by Bill Rowe
After weeks of hearing nothing about it as I travelled, I had concluded that it, as well as the Rothesay matter, was a dead issue. Now this: my alibi, Brent, and my accuser (and likely assassin), Moose, great buddies again. Nothing was going to drag me back to St. John’s. I stood up from the steps and went to the public telephones. I spent half the afternoon getting through to Dad to tell him I’d decided definitively to start a year of study at LSE this fall. “Your mother will be delighted,” said my ebullient father. When I asked him if there was anything on the police thing, he went sombre: “Still in limbo on that.” Right after the call home, I wrote Rosie with my decision.
In another letter that had crossed mine and was already waiting when I reached Naples, she wrote that the Brent and Cory matter had turned out, not only good, but funny. She’d received a phone call from Brent, and he asked her to meet him and Cory for a coffee. Curious, she went. After about two minutes at the table, during which Cory looked everywhere but at her, Brent said, “Don’t you have something important to say to this lady?” Whereupon Cory apologized profusely for anything inappropriate he might ever have said anywhere at any time about Rosie O’Dell. He begged her forgiveness. And he asked her to convey his sincere regrets for any inconvenience he might have caused to her good friend Tom as well. He had told the police he was proceeding no further with his complaint. The Naples sunshine in my face, I laughed out loud. It certainly was good and funny. But not good and funny enough to revoke my decision to study in London.
In Athens I got Rosie’s response to my letter from Rome about my study plans for the fall. She was not really surprised, she wrote, but come hell or high water we would be getting together for Christmas, supposing one of us had to swim the Atlantic. I’d be home for Christmas, I assured her in each of the five more letters I wrote her. I’d definitely be home in December to see her.
During the rest of my travels, I was in the company of a lot of jolly girls and had many opportunities to be disloyal to Rosie, but after the close call with Siggy I kept myself out of tempting situations. Then I arrived back in London, moved into my new digs, and got to know Sian.
From my first week, my lodging there became sweet because of her and Morton. Of all the students living in the building, three women and four men, I was attracted strongly only to these two. Morton lived upstairs and Sian just down the hall, and the three of us became such soulmates that I found myself in a dilemma. Dad called to say the London office of his firm was sending me two excellent tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar, then playing in the West End. “Perhaps you will want to ask your friend Sian to accompany you,” he said, reading my mind.
When the tickets arrived in the mail, however, I began to feel uneasy about inviting Sian. I forgot about reciprocating for the ballet ticket and reflected instead that the closeness of our living quarters, our easy access to one another, Sian not bothering in the least to disguise her interest, and the powerful urges towards her that woke me up in bed could easily convert into the beast with two backs.
But I honestly did not want that. I wanted to remain true to Rosie till I had confirmed my feelings for her one way or the other at Christmas. I already knew what those feelings were, at least based on my memories. It was possible they might change when I spent time with her again, but I strongly doubted it. I loved her now and I would love her then. I jumped out of my chair, ran up the stairs with my tickets, and invited Morton to the musical next week. Morton nearly kissed me in delight.
That evening I heard Morton’s and Sian’s voices in the hall, louder than normal. A knock sounded on my door and Sian’s face appeared around it. “Pardon me for intruding,” she said, smiling, “but I am exceedingly curious why you are so cruel to me. I’ve been dying to see that musical, but couldn’t afford the arm and leg the tickets cost, and I’m wondering why you bypassed my door and went all the way upstairs to invite this Morton bloke instead of me.”
Her bluntness made me blurt, “You can have mine.”
“I don’t want yours.” She pulled Morton into the room. “I want his.”
“It’s not my fault,” said Morton, “if Tom was balmy enough to choose me over you because of a woman an ocean away. Moreover, there is a remedy. Let’s buy a third ticket and all chip in on its cost.”
“Why should Tom, or I, for that matter, be saddled with one-third of another ticket?”
“We all have to pay a penalty for his being so daft as to choose me over you in the first place,” said Morton. Both Sian and I conceded there was no rational rebuttal to his argument.
The night we went to the theatre, Morton ended up with the third ticket, seated on the other side of the theatre, while I sat next to Sian. Morton wouldn’t elaborate to me on how the seating arrangement had changed beyond insinuating that it had involved a death threat. Afterwards we went to a little Italian restaurant where Sian insisted on treating us boys to pasta and Chianti for being so nice to her and turned the conversation to the love, or lack thereof, in our lives. Morton and I having girlfriends back home, and Sian having parted from her long-time boyfriend last spring, she said, “I so envy you both.”
“There’s a thousand chaps at LSE who would do murder for your love,” said Morton. “Last Friday at that social was the closest thing to a white-shark feeding frenzy I ever want to see.” He was recalling the male students who’d flocked around Sian.
“Mort, I don’t want a thousand chaps. I want only one.”
Morton turned to me. “The ties of distant love should be inversely proportional to the opportunity for present lust.”
“You know you don’t believe that,” I said. “You’re as faithful as an old dog to your Angela in Manchester.”
“I am. But by default. Sian here has not been seeking to circumnavigate my person with those elegant limbs.”
“Morton, what lies!” said Sian. “I’m not interested in lust. I only want love.” She wrote hopeless pathos across her face and lamented, “Oh, everyone has someone, except me.”
We chimed, “Poor Sian,” and kissed her on opposite cheeks and ordered her the chocolate cheesecake.
Back at our place, Sian invited us in for coffee. She asked me if I would mind grinding the coffee beans while she went into the bathroom. Morton threw himself onto the sofa, grinned like a jackanapes at me, and made obscene symbols with his fingers involving a digit and a hole.
“Jesus, you are mad,” I said.
“I’m only prophesying your immediate future.”
“Yeah, well give it up,” I growled, grinding furiously.
Sian had re-emerged. “What did you prophesy for Tom that has vexed him so much?”
“Ask him.”
Sian looked at me and I said, “I will not sully the pristine ears of a lady with his gross speculations.”
“Sounds awfully good,” said Sian. “Predict my immediate future too, please, Morton.”
“Ask Tom, I said. Yours is precisely the same as his.”
“How soon is immediate?”
“Right after I have my coffee and get out of your hair.”
Shaking my head at Morton, I asked Sian if I could use her loo. Inside, her stirring scent made me look at myself hard in the mirror. My eyes were preternaturally bright. What was I getting myself into here? Whatever it was, it felt, as Sian had just said, awfully good. But Rosie was waiting for me, trusting me. Thank God, Morton was such a nuisance. By nature he could be counted on to hang around all night, long after the coffee. When I came out of the bathroom, the lack of said Morton was startling. Sian had placed only two mugs by the coffee maker.
“Who? Morton?” she answered me with an innocent smile. “Oh. He said he was knackered and went up to bed.”
The next morning I berated him for leaving me in the lurch last night, and Morton replied that he’d had no choice whatever in the matter: “As soon as you went into the loo, Sian told me to shog off. I said to her, ‘What d’ye mean, shog off? I’ve got to have a coffee and say good night to Tom first, �
� and she seized me by the collar and said, ‘Look, Mort, piss off now, right this ruddy minute, before Tom comes out, or I’ll kick you in the ruddy ballocks.’ You can see what options I had. What happened after I left?”
“Nothing happened. I had my coffee and left.”
“I wish you were an American rather than a Canadian. At least if you were a Yank, you’d be bragging about it.”
I had lots to brag about. Last night, Sian had sat, legs under her, on one side of the sofa, leaving a place for me. I perched on the chair five feet away. We talked for ten minutes and Sian got up and kneeled in front of me with her forearms and hands on my thighs. She looked up at me with melting brown eyes. “I hope,” she sighed, “you don’t mean us to stay good friends.”
I laughed. I felt a surge of deep affection, and desire. Sian’s personality, like everything else about her, was very appealing. I placed my hands on hers. “Why? Did you want me to do something that might make us bad friends?”
“No, better friends. Best friends. I hope that spot in your heart is not wholly occupied still.”
“It is, Sian.”
She stood and picked up the coffee mugs and walked over to the sink on her toes, achieving the impossible, actually improving on the perfection of those legs. “The bonnie O’Dell far over the sea is lucky in her love,” she said.
“I think I’m the lucky one.”
Sian came back, pulled me to my feet, and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, then, you lucky lovely man.”
EVERY NIGHT ABOUT TEN o’clock Sian and Morton and I would get together in one of our sitting rooms for a nightcap. We’d sit and talk for half an hour about our respective lives in Wales and England and Newfoundland.
I found out that Morton’s relationship with Angela was the one and only love of his life, having started when he was in Manchester Grammar School. This surprised me in light of Morton’s semi-bohemian lifestyle, and Morton explained: “Most of the other girls and women in my life, including my own mother, have been artsy-fartsy theatre types, and you have no idea what a comfort it is to have the love of a down-to-earth, dependable, non-prima donna woman of even mood and temperament.”
I found out about the proposal Sian said she’d received from a young university lecturer in Cardiff, which she’d declined before coming to London, because she was far too young.
Though I knew they’d find it fascinating, I said nothing about the Rothesay trial or its aftermath. Once, Sian tried to pursue the cause of my girlfriend’s sister’s death, but I diverted the conversation elsewhere. In truth, the further I’d come from all that in distance and time, the less I could bear to contemplate the hideous subject myself.
Sian and I did stay good friends till the weekend Morton went north to visit Angela. That Friday afternoon Sian asked me if she could take me to a movie that evening, with dinner in her rooms afterwards. “Just you and me,” she said. “But don’t panic. I merely want to repay you a little for that expensive ticket to Jesus Christ Superstar. I’m very conscious of repaying social obligations. It’s the burden of my Celtic-fringe, Methodist, Liberal upbringing.” I said I’d be delighted.
We walked back from the movie, Last Tango in Paris, discussing whether or not the sex scenes were works of art. Sian opined that you can’t have a work of art where cowardice prevailed, and why were macho actors like Brando so cowardly when it came to their own frontal nudity? I suggested Brando’s modesty was in the interest of truth since the ostensible stud was actually inadequately endowed and didn’t want to give female viewers the false impression that he was representative of the male sex in the manhood department. Sian laughed and linked her arm into mine. The movie made her think, she said, that life was not short, life was long, and there was plenty of time for correcting any bad consequences of any risks one might take. And if one didn’t take those risks, life might as well be short because it would be so boring. I agreed. The life without exciting exotic events was not worth the living, I proclaimed. And Sian pulled me closer to her.
At her flat, she placed the Marks and Spencer chicken breasts cordon bleu in her little oven while I opened the bottle of white wine I’d contributed. By the time the chicken was ready, the bottle was empty.
“Luckily, I anticipated just such a catastrophe,” said Sian and went to her little fridge and brought out another bottle. The chicken and the contents of that bottle disappeared simultaneously. We were now way more than tipsy. Sian gave me the job of extinguishing the three candles on her table with an elaborate, antique-looking snuffer. I missed the wicks on two attempts and we laughed and joined forces to accomplish the task, four hands entwined to guide the instrument to the flames.
“How did such a fancy candle-snuffer,” I asked, “come to be in your rented rooms in London?”
“Because I am an incurable romantic.” She pecked me on the lips. “As you would soon find out if you gave it half a chance.” She kept hold of one of my hands and led me to the sofa. “There’s a soccer match on the telly. Let’s watch some of it.”
Sian had recently rented a small television set because she missed watching the soccer matches. She had played soccer at school and remained a great fan of the game. “Soccer sculpts men’s legs to the optimal in aesthetics,” she said.
“And girls’ too, by the looks of things. Is that where yours got their beautiful start?”
“Why thank you.” She ran her hand from below my knee to my groin. “And competitive swimming, I see, has a similar salubrious effect.”
I kissed her on the neck. Sian drew back her head and looked at me. Then, as if she’d decided something, she stood up, went to a cupboard, reached in deep, and brought out a black bottle of Courvoisier. Fetching two snifters, she explained that her sister in Cardiff had given her this after she’d turned down the marriage proposal, to be opened only on a very special occasion. Passing the bottle to me, she sat and leaned against me and murmured, “This is it. The very special occasion.”
I wondered why her sister would give her a gift of expensive cognac because she had turned down an engagement, but I didn’t ask. Instead I poured, and we drank and stopped watching the soccer to kiss long and deep. Soon we were out of our shirts, and when I slipped my hand under her panties, she stroked my erection outside my trousers. Inflamed, I started to undo my belt. Sian stopped stroking and sat up, closing her thighs. “I’m dying to make love with you, Tom,” she said, “but not after you’ve—we’ve—had so much to drink. I need to think this through. I really don’t want to be your casual piece of ass on the side.”
I didn’t argue. Seductive words would have rung hollow after all I’d said about my beloved Rosie O’Dell. We rested in each other’s arms for a few minutes and then she kissed me and said, “Let’s retire to our respective beds for tonight, collect our thoughts, and regroup when we’re sober.”
A long probing drunken kiss at her door and I crossed the hall to my own flat. I went to bed aroused. To keep myself from waking up in that state throughout the night I would have masturbated if I hadn’t immediately passed out… I asked Nina, in the kitchen preparing supper, where Rosie was and Nina replied with uncalled-for resentment that she had no idea—that girl was in a fantasy world of her own. I said with a bravado, which I just knew would embarrass me later, that I would find her. Pagan took my hand to go with me. I looked in every room downstairs and went upstairs and walked along the hall. The door to Rosie’s room was slightly ajar, almost closed, but not quite, and Rosie’s mother, for some reason behind it, said, “You don’t have to look in there, Joyce is dead.” But I replied, “I’ve got to look everywhere.” Nina was an adult and I a child, yes, but I still knew smart from stupid. I pushed the door open. Rosie was lying on her side on the bed, facing the door with her knees drawn up, pretending to be asleep. She was alone, naturally, since I wasn’t lying there with her. But a penis was sliding in and out of her bottom. I couldn’t quite make out which orifice was being targeted. Dr. Rothesay’s face appeared from behind Rosie�
��s head and his eyes pierced mine as he demanded, “What is it that you require, my lad?” in his most intimidating English accent, like a London shop clerk. Mortified by my blundering intrusion, I couldn’t speak. Then Rosie opened her eyes and said, “Oh hi, Tom, here already? I’ll only be a sec,” lessening by her big smile and her niceness my sense of gaucherie. I made a gentlemanly bow at the disturbed duet and turned with head held high to go, but as soon as I was out of their sight, my head dropped in humiliation and I skulked without dignity down the hall. “God, Tom,” said Pagan, still holding my hand, “what was that those two were supposed to be doing in there?” I looked down at the heartbreakingly lovely little girl. I would protect her. “You don’t need to mind those two, Pagan,” I said with a grin and a wink that made her smile back.
The transition from asleep to awake was like a blow from an axe to my chest. And awake, I felt as if hot lead were being poured onto my heart through the gaping wound. I was sobbing from the pain. My face and pillow were drenched with tears. But immediately my sobbing seemed artificial, put on. There was, in reality, no pain, only a numbness. I dried my eyes on the sheet and turned my pillow over. My clock said seven o’clock. I lay there exhausted, wanting desperately to sleep but knowing my pall of depression would keep me awake. I sat up in bed and my head spun. No wonder I was depressed, I had an appalling hangover. I could smell the cognac I had downed on top of the wine. I crept to the bathroom, urinated, and sat on the toilet for ten minutes with my head in my hands. Then I ran the bathwater, went to the fridge, and drank some orange juice and two glasses of water. I slipped into the bathtub, and in the almost too-hot water, my terrible gloom lifted a bit. Now a pleasant engorgement began below and bright images supplanted black thoughts, images of Sian’s face. I tried to visualize the breasts I had kissed last night and to recapture the feeling in my fingertips of touching between her legs, but the brain in my head reproduced only ill-defined memories. The non-brain below must have retained a more vivid remembrance, though, because my erection became so intense that every beat of my heart was registering down there with a discernible swirl on the surface of the bathwater. The big logy brain above, under orders to act from the urgently pulsating little automaton below, contrived a stratagem.