The Man Who Travelled on Motorways

by Trevor Hoyle

  ‘Diminutive.’

  ‘We make an ideal couple.’

  ‘You must get on well together.’

  ‘We would, if he didn’t have a craze on Kim Novak.’

  Why she should deem it necessary to trot out this useless piece of information Gorsey Dene couldn’t fathom.

  ‘And tonight, of course, he’s away.’

  Tiny Pat nodded, her protruding eyes looking up at him. Swollen with lust no doubt, Gorsey Dene surmised. She was a hot little potato who, unlike most women, would not be ashamed of her large breasts. They were sexual weapons in the conquest of the male member. Some women hated carrying them around – as a traveller who finds his freedom hampered by encumbering suitcases. The movement of her sweater indicated their rise and fall. Gorsey Dene smiled at them conspiratorially.

  ‘But let’s go to the party first,’ said Tiny Pat. ‘We’ll buy a bottle of Scotch and share it. You do have transport?’

  ‘Of a sort,’ Gorsey Dene said. ‘It’s a van.’ He looked at her. ‘With a bed in the back.’ He then said something funny and they both laughed. She had small teeth, white, sharp, and the interior of her mouth was a red maw.

  The landlord put a ragged towel over the pumps and shouted into the crowd. Alan and a gang of them bellowed in chorus, silly and drunk with beer and laughter. Gorsey Dene smiled secretively at Tiny Pat; he had wicked eyes.

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With children?’

  Hesitation. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘My husband is away.’

  ‘You said.’

  They went to a party in one of the six tower blocks.

  The walls were made of compressed cardboard and the doors and window-frames were green and unseasoned. The party was a blur to Gorsey Dene and with the raw whisky became a sickly merry-go-round of grey faces in which eyes burned fiercely as with fever. Smiles grew lop-sided, laughter more shrill; pandemonium reigned. A friend of Jay’s faced him in the hall and hissed in his face, adding that she had always known him to be a cheat, a weakling and a charlatan. Gorsey Dene regarded her with his drunken blind eye, imperious of and almost oblivious to her presence. Why should this friend of Jay’s concern herself with affairs which did not concern her? Jay had gone, departed, out of harm’s way, and was none the worse off for not knowing of his nefarious activities; he had to play the field while he could, before his faculties broke into little pieces and dropped into hell.

  Tiny Pat dragged him by the armpit and in the instant that her fingers touched him he had a clear, sharp vision of life: it was a labyrinth. His experiences coiled back in a series of dizzying spirals, curves and convolutions to childhood, to the golden magical past; and, incredibly, the entire structure culminated in his being alive Now. The past had no other purpose than this. He looked into the air and it appeared to be singing with the actuality of the moment – buzzing with molecules which this instant were alive, and even as he looked he knew that this aliveness in the air was in this place as far advanced along the path of time as anywhere in the universe. Here in this hallway! Alive and living now! His forehead was pressing against the frontier of all recorded history, against the furthest advanced point of the world’s civilisations. All the great men who had ever lived were jammed behind him, their lives of no more significance than that he was alive and now (it had all been for him). He looked about him and the fabric of all he saw creaked with disbelief and all but fell apart. And even as he watched and listened old molecules were dying and new molecules were being born and he was being pushed along with them on the peak of the crest of time, living a moment the world had never known before. Tiny Pat’s fingers were closing on his arm, a unique event in time and space since creation. What happened next would be unique too, and what happened after that, and after that, and that, and that, and that. And if he stood still it would be unique, and if he moved it would be unique, and if he laughed, cried, vomited, died, it would be unique too.

  Tiny Pat pulled him from the hallway into the living-room where bodies sprawled, abandoned by their owners, each in a frenzied haze of alcohol. She thrust him against the wall and pressed her pubic bone into his groin, which to Gorsey Dene seemed a distant seismographic pain on the far side of the planet. He was possessed by lust and his penis unfurled and rubbed its sensitive tip against the coarseness of his inner clothing, and as it hardened emitted dewdrops of semen. Heat and music and semi-gloom enveloped him. Could this, he wondered, be a moment of actual life? For it truly astonished him that each instant of existence was not a substitute for, not a facsimile of, some other instant of real existence, but the actuality itself. Why could he not be in a million places at once? His life, it seemed to him, was only a fictitious preparation for the real thing yet to come – which was why all the events of his past experience had about them the quality of myth. His life was a story, a narrative within the confines of book-covers, and he longed to step out from the pages into a world that was real and live and non-fictional; and more than this, he was depressed by the notion that being in one place at one time precluded the possibility of being anywhere else and doing anything other than what he was doing. A trillion permutations from which he could select only one. It was unjust; sickening and unfair. He had to be doing all things in all places all at once; anything less was unjust; sickening and unfair.

  Inside the bathroom he slammed shut the flimsy wooden door and shot the bolt. The floor was shiny-slippery with urine and footprints and they went down on it, incoherent and insensible with blood-red clawing madness, inner black space spinning behind their closed eyelids. He rammed his hand between her legs and she touched the hard lump in his trousers. ‘Jesus Fucking Christ,’ one of them said, and the other said, ‘Fuck Cunt Dick Me-Me-Me.’ Her head was up against the door at an unnatural angle; he was kneeling in piss-wet trousers inside her legs, his crutch aching to burst with the suffusion of blood. Her skirt went up and he smelled her. Then crashing on the door, hammering on the door, fists on the door … people trying to get in. Somehow they were standing, opening the door, walking out. Gorsey Dene jerked her into the living-room to the accompaniment of laughing jeers.

  ‘Hot for a hole and an end,’ Alan tittered.

  ‘Bastard mean bastard,’ hissed a friend of Jay’s.

  ‘Suckcuntwatdickmenow,’ Tiny Pat mumbled.

  Gorsey Dene fell backwards onto the divan with his legs open. He was fatigued and puking ill. Sweat on cold face. Tiny Pat rubbed herself on his knee, making greasy the place between her legs. She leaned forward, both palms pressed on the same spot, supporting herself. In a blank dream they went to the lift, into the lift, down in the lift, into the tingling night air, inside the vehicle, along the sodium-yellow-lit road in the direction she indicated.

  ‘You do have transport,’ gripping the edge of the seat, swaying.

  ‘Didn’t. I. Say. So.’

  ‘I fancied you a bit now.’

  ‘Yesss,’ his eyeballs rolling up into his head as each successive sodium-yellow light appeared, passed over, disappeared. An effort, it really was, to fix his eyes on the road ahead.

  ‘Husband away,’ Tiny Pat said, holding the seat.

  Gorsey Dene twisted his head to look at her. If he closed his eyes they would die. Was death unreal as life? If he closed his eyes would not die they would not, no: exchanging unreality for reality not be called death. In any case was same difference. They alive now but might as well be dead; if dead might be more alive than live. More live than alive. More life than life.

  ‘Attractive your eyes.’

  ‘Yesss.’

  ‘Husband travels alot.’

  ‘Small as you.’

  ‘Smaller’ – giggling, choking – ‘than me.’

  ‘I Deal Couple.’ The engine ran in his head. Light coming, light passing, light passed, light gone, light coming, light passing, light passed, light gone. Light gone light gone light gone light gone
lightgone lightgone lightgone. Gone.

  ‘Married you aren’t you?’ Holding the seat.

  ‘Yes.’ Light coming, light passing, light passed, light gone.

  ‘Two kids.’

  ‘Yes.’ Light coming.

  ‘Me one. Husband away.’

  He lit a cigarette and waited in a side street while she went to see all was quiet. At two o’clock there were few people about (there was no one). He began to shiver, till she appeared at the end of the alleyway and beckoned to him. Arm in arm, hips bumping, they crept through the backyard and into the house, stumbling up the steps. Inside the house it was warm and middle-class: Tiny Pat offered him a drink and staggered away, leaving Gorsey Dene to stare down at his hands. He smoked another cigarette, went upstairs, came upon her emerging from the bathroom in an underskirt. She pointed to a door and he went into the bathroom. He came out of the bathroom and went through the door, a bedroom in which she was lying in bed. Without a thought about returning husbands and vicious attacks and kicks in the groin and breadknives in the belly he stood at the side of the bed and took off his clothes. The bed was frilly pink, as was the dressing-table coverlet, the carpet thick to his toes. Tiny Pat’s head, from out of the fluffy eiderdown, gasped when she saw his big stiff dick with its angry raw end. Then making him stand for a moment with it sticking out over the bed she pressed it down like a lever with her forefinger so that it recoiled upwards and reverberated before returning to its original hanging stiffness. He got in under the eiderdown and put his arms and legs round her chubby little body, the stiff hard thing sticking into her soft folded belly.

  ‘Lick My Tits, Lick My Tits,’ said Tiny Pat.

  As he did she brought her knees together, gently trapping his hard and weeping prick, then rotating them so that it was rubbed, pressured, squeezed, held and released until Gorsey Dene had to say:

  ‘Don’t. I will come.’

  Their wet gasping mouths worked at each other, slavering orifices with tongues and teeth. Tiny Pat felt his wet big thing protruding into her and – a surprise for Gorsey Dene – pushed him onto his back under the eider-down and went for it. In desperation (there is no other word) she sought him with her mouth, almost hurting him, and he had to appeal for gentleness and consideration. But her curly-hair head burrowed at him like a mole seeking refuge underground. With the pads of his feet he stroked her thighs, then hooked his toes between them and explored the slippery hairiness and hidden warm wetness. Her shut eyes squirmed and bulged with unexpected pleasure. She tried to speak but could not due to the heavy weight in her mouth; instead strange incomprehensible sounds of gluttenous appreciation gurgled in her throat and hummed in her nostrils. Gorsey Dene put the palms of his hands to her fatty breasts and pushed her away and she rose up spittle-hung and eyes threequarter lidded.

  Tiny Pat waited dull-gazed and stupor-ridden for the next move. The softly-furnished hushed bedroom waited too, with its pools of pink lamplight, quilted headboard, and velvet curtains brushing the deep carpet. Not for very long though, for Gorsey Dene was still rigid with alcohol and impatience. He stood astride her and she lay back looking up at his hairy flanks which joined forces at the pulpy bag and straining muscle, the end of it taut with blood and the barrel swollen with purple veins. By stretching to reach up she gripped the stem and hauled herself upright, caressing his inner thighs with her cheeks and pressing the length of it with her fingers into her hair.

  ‘Fuckcuntwatdickmenow,’ Tiny Pat whispered to his flesh.

  ‘How much, how much,’ Gorsey Dene crooned.

  ‘All, all, all,’ Tiny Pat said with a muted cat’s cry.

  ‘You want everything?’ Gorsey Dene said with mocking sternness.

  ‘Everything, all, everything, yes.’

  ‘Too much for one little girl.’

  ‘Fuck. Cunt. Twat. Shit. Shag. Dick Me. Dick Me. Dick Me. Now.’

  ‘Everything? All? Inside?’

  ‘Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease,’ as a single word.

  Gorsey Dene put her down on the covers, placed his knees on either side of her head and leaned forward on his elbows, looking down the tunnel thus formed to where the tip of the bulky hot thing was touching her lips. Like a good little girl with eyes shut tight she opened her mouth and swallowed him in. Held firm between tongue and palate, Gorsey Dene felt himself jerking with involuntary spasms and an ejeculation escaped his lips. It was difficult for Tiny Pat to contain him: she hung on with frequent moaning sighs. Then he swivelled, using it as a central pivot, and faced the other way, lying flat down on her to immerse his face between her legs and insert his tongue into the several folded layers, to flicker and dart in warm juicy recesses.

  Later he was to discover that his back was raked with scratches. This had occurred when he had mounted her in the usual position and emptied the product of his testes inside her. And those same scratches were to remain with him as they journeyed south, the four of them, putting out tractor fires and staying overnight between strange white sheets with the van parked and loaded outside. In the brash morning light (which he now fondly remembered) they had eaten breakfast whilst watching the reflection on the ceiling of the glinting coffee-pot, butter dish and domeshaped condiments. Rubber-soled waiters had sidled to and fro, bringing this, taking that. Fortunately for Gorsey Dene the scratches were healed before he had to bare his body to the foreign sun; Tiny Pat’s handiwork remained his secret alone, for having left her crumpled up beneath the covers semi-comatose he had hastened away, never to return. Via the person referred to as a friend of Jay’s it was conceivable that she might have received word of the incident, but rising up now from his loins, mouth stickily compressed and throat working, she showed no signs of jealousy nor gave any hint that anything was amiss. Besides, what had she been up to in another country? Photographers were everywhere, and not to be trusted; dancers too were undependable and should be watched with a stern, unrelenting eye.

  They decided to abandon the plan to find an hotel for the night and set off once again on the interminable drive. The growth, Gorsey Dene became aware, was blossoming: it probably encompassed a goodly portion of the left-hand side of his face by now.

  Jay flounced her arms and lit cigarettes. The dark whining car filled the silence, until Gorsey Dene said:

  ‘What happened between you two?’

  ‘Which two?’

  ‘You and him.’

  ‘Me and the photographer?’

  ‘You and Rhet Karachi.’

  ‘As you were here the entire time I fail to see how anything could have happened.’

  ‘Not the entire time,’ Gorsey Dene corrected her. ‘I got out at one point leaving the two of you alone. Lots might have happened – could have happened – and probably did.’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ said Jay in a voice thin with impatience. ‘He jabbered on about his experiences, that’s all.’

  ‘His so-called experiences.’

  ‘Don’t you believe anything anybody says?’

  ‘No –’ Gorsey Dene said, and hesitated. He wanted to say more but what was there to say? He didn’t believe anything anybody said.

  Jay suddenly emitted a snort of laughter. ‘He did tell me one amusing anecdote. You know the girl he was after, in the hotel, at the show, and finally at the dance? Well –’

  ‘I remember very clearly,’ Gorsey Dene said.

  ‘Well apparently he eavesdropped – with a friend – on the girl and the bloke she was with. They were in the corridor—’

  ‘The girl and the bloke?’

  ‘No, listen: Rhet Karachi and his friend. They were in the corridor listening. It was a scream. They could hear them talking but couldn’t tell what was being said because of the traffic—’

  ‘Traffic?’

  ‘Yes, traffic. In the road outside. Great thundering lorries giving off clouds of black smoke. And the record-player was on too, which didn’t help matters.’

  ‘So what was so screamingly funny if they couldn’t hear an
ything?’

  ‘Because, if you’ll just listen, they knew that this bloke was under the impression that she was with him—’

  ‘Wasn’t she with him?’

  ‘Of course she was with him; I meant under the impression that they were alone and that no one else was in the running.’

  ‘Was someone else in the running?’

  ‘Rhet Karachi!’

  ‘And his friend?’

  ‘No, just Rhet Karachi. But this bloke didn’t know that. He didn’t even know they were in the corridor laughing.’

  ‘How did they know?’

  ‘How did they know what?’

  ‘How did they know that this bloke didn’t know they were in the corridor laughing? If they were laughing he might have heard them.’

  ‘He couldn’t have.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They were laughing soundlessly.’

  ‘Laughing soundlessly?’ Gorsey Dene said with a look askance. ‘How can anyone laugh soundlessly? If you’re laughing you’re laughing.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Jay said with a deprecatory shake of her head. ‘It is possible. With kind of short giggles and bursting gasps. Wheezing rather than laughing, from the chest.’

  ‘Anyway, go on,’ Gorsey Dene said.

  ‘Well, the real laugh is yet to come.’ Jay broke off to snort. ‘While this bloke was distracted by something-or-other—’

  ‘Probably the lorries.’

  ‘Possibly. Or maybe the record. While distracted, she snuck out—’

  Gorsey Dene utttered a brief, sharp, one-note laugh. ‘Snuck? You mean sneaked.’

  ‘That’s the word he used.’

  ‘He would, the pimply Pakistani transatlantic twat.’

  ‘ – snuck out and came into the corridor where Rhet Karachi and his friend were leaning against the wall fighting for breath. This guy didn’t know: he was under the impression she was still in there with him – you know? And all the time – well, part of the time—’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ Gorsey Dene said. ‘Do you mean to tell me that this bloke didn’t know she had sneaked out?’