As Skinny stood in the shower, letting the soapy hands wash over him, he even found himself hoping that they could return to the same position on the sofa, so that he could rest his head on her breasts again. She hadn’t seemed to have even noticed, let alone minded, so perhaps it was a possibility?
After his lower body was as squeaky clean as was humanly possible without the use of boiling water, Eve quickly saw to his face, hair and puny upper body, washing carefully under his arms with a barely damp flannel. She put Trefor’s hand towel onto the floor and helped Skinny step out onto it, looking all bedraggled and pathetic in the steam-filled room. She wrapped him in thick bath towels and sat him on the closed toilet lid.
“I could shave you, if you like?” she asked, not wanting to relinquish the closeness that she felt was in the air. “You’ll have to tell me what to do, though.” He smiled. Teresa had offered to shave him once, on a wonderful night when her parents were staying away, but it had taken too long and she wasn’t being careful enough and he had ended up having to finish it himself whilst she was on the phone to a friend. Eve, however, had all the time in the world and rubbed Trefor’s deluxe shaving gel into the four-day-old whiskers with care and enjoyment. She quickly abandoned Skinny’s clogged old razor and began cleaning her “pink one for ladies” with the toothbrush on the sink in order to remove the excess stubble.
She did cut him, but his small jump brought on such concern and excess indulgence that he was quite pleased she did it a second time. He taught her how to dab a bit of toilet paper with spittle and dot it onto the cut and this she did with such precision that an onlooker would think the wound near fatal.
And, there she left him, perched helpless on the toilet seat, wrapped in towels, toilet paper stuck to his face with little red dots in their centres and a big smile on his face that had appeared after she told him that he looked cute.
Eve, meanwhile, foraged in the kitchen for a tea towel, filled the washing-up bowl with washing-up liquid and hot water and set off to scrub the sofa.
Skinny was clad in another pair of boxer shorts; this time in a darker colour. Peter not having a family that considered a dressing grown a fundamental item in the life of a man, Eve had found the least feminine one of hers from her wardrobe. Her mother had gone through a phase of buying Eve dressing gowns for Christmas, not really interested in the fact that she’d bought one last year and that they are rarely worn out. It had also coincided with a rather spiteful phase of buying things that were too small in an attempt to nudge Eve into losing weight. However, the reverse had happened and instead of being spurred into action, Eve had just disliked her mother more and put the things through the wash a dozen times and moved them round the house in a “see, I do wear them, you trout” manner.
The evening was one of those that Britain has but a few times a year in which people can sit out all evening without resorting to coats, hats and a stiff upper lip. It was the perfect beer garden night when folk bring their families and their white trousers out to enjoy the occasion. The town was rich with the smoke of barbeques and the mini-market had run out of white finger rolls by ten-thirty that morning. Men who never cooked anything more than toast were donning novelty aprons and blowing their chances of ever being able to do bugger all in the kitchen again; their wives sat with their friends in plastic garden chairs with an eyebrow raised at the sudden culinary flair.
Eve disliked the heat; her insulating layer making it greater still and the areas that chafed at the best of times just felt that much more fungal. Saving themselves somewhat from Eve’s overwhelming aromatherapy cocktail that, whilst busily curing Skinny of painful periods and fatigue from over-work, was also making him feel quite sick, Eve heaved open the rickety old sash window. The only thing that had saved it from being glued up by paint over the years was a lack of paint, and therefore, once she got her back under it, it opened quite well.
If they’d had soft muslin curtains, these would have blown lazily from the breeze over the polished wooden floor. Instead, the thick, dark green corduroy hung stiff as a board from years of under-washing and over-smoking, needing something nearing a hurricane to move it from its resting place lodged into the carpet.
Eve had read all about setting the scene and effortlessly dragged the sofa, with Skinny in it, to the space in front of the window. The fresh air would comfort them both and if she was careful, she could probably part her thighs a little and get some air blowing through there too. Dry it out nicely.
And so they sat; Trefor was delighted as the side angle was good for him too. Eve put on some music, which she felt promoted conversation better than the television. Skinny wished she’d put the telly back on as it would save him having to talk. Eve did then the most she could to demonstrate her love: she prepared the perfect picnic tea. Plates of sandwiches were made, allowing Eve to shovel a fair few in whilst she was in the kitchen, which would allow her to parade her sparrow’s appetite in front of Skinny, pleading “But it’s my glands,” if her weight was ever an issue between them. Bags of crisps were opened and emptied into bowls. Even carrot and pepper sticks were prepared, although admittedly it would be the tortilla chips that soaked up the pack of four fresh dips.
When Eve had eaten the equivalent of a small dog, the feast was ready and she took it into her patient who was snoozing lightly, wrapped in his robes – the picture of the start of a perfect night for his hostess. Skinny was suitably impressed by the array and soon Eve cut up the morsels that he selected and popped them into his mouth – she loving it, him hating it. It was over all too soon for Eve as Skinny had a pitiful appetite, worsened by the nausea he still felt.
Although she was slightly disappointed that he’d only gone for the cheese and tomato and that he’d asked for her to take out the tomato “or I’ll puke”, she did relish the amount of leftovers that littered the plates.
“I’m starving,” said Eve. “I didn’t get chance for lunch,” she added: snacks don’t count.
She filled her plate and started munching, pausing only to chat whilst she arranged her next culinary victim.
“Do you know what would be nice now?” said Skinny. “Set the evening off right, like?” Eve shook her head, licking the mayonnaise off her lips. “A bottle of chilled wine? Or perhaps just a couple of beers. You know, to go with the meal.” His eyes met hers, as a puppy’s would, guilty of chewing the slipper, yet so wanting to go for a walk. While she struggled to chew her mouthful, he took advantage of the gap. “Why don’t you just pop down and get a few tinnies. I’ll wait here and then we can have a nice evening – just the two of us, together. What d’ya reckon?”
Eve struggled to swallow the load, feeling as if their evening had been whipped away in one swoop.
“I am sorry, Peter, love, but you know I can’t do that.” she said quietly, so reluctant to have to haul herself up and leave the room again. “I can’t and I won’t. Sorry,” she finished resolutely.
The CD finished its last song and clicked off and as Skinny sought for words and Eve quietly took another ham and pickle, the sound of laughter drifted through the still night and flowed in through the open window. Skinny knew exactly what that sound was. All the boys would have taken their bar stools outside and would be sitting along the pavement laughing and joking as the traffic rolled by. The crowds outside each pub would slowly merge and he would then have to be careful that he didn’t inadvertently steal the neighbouring pub’s glasses. He loved those nights – real cider nights.
Human touch is a very primitive requirement, from the young baby who is quietened in a parent’s arms, to the hospital incumbent who tries to touch the nurse’s breast with his shoulder. Lucky or beautiful people travel through life surrounded by touch. A doting and tactile family passes their treasure into a world of suitors, all desperate to soothe, caress or grope and from which, choices will be made for a partner to continue their valuable role.
Whilst Gloria would have no doubt claimed that hers was a close family, it would ha
ve been more accurately described as controlled. Eve had never seen her mother and father in an unguarded moment, and the existence of the three children was the only evidence of any kind of passion, or even a fondness, between them.
Skinny came from a poor and large family that had struggled to keep afloat. His parents, tired from their long days of labour, fed and watered the children and then left them to their own devices. Teresa’s family had given him an insight into a warm, well fed and clean existence that he sought to aspire to and one which Teresa damn well expected. Her parents had never seen Skinny as a genuine candidate for their daughter’s hand and had successfully delayed the wedding by promising Teresa the fairy tale that she had assumed would be hers since her earliest dressing-up box days. Teresa’s vanity, coupled with Peter’s inability to fund an alternative, had meant that their tactics had been successful. Despite this, the puppy love had continued and flourished despite expectations to the contrary.
Teresa’s parents had been devastated by their only child’s death. All their hopes, dreams and purpose that had been foisted on to Teresa to fulfil, had been dashed that winter’s night and although they felt sorry for Peter, his loss could never be as great as theirs. This, coupled with their certainty that he must have been driving – Teresa would never be so foolish – meant that they never sought to continue the friendship that surely should have grown from so many nights in front of the television together.
Therefore, Skinny had lost not only his girlfriend and future wife, but also the warm fireside, source of comfort and never empty biscuit tin that had brought so many intimations of how life should be. The man that had helped him get his job simply nodded at him in the street. The woman who had cut his hair and given him nice clothes that she had pretended were from a friend’s son who was forever growing out of his, could hardly meet his eye. Both were glad when he eventually succumbed to the lure of the Llew and were able to salve their consciences by saying, “See, it was never going to last; Teresa would never have put up with such nonsense.”
Therefore, for ten years, he had been on the receiving end of little or no real affection aside from the occasional drunken smooch and snog with someone who was sure to regret it in the morning. Even these moments got less as his looks disintegrated, his clothes began to smell and his conversation dwindled to rubbish.
So, when Eve began to touch his body, look after and pay attention to him, Skinny began to awaken to it, seeking it like a cat does a sunbeam. Ten years ago, he would have scoffed at the idea, probably agreeing with Teresa when she bitched about the “state” that Eve had let herself get into. He would have laughed and shuddered with his mates over the thought of Eve naked and enjoy the joke that one would have to roll her in flour first in order to find the damp spot. Never particularly malicious, Skinny had just been one of the crowd and had never assumed that he would ever be anything different.
Tourists speaking ten different languages will gel giggling over a camel fart and teambuilding consultants are fast considering how to insert a few of the boss’s rippers to breakdown those hierarchical barriers in their “Team in a Day” courses. Therefore, it’s not beyond the bounds of the imagination that Eve and Peter might gel giggling into the night at Skinny’s lack of bodily control clashing with Eve’s attempts at sophistication, sending Eve off sniggering like a child in class who knows that they are not allowed to laugh, but just can’t help looking at Sir’s undone fly.
In addition to this, Eve had never had the benefit of a relationship such as Peter and Teresa’s to look back on and would have given anything to have had such a time, even if it included the tragedy that followed it. Her experiences with the other sex were uncomfortable and few. Not having been allowed to go to local dances until she turned eighteen, any knowledge of the world of romance up to that point had been achieved through the gossip of others. At her first dance she had indulged in a last song snog and had been so taken by the experience, albeit it a bit of a lip-biter, that she felt herself enthused and ready for more.
At the next dance in the following month, she took extra care with a new outfit and a pair of the highest heels that she could smuggle past her mother. Unfortunately the last song came and went and Eve remained at the side of the floor whilst her few friends danced away, their heads resting on the shoulders of awkward young men.
In the field afterwards, as the rural teenagers staggered about looking for bored parents waiting in their cars, a local lad put his arms around Eve’s waist and told her he loved her, oh and would she like to come over here a moment. The fumble and blow job that followed were to curse Eve for the next five years. It not only wrecked the points of her stilettos, scuffing the patent plastic beyond repair, but a new nickname, “The Benz”, had been adopted by the whole town by the following weekend, after the young gentleman gallantly saved face by telling his friends that, “Eve goes down too quickly.” The experience devastated Eve, who never went to one of the dances again, retreating to the safer environment of her parents’ sofa of a Saturday night.
And therefore, sat that night on the sofa, it was difficult for Eve not to be aware of the fact that there she was, with everything she wanted within her grasp, but knowing that she was going to have to make the decision to do something that would probably throw it all away.
“Oh, come on, Eve – don’t be so lazy,” Skinny was clever enough to nick her Achilles heel. “Come on now, we’re adults, surely we can have a nice glass of wine with our food?” Make her feel silly for saying no.
Eve’s face was set like stone; her chewing slowed to a grind of the cud as her mind searched for the right words. But Peter couldn’t wait long enough to see if his tactics had worked. A need that was both physical and mental burst through his composure and his emotions were released unchecked as if from a broken dam.
“For fuck’s sake, Eve, when are you going to grow up? Stop being such a bitch, all I’m asking for is a little pint with my mates. Who the hell are you to stop me? Oh, you love it you do, sat here playing house. Well, I hate it. I want to be out with my mates. You women are all the same – you just want to control us. That’s all you really want.” His tirade spent, his voice changed to a whine, his already slight body shrank, his assertiveness abandoned and once more he was a small child asking his tired mum for another story.
“Please, Eve, come on, it’s all I’m asking for. Just one itsy little night out with my friends? It’ll make me feel so much better. Please?” Eve shook her head, her eyes fixed onto a drip of something foul that had long since dried onto the skirting board, her chewing now mechanical as she pushed another bite of sandwich into her still full mouth as if needing the new to wash down the old.
“No,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him, still shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t and I won’t. Sorry, love.” She sat there, her hands on her knees in front of her, shoulders curled in to protect herself from his harsh words.
Peter stared at her, aware that the pleading in his eyes was going unheeded. Addled but not stupid, he soon realised that those were her final words and he knew that his planned evening laughing with his mates over a couple of beers, was a complete non-starter. He felt beaten, helpless, and then simply dissolved into frustrated tears, choking out his words like a spoilt child, wishing he could bang his fists on his knees.
“It is just not fair… All I want… All my mates are down there and I’m, I’m stuck with you.” He looked up at her, still chomping as if the concentration helped. At that moment, he saw her as nothing but a body that stood in his way. He didn’t see the woman who’d made his flat into a home, or who’d looked after him and was responsible for his fluffy hair, his smooth chin or the ridiculous but comforting dressing gown he was wrapped in.
“It’s OK for you,” he sobbed, “you have everything. You can do what you want, when you want. You don’t have to ask someone’s permission or get their help. You don’t know what it is like to really want something, really need it. I know it’s bad for me
; everyone tells me that, but I only want one more – just one little drink, but nobody knows, nobody understands and no one bloody cares.”
The words fell from him in between gulps for air and snorts as the tears brought on a runny nose, so that Eve instinctively retrieved a paper handkerchief from her T-shirt sleeve and dabbed at his face, somehow resisting the word “blow” that should accompany such a move. He jerked his face away with a howl of disgust, “That’s right, yes, wipe my bloody nose, oh, you, you have it bloody perfect.” The choking tears blurted out the childish words and then he sank back into the sofa, spent and exhausted.
Eve withdrew her hand and returned the tissue to her sleeve. She looked at him, mystification on her face, tears now in her own eyes not only from having to watch the distress of the man she loved, but also at his complete inaccuracy. Her mouth started to formulate a response, but the words kept getting sucked back in as she plumbed the depths of her soul’s most intimate thoughts. Finally she was seized by a need to speak, to blurt it all out, with an honesty that would have amazed the leader of her slimming club, her doctor and even herself after so many years of self-deceit.
“God, Peter, you just have no idea. Every day – every day, I wake up thinking today I won’t eat anything…just fruit. But then I am so hungry, all I want is some toast. And, then, well once I start… And look at me. No, look at me.” Peter reluctantly lifted his sulky face and looked at her, her eyes squinting with the pain of her confession, her hands dramatically spread wide as if to expose her real shape.
“I’m fat and hideous. Everyone laughs at me, makes fun of me and thinks that that’s OK because I’m fat. So, yes, I do know what it’s like. I’m sitting here now, listening to you, saying what I am saying – but do you know what I am really thinking? I’m really thinking: “I want that ham sandwich. Just one more.” I am so full, I could burst, but I still desperately want that sandwich and I won’t stop wanting it until it’s gone. And then I’ll want the cake that’s in the tin. So, don’t tell me about wanting things you shouldn’t have. I know all about that.”
Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons Page 22