by Hazel Osmond
9) Point 8 either means I am wrong about the name or there is something wrong with the person.
10) Some men should always wear a bib.
CHAPTER 14
Thursday evening and Tom knew that the closer he got to Newcastle, the more his mind would empty until, by the time he parked his car, there would only be one thing left gnawing away at it. And very soon after that, even this one thing would go and he would stop thinking completely. He would just do. And be.
He laughed. Do be do be do.
But still some way from the dual carriageway to Newcastle, his thoughts were anchored firmly at home. Had he locked the back door? Had he told Natalie to check that damn gum shield was out of Hattie’s mouth before she went to sleep? Of course he had and, even if he hadn’t, Natalie was capable of sorting it all out herself. She had looked after more children than he had.
Those questions he was asking were like worry beads – to be rubbed between his fingers and let go. Unlike the other fears that, now he had reached the slip road, sidled into his consciousness. First came fire, all-consuming. Next a madman with a knife and, lastly, the chunk of biscuit lodged in the windpipe.
He speeded up and, in the slipstream of a lorry, got on to the dual carriageway and headed east. The unrealistic fears diminished as he reminded himself again that Natalie was on watch – a non-smoker, fierce, good at first aid.
And then ‘Steph’ flashed across his brain as if a car travelling on the opposite carriageway had just signalled the word with its headlights. He pulled into the next lay-by.
‘Natalie,’ he said when she answered the phone, ‘one thing I forgot to mention, and can you just listen without saying anything? You’ll understand why in a minute.’ In the background he could hear Hattie telling Natalie she was going to be red and he hoped she was laying out a board game and not planning to experiment with body paint.
‘OK,’ Natalie said.
‘Thanks. Just … if the phone rings, can you check who it is before you answer? If it’s an international call or a mobile other than mine or Rob’s, please leave it. Steph rang twice on Monday and, complicated story, but I wouldn’t want her to call while I’m out and stir everything up again. Oh, and when you put Hattie to bed, could you take the handset out of my bedroom? Hats has a habit of going in and picking it up when it rings.’
Anyone other than Natalie might have asked for a fuller explanation, but in the light of her own home life, it must have seemed dull.
Back on the road again, he didn’t waste a minute wondering whether, in this instance, preventing Steph talking to Hattie was the right thing. Hattie was still high on the promise of going skiing and seeing Steph and he was damned if that was going to be taken away from her. He had done what he’d promised and got on the computer to suss out suitable ski resorts close to Milan. The prices were boggling, so much so that when he looked at the notes he’d made and saw 2043 written down, he couldn’t remember if it referred to the time of a return flight into Manchester, the price of a half-board package without ski-pass or the date when he’d actually pay off the loan he’d need to take out.
By the time he got to the sign telling him Newcastle was only ten miles away, Steph and Christmas and skiing had drifted away and now his mind was skimming through his earlier phone call to Kath. He’d wanted to check how the prenatal class at the hospital had gone and had hoped to get her alone, but Rob was there. Kath seemed her usual calm self, but his brother had repeatedly shouted out comments until eventually Kath handed him the phone. He gave the impression that after just one session, he had become an expert on childbirth, but all that excitement seemed just a shade away from hysteria to Tom.
Five miles to Newcastle, and he was thinking of his mother. That was bad, she was the last person he wanted in his brain right at this moment. He forced himself to stop thinking about Rob’s sighting of the rev.’s car outside her house that afternoon and focused instead on how good June’s edition of the magazine had looked fresh out of its plastic yesterday. After that, he shoved work away to mull over whether Newcastle was going to sack yet another manager. That took him to the outskirts of the city where the traffic was so heavy he couldn’t think of anything else.
As he pulled into the multi-storey car park, he wasn’t a father or a brother, a son or an editor. He wasn’t even a football supporter. He was Tom Howard.
He took the lift down to ground level, in his hand his mobile phone, a couple of files and a notebook. Already his heart rate was speeding up. Heading down to the river, he arrived at the theatre. A quick check on the posters outside and he was walking on past, the excitement in him building.
He got another surge of adrenaline as a text arrived and he smiled when he saw it consisted of just three numbers: a 3, a 4 and a 1. Brief and to the point. When he thought about that single-mindedness, he felt the familiar tightening of his stomach, the nagging sense of need in his groin. He crossed the road, ran up the steps of the hotel and walked purposefully through to the lifts. If he bumped into anyone he knew, he could nod at the files and the notebook and say he was here for an interview.
It was about now that anticipation usually tipped over into something else – it felt like a hunger so strong that it scared him to think what would happen if anything prevented him from knocking on that door with those numbers on it. By the time he stepped out of the lift on the third floor, the adrenaline was in charge of him, not the other way round, and his blood felt thick and sluggish, his brain dissatisfied with everything until he could feed this need he had.
He arrived at the door and laughed at himself. He was sure he could have knocked on it with his cock, it felt hard enough. He used his hand instead, remembering not to thump, although it was pointless trying to act cool. She’d known him long enough to understand how up for it he would be. And he knew she would be feeling the same.
‘How lovely to see you again,’ she said when she opened the door, even those innocuous words sounding heavily exotic in her Dutch accent.
He went inside. Four hours, to do anything.
‘You look wonderful, Grietje.’ The compliment came out without effort, because she did – dark-blue dress this time, linen, fitted at the bust and hips, ending where it showed her legs to best advantage. Bare arms, tanned this time of year. Bare legs too by the look of it, although he couldn’t always tell until he touched them. Whenever he saw her he was struck by how blonde her hair was – that flaxen blonde of northern Europe that came with blue eyes and a clear complexion. She’d had it cut into a shaggy bob a few months ago and although he missed the way he could lose his mouth and his hands in her longer hair, this suited her better.
He liked the way she enjoyed being looked at. There was none of that ‘I wasn’t sure about the length of this hemline’, or ‘My arms, can I still get away with having them bare?’
A woman at ease in her own skin.
She offered her cheek for kissing. It always felt so formal this bit, so foreign, the turning of the head first one way and then the other for one, two, three kisses, but he knew she loved the build-up, the sense that they were strangers even though there was little about each other’s bodies they did not know.
He had her perfume on him now, something from a bottle that was unfamiliar and smelled like old wealth and exotic travel, and something from her that smelled completely and utterly of sex – uninhibited and unabashed. Tom didn’t know if all Dutch women were like her, but Grietje understood what she wanted and was never afraid to ask for it. To her it was like making sure you got what you fancied in a restaurant and that it was cooked exactly the right way. Why be embarrassed?
He liked the directness of ‘More slowly there, Tom. I like this and this. Now, what would you think if I …?’ Perfect English, even when she was being filthy.
She was appraising him, her eyes shining. The large pupils told him she was turned on too.
‘Ah, but you look so well, Tom.’
He saw the knowing smile when her gaze loitered
at his groin.
‘Time to stop talking, I think?’ he said, hoping that he didn’t sound too desperate. She laughed – the type that made his stomach tense because it contained the command to wait and the promise that the wait would be worth it.
He watched how she moved towards the two glasses of red wine poured before he arrived. Moved. He couldn’t really describe it as walking, something too languorous about it. That turned him on even more.
She only picked up one glass and returned to him, raising it in a toast and taking a sip. She leaned forward and placed her lips on his. As he opened his mouth, he took her and the wine in and got an instant hit from both – an extra layer of fuzz to add to the sexual static in his brain. Her tongue was warm and felt obscenely alive and he wanted to put his arms around her and grind himself into her, but she was pulling back. Another slow sip, another deep kiss. No touching.
‘Grietje, please. My erection is killing me,’ he said when she pulled away again.
A slow, wide smile and then, ‘I don’t understand, Tom, you need to say it in Dutch. Say it in Dutch and there may be a reward.’
Could he still think, looking at the way her lipstick was smeared, tasting it on his own tongue?
‘Mijn erectie is killing me,’ he dredged up. An easy one, the last three words particularly.
‘Wrong pronunciation,’ she said, frowning, ‘last three words especially. “Muh” not “meeee”.’
He tried again and obviously got it right because her hand was on his chest, pushing him towards the chair. He sat as well as he could, but his erection really was killing him.
Down went the wine glass, off came her earrings, her shoes. She bent and lifted up the hem of her dress and stripped that away too.
No stockings and no knickers, but a thing, he couldn’t remember just at that moment what you called it. Sheer and cupping. Two of his favourite words in any language. He could see her nipples through the gauze. It made them look black but they were more a caramel colour. He had to stop himself thinking of the way they would change under his mouth, how she liked him to rake his teeth across them.
A body – that was the name. How the hell could he have forgotten that? Probably the sight of the flesh and blood one under it.
She went to the bed, reached under the pillow and placed the things she pulled out on to the bedside table, making a show of touching them, running a finger along the length of one of them. It should have looked over the top, but it was winding him up even tighter.
‘Are they for me, or you?’ he asked, his mouth suddenly dry. He reached out for the wine glass and took a large slug of the contents, knowing she would have seen the way his hand was unsteady.
‘Depends,’ she said, leaving the toys behind. ‘Let’s see if you deserve them.’ She dipped her chin and looked up at him with a hint of a smirk. ‘Or maybe I’ll see if you misbehave enough.’
He tried to calm himself, but she was moving to the desk and making a big show of bending to move the files and papers on to the floor. He looked at the beautiful shape of her buttocks and the view of her breasts from the side, and knew she’d be enjoying the way he was studying her.
A lovely body, not dieted into shape but muscular and capable. He imagined her swimming at her summer home; easy, confident strokes.
‘Jakob sends his regards,’ she said as she finished clearing a space and he replied, ‘And I send mine back,’ although in truth he didn’t want to talk about her husband now and it was the one part of her utterly straightforward approach to her sexual needs that he, old-fashioned little Englander that he was, would never get used to. He didn’t want to talk about her other lovers either, those men who met her in hotel rooms around Europe to take her mind off venture capital and another night apart from Jakob.
‘So,’ she said, leaning her backside against the desk. First one strap was pushed down from her shoulders and then the other. She lowered the whole top to reveal her breasts, and however many breasts he saw in his life, that thrill never went. He had to will himself not to hurl his mouth towards them.
A smoulder of a look from her and then she was undoing the fastenings on the material between her legs.
What did his face look like at this minute? Yearning?
He thought of that first time he’d met her, when he had really been interviewing her – a woman whose bank was bringing jobs to the region. Had he looked like he looked now? Is that what had made her, when all the questions were over, reach under the table and put her hand high up on his thigh? He remembered the shock of realising that he’d stumbled on a woman who could provide him with something that, up until that minute, he hadn’t been aware he needed. Someone who didn’t want to get to know his family or the intricacies of his job or what had happened to his marriage, but who would love to have sex with him, vigorously, imaginatively, often.
He revelled in the fact that she was a secret and what he was doing seemed daring. That Grietje could never be fully his or even fully known.
‘What would you like, Grietje?’ he asked, trying to hurry her along to the moment when she’d let him touch her.
She thought about that. Licked her lips, he guessed, on purpose. ‘This,’ she said and gave him a little demonstration of what she meant, although you couldn’t call it a dry run. ‘And then again with your mouth.’ She arched her back. ‘Then however you want it, Tom. Rough. Gentle. Play a bit first.’ He followed her gaze to the bedside table.
‘So many choices.’
A soft, low laugh. ‘So, what are you waiting for? A written invitation?’
Standing up, he felt lightheaded because every drop of blood in his body seemed to be in his groin, burning and bubbling and driving him to stand between her legs and kiss her deeply and roughly on the mouth.
He pushed her back on the desk and she flexed her hips, trying to rub herself against him and then he was moving away a little so he could lower his head.
‘So many choices,’ he repeated, ‘a real smörgåsbord,’ and then he was taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking and tonguing it. Smooth, then tightly budded. He brought up a hand to help him and felt her breathing quicken as he scraped his teeth gently back and forth. Everything about him felt hard and taut now – thigh muscles, stomach, cock, resolve.
‘Not smörgåsbord … Wrong country, wrong country,’ she said in little gasps. ‘Smörgåsbords are for the Swedish, you stupid Englishman.’ He could hear her need to come in the irritation running under her words, as if by making them harsher she could goad him into getting her there quicker.
‘Wrong country?’ he said. ‘Really?’ and moved his other hand between her legs. He slipped his fingers into the heat and the wet of her and those two sensations together made him close his eyes in an effort to pace himself. Slowly he slid his thumb to the place he wanted.
He stroked, slowly.
‘The wrong country?’ he asked again. ‘And am I in the wrong country now, too?’ A push that sent his fingers deeper into her and caused a sharp pull in of her breath. ‘Strange … feels like the right country to me, Grietje.’
Him in control now, her under him and responding. Wonderful to be able to do this with a woman again.
‘Niet stoppen,’ she said, urgently, and she was grabbing hold of his shoulders and pulling herself up so she could grind against his hand … ‘Niet stoppen, niet stoppen …’
‘I’m never stopping,’ he assured her, feeling wildly alive.
He didn’t catch her reply, too busy concentrating on his thumb, on her and on that moment when he got to fall apart as well.
CHAPTER 15
Thursday 15 May
1) Four days in a row looking at microfiche leaves you with a pain behind one eye. Perhaps I could borrow Hattie’s eye-patch. But it was the uninterrupted time I needed to reach the finish line. What a lot I learned along the way.
2) 1962 was an interesting year – although studying other people’s wedding photos is not always an uplifting experience.
3) 1963 was another interesting year – and at least now I know how old Mrs Mawson is. And that she is an Aries. This does not surprise me.
4) Charlie Coburg and his wife, Penelope, did not seem like a matching pair. She was carved out of granite while he looked as if someone had squidged him together with their hands.
5) Jamie resembles his maternal grandfather. He definitely has his mouth and, like him, appears to be the only one in the family who can move the muscles around it to make a smile.
6) Jamie’s brother, Edward, likes to kill things. Things smaller than he is.
7) Tom’s father died when he was very young – Tom and the father.
8) Tom does not look that different now from how he looked at seventeen in his rugby kit. Except he is about twenty years older, twenty pounds heavier and goodness knows how much more pre-occupied.
9) Charlie Coburg went missing from the newspapers during 1989/1990. Perhaps he was hibernating. (This is a joke, although not the funny kind. And a riddle to which I already know the answer.)
10) The library was very quiet. I suspect that the graveyard, when I can face it, will be even quieter.
CHAPTER 16
‘What about a newt, then?’
‘No. They’re wild, they belong outside.’
‘A parrot? All pirates have parrots.’
‘Definitely not a parrot.’ Tom accompanied the reply with a stern look into the rear-view mirror. It was completely wasted on Hattie who was staring out of the window, no doubt imagining striding over a quarter-deck off the coast of Jamaica with a parrot on her shoulder.
‘Python?’ she said.
‘No. I’d find you missing and the python with a Hattie-shaped lump in it.’