"So how was it?" She was talking about the dance.
I would like to have told her that 'it' was just fine until my boyfriend's little problem with premature ejaculation.
"It was good. I met a boy," I told her.
This got no response.
"He may have knocked me up. But don't worry, we're getting married as soon as he gets his parole."
"That's nice, dear."
I sighed. I love my mum but she doesn't always listen. She's probably back at bridge club bidding two no trump.
"Mum, I need to talk to you"
"About what?"
"Sex."
I knew this wasn't going anywhere. I just hoped for once it might.
"Don't they teach that sort of thing at school, dear? We pay all that money..."
"0f course they do. Procreation for Dummies, I get more out of Latin. I need to know more than the names of the dangly bits and who does what to who."
"Whom, dear, who does what to whom. And please try not to be vulgar."
And I'm thinking, 'Mum, I want to talk to you about losing my virginity and oral sex, which is next on my wish list, and all you want to do is correct my grammar.'
She changed the subject. She always does. "You say you met someone. Anyone I might know?"
This is code for: Does he come from the right sort of family?
"Joshua Southgate, he was in my class at Sunday school."
Mum was suddenly all ears. "Is that the family that owns the antique store in the village?"
I said I thought it was.
"That's nice, dear. You should ask him round for tea."
I almost lost it. I don't think she'd be so quick with the cucumber sandwiches if she knew he'd been shagging me only an hour ago in the basement of St. Gabriel's.
I shivered, reliving the magic in the musty leaf-blown darkness, my first time, panties down, skirt hiked up around my waist, Josh's warm hands drawing me to him.
"You're shivering, darling, you should climb into bed."
I kissed her and held her tight. "G'night mum. See you in the morning."
When I knew my parents would be asleep and it was safe to talk I grabbed my mobile off the bedside table and punched in a number. I had news for Jen. She'd been lording it over me ever since she lost her virginity two months ago in the backseat of a car parked at a lookout on the top of Pikes Hill. She picked up on the first ring.
"Hiyer."
"Hey, guess what?"
"What?"
"I did it."
"Did what?"
"Got laid, silly, what do you think? Lost my virginity. Move over, sweetie, I'm right there with you."
"Cat, that's brilliant. Who was it? Anyone you know?"
We had a good laugh over that.
"You wouldn't know him, a boy I used to know at Sunday School."
"Is he cute?"
"Very."
"How old?"
"Our age. We can't all shag 20-year-olds." Jen's first time was with an apprentice plumber she met at a careers seminar in Brockenhurst. She let that go.
"Well? How was it?"
"Fantastic. Quick though. He went off almost right away."
"They all do, unfortunately. Never mind, it gets better, so they say."
So I told her all about it: the music, the slow dancing, the hot summer night, how we went outside, how he kissed me, held me, ran his fingers through my hair, his tongue in my ear until neither of us could stand it any longer Then he took my hand and put it on his thing. I will never forget that feeling. I pulled my hand away as if it was burning my fingers. "Not here. I know a place." And I grabbed him and we ran across the graveyard to the basement stairwell, descending the stairway to heaven.
"Sounds a bit spidery, go on."
I know Jen. She likes talking about it as much as doing it. I pictured her in her teddy bear pajamas, her hand between her legs. She was my first love. What we discovered about our bodies and sexual arousal we learned at school after lights out and during sleepovers. Telling her what happened, remembering how it felt, was making me hot. I loosened my pajama bottoms and wriggled them down to my knees.
"Jen?"
"What?"
"Are you doing what I think you're doing?"
"I'm not telling you. Maybe. I've been stuck here all night studying algebra. You're the one who's been out getting laid."
She paused.
"Did it hurt?"
"A bit, just at first."
Gently I touched myself. I wasn't sore any more. I was elated. Suddenly I felt like a woman, the awkward anxiety of adolescence behind me.
"You can't have had much room under the stairs." Jen was ready for the best part.
"Well it wasn't exactly the Ritz. We did it standing up."
"Cool. Although you say it was over pretty quickly."
"I didn't get off, if that's what you mean."
"Cat?"
"What?"
"Do you feel different now?"
"Yes, didn't you, after your first time?"
"Relieved more than anything. Next time I want candles and satin sheets."
"Me too. And music."
"I can't believe you did it in a graveyard."
"I didn't. I told you. We were under the stairs at the back of the church."
"Whatever. Bet you had more room than in the backseat of a Honda."
We laughed the ways friends do who are totally at ease with each other.
Jen was suddenly serious again.
"Honestly, Cat, I'm really happy for you. But it's funny isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Now we've both been with boys can things be the same between us?"
"Of course they can. We still love each other, don't we?"
"0f course."
"Well then, why would things change?"
"Jen?"
"What?"
"Did you tell your mum after your first time?"
"It's a funny thing. I wasn't going to, at least not right away. Then when I saw her and she was still up and she made me a hot chocolate I sort of blurted it out."
"And?"
"She wasn't cross or anything, like she was kind of expecting it. She just wanted to make sure we had used a condom. Then she told me her first time was in a car too. And then I laughed. 'They had cars back then?' And that sort of broke the tension. She hugged me and told me a bunch of stuff: Respect yourself, be careful, don't give it away, boys only want one thing, like 'duh', I figured that out in the third form when Johnny Davenport tried to put his hand down my gym shorts. Did you?"
I took a deep breath
"I wanted to, I just couldn't. I tried to, but all I got was a lecture on the subjunctive. I would have settled for a hug."
I was close to tears. I wished my Nan were here. I suddenly felt exhausted.
"Jen, I'll call you tomorrow, okay? I'm beat."
"Sure, we'll talk more tomorrow. You'd better get some sleep."
We said our goodnights. We had a lot to think about.
I lay back and cuddled my pillow. When I closed my eyes I could hear the church clock chiming the hour. Bong, not a virgin, bong, not a virgin. I counted. I didn't make it to twelve before I fell into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Seven
If anyone ever asked him when he was born – and in truth the opportunity seldom arose – George would say he was born on a dark and stormy night. It amused him. He thought that was most splendid start to any story he had ever read, invoking just the right hint of menace, of ominous things ahead, a foreboding confluence of foul weather and darkness, of which nothing good could come.
Once, when he was about twelve, he asked his mother about it in the hope that it might actually be true in his case. "Nonsense, dear," she told him not unkindly. "Whoever told you such a thing? You were born on a bright October morning just before noon. Your poor mother had been pushing and panting all night long and half the next day until you decided in your own good time that you would enter the world and grace us
with your presence. And you didn't arrive head first in the normal manner. No sir. One tiny clenched fist appeared first, waving in defiance at the apparent injustice of it all, followed by the rest of you, slippery as an eel, your little crinkly face grimacing at us as if we had just awakened you from a particularly pleasing dream."
As a boy, George could listen for hours to his mother's way of telling things. As a special treat on wintry Sunday afternoons his dad would stoke up the coal fire until sparks flew and toast great doorstopper slices of bread at the end of a long fork until they were blackened and crunchy and lavish them with drippings from the Sunday roast and George would sit almost as close to the fire as the cat and ask his mum to tell stories of her childhood growing up in Wales.
But in spite of his mum's explanation, he didn't feel any imperative to amend his own version of events. It amused him to tell grownups that he was born on a dark and stormy night and it was only a tiny lie, not even a lie really, but just an embellishment that invariably intrigued people who stared down at him in disbelief as if he were giving them too much information.
To say that George lived in a fantasy world was only partially true. Very few little boys his age were as grounded as he, or knew the value of working half a day on Saturdays for two shilling and sixpence in his father's bike repair shop on the high street, or could kick a pebble all the way home from school then score the winning goal in the cup final at Wembley Stadium with the crowd on its feet, even though in reality it was scored between the gateposts of a little semi-detached house on Galton Road.
George loved working in his dad's bike shop. Most of their work, or as his dad would say, 'the little jobs that put food on the table,' was repairing punctures. He and his dad were a team. His dad would remove the inner tube from the tire and George would pump it up and pass it inch by inch through a pail of soapy water. Where it was punctured little bubbles appeared and George would dry the tube and draw a chalk circle around the hole so his dad could stick a patch on it and charge the customer one shilling and sixpence. To George the inner tubes morphed into the entrails of dragons or sea monsters and he grasped them firmly in his little hands lest the monsters should rise up and devour East Grinstead. He didn't want to be responsible for a monster eating East Grinstead.
"Hurry up, son," his dad would say. "It doesn't take all day to find a little hole."
"Sorry dad. But you can't be too careful with genus Architeuthis. It's a giant squid that lives in the depths of the ocean. Adult females can grow to 40-feet long. You don't want to mess with Architeuthis."
"I'll give you archytoothache, if you don't get on with it," his dad would say, grinning behind his hand, secretly pleased that his George was easily one of the smartest kids in his class and one day would make something of himself and not be mending punctures in a little shop on the high street, not that there was anything wrong with that.
At the age of 12, George went to the local grammar school. It was a typical post-war brick structure with an imposing neo-classical façade and behind it classrooms grouped around two grass-covered quadrangles upon which no one ever set foot except the gardeners. Behind the school was an expansive two-tiered playing field. The top field was the cricket pitch, circled by a quarter-mile running track, and the bottom field, less well manicured, had two rugby pitches laid out side-by-side. Behind them was the school canteen where hot meals were served and at lunch time the boys queued up noisily for a slice of meat and a dollop of mashed potatoes and peas pudding, which George hated, grateful there was always someone willing to take it off his plate. In the classrooms, the wooden desks were arranged two-by-two in rows in front of the blackboard with an aisle between them so the teacher could patrol up and down. George's deskmate was Christopher Marples whom he knew from primary school and the two were firm friends, often cycling home across the park together, sometimes helping each other with homework at one or the other's house..
George was the shortest boy in the class and his physical development lagged behind the others. Despite his diminutive stature he loved rugby because he was a fast runner and he was put on the wing where the ball seldom reached him, but when it did he could sometimes outpace his pursuers and he learned to bob and weave and cut inside to score under the posts. But as much as he liked to play the game, he dreaded going to the showers afterwards. The other boys all had pubic hair and he had none. He was terribly embarrassed and covered up with a towel as much as possible, turning his back to them when he put his underpants on. The thought of girls and what to do with them was a mystery. When Charlie Langlois, who sat two rows behind him, bragged about 'getting a bit' he had no idea what that meant, a bit of what, he wondered? And although he knew about playing with himself, and sometimes did it under the sheets, he was unclear what was supposed to happen, except 'the feeling' as everyone called it and a wonderful juddering sensation at the end. In George's case the whole thing usually lasted less than a minute. He fantasized that he lived next door to a beautiful Arabian princess who would be aroused to the point of ecstasy by eunuchs – he had read about eunuchs in bible class – until at the very last minute she would send them all away and call for George.
During some classes at school, Latin, for example, where Mr. Erebus was so short -sighted he couldn't see past the front two rows, the boys at the back of the room passed the time by playing with each other's willy, little fingers unbuttoning the fly of their neighbor and little fists jerking up and down. During art class, when Mr. Dupont was absorbed at his easel, attempting to demonstrate the subtlety of perspective and how the figures on the Sistine Chapel appeared one way to Michelangelo at ground level and quite another when the maestro climbed the scaffold to the ceiling, some of the boys daubed paint on their willies. It was an excuse to get it out of their trousers.
Unlike most of his classmates, George enjoyed going to school although he would never admit it, but when the bell rang at ten to four he didn't hang about in the playground as some of the boys did, but cycled home right away for tea. He would take his seat at the parlour table while his mum fussed with the place mats until they were lined up just so, then brought in tea and biscuits on a silver tray and sometimes, if he was lucky, slices of her home-made fruit cake. "Only one piece George, or you won't be eating your supper." Then she would take her own cup over to the fireplace and pick up her knitting.
"What did you do at school today, dear?" she would ask him. He was always prepared for this question.
"Not much, although we learned about perspective in art class and that was interesting. Did you know that Michelangelo had to paint stuff high up on the ceiling as if he was seeing it from down on the ground? Can you imagine how hard that would be?" He didn't tell-her about the boys who painted their willies, although that was easily the most interesting thing that happened.
On Saturday afternoons, after he finished at the bike shop, George was allowed to go to the pictures at the Metropole. George would spend fourpence on a packet of sweets which he shared with his friend Christopher. The cinema showed all the latest Disney cartoons, but what George liked most were the old ones in black and white. He howled with glee at the misadventures of Laurel and Hardy, but his all-time favorite was the little tramp with the bowler hat and baggy trousers and his curved walking cane. There was something about Charlie Chaplin that George identified with. And years later when he went to work at the town hall as a junior clerk, he could indulge himself by sporting a bowler of his own and he learned to do the little Chaplin jig, clicking his heels in mid-air and twirling his rolled umbrella, a proper Charlie. Sometimes when things were going well, or a particularly pleasing thought popped into his mind, he would stop what he was doing and do his little jig. It was a George thing, his personal commentary on the vicissitudes of life.
He was given the middle name Aloysius in honor of his great, great grandfather Aloysius Spencer Brown, who according to family history was an early explorer of the Amazon and a contemporary of the legendary Percy Harrison Fawcett who led many
expeditions to the Amazon basin beginning in 1906 when he was commissioned by the National Geographical Society to map the border between Bolivia and Brazil. Aloysius Brown had no such commission and funded his own expeditions, but like Fawcett he believed in the existence of the Lost City of the Amazon, which was rumored to be in the Mato Grosso region, and its discovery, if he would have found it, would undoubtedly have brought him fame and fortune. Unfortunately, his diaries were destroyed in a house fire in Aberistwyth in 1928, but there is evidence that the explorers crossed paths on at least one occasion during their travels deep in the jungle. When George was a student at the London School of Economics, which he attended on a scholarship after leaving high school, he found the evidence he was looking for in the archives of The Times, a letter to the editor written by his distinguished ancestor in 1907. Aloysius Brown had led a very public defence of Fawcett who had been widely ridiculed by the scientific community after claiming he had shot a 62-feet long anaconda. Aloysius Brown who had entered Fawcett's camp the following day, not only saw the dead snake but helped Fawcett remove a partially digested jaguar from its belly. He had no time for armchair explorers.
"In simple terms that even a desk-bound scientist would understand, I estimated that Fawcett's anaconda when stretched out from head to tail was slightly shorter than the length of a cricket pitch (66-feet, or 20 m)," he wrote in a letter posted in Iquitos, Peru, which took seventeen weeks to reach the offices of The Times. "I can only hope that the so-called 'scientific community', which evidently has much to learn about giant anacondas, has a clearer understanding of the distance between the stumps." The letter was published under the heading "Clean Bowled."
George had roared with laughter when he read that and tucked a copy into his wallet. To him it was proof that there is no experience like being there and after he got a job in the recycling department at Putney & District municipality, he never accepted without question the evidence of the 'scientific community.'
"Interesting, if true," he would say to himself. "But how long is an anaconda?"
Spank: The Improbable Adventures of George Aloysius Brown Page 10