by Guy N Smith
Her hips were moving seductively in time with the rhythm; his rhythm. His strumming fingers were making her do things just as they had years ago, dominating her. She stayed in that same place just below the stage, eyes fixed on him. Hallo, Carl, I'm back. Remember me? Remember all the things we used to do together? You're turning me on again. A suggestive jerk of her hips like she was on the verge of an orgasm. I haven't changed any Carl, not one little bit. Wouldn't you like me again, just once, for old times' sake? Of course you would.
He swallowed. ‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’. It didn't come out like that though. His fingers, his voice, his backing had other ideas.
‘Roll me home, deep waters,’
‘Never more will I ever roam.’
Her eyes were closed, her features suddenly bathed in shadow. Responding, shuddering.
‘Take me back, deep waters,’
‘To the old ones that I left at home.’
There were just the two of them, everybody else had gone, faded into the shadows. Sam didn't exist; just himself and Marian, how it used to be. The way it should be.
He flicked a switch and his tapes took over, carried on as they always did during his ‘break’. Nobody seemed to notice, if there was anybody else there besides himself and Marian Preece. Going to her, her body slipping against his with a familiarity that the years had not dulled, her soft lips brushing against his. Moving together, a kind of musical copulation.
‘Never more will I ever roam.’
He followed her, willing to go where she led, not questioning. Nothing had changed. If there had been intervening years they had been a fantasy, like going to sleep and dreaming, waking up and carrying on where you left off.
Outside. Cool sweet night air fragrant with cherry blossom. The smell of pines. They were still here, a whole wood full of them, tall giants that defied time and the efforts of Man to destroy them. In his dreams they had been felled, the land quarried and disfigured. But everything was all right now and his nightmares had faded into oblivion.
Through the churchyard, a brief fragrance of cut flowers on the graves; so temporary. Tomorrow they would wither and die whilst everything else around them lived.
The tall woods, pine needles a luxurious carpet beneath their feet, low fir branches stroking the lovers affectionately. Welcome home.
‘Never more will I ever roam.’
The trees seemed to echo the words, hang on to them. Suddenly the atmosphere was chilly, made him wish he'd brought a jacket with him. Just buckskins and that ridiculous Stetson; Midnight Cowboy. He laughed softly at his own joke.
Moonlight and shadows. He tried to make out Marian's features but they were bathed in darkness. It didn't matter, though, because he remembered every detail. That mole just below her left eye, her pert nose. Like Sam in a way. Who was Sam? Just a nymph in a dream that had vanished.
The Sucking Pit. He saw its shape, a patch of blackness that was blacker than its surroundings. Just the same as it always was, fringed by thick reeds, the outlying grass soft and squelchy so that you sank in above your shoes. Only tonight he was wearing calf-length pseudo leather cowboy boots. They weren't waterproof because he could feel the cold water beginning to saturate them.
‘Where are we going?’ A whisper that the woods took up. Where are we going? Going … going …
‘Home,’ she said, stopping and pulling him round to face her.
Now he saw her face for the first time. Different. More mature; no, ageing. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken and glowing brightly as though she had a fever. Perhaps it was the moonlight that silvered her hair. Slim, her long dress almost transparent so that her slender form was partially visible. He drew in his breath sharply; those breasts which he had kissed and fondled so often sagged with a repulsive shapelessness. Thighs and legs that had an emaciated look about them, twisted and wasting, giving her an ungainly stance.
‘Marian?’
It was her and yet it was not. The same smile but without the warmth, almost leering. Clutching at him.
‘Kiss me, Carl.’
His instinct was to back away, to shout. ‘You're not Marian, you've tricked me.’ But her lips found him first, smothered the words. Ice-cold, her breath stale. Her fingers clawed him, held him as her tongue forced its way into his mouth, her lifeless breasts squashing against him, her thighs pushing at him, gyrating in an attempt to arouse him.
He shuddered, made one feeble effort to push her away but she only held him tighter, working her body faster and faster against his own, her breath coming in stagnant gasps, her fingers feeling for him, caressing him so that flaccid flesh grew stiff and pulsing.
Wanting her now, desperate for her; it had been a trick of the moonlight, the coldness and stench coming from the nearby bog. She was young and beautiful, warm-blooded and desirable, her sweet scent heady and overpowering like wild woodland flowers.
Entwined they sank down on to the grass, tearing off their clothes with the eagerness of youth, trembling bodies pressed close together. A maelstrom of lovemaking, convulsing together, crying out aloud for each other.
And afterwards they just lay there in each other's arms, too tired to move, to go wherever they were supposed to be going. Not caring, listening to the soughing of a summer breeze whispering through the trees around them.
‘Take me back, deep waters,’
‘To the old ones that I left at home.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Carl's gone!’ Samantha found Chris and Pamela in a corner of the crowded hall. Her face was white with consternation, and she had to shout to make herself heard above the noise of the amplified tape recorder.
‘That's ridiculous.’ Latimer set his glass of shandy down on the floor beneath his chair. ‘He was on stage a few minutes ago. He's due for a break, he's probably at the bar.’
‘He isn't, I've looked. He's nowhere in the hall.’
‘Calm down. He could be in the gents. I'll take a look. Stop here with Pamela.’
He knew he would not find Carl Wickers in the dowdy gents' cloakroom, knew before he even forced his way in there, but he had to satisfy himself. A small queue for the single WC which was being used as a urinal. Four youths but no Carl. Latimer went back outside again. Why the hell didn't the organisers put the lights up during the interval?
‘Well?’ Samantha and Pamela had vacated their chairs, come to meet him.
‘He's not in there.’ OK, you told me so but I had to check before we start panicking. ‘He can't have gone far because he's due to start playing again in ten minutes.’
‘He was with a girl!’ Bitterness and jealousy in the way Samantha spat it out. ‘He switched over to his tapes and the next thing I saw was him smooching with this woman.’
‘Probably somebody he knew.’
‘You can bet your life he knew her all right by the way they were holding each other! They say a leopard never changes his spots.’
‘Let's not jump to conclusions. He could be outside somewhere.’
‘If he is then he's only gone out for one reason.’ Samantha was already heading for the door, struggling to push her way through a throng of drinkers who weren't particularly interested in Carl Wickers' whereabouts or whether he was going to start playing again.
Christ, Latimer thought, I hope Carl isn't as stupid as I think he could be. If he's left the stage and come out here with a bird then all hell's going to be let loose when Sam catches him!
Cars and motorbikes were parked everywhere on the small space of waste land adjoining the village hall, spilling out into the road; those in first would have to wait for the latecomers to go. Kids snogging in the shadows; a girl was giggling uncontrollably hidden behind the body of a black-jacketed biker who was pressed up against her.
Latimer caught up with Samantha. This wasn't Carl's scene.
‘He's not here.’ She turned to face the other two and they saw her expression in a shaft of light from one of the windows. Anger had turned
to despair, almost hopelessness. ‘Oh my God, where can he be?’
They guessed, remembered that same morning, and were afraid to voice their thoughts. Oh God, no!
‘He played that song just before he finished,’ Samantha whispered. ‘You know, Deep Waters or whatever it's called. I've never heard him sing it before until … until this morning!’
Standing there looking at one another. A pang of guilt hit Chris Latimer like a stiletto knife being driven into his stomach. We'll all go to the dance with Carl tonight so that we can keep an eye on him. And what a bloody brilliant job we've made of it: let him walk right out on us!
‘He's gone back to the Sucking Pit.’ Samantha's voice trembled. ‘I know it. I know that's where he's gone!’
‘I'll go and check. You two go back inside the hall and I'll rejoin you in a bit. It's not far, three-quarters of an hour there and back on foot at the most.’
‘I'm coming with you.’ Samantha's tone was firm now.
‘And so am I,’ Pamela added. ‘You said yourself we've all got to keep together, Chris.’
‘All right.’ He hadn't the strength to argue. His brain was spinning again. Christ, didn't anybody ever go anywhere except to the Sucking Pit. ‘But stick together, don't get any ideas about going off on your own.’
They walked quickly, uphill over the canal bridge, turning off the main road on to the rough track past the parsonage. Through the churchyard.
‘Listen.’ Pamela stopped suddenly, and they all listened. Just the distant strains of Carl Wickers' tape, his voice, coming from afar, filtering out of the open village hall windows and lingering in the still atmosphere. Taunting them, like a film star's widow seeing her beloved husband again on the screen. So impersonal. A voice that was dead, floating back from the grave.
‘It's …’ Latimer began and then another noise interrupted him. A long rumbling sound like a distant convoy of heavy vehicles. Dying away.
‘Thunder,’ he said. ‘Come on, we don't want to get caught in another storm.’
The atmosphere was sultry; in all probability there would be another storm before morning. They came to the barbed wire which separated the cemetery from the start of the wood, Chris holding the strands down with his foot whilst the other two clambered over, then hurrying to get ahead of them. He did not want to risk Samantha forging ahead on her own again.
Suddenly he halted, the other two bumping into him.
‘What's up?’ Samantha was tense, impatient. ‘If we keep stopping to listen to every clap of thunder …’
‘Look!’ Latimer pointed, his voice a low whisper. ‘Something's wrong. This should be barren ground leading up to the quarries. But there are trees growing here just like there used to be!’
The three of them stared in disbelief but it was true what he said. All around them towered mature Scots' pines, huge straight trunks which had stood firm through fifty winters. A sweet almost sickly smell of resin laced with masses of bluebells, like the pungent aroma of funeral flowers.
‘We … must be … wrong,’ Samantha edged up to Chris and Pamela's fingers found his. ‘We've come to the wrong place.’
But they all knew they hadn't. A wood which had been murdered in its prime had risen again like a phoenix out of the ashes, had defied all the laws of Nature.
‘It's impossible,’ Latimer breathed. ‘but it's true. Unless we're all having hallucinations. We'd better go back.’
‘No. Carl is somewhere in here and I'm going to look for him no matter what you two do. You can go back if you like.’
Chris Latimer walked forward, saw this strange landscape in the ethereal glow of the moon. Dark shadows that took on weird shapes, a winding path thick with pine needles seeming to beckon them on. A track which undoubtedly led to the Sucking Pit!
Susan Taplow looked forward to dance nights at the village hall with relish. Not because she enjoyed dancing or ever went to any of them (that would have entailed either dancing on her own or else finding another girl who was willing to partner her), but because that meant babysitting at the Whitmore's house. Three quid just for sitting watching the telly or reading. The Whitmores went to all the local hops, usually went back to somebody else's house for coffee afterwards which sometimes earned her another hour. Money for old rope. Little Thomas seldom woke up, a darling baby of six months and Susan often longed to bring him downstairs and nurse him, but that could have posed her some problems, if he'd woken up and started crying. One day she would, though.
At seventeen Susan was one of life's unfortunate teenagers. Short-sighted, she needed to wear glasses all the time and her wages at the factory on the new industrial estate did not allow for anything more than a very basic pair of NHS frames. Her hair always straggled no matter how much she washed it; often shampoo made it worse. A lot of her colleagues at the factory spent their whole lives trying to slim, always had a surfeit of weight. Susan had desperately attempted to gain weight, without result, and this last six months she had given up trying. She was slightly knock-kneed, noticeable particularly when she danced. So she didn't dance any more. Her favourite pastime seemed to be giving things up, abandoning all hope, just accepting her fate. Vegetating.
Another regret: she was a virgin. Not through want of trying, she told herself with some bitterness. One night, out of sheer desperation, she had gone into town and tried to get herself picked up, without success. She'd missed the last bus home, thumbed a lift with a real rough-looking type, and when she had dropped a very unsubtle hint he had pulled into the kerb and told her to walk the rest of the way.
Susan did not just want to lose her virginity; she wanted a baby. By any man who would be willing to give her one. She would not try to trap him into marriage or sue him for maternity payments. Just give me a baby and I won't ever bother you again. I promise. But even that hope was beginning to fade. Until this afternoon.
She had gone for a walk across to the quarries, an aimless stroll, and in due course had found herself by that fenced off pool. The Sucking Pit, people called it. She shuddered at the name but actually the place wasn't like that at all. It was really quite nice, a bit bare perhaps but in due course algae and reeds would grow and break up its stark appearance.
Susan had sat down inside the wire perimeter, just relaxed, the presence of water comforting. It reminded her in a strange way of a place which she had once visited in Derbyshire on a bank holiday coach trip with her parents - the Wishing Well. You tossed a coin in, heard it go plop, and as the ripples spread out you made your wish. Don't tell anybody what you've wished or else it won't come true.
On a sudden impulse she delved into the pockets of her slacks, found a 5p coin. Waste of money. No, anything was worth a try when you wanted a baby as badly as she did.
She walked closer to the edge of the pool, the coin gripped in a sweaty palm. Now! She threw it, watched it reach the apex of its arc and begin to fall, glinting. Magic. Spellbound, she saw it hit the water, heard that familiar ‘plop’. Ripples, growing larger, faster, hurrying to reach the edge. She laughed softly to herself.
Please give me a baby, Sucking Pit! Well, those few moments of hope, just doing something positive, were worth 5p.
She looked at the clock on the Whitmores' mantelpiece. Nine-thirty. They wouldn't be home for another three hours at least. She got up, crept up the stairs. A quick peep into the small bedroom. Thomas was fast asleep, a dummy jammed firmly in his mouth. Sheer contentment.
She left the door ajar and as she moved away became more stealthy. Furtive. Into the big bedroom, checking that the curtains were drawn before she put on the light, her gaze centred firmly on the wardrobe in the far corner.
Her breathing quickened, her excitement bringing on a slight asthmatic wheeze. This was another of her secrets, one which would surely get her the sack as babysitter if she ever got found out. Over the last few weeks she had tried on all of Sheila Whitmore's dresses, including the new cream trouser suit which had come from Rackhams. Slightly large but they looked good
in the full-length mirror. More than that; sexy! I'm Mrs Whitmore and I've got a young baby, you know. That proves I'm not a virgin, doesn't it? I've been … fucked by David Whitmore!
The very thought had her goose pimpling and on one occasion her fantasies were so strong that she'd lain back on the double bed in full view of the big mirror, and with her borrowed dress lifted up to her waist had done all those things to herself which she did most nights in the privacy, and loneliness, of her own bed. God, she'd come and come, had had David Whitmore lying on top of her thrusting into her. Electrifying, but it hadn't got her pregnant, nor was it likely to.
Flipping through the dresses again, trying to make her mind up; it wasn't easy. And then she spied the nightdress draped on a coat hanger at the back. White with embroidered pink flowers, no longer than knee-length - for her, anyway. An instant picture in her mind. David naked and fully aroused pulling up Sheila's nightie, prising her legs apart and feeling in between, rubbing and squeezing. Then going in hard, ramming as fast as he could go.
Susan closed her eyes, swayed slightly. God, Mrs Whitmore had surely been screwed wearing that. The girl fumbled at her own clothing, tugging to get all her garments off. Naked; Sheila Whitmore wouldn't be wearing anything underneath.
She pulled on the nightdress, cheeks flushed as she studied her reflection in the mirror. It was sexy, all right, the silky material against her goose pimpled skin so sensuous. She lay back on the bed, saw David Whitmore again, closed her eyes because she didn't want to watch, just to feel. Jesus Christ, he was randy tonight, baring her body right up to the waist, making her squeal with delight as his fingertips slid up the insides of her thighs. Closer, closer … she writhed, virtually did the splits for him.