by Coote, Cathy
I hadn't. Not even close.
I pleaded virginal ignorance. ‘I don't know.’
Your hands burrowed into my armpit, swept along my thigh. ‘You didn't sweat. I don't think you did.’ You looked concerned. ‘God, you'd know, if you did.’
I swear your lower lip trembled, almost imperceptibly.
‘It was nice, though.’ My voice held just the faintest whiff of look-on-the-bright-side, determined cheerfulness. I knew how to make you insist your love, now.
‘Yes, but—’ You struggled to explain yourself. ‘Every time we do this, I have the most intense … it's spiritual, it's … the best thing imaginable. But I want you to experience it too, or else it's just … meaningless.’
Kissing your damp forehead, splaying a comforting hand over one of your buttocks, I suggested, ‘Maybe it's just a matter of time. I think it's more complicated for girls. From what I've read.’
‘Maybe,’ you agreed, hopefully.
‘Well now.’ You rested your elbows on the arm of the couch and regarded me from between your forearms. ‘What are we going to do with you?’
‘I'll move in. I'll be your mistress.’
Mistress. The word itself seduced me. Looking at your wide eyes, I willed myself mistress of all I surveyed.
‘Mistress?’ Your voice was half-hysterical with the possibility of it. You winced with the naughtiness it seemed to convey.
My heart caught, fluttering, in my throat.
‘Well? Can I stay?’ I tried to say it casually, as though you could decide either way and I, fatalistic china doll that I was, would shrug and agree and go my way. But I, too, was struck dizzy with hope. I, too, was winded with the promise of escape.
Breathlessly agog, you reminded me: ‘There's eighteen years between us!’
I kissed the milky, sweat-glossed skin of your chest, and then let my lips hover there. ‘There's half an inch between us.’
‘Oh, love.’ You sank down onto me, like a wet warm blanket. ‘There,’ you said. ‘Now there's nothing between us, at all.’
*
I stayed the night.
We watched television together, intertwined on the couch like snakes in their basket, waiting for the flute song.
We slept together. Naked.
‘I like this,’ I said, with the sheets pulled up beneath my pearl of a chin. ‘Being naked in bed. It's like being a grown-up.’
Agog at the fact of your own actions, you laughed violently through your nose.
‘Like being a—!’
I curled into you, fitting myself to your inside curves. ‘It's nice!’ I pretended to be offended ‘I like it!’
Guttural with emotion, you rasped into my ear, ‘I like it too.’
I lay still in your embrace, long after cramps wracked my bent legs, and my folded arms grew stiff and sore.
You slept restlessly. You were dreaming intensely. You wriggled, whispering urgent nonsense aloud.
The next morning, I picked my wrinkled, musty school uniform up from off the bathroom floor, and put it on again.
You went to the bakery for croissants, and came back restless with worry.
‘I can't give you a lift to school!’ you told me.
‘'S all right,’ I said, wiping crumbs from round my mouth. ‘I'll walk.’
‘You won't get tired? Oh, I'm so sorry!’ Leaning over the table, you flicked with your thumb at a large crumb I had purposely left untouched for you to wipe away. ‘Messy girl! … I just … we can't be seen … can we?’
‘It's okay,’ I said. ‘Where's my bag?’
‘Under the couch. Where you left it.’
You retrieved it for me.
Swinging one leg up onto the table, I unrolled a white sock slowly upwards over my foot. You watched me surreptitiously from behind the pile of breakfast things you were clearing away. Clearing your throat, you seemed about to speak. But, instead, you disappeared into the kitchen, the honey-jar rattling against the plates as your hands shook.
I put my other sock on briskly and without ceremony. Without your watching eyes, there was no need for delicacy.
‘Here,’ you said, returning with a paper bag in your hands. ‘I've made your lunch.’
In the open doorway, you pecked my cheek with your lips.
‘Be careful,’ you told me. Your fingers were five fiery points burning the skin of my shoulders with the heat of your concern.
I twisted, like a tiptoeing snake, and pressed my open lips against yours. ‘I'm always careful,’ I said.
Looking back, I saw you wiping at your chin with the back of one hand. Your mouth was still half-open, but whether from surprise or passion, it was impossible to tell.
Passing by my house—my aunt and uncle's house—I let myself in. The smells of the hallway already had a nostalgic quality. Like a song remembered from kindergarten, they were obvious but strange at the same time.
In my room, I loaded up my schoolbag. I grabbed a few bits of underwear, my other school uniforms. There wasn't really much else I needed to take. None of the myriad little china things-for-putting-things-in that I'd acquired had the slightest sentimental value to me. Nor did the fading stuffed frog or his threadbare monkey companion. I'd be relieved to leave the technicolour clutter behind.
I was just about finished packing when I heard a noise downstairs. It was a sharp creak, like the ones our kitchen chairs made when you shifted position.
I froze. My uncle and aunt should both have been at work.
I stretched my ears wide, listening furiously. I wasn't sure if I was listening for a burglar; or because I felt like one myself and didn't fancy a confrontation. But the noise came again, along with a chink of metal on ceramic.
I decided that it must be my aunt or my uncle. A burglar was unlikely to be making himself a cup of tea.
Whoever it was must have heard me come in. The front door was right near the kitchen. It was making me restless, sitting here, straining to be quiet. I just wanted to get back to you.
What the hell, I thought, and zipped up my bag.
As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw that the kitchen door was now wide open.
‘Hello?’ called out a voice suddenly from inside. It was my uncle, but it took me a second or two to recognise his voice; it sounded high-pitched and strained.
I hesitated in the hallway. I couldn't just ignore him. But I was afraid of him, too, as if he were a big dark octopus that might drag me to some murky place away from you.
‘Hello?’ came that call again, quicker and more tense than he ever sounded.
Making myself as casual as possible, I strolled into the kitchen. ‘Hi,’ I said.
My uncle was sitting at the kitchen table. He hadn't left for work yet. He had his suit jacket on but it was sort of clumsily pushed up at the elbows.
I stood in the doorway and we looked at each other. He looked sort of crumpled all over, like someone had scrunched him up and thrown him in the bin. His eyes were very slightly red, though he regarded me inscrutably for a long moment.
Neither of us said anything for a while.
‘I just came back to get some of my stuff,’ I said after a while. My voice sounded uncomfortably small and thin in the space between us.
Again, he paused for a long time, and seemed to be reaching a long way inside himself for a reply. He nodded heavily.
‘I was just thinking about you,’ he said.
Standing there, unable to run away (I wasn't allowed, it was obvious), my grip tightened on the handles of my bag.
His voice was thick with some potent emotion. ‘Thinking about how we used to go down to the beach and you'd always draw a big face in the sand for me with your feet.’
I made a face now. A very slight one, to myself rather than to him. I had no wish to remember being so vulnerable a thing as a child who draws faces in the sand.
He smiled to himself, shaking his head a little.
‘Do you remember?’ he asked me.
I said
nothing. Of course I remembered. Holding his hand and being bought ice-cream with bubble-gum in it which I always forgot was bubble-gum and swallowed and half-choked on. Getting sand all through the car and leaving it to him to clean up.
He asked again, ‘Do you remember?’
There was a very heavy question in the air now. He wasn't pleading with me. He was too dignified a man for that. But he was asking me, as strongly as he could, to acknowledge this child, this little blonde girl running around like a fool in the shallows, blowing bubbles underwater with her hands clamped over her eyes for fear of salty water.
‘Hmmm?’ he prompted, his eyes troubled. ‘Down the coast?’
‘No,’ I said. I couldn't stand the thought. I wanted you. I wanted safe ground, not these sandy dangerous memories. ‘I've got to go.’
I turned and left. He didn't call after me as I went. He just sat there at the kitchen table, thinking of another girl.
I loved those days.
I lived them in a silver-filtered daze. An acute daze, a daze of heightened sensations and ecstatic hyper-awarenesses.
All I can think of is the sweep of linen sheets against my skin and the infinite different postures that a man can adopt when he is pretending not to look at something.
I loved the constant, silken touch of your eyes, sweeping endlessly over my yellow hair, and the curve of my belly, and the white arches of my bare feet.
It seemed that I had succeeded in giving myself away. I had foisted responsibility for myself onto someone else. My little-girlness, my thousand-and-one charms, were a sugar-coating which enticed you to swallow me whole.
I flaunted my smallness as other people flaunt bare flesh. I measured my hands against yours, making them slimmer, more delicate; childlike. All my height left my head three inches below your shoulder. All my weight left me light enough for you to carry me easily to bed, when I fell asleep on the couch where we read, where we watched television.
I felt I owned the big hand I held, the big body to which it was attached, the rough cheeks which needed shaving every day, the deep voice. The strength of your desire made you mine.
Orchestrating reactions from you became my overriding concern.
It was all about erections.
You have to understand that my pleasure in our physical contact was, at first, utterly psychological.
Your desire for me was like a physiological weakness, a sort of epilepsy. I needed to see you in its grip more than I needed to eat. But physical desire was quite another thing.
I soon learnt that the faintest indication of arousal on my part drove you into a convulsive frenzy. If I closed my eyes; if I made myself seem spaced-out, abstracted; if my breath came more heavily and louder, I could force you to a fever pitch.
At first, it hurt terribly.
It seems awful to say it now, but I promised you the whole truth, my darling, and you shall have it.
I opened to you, always. But there were times, in those first few weeks, when a dull stinging pain threatened to overwhelm me. All my smiles were grimaces transmogrified.
I think the force of your passion bruised me, too. All those kisses. Your hand always curled over mine. Those soft eyes sliding helplessly, endlessly, over my face. It was too rich a diet, for someone who's lived for years on sketch paper and thin ink.
The truth is that, the third time we had sex, I lay on my back on the green leather sofa, revelling in your face but wishing your penis would stop.
*
Separately, we skulked to school and home again. Between one class and another, we met surreptitiously in corridors, sharing quick strained confidences. At lunchtimes, we walked together harmlessly in far corners of the grounds. But only when you didn't have staff meetings.
I could have fobbed the world off with a farce, indefinitely. Fobbing people off with farces is my trade. God forgive me.
But you, precious creature, are too good for those ways. You wore deceit badly. It stuck out on you, like a bright colour. And it grew brighter, all the time.
I remember when Mrs Taylor made my day.
She was the young, cool drama teacher. She liked Mel Gibson and she usually gave us an early mark for lunch. She strode about the school in jeans. Everyone liked her. She was boundlessly enthusiastic and wore her curly hair in high French twists. I can just imagine you in the staff room at recess—before I moved in, when your conscience was bothered by nothing more awful than man's general inhumanity to man—nibbling your sandwiches and listening to her loud laugh and boisterous anecdotes with that shy smile on your face.
Mrs Taylor made my day by saying ‘No’.
I was walking at your elbow through the quadrangle. You were telling me, in ponderous tones, about Henry V. I wasn't really listening; just enjoying travelling in your shadow. I liked to watch your hands in their quick gestures, shaping people and events from the air, for my edification.
Mrs Taylor, her arms loaded up with plastic swords and white-fringed royal robes, put her shoulder against the glass panel of the door at the bottom of the Drama Room stairs as we passed.
Instinctively chivalrous, you strode out of your way to open the door for her.
And from over that armful of props, she eyed you balefully. She refused to pass through the opening you'd made for her. She stood in the doorway while you kept your hand uncertainly on the knob.
‘Need a hand?’ you offered.
Her white be-ringed hands clasped her bundle a little tighter.
‘No!’ she snapped. The disapproval in her voice cut into you like ice. Your mouth swung open with the shock of it. Mrs Taylor turned her pretty face away, scowling, and pushed herself through the door.
You cleared your throat, nodding desperately at the doorway.
‘Um,’ you said, reddening painfully. ‘Well. Um.’
Bending like a soldier from the waist, you shut the door, carefully. This was a supremely ridiculous gesture. The weight of the door was designed to swing it shut without help.
You had nowhere else to find refuge from her harshness. You turned to me. You were smiling terribly in your embarrassment.
‘Don't worry,’ I said. I curled my fingers around yours.
Your smile melted into a look of appeal. Your hand, having nowhere else to go, gripped mine tightly, just for one ecstatic second.
Your nobleness crumbled all away, and you were mine.
I had come to you like a refugee. I had a bag full of pencil sharpeners and be-doodled exercise books, and the clothes I stood up in.
I delighted, in those first few days, to run around the house in nothing but one of your enormous white shirts.
‘We'll have to get you something to wear,’ you said.
We went shopping in the city.
I tried on everything. You stood, hands in pockets, looking at your shoes, looking at me. The shop assistants thought you were my father. The middle-aged ones cooed over me with you, making you blush. The young ones ignored you.
I clothed myself with infinite care. I'd never really cared what I wore before, so long as it hid me from the world, but now my wardrobe was as important to me as a hook to an angler. It was a vital tool.
I judged the effectiveness of the outfits by the depth of your flush.
It was almost going to be little turtleneck tops and overalls. Just think—I was almost Punky Brewster for you, darling! What a scary thought.
In the end, I settled on short skirts, skimpy T-shirts with tiny hearts on the front, knee-high socks, and little raver sneakers.
‘You'll freeze!’ you said, when at last you stood on a street corner with the new me.
I let you buy me a sensible new dufflecoat.
‘Come on. Put it on.’ You grasped it by the lapels, there in the street. Plastic bags full of clothes hung from your wrists, swishing as you leaned forward to settle the shoulders over mine.
I was glad you'd insisted. It really was chilly.
‘I look like Paddington Bear in this. Or a spy.’
<
br /> You did the coat up to the neck. ‘At least you'll be a warm spy,’ you said.
*
It never occurred to me that you would lose your job.
Honestly.
I came downstairs that first, glorious Saturday after I'd moved in. I had one towel on my head and another round my body. My arms and legs were sleek and wet. I glowed pink.
You sat on the sofa, your long pelican's legs stretched out before you, and hid your face behind the newspaper.
‘Hello!’ I said, kissing the top of your head.
You were fully clothed. You were wearing shoes. Blushing slightly, you answered with non-existent casualness. ‘Good morning.’
Sitting down beside you, I nuzzled my head between your arm and your side, and laid it in your lap.
I read the newspaper with you. My eyes skimmed across the words, but I didn't bother to find their sense. I was feeling you breathe. I was worming my hand into your sweaty fist.
You spoke in a sudden burst, like a car not quite catching: ‘Look, I've—’
‘Am I wetting you?’ My arms were soaking your trousers.
‘No!’ You stared blankly at me. ‘No. I've got to leave St Mary's.’ The newspaper made a tent over both our faces.
‘But aren't you too young to retire?’ My naiveté, for once, was real.
‘Of course I am!’ You tightened your hand around my wrist. ‘Of course!’
‘I thought you liked being a teacher.’
You shut your eyes against my gaze. You looked as though you had a headache. ‘I love being a teacher,’ you explained carefully. ‘But there are some things that a teacher just can't do—’
‘Oh.’ The possibility that you would chuck me in for professional reasons bore down on me with terrifying suddenness. I felt dizzy. The sounds of the suburb outside seemed to recede, as though I had put my head under the bath water.
‘It's only a matter of time.’ There was a struggling misery in your voice. ‘I mean, for now it's only rumours. They give me dirty looks. But there's bound to be some … official interest, soon.’