“Must have been a pretty powerful thought. Want to tell me what was it?”
He takes slow sip at his bottle. “I decided…I don’t want to be broken any more.”
Grace leans into him and kisses him on the cheek. “Colin, that is wonderful. Not so much a baby step as a massive great ground gobbling stride. I’m so proud of you.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you, Gracie. You…you gave me the strength to–” He takes another sip. “I couldna done it on ma ain.”
Grace pats his leg. “Yes you could.”
“No, I…I absorbed it, from you. You…you give it off, in waves, and it…it soaks right into me.” He turns his bottle in his hands. “Can I ask you a wee favour?”
“Sure.”
He puts the bottle on the windowsill. The sunshine passes through it, turning the brown glass a rich amber, casting a streak of coloured light onto the bed.
“Would you mind if … if I held you?” he says. “Jest fer a little while. To soak up some more. Top up my reserves, so to speak?”
Grace puts her bottle on the sill next to his where they stand together like soldiers on parade.
“Of course you can. There’s plenty to spare. Help yourself.”
He gathers her up into a bear hug, enfolding her with his arms, holding her tightly against him, cheek resting against her hair, eyes closed as he concentrates on recharging his emotional batteries.
Grace returns the hug, sliding her arms around his waist, her hands up his back, feeling his muscles tighten and relax beneath her.
“How’s that?” she says, after they have been silently shoring each other up for nearly a full minute.
“Very nice. Feeling stronger already.”
He releases her from the clutch, yet they do not separate, remaining with their arms around each other, faces a few inches apart, each looking into the other’s eyes, each wondering which one is going to make the first move.
The decision is simultaneous. Their first kiss is an exploratory touching of the lips, no more than a tentative peck, their second more confident, their third, full bodied and deep.
“Are you flirting with me now, Mr McLeod?”
He kisses her neck with delicious tenderness, puts his hand beneath her T shirt, his skin hot against hers.
“I’m trying to.”
He helps her take off her top, revealing sun kissed skin prickling with goosebumps of excitement, her gentle tan enhanced by the stark whiteness of her matching bra and panties.
Colin licks his lips, puts his hands either side of her waist, moving them over her ribs to her breasts, cupping and kissing the soft mounds, touching his lips along her shoulders and up the side of her neck to her ear, every touch soft and warm and sensuous. A flick of his wrist behind her and her bra is undone and off.
Grace has already unbuckled his belt, popped the button, unzipped his fly, and taken his shirt from him. She has his vest halfway off when he pulls back from her, snatching at the fabric, covering himself again.
“No! You can’t.”
“Can’t what? What’s the matter?”
“You can’t … I don’t want … I don’t want you to see.”
“I already have, more than once.”
“Not all of it. Not close to. I don’t…don’t want you to be—horrified, sickened–”
She puts her finger to his lips. “Shhhhh. I won’t. It’s okay. Trust me.” She unclenches his fingers, releases the fabric and eases it over his head. “Now, turn around.”
He hesitates, then does as he’s told, slowly turning his back and shoulders to her, exposing the huge swathe of scar tissue. It has the texture of pink tree bark, hard and hairless, a macabre relief map of pain etched into his flesh.
She lets her fingertips caress the healing blast burns, delicately touching her lips along the puckered trail which stretches as far as his jaw line.
Colin keeps his head bowed, eyes fixed on the bed. No matter how desperately he wants to see her face, to gauge her reactions as her fingertips discover the troughs and hollows where the fire ravaged him, the craters and gouges where shrapnel tore through him, he’s afraid to. Afraid of seeing the look of barely disguised revulsion, afraid of seeing her brows pinch together to form that soft groove between her eyebrows in silent rejection of the deformed creature he’s become.
“If you’re going to go, go now,” he says, and closes his eyes so he won’t have to see when she stumbles outside to vomit her disgust into the leaf mould.
She doesn’t go. Instead, she presses her lips to the ruined skin with its pattern of fine silvered lines and dots, each one marking where a fragment of shattered metal sliced into his skin, the tiny black metallic tattoos serving as permanent reminders. She takes his flushed face between her cool palms, tilts his head forward and kisses his eyelids.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispers.
She pushes him down onto the cot and eases his pants to mid thigh, and then hesitates. What is she going to find when she reaches the point where the rest of his legs should be? Fresh air?
Here I can have them back. Even make masel’ a bit taller if I want.
That’s what he said. Time to see if it’s true.
There is not an empty space, or plastic and metal prosthetics, but flesh and blood and bone, although both legs are hideously scarred and disfigured, and one is missing a kneecap.
“I couldn’t get them right,” he says. “I never really took much notice of them when I had them, always took them for granted, so whenever I thought about them …” He massages the mangled limbs. “I couldn’t remember what they looked like. These are just representations of what I’ve lost.”
“Shhhh. No talking,” she says, fingers caressing his stomach, sliding gently over his hips to his groin, to an interest which is becoming more obvious by the second.
“Let me ask you something first,” he says. “It’s important.”
Grace’s response is muffled by the shaft of his cock against her lips. “Better bloody be.” She cups his testicles in her hand and squeezes. “And make it quick, because if Mr Stiffy here loses focus–”
“What do I look like?” he says.
Grace’s head snaps up and she stares at him. “What!?”
“My face. I’ve never had the courage to look properly. I know it took a pounding and there’s still some shrapnel shards in it, but tell me … is it … scarred, hideously twisted. Dammit, do I look like the Elephant Man?”
“Seriously?” Another squeeze of his balls. “You’re asking me this now–?!”
“Please, Grace.”
“God’s sake. You have a few little scars here and there, nothing major, and a quite bad one here–” She touches the deep crescent shaped mark under his right eye. “But overall, you’re pretty … presentable. Nobody would notice.”
“You sure?”
“Yesssss. Now, if it’s not too much trouble, there’s sex to be had.”
Colin’s smile is broad and full of mischief as he pulls her to him, kisses her hard, his hands cupping her breasts.
“Like this?” he says, and takes one nipple into his mouth, sucking on it, teasing it with his tongue, whilst massaging the other with his thumb, making her moan and mew with pleasure.
“That’s more like it.”
When they are both ready to take it further, he lies back on the cot and she lowers herself onto his now very attentive cock, encasing him in wet warmth.
Chapter 35
Colin kisses Grace on the forehead. “Thank you.”
She breathes out a deep exhalation of satisfaction and relaxes against him, listening to his heartbeat through his gently rising and falling chest, fingering the collection of little silver scars nestling in his body hair, joining the dots.
“You’re welcome.” Another sigh. “You know, I haven’t felt quite so comfortable with anyone since … well, for a very long time,” she says. “I’ve had sex before, of course I have, lots of times, but it was always functio
nal, mechanical; there wasn’t anything there, either during or afterwards. I never got the feeling of … contentment?”
“Aye, I know exactly what you mean,” he says, kisses her again and holds her tighter, his large hand moving up and down her slender spine in slow, sensuous strokes.
“It’s a pity I don’t smoke or I’d be puffing smoke rings of happiness right now,” she says, and lets out a chain of rapid huffs, simulating the action.
“Being forced to give up the ciggies was probably the only good thing to come out of all this,” Colin says.
“Can’t disagree with that. Filthy habit. Expensive too.”
“Aye, they said it would stunt ma growth, but having ma legs chopped off did that anyway so what have I got to lose by having a fag now and again?”
Grace stares at him open-mouthed.
“Ach come on, Gracie, crack a smile,” he says, grinning himself. “Nothing gives misfortune a bigger kick in the bollocks than laughing at it.”
She settles back against him. “True.”
A warm quiet silence descends, and then Colin laughs.
“What’s so funny?” says Grace.
“I was just thinking about how much worse things could have been. Losing ma legs is one thing, I can get spares. Having ma knackers blown off–” He sucks air over his teeth. “Doesn’t bear thinking aboot. Do they make artificial dicks?”
Grace splutters. “You could try Ann Summers.”
“Should be grateful I managed to hang onto ma bits,” he says. “Although I don’t know if they still work. Since the… incident, I’ve never even thought about sex.”
“Not even a five fingered shuffle to keep the blood flowing, to stop them shrivelling up from lack of use?”
“With a tube stuck up ma dick, literally taking the piss, what do you think?”
Grace nods. “Hmmm. I can see how it might take the shine off it somewhat.”
“Aye. Somewhat.”
In the conversational lull Grace refits her bra and roots about for her panties, while Colin eases on his trousers and pulls his vest over his head, wincing as the movement of his arms and neck forces the not yet totally healed scar tissue over his back and shoulders to twist and stretch.
Their shifting about as they gather up their clothing makes the rickety old cot creak beneath them in an alarming fashion.
“How on earth do you manage to sleep on this?” Grace says. “I’d be frightened of it collapsing under me.”
“I don’t… and I don’t jest mean I don’t sleep on this bed, I mean I don’t sleep … at all.”
Grace wriggles into her T-shirt. “You probably do. You just think you don’t. Everyone sleeps. You have to. It’s a scientific fact that if you don’t sleep, you go mad. I get really cranky if I don’t get at least eight hours a night.”
She regards him keenly and notices for the first time how utterly shattered he looks. Dark heavy rings encircle eyes that are sunken and bloodshot and clouded with fatigue. “You really mean it don’t you?”
He shrugs one shoulder.
“Why not?” she says. “Are you in pain?”
“No much.”
“Then why?”
“I–” A pause, before the truth spills out. “I daren’t sleep,” he says, fidgeting with the front of his vest. “I’ve tried, I really have. Even here, where I ken it’s safe, I canna rest. At the centre, it’s worse. I have ta have the light on all the time, and even when I’m too tired ta stay awake I canna risk even snatching a few minutes, I have ta be facing the door and have the emergency call button in ma hand at all times. And then, if by some miracle I do manage to drop off, there are the dreams, the nightmares, and I wake up screaming and drenched in sweat. One time, I pissed masel’–”
He puts a trembling hand to his brow, where the liquid terror leaking from him stands in glistening beads. More spring out on his neck and chest, making his skin shine.
“The bathroom is another place where I know I’m vulnerable,” he says. “No that I’m ever in there alone, there’s al’ays someb’dy wi me, but I canna take my eyes off them in case they’re an enemy infiltrator sent to finish the job they started. The rational part of my brain tells me they’re no … but the rational part isn’t always in control, and the thoughts are always there, niggling at the back of my mind.” He barks out a mirthless laugh. “Daft thing is, if they do turn out ta be some kinda ninja assassin, there’s no a damned thing I can dae about it, is there? It’s no’ like I can spring out of the chair, kick them in the balls and run away. I’m yer genuine sitting duck ready ta be picked off.”
She gives his arm a comforting stroke, a silent encouragement to tell her everything.
“I’m on edge the whole time,” he says after a short pause. “They call it being hyper-vigilant, wary of every sound, seeing things from the corners of ma eyes, paranoid about there being something or somebody hiding in every shadow. I hear whispering when there’s naeb’dy theer, I canna stand the sensation of anyone behind me, even the nurse pushing ma chair. Any sudden out of place noise sets me to a panic. Could be a door banging, someone shouting, a car backfiring, or a crack of thunder–” His breathing turns to sharp edged ragged gasps. “It’s everything Grace. The slightest bloody thing and I’m right back there, down in the dirt, covered in my mates’ guts and brains, on fire with my legs ripped to bloody mush–”
He bows his chin to his chest, hunched over as if all the weight of the world is pressing down on his shoulders.
“I know that was hard,” she says. “You did really well to tell me.” She puts her hand to his hot sweaty neck, his skin burning with heat from some deep seated internal furnace.
He curls his arms over his head, drawing them together like a defensive shield, hands balled into fists, breaths now heavy and noisy as he fights to retain a semblance of control. It is another battle he cannot win. His shoulders heave and drops of water spill from his eyes to catch the sun as they fall. Tumbling diamonds of abject misery.
She rests her head against his, fingers buried in his hair.
“Shhhhhh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
After a while he unfurls himself, looks at her with eyes dulled by exhaustion, and she knows what he needs. She shifts on the bed, straightens out her legs and pulls the pillow into her lap.
“Lie down,” she says, patting and smoothing the plain ticking cover.
“What?”
“Lie down here, close your eyes, and let yourself go. I’ll watch over you. Nobody and nothing is going to hurt you. You’ll be perfectly safe.”
He doesn’t move.
“I promise,” she says.
He looks at the pillow, then back at her, blinks a couple of times and then lowers his head.
“There you go,” she says, pulling the blanket over his spoiled shoulders. “You sleep now. As long as you like. You’re safe here.”
Her fingers move through his hair in delicate comforting strokes, and after a few moments staring at the door, waiting for the monster to burst in and catch him with his guard down and eat him alive, his eyes fall closed and she feels his shoulders relax beneath her. He sighs out a deep juddering expulsion of air as, utterly spent, both physically and emotionally, he lets go and slides into sleep.
Lying there with his head in her lap she thinks he looks more like a little boy afraid of the dark than a leader of men who has worn his uniform and shed blood for his country. So frail, so vulnerable; it’s heartbreaking.
No man should have to suffer that kind of pain in his soul, in his heart, such that it turns him inside out with fear and grief.
For him the war will never be over. It lives in him every moment, in memories, in smells and sounds and tastes. The smell of mud makes him sick; a clap of thunder has him throwing himself to the ground with his hands over his head, crying. He can’t even bear the sight of the colour red. She understands everything now.
Behind those dark feverish eyes his mind rages with the most unspeakable apparitions, living mo
vies in which pals and comrades are shot, blown up, and burned before his eyes. In full glorious colour he witnesses their mutilations, disfigurements and dismemberments, over and over again on a never ending loop, and the love and peace that once resided in his poor battered heart is displaced by unimaginable - unquenchable terror and grief.
His burned and scarred flesh is still raw, and when the ever present pain breaks free from the suppressing blanket of medication, it flows through him like a tsunami of boiling oil, his missing legs continuing to persecute him with their phantom presence.
He’s given his all, his flesh, his blood, his sweat, his tears, to do his duty as any good man should, and his undeserved reward will be to spend the rest of his days in a fruitless pursuit of the one thing that will evermore be denied him – peace.
Is this to be his reward for daring to survive, for not having the decency to become another battlefield statistic? To spend his days in mental and physical torment, struggling to hang onto every shred of sanity, in fear of it unravelling like a piece of knotted string, until at last he is given the final order,
“Stand down soldier. Rest easy. Your duty is done.”
She strokes his cheek, flushed and warm, and bends to kiss it. As her lips touch his skin she feels something move inside her, a fluttering in her chest, like a bumble bee trapped in a bottle. The rapid thrumming makes her light headed and hitch in a breath.
Could this be what love feels like? Has her self constructed carapace been breached at last, the crack just wide enough to admit something soft and warm into the empty space inside, where it lies like a hot ember nestled in the ashes of long dead passion?
She wants to fan it and see, to make it spark, to bring it to a flame, to burn long and bright until, like a phoenix it rises up and totally consumes her. But can she risk lowering her emotional blast shield? Dare she risk it? For this man, she thinks she can. For this man she makes another promise.
“You are not going to give in, Colin,” she whispers as she strokes his hair. “You will get better. You will leave that place. You will not just exist, you will live…live and love, and I’m going to move heaven and Earth to make damned sure of it. I swear on my own life.”
In The Garden Of Stones Page 24