Frank kept his eyes on the plate. He dreaded these occasions as much as Penny did. She liked Frank. In fact he was probably the reason she'd not dumped David early in their courtship. Frank was a professor of mathematics, and as a young woman with very few O levels to her name, Penny had been fascinated by him. Mathematics had been a blank expression to her, and to meet a professor of it,… and one so charming, unlike the screaming beserkers she'd had as maths teachers,… well. He wasn't the only reason of course,… I mean David had had his charms in those days and wasn't quite so churchy - or at least he'd pretended not to be - and he'd had his fingers burned with the minister's daughter who'd turned out not to be quite so innocent as she'd appeared to be - and of course Penny had deceived him into thinking she was more innocent than she really was,…
"More parsnips, Frank?" She hated how they ignored him. Indeed since his retirement, Frank's only distinction was his impressive invisibility.
"No he doesn't, dear."
Frank sighed. "Well,… "
"Parsnips don't agree with him."
Oh, leave it Angela, let's not get into another discussion about Frank's bowels.
"He was up all night, last time, weren't you, Frank?"
"Was I? I,… "
Good boy, Frank. Lie down, go to sleep. Do as I tell you. Be as I say you are. You do not like parsnips Frank. Repeat after me!.
The boys had begun poking each other under the table - quick expressions - a raised eyebrow, a puckered lip, each communicating volumes to each other. What did they think? What of all this did they perceive? That their father was a pompous ass and their grandmother a spiky matriarch, chief controller of all their fates? Their mother a useless drudge?
"Really dear, I don't believe in all this oriental nonsense."
Since when had we begun discussing that, Angela?
Keep your distance, Angela. I choose whom I wish to discuss personal matters with. And I would not choose you, even with a gun at my head. I give you an inch and you're organising my diary. Is it not enough that I have raised you a pair of future church wardens? Here, take my children,… you'll have them from me anyway soon enough - except I think they're wise to you, and so we'll both be losing them pretty soon. But leave me alone. I am my own private self, untouched and untouchable by all, except those I choose, and I withdraw from you, from all of you.
Shit,.. it's parent's evening tomorrow!
"Well, the only alternative is antidepressants," she said. "And I've tried them. I was on the toilet all morning afterwards. So no thank you. I prefer Tai Chi - it's healthier."
Number one son, Adam, 16 and already a man of the world, looked up, his brow furrowed in alarm - clearly the concept of his mother sitting on the toilet disturbed him.
But was that a hint of rebelliousness in Penny? What's the matter with you, girl? David was looking scared. He'd spent fifteen years in dread of Penny standing up to his mother. Because whose side would you choose, David?
Penny looked at him, saw what he was becoming, what they were both becoming and she hated herself for just standing by and letting it happen, hated him too for letting her stand by. Let's move away David. Let's go to the other end of the country - be ourselves, raise the boys as we choose, live as we choose. You can go to another church, be religious somewhere else, out of the poisonous influence of your bloody mother. I'll stay at home and cook your Sunday lunch and we'll eat it, just the four of us - or bugger cooking it - let's go out, let's ditch this weekly charade and do something else for God's sake! Ouch: thou shalt not blaspheme, Penny!
Gabriel! What would Gabriel be doing now? Had he been to the class this morning? Had he looked for her? Had his heart sunk when he'd not seen her there. Had he gone up on the moors again? Had he tried to find her on top of Black Hill? Except he wasn't Gabriel, was he? You didn't keep falling over Gabriels. He was Phil. And she felt dangerously indiscreet in his presence. Given half a chance she would tell Phil anything, everything - even how she was unable to touch her husband's dick without him squirming in embarrassment - until he even had her thinking it was something unspeakably filthy. You'd let me touch yours, though, wouldn't you Phil? Let me cup your testicles and suck on them, and stroke that hot stiffness, make you dance for more until you cry out and lay your head against my breast - and all that other stuff I've not done since I got married. You'd let me do that, wouldn't you Phil?
Keep away from me,… for pity's sake keep away. I've grown too depraved!
Gabriel was not an angel. He was a man, and he loved her, but he couldn't bring himself to say so, and she was too prim and proper to coax it out of him. It just needed the right combination of circumstances, that's all, the right coincidence that would throw them together. And there'd been many Gabriel's now - so very many, since she was a girl and first discovered him longing for his Bathsheba in Thomas Hardy's novel Far From the Madding Crowd. Oh yes, Gabriel Oak, was her man, but she was no Bathsheba. She would have loved Gabriel right back, and let him know it. But if her Gabriels had loved her, they'd a funny way of showing it. Indeed, with Gabriels it was as if they didn't even know you were there.
"Such a lot of washing up, dear. You do use the dishwasher, don't you?"
"Hmn… ?"
"Dishwasher dear."
"I'm sorry?… "
Was this to be another lecture on the merits of the dishwasher? Penny felt herself becoming hot. She would have used the dishwasher, of course, until Angela mentioned it - but she wasn't about to use it now, not even if it took her the rest of the day to sort the pots out.
"Much more hygienic, dear."
How would you like me to stick this spoon in your eye, Angela? "Bad for the environment,… all that electricity and detergent,… to say nothing of the water." Oh leave it Penny - don't get her going.
"Nonsense. Surely you don't believe all that green propaganda do you?"
"My boys haven't seen more than a few hours snow since they were born, Angela."
Angela looked at once to David, but David was pretending to wipe a spot of gravy off the tablecloth.
Angela sighed. "I don't know why you don't call me mother, dear."
Because you're not my mother. Because my mother's dead, and I've been standing on my own two feet since I was thirteen years old. I was uncaged, Angela dear, until I married your son. Now he controls me, and you control him. You are not my mother, you are my gaoler!
"Eat up," said Penny. "It's apple crumble and custard for anyone with a clean plate." And if you ask me if I can manage to make the custard thicker this time, Angela, I swear I will spit in it.
"Could you manage to make my custard a little thicker this time Penny?"
Penny's eyes narrowed. Are you a real person, Angela, or are you a pantomime villain?
Penny always spat in Angela's custard, or her tea, or anything else she could get away with. It was a filthy habit of course, one she'd learned from the head chef of a restaurant she'd once been a waitress at. It was only to be used as a last resort with the most difficult customers, of course, and then served with a polite smile. Was that childish? Would she burn in hell for exposing such an upstanding churchgoer to her saliva?
"And what about you, David?"
"Hmn?"
"Would you like your custard thick or thin." Say thin David - and remember this is not just about custard!
"Oh as thick as you can manage, Penny."
Hmn,… no tuppence for you tonight, lover,… always supposing you could remember what you do with it. You stick your penis in it, David. You know - that thing between your legs? You do still have a penis don't you? You've not lost it or anything? Only it's rather a long time since I saw you with one.
After lunch, David and Angela slipped like spies unseen into the conservatory. There were important matters to discuss regarding tactics at the next meeting of the church council - such as how to outmanoeuvre Maggy Windbag and slide one of their own cronies in instead. Then they'd have a majority who'd vote on their side and they'd more or l
ess run the church, run rings around the handsome but hopelessly naive young vicar.
It had come as a surprise to Penny to discover that it was not the vicars who ran the churches at all but characters like Angela and David, and the last bastion of spiritual values in an otherwise unfeeling world was no more than another social club - largely at the mercy of its warring cliques.
Frank came into the kitchen, almost on tiptoe to ask Penny if he could help. Bless you Frank but no. You're such a clutterbuck; the last time you broke my Denby teapot. "Would you, Frank? That's lovely. Thank you."
Was it her fault if she'd looked at Frank all those years ago and seen David in him,… . seen David as this thin, slightly frail gentleman with his hesitant mannerisms, and lovely ways? Was it her fault, David had chosen instead to turn into his mother?
"How are you Penny?"
The kitchen was quiet. It was an Angela free zone and Frank could open his mouth now without her finishing his sentences. He could be intelligent and sensitive, be himself again.
"I have good days and bad days, Frank."
"A colleague of mine once had a full blown nervous breakdown," he said, speaking as if in fond reminiscence of the said event. "They encouraged him to take up Yoga, which he did, and then he got in to running. He said it helped immensely. Died of a heart attack half way through the London Marathon - but otherwise he was perfectly sane by then."
Penny wasn't sure of his point. He had a habit of speaking in metaphorical riddles which antagonised Angela because his intellect was the one thing she couldn't beat him over the head with, except to imply that he was going senile.
"You mustn't give it up you know," he went on.
"What's that then?"
"Your Tai Chi. I was in China in '82, cultural visit - saw the people there doing in the parks of a morning. Terrible places, the cities out east. The squalor was almost Victorian and the humidity's an absolute killer,… so it was odd to see so many people looking so serene."
"I didn't know you'd been to China, Frank."
"Long time ago, now." He sighed. "We must always be ourselves, Penny. It's just that sometimes we forget what ourselves are like, because it's easier to let others decide how they want us to be."
"Frank?"
He smiled and she thought there was a dangerous little twinkle in his eye.
David and Angela barely noticed Penny as she slipped through the conservatory and went barefoot across the lawn. Nor did they notice when she whipped the sack off the Buddha and carefully blew the little bits of fluffy compost from him. Frank noticed though and paused half way through his Soduku to watch as Penny loosened her arms and legs up, shaking like she was having a fit. Then she dropped into the opening position and did the only five moves she knew - did them over and over. She had always been a graceful girl, he thought.
Angela's attention was drawn by Penny apparently dancing on the lawn, and then she noticed the garden ornament and stared pop-eyed somewhere between the two. David blushed. Penny hadn't always been so,… indiscreet. How did she expect him to love her, to respect her when she insisted on doing something so,… embarrassingly stupid.
"Adam, go and ask your mum if she's all right, will you?"
Adam looked at David as if to say: you must be joking! He was having enough trouble relating to his mother as it was.
"Go on, now."
Adam shuffled out, and stood a little to one side of Penny who seemed lost in her own world. Eventually, she noticed him. A hug from Adam would have been worth a whole day of Tai Chi, but he was as distant and as wooden as his father these days. "Hi Adam. What's up, chuck?"
Adam cleared his throat, his voice warbling, wavering between high and low, ready to break. "Dad and Grandma want to know if everything's all right."
"No, Adam. You are their instrument."
"Eh?"
"They merely want me to know that they're watching, and do not approve."
Penny began her moves once more. "Tell them,… "
"What? What was that?"
She waited until she'd finished, then smiled. "Just tell them to mind their own fucking business."
Adam's eyes popped open, and he almost gasped in disbelief.
"Sorry, chuck. Just tell them I'm fine."
Chapter 15
One of the problems with masturbation was catching the emission at the moment when one was least concerned about the potential of staining the carpet. Phil had found the solution to this problem in a neat little device called a Virgo that simulated a vagina. He'd seen it on the Internet - at the same saucy emporium he'd purchased the jokey stuff from for Mrs Parker's benefit, and in a rare moment of daring, he'd decided to order one. Made mostly of a deliciously soft silicone rubber, it slid over the penis, and was plugged into the computer's U.S.B. socket, then driven, so to speak from a computer display.
He kept it locked in an old briefcase in the study-cum broom cupboard where he'd set up his personal computer. At first he'd felt guilty about it, also it has to be said, he felt like a bit of a pervert, but he'd told himself it was an adult toy, that the health magazines assured him most men masturbated, even the married ones - or at times especially the married ones - and he was,… well,… an adult.
The computer in the study was a more powerful machine than his laptop, one he used for playing games and accessing the Internet. But this computer was also family machine, so Phil was fastidious about the material he stored on it - definitely no porn, and he ran an automatic routine for erasing his browsing habits from those sneaky little cache files, just in case. Marty was probably getting well up on these things at school, and Phil couldn't be too careful.
After a few evenings of practice with the Virgo, in association with saucy images he'd found on-line, he began to feel very stupid. I mean it was bad enough if Sally discovered him doing it in the conventional way, but she'd probably have fainted if she'd found him actually plugged into his computer.
Fortunately, he was distracted from this thorny problem when he discovered the world of massive multiplayer online role playing games, or MMORPGS as they were affectionately known - and one in particular called Freedom. In Freedom, players logged on from their computers all over the world and were represented by an in-game character called an avatar. The avatars were breathtakingly realistic, the female ones exceptionally beautiful, and part of the fun was changing their looks and their clothing to project one's own personality or mood.
Freedom contained many different kinds of world, from the fantastic to the grotesque. There was no real aim, and it was not a game as such, but Phil was captivated by it. One simply wandered about, exploring the scenery and the buildings, and interacting with those one encountered along the way. To him these worlds were like dreamscapes - he could even fly through them! He made casual friends too - men and women in Australia, Brazil, California, Romania. These were the real-world's bored computer literati, cruising via their Broadband connections and exchanging small talk from behind their lovingly crafted avatar masks. It had all seemed polite and charming at first, but eventually he felt it was too cushioned from reality to have any impact, to have any real meaning. But then he encountered a lady avatar called Joranda, and it was she who finally rocked his senses by introducing him to cybersex. She was breathtakingly beautiful and skimpily clad of course, and after the briefest of introductions she invited Phil back to her place, (her virtual place, that is) a minimalist designer flat in a tower block overlooking an azure bay.
Phil: Wow! It's very nice here.
Joranda: lol
Phil: Sorry: I'm a newbie. What does lol mean?
Joranda: lol
Phil: Never mind. Where are u from?
Joranda: Oz. U?
Phil: UK.
Joranda: Cool. U gotta Virgo?
Pause,…
Joranda: U still there?
Pause,… .
Phil: Yes. Gotta Virgo. U?
Joranda: Im a gal. lol. No Virgo. Gotta a Lectric "D" plugged in tho. U?
>
Pause,…
Pause,…
Joranda: U still there?
Phil: Here.
Joranda: Is this working for U?
Phil: Oh,… absolutely. I was just,…
Pause,…
Joranda: Just?
Phil: Connecting up.
Joranda: :)
Phil was beginning to catch on. He now sat trembling from head to foot. A side of him wanted desperately to get out of there - to head off whatever was coming, but the rest of him hung in, telling him it would be impolite now, and anyway, none of it was real, none of it touched anything or anyone. Joranda was not exactly real, anyway - she was a creative splinter of some stranger's imagination, a part of the game.
Joranda's skimpy clothing disappeared and she spread herself on her bed, displaying a very finely detailed vagina and pubic hair. Phil found the menu and clicked "missionary" - he was definitely catching on now. His view expanded to the third person and he saw himself and Joranda intimately embraced - at the same time, he felt the Virgo come to life - as he supposed had Joranda's 'Lectric D.
Joranda: "MMMnnnnn,… "
Phil: "MMMMMMnnnnnnn"
He caught himself wondering just what the hell this was. Was he betraying Sally? How could he be? This was just a bit of stimulation in conjunction a computer image - except, he was plugged into it. It just so happened that a woman in Australia was plugged in as well. It was purely mechanical. But wait: What was this? He felt long, slow waves of pleasure from the Virgo as if,… no, this was not a machine - she was controlling the pleasure she gave him - how? Phil wondered, running the mouse up and down on Joranda's digitised privates, and yes, the avatar responded, as if reacting against his touch.
Joranda: Not so rough, lover!
Phil: Sorry - still getting the hang.
Joranda: That's better. Slower.
My god! Phil lay back as his loins exploded. He'd stepped out of reality altogether, stepped into either a dream of heaven, or the depths of hell while sitting in a smelly, airless cupboard, in the middle of suburbia.
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