‘You’re not to blame,’ I said, neatly avoiding the question. It was true. I found her missing spectacles lodged in the folds of the blanket at the bottom of the bed. The wire frames were bent but they hadn’t broken. ‘I know that you weren’t responsible,’ I continued indulgently. ‘I suppose you just couldn’t help yourself…’
‘Did you hear me talking in tongues?’
‘You didn’t say a word. Your eyes were closed. You moved in a trance.’
Dorothy stared at me thoughtfully. Her eyes flickered. She was just beginning to get the idea. ‘You know, I think it’s important, for the moment, that we keep these wonderful signs to ourselves,’ she said.
‘But it might have been a miracle!’ I protested. ‘It might have been an important message.’
‘All the more reason to pause and consider.’
I nodded gravely.
‘We should say nothing about these things until we’ve offered them up in our prayers. We need some time to meditate. You understand…’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s our secret.’
‘Look at me!’ she cried suddenly, directing her audience to gaze in wonder at the sight of her unbridled breasts. ‘I’m indecent!’ She laughed. She blushed. She cupped her proud, pink nipples and tried to push them into her shirt.
‘You’re nothing but lovely!’ I managed to blurt out, feeling awkward. This last act of modesty snagged my heart.
‘Thank you,’ she said and, to my surprise, rewarded me with a smile. ‘I don’t know what came over me….’
‘You were having a ghostly experience.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But I’m sure there’s a purpose. It’s a sign. Nothing happens by accident. We’re part of a greater design.’
33
God was a personal friend to Dorothy. She told Him everything and took Him everywhere. When she introduced Him to the house He stared into our hearts and He pried into our dreams. We found that we couldn’t hide from His suffocating presence. The Cosmic Voyeur peered into cupboards and drawers, peeked under beds, ran His finger along the tops of picture frames in search of cobwebs and dust. Nothing escaped His attention. He remembered each transgression. He knew every small, sad secret, from Janet’s hopeless love of Franklin to my past idolatry of the mighty Lottie Pout. He weighed our strengths and weakness and always found us wanting. He scowled. He thundered. He never laughed. He couldn’t see the joke.
Dorothy meditated upon the night’s events. The knowledge that she had been thrown into the air by some divine or demonic hand and then been granted the strength, more or less, to hurl me down on the bed, must have appealed to her vanity. It was a sign that she had been chosen for some special purpose. No doubt about it. She had been brushed by the wings of angels. And for reasons that passeth all understanding I was to share this mystery. I’d been elected to witness her flight and play a part in her plunge from grace.
She turned to the Good Book and, seized by a fit of bibliomancy, sought the advice of Daniel aka Belteshazzar, favourite of Nebuchadnezzar, child of Judah, master magician, man of night visions, interpreter of dreams. And was it not Daniel who was tested and plucked alive from a den of hungry lions? Exactly. Dorothy saw the connection. She was eager now to sew me into a lion’s skin. I had been sent to test her faith. I was the wild and raging beast from which she would shortly be delivered. I was to be the pit into which she tumbled and the ladder she would climb towards her redemption. I would become her ordeal and her ultimate salvation.
34
The next morning she seemed subdued. She came down to a late breakfast and spent the day in pious reflection. We didn’t speak to each other. We barely exchanged a glance. Whenever we found ourselves together we quickly became uncomfortable, muttered excuses and fled to different parts of the house.
There was no bible class that night. Dorothy complained of a headache and went to bed soon after supper. She was not to be disturbed. Mother worked in the kitchen and father escaped to the cellar. Janet gossiped with Mr Marvel and Franklin went aloft to scribble mad secrets in Lilliput.
I loitered for a while in the front parlour, flicking through Jesus comic books while listening to Janet chatter to Marvel as they set out their box of dominoes.
‘How is your mother?’ Marvel inquired.
‘It’s been nothing but liver and lights for a month,’ Janet reported. ‘Frozen shoulder. Pain in the neck. Legs like balloons and panic attacks.’
Marvel made little clucking sounds. ‘She seems to suffer with her legs,’ he said. ‘I thought the doctor was going to drain them.’
‘Yes,’ Janet said sadly. ‘But every time he empties them, they start filling up again. He said he’s never seen anything like it.’
‘Poor woman,’ Marvel said, shaking his head and ducking like a demented chicken. ‘It’s a terrible thing to be old.’
I slipped Jesus under a cushion. The conversation depressed me so much that it drove me into the heat of the kitchen where mother was checking the horoscope page in her star-studded copy of Chinwag.
‘Foreign travel is on the horizon. You’ll find a new hairstyle working wonders,’ she announced, as I sat down beside her at the table.
‘Is that me?’
‘No. It’s your father.’
‘Aquarius,’ I said. ‘Tell me about Aquarius.’
‘A handsome new man will enter your life. He could be a construction worker.’
‘It doesn’t sound very likely.’
‘What have you done to Dorothy?’ she said, pausing to scratch in her cardigan pockets in search of stray peppermints.
‘Nothing.’
Mother frowned and shook her head. She was clearly worried. ‘She looked dreadful at supper. I hope she’s not sick. We can’t afford it.’ She found a solitary peppermint ball and flicked it neatly into her mouth.
‘It’s nearly the end of the month,’ I said.
‘What’s her star sign?’ she demanded suddenly.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I hope to God it’s not Virgo!’ she muttered darkly, scanning the stars in search of trouble.
It was late when I finally went to my room. I had finished my regular midnight patrol, testing the windows, locking doors and switching out lights. The world was silent and secure. But I found it difficult to sleep. I lay awake in the dark and thought of my tumble with Dorothy. It seemed impossible. An hallucination. A fever’s dream. A cunning illusion brought to life by the heat of my own desire. I settled down to revisit the dream but failed; nothing substantial remained, and I very nearly persuaded myself that Dorothy’s enchanted flight had been no more than a flight of imagination.
When I woke up it was still dark. My heart was racing. The sweat prickled against my scalp. Something had dragged me from uneasy slumber. There was some strange presence in the room. I lifted my head from the pillow and peered fearfully into the gloom. At first I could make nothing from the dancing shadows that swarmed in my eyes. But there was just enough moonlight through the half-drawn curtains to distinguish a figure standing at the foot of the bed. I sat up, startled, and stared. It might have been Marvel, come to bring news of phantom intruders tapping against his bedroom window; or the wretched Franklin, sucked from his lair in a whirlwind of anger to smash in my skull with his pencil pot.
It was Dorothy! She was naked. Her hair was loose, her hands were clasped and her eyes were turned to Heaven.
I wiped my face in my palms and stared. I was too astonished to speak. It was several moments before I tried to open my mouth. The sight of her standing there, stiff as a saint, was enough to shrivel the tongue in my head. ‘Dorothy!’ I hissed. ‘What are you doing here?’
She stopped offering up her prayers and turned to squint at me through the darkness, leaning forward on tiptoe. She had come without her spectacles, as if to enhance her nakedness or perhaps to merely protect herself by sparing her eyes unwholesome sights. ‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ she whispered at me. She sounded rathe
r disappointed and crossed her arms against her chest, holding herself by her lovely shoulders.
‘You woke me up,’ I said, feasting my own dim eyes on her beauty. She seemed to be made entirely of shadows, arms folded, face obscured in a cowl of black hair. Between the blades of her hips and the swelling of her thighs I searched in vain for the prickly valentine heart of darkness. ‘Is anything wrong?’ I managed to mumble.
‘Behold, I cried out for help in my prayers,’ she whispered.
‘Were they answered?’
‘I turned to the Book and was given a sign.’
‘What sort of sign?’
She tried to explain it to me. But I wasn’t paying attention. It was difficult to concentrate on her theories of mortification while I watched her stepping towards me, her long legs plunging through murky moonlight and her big breasts clasped like gifts in her hands.
‘Oh, Lord,’ she whispered, as I felt her slip beneath the sheets to press herself, warm and naked, beside me. ‘Oh, Lord, he deviseth mischief upon his bed; he setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil!’
Yes, it was true! How was I to resist temptation? Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? My bed was narrow and she was large and profoundly perfumed. Ah, sweet Pandemonium! I set about my task willingly and with as much vigour as I could manage in such confinement. The serpent slithered from its nest and nuzzled its snout against her thigh.
Dorothy stiffened and growled. ‘The Lord shall smite thee with consumption!’ she warned urgently. ‘And with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish…’
I shrank. I considered. So that was the game! I was the sword of iniquity, the mouth of the lion, the storm that howled and broke itself upon the rock of her faith. I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair, discouraged. But I wasn’t yet discouraged enough to stop my hands from wandering in the hope of leading her further astray. I murmured gently into her ear, apologetic and comforting, as my fingers traced the curve of her thigh before scrambling up the slope of her ribs, in the hope of seizing a breast by stealth and sucking some titbit into my mouth.
But she was too quick for my crafty fingers. ‘The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst be healed…’ she threatened, catching me by the wrist as my fingertips fluttered against a nipple, and twisting my arm back into the mattress.
I might have risked the itch and the botch but I didn’t like the sound of unhealing emerods. I retreated, shifted my weight uncomfortably, and pressed myself against the wall while she arranged to protect herself with elbows, knuckles and ankle bones. But how could I escape my fate? Oh, save me not from the sweet temptations of this world, rather let me rejoice in all the workings of creation; for we are but flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again.
As soon as she had settled, my fingers sneaked forth in a different direction, hoping to take her by surprise. A nimble raiding party sent scampering invisible through the narrow, no-mans-land in the sheets. A bony spider set loose to pounce upon her proud and extravagant arse.
But Dorothy was waiting for me. ‘The Lord will smite thee with madness, and with blindless…’ she sang breathlessly, yet allowed me time enough to reach around and fondle the rise and fall of her buttocks before she checked my bungled advance by driving her elbow into my stomach.
‘And upon the wicked He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest!’ she added.
I searched for some well-turned phrase to use in my own defence but the only words that came into my head were warnings against the unclean flesh. And these are they which thee shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle and ossifrage and the ospray, and the vulture and the kite after his kind. It didn’t sound suitable.
We lay in a tangle of arms and legs, shipwrecked and drowning. I closed my eyes. I threw kisses at her throat, her neck and shoulders as if I were destined to peck her to death. The abomination of fowls. She softened and squirmed and seemed to sink beneath my caresses. I drew strength from these little sighs of surrender and searched for her mouth but she jerked her face away, indignant. I should have been content to lay there crushed, with her breasts pancaked against my chest and her breath in hot gusts against my neck.
But it wasn’t enough. I was half-mad with excitement. I hadn’t yet earned my full measure of fiery brimstone and after all, win or lose, I would probably still have the Devil to pay for this night of stolen pleasures. So I wriggled loose from her grasp again and made a final, clumsy assault by forcing my hand between her legs. She quivered and grunted in surprise. She was lost. For a brief moment she was sprung wide open and beneath her brush she was hot and swollen and slippery.
‘Be warned!’ she gasped, snapping her ankles together and trapping my fingers between her thighs. ‘He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord!’ And with these words she identified my stones by seizing the pair of them in her fist and giving them such a wrench, such a sudden and brutal squeeze, that it left me blinded and wheezing with pain.
The agony of that embrace! The memory of it brings tears to my eyes. I choked and wept like a miserable sinner and cradled my broken stones in my hands. Do you think that Daniel tormented the lions by cracking their nuts together? No! If that was the secret to his success he should have been disqualified.
And so we remained entwined while I gurgled and tried to stifle my sobs as Dorothy prayed and gave thanks to the Lord for having been spared from the worst of my pagan cruelties. She sounded so very pleased with herself! When she finally stopped chanting she yanked her face from the smother of sheets and stared peacefully at the moonlight drifting across the ceiling. She yawned. She stroked my face. She murmured little endearments to show that she’d now forgiven me. But I said nothing. Did she think me a fool? I wouldn’t be tempted. I was feeling too bruised to risk another stolen embrace.
‘Yet a little sleep,’ she whispered, taking me into her arms, ‘a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep…’
35
‘Ah, too lovely! Too lovely! ’Tis but a dream!’ she whispered sadly through trembling lips as she sank once more into the warmth of his sheltering arms and allowed her fingers to lightly trace the noble curve of his strong and finely fashioned thighs. ‘’Tis but a dream and waking shall find us parted.’
He said nothing but turned his beautiful face to gaze at the glittering ceiling of stars that swarmed in the velvet dark of the tropical night that surrounded them with its lush and sweet-perfumed embrace.
‘Nay, ’tis but a dream come true and I pray we may never be woke from it, ’ he said with a smile that betrayed a measure of melancholy.
They were lost for a time, adrift in the marvellous majesty of that secret and steaming jungle arbour. Were they tribal drums she could hear in her head or the savage melody of her heart? How deep the night! How bright her fever! She felt she must quickly swoon with love. She feared she might die from its rapture. And then, without a word between them, he had gathered her up in his gallant embrace and pressed her surging loveliness against the smouldering heat of his loins, so that she gave a little gasp of surprise and melting into his flame of desire, cast all her modesty aside to yield to the urgent appeals of his mouth and the vigorous work of his nimble hands as a panther barked in the moonlight.
36
It was almost dawn when I woke again. The bed felt empty. When I looked around I was just in time to catch Dorothy as she stumbled towards the door. She was luminous. Her hair was so dark and her skin so pale that she seemed to shine in the gathering light.
‘Where are you going?’
She stopped in confusion, staring at me over her shoulder. She looked bewildered to find me ther
e. ‘Thirsty!’ she mumbled. ‘Want something to drink…’ She frowned and wriggled her toes against the chill of the old, grey carpet. Her hair was in her face. Her voice was still thick and blurred by sleep.
‘Wait!’ I said, scrambling from the ruins of the narrow bed. ‘Stay here and I’ll fetch it for you.’
But it was too late. She had already reached the landing and was staggering blindly downstairs.
The kitchen was filling with early sunlight. It covered the floor and lapped at the legs of the big, scrubbed table. It licked a stripe on the dismal walls and pressed along the doors of the cupboards. A smell of onions, soap flakes and tea leaves. An empty casserole pot on the stove. Aprons hanging on metal hooks like the washed-out skins of butchered skivvies. Two a penny. Boned and peeled for pies and gravy.
Dorothy moved towards the fridge, her bare feet making little sucking sounds on the sticky, checker-board tiles. She looked so tall and elegant, with her spine erect and her black hair loose and her long legs shining in the pale light; and those wide shoulders with her broad hips, lending her the wasp-waisted grace of some lost Edwardian beauty. She clipped the back of a kitchen chair, gave a yelp and clutched an elbow. I think she was missing her spectacles.
‘Do you want some help?’ I whispered.
She turned in my direction and scowled. ‘Go away!’ she insisted, brushing at the air with her hand.
‘Shall I make coffee?’
‘Cold. I want something cold. I’m looking for orange juice.’
‘It’s in the fridge.’
‘I know that, stupid!’ she growled. She reached the fridge and pulled violently on the door, releasing a blast of freezing fog.
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