It hadn't been in any of the windows. A gap between two houses snagged his attention. The opening looked hardly wide enough to admit him, but at the far end, which presumably gave onto an adjacent street, he made out the contours of a thin female body, which looked to be pinned against a wall.
He paced closer, staying within the faint ambiguous multiple shadow of the church. Now he could distinguish that all her limbs were stretched wide, and in the dimness which wasn't quite dim enough, it became clear that she was naked. Another reluctant step, and he saw the glint of manacles at her wrists and ankles, and the curve of the wheel to which she was bound. Her face was a smudged blur.
Woodcock stared about, desperate to find someone to whom he could appeal on her behalf. Even if a policeman came in sight, what would be the use? Woodcock had seen policemen strolling through the red light district as if it was of no concern to them. The thought concentrated his revulsion, and he lunged at the gap.
It was so much broader than it had previously seemed that he had to suppress an impression of its having widened at his approach. He pressed his arms against his sides, his fingers shifting with each movement of his thighs, a sensation preferable to discovering that the walls felt as fleshy as the bridges and cobblestones had. That possibility was driven out of his mind once he was surrounded by darkness and could see the girl's face. It looked far too young'as young as his daughter had been when she'd stopped obeying him'and terrified of him.
"It's all right," he protested. "I only want..." The warm walls pressed close to him, confronting him with his voice, which sounded harsher than he'd meant it to sound. Her mouth dragged itself into a grimace as though the corners of her lips were flinching from him. As he crept down the alley, trying to show by his approach that he was nothing like whoever her helplessness was intended to attract, her large eyes, which were the colour of the night sky, began to flicker, trapped in their sockets. "Don't," he said more sharply. "I'm not like that, don't you understand?"
Perhaps she didn't speak English, or couldn't hear him through the pane of glass. She was shaking her head, flailing her cropped hair, which shone as darkly as the tuft at the parting of her legs. He knew teenagers liked to be thin, but she looked half starved. Had that been done to her? What else? He stepped out of the alley and stretched his upturned empty hands towards her, almost pleading.
He couldn't tell whether he was in a square or a street, if either. The only light came between the glistening walls of the gap between the houses and cast his shadow over the manacled girl. Her mouth was less distorted now, possibly because the grimace was too painful to sustain, but her eyes were rolling. They'd done so several times before he realized they were indicating a door to the left of the window; her left hand was attempting to jerk in that direction too. He wavered and then darted at the heavy paneled door.
He'd fitted his hand around the nippled brass doorknob when he caught himself hoping the door would be locked. But the knob turned easily, and the door drew him forward. Beyond it was a cramped cell which was in fact the entrance to a cell, although it reminded him of his own toolshed, with metal items glinting on the wall in front of him. There was an outsize pair of pliers, there was what appeared to be a small vise; there were other instruments whose use, despite his commitment to seeing the worst, he didn't want to begin to imagine. He lifted the pliers off their supports and paced to the door into the cell.
Despite his attempts to sound gentle, the floorboards turned his slow footsteps menacing. Through the grille he saw the girl staring at the door and straining as much of her body away from it as she could, an effort which only rendered her small firm breasts and bristling pubis more prominent. "No need for that, no need to be afraid," Woodcock muttered, so low that he might have been talking to himself. Grasping the twin of the outside doorknob, he twisted it and admitted himself to the cell.
The door screeched like a bird of prey, and the girl tried to jerk away from him, so violently that the wooden disc shifted, raising her left hand as though to beckon him. When she saw the pliers, however, her body grew still as a dummy in a shop window, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut, and then her lips. "These aren't what you think. That's to say, I'm not," Woodcock pleaded, and raised the pliers as he took a heavy resonating step towards her.
They were within inches of her left hand when her eyes quivered open. She clenched her hand into the tightest fist he'd ever seen, all the knuckles paling with the effort to protect her fingernails from him. There wasn't much more she could do, and he had a sudden overwhelming sense of her helplessness and, worse, of the effect that was capable of having on him. The pliers drooped in his grasp as though, like his crotch, they were putting on weight'as if one might be needed to deal with the other. "Don't," he cried and, gripping the pliers in both hands, dug them behind her manacle where it was fastened to the disc.
The wood was as thick as his hands pressed together. When he levered at the manacle with all his strength, he was expecting this first effort to have little if any effect, particularly since he was standing on tiptoe. But wood splintered, and the girl's arm sprang free, the manacle and its metal bolt jangling at her wrist. The force he'd used, or her sudden release, spun the wheel. Before he could prevent it she was upside down, offering him her defenseless crotch.
He felt as though he'd never seen that sight before'a woman's secret lips, thick and pink and swollen, bearing an expression which seemed almost smug in its mysteriousness. "Mustn't," he cried in a voice he hardly recognized, younger than he could remember ever having been, and grabbed the rim of the wheel to turn it until her face swung up to meet his. Her mouth had opened, and her eyes were also wide and inviting. As they met his she clasped her freed arm around his neck.
"No, no. Mustn't," he said, sounding like his father now. He had to take hold of her wrist next to the manacle in order to pull her arm away from him. Although her wrist was thin as a stick, he had to exert almost as much strength to move her arm as he had to lever out the manacle. Her eyes never left his. The manacle clanged on the wood beside his hip, and he thrust his knees against the wheel between her legs, to keep it still while he released her other arm. He couldn't bear the prospect of her being upturned to him again. Forcing the jaws of the pliers behind the second manacle and bruising his elbows against the wheel on either side of her arm, he heaved at the handles.
He felt the jaws dig into the wood, which groaned, but that was all. His heart was pounding, the handles were slipping out of his sweaty grasp. Renewing his grip, he levered savagely at the manacle. All at once the wood cracked, and the manacle jangled free, so abruptly that the pliers flew out of his hand and thudded on the floor. Only then did he become aware of the activity in the region of his penis, which was throbbing so unmanageably that he had been doing his best to blot it from his consciousness. While he was intent on releasing her arm, the girl had unbuttoned his trousers at the belt and unzipped his fly. As his trousers slithered down his legs she closed her hand around his penis and inserted it deftly into herself.
"No," Woodcock cried. "What are you'what do you think I'" She'd wrapped her arms around his waist, tight as a vise. She didn't need to; he was swollen larger than he'd been for many years, swollen inside the warm slickness of her beyond any hope of withdrawing. Once, early in their marriage, that had happened to him with Belinda, and it had terrified him. There was only one way he could free himself. He closed his eyes and gritted an inarticulate prayer through his teeth, and made a convulsive thrust with his hips. The manacles at her ankles jangled, her body strained upwards, and her arms around his waist lifted him onto his toes. Perhaps it was this shift of weight which set the wheel spinning.
As his feet left the ground he lost all self-control. He was a child on a carnival ride, discovering too late that he wanted to be anywhere but there. When he tried to pull away from the girl the movement intensified the aching of the whole length of his penis, and his reaction embedded him even deeper in her. He groped blindly for handholds
as he swung head downward and then up again, and managed to locate the splintered holes left by the manacles. He pumped his hips, frantic to be done and out of her, but the sensations of each thrust contradicted his dismay, and he squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to deny where he was and what he was doing. The jangling of the manacles had taken on the rhythm of the girl's cries intermixed with panting in his ear. The wheel spun faster, twirling him and his partner head over heels, until the only sense of stability he had was focused on the motions of his hips and penis. Were the girl's cries growing faster and more musical, or was he hearing a street organ playing a carnival tune? He was beyond being able to wonder; the sensations in his penis were mushrooming. As he strained his head back and gave vent to a roar as much of despair as of pleasure, light blazed into his eyes. He could do nothing but thrust and thrust as the vortex in which he was helplessly whirling seemed to empty itself through his penis as though it might never stop.
At last it did, and the girl's arms slackened around his waist as his penis dwindled within her. He kept his eyes shut and tried to calm his breathing as the wheel wavered to a stop. When he was sure he was upright he lowered himself until his toecaps found the boards, and let go of the holes in the wood, and fumbled to pull his trousers up and zip them shut. His eyes were still closed; from what he could hear, he thought he might not be able to bear what he would see when he opened them. After a good many harsh deep breaths he turned and looked.
The window-frame was ablaze with colored lightbulbs. Speakers at each corner of the window were emitting a street organ's merry tune. In the street which the lights had revealed outside the window, dozens of people had gathered to watch: sailors, young couples and some much older, even a brace of policemen in the local uniform. Woodcock stared appalled at the latter, then he stalked out of the cell, wrenching both doors as wide as they would go. Even here the law surely couldn't allow what had just been done to him, and nobody was going to walk away with the idea that he'd been anything other than a victim.
When the audience, policemen included, began to applaud him, however, he forced his way to the gap between the houses and took to his heels. "Bad, bad. The worst," he heard himself declaring'he had no idea how loudly. From the far end of the gap he looked back and saw the girl raising her manacled wrists to the position in which he'd first seen them. As the lights which framed her started to dim, he gripped the corners of the walls as though he could pull the gap shut; then he flung himself away and dashed through the streets choked with flesh to his hotel.
In the morning he almost went back, having spent a sleepless night in trying to decide how much of the encounter could have been real. He felt emptied out, robbed of himself. As the searchlight of the sun crept over the roofs, turning the luminous neon tulips on the walls of his room back into paper, he sneaked downstairs and out of the hotel, averting his face from the receptionist, gripping the brass club in his pocket rather than relinquish that defense.
He left the whines of early trams and the brushing of street cleaners behind as he crossed the river, on which neon lay like a trace of petrol. He followed the canal as far as the lane to the Oude Kerk. Under his hands the parapets were as cold and solid as the cobblestones underfoot. He strode hastily past the occupied windows and halted in sight of the church.
He could see the gap between the houses but not, without venturing closer, how wide it was. One step further, and he froze. The question wasn't simply whether he had encountered the girl or imagined some if it not all of the incident, but rather which would be worse? That such things could actually happen, or that he was capable of inventing them?
A movement beside the church caught his eye. One of the women in the windows was nibbling breakfast and sipping tea from a tray on her lap. An aching homesickness overwhelmed him, but how could he go back now? He turned away from the church and trudged in the direction of the canal, with no sense of where he was going or coming from.
Then his walk grew purposeful before he quite knew why. There was something he ought to remember, something that had to help. The face of the girl on the wheel: no, her eye s... Hadn't he seen at least a hint of all those expressions before, at home? It had to be true, he couldn't have imagined them. The bell tower of the Oude Kerk burst into peals, and he quickened his pace, eager to be packed and out of the hotel and on the plane. As never before that he could remember, he was anxious to be home.
Out Of The Woods (1996)
The glass of Scotch gnashed its ice cubes as Thirsk set it down on his desk. 'I don't care where it comes from, I just want the best price. Are you certain you won't have a drink?'
The visitor shook his head once while the rest of him stayed unmoved. 'Not unless you have natural water.'
'Been treated, I'm afraid. One of the many prices of civilization. You won't object if I have another, will you? I don't work or see people this late as a rule.'
When the other shook his head again, agitating his hair, which climbed the back of his neck and was entangled like a bristling brownish nest above his skull, Thirsk crossed to the mahogany cabinet to pour himself what he hoped might prove to be some peace of mind. While he served himself he peered at his visitor, little of whom was to be seen outside the heavy brown ankle-length overcoat except a wrinkled knotted face and gnarled hands, which ornamented the ends of the arms of the chair. Thirsk could think of no reason why any of this should bother him, but - together with the smell of the office, which was no longer quite or only that of new books -it did, so that he fed himself a harsh gulp of Scotch before marching around his desk to plant himself in his extravagant leather chair. It wasn't too late for him to declare that he didn't see salesmen without an appointment, but instead he heard himself demanding, 'So tell me why we should do business.'
'For you to say, Mr Thirsk.'
'No reason unless you're offering me a better deal than the bunch who printed all these books.'
That was intended to make the other at least glance at the shelves which occupied most of the wall space, but his gaze didn't waver; he seemed not to have blinked since Thirsk had opened the door to his knock. 'Do you know where they get their paper?' he said, more softly than ever.
'I already told you that's immaterial. All I know is it's better and cheaper than that recycled stuff.'
'Perhaps your readers would care if they knew.'
'I doubt it. They're children.' The insinuating softness of the other's speech, together with the dark wistful depths of his eyes, seemed to represent an insubstantial adversary with which Thirsk had to struggle, and he raised his voice. 'They won't care unless they're put up to it. If you ask me there's a movement not to let children be children any more, but plenty of them still want fairy tales or they wouldn't buy the books I publish.'
The ice scraped the glass as he drained his Scotch and stood up, steadying himself with one hand on the desk. 'Anyway, I'm not arguing with you. If you want to send me samples of your work and a breakdown of the costs then maybe we can talk'
His tone was meant to make it clear that would never happen, but the other remained seated, pointing at his own torso with one stiff hand. 'This is for you to consider.'
He wasn't pointing at himself but rather at a book which was propped like a rectangular stone in his lap. He must have been carrying it all the time, its binding camouflaged against his overcoat. He reared up from the chair as if the coat had stiffened and was raising him, and Thirsk couldn't help recoiling from the small gargoyle face immobile as a growth on a tree, the blackened slit of a mouth like a fissure in old bark. When the hands lowered the volume towards him he accepted it, but as soon as he felt the weight he said, 'You're joking.'
'We seldom do that, Mr Thirsk.'
'I couldn't afford this kind of production even if I wanted to. I publish fairy tales, I don't live in them. The public don't care if books fall to bits so long as they're cheap, and that goes double for children.'
'Perhaps you should help them to care.'
'Here, t
ake your book back.'
The other held up his hands, displaying knobbly palms. 'It is our gift to you,' he said in a voice which, soft as it was, seemed to penetrate every corner of the room.
'Then don't look so glum about it.' As Thirsk planted the book on his desk he glimpsed a word embossed on the heavy wooden binding. 'Tapioca, is that some kind of pudding cookbook?'
Whatever filled his visitor's eyes grew deeper. They struck Thirsk as being altogether too large and dark, and for a moment he had the impression of gazing into the gloomy depths of something quite unlike a face. He strode to the door, more quickly than steadily, and threw it open.
The avenue of pines interspersed with rhododendrons stretched a hundred yards to the deserted road into town. For once the sight didn't appeal to him as peaceful. Surely it would when he'd rid himself of his visitor, who he was beginning to suspect was mad; a leaf and maybe other vegetation was tangled in his hair, and wasn't there a mossy tinge to his cracked cheeks? Thirsk stood aside as the other stalked out of the door, overcoat creaking. Too much to drink or not enough, he thought, because as the figure passed along the avenue, beneath clouds which were helping the twilight gather, it appeared to grow taller. A sound behind him - paper rustling - made him glance around the room. The next second he turned back to the avenue, which was as deserted as the road.
Had his visitor dodged into the bushes? They and the trees were as still as fossils. 'Get off my property,' Thirsk warned, and cleared his throat so as to shout, 'or I'll call the police.'
By now it was apparent to him that the man hadn't been a printer. He was tempted to hurl the book after him, except that might bring him back. As he stared at the avenue until the trees seemed to inch in unison towards him, he found he was unwilling to search the grounds when it was growing so rapidly dark. 'Go back where you came from,' he yelled, and slammed the door so hard the floorboards shook.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 123