The White Mercedes

by Philip Pullman

‘I don’t understand you,’ she said.

  ‘Why? What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean you obviously want to, but you hang back. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘No. It’s difficult to explain. I think it’s—’

  ‘Don’t explain, you don’t have to explain…’

  ‘But you said you didn’t understand, so I was—’

  ‘I don’t want to understand necessarily. I think you’re strange, but I don’t mind you being strange, it’s nothing I want altered or anything. I like you as you are.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I just said so.’

  ‘I love you, Jenny.’

  He’d said it. He hadn’t meant to, but there it was.

  Suddenly, with a little convulsion that felt like a sob, she was kissing him again. Her lips were open and moist, it was honeydew, he was drinking the essence of her and it was making him drunk with wonder.

  ‘Listen,’ he whispered when they finally stopped kissing, ‘my father’s got a house in Rose Hill, OK, and he’s going away for the weekend and he’s asked me to stay there and look after his cat…’

  ‘Yeah, and…’

  ‘Would you come and stay with me?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Friday night. And Saturday.’

  ‘OK.’

  —

  He searched his memory exhaustively later on in bed, after he’d walked her home and they’d shared a pizza and one beer, which was all they could afford, in the kitchen of the squat with a girl called Marje. Jenny wouldn’t let him come to her bedroom, but she’d promised to come to his father’s house; he was sure she had. He replayed their kisses and her words over and over again. He was sure he’d got it right.

  When Friday came, and he was sitting in the narrow living room at Rose Hill, his certainty began to fade. The kitten, for whose sake he was there, was curled up asleep on the sofa, and the setting sun threw a warm glow over the Victorian tiled fireplace, the shelves of books beside it, his father’s neatly stacked architectural journals and art books, the shabbily beautiful Persian rug. Chris sat in the silence, feeling the house empty all around him, prepared for her. There was food in the kitchen: a cold quiche and salad, laid out by Diane. There was music: his father was not one to live without his cassettes and his compact discs, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner, Strauss.

  The whole house was theirs…Chris began to tremble. He’d got it wrong. She hadn’t said she’d come. She wasn’t going to come; she had no intention of coming. She’d laughed when he’d said he loved her, and he’d blanked it out of his memory. He’d never had pizza and beer in the kitchen of the squat; he’d dreamed the whole thing. She was sitting with Derek and Ollie now, laughing at him. He imagined every kind of humiliation, as he sat there in the neat little room while the evening faded and the night began to gather in the garden.

  When it was completely dark he stood up slowly, feeling the tension in his muscles. The kitten looked up briefly and miaowed before instantly falling asleep again. Chris felt for the standard lamp, and as it came on his reflection sprang into being in the french window, looking imprisoned and desolate.

  In case she’d mistaken the number of the house and was wandering up and down looking for the most likely one, he went out of the front door and stood in the tiny garden. There was no one in sight. Identical little brick houses stretched to the right and left on both sides of the road. Lights were on behind curtained windows, street lights gleamed off the roofs of parked cars or lit up the pale green underside of the tall trees on the pavement, shining on no one.

  He could hear traffic from the main road around the corner, and music from someone’s open window across the road, and laughter from a back garden. Along with the heavy fragrance of night-scented stocks from next door, there was a trace of charcoal smoke in the air, the smell of grilling meat.

  He walked slowly out into the centre of the road and slowly down to the end, and turned, and went all the way back past the house to the other end, and not one car turned into the street, not one star fell out of the sky, not one girl appeared around the corner.

  Chris felt a physical pain in his chest. He was ready to cry out with his longing for her. He knew exactly, almost to the metre, how far her house was from this. He felt an invisible cord joining the two of them, stretching tightly through the night from his heart to hers. He imagined her house now: a bedroom light upstairs, her room, which she’d forbidden him to see, but hers, full of her scent, with her clothes tossed over the back of a chair, her shoes, the little radio that whispered to her in the night, the little mirror that gazed at her, the bedside light that shone on her silky olive skin…

  He was seized with the desire to go there right then. He could visualise every step of the way. He’d just stand outside, see that her light was on, and know where she was; that would be enough, he’d be happy with that.

  And simultaneously he thought how foolish he was. He wouldn’t know which of the windows in the little house was hers. He might be gazing lovestruck at Derek’s or Ollie’s. Or else, on the way there, he might miss her, as she came to Rose Hill by a different route. Then she’d arrive here and find the house empty, and leave again. No! He’d have to keep faith and wait.

  He wandered slowly back, tracing the letters of her name on every paving stone, on every gatepost, making the whole road hers.

  A last look round, and he went inside again. On the table in the kitchen he’d put two plates, two knives and forks, two glasses. How pathetic it all looked. He picked up her plate, and then realised that he wasn’t hungry anyway, and put everything away.

  In the living room, still and silent in the light of the standard lamp, the kitten was waking up and looking for something to play with. Chris picked it up. It was so small and light it was hardly there at all, but it was full of life and energy, batting at his hand with a pawful of soft needles, leaping sideways out of his grasp and running away only to stalk back again, rolling over and spitting at imaginary threats.

  ‘You don’t need anyone, do you, Thing?’ he said to it. ‘You’ve got everything you want. You’ve got everyone organised…They bring you food and play with you and clear up after you, and you don’t know anything about it, do you? And you don’t care either. You lucky little bastard. If I told you about Jenny you wouldn’t even laugh. You wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Just because I saw her at that ball in her long dress under the trees…I’m lost, I don’t know what to do…’

  The kitten took no notice. Quite suddenly, after plucking savagely at the Persian rug, which had had the effrontery to snag its little claws, it lay down and fell asleep at once. Chris touched it gently, and went to bed.

  Six

  He woke early in the strange bed, and lay for a while in the warm yellow light coming through the curtains, pretending that he’d lost his memory and didn’t know who he was. It was no good, though; he couldn’t forget her for long enough, or ignore how humiliated he felt.

  At eight o’clock he got up, heavy-hearted, and put on shorts and T-shirt before going down to give Thing its milk and make some breakfast for himself. He took a bowl of cornflakes into the garden, which was already hot, and sat on the bottom step to eat them.

  He’d just gone in to switch on the kettle when the doorbell rang. Instantly his heart started thudding, but it was only the postman with a parcel that was too big to go through the letter-box. Chris went back to the kitchen and made some tea, wondering what to do for the rest of the day; and then the doorbell rang for the second time.

  This time, it was Jenny.

  She stood on the step, half shy, half defiant, and said, ‘I couldn’t come last night after all. I’d’ve rung but…’

  ‘I’ve just made some tea,’ he said.

  He stood aside. As she passed him in the doorway she hesitated and then leant up and kissed him clumsily before going through, and there it was, his heart had melted again.

  They were both shy with each other. He poured the tea f
or them and they sat on the step watching Thing chase a butterfly.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to come,’ he said.

  ‘I said I would. You should believe people when they tell you things.’

  ‘I do. I believe everything.’

  She sipped her tea, holding the mug in both hands. The clear sunlight showed up a bloom on her skin that was like that on a plum: the faintest powdery clouding imaginable over the delicate rose-olive underneath. She seemed to enjoy his gaze; she turned and smiled.

  ‘Who’s this place belong to?’ she said.

  ‘My dad. He lives here with his girlfriend. They’ve gone to Paris for the weekend.’

  ‘What’s he do, your dad?’

  ‘He’s an architect. She, his girlfriend, Diane, she’s his secretary. Or used to be. He reckons she’s talented at architecture, so she’s going to the Poly to do a course.’

  ‘Perhaps she is.’

  ‘Well…Yeah, perhaps she is.’

  ‘Was there a big fight? When they split up, him and your mum? Was it painful?’

  ‘There wasn’t a scene, no. It was all very civilised, I suppose. You know, kind of we’re too mature to behave in a vulgar kind of way and throw things, goodness, let’s be sophisticated…Actually Mum was devastated, I think. She used to stay in the bedroom all day and get drunk. I did all the shopping and cooking and stuff. Then one day she met this bloke—he’s living with us now—and she was all right again. She went back to treating me like a kid, even though I’d been looking after her all that time.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you like her very much.’

  ‘Like her? Oh, no, she’s fine, she’s all right. I can’t stand him, though.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘No! Her bloke. He’s all creepy and wimpy, you know, he wants everyone to like him, he tries too hard. Dad’s not a bit like that. He couldn’t give a shit. He pretends not to, anyway, but I know he cares about art and architecture and music and things like that. You wouldn’t think so to look at him. He’s fat and bald and he looks all scruffy and lazy, but he really does know a hell of a lot and he really cares, too. Not about making an impression but about truth and honesty and doing things well.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘Yeah. I do. Yeah.’

  ‘What about his girlfriend?’

  ‘Diane, oh, she’s really young, she’s blonde and pretty and…Oh, well, I suppose she might be really talented at architecture, but that’s not the first thing you’d think about. You know, you see her and Dad together and somehow you don’t think they spend much time discussing architecture.’

  ‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘No. Thank God.’ Then she put her mug down on the step, and looked up at him and said, ‘Come indoors.’

  He stood up, his heart beating fast, and followed her in through the French window to the little living room. She half turned. He caught her wrist, bare flesh under his fingers, and then they were in each other’s arms, kissing so fiercely as to bruise their lips.

  After a minute, breathless, they drew back, and each of them saw an urgent brightness in the other’s eyes. With no word said they took hands and made for the stairs.

  In his room they sat on the unmade bed. He said, ‘Get up a sec,’ and threw off the covers altogether, so that the bed was bare, a clear white surface. They lay down together. She was so slender and light that she hardly made any impression on the bed. He could smell her hair, sweet as if she’d just washed it. She looked up at him briefly, and then her eyes moved away and she wriggled down so that her head was on the pillow beside his elbow. The movement made her short flowered skirt ride up over her thighs. She made no move to push it down.

  He leaned down to kiss her. She moved her head a little to make it easier, and they found each other’s mouths touching, brushing at first gently back and forth, up and down. Then as he moved his mouth down towards her chin she let her lower lip go with it, and he found himself kissing the slick silky moistness inside, and he touched it with his tongue like a delicate small fish.

  He found his tongue being touched by hers in return, his lips nibbled with the utmost tenderness; and then they were eating, drinking, licking and swallowing and exploring the inside of each other’s mouths with perfect freedom.

  His hand was still on her arm. He moved it gently, brushed her breast, the softest thing in the world, a dove, a cloud. And there was her nipple under his palm, through the cotton T-shirt, innocent somehow in its little firmness, and he stroked it with his fingertips. It was like a small animal nosing at him, curious and self-possessed, and he found himself smiling with delight.

  Her hands were moving on him too: his ribs, his thigh, his bare stomach. Again they kissed, and again, more strongly now, and he pressed the length of his body against her and felt, happily, an equal pressure answering him.

  Then she pulled free and sat up. With one swift movement she pulled the T-shirt over her head, and then stood up to slip off her skirt and panties. He gasped in wonder at the little dove-breasts, pink-tipped, the softest delicate curve of silky belly, the pearl-lustre sheen of thigh and buttock and the neat, frank patch of black hair. It—she—her body—her expression, flushed, excited, confiding—was as lovely as the night had been, that extraordinary moment when she’d appeared out of the darkness beside the lake, needing his help.

  Every scrap of shyness and doubt had vanished, and in a few seconds he was naked as well. Instantly they were pressed together, hugging each other close, their bare legs tangling, hands pressing each other’s backs.

  She broke away and sat up, breathing quickly.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, and reached down to the canvas bag she’d dropped beside the bed.

  ‘I’ve got—’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right…’

  She came up clutching something in a closed fist. He knelt up to face her, and saw something that had been concealed before: a small, perfect butterfly tattooed at the top of her left buttock.

  ‘You didn’t—not Ollie—’

  ‘God, no!’ she gasped. ‘I wouldn’t let him near me, don’t worry. This is a professional butterfly.’

  ‘I love it,’ he said.

  They came together again. Now that they were upright, both his hands were free to run down her flanks, over the slight slim swell of her hips, and cup her soft buttocks.

  ‘Just a second,’ she whispered, twisting around. She opened her hand and tore open the little packet she was holding. It was a condom.

  He said, ‘I bought some—’

  ‘It’s all right, ssh…’

  She knelt up and gently, teasingly slow, put it on him. For a vanishing second he felt sorrowful; she’d done this before; she wasn’t altogether new to it as he was. Then she lay down again and he began to stroke her ribs, her thighs, the fragile bird-bone rise of her hips, the drift of springy hair.

  ‘Chris…’ she whispered, but it was more like a sigh.

  He felt her breath on his neck, her lips at his ear. With a swift light movement she twisted to make it easier for him to enter her; and then he was hardly conscious of what was her body and what was his, the morning and the night, her secret knowledge and his innocence.

  PART TWO

  Seven

  At the time when this was happening, the Oxford police were concerned at the amount of drug trading that was going on in the city. They decided to crack down on the dealers they knew about; so early on Sunday morning they raided a number of houses, including the one Jenny shared with Derek and Ollie.

  If she’d been there, she would probably have been arrested with them, but at the time the police broke the door down she was in bed asleep with Chris at Rose Hill. She herself had nothing to do with drugs. She knew Derek and Ollie did, but she thought they only touched cannabis.

  At any event, she knew nothing about the raid. She spent Sunday with Chris, and then left Rose Hill to go home. When she turned the corner of
the street where her house was, she knew at once that something was wrong. A large sheet of plywood had been nailed across the doorway, and the ground-floor windows were boarded up too. There was no point in even trying to get in; she knew exactly what had happened.

  Nor was there any sense in going to the police and asking for her things back, her clothes and the few bits and pieces she’d acquired. It would only mean getting dragged into Derek and Ollie’s business, and much as she liked those two, she had no faith in the police. She thought that they’d be bound to say there’d been drugs in her room as well; it was inevitable.

  The little money she had, and the clothes she needed immediately, were with her in her rucksack. The natural thing to do would have been to ring Chris and tell him what had happened, but there was a simple and ludicrous reason why she couldn’t: in the time she’d spent with him, which hadn’t really been long, she hadn’t learned his surname or his address, and so she had no way of finding out his phone number.

  She might have gone to Oxford Entertainment Systems and found him there, but all she knew about the firm he worked for was that it was based somewhere in east Oxford; she had no idea what it was called, or what Chris actually did there. Another thing she could have done was go back to the house in Rose Hill and ask Chris’s father, who must have returned by now, for Chris’s address or phone number. But she couldn’t make herself do that. Despite what Chris had said about him, a father was a father, and she felt too uncomfortable to speak to him, in view of what she’d been doing in his house. A day never went past—in fact, hardly an hour went past—without her own father haunting some corner of her thoughts.

  So she didn’t speak to Chris. Instead she went to the flat rented by a friend who sometimes worked in the same café, and slept on her floor. She’d find Chris before very long, she thought.

  —

  As soon as he finished work on Monday afternoon, Chris got on his bike and raced along the Cowley Road to Jenny’s house. It was a hot day, and he stopped to buy a couple of ice-creams, intending to take one to her. When he saw the plywood nailed across the doorway he stopped as if he’d been punched in the heart.