‘There are only two things a man can’t do for a woman,’ Swallow predicted ominously, when Monty telephoned her. ‘Have a baby and buy her jeans. Why doesn’t he just bring up something from the Priory?’
‘I think he wants to buy me a present and needs a good excuse,’ Monty told her. ‘Will you get someone to come and cut my hair? I’ll scare the yokels to death looking like this.’
The hairdresser cut her hair as short as a schoolboy’s and showed her the effect in the mirror. Monty thought she looked younger and thinner. She had the impression of seeing her face properly for the first time, and she liked it. Joe brought the new jeans, which were two sizes too small.
‘Do you really think my ass is that little?’ she asked him, gesturing with her bandages.
‘Isn’t it?’ he asked her with concern. ‘I reckoned it was about this size,’ he made a gesture in the air with his hands; it was unmistakably caressing and Monty began to smile but the pain stopped her.
‘Damn you, Joe, will you stop making me laugh? Now get on the telephone and I’ll talk to the shop.’
All the shop had was a pair of black trousers that were severely tailored, with a jacket to match which Monty couldn’t get on over her bandages. Joe helped her into the clothes and fastened the trousers for her.
‘You’re much more careful than the nurses,’ she told him. Monty was beginning to realize that she had been seriously wrong in assessing his character. He was gentle and thoughtful, nothing like the savage she had seen on stage. He could even change the dressings on her hands without hurting her, which was more than most of the nurses could.
At the Priory, she set to work at once in the studio, directing Joe and Al as they remixed the song on which he’d asked her help; then they went on to finish the remaining three tracks on the album. Her hands were still bandaged, but Joe was quick and subtle about doing what she told him. He was also full of cunning strategies to draw out her ideas and build her confidence.
Joe did all this in his own interest. ‘Love’was a word he used very cautiously, never entirely sure that he knew what it meant, but on considering very carefully he thought he loved Monty. He was grateful that she was attracted to him, but most women responded the same way; he sensed that her heart had been broken so often it was mostly scar tissue; he knew with complete certainty that she would only be able to love him if she also found the strength to handle the rest of her life.
Joe was a good teacher, and to his delight Monty grabbed every opportunity he gave her. It was true that they complemented each other artistically: she was a much more sophisticated musician than Joe, but he had a raw power of expression which she did not.
‘Aren’t we a terrific team?’ she asked as they listened to the last track when it finished. ‘Fred and Ginger, Tracy and Hepburn, you and me. We’re magic.’
He gave her a look that was startled but warm, and the little room seemed even smaller as their intimacy suddenly leapt into a new dimension. Monty felt light-headed and skittish. She trusted him now, and she trusted herself with him – after all, with half her skin still missing, what else could they do but talk? Al, the other musicians, and the engineer had already left. They were alone.
‘Why do you always play so loud?’ she demanded boldly, leaning back against the mixing deck.
He ran his hand through his silky black hair, thinking. ‘When I started out I used to feel this incredible rage. I just wanted to kill everything and everyone. The place it really came out was in my music. All I wanted to do was attack, destroy with noise, you know.’
‘Don’t you feel like that now?’
‘No. That’s really why the band is splitting up. I’m interested in music that’s a whole lot more expressive now. I’ve had it for communication on the Tarzan level. To tell the truth, I think the boys feel the same. But what we’ve gotten known for is that megaton fireball noise, and that’s what our company wants us to go on doing so they can go on selling the records. You can’t blame them. They’re in business to make money. People have got a lot of rage inside them and they’re willing to pay to have it let out.’
‘It was exciting, that killer sound.’ She wondered if he remembered just how excited he had been when they first met, and she hadn’t been able to do anything but stare at his crotch. He dropped his eyes from her face at once, and she realized that he did remember, and was embarrassed.
‘What’s excitement all about, though?’ He still couldn’t look at her, she noticed. ‘Let me tell you something. I don’t know if you’ll understand but I’ll try to explain.’ Now he looked up, appealing to her. ‘I’ve had all the excitement I can stand, more than most people have in a lifetime. Thrillsville USA, that’s my home town. I’ve done dope, I’ve done booze, I’ve done jumping out of aeroplanes … and God knows what it is that I’ve got, but women have come on to me all my life. Once I was a big star and all, it was just ridiculous. It was like every chick in the world wanted my scalp. I know I laid 427 chicks in our first year, because we kept count, but after that I couldn’t tell you. It got to be a game, seeing what I could get them to do.’
She nodded, remembering how Rick and Cy used to amuse themselves the same way.
‘I was doing the same thing I was doing on stage – hitting back,’ he continued. ‘I realized I had to break the circle; OK, so women had used me, my mother had abandoned me, my wife had left me – so what? I couldn’t stay on a revenge trip for ever. I was the one who was suffering, I was the one who felt degraded. And I realized I was using fucking just the way I’d used alcohol, to cover up. It was something I could do to distract myself from everything I didn’t like in my life. So I decided I’d let it go.’
‘You mean you gave up fucking?’ Monty looked at him in amusement. A man who didn’t fuck seemed an idea as bizarre as water that wasn’t wet.
He nodded, searching her face to see if she understood. ‘It wasn’t at all difficult. I didn’t give up for ever, I just wanted it to mean something. I felt it was time to take responsibility for my life. One day you have to admit that the buck stops with you.’
Monty nodded. ‘I learned that at the Centre. I’m an addict, did you know that?’ They talked on, trading secrets. She told him about her relationship with Rick, and with Sig Bear. ‘What I can’t understand is that they both said they loved me, and they did love me, in their way, but all they did was take what they needed from me, and never think that they were destroying me.’
He shook his head with emphasis. ‘They didn’t love you, Monty. Nobody who loved you could ever use you.’
She shrugged, wishing she could believe it were true.
After that they talked all the time, until it felt as if they knew each other like brother and sister. Somehow it became clear that they loved each other; they desired each other, too – at least, Monty was almost sure Joe wanted her as much as she wanted him. He didn’t flirt with her and he would not touch her, but their bodies were bonded mysteriously together.
Monty’s new skin grew fast and flawless as she healed. Her face and body were as good as new – although rather pink – in a month. The bandages came off her hands and that skin too regenerated, at first as fine as poppy petals, then thicker. By the beginning of August, only a slight puckering and discoloration on one hand remained to show that she’d been burned.
One by one the disaffected members of the band had left the Priory, and then when the album was finished the technicians departed. Al was the last to go and Joe and Monty waved him goodbye from the driveway, like parents seeing off the last child to fly the nest. It was an uncertain summer evening, with towering columns of black cloud building up in the sky and the swallows flying very low above the lawn in front of the music room windows.
They went into the empty house, made tea and took it into the sitting room. Joe sprawled on the chintz sofa that was so vast and shapeless, it was like an ocean of printed roses. Monty walked to and fro in front of the narrow stone-framed windows, watching the unearthly dusk ligh
t in the valley. Their silence was as heavy as the stormy air. The question ‘what now?’ hung between them like a sword poised to part them. Monty could feel Joe’s eyes follow her as she paced the carpet.
‘Can I play you something?’ she asked him, desperate to cut the tension.
‘Of course.’ He pulled in his legs and stood up, and she led him into the music room, which was tall and narrow with french windows open to the garden and the valley below it. The eighteenth-century tapestry curtains stirred as a warm wind began to gust.
‘I haven’t got any words for this yet,’ she opened the piano and sat down, ‘but I think I’ve got the tune all figured out. Anyway …’ She raised her hands to the keys and began to play, finding the melody which had been lying at the back of her mind for a week. The notes seemed to arrange themselves by magic, until they were a tune that seemed a simple flowing line of sound with delicate harmonies reflected within it. She played it through three times, until she was sure it was perfect.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him. Joe was sitting on a hard, black leather couch by the window.
‘It’s pretty,’ he nodded, approving.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she told him calmly, wondering why he was being so obtuse. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever written. If I never write anything better than that I’ll die happy.’
Of course. This was another of his games, a test to discover her true feelings, to see how sure of herself she was. He was sitting there, relaxed and expressionless, creating a climate of emotional neutrality in which she could express herself freely.
Monty walked across to Joe and stood looking down at his great, sprawled body. His arms were spread out across the back of the couch, and she could see a sinew flickering in his left bicep.
‘What I’d like to do is go into the studio tomorrow and record this. When my contract with Biffo ends I want to start singing again, but this time the way I want, and I’d love it if you produced me, like you did Al.’ She looked him squarely in the eyes. Inside her a chasm of fear opened. Suppose he said no? Suppose she had read him wrong? Suppose he made some slimy excuse and rejected her – now, when she had opened up to him and dared to say what she needed?
‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘Let’s do it.’ The flicker of nervous tension had moved to his lips. ‘Why start tomorrow?’ he asked, knowing the answer. ‘Why not now?’
Outside big drops of rain were beginning to fall, leaving spots of moisture the size of pennies on the flagstones.
‘We have something else to do now,’ she said, and stood astride him. Slowly, she sank down to sit across his lap. To her joy and relief, first one arm then the other left the back of the couch and he embraced her, his face pressed between her breasts. She felt the heat from his thighs strike up into her body, and hugged her knees around him.
Joe raised his face to hers and she took his lips, shutting her eyes to savour their harshness and the pleasure of the months of yearning coming to fruition at last. Lust as keen as anguish twisted inside her. She plunged her hands into his thick, black hair and strained him to her, feeling her blood catch fire. Their lips parted and their tongues met, flickering and darting around their mouths.
Monty felt fear again, knowing she was going to be vulnerable to this man as she had never been before, that he would possess her completely, but also make her the gift of himself. Soon there would be nowhere to hide, no escape from the demands of the life they would create together.
He sensed her fear and held her to him with as much strength as he thought she could bear. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, his lips brushing her ear. ‘We’ll make it. We love each other. We’ll always love each other.’
She kissed his forehead, his eyelids, the sharp bridge of his nose, tasting the salt film of perspiration on his skin. Her lips explored the sinewy warmth of his neck, the firm swell of the shoulder muscles, the hollows behind the sharp collar bones, the tender membrane of his throat. With careful hands she pulled at the thin fabric of his T-shirt and pressed her mouth to the ridges of his chest.
‘Can I touch you?’ he asked her in a soft voice. ‘Is your skin strong enough?’
‘I think so.’ She pulled her own shirt over her head and threw aside the two garments together, offering him her breasts. This was the moment for which she had craved. His hands held her and his mouth closed over her flesh, trying the texture of the new skin with pressure as delicate as a falling leaf. His tongue, narrow and red, teased the swelling nipples and she heard a soft moan rise in her throat.
Outside the rain began to fall hard and fast, and the wind whipped wavelets in the sheets of water on the stones. A fierce gust blew back the glass doors and whipped the curtains. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he whispered.
She shut the french windows, seeing the storm clouds circling above as if the sky were boiling. With their arms around each other’s naked waists they walked slowly to the staircase and began to climb. Joe was a full twelve inches taller than she and to walk this way was awkward. She slipped on the polished oak tread and he snatched her up protectively. The contact of their skin was electric; restraint abandoned them. Joe took off her jeans, then his own, and they stood clasped together below the stained glass window at the half-landing, glorying in their nakedness and wanting this first time to last for ever.
It seemed to Monty that they stayed a lifetime on the staircase below the streaming window. Kneeling between his thighs she made love to him with her mouth, caressing the beautiful shaft of flesh that would soon be enveloped in the centre of her. At last he asked her to stop, curled his long body between her legs and began to part the folds of her flesh with his fingers and tease with his tongue, coaxing the petals to swell and unfold and the sweet-smelling moisture to run. The small liquid noises echoed in the empty mansion.
Finally he drew her across him and their bodies locked slowly together. Monty curled her arms around his neck and let her pelvis rock gently. His hands on her hips slowed her almost to stillness and they rested together, listening to the rain and holding on to the moments of closeness as long as they could.
At last Joe said, ‘Darling, you’re freezing. Let’s go to bed,’ and they separated and ran up to his room where they dived under the tangled quilt like romping children.
Their jeans lay discarded on the stairs, the sloughed-off skins of their old selves. In the warmth of the bed they set about the next phase of their union, acting like what they were, two sensual sophisticates showing off their skills.
At last they grew tired and fell asleep, while outside the storm continued in the darkness. Monty woke some hours later, and lay still in Joe’s arms listening to the thunder, which rolled like the balls in a giant’s skittle-alley behind the distant Chiltern Hills. Lightning flickered at the far side of the valley, its blue radiance glowing briefly in their room.
She realized that Joe also was awake.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, twisting towards him. ‘I feel like I’ve never loved anyone before.’
‘You never have loved anyone before,’ he told her, drawing her close. ‘And nobody has ever loved you.’
The thunder sounded louder and closer, Monty counted the seconds between the noise and the light.
‘Twelve,’ she said. ‘It’s twelve miles away.’ As if to mock her, a deafening clap sounded above the house, rattling the windows and shaking the floor below them. The lightning tore open the sky at the next instant, filling the room with white glare.
Obeying a primitive instinct to seek comfort, they searched for each other’s lips and felt warm and moist and strong in their humanity under the tumult of angry elements continued outside. She saw the whites of Joe’s eyes gleam in the darkness and felt his hair fall around her face as he leaned over her, his breath coming faster than before. She sensed that now he was struggling to tame an impulse that was searing all his senses, and slid her hands under his, linking their fingers.
‘Do it,’ she told him, ‘whatever it is, do i
t. I can take it.’
He paused an instant, then fell upon her like a demon in the darkness, a mad spirit of the storm wanting to smash their bodies to atoms and let them recombine. With his strength unchecked, he held her, turned her, picked her up like a plaything, steadied her against his thrusts. At last he collapsed with an animal cry shuddering with the violence of release.
They slept again, and in the morning she took what she wanted from him, passing the dreamy dawn in a mist of ecstasy. The sky was clear and the sunlight seemed fresh-washed like the landscape. Chuckling rivers of rainwater ran down the pathways in the hillside and in the chestnut wood a pigeon called.
For the rest of the day, everything seemed like an intrusion between them. They did not want to get dressed, because it diminished their intimacy. When the telephone rang, they did not answer it. The mail lay untouched on the mat in the hallway. They walked through the rainwashed garden, picking currants from the bush trained against the wall and dipped their feet in the cold pool to wash off the mud. They made love when, where and how their bodies craved each other, prisoners of desire who did not want their freedom.
The next day, they were ready to admit the world into their own universe. Joe made telephone calls, and at midday the engineer appeared, followed by Tony, her old guitarist. Winston arrived in the afternoon, by which time Monty had found words for her song. They began recording, and when it was finished the five of them listened to the playback in silence.
Winston laughed and slapped Monty’s hand. ‘That is the most beautiful song I ever heard in my entire life, girl.’
Joe rewound the tape and picked up a marker to label it. ‘What are we calling this?’ he asked her.
‘Broken Wings,’ she told him. ‘Now, shall I play you what I want to back it with?’
Eager to try her new plans out, Monty asked Sig Bear to release her from her Biffo contract.
‘Not a chance,’ he told her. ‘Just because you’ve run off with some Hiawatha, don’t think you can come round here threatening to zap me with the old thunder-mittens and get everything you fancy. Any song you write now belongs to me, and don’t you forget it.’
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