Otherhood

by William Sutcliffe

  The other thing that bothered him was the darkness, which was thicker and deeper than any darkness he had previously experienced. They were miles from the nearest streetlight, and the moon was the merest sliver in the sky, only fleetingly visible through the dense Welsh cloud. While trying and failing to get to sleep, he experimented by putting his hand in front of his face, and was disquieted to realise that only when his hand was almost touching his nose did it become visible. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.

  The following day, not long after breakfast, which started so late and went on so long it also turned out to be lunch, Erin went out to buy supplies for dinner. As the sound of the car receded, Christine gave Daniel the look he’d been waiting for. She ripped off her jumper and T-shirt, tossed them at his feet and ran upstairs. Daniel followed and found her naked in bed. It had been two years since he’d last seen her, eight years since they’d last slept together, but he slipped into her as you would into an old pair of jeans. The mattress squeaked, the bed frame groaned, the floorboards creaked and the headboard whacked out an insistent beat on the wall, but the only living things for miles around were sheep. There was no reason to be quiet. The noisier it became, the louder they made it. By the end, it sounded more like rodeo than lovemaking.

  Sweaty and spent, it was a while before either of them spoke.

  ‘Still feel like the ugliest girl in the playground?’ Daniel said, eventually.

  ‘Maybe not quite so badly.’

  That afternoon, the three of them went for a long walk. Erin was in a strange mood, alternately hyperactive and strangely quiet. It was clear she sensed what had happened while she was out. In the cold air and high winds, the fug of desire hanging over the three of them seemed to dissipate, and a strange, uncharacteristic cordiality settled over the rest of the day. Everyone was friendly, the conversation never flagged or became dull, but the spark of excitement between the three of them had suddenly gone.

  He told them about his dislike of the intense darkness, and about his hand experiment in the middle of the night, thinking they would find this hilarious, but they both gave a muted response. ‘You can’t tell if your eyes are open or shut!’ he complained. They laughed, but didn’t launch into the tirade of affectionate mockery he had been expecting, or wrestle him to the ground as they might have done the previous day. Erin didn’t even appear to be listening.

  The same atmosphere prevailed through dinner: an improvised hodge-podge of boiled artichokes, mashed potato, roast asparagus and a baked fish. By midnight, they were all in bed, relatively sober, Daniel plagued again by the same biological taunt, though this time it didn’t keep him awake. Rather, he soon found himself in an intense erotic dream, in which Erin was in that very bed with him, below the covers, sucking him.

  He had dreamt about sleeping with Erin before, many times, but never once of this act, and never with such vivid intensity. As the dream became more arousing, his eyes opened. Or at least he thought they opened, but for a moment it was hard to tell, because no light entered his eyes, and because the physical sensation of his dream continued. This meant he had to be still asleep, but he could feel his eyelids blinking, leading him, with a few seconds’ befuddled calculation, to the conclusion that he could only be awake. And yet he still felt a remarkably realistic sensation of fellatio.

  The information his body was receiving from his various senses, at this instant, simply didn’t add up. He seemed to be awake, but he was also still dreaming. He touched his face, which gave him the sensation of fingers on his face. Real fingers, awake fingers, on an awake face.

  He recalculated. There was only one configuration of events that now made sense: he was awake, and someone was sucking his penis. He reached out and confirmed the presence of another body in his bed. This new information gave him an instant, disbelieving thrill, twinned with the pang of smug relief you get on solving a crossword clue.

  He reached down under the covers, and felt the stubble of Christine’s head. Disappointment is not a sensation compatible with skilled fellatio, but for a fraction of an instant, Daniel felt the tiniest pang of it at the difference between reality and his dream.

  Feeling the touch of his hand on her head, Christine rose up from under the covers and slid Daniel into her. She kissed him swiftly on the lips, a waft of penisy breath filling his nostrils, and still he couldn’t see her face.

  ‘You had a hard-on when I came in, you dirty man,’ she whispered into his ear.

  ‘What time is it?’ he said.

  ‘Two,’ said Christine. ‘But a woman has needs.’

  ‘How do I know it’s you?’ he muttered.

  ‘Maybe it isn’t,’ she said, raising herself up, beginning to push against him in an exquisite, slow rhythm.

  On his histrionically squeaky bed, they could barely move without a cacophony of howling joinery filling the room, an impediment which added a titillating edge of masochistic self-denial as they ever so slowly pushed one another on and held one another back, inching towards two clench-mouthed, vein-busting orgasms.

  The following morning, they woke to find Erin gone.

  For a week, Erin wouldn’t return Daniel’s phone calls, nor did she answer her door, until one evening when he rang her doorbell for half an hour and she eventually opened, greeting him with a face screwed tight in rage and hatred.

  ‘I just want to say two things,’ said Daniel, ‘then you can slam the door in my face. One: I apologise, for being a lecherous, insensitive idiot. And two: I love you. I’ve loved you for years, and I’ve always been too scared to say it, because I couldn’t face the idea that it might destroy our friendship, which is the deepest and closest friendship I’ve ever had. But now it seems like you hate me anyway, so there’s nothing to lose, and I can finally say it. I love you.’

  Erin didn’t react. The only sign that she had heard him came when her arm rose to touch the wall, as if she needed extra support to stop herself falling over. Silently, a tear squeezed itself out of her left eye and rolled down her cheek.

  Daniel reached out and wiped it away with the back of his index finger. Without thinking about it, or knowing why, he lifted the finger to his mouth and licked it, savouring the sharp tang of her salt on his tongue. After all these years, this tear was his first taste of her.

  The instant they touched, it seemed miraculous, preposterous, that they had avoided it until now. It was a long night. They talked and fucked, fucked and talked, until everything ached. They agreed that this was it, for ever.

  Their night together didn’t feel like the start of a relationship. There were no doubts, hesitations, obstacles, niggles or qualms. They already knew each other like a married couple. They had both waited years for this love to be consummated, and the act felt more like a conclusion than a beginning. Only now could they acknowledge to themselves, and to one another, how long they had been holding back, how they had both yearned for this simultaneously yet secretly, for year after year, the same desire hanging unexpressed but unignorable in the air between them.

  Suddenly, their years of chaste, platonic friendship seemed like one long tease, like a ludicrously prolonged act of foreplay. They couldn’t decide now whether to relish or regret this delay, whether to laugh or cry or just fuck and fuck again.

  The future, their life together, suddenly shone with clarity and hope. They talked, half-jokingly, about whether they should have two, three or four children, and where they would spend their retirement. Erin, at four in the morning, declared that she couldn’t possibly make such a big commitment without giving Daniel a thorough medical, which turned out to be more sex, after which she told him she had memorised the positions of every mole and scar on his body. If he died in a plane crash, she’d be able to identify his body from one limb. She told him that the only thing she hadn’t already loved about him, through the years of their friendship, was his body, because she hadn’t really seen it. Now she loved that, too. Daniel told Erin that her body was the first thing he’
d noticed about her, after her hair. Everything else had come later.

  You could not ask for more from life than this, and they, at last, had found it, in one another.

  ‘Every other woman I’ve ever been with was Milton Keynes,’ said Daniel. ‘You’re my Venice.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve had one or two Birminghams.’

  ‘What about Christine?’

  ‘She’s Beirut.’

  Erin laughed, then rolled on to her side and fixed Daniel with an intent stare. ‘She told me it wasn’t your fault. She said she didn’t really give you a choice.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I told her that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.’

  ‘Really. What did she say?’

  ‘She said I don’t know shit about men.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Daniel, kissing her on the lips.

  ‘The day after you, she had the bloke who came to fix her mum and dad’s boiler.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘In the garage. Her parents hadn’t even gone out.’

  ‘She’s quite something.’

  ‘She is,’ said Erin. ‘Why did you do it? If you really do love me, how could you do that with her?’

  ‘Because I thought I couldn’t have you.’

  Erin stared at Daniel, her eyes wide and unblinking. ‘Wow,’ she said, with a shake of the head.

  ‘What?’

  ’That’s the worst reason for having sex with someone I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘It’s just an amazing piece of logic.’

  ‘Maybe it only makes sense if you’re a man.’

  ‘Maybe it only makes sense if you’re you.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Erin stroked Daniel’s cheek with the back of her index finger. ‘If you ever cheat on me, I’ll cut your balls off,’ she whispered.

  ‘I love you, too,’ said Daniel, with a kiss.

  ‘This one first,’ she said, giving his left testicle a gentle squeeze, ‘then this one.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ he said, wondering if it was too early in their relationship to let her know that having his balls touched made him feel nauseous. He rose up on his elbows and rolled on top of her, releasing himself from her grip. ‘I haven’t given you your medical yet,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m too tired. I have to be at work in three hours.’

  ‘It seems a shame to stop, though.’

  Spent and sore, they did, eventually, fall asleep. Despite stumbling through their day’s work on two hours’ rest, they barely managed any more sleep the following night. It was a month before they spent the night apart. For a year, they never argued. But after three years, when Erin decided it was time to start a family, and Daniel resisted, the long prologue of friendship began to seem, for the first time, like a hindrance. They couldn’t lie to one another. And Erin knew she couldn’t just wait for Daniel to change his mind, because in all the years she’d known him, he never seemed to change his mind about anything.

  Erin always remembered that he had promised her children on the first night they spent together. She told him she’d meant it when she asked, and she had taken him at his word when he answered. He repeatedly swore that he did want children, but not yet.

  Erin couldn’t trust Daniel’s ‘not yet’. She knew he put off difficult decisions until they went away. She sensed that in his heart he didn’t want to be a father and, if this was true, he had betrayed her. They should have simply remained friends. Their years together had been a waste. She had thrown away the most important time of her life on a man who would never give her what she most wanted. Having children, she felt, was the ultimate purpose behind everything. If she never became a mother, her existence on earth would amount to nothing. Her later life would be lonely, empty and pointless.

  By the time she sent him away to make up his mind, she had lost patience with him. She loved him, but she was so angry with him for his prevarication and (as she saw it) his huge lie at the start of their relationship that she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to pick up the love they seemed to have for one another and hurl it on the floor to see if it smashed. If she succeeded in breaking it, she would be free to start again with another man, a potential father.

  Carol and Matt

  I can read you like a magazine

  It was the biggest meeting of the week. All the big BALLS! players were there. Matt, as ever, was at the top of the table, sitting at the editor’s right hand.

  They were discussing the June issue. The favoured idea for a cover story had been put forward by an ambitious young pup on work experience, who had bypassed Matt and emailed his suggestion straight to Daren, the editor. This breach of etiquette might have got Pup into trouble had Daren (who had taken one ‘r’ out of his name by deed poll) not loved every word of it. The idea was written at the top of the conference room whiteboard, in huge capitals: THE SUN CREAM CHALLENGE – SHOULD TITS BE SHINY?

  Pup, who would normally have considered himself lucky just to be bringing cups of tea to a meeting of this importance, had been given a special seat at the bottom of the table, in which he squirmed with pride and glee. The look he had given the other work-experience kid, at the moment when sub-Pup had been forced to ask promoted Pup if he wanted tea or coffee, had been priceless. Never before in the history of human communication had the words ‘tea, extra milky, three sugars’ been pronounced with such overtones of commanding superiority and self-satisfaction.

  The topic under debate was whether the shininess idea of the original proposal was the one they should pursue, perhaps with a reporter dressed as a cricket umpire measuring the reflectivity of various differently smeared breasts using a light meter, or whether they should rethink it as a TV advert spoof taste-test, with someone sent to taste the array of breasts, and write it up Gonzo/Loaded style.

  Pup was hanging on every word of the debate, too overwhelmed to speak, visibly quaking with the agony of watching his precious idea being roughly tossed around with scant regard for its integrity or genius. Whenever the taste-test angle appeared to be winning out over shininess, Pup’s face turned faintly green with the sheer physical pain of seeing his loved one fighting for survival.

  Uncharacteristically, Matt found himself unable to care either way. It was his job to have a strong opinion on matters like this, and usually he would have been leading the discussion, stamping his authority on the meeting and on the magazine. In this particular debate, it was more important than ever that he spoke up, in order to eradicate the lingering slight of having been bypassed on the key email. It was obvious that he ought to have been pushing for the taste-test angle, ideally taking it in a new direction in order to send Pup back down to where he belonged and to assert some personal ownership of the idea, from which everyone round the table knew he had been initially excluded. But, as yet, he had not spoken a single word on the subject. As the debate stalled, the table divided more or less equally between the two options, Daren turned to him.

  ‘You’re very quiet today,’ said Daren.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Shininess or taste-test, Matt. Come on, get with it.’

  ‘Mmm. Not sure.’

  ‘Not sure?’

  ‘I mean, I’m not sure I go for the whole idea.’

  ‘What, the Sun Cream Challenge?’

  Pup, at the bottom of the table, went white. For a moment, it looked as if he might faint.

  ‘It doesn’t do it for me.’

  ‘Matt, the Sun Cream Challenge is a winner. That’s not even up for discussion.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK? Don’t you even care?’

  ‘I’ve said what I think. I don’t like it. But if you all love it –’

  ‘Why? Are you just down on it because Scott didn’t go to you first? Because I’ve told him about that, and he’s going to send you an apology. It was a simp
le mistake, and I’ve told him how things work, and he knows exactly what to do from now on. He knows you’re the man. Don’t you, Scotty?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Pup. ‘One hundred per cent. And I’m really sorry. I mean, I didn’t know. No one told me. It was a mistake. No one told me.’

  ‘Calm down, Scott,’ said Daren. Pup was hyperventilating, on the brink of tears. ‘Go and get a drink of water.’

  ‘OK.’

  Pup stood up, with some difficulty, and staggered out of the room.

  ‘He’s a kid,’ said Daren. ‘You’re bigger than this.’

  ‘It’s not the email,’ said Matt. ‘It’s the idea. I just don’t like it. But if you’re committed to it –’

  ‘WHY? How can you not like it? It’s a winner.’

  ‘I just . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘. . . think maybe it’s a bit . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What? You think it’s a bit what?’

  ‘Well . . . degrading.’

  A long silence settled over the conference table.

  ‘To who?’ said Daren, eventually.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ said Daren, who clearly did. He was making Matt say it, forcing him to bask in his shame.

  ‘Women.’

  ‘Degrading to women?’ said Daren.

  ‘Just a bit.’

  It was as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. The lights gave the impression of dimming slightly.

  Pup walked back in, his trousers faintly speckled with urinal splash-back. Sensing the atmosphere, fearing that he was the cause of it, he turned and fled, slamming the door behind him.

  ‘OK, take five, everyone,’ said Daren. ‘Matt, my office. Now.’

  Daren strode out. Matt followed, not catching anyone’s eye as he left the room.