by David Miller
Cass – she preferred to be abbreviated, but was strictly teetotal – had first encountered Lenny as part of a mixed amateur running team (they ran Wednesday nights, mostly around the Epping area) and had been immediately convinced that he was exactly the kind of man who might own a big dog. She was right.
Her parents had both been art teachers. Her father had suffered from an allergy to hair, so they’d kept cats. Cats have fur, not hair, which is a small but significant difference. As Cass grew older, such differences became very much a pre-occupation. But even as a small child, Cass had found felines both sexually unexciting and physically unreciprocal.
Lenny’s father was a hospital porter. His mother, Doll, worked off and on in pub catering, Lenny himself was 27 and tender verging on raw following his recent separation from Jill, his superficially angelic, but perpetually philandering, wife. So he was home again, back in his old bedroom where Sam Fox fought nightly duels on adjacent walls with a post-pubescent Glenn Hoddle. Home again, having difficulty in digesting regular meals of fish fingers with chips (never oven-baked) and saveloys with mash. Back home, and right along-side him – trotting, panting, cavorting – was good, loyal, unadulterous old Pike.
Woof! Lenny earned a crust driving his own black cab and was not alone in observing that there are, in general, two kinds of cabbies; those who converse and those who don’t. Lenny didn’t. It wasn’t in his nature to unburden, and anyway, those things buried deep within him – his heart, his kidneys, his pride, his bowels, his backbone – were still much too fragile and tense and jaded for him to even contemplate off-loading.
Lenny was gentle and relatively physically demonstrative, but not in the tiniest bit wordy. And although he could boast of big hands, grey eyes and an almost infallible sense of direction, these characteristics, married with an intrinsic naivety, were rarely sufficient to keep him out of trouble.
Cassandra, on the other hand, was ridiculously chatty. She knew her milkman by his first name (Bud), told people on buses about her terrible appendicitis scars (an “imposter’ surgeon had apparently been involved) and didn’t hesitate to use the men’s toilets when the queue outside the ladies’ seemed prohibitively long.
She had short dark hair, big lips, a small nose and a skinny torso which was crowned by two huge pink nipples. These she displayed, unashamedly, like exotic chrysanthemums, as a life model every Thursday night. She found keeping still such a constant struggle that she could often be found sitting hard on her hands, was 23, and fully enrolled in a part-time course to learn the fine art of the masseuse.
One day she hoped to work for the British Olympic team, or in a temporary capacity for a continental soccer club.
Cass always found quiet men a particular challenge. Lenny was surely no exception, but she won him over, finally, by faking cramp in her left thigh towards the end of a seven-mile run. Lenny was already deeply impressed with the stamina Cass displayed by running and talking almost continuously, even uphill. This remarkable accomplishment, she told him, was considerably aided by the wearing of the kind of nasal strip she’d seen demonstrated during the Euro ’96 football championship, which served to facilitate the more efficient flow of oxygen directly up the nasal passages and straight down into the lungs. (She had also been known to favour using this particular device during certain types of vigorous sexual activity.) Prostrate in the roomy confines of Lenny’s cab, hot and languorous on her way back home, Cass told him how she’d learned – from a punkish American performance artist – to reach orgasm during masturbation without using her fingers, but merely by controlling her breathing in a very particular way. Lenny was perfectly appalled by this revelation and resolved to go out of his way to avoid her at every future opportunity.
But Cass kept turning up. And although it was no instant thing – no fireworks and silver spangles – it took only a gentle nudge here, a canny poke there, the odd bit of honking and parping and timely indication before Lenny was seeing what he thought was the Real Girl underneath all the talk and the trash and the tassles.
If Lenny was a traffic jam, Cass did her damnedest to surreptitiously ease herself in at the front end. But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Lenny was still too chafed for full-scale sexual adventure. His jib was still battered, his mast halved. And these particulars aside, there was still his mother to contend with, and she was surely no pushover.
Doll was powerfully built, majestically permed and certainly a proposition. She took against Cass with a vengeance during their very first encounter. Cass’s Lycra/cheesecloth combinations were truly a red rag to a cow. Doll lived in nylon and believed – stupidly, vocally – that a compromise between Lenny and his ex-wife, Jill, was still attainable. If only, she’d mumble ruminatively, if only Lenny could learn to accept that trust can always be reacquired following certain kinds of minor sexual indiscretion. Doll was an old fashioned pragmatist and proud of it. Cass, she felt, was horrifyingly arty-farty. On her first home visit, Doll watched with some amazement as Cass fed the devils-on-horseback she’d so painstakingly prepared to lolling, pink-tongued old Pike. And this, even after she’d warned her that virtually all kinds of preserved fruit made him prone to wind. Cass was unapologetic: “I’m a vegetarian, Doll, and something of a body fascist,’ she announced, baring a set of teeth as grand, magical and monolithic as the main circle at Stonehenge, “so I’m afraid that you’ll just have to take me as you find me.’
Doll found her sorely wanting. She watched suspiciously as Cass stroked Pike from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail and didn’t think once of slapping him down when he clambered up all too keenly. She advised Lenny towards carnal reticence. The word “rebound’ was rarely far from her commonplace vocabulary.
Lenny smiled. He’d felt under no pressure to be sexual with Cass as yet, and since Cass claimed to be able to reach a climax while watching adverts about car insurance, was aroused by things as everyday as the taste of peppermint and the smell of household disinfectant, she appeared about as sexually demanding as a Pot Noodle.
Doodling in Cass’s kitchen one day, Lenny happened to notice a leaflet an the noticeboard for a discussion at the ICA entitled “Where Does Love End and Fur Begin?’ And paging through Cass’s copy of Madonna’s book, Sex (“Madonna is the ultimate paradigm of a truly emancipated female’), he noted that one of the pages was especially well-worn. It detailed the Virgin Queen’s early experiences in New York’s strip joints. There were some pictures involved but it was mainly text, which, Lenny decided, as far as Cass and her proclivities were concerned, made perfect sense.
He fondly believed that Cass, unlike his apparently conventional spouse, Jill, was all talk, no action. She was a chicken waiting to be plucked. But until that time, she seemed perfectly content to simply peck and cluck. What Lenny didn’t notice, however, was that on the back side of the well-worn page was another which showed Madonna frolicking in the garden with an exceedingly friendly bitch. And Madonna, the strumpet, was all bare ass and beams.
One Tuesday night, Lenny came home for a quick snack before starting his evening shift and let slip to Doll that he was considering attending a World Music Festival in Reading that weekend. It would be the first night he and Cass would spend together. Cass owned a tent – he dimpled – and she had suggested that they take Pike along with them for the ride.
Pike swished his tail at the mention of his own special syllable and gave an attention-grabbing whine. He was surely the gamest of pawns.
Doll scowled: “But what about his regular Sunday walk in the forest?”
“He’ll get plenty of exercise with us.”
“He might get lost.”
“Lost?!” Cass nearly choked. “Lenny! He’s your dog. Tell her that she can either like it or lump it.”
Thursday morning, Lenny told Doll that Cass was determined that Pike should attend the festival after all. “This is an important weekend for Cass and me,” he said gently, “and it’s rather a case of love me, love my mutt.”
> Doll sucked in her cheeks. She felt a brief spasm of prickly heat beneath her girdle. Then she exploded: “Don’t you think Pike has been through enough already over the past few months? He shouldn’t be dragged from pillar to post. What he craves is security.”
“It’s only Reading, Mum,” Lenny whimpered, but Doll had already stalked off.
“Oh dear.”
Lenny stared at Pike, who stared back and then reached down to sniff his own scrotum.
(Let it be observed that if, at any point, it might have been suggested to Lenny that the conflict between his new woman and his mother was in fact a psychosexual one, the suggester would’ve been the recipient of a grazed jaw. But a secret part of Lenny sensed that this was, in fact, the case, and the private thrill of it made his oedipal juices swish. The silly bugger.) Through the remainder of Thursday and the first mouthful of Friday, Lenny didn’t mention the subject of Pike’s weekend to either conflicting party. Cass saw no reason to believe that she hadn’t got her own way, but decided, just in case, to turn up at Lenny’s house a spit before he arrived home from work, so that any disputes between her and Doll could be ironed out in his absence.
Doll had been very busy. She’d taken Pike out that morning for a wade in the more rancid spots of local marshland and had gorged him on smoked haddock for lunch. She answered the door wearing a pale pink housecoat and pop socks. Pike was as high as a rotten potato. Doll – usually houseproud – appeared not to notice.
Cass recoiled. Pike in no way resembled the beautiful firm-nosed, tousle-headed, clean-tongued dog of which Anais Nin had written so evocatively in her erotic prose. But these differences, Cass told herself, while significant, were really quite small.
Doll led Cass into the front room.
“I gave Pike a worming tablet just after lunch,” she declared, the high colour of battle flaring in her cheeks. “So he might be a little gyppy in the car.”
“Oh.” “Perhaps he’d be best left after all.” “He’ll be fine. Maybe we could hose him down before we go?” “No. Tea?” “Thanks.”
While Doll busied herself in the kitchen, Cass dumped her suitcase, grabbed Pike’s collar and led him, with little resistance, to the front door, through it, and onwards and outwards. “Okay, fella,” she told him, once they were settled on the bus, “let’s see how you scrub up, shall we?” Lenny arrived home to a scene of sheer bedlam. Doll was rabid.
“Pike’s gone!” she bellowed.
“Where?” “She took him! My back was turned for just one moment and then she took him.” “Who?” “Cass!” Lenny grinned. “Come off it. Why would Cass take Pike?” Doll threw herself down onto the sofa. “I don’t know why, Lenny, but what I do know is that the way she petted Pike and fussed over him every single time they met just wasn’t natural.”
Lenny was mortified. “Mum,” he said quietly, “calm down. You’re being silly. She’s probably only taken him out for a walk. She left her suitcase behind, see?” He pointed.
“Yes,” Doll was triumphant, “and maybe you should take a little look inside.”
She sprang up and grabbed Cass’s battered old, case, pinged open the lock and pulled it wide. It was empty except for a small, but rather delightful, moth-eaten fur bikini. Lenny was lost for words.
“How’s that for depravity?” Doll slammed the case shut with a resolute crack.
Lenny took a deep breath and then spoke: “Have you considered,” he cleared his throat, “… is it at all possible that you might be feeling just the tiniest bit …” he paused, “um … well … jealous?” Doll blushed the colour of a beef tomato.
“Jealous? What of?”
“Of … well … of me.”
Doll cackled: “Jealous? Of you? Pah!!”
Lenny was visibly withered.
Driving over to Cass’s flat, Lenny couldn’t help fixating on the way she’d pinned a cuddly puppy calendar above her bed, her collection of studded collars, her great show of excitement when Crufts was televised – especially during the working dogs coverage. He felt sick.
Cass, meanwhile, had arrived home and tried to put Pike in the bath.
He’d proven astonishingly unwieldy. In the space of 20 minutes, he’d sat on her face-towel, eaten a bar of soap, a loofah and several chunks of her best fern. Then he’d shaken himself all over her new living-room curtains.
Things weren’t going at all to plan. Pike kept barking at her stereo and her toaster. Three times she’d had to remove her first edition copy of The Women’s Room from between his champing jaws. He, like Doll, was certainly proving no pushover. Cass inspected her soaking shirt-front and sighed. The whole flat smelled like fish guts and old cardboard. Why weren’t things working out? Was it just a lack of organisational skill on her part? Did she possess no real sense of authority? Was it simply this alien environment which had rendered Pike so unattractive, so unmalleable?
“I have the fantastical nipples of a true hussy,” she told herself brokenly, then picked up her favourite pair of Hush Puppy suede slippers and threw them violently against the wall.
“Pike. Fetch!” Good as gold, he retrieved them.
Lenny felt like he was driving through treacle. Everything seemed so slow and so sticky. But finally he arrived. He parked the cab, climbed out, stared over at Cass’s flat, took a deep breath, walked up to the front door, pushed. It wasn’t locked. He steeled himself and then bowled right on in. He froze.
The sight that greeted him made him gasp in horror.
“Pike!” he yelled. “Off the sofa! You know full well you’re never allowed to do that at home.”
Cass emerged from the kitchen, perfectly cool, holding a bowl of water.
“Hello,” she smiled. “I brought him home for a bath. He was absolutely filthy. How was work?” “Work?” Lenny just gaped.
In the cab, after an interval of strained silence, Lenny said quietly: “Cass, you do realise that Pike’s been neutered?” “Really?” Cass seemed unperturbed. Lenny studied her lack of reaction side-on. He hated himself for the thoughts he’d been having.
“So you don’t think it’s cruel or anything?” “What?” Her mind was clearly elsewhere. “Actually, Lenny, maybe we should leave Pike with your mum after all. If it really means that much to her.”
Pike sat damply on the back seat, full of beans.
“So you don’t think it’s cruel? To neuter?” “Cruel?” Cass seemed taken aback. “Hell, no. Cruel? What a silly idea. I mean that’s like saying life would be impossible without penetrative sex.”
Lenny was suddenly nervous: “You mean for dogs?” “No,” Cass looked perfectly calm. “In general.”
“But wouldn’t life be impossible?” Cass glanced at Lenny’s troubled expression. “Good God, Lenny, some of your ideas are so bourgeois.”
A gradual change began to take place in Lenny’s perception of Cass.
Gradual, slight even, but very significant. Could a person be very sexual, but very prudish, at exactly the same time?
“It wasn’t really true about your being aroused by household disinfectant, was it?” Cass wasn’t listening. She was debating the small, but significant, difference between reality and fantasy. She was thinking how wolfish Lenny was in profile, how big his hands were, how obliging he could be.
And he had a fantastic sense of direction, which was always an asset in a man.
“Disinfectant?” she parroted finally. “Uh … no. Well … only pine-flavoured.” “And surely you can’t actually reach orgasm by simply breathing?” Cass frowned: “I can’t if I don’t, that’s for sure.”
Lenny spent the best part of the journey home working out what this meant exactly.
They dropped Pike off. Lenny explained to Cass that it might be easier if she waited in the car.
“Fine.” She propped her feet up on the dashboard.
Pike was glad to be home. He blew about like a mad little thistle in a windy gust. Doll was much calmer than she had been previously. Lenny told her that the t
rip to Reading was still on, but that they’d decided to leave Pike behind after all.
“Fine.” She didn’t bat an eyelid. “Whatever’s easier.”
Doll always recognised victory when it bit her on the butt.
Lenny retrieved Cass’s suitcase and headed for the door. He felt like he’d really run the gamut. He climbed back into the cab and handed Cass a map. “Just in case,” he muttered, and fastened his seatbelt. Cass tossed the map onto the back seat, sat hard on her hands, and spent the rest of the journey trying to scrape Lenny’s Thank You For Not Smoking sign off the dashboard with her toes. For once, she seemed to have nothing in particular to talk about. And for once, Lenny felt like he had plenty.
Pike was home again! He was truly home again! Doll was ecstatic. She was so relieved, in fact, that for the first time in what seemed like a very long while she felt able to relax and wind down completely. She took off her housecoat, rolled her pop socks around her ankles and applied a fresh coating of bacon fat to all her main glands.
BEAUTY’S SISTER
James Bradley
James Bradley (b.1967) has twice been named as one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists and has won the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Literature Award, the Kathleen Mitchell Literary Award and has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. He is the author of a collection of poetry called Paper Nautilus and the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist and the forthcoming Clade. He lives in Sydney with his partner and their daughters.
I was four when I discovered I had a sister. It was winter, the forest outside still and silent, the fire dancing in the hearth.
All morning my mother had been tired, distracted, pushing me away and snapping when I grabbed for her sewing, her frustration with me so palpable that finally I retreated to the other room.
It was darker in there, colder, and so with my doll beneath my arm I clambered up onto the bed. From the next room I could hear the fire, the occasional movement of my mother’s chair, but otherwise it was quiet, the only sound that of my father’s axe in the distance, the blows ringing through the freezing air.