Transgressions

by Sarah Dunant

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t need it. You don’t have to hurt me. That’s not how it has to be.”

  She waited, counting off her heartbeats. At ten she moved again.

  Where she had first used her fingers, now she used her tongue. His lips trembled, then parted to let her in. Slipping in through the portcullis of his teeth, she made herself think of all the lovers she had known who could turn a kiss into making love—teasing and catching at your lips, pulling them into theirs, making the kiss its own act of seduction, a kind of devouring that made you want to take off your clothes and guide their pricks into you. Making you ache for them, all from a kiss.

  Remember it now, she thought. Remember it now because your life depends on it. She pushed her tongue in. His mouth was limp. “Kiss me back,” she whispered. “Use your tongue.”

  She could almost hear his heart beating. The tongue fluttered, then whipped out, like a lizard. She could feel the tension in him, like some uncontrollable seismic buildup, and she felt the hammer hand jerk across the coverlet. The kiss continued, his tongue darting, still lost but still trying. God help me, she thought. God help me here to know what to do.

  She brought her hands up to cup his face. “That’s better,” she murmured. “Again.”

  This time he did as he was told and the kiss connected. They both felt it. As it went deeper, she slid her hands over his neck, then slowly down his back. The wool of the sweater he was wearing was coarse and prickly and damp to the touch. Under his clothes he would be sweating. Who says it’s only the woman who feels the fear? She pulled up at the sweater to discover a shirt underneath and some kind of vest. Too many clothes. He was dressed as she had been, smothering the desire, hoping it might go away. As her hands finally reached his bare skin he let out another noisy breath. She stopped, waiting, reading the signs, then slowly continued the caress. Again he relaxed. She let her hands linger, then slid one of them down over the edge of his trousers onto the bed and toward his right hand. At her touch the fist clenched. She kept her hand cupped over it, waiting, then slowly the fist opened itself, the hammer slipping onto the bedspread. She slid it as far away as she could without risking the noise of its falling on the floor. She took his hand in hers, entwining their fingers, using her thumb to play with the inside of his palm. The skin was surprisingly soft, almost like a girl’s, soft and wet with sweat. She felt a sudden shaft of power.

  And as she did so she thought of the woman in the Prague apartment. And the girl in the attic. And she knew that there had to be another way, a female way, where redemption is as powerful as violence.

  This time when she moved away from his lips, he came toward her, his mouth messy, greedy. For a second the taste of him repelled her, the saliva and the smell making her want to puke. She pushed away the thought and sucked his lips back into hers.

  She had released the rest of the clothing from his trousers and was exploring his chest. The skin underneath was rough and dry, with wiry little curls around small nipples. Not cared for. Not loved. How does it happen to some people? she thought. How do they miss out? If you’ve never been touched, how do you know how to touch? If you’ve never felt, how do you know how to feel? So unfair. So dangerous. She brought his hand up and guided it slowly to her body, cupping it over her breast.

  The first contact made him shudder. Before he could pull away she moved her body into his hand, pushed the weight of her flesh against his palm and heard him groan, a dark, painful sound dragged out from a long way down. To her astonishment the noise delighted her, as if the control she was feeling really did contain its own sexuality, the pleasure of her control. Don’t show it, she thought. Whatever you do don’t let him know.

  She was about to help him further when his fingers found her nipples, hard from the cold and the fear and a sudden muddied, confused kind of desire. The first squeeze was too tight, it made her draw breath too quickly. “Gently,” she said in a whisper. And this time he heard her and did as he was told. Slowly they toppled from sitting to lying on the bed. And as they did so she brought up her right leg and used the bottom of her foot to locate the hammer on the coverlet and push it gently toward the edge.

  It hit the floor with a thud.

  The sound, or maybe the sudden weight of him pinning her down onto the bed, brought back a flash of fear. They both felt it, both sensing the change and tensing themselves away from the other. She recovered first, reaching up to kiss him again, maneuvering herself half out from under him, at the same time moving her hand to the top of his trousers, fumbling to free the button. She used the ball of her palm to push down the zipper, then slid her hand inside, slipping under the frayed elastic of the underpants until she found his penis, limp and curled. You’re not ready, she thought with a sudden panic. Is that your problem? Or is this what you need the hammer for, to get a hard-on?

  Maybe he heard the thought. At her touch he pulled back violently, and for a moment she thought she had lost it, could feel him thrashing around in search of some way back into control. In search of a weapon that would give it to him.

  “It’s all right,” she said quickly. “It’s all right.”

  She kept her hand over his softness, holding it there almost tenderly, as she pulled her T-shirt farther up her body and over her head, rubbing herself against him, letting him feel her nakedness underneath him. Instinctively his hands went out to touch her again, moving down from the breasts to her stomach, clumsy, urgent caresses, until his fingers slid into the tangle of pubic hair. And as he did so she heard herself moan.

  The sound had not been deliberate. In fact, if anything it was more a release of fear than anything to do with pleasure. But somehow it helped. Both of them.

  He hesitated and she knew he was frightened to go further. Knew that at that moment he was more frightened of her than she was of him.

  I am here, she said to herself, although the thought didn’t make sense. This is me doing this. Here. Now. It’s not someone else.

  “I’m here,” she said, this time out loud. “And I’m not pretending. Anything you want to do to me is okay.”

  And as she said it, his penis took a jerky leap in her hand, and he let out a sharp groan of pain and pleasure. At the same time his fingers slid into her, pushy and overeager, a sudden haste to everything, the onslaught of a frenetic kind of lust. To her amazement she realized she was wet. The discovery sent its own shock wave through the pit of her stomach. She ran her hand gently up and down his prick, her own breath coming quicker now, teasing him into further erection. Then, registering the sudden urgency of his need, she slid herself underneath him so she could guide him into her. It wasn’t that easy, as he was still only half erect, but as he moved inside the mouth of her he stiffened further, then slid in all the way, letting out another shattering groan. She heard her own voice join his. And so, almost without giving her time to move, she felt him rise up, and, with two or three thrusts, come inside her, a juddering, jerky orgasm that was too hurried and crude to bring any lasting pleasure.

  AIDS, she thought, in a sudden blind moment of panic. AIDS, and the clap, and a million other diseases that will rot me slowly for my sins. But even as she recited the litany, those thoughts were overwhelmed by another. The realization that he was crying.

  He had fallen heavily onto her body after the orgasm. Now he tried to pull himself off, the sobs clutched and angry, searching frantically around him, groping for something that she knew would be a weapon. But this time, rather than his violence, all she could feel was his pain.

  “It’s okay. You’re all right,” she said fiercely, pulling herself up with him and putting both her arms around him, hugging him hard to her and holding on to him, despite his attempts to wrench her off. “It’s all right,” she said again. “Really. You don’t have to do anything more. It’s done. You did it. It was fine.”

  And slowly, as she clung to him, reading the battle in his body between the rage and the release, she felt the fury diminish and the crying
win out.

  So it was that she sat there in the winter night, her body shivering with the cold and the adrenaline, holding on to a man sobbing his heart out for the fact that the rape he had planned had turned into an act of lovemaking.

  Time passed. And eventually the sobbing subsided so that now when he started to pull away she knew to let him go. She stood up and took a robe from the door to cover herself, as she did so feeling the cold trickle of his semen running down the inside of her thigh. Cold, she thought. Why is it always cold when it has just erupted from such hot depths? She used the inside of the robe to wipe it away, and then, as she tied the belt around her, she felt about the floor with her feet until she came across the cold edge of the hammer and slid it farther under the bed.

  He was pulling up his trousers, fumbling with the button. They always look so lost getting back into their clothes, she thought, thinking of Malcolm from the night before, and a dozen other men remembered through the years, all returning to little boys once the act was complete. No wonder women need to be mothers as well as lovers.

  Then, after what seemed like an age, he finally looked at her, and in the gloom she knew that, whatever he might feel or become in the future, as of that moment she had won and she could do what she liked.

  And this time her voice was her own, no longer clotted up with demands of seduction or fear.

  “It’s over now,” she said quietly, staring straight at him. “Do you understand? You and I are over. Whatever it was that you thought was between us is finished. I won’t say anything, won’t tell anyone. And neither will you. But if you ever come near me again I swear I’ll go straight to the police. I want you to go now. Leave by the front door and when you get home throw away the CDs and the papers from the book. The kitchen doors are locked now. You can’t get in there anymore. This obsession is over.”

  He didn’t reply, didn’t even look at her, but instead he got up from the bed sniffing loudly and looking around the room as if searching for something that couldn’t be forgotten. But he had heard her. They both knew that.

  “It’s gone,” she said firmly. “It’s gone and you don’t need it anymore. Maybe you never did. Now I want you to leave. Go.”

  At last he turned to her. She moved out of the line of his path to the door. They stared at each other, and in the gloom she saw the spark of something in his eyes, but couldn’t read it. And she knew she was taking a risk, showing him so clearly that she had won, but right now there was no more pretense left in her and she suddenly needed to be alone so badly that it hurt. He gave a kind of sneer, and brought up a hand in what seemed to be a gesture of mock aggression, but it never connected. Instead, after holding it there for a second, he dropped his arm and, turning on his heel, he walked out.

  She waited, rooted to the spot, until she heard his steps go down the stairs and out through the front door. As she heard it slam behind him, she raced out the door to the landing window in time to see him turn and look up at the house, then move off quickly down the road.

  She was downstairs in seconds, through the kitchen door and standing in the darkness by the French windows looking out over the night garden. The silence was total.

  Now that it was over she discovered she was trembling, her legs shaking so violently she could hardly stand, but still she wouldn’t let herself rest, still she stayed there watching, waiting. And eventually she was rewarded. Across the expanse of the night to the left of center of the semicircle of houses, she saw a first-floor light go on, a white hole burned into the blackness. And as the position of it imprinted into her brain the trembling won out and she slumped onto the floor, allowing herself to feel it all again, the touch of his hands on her flesh, the stickiness of his come inside her, and the river of his saliva in her mouth.

  She spat the taste of him onto the floor and in that moment of revulsion she had a clear knowledge that there was a choice to be made. She could either allow this night to become the rest of her life, to warp and corrupt everything that came after, or she could let it go and find its natural place.

  If she was going to get him, now would be the time. She imagined picking up the phone and dialing the police. She saw her plump young constable sitting across the table, notebook in hand scribbling frantically, eyes as big as saucers in wonder at her tale. Except it wouldn’t be him. No. They would send a woman instead, female sensitivity to comfort her in her distress. She saw the trained sympathy in the woman’s eyes and tried to imagine how she would tell it to her. And she knew then that she couldn’t do it. That in some unfathomable way what had passed between them was more intimate than violence and that she would never be able to tell it. Certainly not to the police.

  Did he know that also? Did he know that she would keep his secret? His and theirs. What was he doing now? Washing her off him in preparation for starting a new life or staring at those shiny CDs on his windowsill, remembering, reliving? Had he thrown them in the bin yet?

  Listen to what you told him, she thought. Believe that. You did it and now it’s over. You looked into the eye of the nightmare and survived. And having done it, this should indeed be the end of it and both of them would be forgiven and redeemed, even if that redemption may have to grow out of a landscape of humiliation and fear.

  And so she got up and very slowly started to get on with the rest of her life.

  fourteen

  She took the hours till dawn deliberately quietly. She went upstairs and showered but didn’t try to wash him out of her, because it was too late for that and because she didn’t want to give in to that kind of frenzy of disgust. She brushed her teeth and stripped the bedclothes, replacing them with a crisp new sheet and duvet cover that Sally had given her six months ago for her birthday but that she had never bothered to open. It pleased her to see how it made the room different, less like her own.

  As she folded back the cover she came across the length of twine caught in its folds. The hammer she located halfway under the bed. She had intended to throw it away, but when she put out her hand she found she couldn’t touch it. In the end she used a Safeway bag, scooping it up into the white plastic, turning the bag inside out so she couldn’t see it anymore. She even got as far as taking it out to the rubbish bins by the front gate, but once there she kept thinking about who’d been going through her garbage and instead brought it back in and hid it at the bottom of a cupboard.

  Outside the kitchen doors the world was a black hole again, with no starburst of electricity to mark out his presence. She turned on the radio. People who couldn’t sleep were calling a talk-show host, regaling him with stories of real-life nightmares. He listened impatiently, butting in with inane comments until they had bored or annoyed him sufficiently—at which point he cut them off with the sound effect of a scream and a body hitting the floor.

  Maybe this was the way she should exorcise it—anonymous and public at the same time, delivering thrills to some loser night jock with a taste for the macabre. Who knows, a certain thin-lipped man with pasty skin might even now be listening, staring out at her from a darkened first-floor window. She looked back over the gardens. What if he had turned out his light deliberately, realizing that if he could see her then she, too, could see him? The thought moved her away from the window. The host took a call from a woman named Fanny in Hendon who had backed out of the garage and run over her dog. “Oh, Fanny. To each their terriers, eh!” In the studio you could hear him trying not to crack up.

  She hit the off button, then turned down the overhead light. She wouldn’t need it much longer anyway. The dawn was starting to come in, the sky already fading from translucent mauve to a dull winter gray. The garden took gradual shape in the light. The only thing moving was the cat. She watched Millie jump down from the back wall and pad swiftly across the lawn. For once the black tom was nowhere to be seen. Maybe Millie had triumphed, too, had spent the night fucking him stupid then left him for dead in the bushes.

  She emptied a whole tin of cat food into her bowl. Hungry work,
confronting your demons. Then she washed up her mug, put it back on the shelf, and made her way upstairs to the attic.

  From under the eaves she pulled out a set of boxes that had come from her mother’s house, a collection of things that had proved too personal to sell, too old or strange to ever be of use. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. The pair of old-fashioned binoculars that had once belonged to her grandfather. She unwrapped them carefully from a length of black felt, the cloth giving off a smell of London as she imagined it during the war: a hint of cordite and danger in musty darkness. As she held them she remembered their heaviness and how big they had once felt in smaller hands.

  She had watched her own father using them when she was a child. He would stand for hours at the end of their garden at the edge of the marshland, the glasses trained on what always seemed to her to be an empty sky, she waiting next to him, wanting to be included, trying to be still but always becoming bored and noisy, so that in the end he sent her inside. The birds, it seemed, came out only when she wasn’t there. Now she understood why. To catch something unawares you had to wait, be patient. Then and only then would it give itself up to you. She had never had enough time before, was always too busy pushing to grow up. Not like now. Now there was satisfaction to be had in surveillance.

  Her bedroom gave the best view. His window, as far as she could relocate it in the light, was like all the others in that house, blank and dark, with a half-curtain across the bottom of it—like someone’s old-fashioned parlor. Was it his kitchen or his bedroom? Kitchen, surely. A door to the left, half glass, half wood, led out onto an iron balustrade and some steps spiraling down into the garden. If she focused properly she could make out the peeling wood on the shed nearby. Was this the pleasure that had so transfixed her father, pulling distance closer, seeing what was not meant to be seen? The garden was unkempt—long ragged grass and overgrown shrubs—with a paved path down one side of it. The wall at the end was small. Easy to get over, and from there you would need only to slip across the bottom of another garden and over another wall to reach hers. She practiced the run through the glasses, each stage of the journey jumping into sharp focus, crossing fences, sliding along boundaries, dodging the path of security-light triggers, before at last moving across her lawn to the cat flap. Easy in darkness.