A Woman of the Future

by David Ireland

  Food, Glorious Food

  John Mabbe had me for a longish time while I was fifteen, but John Schanke wanted me. John Mabbe was aggressive, and long after he no longer wanted to inhabit my body he hung on to me so John Schanke couldn’t have me. And John Schanke really liked me. I don’t mean just to get my pants down or rub his hands over my tits and wiggle them about: he liked the me inside. Often he would be watching over the fence when we were all playing at the quarry as if something in him was feeding on the sight.

  On school excursions he seemed to find a place near me on the ferry or the bus. He would never let an arm or a leg touch me. Once when his sleeve brushed my arm he drew it away as if the material of his school blazer had nerve-endings.

  John Mabbe began to accuse me of having it with John Schanke. I didn’t hit him or abuse him, though he was afraid I might shame him in front of the other kids.

  I didn’t bother to answer. There was something in the reluctance of Schanke to touch me that stirred something in me. Perhaps that’s a wrong way of saying it: perhaps it stirred something in me that had never awakened. Anyone who touched me, I imagined, had either touched me because he wanted to, or it was accidental. But to know someone wanted to touch, yet didn’t: that caused the stirring. I began to look for the feeling, began to get near him, just to have him take himself away out of range. When the sleeve of my blazer was near the sleeve of his I felt a tingle up the arm. When the sleeves touched, the tingle was vibrant and became warm. It stayed like that for ages, until it felt hot. He moved his arm away, and the tingle died. My arm felt immediately empty of blood, hollow and cold.

  I caught sight of my hand, hanging like a piece of meat on the end of my arm. There was a mark, an ink mark on my thumb. I was only a schoolgirl, after all. What a lot of fuss to be making about a boy.

  I didn’t necessarily want to go with John Mabbe to the quarry, but that week it was the only way to be fairly sure that John Schanke would be somewhere around. (Since he wouldn’t let any of him touch me I could hardly get him on the phone. Well, of course I could have, but the thing he was awakening told me I wasn’t supposed to.)

  “Where’s that gig?” Mabbe said. I didn’t let him in me, I was just holding it as he liked me to. “Where’s he at, the dickhead?” He looked round, his penis pulled against my hand. I gave it a sharp jerk at the base that brought him to heel.

  “Cut it out!” he squealed. “If you break it off I’ll take you to court. You’ll be bound over to keep the peace!” He doubled over, laughing. I caught sight of John Schanke’s ear showing round a tree. I had an idea. I would be curious about him, ask him things. I would show I was careless of his feelings, I would look at him in a pitying way, yet take an interest in him. Perhaps . . .

  Perhaps John Schanke had had enough of looking round corners. He came from behind his tree on the edge of the cleared quarry floor, walking toward us. He saw Mabbe’s thing poking out from my fist and disappearing back down into his jeans. He looked away from my face and from me, and fixed his eyes on Mabbe. Mabbe got to his feet in a hurry, tried to put it back in, couldn’t, and finally did the top button up before the fight began. They gave each other a few hits with closed fists. A small amount of blood appeared on both their faces, and Mabbe’s erection began to go down. He seemed to fight better for a while, but eventually Schanke’s fury told, and he bore Mabbe toward the water. At the foot of the old rock cliff was the quarry pool, the water dark and slimy and never making ripples. And cold, cold and deep, so deep it never warmed up, they said.

  Schanke had him going, but as Mabbe overbalanced his hand caught Schanke’s arm and pulled him in too.

  They were filthy. They continued the fight in the water, and again when they both climbed out. His little shrunken dick was still out, taking the air.

  I didn’t bother to wait. I didn’t care who won. I certainly didn’t consider they were fighting over me, the filthy things. Their eyes pressed my back as I left.

  On the way home I felt in a poetic mood. I would talk to father and get him to tell me of his early years in the theatre. I walked on, my eyes on the concrete paving slabs, stepping on each crack for luck.

  My head was not suited to thinking that day, particularly walking along; the pleasant movement of my legs and my body above them induced a feeling of such sleepiness that it was as if I slept as I walked. The sun, the scent of spring flowers, the green shoots budding out from the grey bark of trees. How was it, in the midst of this beauty, this spiritual blessing of the recurring seasons, that into my head there came pictures of possible dinners that father might make for us that evening: a roast; his special pork and peaches; a carefully tender steak, with my favorite vegetables not quite cooked?

  Near home there was a new dog, part cattle-dog, with a funny pinky color, that had a look about him as if he’d like a taste of human. Just a little bit, but I was the morsel he had in his mind’s eye. I shoved him off, with loud noises.

  At home father was cooking, surrounded by food. The sun filled the kitchen like affection.

  Cheek From An Art Teacher

  “Do you know what you look like?” said Miss Footlow today.

  I waited. What did she mean look like? Of course I knew what I looked like.

  “From the back you have a slouching walk,” she said.

  Still I said nothing. Why was she attacking me? Had I missed some jocular note I should respond to? Had I been absent when the subject had come up with other kids?

  “Like a horse,” she explained.

  I smiled. I liked the comparison.

  “Or a cat. Or—have you seen greyhounds being walked?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Like the back legs of a greyhound. When it’s walking, mind, not when it’s running.”

  I must have looked puzzled. I was trying to see where the criticism lay in this mysterious communication. I didn’t know. Was she jealous of me? She walked on over toward the staff room. She waddled. Wherever she walked she probably drove every lizard back under its rock.

  John Schanke’s Approach and Four Questions

  It surprised me. He’d always made a point of not touching me, of shying away.

  I daresay some would have called it an insulting approach, but to me the result was what counted. I was prepared to turn him away at any time, even after penetration; content to wait and see how I felt, adding up the plusses and minuses, and ready to decide on that basis.

  He said, “Let me see your right breast!” standing in front of me in the primitive masculine salesman-hunter’s attitude of cutting off my escape. I could feel the power of this confrontation even though I knew it was only an emotional power that held me, and a step back and a half-turn was all that was necessary to be rid of it.

  What would he do then? Why shouldn’t I?

  I pulled the fabric to one side and Helen, my right breast, popped out, hanging slightly over the hem. Why hadn’t I shown him Cassie, instead of the breast he asked for?

  His triumph was concealed behind a frowning examination of her. Helen’s nipple pointed slightly upward, toward his left shoulder. Cassandra waited, she knew her turn was coming.

  John Schanke and I had a thing going for a while after that, but I never felt the same as I did when we were almost touching but not quite.

  Schanke blamed Mabbe for spoiling things, and they were enemies forever.

  (Did the hatred that makes enemies amount to a deformity that would make him a Free? And if that was so, was love a change? And going on from there, did no Servant of Society love?

  Was that why I seemed to have no love in me?)

  The Predator Behind My Eyes

  Something about the trees in the bushland reserve occupied me today. It is November, and the thin bark, last year’s growth, is peeling from the eucalypts, leaving the cool, green-cream new flesh facing north and the sun: brown bark still adheres on the southern sides.

  There was a warning bell sounding faintly in my body somewhere, some part of me I
had never used before.

  Warning bell? Perhaps an awakening bell.

  What was it saying to me?

  I stood still, watching the trees with wide eyes and open mouth, the way I concentrate (mother calls it dreaming), and in my eyes the trees crowded together until they were many; there was movement among them; I was running; other creatures ran.

  The others ran before me, they were running away; I was running after them! My heart wanted to beat faster to match the speed of my body, but the dreaming me stood still; my heart beat slowly to suit a standing girl. But behind my eyes I was running faster, and the creatures in front of me were getting closer and running for their lives. Running from me, for their lives. I was a predator. When I caught them I would kill, carry them up into a tree and eat their bodies.

  The trees emptied from my mind and became again the few dozen that usually stood on the edge of the reserve. A Saturday dog that noticed my stillness approached me, it was that pinky-brown cattle dog, and was about to bark, standing so he could run away immediately. I noticed him, and turned, both arms stretching out toward him as if to seize him violently. He fled, with anxious yelps. I walked home, wondering.

  The Terrible Suburbs Where No One Speaks the Truth

  A few streets away there’s a boy called Brian Lethbridge, known for his habit of being curious.

  Every day on the way to school and coming back, you can see him listening to the grey metal cabinet standing in a superior fashion some distance from the traffic lights, controlling them with clicks and mutterings.

  Girls giggle and hit him as they go past. Boys glance at him and look away. Everyone’s frightened of looking as if they don’t know something, as if when you’re young you could be anything other than ignorant.

  I often yell at the girls and say, “Get and listen with him! You stupid cruds might learn something.”

  That makes them get the shits with me, but they’re too scared to give me a back answer. They do it again next time they see him. And he always does it. He looks over fences, pats electricity poles, listens underneath the transformers, runs his hand over brickwork and wrought iron he passes, looks closely at dogs. There’s an Airedale, Simba, down at the bend in Euclid Way, and he sneaks up to the nearest place he can see it from and watches it when it doesn’t know.

  Father predicts a strong future for him if he gets graded.

  When his teachers get him working on a project, they find themselves inundated with material. He gets his parents out on weekends going to places like foundries and steelworks and dairy product factories and so forth, and winds up getting a limit set on the size of his project. On steel, he went to the south coast in the holidays and came back with samples, biographies, process diagrams, photographs and project books full. The teachers couldn’t get through it, there were seven books full and a briefcase.

  “We need a Brian Lethbridge Hall in this school, just to exhibit a single one of your projects,” Mister Khaled told him. “In future, just one project book.” And when his father objected, “Well, two at the most.” He hopes to go to university when the time comes.

  He refuses to do it with me. Perhaps in a year or two I’ll ask him again. I thought I was doing him a favor; he’s two years younger than I am: where’s his curiosity?

  I might begin by telling him of the bright birds with wings of lead that flap over those terrible suburbs where no one speaks the truth.

  Creep’s

  One afternoon during the week, I was finding it hard to get down to my homework, and filled to overflowing with vague restlessness. I had a drink of water. It was too flat. I tried a cordial; it was insipid. I climbed the climbing tree that I’d spent so many hours in when I was a child: it bored me to be on show to any neighbor that chanced to look. I ran around the yard, through the side gate and did a circuit of the front lawn: there was no taste in running, though I made every fourth stride a hop, step or jump.

  I hadn’t masturbated: perhaps I was uneasy because of that. At least when you do, you don’t have to wait for someone else.

  Creep stirred himself, barked, and followed me, and when he got to where I was in the front of the house, stood like a sentinel and barked at nothing, and everyone.

  I cuddled him, bending down, and he let his hindquarters sink down and his back legs lie sideways, standing only on his front paws. His head extended upward, nuzzling at me, finding the channel between my thighs, his nose buried upward, towards my pubic region. My eyes found his lower parts; his penis with its long-haired sheath. The pink tip of it stuck out perhaps a millimeter. As I stroked him harder, pushing his head down toward his body, more than the tip of it protruded from that hairy sheath. It was wetly pink, very shiny, like the inside of a mouth.

  I stooped and touched it. It retracted a little; his head stayed up. I was still stooping, and held it in my hand. I was a little—shy? embarrassed? ashamed?—I don’t know which, and it was a minute before I could squat beside him and look into his warm brown eyes, holding it in my hand.

  The Head’s Message to Us on Speech Day

  “Young people are known for the way they bravely face the world, but at the same time the world is facing them, confronting them. There are a number of wars in different parts of the world, as there usually are, and the question I want you all to face is: What are you prepared to kill or be killed for in war today? I ask further the general question: What are you prepared to die for?

  “That is all. I want that question to be on your mind, in the background of your thoughts. Sooner or later you—the essential you, inside—will compose an answer to it out of your experience of life and out of your developing natures.

  “What are you prepared to die for?”

  When it was all over I was able to miss the crush and get out of the hall behind the stage and carry my prizes to the car, where I waited for father, who was besieged as usual. I saw him way back inside the doors of the Assembly Hall. Darkness surrounded me; I rested my loot on the car roof. Mother was missing, perhaps crouched in a corner, fearful of her thoughts being disturbed.

  Poor mother. Perhaps at some time she lifted more than she could carry—or carried more than she could bear.

  Benjamin Allan Lawson Lee Swanson

  A person approached me. It was an old man with linen face and paper hands. When he was middle-aged they called him The Cone; he was built on solid lines near the ground, and in those days had eyes like stoves, though now his hair was raffia. A mouthwreck for years, he had steel wool eyebrows; in his prime his bottom was like the back of a bus. His complexion was rather Great Dividing Range conglomerate. Can you see him? When he was young they called him Balls. His father saw to that.

  In old age the good people, Free citizens and voters of our district, looked on him as harmless, and the main reasons for this were a benign desire to keep him out of institutions, and his habit of reciting his name in full, followed by his initials, together with the child-names his folks dreamed up for him.

  Little bonny Benny, tiny funny bunny, pretty sunny Benny, and Balls.

  Benjamin boy, Allan me lad, Lawson me gurgler, Lee me little soldier, Swanson me diver, and Balls.

  Repetition never wearied him.

  I tripped him when I was twelve, in the grounds of the high school on a similar speech night, for putting his hand up my tunic in the crowd. He fell in a lump, hurting some ladies. Toothbrushes fell out of his clothes, about a hundred; all used. He did it to all of us, but there were times we didn’t want to be touched, however old or harmless the person was.

  Waiting for father I elbowed him now at fifteen for the same offense. I wasn’t about to let some bastard do anything I didn’t want him to do.

  My elbow went right in where his ribs should have been.

  It was dark in the parking area, I was glad no one saw me. He didn’t grunt, which was strange. I put my hand inside his chest; it went right in between the buttons. It was empty.

  I reached down and around and with resentment came upon a g
roup of quite greasy—knackers, the boys call them—hanging down inside the front of his trousers. Up higher, a softish bladder hung suspended. I squeezed it, and wet came through on the front of him. I put my other hand in, squeezed the bladder and held his dick; I could feel the liquid coursing through it. The pool spread round his feet. I had to jump clear. Higher, a repulsive liver brushed the back of my wrist. A heart writhed and clenched frighteningly.

  There was no one around. Parents and kids outside the Assembly Hall, in and out among the young trees, were frozen in attitudes of talk and listening.

  I pulled the coat entrance apart with both hands, like enormous cloth lips, and got in. He was a cone, there was a ton of room, it was like a cathedral in there. Could I expect a conversation?

  A dim light spread upward from niches in this edifice. I ran up a flight of steps to look out of the eyes—which was strange since I was as tall as Balls—but through his eyes the world was full of sharp hurtful things, spines and prickles, sharp edges, blades and dangers.

  A thin dilapidated music sounded, persisting, growing and clanging; I began to swing like an ape on a growth inside the throat, knocking against heart and lungs, stretching the growth till my feet touched bottom. I scaled the ribs hand over hand, like a kid gone mad in a playscene. I ascended the spine like a native up a coconut tree. Fronds with the heads of blindworms reached for me.

  I shinnied down, got off at the fly, grabbed his thing with both hands and swung down to the ground, leaving him standing with it out. On firmer ground I walked in a ladylike way over to my father, who had disengaged himself from admirers and was looking anxiously round for mother.

  Mrs. Ellerslie and Mrs. Besanko said, “Naughty man! Put that away!” And told everyone in loud voices what a dirty old devil he was. Hundreds of us there had felt the old man’s hands for years, and we knew it wasn’t terribly dirty, but we kept quiet.