One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  No. I was really that bad.

  ‘Oh,’ I twittered, ‘Del spoke to you about that, did she?’

  We were sitting on the low wall that separated the patio from the neatly shorn lawn, him with his Kingfisher and me with a mesmerized and (it must be admitted) slightly dozy smile on my face. Though I had resolutely refused to have anything to do with Del’s gymslips-and-bunches flight of ridiculous fancy, it was only because I didn’t really need them.

  It was, however, almost the first time we’d spoken to each other properly since we had arrived. We’d (I’d - I never even asked him) elected to come as sixth-formers, which meant our first social exchange of the evening was a stern ticking-off by house-master Benjamin, which turned out to be only marginally less embarrassing than having put a hockey skirt and socks on in the first place. I was so mad at Del - you can’t do that stuff with new boyfriends. It’s so married. It’s so suburban.

  I’d barely been able to get within six feet of him since. I had also been more than a little dismayed by the amount of attention he had seemed to be receiving from Ben’s latest registrar: a tall blonde Australian woman with a nose stud and rings on her thumbs, who had come as a school nurse, and who had greeted me by saying, Ah, ind who’s this, theen?’ before going ‘inyway’ and continuing straight on with a monologue she seemed to be telling, mainly through her nose, about a sigmoidoscopy and a rampaging bedsore. All the men clustered around her like spermatozoa head-butting an ovum. Apart from Stefan, who had looked on with cool detachment, declared himself on suspension and gone off to the kitchen to help Del with the food. No matter, I’d thought, a few more hours and we’d be back at mine, and then I’d have him all to myself.

  He nodded and placed a proprietorial hand on my thigh. Which was nice.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, through the neck of his bottle. ‘Indeed she did. I’d always wondered what sort of people subjected themselves to such crass humiliation on national television, and now I know. She’s something else, your sister. Very nice, but something else.’ He tipped his head in the direction of the dining room we’d just left. Everyone else was still in there, guffawing. About what I knew not. About what I cared less.

  ‘Oh,’ I said again, not quite sure how to take this. The dining room was currently decked out to look like a Central American hacienda she’d spotted in a Kuoni brochure - sort of Cancun meets Chitchen Itza meets the Next home catalogue. Lots of burnt orange voile and spindly wrought iron. And she’d taken all the knobs off her sideboard and replaced them with rusty hinges. Del had a permanent rolling programme of room redecoration: until a month or so back, it had been Henley regatta, after her protracted Laura Ashley affair. Her and Ben’s bedroom (currently a Vermont/Amish fusion involving copious amounts of gingham and corn-dolly knick-knacks) was to be next on the list. And now, it seemed, at Stefan’s and my hands. Despite myself, my reservations and the fact that I did not know a toggle from a tin tack, it gave me an unexpected lovely warm feeling.

  ‘It’s Del’s sort of thing, of course. Decorating,’ I said. Then wished I hadn’t. Because it made her sound like a bit of a divvy. ‘She’s very creative with interiors,’ I added, to qualify. In case he thought I was being bitchy. It made her sound even worse. ‘Not my sort of thing, though. That’s why I live in a tip. Ha ha ha.’

  He resisted the opportunity to laugh heartily at my decorative shortcomings, and instead traced a languid figure-of-eight on my thigh.

  ‘Oh, and what’s your sort of thing, then?’ he asked.

  It couldn’t have been much after that that we decided we very much wanted to go home. We said our farewells, left the Jag on Del’s driveway, and set off to walk the mile or so back to my place. It was a clear night, and warm enough that I hadn’t bothered with a jacket. Stefan’s arm, in any case, kept what breeze there was from my shoulders. Here and there, at least. Because he seemed a little strange. Rather skittish, in fact. He kept veering off (as artists do, perhaps?) to pass judgement on various mixed bedding arrangements, sniff flowers and shimmy along front garden walls. It was somewhat erratically, therefore, that we finally reached the junction with the lane that led to Cefn Melin woods. There was an area of grass here and a much sat-upon tree stump. The tree itself had been damaged in a storm some years back and the council had decided to fell it. Stefan, having left me to go and take a closer look at it, now beckoned me over.

  ‘This the way?’ he asked. He was squatting beside the stump, putting the lid back on an Old Holborn tin, before lighting a skinny cigarette that he’d made. I hadn’t realized he smoked. I said so.

  He stood up and held the glowing swizzle out to me. ‘Not tobacco,’ he replied. ‘You want?’ I said no. He nodded once again towards the lane. ‘In there?’

  ‘No. It’s this way.’ I pointed. ‘That way takes us back up through the woods.’

  He took a deep drag on his little cigarette. ‘But it does lead back to your house, yes?’

  I nodded. ‘There’s another entrance at the end of my road.’

  He started moving, dragging once again on the cigarette, and pulling me with him through the veil of sweet-smelling smoke. ‘Then let’s go that way.’

  ‘What? Walk home through the woods?’

  ‘Of course. Come on. It’ll be fun.’

  I looked down at my feet. ‘I’m not sure these are really the shoes for it.’

  He shrugged. ‘So take them off.’

  ‘I’m hardly going to go plunging into the undergrowth barefoot. Have you seen how many dogs there are around here?’

  ‘Tsk!’ he said. ‘Tsk!’ Then shot off through the dewy grass to the kissing gate, leaving me little choice but to follow.

  The moon was still almost full and shed sufficient light that it wasn’t too difficult to make out the path. It was flanked by the glossy foliage left by the bluebells, and dotted with wood anemones and low bowers of fern. The scent of wild garlic pricking our nostrils, we tramped gamely on into the trees.

  The woods in Cefn Melin are, I suppose, like any other vestige of suburban woodland: diminutive, etched by many well-trodden pathways, and corralled on all sides by back-garden fences and walls. Even so, the natural contour of the hillside remained and, once down in the base of the valley, we could easily, were it not for the much-trampled ground and the buckled Coke cans, have been in some vast forest wilderness. We followed the path’s course down the bend of the hillside, the ground stepped, in the steepest parts, with risers of cut logs. Down here the stream opened up into a series of wide shallow ponds that provided the main backdrop to the local primary school’s aquatic and conservation endeavours, and much of the filth on many a school sweatshirt as well. It had been dry for some days now so the water trickled rather than tumbled, only half filling the wider pools and moving sluggishly over the twigs, old bricks and other detritus that were daily lobbed into its muddy embrace.

  ‘Well,’ said Stefan, treading carefully along a length of fallen tree that thrust out and formed a bridge of sorts over the main pool, ‘isn’t this just beautiful?’ He was, I presumed, an urban sort of person. He released his hand from the branch he’d been holding and took another three careful steps along the log.

  I stayed on the bank, not knowing what else to do and feeling more than a little stupid in my sundress and sandals. He seemed to have nothing else to say and the silence was becoming unsettling. ‘It’s a great place for frog spawn,’ I told him. ‘We come to these woods quite a lot. Though I don’t like to enquire too deeply about what Leo and Simeon get up to when they’re down here on their own.’

  He reached the end of the tree trunk and stood for a moment, as if listening for something.

  ‘Best not to, then,’ he answered finally. ‘Little boys in the woods. Naughty little boys in the woods. When I was a little boy I used to pull the wings off butterflies and make them funeral pyres in old hollow tree trunks. Hmm. Slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. And Jabberwockies.’ He raised a finger. ‘Best not to know what the Jabberwockies
do once the nice human folk are tucked up in their beds, eh?’

  His back was still to me, his body now motionless. I continued to hover on the bank, uncertain how to respond. I wondered if he was off on a trip of some kind. I didn’t like to ask. It made me feel edgy. ‘I don’t think we have many Jabberwockies in Cefn Melin,’ I said at last.

  He took another step. ‘Ah, you say that!’ he said, reaching the end and turning gracefully on his toes. ‘You say that. But how would you know? Listen!’ He put a hand to his ear.

  ‘And as in uffish thought he stood,

  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

  Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

  And burbled as it came!’

  It was difficult enough to follow Stefan’s train of thought at the best of times, but even harder when he kept popping poetry into the conversation as well. And more difficult still to think of anything useful to say in response to it. Stefan was very good at stopping ordinary conversations. Should I clap, perhaps? I clapped. ‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘Very atmospheric. I remember it from school.’

  He took another step, said, ‘Callooh! Callay!’ Then leapt from his tree trunk and pulled me into his arms.

  Oh, my goodness me. What was it with Stefan and poetry? I couldn’t work out whether it was him or me or just me being sentimental and girly or him being so exhilarating and unsettling to be around or maybe it was a Tom Cruise in Legend type thing - yes, that must be it. With his little suede boots and his long, long hair. And those unicorns. With their thrusting spiralled horns. Or maybe it was the nodding of the creamy upturned faces of the anemones on the bank or the ivory moonlight or the distant swish of the breeze in the treetops or simply his way of being so romantic and lovely and poetic, or maybe the thought of him being so turned on by me being so turned on by him reciting it to me - was it that? I really didn’t know. But it seemed to work anyway. For there was now something very, very sexy afoot. He kissed me fairly passionately for several long lovely minutes, but just as I was about to suggest that we zip home and snuggle under my duvet, he released me and bounded off into the darkness once more.

  ‘Come on,’ he called. ‘Come down here.’ He was just like a puppy.

  The ground fell away sharply to the left of the stream here, the water itself moving sluggishly over the slimy green pebbles before tipping itself over the rocks into the pool below. I peered down the bank. ‘Come where exactly? I can hardly make you out.’

  I heard a snap and a rustle and then he moved back into my vision. I felt his hand tug at the hem of my dress.

  ‘Down here. Come on. Let’s go exploring, shall we?’

  I took his hand and slithered down the few yards of slope that separated us. It was darker down here, dank and dewy and pungent. But what little moonlight could find its way through the rampant early-summer canopy of foliage glittered, beguilingly, in his eyes. He led me carefully through the muddle of young saplings and bracken then pulled me against the lumpy trunk of an oak tree and began to nuzzle enthusiastically at my neck. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Can you smell it?’

  I sniffed. ‘Smell what?’

  ‘The scent of growth, Lu. The scent of glorious verdant excess.’ He inhaled deeply and twisted us round so that my back was now against the tree. ‘This is such a fertile time of year. Everything consumed with the drive to thrust, to grow, to reproduce. New life everywhere. Fecundity. Abundance.’

  His fingers slipped under the straps of my dress. He stroked one aside and bent to kiss my shoulder. An owl hooted.

  ‘Mmm,’ I answered. I could feel my heels sinking into the soft earth beneath me. The knobbly protrusions of the bark against my back. His hot sweet breath on my face, and the warmth of his hands, which were now working industriously at the buttons on my dress.

  Which went all the way down. He showed no signs of stopping. ‘Stefan,’ I said, ‘it’s not far to home now. Do you think we should—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Be, well, doing this - here?’

  He stopped fiddling and smiled disarmingly at me. Then stepped back and spread his hands wide. ‘Doing what?’

  My dress, I noticed, was now undone to the waist. My boobs looked white and alarming in the moonlight. Like beacons. Or a pair of quivering vanilla blancmanges. ‘You know.’ I glanced around and then pulled the edges of my dress back together. ‘This.’

  He stepped forward again, then took my hands and looped them back up around his neck. Then teased my dress apart again and slipped both his own hands inside it, running them ever-so-slowly over my breasts.

  His mouth twitched in amusement. ‘What - this, you mean?’

  I nodded. Swallowed a gasp. He was incorrigible. And obviously on a completely different exploratory quest from the one I’d anticipated. ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘lovely though this is, wouldn’t we be better off getting back to my house, and, well …’

  He shook his head and lowered his face to my throat. ‘I don’t think I would be better off. Would you?’

  ‘It’s just that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of … I mean I’m very comfortable with the idea of … oh, Stefan! But I’m not sure I … Well, what if someone comes by? Walking their dog or something? … Oh, it’s just that is this really the place to be … oh, God, Stefan …’

  He moved his face lower still and lapped at my breasts for some moments, then lifted his head again, scooping his mane of hair to one side. His voice had developed a sudden gravitas and depth. Like a voice-over. Were there gorillas nearby?

  ‘Lu,’ he was urging in my ear, ‘this is exactly where we should be doing it! Amid all this organic bounty. Among the thrusting shoots and stems. Bruising the new bark and crushing the foliage. This, believe me, is where it should always be done. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Can you go with me on this?’

  Organic bounty sounded more like a Tesco promotion than sex talk to me, but talking was fast becoming an irrelevance anyway. By this time his hands had evidently decided upon relocation. They were now cruising purposefully up the outsides of my thighs, scooping up the hem of my dress on their way. ‘Just say, though,’ he was saying to me, quite conversationally, as he flipped it up and scrunched it deftly between our stomachs. ‘You only have to say. Is this difficult for you?’ He reached behind me and took hold of my bottom. ‘Would you feel more comfortable if …’ I felt his hands slide beneath the waistband of my knickers ‘. .. if - there we go, now! - if, say, we lay down or something? Would it help if I - hang on—’

  And then the talking seemed to tail off. I couldn’t hear a great deal, with his face buried, as it was, against the side of my head, but I could hear one thing. The sound of a zip.

  And I wasn’t wearing a zip.

  Sunday 6 May

  Did I really do that? Did I?

  We had run home straight afterwards, flushed and giggling and breathless, but Stefan didn’t stay. He came in briefly, wolfed down two bowls of Sugar Puffs, then kissed me, got astride his bike and pedalled off into the night. I sat on the doorstep for a good twenty minutes, staring into the night sky and wondering whether I was right to be feeling so disconsolate and agitated.

  I tiptoed quietly upstairs, almost forgetting to remember that Leo was sleeping over at Del’s - which now bothered me some as well - then stripped off, cleaned my teeth and turned on the shower. I was just about to step in when something caught my eye in the bathroom mirror. Some sort of mark on my bottom. I brushed at it and it dropped on to the carpet. I looked down.

  It was a slug.

  I slept as I assume hapless villeins used to in medieval times. Uncomfortably, damply, plagued by nameless anxieties, and, as I’d left the window wide open, a plethora of small bewinged wildlife as well. Then woke with the dawn. It was a quarter to five.

  As the day in question looked, at least, to be sunny and clear, I called Del early and suggested that, as Ben would be out playing tennis all morning, we take the boys off to the park. I’d seen very little of Leo since Wednesday and if
we didn’t go off on some sort of shared activity I would lose him for the day to the street life he so favoured at the weekends, whizzing up and down on his stunt bike and swapping Pokémon cards with his mates down the road. And not only that: I needed to spend some time with him. Not least because I was beginning to feel it was necessary to reaffirm that I was a grown-up, a mother and a sensible person, not the harlot and wood nymph my actions of the previous night suggested I might be, given half a chance. It wasn’t that I had any particular problem with al fresco sex generally, or even that I had any specific objection to trees as a location of choice. And it had been fun, hadn’t it? But, nevertheless, something uncomfortable nagged at me. It wasn’t the dope, but I didn’t know what. Why hadn’t he stayed? I wished he’d stayed.

  ‘Well,’ Del said, getting into the Jag and settling into her seat like a cat on a litter tray, ‘I am pretty damned excited, I can tell you. I shall call them first thing and confirm that Wednesday’s OK for the recce. Ooh, there’s a thought. Wednesday. Is that going to be OK for you? It’ll only take an hour or two and they said they didn’t mind making it an early-evening appointment - I told them you worked in the daytime, obviously, and they can always do me first, so—’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, starting the engine. ‘This Wednesday? You mean you’ve already fixed it up with them?’

  She flapped an arm dismissively. ‘Oh, Lu, don’t be such a drear all the time. Of course I did. I spoke to them on Thursday. I was going to talk to you about it on Saturday, but then I thought you’d only start whining and fretting again about asking Stefan, so I thought I might as well leave it and just ask him myself.’

  Whining and fretting indeed. I backed out of the drive. ‘Hang on a minute, Del,’ I said, needled, ‘did it never occur to you that maybe I should have had some sort of input in this? Don’t you think it was just a teeny bit off for you to steam straight in and harangue Stefan about it, without consulting me first?’