‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ he muttered. ‘You’re fantasizing, as usual.’
Turning off the bedroom light, he groped his way to the bed. A bedside lamp hadn’t been provided, or indeed a fire. The radiator was obstinately cold, and its valve so stiff he couldn’t move it an inch. He shivered as he eased his body between the clammy nylon sheets. Forget memory-foam mattresses – this one felt like horsehair. As he edged his legs down, he suddenly encountered a rip in the sheet, only to tear it further as he tried to extricate his foot. The thing was paper-thin, probably rotting from years of laundering. Couldn’t the invalid mother even afford some decent bed-linen?
Wearily he dragged himself up again, deciding to remake the bed and use the ripped sheet as the top one rather than the bottom. He switched the light back on and stood inspecting the damage. The tear was eighteen inches long, for heaven’s sake! Surely he had every right to demand a serviceable sheet? Stacey was probably still awake, so if went down now, he’d catch her. From what he gathered, women took an age before they actually settled down to sleep; doing mysterious female things such as creaming their faces or putting their hair in curlers.
Flinging on his dressing-gown, he descended the stairs as quickly as he dared, although being careful not to wake the mother.
His heart was racing as he paused outside Stacey’s door, and not from the exertion. This might be all it needed – a ripped sheet leading to romance. He must handle the situation with the utmost care and tact; forget his own base desires and focus on her needs. It was sympathy she lacked; tenderness, devotion. For all he knew, she might be weeping at this very moment, distraught about her mother’s fate – her own fate. He must treat her very gently; clasp her in his arms only to console her; not to sate his lust.
He cleared his throat, smoothed his hair, wishing now he’d sprayed himself with aftershave. But no way was he retreating. He might lose his nerve if he delayed a second longer, so, screwing up his courage, he tapped softly on the door.
No answer.
Maybe she was in the bath. An image of her naked body leapt into his mind; the white flesh gleaming seductively through a haze of foamy suds – although recalling what she’d said about there being no hot water caused the vision to collapse. No, she was probably crying, as he’d thought at first, and embarrassed to be seen with red eyes and tear-stained face.
‘It doesn’t matter, darling,’ he rehearsed in a soft purr. ‘You’re still beautiful to me, however red your eyes.’
He knocked again, louder, but no response whatever. Maybe she was asleep, and sleeping very deeply. Was it fair to wake her?
Yes! He could always soothe her back to sleep, once he’d explained about the sheet, and – more important – explained his rescue-plan. In fact, she’d sleep much sounder when she knew there was an escape-route, and that his little flat awaited her, as lovers’ nest and haven, should death or heartless bankruptcy blitz her world to shreds.
His own life seemed poised on a knife-edge as he wrestled with himself. One part of him was tempted to creep cravenly back to his room. He wasn’t the type of bloke to pound on women’s doors, or drag them rudely out of bed. Yet, if he didn’t act incisively, for once, he’d lose this precious second chance – a chance, he knew, that would never come again. If things worked out between them, she might actually bear his child – a whole brood of children, even. He’d not only be a husband, he’d be a family-man – a fully paid-up member of the human race. He’d no longer feel inferior to those younger, keener colleagues who all had wives and kids; all earned higher commission; drove superior cars. With Stacey in his life, he could sell a million beds; sell beds to sleepaphobics, even sell them to the dead.
‘Yes, go for it!’ he muttered, clenching both his fists and only hesitating a second longer before beating them against the door. The loud drumming noise was a shock to his whole system, yet a triumphant shock, bordering on euphoria. At last, he was acting like a champion, a hero. And his courage was paying off. He could hear movement from inside the room, footsteps approaching – closer – and, all at once, the door was flung open.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?’ yelled an outraged voice. A deep voice. A male voice. A voice like a tornado. And there, standing, arms akimbo, was Steve, the handyman – no longer in his soiled blue jeans, but naked save for a towel. And crouching on the bed behind him (a double bed, a lovers’ bed) was Stacey, also naked, although half-covered by the duvet.
He turned and fled, each step he took ageing him a good five years, so that when he limped back into his room, he was a panting, breathless pensioner, a laughing-stock, a dotard. How could he have imagined that a young girl in the springtime of her life would choose to mate with winter – brave its thin, bare, cold embrace, when she already had hot summer to melt her into surrender? He saw their agile limbs entwined; their thrusting, youthful bodies coupling in abandon. Steve was rightly called a handyman – he’d be handy with his cock, of course. She had lied to him; told him Steve was ‘leaving in a jiff ’; pretended she was tired, desperate for her beauty sleep, when, in galling fact, she was desperate to be rid of him, so she could rush to her lithe lover.
He paced up and down the small, cramped room, beside himself with humiliation. How ever could he face her in the morning? Indeed, she was bound to be the one who’d cook his breakfast: more wishy-washy tea and beans; more charred and greasy lies.
Impulsively, he seized his case and started hurling in his things at random; tossing his dressing-gown and pyjamas on the top. Then, naked in the unheated room, he dressed with feverish haste; unable to endure the sight of his blubbery stomach and grizzled old-man’s chest.
Grabbing his coat and suitcase, he dashed headlong down the stairs. Too bad if he woke the mother. For all he knew, she wasn’t ill at all; maybe in bed with her own lover. And certainly Steve and Stacey wouldn’t hear a thing. They’d be making too much noise themselves: whoops of passion, moans of desire, wild bellowings of lust.
He unbolted the front door, slammed it shut behind him and raced across the tarmac to his car. Accelerating away, he drove at perilous speed along the winding lane; hit the main road and hurtled on towards the M5 and home. His sole aim was to reach the safety of his flat; hole up there and hide his shame; never show his face again, or brave the mocking world.
As he turned on to the motorway, he pressed his foot down, hard; the breakneck pace reflected in his body: heart thwacking like a sledge-hammer; dizzy blood careering round his veins. Shadows formed and reformed; headlights dazzled, glared; the ghostly glow of distant towns diminished to a blur. Other cars were mere insubstantial shapes, to be overtaken, swallowed up. Nothing else existed but his own frantic sense of motion, as bridges, pylons, hazy landmarks went streaking, flashing past. Even the road-signs failed to register, until, suddenly, the words ‘West Bromwich, Walsall’ struck him with such force he all but skidded to a halt.
Hardly aware what he was doing, he veered left off the motorway, scorched along the slip-road and on towards the roundabout, and there did a total turnaround, until he was no longer driving north but south. The squall and storm of emotions churning through his mind had banished all clear thought; reduced rational decisions to so much airy moonshine. Since the moment he’d glimpsed Stacey naked on that double bed, he’d been acting on blind impulse; his usual common sense and caution thrown completely to the winds. Yet, strange as it might seem, it was the girl herself who had wrought this crucial change; made him see that he couldn’t stay a moment longer landlocked in the Midlands; kowtowing to his customers; cringing to his boss; tied down by schedules, shackles. All that was in the past. No way was he returning to stagnation and surrender, servility, defeat, but now setting his sights on space and scope and freedom – yes, heading down to Cornwall and the last, storm-tumbled outcrop before the ocean stalked the shore; the very furthest limits of the land.
He allowed the shocked speedometer to hit the ninety-mark, as if it shared his own impa
tience for a new, untrammelled life. Yet, despite the whirlwind speed, his breathing and his heartbeat began gradually to slow, and his tense, angry grip loosened on the steering-wheel. Even his injured pride was fading in significance. Why fret and fume about one small indignity, when ahead was independence, a new start? However mortifying her methods, Stacey had released him – and before it was too late.
Already, he seemed to hear the brazen waves booming forth their message on the shore: that he could still find love, find purpose; that he wasn’t just a piece of flotsam to be battered by the tide. And, overhead in the dark night sky, a flock of gulls went soaring up to a vaster, clearer realm – a more radiant sphere, bordering on infinity.
By dawn, he would reach Land’s End. Food and sleep must wait, while he rushed straight out to walk the eager strand, feel the sea-breeze stroke his face, see the gulls for real – triumphant gulls, not crying in derision now, but screeching out a hymn of praise to the lonely but courageous man who had broken free.
At last.
By the same author
Absinthe for Elevenses
Cuckoo
After Purple
Born of Woman
The Stillness The Dancing
Sin City
Devils, for a Change
Fifty-Minute Hour
Bird Inside
Michael, Michael
Breaking and Entering
Coupling
Second Skin
Lying
Dreams, Demons and Desire
Tread Softly
Virgin in the Gym and Other Stories
Laughter Class and Other Stories
The Biggest Female in the World and Other Stories
Little Marvel and Other Stories
Copyright
© Wendy Perriam 2009
First published in Great Britain 2009
This edition 2012
ISBN 978 0 7090 9847 8 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9848 5 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9849 2 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8788 5 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Wendy Perriam to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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