.  His face began to pucker as if in distress, but partly as if he'd learned the power of noisy crying.  She put her hand in the bag and withdrew her camera, giving it to him, whilst holding on to the short cord strap.  He immediately went to put it back in her bag - to restore his fascinated project of discovery, which she had uncomprehendingly wiped out so easily. It wasn't the camera he wanted so much as the exploration, the discovery of it, within her.  As the cord loop was still caught in her fingers, he could not get the camera back inside, and he began intelligently to explore the means of attachment of the camera to her fingers, pulling this way and then that in random expectation. During all this she continued a similar random prodding of the air with her directed attention to various corners of the railway station.

 

Our observer of this observing woman would have been pained by the insensitive mis-contact - the toddler intent on exploring his mother; mother intent on probing the contents of the distant air.  Not long after this, the observer would have seen her pick him up as a surprised bundle and pop him carefully into the straps of his pushchair and begin to move off to a crescendo of protest from his affronted dignity and frustrated purpose.  Such an observer would have been tempted to emerge from the crowd with words of advice and chastisement on her lips for this absent-minded mother.  But she would have been stopped with the words unspoken, by a surge of people crowding from the gate of one of the platforms; and from the midst of the surge a male arm rose in greeting to wave to the woman's equally welcoming wave, whilst the little child screwed round in his entrapping harness more desperate than ever to find where his mother with her interesting bag had vanished to.

 

The threesome united.  The woman's half-inviting smile welcomed the man, whilst the wooden posture of her body remained unaltered. It was a cooling unresponsiveness to his embrace.  His glowing smile keyed immediately into her immobility.  His eyes became momentarily glazed and fixed.  They turned to the screaming toddler, a joint protest, how unreasonable when Daddy had come. He quietened quickly in his pushchair when she attended to him for a moment instead. She lifted him up.  His face transformed into a strange stare; either deeply puzzled or suspiciously curious, or simply a silent paralysis of fear.  She lifted him in her hands, raising his face level with hers and announcing that his Daddy was here.  Then she handed him into the father's arms.  They hugely enfolded him like a protective coat of love.  His stiff little face smoothed a little, and his hand began an intense exploration of Daddy's ear.  Daddy laughed, and ducked as his little son's hands chased his various features, ear, hair, spectacles.  Mother laughed, and he turned with his own happy gurgle to see his mother's face come to life.

            Our observer might at this point have bitten her tongue, relieved that she had been prevented from interfering with chastising words in this now gloriously happy, and mutually infected, family scene.  She would have found herself inspired, bursting out laughing too.

 

                                                         ....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

If our dark observer from the vantage points she has had could sprout wings, she could have followed the movements of this family unit through London; the taxi, the early morning coffee and croissants in Bayswater, the playing with the toddler in Kensington Gardens whilst the grown-ups began to talk earnestly, albeit interspersed with her instant laughs, joyous but forced, whenever he chuckled, or the toddler coo-ed.  If our fascinated observer had achieved invisibility - shall we give her a name, shall we call her Mary, perhaps - if Mary's skin, already so Africa-black, had gone one step further and become a skin of invisibility, then she could have drawn close and begun to hear their earnest thoughts.

 

                                                         ....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

Over lunch the mother, now we shall call her Marie, her thin wild hair, loose, carefree, magnificent, and her complexion a little pink with the tension of the day, the excitement, the prospects of the next four days, sat opposite the man, the father of her first child.  He, in his pressed suit, slightly self-conscious and with his glowing smile, which, at times, encouraged himself as well as her.  Our invisibly present observer sat on the fourth side, opposite the toddler clattering and clamouring happily in his high chair, and charming the bright Italian waitress.

            "It is not," she said "a matter of respect - though I do.  Enormously. You know that.  We wouldn't be here otherwise."

            "I know, my dear, I know." He said. Our puzzled observer – she, a Mary – studied the smooth features of his white face.  Their very smoothness seemed to imply that he was actively smoothing out some inner turmoil.  The woman – our Marie – seemed to notice the same, and she reached out her hand across the table-cloth to put her fingers loosely over his.  She was, Mary noticed, almost gazing into him.  His ever-present, playful smile relaxed a little. "We don't talk about love, do we? My dear Marie; only of respect."

            "No," she said, glancing quickly at her toddler who was investigating bread, which now lay in crumbs on his plastic tray, "We can't.  We know that. Love is not part of it."  The momentary contact was lost; some balance between them had changed.  Her hand remained covering his, but it was a meaningless gesture now.  He moved his hand to grasp her fingers.  They had returned to wood.  Mary, our perceptive observer, felt chilled suddenly at this lost contact, as if it were a real death; she looked at the woman's fingers without a wedding ring.

 

                                                         ....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

What Mary struggled to learn from their earnest discussion were the many unspoken concerns, memories, secrets and wishes that Marie and Jacques negotiated - or were failing to negotiate - at this little restaurant table.

            One such might have been Marie's long-felt pain as the youngest child brought up in the sandy fields of coastal Suffolk; the daughter of a disaffected Church of England minister with sharply declining congregations in his cluster of rural parishes.  They lived most of her childhood in a once magnificent half-timbered Tudor rectory, with a jutted upper story.  It was supported by rotting oak corbels some still proudly showing deeply grained carvings of smiling faces.  The crumbled plaster walls still showed some decorative pargetting because the inclement North Sea weather had not yet got its final grasp on all the fine surfaces.  Her big brother's bedroom still sported the opening of the primitive ‘guarde l’eau’ covered by a makeshift trap door of modern plywood.  In mischievous moments on bored holidays, he would lift it, lie in wait till his little sister moved past on the flagstones underneath, and subject her to a sharp deluge from the upstairs commode.  Her wetness was then accompanied by a shriek of his excited laughter.  If she could leap aside, or he missed, she would retaliate with a shriek of her own equally excited mocking.

            Her father's magisterial aloofness rode above the grinding decay of his house and of his congregations.  He did nothing about it; but it was an acute, corrosive pain for his youngest daughter.  The decay was a visible sore festering on her father's pale countenance.  Later on, as they grew up, his pained silence greeted the contemptuous rebuffs from her brother, and they seemed to hasten her father's decay, his patrician stoop, his gratefully early retirement and his subsequent sudden death.  Decay was inherent in her heart.  A pickling agent seemed to turn everything she touched into a dusty relic of what it should have been.  She survived, as it were, a life-time series of those cold douches, a lifetime of turning them aside with her caustic gay laugh.  Instead of a real movement into joy, those childish laughs turned her away from herself.

 

....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

Still seated in the bright restaurant, she sat back slightly, "We must be practical."  She smoothed back her hair in an elegant movement with her free hand; "Practical, considerate of each other."  She seemed to be struggling for words.  He was looking for something from her.  She knew there was a male pride, that she must not harm. Yet his word ‘love’ was too simple for how complicated it was.  "My respect for you," she continued earnestly "is because we, you and I, can think out things practically.  It is what we are good at."  She was gazing right into him.  He felt her closeness.  But also, it was still somehow unmanageable.  Her fingers softly caressed his again as she felt safer.  He smiled in relaxation.  She suddenly sat right back and laughed happily, "I love that puzzled look of yours, Jacques, I love it."  She emphasised the word ‘love’ as if it was a huge joke.

            The waitress came quickly, spotting her moment to take the order.

            Mary, observing all this, could have been a little irritated, the hesitation, the to-and-fro, so much numb contact -- a dinghy and a jetty jostled each other in a high sea.  By now Mary had learned that Jacques was an affectionate acquaintance from Paris.  He had been recruited to the project again, to provide a little brother or sister to the toddler.

 

                                                         ....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

Marie's finding her older sister in bed with her brother one winter night after their father had died, was only known to observer Mary because she had found a route into Marie's secret knowledge.  Mary knew, too, that the tickling and squealing laughter from the bedroom had been a mystery for a long time before that, both fascinating and unaccountably exciting.  Agitated as a child, Marie had never been able to penetrate their shut door with her enquiring eyes.  Nor to ask anything or anyone about it.  She remembered those excited squeals like a repeated dream from her childhood.

            Here she was with Jacques, the child, and similar squeals of laughter.  Only Mary knew how they linked up.

 

                                                         ....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

In the evening at the end of the day, the toddler had been bottled and powdered and put to bed, Marie and Jacques sat in adjacent armchairs, silently contemplating what came next.  Dark Mary, invisible in the recesses of the room, had noticed how their conversation - through the day, over the elaborate and celebratory meal - had petered into desultory attempts to fill in silence.  The practical intimacy in the morning had faded to the stillness of the evening.  The joint project had seemed to come apart: he had been flattered in the anticipation, but had now come to feel impersonal, more flattened. She organised and energised in the initiation and arrangements, but was now tensely aware of the penetration that she would be subjected to.  What once seemed a resounding climax of rationality, could now be an uncalculated animal moment.  He felt put on his metal, his performance mechanically required, not cherished. Mary's impatience with this pair made her laugh unkindly.  She could not discern any charge in the atmosphere; no passion in either of their loins.  Contempt for them was possible. But somehow sympathy came out in Mary, too.

            After minutes of separate silences, Jacques came to the point, "My dear Marie, shall we get on with it?"  Marie, appalled at his lack of passion - but equally relieved that she would not be a vessel to collect a spilling sentimentality - led the way to the bedroom.  They took off their clothes.  He folded his neatly on a chair; she carefully sorting certain items for the laundry basket, to wash tomorrow.  They lay on the bed.  His erection came with certainty, it pointed a direct line to Marie's inside.  She flinched but braved it.

            Afterwards they slept; she deeply, almost as a protection against the proximity.  He, fitful, wondered hazily why this had been important for him.  Mary watched over them as if a guardian angel, for the next three days.  Nights in the same bed, but during the days Jacques went into London, researching motorboats for the magazine he wrote for.  Marie spent the days looking after the toddler, taking her turn in the playgroup. Mary watched her, watching the sad decline of spirit.  The project was biology, not a love-child, like the first; this time a test-tube performance.

            Mary felt a closeness to Marie; yet put at a distance, outside effective influence.  Mary's disembodied sadness seemed lost on Marie who rehearsed her sensible reasons continuously in her mind.  How sensible as she had been not to make a relationship before it had been time to become a mother.  One parent, especially a mother, is as good as two - the independence and therefore the extra attention her children would benefit from.  Frankly, the liability a man is, in a woman's life… !  Mary knew of these arguments, their use to bolster up this lonely woman.  Marie would not yet know what Mary knew about her.  Mary's sadness was that Marie yearned for more than she thought she'd settle for, and her sadness was what Marie does not yet know.  Further, Mary was sad that she was neither a help nor yet truly a relief from Marie’s loneliness.

 

                                                         ....ooooOOOOoooo....

 

On the fourth day Jacques left in the morning.  Marie fumbled with her camera and snapped him, holding in his arms the indifferent toddler, an effigy.  Perhaps Jacques had left another inside her.  We will not know yet awhile.  In the meantime, Marie went back indoors to continue her own life - as if never interrupted.  Her shadow, Mary, decided to remain with her.  The sadness had moved a little nearer.  Mary accompanied Marie almost touching now.  Their twinning had become apparent.  Marie, fully alone again, turned to her radio, she laughed desperately at the frenzy of the chattering disc jockeys.  She frowned at the news broadcasts, hummed and thrummed with the spreading music.  But sometimes she wondered at the new sad presence in her house, as if she were no longer alone.  Then her nervous laughter calmed.

            In the evening after the toddler had been bathed and bedded, more protesting than usual at his pre-occupied mother, Marie also took herself gratefully to bed.  She lay down and her dark sadness lay down beside her.  Mary's laugh, as silent as she was invisible, drew a direct line into Marie's inside.  Marie and Mary made a form of love together.  Their silent laughs mingled in rest at last.

 

 

*****

 

 

** 11 It might have made a difference        

I have always believed that friendship is more important than money. But I have to say he did tax that belief, most severely.  If he had paid his debt to me, I could have used a substantial amount for her.  It might have made a difference.

            I had asked her “Which is more important, money or friendship?” I remember exactly the moment I asked her.  We were sitting on a small balcony on the top floor of a hotel in Rome.  The morning sun was clear in a spring sky.  The sounds of a small fruit market in the street below seemed a long way away.  The church bell in the campanile across the road had just finished striking ten-thirty, ten deep-throated gongs and one high-pitched bell.  She was just cutting into a fresh pear and carrying a slice towards her lips, her finger pressing it against the knife.  The elegant movement was unhindered by my question and the slice was deposited safely in her soft pink mouth without mishap.  I knew she had been a ...  Well, I don’t know what I would have called her.  She would certainly not have let me even think of calling her a “tart”.  And indeed, it would certainly not have been apt.  She was, I tell you, in a class of her own, an aristocrat, a shark among minnows, a Botticelli amongst Disney cartoons.  But I had not let myself think of all that whilst we were in Rome.  And yet I must have been thinking of it.  It was the one reason she was with me there.

            I was cheating on my new wife of course; if you could call it cheating.  My wife would have called it that, if she had known.  But it was something else I was thinking of, and at the same time not thinking of whilst I was in Rome.

 

Another slice of pear moved elegantly to her lips before she spoke. The juice filled her mouth with a sweetness that showed in her eyes; and her tongue swept across her red/pearl lips leaving them moist.  “You’ve heard of diamonds,” she said.  It was hardly a question, her eyes looked at me from under lids, her moist lips moving in a coquettish smile, unexpected but forbidding.  It was not the glance of a street girl, it was the darting invasion of a woman of style, underplayed, decisive, a confident beauty.  I loved her with passion at such moments.  “Diamonds, my friend,” she added, almost as a protest at my naivety, like a threatened demand.  It had a coldness which mingled with her smile like a piquant sauce on red beef.

            She had come to Rome for two days to meet me. It was at my request, but I knew why she had come.  It was not in fact to enjoy money spent on her.  It was to make him jealous – not that she ever could have made him jealous. He would never have noticed. Nevertheless, I knew she would not keep her trip secret, and I knew it could hurt my wife without measure.  But to hurt my wife was not my reason; for my part, it was not to make her jealous.  Instead, it was fascination with this perfect creature.

            And yet she was no creature.  I watched another slice of pear slide sensuously into her mouth.  The sun was burning our skin as we sat, tired by the heat, relaxing in the innuendoes of our circumstances.  She was not a creature, she was sublime, to my eyes – and more.  Her urgent physicality met with exquisite and careful elegance to raise her into an untouchable realm.  It was a mixture to explode with; that allowed no ordinary expression.

            She had loved him dearly, though I had never got her to admit it.  And he with his overbearing weightiness had never responded to her.  She would have had to shout it, and on her knees, before he could look down and hear her.  And she would never bear herself so low.  I knew what a heart there was beneath the calm precision of beauty; within the pout she presented to him, and to me; and to her customers.

            She had been looking at the expensive cases of jewellery in the hotel foyer.  She had spotted a diamond creation for her neck.  It would have looked wonderful, she was right.  I had not said a word at the time.  Now, she asked, “What did you think of the necklace I showed you?” The next slice of pear was on its way.

            ‘My dear,” I began.  Some impatience had crept into my voice I suspect.  I was about to protest as mildly as possible that jewellery costing thousands of pounds was beyond me at present.  But I cautiously changed my line.  “It is as beautiful as you are.” I suspect, however, that she had caught my anxious tone.  That slice of pear got, I thought, a harder bite than the others.  She looked aside and I thought I glimpsed an arching of the eyebrows, but she would not let me see it.  She put down her plate with the knife on it at our feet and dabbed her lips with the napkin.  One more slice of pear waited on the plate.  A slight hardness had come into her features, without perceptible movement.  Her hardness was legendary.  She knew I was about to refuse her request, about to become insubordinate.  She would not press to that point where she was refused, but she felt it all the same.

            I thought of the money he owed me.

            I could have bought her several necklaces with it.  She loved him, I suppose, helplessly.  He was the only person that I saw her give her own money to.  But we all did.  He was like that.  His expansiveness towards everyone was so obvious.  He always knew someone who would do just what you needed doing.  He could always get something fixed.  And then of course there was that forlornness; he needed things and not one of us could arrange it for him.  He contrived thus, an imbalance; and it always cut his skin. His sadness of heart made him curiously magisterial.  And even Florence, whose skin could blunt razor blades gave him her own money out of her wallet.  When I was with her, as now, she never even carried money.  I watched her sitting on this penthouse terrace, in the Roman sun, eating Italian pear and utterly matching the serenity I was buying us. But the motionless tension beneath her skin showed me she was not happy.  It is partly why I had asked the question.

 

He had sold my car for me.  It had been a rare Bugatti.  I had longed for Italy then, even before I had found it.  I methodically restored it.  I have always been rather predictable and ponderous.  Even at Oxford, where I had first met him, Oliver had criticised my essays for their lack of personality - in the very tenderest way; and as always with that slight hint that I had let him down personally, just a bit; that now I owed him something.  Let him down rather than myself.  Anyway, my one gesture to a creative life occurred when I was sailing amongst the sand-reefs of the Suffolk coast and at the opening of a quiet estuary, and amongst various rotting wooden hulks.  I came upon the rusting corpse of my Bugatti barely beneath the surface.  It scraped under my centre-board and I immediately decided to bring up whatever it was.  I assumed at first it was a piece of war machinery, a tank, a felled bomber. I had just fallen in love then, perhaps it was for the first time and everything in the world seemed possible. The local farm mechanic was enthused by my energy.  He was familiar with any, and all, requests.  It became a challenge for him and his local villagers to raise it for me. I spent all the summer scraping rust in my father’s garage, picking out the intricate mechanism, still robust from its 1920s manufacture, and much was still rescuable after the years in the cold Suffolk tides.  I worked doggedly into the winter at weekends when I could leave Oxford, and it was the fascination with restoring this dead machine that led me to change (from my degree in history) to engineering - like my father.  That was how I came to spend five rarely uninspired years at Oxford, and cemented the relationship with the paternal Oliver.  He had always pressed me to part with my Bugatti, to lend it to him, to sell it to him, to let him sell it for a very good price through one of his contacts at the University who knew an aristocrat family that wished to surround themselves with fashionable and expensive trivia.  When he met Florence, I was not surprised.  I had always thought of his weighty hungriness as a kind of sleaze, a perfect match for her lewd business of practiced intimacy. They had met, as it happens, silently wafting over the north Oxfordshire countryside in a balloon - she taken along as a decorative accompaniment for the wealthy balloonist, Oliver with his soaring intellectual sparkle having ingratiated himself with the same wealthy man. That was in my last year.  I met them soon after the balloon owner had dropped them both for new hangers-on, and new hobbies.

            She was at tea in Oliver’s rooms, and I fell in love with her instantly.  I do not think she minded particularly as, unimaginative as always, I was no problem to her.  I was in control of myself, my ardour always hovering at the right distance.  She had then given me the address where she worked in London.  She asked no questions and let it be known that none would be asked. They, she and him, were such a contrast: he boisterously loud, impulsive and brilliantly shallow; she instead quiet, deep and inviting.  They had in common their respective hungriness.

 

I looked at her relaxed form, the very centre of our warm balcony, cut out of the centre of Rome, just for us.  She had come to me for a couple of days.  Just us together.  After twelve years.  Was it so long?  I looked and knew the shape of her breasts which her blouse now enfolded shapelessly. I was familiar with the long sweep of her thigh to which the canvas trousers now clung.  I have encountered all things about her but have not captured them.  Perhaps, I wistfully wondered, if I had the money she really would be mine.  But, after all these years of friendship, I still knew myself to be just one among the many who attended and contented her. And I never challenged that.  I would not do that to her.

            Later, when my father died, I had some money to spend on my Bugatti, for proper repair - the bodywork, the upholstery, the canvas top and the now rare materials for restoring the mechanics.  But I had money too for setting up my own practice as an engineer, and I began to travel.

            As I aged a little, in my 30s, my work grew moderately prosperous.  All my young sisters married and I, amazingly, became a fond uncle several times. Babies unaccountably grew on me. I realised I had outgrown my Bugatti and I let Oliver agree to sell it for me.  He had it around for a year and a half in the yard behind his house in the country outskirts where he lives now.  He did not look after it and he let me know, by slight hints, that this favour put a burden on him.  When he had finally disposed of it for me it was without much ceremony to a car museum somewhere in the north of England.  He was somewhat vague about where it went, and at what price.  I knew it should have been somewhere amongst six figures, but he let me know in small ways that pressing him for details, and for money, was an embarrassment to him.  There were only instalments, he conveyed, paid to him, at this stage.  The money would finally be accumulated and handed over all in one sum in the end.  And when at last he gave me a firm figure, it was probably less than half I might have expected.  But for such a favour, he implied, I could not grumble.  Machines have always come easier than people, I know where I am and can handle them.  Not so the complexity of his generosity which was beyond me.  I have therefore been helplessly waiting more than two years for payment.  I am good-natured at heart, and I do not press him.  But my timidity comes also from a taint of intimidation in our friendship. I could not lose him, whatever it cost me.  And it did cost me - not only the money, and also not only the jealous knowing of her devotion to him, but most painfully having the combination, that is, to cede her loyalty to me which the money might buy.

            And then there was the other thing.

 

Why did I give two minutes of my life to this heavy bully?  Why did I always let his grandly, selfish importance feed on my adulation.  It is because of the moments of something else; his sudden charming concern for some detail in my life - an inquiry about some worrying contract that I had told him about weeks ago and now long-forgotten by me. He recalled his frequent admiration for some charitable donations I made from my father’s estate after I was bereaved; and then often, at times that were most difficult, I was enriched by his lavish gratitude over my forbearance of his longstanding debt - that money.  I always allowed him the enjoyment of giving me these testimonials to my qualities. And, to be quite fair, I enjoyed them too.  The naivety in his gushes of warmth gave him that concealed charm.  It was the visible boy in him that he thought he camouflaged with bulk - that was what engaged some sentimental part of me.  I had never striven to reach beyond being his student in those first terms at University when he had tutored me in history.

            She shifted her body, uncrossed and recrossed her lithe legs.  She retrieved with a gracious movement the plate with the slice of pear.  I heaved inwardly at the flow of the perfect body that had once contained something of mine.  What, I wondered now, was in her mind?  Was she thinking of the flight that would swiftly take her away from me back to London after her short two days here?

            I decided at that moment to tell her.

 

In spite of marriage, my visits to her address in London continued with a frequency I was sometimes ashamed of.  Marriage had been a deeply insignificant event and I was determined to keep it that way.  The wedding had been entirely a family affair, and so, as far as I was concerned, the marriage had remained.  The reasons for that will have to wait for another occasion.  Florence - perhaps quite simply, she is the straightforward reason - she was always so curiously complimentary about my loyalty to her.  I believed myself her very best consort, of course I did; I suppose they all did.  But it was, I always felt, a considerable consolation prize, one that I wished to keep, and sometimes this specialness was confirmed by a boating trip in Regent’s Park, tea at Harrods, a drink and a theatre somewhere near her birthday.  On one occasion, it was about nine months ago, I suppose, it had been quite a special occasion, she had wanted me to take her to collect a painting from an exhibition a friend of mine had just shown. She had bought one and we took it back to her flat.  We went as usual into the familiar bedroom.  Afterwards I noticed there had been a leak in the condom.  I was in the lavatory peeling the thing off me and I noticed a few drops of fluid squeezing from a small puncture near the tip.  I wondered, at the time, if there was a risk of sperm getting through to her.  For some reason I decided it would be a delicious pleasure not to tell her. It was the only cruelty I have ever done her.  It became a precious secret, a warmth for me, a permanent companion to cuddle up to on my own. Even if there was no fertility, I had left something of me in her, a spot of my essence that inevitably she had had to accept.

            A few weeks later Oliver was speaking on the phone to me.  I think I had made a friendly courtesy call, perhaps I was arranging when I would next go to tea at his place in Oxford.  We had avoided mention of the Bugatti for a long time, but he suddenly said, “You’re my biggest creditor.” It intimated that something was up.  “This place,” he indicated the old farmhouse he was living in, “it’s up to the limit.  I’ve got a mortgage broker looking into Swiss mortgages - two or three percent down on building societies here.” I was not sure if he was bursting with his financial anxiety, or if the intricacies of his arrangements were a kind of boast.  Then equally surprisingly he changed tack in his off-putting but characteristic way, “If it were not for you, I’d have the banks onto me.” Suddenly the generosity of his comment warmed me as it always did.  “As soon as the banks have quietened off, I’m going to tackle what I owe you.  I’ve got an idea...” Fortunately, his other phone was ringing, and I was put on hold till I had to ring off.  I was spared the discomfort of hearing the somersaults he was apparently going to turn for me.

            I think it was only coincidence, though, that the next day he was ringing around everyone who knew her with hints that something was up.

            A week later I went to have tea at the weekend with him - my wife indulged my old links with male friends.  But Florence was there on that occasion.  They openly discussed her pregnancy test.  Oliver, as always, was insistent he could sort it out, “I’m pleased you came to me,” he said, his relaxed form lying grotesquely extended in an armchair.  His massive arms placed either side came together at the finger-tips and he viewed her through the lattice they made.  “You know Pearson?” He glanced sideways as if to include me in his pondering.  I had just come in and sat down on a small chair with horsehair showing at the front edge.  Before I could say anything, in fact before I could get my breath from climbing the stairs to his studio in the attic, “You know Pearson, he ran the psychical research club when he was here”. He turned again to Florence, “You know Pearson is a very good friend of mine.  We had dinner a couple of months ago.” In fact, it is probable that that occasion was the only time they had met.  I wondered what Pearson had made of this bombast. He indicated Oxford and its environs with a gentle sweep of his broad hand.

            Florence was less interested in Pearson’s activities as a student in Oxford, but she remained looking pretty in her severe unsmiling sort of way.  “I hope he can do it as soon as possible.”

            “That’s no trouble,” Oliver retorted wildly.  “He’ll do what he’s paid for.” There was an edge of scorn as, true to pattern, Oliver’s respect for others, beginning sky high to prop his high regard for his own impressive connections, then steadily plummeted back with every sentence he spoke about them.  “It’s only a question of paying him.” Then he suddenly reached out with his arms, pushed his sleeves half up to the elbows, flapped his hands up and down as if to subdue anything Florence might say.  “You’re not to worry, dear.  Don’t think about it.  I’ll be glad - no I insist - I’ll take care of everything, Flo.” He glanced a second time at me to collect my approval.  “Brian,” he announced, as if calling me from a distance, “used to have an old Italian car. Not in your day.” It was a gratuitous flatter that silenced any comment I might have added if I had managed to sort out the complexity of it.  He seemed to be implying that he would contribute the money from that sale to Florence’s termination; whilst concealing that money he received from the sale he should have already given to me; whilst also, it seemed, he was challenging me to expose his bluster.

            Florence got up and said she would make a cup of tea. It was a tense moment, as if she did know something of the issue that Oliver and I had over the car.  She said nothing but rather ostentatiously concentrated on moving around the room on her elegant legs as if in some ritual performance to impress our attention.  Oliver, of course appeared oblivious, and directed her to where she would find the milk as he had placed it in a cooler on the window-ledge, the fridge being full because a group of students was coming to supper and one of the female ones had offered to come that morning to prepare food, and she had been so nervous that to reassure her, he had turned the fridge out to accommodate everything she had brought that could possibly go bad.  Florence responded machine-like to his instructions, a beautiful figure on a screen, the projectionist’s puppet.  She lingered a little, motionless and expressionless.  Secretly, I knew she was relieved to have Oliver’s total command of the solution and joyful it had been him who had wanted to help her.

            But she showed nothing of these feelings as she swayed elegantly about the room making tea.

            Oliver turned his attention to me.

            He was insistent.  He was going to arrange the best in Harley Street, through his contact, no expense spared, and he lavishly declaimed with a wide gesture of his grasping hand, it would be all at his expense.  Perhaps he wanted it thought he was responsible for her pregnancy. Within a week it would all be over and back to normal, he concluded confidently.  Naturally Florence, as she produced the tea, seemed gratefully soothed. She said little while she poured our cups and drank hers.  She was listening intently to Oliver’s plans for her.

            Despite his masterly command of her problem, I recalled only those few days before on the telephone, his gratuitous comments that I was so good about the debt to me that was unpaid.

            Then, a few days later he rang to ascertain - he’d known I would agree, he said - that I could not want to press him for money, when Florence was so upset and needed him to fix it for her.

 

So I had decided to tell her.  On our paradise, looking down on the sounds and smells of Rome.  She listened, still and grave.  The slice of pear waited on the plate.  I finished telling her: the baby that Oliver had paid to abort was the one I had made in her.  There was a long silence.  Was she thinking carefully about it?  Did I see a slight shrug of the shoulders?  Or not?  I could barely tell.  Any movement was too invisible to be certain.  The final slice of pear slid unperturbed into her perfect mouth.  Had she realised, I could have paid for her to have my child?  If I had had my money.  Would it have made a difference?  It was time for the taxi to be called to take her to the airport.  Her lips tasted slightly of pear as I kissed her goodbye. We never again mentioned the secret I had kept for nine months.

 

 

***** 

 

** 12 Duncan

The South Coast of England from Brighton to Bognor Regis is sometimes known as the Costa Geriatrica.  It is a complacent self-mocking term used by innumerable London civil servants who retire there to watch each other crumble away. The climate is balmy, the undertaking trade is discretely buoyant and the traffic moves sedately on the roads.

Out there was the world he knew.  In here was another world. When Grace left that first evening, Graham tidied his locker. His clothes had gone back with Grace. The toothbrush, towel, the magazine she had bought  him, all these he looked at carefully and put away.  He felt a desperate affection for these simple things that had come with him as if they represented his only friends in this new place.  The doctor from the outpatients, the nurses there who had taken his blood, the receptionist, all those people he had come to like in the hospital, seemed so far away now.  He had not seen any of them on the ward.  The evening sky outside was darkening, and a nurse came to pull across the curtains over the great plate-glass windows.  He got onto his bed first of all in his pyjamas.  He put on the old dressing-gown that he had since they moved to their present house - was it fourteen years ago.  Opposite his bed was a wall of curtains.

It brought to mind leaving on the train, the platform awash with couples parting. Duncan was two then, and Grace was pregnant. So much unknown.  He felt that mystification again now.  Then too there were fears of death.  It had been wartime, and they may never meet again ‑ lost forever. There was no space, to know what to say. Time had closed into a tight ball. The train had shuddered and jolted inches forwards and gradually it was pulling out of the station away, away. He looked at them looking, his wife, his little son. 

Deadened, he had sat back in a seat after waving from the carriage window, wondering how they would get on at home, making their lives without him.  The night had become dark he pulled down the blind over the window shutting out the other world outside. 

The long, limp hospital curtains now hung before him as if a screen for these old memories to play out upon. Then, that miserable journey, he had not slept on the hard horsehair seats. He jostled the unknown soldier next to him, supporting each other's upright balance.  When he had got off the train and walked onto the early morning ferry to Larne the crisp air, and the blue-green deserted mountains chilled his spirit yet again. This world was foreign, deserted. He had looked at the others as if they were zombies, as he felt himself, cut off from life, as they went aboard, all on the grim business of the war. They dispersed to the submarine bases, the anti-aircraft installations, the small aerodromes from where they tried to hunt the enemy submarines. They were tasting a kind of freedom, the freedom of loneliness it seemed. Belfast would become this mysterious new home. 

He placed the magazine, that Grace had bought for him, on the locker beside the bed, to remain as if it were his only memory. It remained unopened and now he almost felt a disloyal as if he were neglecting her thoughtfulness to him. He glanced at a few pages. Why did she have to buy these things. The people who write the columns will say anything, and he sucked the air through his teeth in disapproval.  It was important to keep his mind focused. Roaming through the junk of his memory... it served no purpose.  But there was so little going on in the ward, and his thoughts were darting to different things as he was  trying to sleep.  He had put the magazine away, ‘how was Grace managing the bolt on the front door?’  He should have seen to it long ago.  Now she would struggle with it on her own so far away.

What would the doctor find tomorrow! He owed it to Grace to let them find out what it was.  She was not worried; she always believed in his strength, reassured him it would be all right.  But no one knew. No one knew what was wrong; even the doctor had found it interesting. And, chilled by the thought of tomorrow’s investigation, he drifted into his first night's disturbed sleep.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

The view was a monotonous November grey, some bare trees stood unmoving in the concrete compound of the hospital. Inside, the pale curtains draped themselves against the aluminium frames of the picture windows. Each of the four beds in `C' alcove faced the world beyond where their inmates had come from. Would any of them return out there? And if so for how long.  He had had 78 years, a goodly time.  But the last week had happened with such speed.  Investigations, what would they find?  Grace had packed the things he needed, and they had driven here, neither speaking, silently aware of an unknown future. Perhaps they had been ill-assorted for marriage, but neither of them dwelt on the thought. They had been happy - happy for them -  at least for these last 13 years since they’d moved here from London.  And at their age, you never knew how long it would go on. They had silently driven along the coast, neither thinking those thoughts, though they were known, and both knew the other felt the same. Grace had left quickly.  It was an opportunity to shop; practical as ever. Life as usual.  Grace was economical and opportunist.

 

Staff Nurse Timpton had moved in quickly and turned down the bed in crisp fashion to welcome his body. “Thank you, Nurse”'  She whisked off, her slipstream leaving Graham holding his pyjamas. 

“She's the best of them. said a voice from the bed beyond his, A ghastly pale face; a body motionless in bed. “She's like our boy's wife.” the voice continued. “And they've both got a couple of young ones, about the same ages. Anthea, this one is called.  She doesn't like being joked.”  His strained features hardly looked capable of humour.  “She always comes when you want something - when it's her shift.  They change over at one-fifteen.”  Graham sat on the edge of his bed listening to this old boy.  He looked very near the end.  “Can you give me a shove up the bed?  It feels better like that,” he said heavily.  Graham did his best to pull the feeble body; “One of the vertebras,” he said briefly. “They say its given way.” The moist old eye in the worn skin looked him over shrewdly.  “Have we met before?”  Then he turned back to face the wall again, away from the damp grey outside the window. “I was Home Office,” he said as if to himself now, as if talking to his own pain, “for most of my time.” 

            

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

He sat back on his own bed and the Nurse came round for routine checks, tightening the cuff on his arm. “Not much blood left in me, I expect,” he tried to be light-hearted.  She did not emerge from her heavy effort, so no response came. His mind flashed: the finger clutching his bare arm, the crimson varnished nail, so cruelly painted; where had she got nail-varnish in the wartime? Not that, he told himself; why did he still cling to that old memory.  The Nurse took the earpieces out of her ears.   

“She's a flighty one,” came the frail voice from the next bed. “Told me all about her boyfriends,” and with a despairing laugh, “as if I were interested. They have a different life nowadays.” He seemed exhausted by the thought and relaxed into silence.

They do things differently. Graham thought of Duncan; truly they did have it very different. He  hadn't wanted it for himself, and nor had he begrudged Duncan, well…  not until Duncan had let himself down. Graham sat still sinking into thoughts about Duncan. It had been such a shock when it had first happened, and still a shock eight years on.  Lesley had come down with the grandchildren in a terrible state. It had not been a question of understanding it; it simply could not be understood.  They did things differently.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

The thoughts left a sense of doom and a tense damp feeling in his skin as if he had been sweating slightly.  He thought of Grace, at home, on her own. He hoped she had locked up properly before she went to bed.  He thought of Lesley, on her own, Duncan's wife, now ex-wife - since Duncan had left her... he had just walked out.  That's what Lesley had said.  She just came down to Grace with the grandchildren. It had been inexplicable. Ever since then it was as if everything had gone wrong with the family.  Somehow, they – he and Grace - had all got tangled up in the friction and quarrels.  Duncan had never been able to explain himself, and yet he had always been so responsible, a Doctor, one who knew about people, about children's upbringing.  Graham caught himself.  There was that little stirring in his stomach that he felt when one of his tempers was coming on.

Thoughts went round and round, stirring his living flesh, churning up emotions and moods that continually needed controlling.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

He lay on his back staring. Duncan was middle-aged, and even middle age was different for Duncan's generation.  He seemed so boyish. Perhaps, for Graham, it had been the war years.  That's what Grace had said - "We had the war, dear; they don't understand that. It made us... serious.  More serious than they are now". Nowadays they do what they want. When Graham  was young, it was the economic depression, unemployment, insecurity. Well, there is unemployment now; but look at the social security; it is a featherbed. In his own generation you had to work for everything. Nothing fell into your lap, and he was proud in his achievement. Not like that now; all this pushing and shoving and getting in first. In those days, he had been able to feel closer to people. He would never have known Rose like that in any other circumstances.  It just shows, does it not? Why does Rose keep coming to his mind?

Even young and still at school, he had known that if he wanted to have some security, he would have to go out and work hard to get it.  He had gone to night classes and got his exams well enough. The civil service was secure.  And he had saved to marry. They had bought their own house in 1933.  There had been things that had gone wrong of course.  Grace's first child had been born a dead one; but the next year Duncan had come along and he had been healthy, more or less. Of course, he had worried them when he was three and nearly caught his death of a cold. It would have been a great blow. Grace might not have been able to bear it. She had been on her own then because he had gone back to his station, in Aberdeen, after the new baby, Tony, was born. She had not said a word to him about Duncan’s illness until the little chap was out of the critical phase.  He had been cross with Grace for not telling him - but proud of her at the same time for managing their little family on her own.  It made him feel that they, and the home, such as they had, was safe with her.  It had made it all the more difficult when he had found himself with Rose that evening.

The  nurses were beginning to stir. Those thoughts of his, the heavy and light thoughts of the past, seeped back into the underground of his mind. He felt set apart from these young ones.  He was tired and they should care for him.  Grace had always said it had been a hard life for them as a couple, and they had a right to enjoy themselves now he had retired - that was why they had moved down here to the south coast.  Of course, they had enjoyed themselves at times all through; he was sure of that. Though there had been rows and difficulties in the family.  Tony had been surly and difficult at times - and Duncan of course... he was the one for a fight.  But Grace had always been patient and tolerant.  She never lost her temper.  Why was it so difficult that she never lost her temper? It was the great asset the family had was Grace being so even-tempered.  He knew he was not so himself.  It often made him feel worse - but he must not complain.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

Sister Timpton sailed down the ward at about 7 o’clock. "Come along, Mr Dawson,” she called, “You really must get tidy in the morning,” and she swept by him.  The nurses, he had begun to realise, are at their hardest in the morning, as if they have to reassert their authority all over again for the coming day.  Graham did not feel disposed to go along with it.  He noticed the boiling feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he resented that they should give him the problem of dealing with that turmoil there. But what could he do? His lips tightened. He asked when she expected the doctor to come round.  It was urgent in his mind. “We look after you in here,” she coolly replied, and as she did so, her hands went to the top of his pyjama trousers and started to roll them down.  He was surprised by the elegance of her fingers and the gentleness of her touch. He felt a warmth, though stern, as she peeled away the cloth.  “The doctor will come when you are ready to be looked at.” She pushed his pyjama jacket up from his tummy.  He was now exposed from his ribs to his hips in front of her. And she parted the curtains and bustled out. She left a gap in his privacy and occasionally, as he waited, he could see other patients moving around He lay back. 

He thought of his mother who used to use the same steamy and starched manner. At one time, he had lain for weeks when he had been ill as a child.  Just before the First World War, he remembered, because he was convalescing when war was declared.  He had developed such a weakness in his legs and a fever in his head. Nobody knew what it was. They could only afford to have the doctor once.  He had shaken his head a few times and whispered to mother.  She had been stony-faced and said nothing to him after the doctor had gone. His feet had, ever after, tensed up into a permanent claw-like shape.  His mother had never said anything. Duncan had been very interested in the shape of his father's feet. As a student at his medical school, he seemed to think that there was something special about the feet. Graham had recalled that there may have been others in his family who had deformed feet, extra high arches.  Duncan had got to medical school, so clever, they had almost not known what to do with him; so clever he had made himself unpleasant. He could make them feel such fools.  Mother had said, had warned Graham, it was no good pushing Duncan along.  The child should find his own way.  But if he had the gift of intelligence, Graham thought surely it should be husbanded and brought out.  Perhaps he had made a rod for his back by encouraging Duncan.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

He had had to wait all morning for the doctor to arrive. The afternoon began when it seemed the morning was only half-complete.  Lunch things were whisked away with a busy clatter and the thunder of the lift had echoed round the ward. A buxom nurse brought the bedpan.  She could make her body quiver in her starched uniform, which he did not like.  Some of the other men laughed and teased her like schoolboys. Men should control all that even if some women flaunted themselves.  Duncan must have been like that, letting himself notice girls.  It did no good in the long run.  Look where it had got him.

 

She bustled around the bed, tucked the laundered sheets tightly in again so that he was pinned frailly in bed like an invalid.  He felt managed in an old-fashioned way, his legs almost amputated by her enthusiasm with the sheets. “You had forgotten me,” he said morosely trying to be light about it. 

“Don't you worry about the Doctor,” she commanded.  “He'll come when he can.” The fresh creases of her uniform kept brushing against his fingers, or his cheeks.  He moved quickly aside from her close presence.  `Oh, sorry!  Did I knock you?” half mocking. “We're feeling a bit fragile today, are we?' with a momentary hint of quarrelsomeness in her voice, the slightest of threats. But then – “Don't you forget to call me when you want anything. Sister is off this afternoon, so I can make a fuss of you all today.” And she bustled off seemingly satisfied with settling him. But he felt very unsettled.The pain in his back was largely forgotten.  But sometimes it caught him off-guard as he turned, and then his head whizzed in a daze of wincing surprise. They had looked at his blood had told him it was "Myeloma".  Duncan had to explain.  But why should his blood hurt his back?  It did not stand to reason. 

In a stir, the air moved apart and the long ward was cleft by the speeding arrow of time as the Doctor, at last the Doctor, came straight towards him.  He homed like a missile towards his bed. The Doctor made it no clearer; he said very little, and prodded his back as if it were hardly to do with Graham. He was a stranger, and young and perhaps he was new.

In fact, the young doctor seemed more interested in the little nurse who was moving around him, fetching things, the blood pressure pump, or the tray with special instruments.  He told Graham there had to be more tests to look into his breastbone. Or his hipbone. He talked quickly and Graham felt inpatient.

He was proud of a long life he had lived.  Yet his two brothers, for ever his comparisons, and who he had outstripped all his life in all the achievements that meant anything, were both hale and hearty. What an irony if he, when he had done so well compared with them, should perish first.  The thought leapt darkly across his mind.  The thing to do was to wait until the consultant came round next.  Then he could know how long it would take them to get him better.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

“Your wife's here, Mr D,” the nurse said hardly bothering to put her head round the partition into the alcove. Graham glanced back at his newspaper and then turned towards the opening into the alcove.  He put his pen down beside the bed and raised his hand carefully to take off his glasses. 

As Grace came into view he gave her a dignified smile, she pecked him on the cheek, “Hallo, dear.  You’ve got a paper, have you? I brought one in for you just in case. How are you?” she purred.  She made herself natural and at home beside his bed. “So, so,” he said noncommittally.

Graham looked at the basket she had brought and watched her bringing things out. “It's very good of you,” he said warmly, familiarly. “There's a young chap along the corridor went down for papers. A lot of the men in here smoke,”

I brought your dressing gown in,” she explained unnecessarily, “and your slippers.” Grace's homeliness was infectious. He remembered the separations from her in the wartime, coming home to quiet domestic routines, little Duncan always very serious, and the baby Tony who took up so much of Grace's time in those early days.  She would say the same then – “How are you dear?” 

And he would reply, “So, so,” never liking to tell her how he hated being away from home. 

And she would continue, straightaway “I've done some baked potatoes.  Come along Duncan, clear the table for me.  Daddy is ready to eat.  We'll all eat together today, shall we?”  Her quiet formal organizing never let out how relieved she was to have him back, perhaps she did not let herself know it exactly.  It had been a question of carrying on as normal for all of them in those days; the whole country did.  Grace had played her part, was be an exemplary model of the stoical spirit of wartime. 

Once, he had shown Duncan the gun out of his kitbag, and the small boy had looked carefully at it, not sure if it was a toy his Daddy had brought. It seemed his parents were anxious with it, “Be careful now”, his father had said. Duncan had taken it thoughtfully as if a little overwhelmed.  Grace had looked out of the corner of her eye as she poured the tea into the cups. 

As soon as he had put it down on the tablecloth, she had said swiftly, “Drink up your tea, Duncan, there's a good boy.  Let's show Daddy how grown up you are.” And Duncan had drunk his tea in small swallows, putting the cup down with a slight gasp for breath. His mother had said previously there was something important to talk about now he was five. He had started school and he could do many more things for himself, and could help with little Tony, and did not need to shout and cry anymore.

Graham had been proud of his eldest son.  Yet he sometimes felt a little uneasy about Grace’s way of talking to him. He never knew exactly what it was about, Grace and Duncan being serious with each other, but he felt uncomfortable. He had often told her to be more disciplining with the boy. Yet proud he was. And how glad that their oldest had in the end been a boy.  But that was another thought that had to be controlled. Grace would have thought of first baby, the dead one, them little girl. Grace would have been hurt by his thought.

Grace interrupted these reminiscences. She had sat in the robust hospital armchair, “Are they looking after you all right, dear?'” 

“Well enough,” he replied, “can’t grumble.  The food isn’t up to much.  But they're trying hard.” 

“Oh,” she replied. “They're trying hard, of course they are.  Dr Rees was so chatty wasn't he, in the clinic.  He took so much time with us.  To tell the truth,” Grace smirked, “I think the out-patient Sister got a bit fed up with the amount of time he was taking with us.”  Then she continued without a change in her voice, “Has he been round to see you yet?”

“No,” said Graham, “I only came in…” he thought “yesterday, wasn't it?”  He was suddenly slightly puzzled.  He felt he had been lying here for weeks.  “A young lady came round and took a lot of blood from my arm.” He said it partly to calm himself. “She used several syringes. I said to her ‘What are you going to do with it?’  She was from the pathological laboratory.  Anyway it’s someone else's blood isn't it; can't be mine after all those transfusions.”

“It's the pathology department,” Grace corrected him.  “Dr Rees said they would have to test your blood while your here. I don't see what it’s got to do with my back.”  Graham drew in his breath, “It's your bone marrow.”  Grace, still patient, “They have to test that, as well.  How is your back, dear?”  She could ride out his tetchiness by ministering her care. She looked down sadly to her lap where she was still holding the slippers.  She looked up again at Graham's face. “I thought I should ring Duncan last night, too.” 

 That would have been difficult for Grace.  He was grateful.  She always did the phoning, and he was glad she had dealt with Duncan.  He wished, for a reason that escaped him, that he had been able to speak to Duncan. Her eyes were slightly watery. “He seemed very touched,” she said, “He wanted to ring Dr Rees. Sort of doctor to doctor, isn't it?” She continued, somewhat coolly, “I expect he will.” There was a pause. “He said he will come to see you on Sunday, in the afternoon.” And she added, coyly, “I thought you wouldn't mind.”

Graham felt the knot in his stomach tighten.  What would he say to Duncan?  There was nothing to say. Yet there was everything.

Grace was looking at Graham in a plaintive. and slightly accusing way, “Don't get onto...,” she fumbled with her words, “don’t get into any arguments.” He knew he should not lose his temper. 

“He's too full of himself,” he snapped. “You would have thought he could control himself. He’s 45 and still treats us like…” 

“Lesley said the grandchildren are fine.”  Grace blatantly stepped in, and Graham could see that she was trying to control his outburst before it happened.

But he wasn’t going to be controlled, and he turned up the pressure, “He has become too big for his boots.  Doctor’s think they are tin gods,” he said crushingly. “I don’t mind who he is. If he wants to come and see me, he can. If he wants money, he can ask for it,” he raced on grandly. 

“Ooh,” Grace interrupted, “I am sure he only wants to see how you are”.  She tried to soothe the conflagration as if with an inflammable fire-beater.  Graham snorted as if nobody could add a worthwhile word to the crescendo of his implied accusations.  And then he stopped himself, as if realising that Duncan was not present, and no use if he was not present to hear it. 

Suddenly he found in himself how much he really wanted to talk to Duncan about all sorts of things. What changed in that instant? 

Later Grace was beginning to gather her things. He would be on his own. Always loneliness took him back to that moment…

After she had gone, his thoughts turned naturally to being alone those years ago, away from home, his family trying to get away from bombed London. And when that secret had happened. That moment with Rose. He did his best never to think of it. But then, he had to tell Duncan something of how he understood what had happened, what Duncan had done.

He wanted more than anything to tell Duncan about it, to tell someone about it. Duncan seemed the only one who could now listen.  But then…. Could he be as bad as Duncan?  He turned his thoughts away and that night he asked the nurse for something to sleep.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

The day was bright.  The pale grey clouds were wisps in a clear blue sky. He ran his fingers through his hair.  It was greasy.  His heart ached now for those times which were surely gone.

            He wanted a bath, but simple amenities in the ward were difficult to arrange. His hair had always tended towards greasiness.  Normally, he would ply his hair with liquid paraffin to absorb the dandruff.  It was an old-fashioned remedy, but still the best perhaps. It always looked sleek, fashionable in those days  Grace used to complain of the smell. Somehow that had not mattered.  The smell soon went.  Rose had once suggested he should go to the doctor about his dandruff. That had been a long, long time ago, way back in the wartime.  He had looked at her, and she was not joking; she was worried for him.  He reassured her in the way that had always satisfied her. He used to smile, run his hand through his hair, then frown slightly as if he had it all in hand and had been thinking about the problem. She would smile, hold the bundles of letters or files in her hand, the robust skin of her working hands looked very capable.  He liked the practical no-nonsense style about her.  It reminded him of his mother. 

            The sun was progressing steadily round the corner of the far wing of the hospital building, like a ship rounding into the mouth of a harbour, like the fishing boats returning that time that he and Rose had walked down to the docks, in the evening after work.  They had both been shaken by the news of the plane that had gone missing on its way to the Orkneys.  He should have been on that plane and but for his flu he would have disappeared too.

            Somehow, they had gone for a stroll together outside the offices in Aberdeen. He had been transferred from Belfast, and there were two girls in office for the typing. Rose had a strong highland accent. He had decided to go to the shop downstairs for cigarettes. It happened that she had also been just going to the shops for something. So, in her bright manner, she suggested they wander outside. They found themselves at the waterfront and she had leant on the rail while he went for his cigarettes. Then he returned to her and they gazed in silence over the calm cool water. It was summer, even in the north here. She put her hand on his bare forearm for a moment. They had stood in silence watching the boats against the sky.  Then she smoothed his hair that was ruffled by the mild breeze off the sea in that calm summer dusk.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

After a couple of days, he had resigned himself to the routines of the ward. It was Tuesday. Duncan would be coming down on Sunday evening, all the way from London. Just to see an old man like this; it was surely not necessary.  What would he say to his son? Would he tell him? 

If only he had, on that previous occasion, when was it – five years ago, no seven, it must be – he considered when Duncan and Lesley had split up.  That previous time when Duncan had come down for the evening to talk together. It had been the right time. Duncan had been late on that occasion. Actually, it turned out he had not been coming at all until Graham had rung to ask what was happening.  Grace was away, giving her counsel to Lesley. The meal Graham cooked, was in the oven. And he did not arrive.  When Graham had rung, Duncan was as off-hand as ever. He never did give credit for what had been done for him all his life. Right from the start, he demanded and was given.  He simply took what was given from the word go. He did not even wash properly and had ended up with acne all over his face.

Graham had told him all these things.  And look at what he had done with his marriage. Still just taking what he wanted, even in his forties. Graham was just coming home from the war when he was forty.  Their house had been destroyed by a bomb.  Even with the young family, Grace had just got a new house; done it all herself, she had been a wonder, and he had merely come home, ‘demobbed’ to meet his family safe and sound, perhaps the most wondrous moment of his life, or very nearly so. Apart from that other moment. Perhaps she had decided to go shopping just because she saw him leaving and wante to walk with him. He turned his mind away as usual. 

Duncan knew nothing of what they had been through all those years ago.  His life had been protected and so he always thought little difficulties were big ones.  When would he learn.  He would go back to Lesley. Grace was sure. But Graham felt that Duncan had to be put to rights about his weak character. It seemed at the time that he had listened to all that.  He had seemed chastened. And opening up a crack, he told Graham about his unhappiness. He thought that Lesley did give him a decent life, or rather, what was it….  Graham turned the other way in his chair.  But… Sister Timpton was standing over him. She put him into bed in her formal manner. 

But, when he was settled again, and she has moved on to the next bed, his mind returned to that weekend. When Duncan had arrived for the talk, they went on till two in the morning.  Duncan could have gone on talking.  They had never really talked together like that, not before, not since. 

            But even that long might had done nothing to get him back to Lesley.  It seemed he did not want to go back.  It seemed he wanted it easy. For the first time, Graham had a doubt in his mind about whether Grace was right.  Duncan wouldn’t go back, and Graham knew it. It felt conspiratorial. It had been a precious moment, for both of them.

            Perhaps he knew more of what Duncan felt than he had realised. There was that time, so long ago now, the touch of skin.  They both knew it perhaps. So different from everything else. Rose had wakened his own skin too.  Could he tell Duncan some time.  That would weld their link.  It would be the first time he had told it to anyone.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

Sister Timpton was on duty again. He felt his inside grinding with scorn. “Now we are not going to get in the way of the nurses, are we?” she growled. 

“No”, piped Graham in an acquiescing manner which he would never have allowed himself to deliver, except that it quite automatically came out of him.  He felt all that way back to being a little boy again when his mother demanded to know what he had learned at school. “Nothing”, he had often whispered, because it had been the easiest way of finishing the conversation without receiving the full voltage blast that seemed to be pent up in her waiting for him.

            He felt foolish, and he wandered grumpily to the stairs. A cleaner was scrubbing them equally joylessly and he slunk over her cleaned patch leaving the inevitable footprint tracks in his wake, without a word of apology that he might normally have given her.  She was, he thought to himself, a foreigner and not, therefore, like himself and his kin.  Black people should know their place, he thought ungenerously. The problem is that these days people do not know how to be satisfied.

He was always argumentative as a lad, aggressive and argumentative.  Duncan is the same. There had been those scenes, abusing his mother, never a word to his father about any of this business, and now scarring the children for the rest of their lives.  Well, it was some years ago, but he kept it up even now. 

            How did he turn out like this? Graham pictured Duncan as a baby gurgling and chuckling when he was tickled, and what a concentration he had as soon as one put something interesting  into his hand, his teddy bear or a shiny teaspoon or whatever. Surely that was a sign of his intelligence. Why couldn’t he see how things had to be?  What a waste he had made of his life!

            In the morning. the air carried plumes of people’s breath outside the entrance doors of the hospital. Inside the foyer, turned and approached the shop.  Grace had told him to get some paper handkerchiefs.  They were more practical than using his own and sending them home with her for washing and ironing.  How could he ever approach Duncan?  He had always shown contempt for his father – Graham sighed again, and he felt for the coins in his dressing-gown pocket.  Grace always said to him not to talk to Duncan; it never did any good. What had all his efforts to talk to Duncan achieved?  His old hands held the coins for the young lady in the shop as if he were a child spending his precious pocket money.  He let her take it, and silently took the newspaper and the tissues, holding them to his chest like part of his body.  He began to climb the stairs again.  It gave him exercise, he told himself, and it passed the time. 

            He looked down at his gnarled old hands carrying his things.  His thoughts flicked to Rose, when she had touched his arm. He thought whether she had touched his hand too.  Not then gnarled, old, and frail. She had touched a man’s hands that had then moved and felt different.  She had told him not to get so fretted and ruffled by the sergeant in charge.  Her face burned indelibly into his memory, her touch.  She had smoothed his hair for him.  Duncan had once said that loving and touching were the same. It touched a chord. Remembering his words somehow helped. It touched the link that they had had. When Duncan came at the weekend, there would be an opportunity to complete one of the unfinished scenes of his life, a scene that had been properly sentenced to abortion, and never properly carried out, and now perhaps he could honour his memory and Rose too, just before it might be too late.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

Sunday afternoon arrived and Duncan walked in, in a relaxed manner down the floor to Graham’s bed.  The large plate glass windows were darkening as the day outside dimmed.  The evenings were drawing in.  They shook hands warmly and firmly and Graham pointed him to the chair, but Duncan insisted on sitting on the bed, awkwardly; the invalid should sit in the comfort of the chair, They ended up both perched on the bed, one on either side. Duncan looked strained and enquired about his father’s health and comfort.  He had contacted Dr Rees by phone in the week who said only the things that Graham already knew.

            Father and son found they could talk to each other.  It became fairly relaxed, but conversation rambled around Graham’s illness, the life on the ward, Duncan’s work, the journey down from London.  “The doctors say I may go home on tomorrow – or Tuesday.  But the nurses don’t know.  They never say anything.  I don’t think they know very much”. 

“Ma will be glad to have you back again. She’s always worried.  She’s looking for a local gardener, someone to keep the garden going, she said?  There must be plenty of people around.  If she can find the right one.”

“I’ve lost a bit of height.  Have you noticed. 

“You’re shorter because the vertebrae of your back have got a bit squashed.” Duncan demonstrated a squashing motion between the palms of his hands  Graham took little notice.  Duncan always knew something; he was always telling you something.  But how did he know what was happening.  No-one around the hospital seemed to. Duncan looked blank in his eyes.  He probably did not know quite what to say. Perhaps he thought the illness was a serious one and did not like to go on describing it.

            Graham changed the subject, going back to the garden. “We had some wonderful lettuces this year. The wet weather came at the right time.  I suppose you don’t take a lot of interest in gardening.”

“No. We don’t have a garden in London. Lesley was keen on growing things in pots.  We had back extensions to the house, and terraces on various levels. She grows lots of flowers in spring and summer.”  Duncan seemed pleased to tell him.  But now he lived in another house, in another part of London; how long had he been there? Graham had never visited.  There was a silence.  Both knew that what he said about Lesley was now in the past, a dark boundary separating from the present. A sad moment crossed his heart. And such a distance from his son, too; such a gap to bridge. 

He searched for something to say.  “How is the little girl?  Milly? 

“She’s three and a half, now.” 

“Is she really,” Graham was surprised. The little girl would see so many things he would not, and he had seen so many things that would mean nothing to her.  Where would there be any common interest? There was some strain between them. What did Duncan want to talk about? – not ordinary things. How could he recreate that precious link, step across that gap – could he do it again? He turned his head and a mass of tumbled and panicky thoughts sped away into a vacuum unexpressed and inexpressible between them.

            He turned his mind to the present, again, “Did you speak to Dr Rees? He’s a very nice chap.  He does explain things to us.” 

“Yes, I did,”  Duncan nodded. “I think they know what they are doing. 

“Yes,” Graham responded doubtfully “I don’t know if they know what is wrong with me.” He started off in his lecturing style. “The body is such a complicated thing.  They are so pressed with so much going on.  The young lad here - he’s a registrar to Dr Rees, a young Indian chappy. He is around till ten o’clock some nights  He told me yesterday that there was no room for me now.  I should be leaving. I said that Dr Rees expected me to stay till Monday.  I haven’t got my clothes.  Your mother will have to come in with my things.  It was late in the afternoon yesterday by then. The young chap didn’t look pleased. There seems to be some mix up about whose bed I’m in. Apparently, this is Dr Stephen’s bed. He laughed at the incompetence.

“I expect they have a pressure on beds at the moment.” 

“Well,” Graham continued in a slightly triumphant way, “This is Dr Stephen’s bed. So, I’m told,” and he shrugged his shoulders in a dismissive way.  He looked disconsolate too, as if heavily resigned to some sort of defeat which he had somehow deserved. Duncan said no more about it and looked either puzzled or uninterested. 

            He looked at his watch and said that he had to drive back to London, Graham felt he had lived through his moment that was special without it being that moment at all.  A sadness surprised him, but he left it aside. Duncan discussed the journey times. He hesitated and said, “Dad, I wanted to know how you feel.  That’s why I came down today.”  He hesitated, “I suppose I wanted to know if you find yourself thinking about what is happening - you know what I mean – with your illness.” 

Graham replied almost automatically, “It’s best not to think about these things. I don’t want to worry Grace. You know.” He began again, in his pompous style, ‘We are all getting older. One could depress oneself if one let oneself think about it.”  Duncan waited for him to finish. Then he began making his farewells though they did not know if they would see each other again. They said goodbye as if there had never been an estrangement, and as if this was a regular weekly visit between father and son. He walked with Duncan slowly down the ward.  They were affable.  Graham felt relieved, embarrassed now by the thought of his self-revelation which thankfully had not materialised. It felt strangely like a release from a pressure in him to confess something to someone.

            He watched Duncan walk towards the stairs whilst he remained standing at the door of the ward. He felt so pleased and proud that his son had been to see him, his son a successful doctor in London.  As he turned away a peculiar dark colour spread across his mood like a filter removing part of the day’s light.  He did not know what this meant.  He tried to turn his thoughts to more sensible things.  He hoped he had advised Duncan best on the route back to London. Tomorrow, Grace would come in the afternoon.  There would be no need to buy a Sunday paper.

In the morning he crawled stiffly to the bathroom and washed and shaved slowly. When he came back, he asked Nurse James what he could do to help.  It had become a routine in the morning to help with simple things so that the ward could get going early in the day.  Nurse James looked harassed.  He straightened the blankets with her like a child helping mother.  She thanked him as a mother would whose child is more trouble helping then if he was playing by himself.  She bustled off.  He returned to his bed.  It was Sunday. 

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

 “Bad mood this morning?” she chirped in a manner that was not a question but a dismissal. 

“Night was a bit disturbed.” He conceded. 

“Did you take your night sedation?” The flirty nurse asked. 

They were still waiting for the pathology tests.  The last one would be done today.  The doctor said he would come and do a marrow biopsy.  It meant boring into his hip bone.  He tried not to think about it.  He would be coming to the end of his stay. He felt a sort of glow.

The ward was quiet for a moment. Time was dragging. He slid off his bed again and sauntered along the ward looking for someone to have a word with.  One of them perked up a bit when he approached. “The wife was saying last night she recognised you, Graham – from the dancing, isn’t it?” 

Graham nodded. “Well,” Graham began modestly, “we’ve been going for years. It is good for you, keeps you fit.” He did not mention the nostalgia he and Grace always felt for their youth when they had been so keen on dancing. The times when they had been courting, in fact, they had met originally at a dance. The civil service rowing club had a Christmas dance way back.  He could not remember exactly whilst he was talking to this man.  It must have been 1930, say. Graham was reticent about the memories. “Times have changed.  Things are not he same”, he offered, wanly. The man went into a rush of eager details, and a wish to prolong the contact.  Graham felt imposed upon, a garrulous old man, he thought, and began to pull away.

            “Did you hear what happened in the night to Frank?  Frank, in the bed just here.”  The man gestured to the next bed.  Graham felt annoyed at being held on to, but also, he was curious in a fearful way.  If he had avoided talking about the past too much because he was afraid of being drawn into his own thoughts and feelings, he was also fascinated in a repelled sort of way about the future, and what might be happening to him – like the others here.  One day someone would look at the bed he had been sleeping. Until that moment when he wasn’t asleep. He couldn’t think, He knew the man was going to say something dreadful about what had happened to Frank in the night. 

Graham had not known Frank, but he knew he would be affected by anything that happened to any of them in his ward.  The man continued in detail.  “It must have been after midnight.  There was a bit of a commotion.  I hadn’t properly got to sleep.”  It came tumbling out.  “Frank looked blue.  He dropped his glass of water on the floor.  There wasn’t that much in it, because I had checked it for him before lights out.”  He seemed jittery as he spoke. Graham did not take any notice. He was waiting of an impending horror, looking at the now empty bed.  “I got hold of the alarm bell and pushed and pushed, because I thought – ‘This is it for Frank’.  The nurse came, the black girl, at the double.  I’ll give her her due.   She was here in a flash, took one look and rang for the trolley team.  She was back in an instant, and we got him flat on the bed and the curtains pulled around.  I held his wrist for her while she rushed off to the clinical room and came back with a trolley full of all the things they use.  I’m surprised you didn’t hear it.”

            Graham made a consoling nodding movement of his head; he knew it had been the sleeping pill.  And he had already anticipated the end of the story and supposed that Frank was dead. There was no stopping the flow of anxious talk that masqueraded as brave assistance to the nurse.  Graham was relieved that at that moment another man strolled up to them, to see what was being talked about in this tense way.  Graham looked up as if help had arrived in the nick of time.  The anxious old man was rattling on and Graham could now fade away, and slide off.  When he had heard enough to be sure of Frank’s final outcome, he extricated himself and left the other two to swap disaster stories.

            He remembered those dead men. They had never been found. There had been a suspicious incident in the Orkneys.  It was suspected that some enemy parachute troops had landed to keep an eye on the navy’s movements.  Six men from the office had been detailed to go up there to support the police investigation, but the plane had disappeared in a storm just off the coast. There had been a lot of speculation. It had prayed on his mind. There had been a quiet man who Graham had begun to feel friendly towards. They had been going together – until Graham’s flu.

            The plane was missing, and there was a strange silence for a day or so.  People spoke in hushed tones.  The typewriters clacked away inhumanly.  They had all seemed to come together in spirit, like the coming together of a congregation at the communion service.  Rose did most of his work, and she reported to him all the news that there was – very little – or rather she reported to him the lack of news.  After a couple of days, people began openly to talk of the death of their colleagues.  They talked of the deaths in war in general.  Rose had lost her father in the First World War, when she had been a very little girl.  They would sometimes go for drinks all together after that when the work finished for the day, and the duty office could be on call from the bar.  It was just one evening when most of the people were off for the weekend, and the duty officer had been called back that he and Rose found themselves together again.  She had moved along the pub bench to him, “Let’s go down to look at the harbour,” she had said.  Then he too had wanted to get away from the tense atmosphere.  It was no good thinking about these morbid things.  So, she had taken him to look at the harbour at night. Quickly he was compelled to excuse himelf.

 

…..ooooo00000ooooo…..

 

Eighteen months later, Graham died after a considerable period of great pain.  Rose who had not thought of him for many, many years knew nothing of that timid, blustering man the war had thrown across her path momentarily, who had brushed her arm with such an electric signal to both of them, and who had blushed every day thereafter when they had been in the office together on their own.  She knew nothing of the thoughts he had harboured and puzzled over down the years, the thoughts that had been rekindled by his son’s own unblushing passions. She knew nothing of the unadmitted wistful longings that the frail glance of her skin against his had coloured his years in between.  She did not know that they had finally been snuffed out in the midst of pain, during which she had been most thought about.  And even if she had known, she would not have remembered that tiny moment that had seemed so natural to her and which had seemed so unnatural to him. She never knew she had created that moment so that it had lasted in the darkness of his shame for so long.  She would have marvelled at the prolonged memory it had lived in him for so long like an exotic butterfly confined forever to its chrysalis.