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Change Partners

Page 7

by Cathryn Cooper


  Still she had not been able to see the woman’s face but, even so, each person has individual traits, familiar characteristics by which they are and forever will be known.

  Perhaps it is the way a woman holds her body or holds one leg against the other in a clichéd pose she might once have seen in Vogue. Perhaps it’s the angle of a toe in relation to its foot. The slimness of an ankle, the dimple of a knee - whatever. Mariana could not discern exactly what it was that was so familiar about this woman. But she had paused as she watched, her face impassive as a hive of confused thoughts had buzzed in her head. She had been convinced that the woman was known to her.

  Impassive though her expression had been, Mariana’s heart had thudded against her ribs. Even now as she walked through an English park all those years later, just thinking about that time brought back the echoes of that thumping heart.

  It had been the dress the woman was wearing that had been the trigger to knowing. The slim shift of black crepe studded with jet had been new.

  Even so, she had not been able to bring herself to tell her friends the woman’s identity. That was for her to know. That was the pain for her to carry. Much water had flowed beneath many bridges since then, yet still her face flushed when she thought about it.

  Groaning as the man’s fingers probed her sex, the woman had thrown back her arm and a gold bracelet had flashed in the moonlight.

  The bracelet had been enough to send Mariana’s heart racing more quickly. She knew that bracelet too well and thought she had known the woman to whom it belonged.

  Curiosity had made her throat dry. Her breathing had quickened and become almost painful as it rasped over the dryness of her tongue and her throat.

  She managed to swallow as she focused her eyes on the woman who lay beneath the man. She immediately recognised the features.

  Although her eyes were closed and her mouth had hung open in the manner of someone who has totally taken leave of their senses, her identity was confirmed.

  Heart beating like a drum, Mariana had hung there, eyes wide with amazement. The coldness of realisation had mixed with the heat of untried adolescent sexuality. Down below, in the light of the moon, surrounded by the lush greenness of a Turkish balcony, her mother was having sex with another man.

  Of course, she could have run screaming into the house, shouting at the top of her voice that her mother’s knickers were around her ankles and Uncle Ahmed was lying in between her thighs.

  She could have rushed crying to her father, eyes and nose running as she tried to blurt out the details of what she had seen.

  But she did not do those things. Instead, she watched, her eyes wide, her knuckles whiter than the stone balustrade she was gripping so tightly.

  And inside, something had stirred. Something she had not understood, and yet had enjoyed. Feathery light tingles of something resembling butterflies seemed to flutter between her legs and float upwards into her belly.

  There was a stirring between her legs, a more persistent fluttering as though something had just hatched out and was about to spread its wings. The strange thing was that no matter how much that presence might try, it would never truly leave her body.

  She never questioned how she had known that. She just had. One thing she was sure of was that from that day on everything in her life would never be the same again.

  As she plodded the dented tarmac of the path through the park, Mariana contemplated how it had been after that.

  She remembered it being hard to be civil to her mother.

  Incivility had led to outright rebellion, and not just that. That other something that had been aroused besides the contempt for her mother was also becoming more and more demanding.

  After her mother had complained about her behaviour, her father had taken her into his study and given her a lecture about being civil to one’s elders.

  She had stared at him, her jaw firmly clenched, wanting to tell him exactly what she had seen and not knowing where to begin. Her father’s blue eyes had twinkled once the dressing down was over. He’d hugged her. She’d hugged him back as tightly as she could. There had been so much she had wanted to say, and so much she couldn’t. But the cold fingers of shock that had first gripped her heart had changed to fear. What would be gained by her father knowing? He might go away and leave her entirely with her mother and Ahmed. And how could she face them? How could she talk to them and laugh and joke like they used to. Living with them would be like living at half volume.

  No, she had decided and, with the naive logic of the young, she had bitten her lip and hugged her father that much harder.

  ‘Steady on,’ he had said, as her hands had clutched at his trousers. She remembered the embarrassed look on his face as he pushed her away, the slight flush that had come to his cheeks and a certain furtiveness to his eyes. ‘Steady on, girl. Save that for all the young men that are going to come after you. They’ll all want your love and if you give it all to me, you’ll have none left for them.’

  ‘I don’t want them!’ She had tried to hug him closer, her hands gripping his buttocks, but he had pushed her away with more force than before so that she fell back onto the floor. Tears had stung her eyes. All the love she had for her father had been as bruised as her body - more so perhaps.

  His jaw had become more solid, eyes more stem, lips set in one even line. ‘Oh yes you will,’ he had stated, and then he turned away.

  She had lied to her changing-room friends about the trip into Istanbul. Her father had not been with them. Her mother and Ahmed had laughed a lot together and she had felt like some piece of unnecessary baggage they would rather have left behind.

  All the same, the strange fluttering that had been ignited on the night she had seen them having sex beneath the balcony was still with her. Only it wasn’t so much a fluttering now, but a bigger, more solid presence. It was like comparing what had been a mere butterfly to an eagle.

  On the trip into Istanbul that presence began to assert itself as she watched her vivacious, blonde mother and the darkly romantic Turk.

  Their hands kept touching, their hips bumping as if neither of them could contemplate being separate human beings.

  Mariana had trailed on behind, her eyes following each furtive movement, each sexual signal.

  Ahmed had long brown fingers that seemed as dextrous as spiders’ legs. Mariana’s gaze had followed them as they curled over the soft rise of her mother’s behind, up over her waist and her ribs so that they rested beneath the curve of her bosom.

  They had sat at a table outside a whitewashed cafe and, as Ahmed and her mother drank thick Turkish coffee, she had sipped at sherbet, her eyes studying them from under the flaxen fringe that fell over her eyebrows.

  Again she had followed the progress of Ahmed’s fingers. They had lain almost immobile in her mother’s lap, the long fingers pointing down between the deep valley between her thighs.

  As she looked, she heard Ahmed whispering to her mother.

  ‘What are you looking at, Mariana darling?’

  Her mother’s high-pitched voice had made her start and look up, leaving the straw she had been sucking twirling in the midst of her drink.

  She had flushed and mumbled a muted ‘nothing’. She had blinked, glanced at them, and seen them exchange looks that told her they did not believe what she had said.

  Ahmed made a comment about it being time she had a man of her own.

  Her mother protested that she was too young. ‘She’s only sixteen.’

  ‘Old enough - especially in Turkey,’ Ahmed remarked. Mariana did not hear what he whispered to her mother.

  She only watched, hands clasped tightly around her drink, eyes wide and apprehensive.

  Her mother tried to argue, but Ahmed gave her no chance to utter more than one word at a time. At last, her mother - poor, weak sou
l- seemed genuinely swayed by the logic Ahmed presented to her.

  It was a day or two later that she had accompanied her mother to Ahmed’s house.

  The ‘house wasn’t his matrimonial home where he lived with his family in the crowded heart of the city. This house was white and square, its base built on the yellow dust of the earth, its top half framed by the blue of the sky. Yellow dust trailed behind their car as they approached it; like a veil, Mariana had thought to herself, or a curtain that hides this side of Ahmed’s life from the other.

  They entered a hall with a high ceiling and floors of terracotta red.

  From the outside the house appeared to be a simple square, but its heart was cut out. In the middle was a courtyard.

  Sunlight filtered through damask blinds and broad-leafed plants. A fountain played in the middle of the courtyard beyond arched doorways in walls of blue tiles.

  Smiling, Ahmed approached from a set of steps that curved from one side of the room.

  ‘Welcome!’

  His voice echoed around the blue, grey and green of the place. It was the only sound except for their breathing and that of the fan which disturbed the air and their hair.

  ‘I hope you are well.’ His teeth flashed white against the sleek brown of his face and Mariana thought how handsome he was. The feeling inside her that had started so small was now taking over her body, responding to his dark eyes, his captivating smile.

  In that one moment she became a woman. In that one moment she also became jealous that this man lad lain with her mother before lying with her.

  There was a sudden electric charge in the air. All three of them had stood immobile, holding their breath for the next thing to happen, the next word to be said. But something did happen and something was said. Mariana remembered it well - too well. Word for word, she remembered what her mother had said next.

  ‘It’s so hot out there. I’m quite faint. Do you mind if I lie down out on the terrace. I’ve brought a book with me’.

  A book. She always brought a book, always had a world to escape into. In a book, she was forever young, forever sexy, and always the heroine.

  ‘Perhaps you could take my daughter over the house. She likes old buildings.’ There had been a distinct nervousness in her voice. Her eyes had flitted onto her daughter then quickly away.

  Her footsteps had echoed off the cool walls, the blue tiles, the green blinds, the redness of the terracotta floor.

  Mariana had not protested. She had looked boldly into Ahmed’s eyes, so boldly that his seemed to light with excited fire.

  Vague impressions from memory came back to her as the shadow of a plane tree fell across her path. Its shadow was solid, black as she made her way through the park. She shivered and wrapped her woollen jacket back round her again. The sun was less warm now and the clouds were getting darker.

  She shivered again, but not so much because of the fading sunlight, but because of those things she remembered.

  Ahmed had taken hold of her hand. She had gasped at the coolness of his fingers, the softness of his palms. A sweet ache came into being below her belly.

  ‘Are you going to seduce me?’ she asked him.

  His eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘Seduce you? My dear girl, do you know what that word means?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. It’s what you did to mummy out on the terrace. You seduced her.’

  Ahmed looked at her in amazement, then frowned. ‘You saw us? Did you tell your father?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘But I thought you were daddy’s little girl. I thought you told him everything.’

  ‘My mother said so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps. But you haven’t answered my question. Are you going to seduce me?’

  He paused. ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She trembled.

  Still holding her hand, he came close to her. He touched her face with his free hand, the coolness of his fingers running over her cheek and leaving a fire in their wake. ‘It will be good for you. It is meant to happen.’

  That in itself would have been acceptable. That in itself would have been a tale to tell - if Mariana hadn’t found out the other thing. But the other thing would stay hidden. The other thing was something she did not like to repeat.

  ‘You are hot,’ he said to her when they at least reached the sleek coolness of the upstairs rooms. ‘You must have something cool to drink.’

  Mariana licked her lips and swallowed as she remembered the taste of raspberries and something else, something slightly bitter.

  ‘Drink it all up,’ he had said, and she had done so.

  A feeling of wellbeing had come over her. The room around her seemed less crisp. Bright colours became more muted, hard lines were softened. After that, her arms and her legs seemed suddenly lighter than they had been. He bade her lie down. She couldn’t recall the colour of the walls or the floor in the cool room. She only remembered that the bed was soft, the headboard behind her fashioned from dark wood. Grapes, vines, nuts and small birds with unseeing eyes rambled, tumbled and flew across the headboard. The carvings were slightly yellow in places where, perhaps, hands had rubbed or nonchalantly followed the form of the carving or the grain of the wood.

  The main thing she remembered was the rich ochre of the ceiling and the waft of air from the overhead fan. She also remembered the look in Ahmed’s eyes as he bent over her. His teeth looked like small pearls above the moistness of his tongue. He smiled.

  ‘Let me make you comfortable.’ His voice was as provocative and as irresistible as the sound of the waves kissing sand. ‘You are too hot. Let me make you cool.’

  She vaguely remembered trying to protest as her clothes were taken from her body. She tried to wriggle, but her hips merely undulated with a sensual slowness. Her voice did not obey her. Neither did her limbs. Only when she lay naked did she moan as her nipples hardened and her flesh dimpled beneath the coolness of the overhead fan. Suddenly, she had been grateful for his consideration.

  Silent and unmoving, she had watched everything Ahmed had done. She had taken in the details as a bystander might watch an accident occur, or a crime happen. Such things seem to take place in the smallest of moments, so minute a time frame that the bystander can make no movement. Or at least, that’s how it seems. The moment itself drags by in slow motion and each detail is remembered as if it took forever.

  As she walked through the park all those years later, she found it all so easy to recall.

  His lips had kissed her mouth and his tongue slid between her teeth. The smell and taste of him gave her pleasure. The silk of his shirt caressed her breasts before his hands did, before his fingers tapped, then squeezed at her nipples.

  They’re getting harder, she had thought to herself. She could feel them responding to him.

  Above her the fan had whirred and turned. Below her breasts, his head bobbed around her belly. A wet warmth had circled her navel. What was he doing there? she had asked herself.

  Strong, yet delicate, his tongue had dipped gently into her navel as though this small, fleshy cul-de-sac was something far more feminine, far more virgin than anything else on her body.

  Feelings never before experienced had swept over her.

  Even as she walked through the park now, she remembered how exciting those feelings had been. There never is a time like the first time. Never is a moment so indelible in the mind. But she also remembered indignation that something precious was being stolen from her without her permission - almost without her taking any starring role in it.

  Suddenly, despite the cool air, her cheeks burned and her eyes turned a more chill blue than they usually were.

  In the park, two teenagers were strolling along the path in front of her. They were giggling, c
uddling, the boy’s hand slipping onto the girl’s bottom, his fingers squeezing. The girl did the same to him.

  Later, thought Mariana, they would do more. Within the park they would find a grassy mound among a clutch of shrubbery and there they would make love. It might be for the first time, or it might not. But at least the girl was likely to be given a choice whether to respond or not whether to push him away or not. Mariana had not had a choice.

  Ahmed’s dark eyes had smouldered with passion as he had looked at her over the flatness of her belly. His hands had pushed her legs apart. She had been too weak to protest. The drink he had given her had done its job.

  ‘You liked that, didn’t you, little girl. You truly liked that. I can tell because you are wet.’

  She had tried to say something. Only a whimper came out.

  He had laughed. ‘You do not believe me? Then I will show you.’

  Long, artistic fingers slid through her hidden flesh. She trembled at their touch and small cries fled her throat like a clutch of startled birds.

  Tingling, tantalising electricity gathered in one particular spot as his finger dipped into her. The sensation around where he entered was not unpleasant. She had found herself wanting his finger to go in further. She had found herself wanting this man to do whatever he wanted.

  ‘See?’ He had held his finger up before her face. It glistened with her own juices.

  The story she had told Crystal and Josie was partly true.

  He did say that he was taking her virginity and that she would remember him all her life. She had remembered him. She had adored him.

  ‘I will show you the weapon that will take your virginity,’ he had said. He had knelt between her legs, unzipped his pristine trousers and released his member.

  Wide-eyed, she had gazed at it. She saw it move as if it were trembling at what it was about to do. Thick veins stood proud of the dark tan flesh. She could almost feel its heat, wanted to reach out and touch it, but her arms felt like lead. She had then mewed with pleasure as its hot tip had divided her sexual lips.

 

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