Room Little Darker

by June Caldwell

  He’d called around for the first time three weeks before. Part of the deal was he’d bring a toolbox and whack up some picture hooks and a large red canopy above the bed I’d bought on eBay for a tenner. ‘Well here we are,’ he said when I answered the door. Tall, tanned, green eyes, wide lips, smelling of Palmolive soap. ‘Shit, this is real,’ I giggled. He seemed irritated. Pushed by me into the sitting room, swinging open the metal box, getting to work straight away. ‘Where do you want them?’ I sidled off to the kitchen to get a glass of prosecco. He wanted cold beer. The counters were rubbed clean with lemon wipes but out the window at the side passage the mounting bags of rubbish were starting to attract fruit flies. ‘Do you take anti-depressants?’ he asked. Pressed against the counter he nudged his tongue deep into my mouth. I felt dizzy quite quickly, if not a little sick. He stopped and told me to ‘breathe’ before going again. His hands kneading the back of my hair. ‘Can we just … can you hold on …’ He pulled back to look me in the eye. ‘What’s that smell?’ There was a fish pie in the oven. ‘I thought we might eat,’ I said. ‘I’m more of a bacon butty type.’ There was no meat in the house. ‘Take off your top.’ I can’t do that, I told him, I’m shy. ‘You’re in chatrooms looking to fuck strangers, but you’re a coy little girl, am I getting that right?’ He pressed me up onto the counter, rooting his hands down my knickers from behind. ‘Can we just go to the bedroom,’ I said. ‘Really, it’d be more comfortable for me.’ There were leftover eyelids of radish in the salad spinner I bought in Arnotts, winking at us. The downstairs toilet fan whirred in disapproval. It seemed to go on for a good bit and I got embarrassed at how wet I’d got. ‘You go first, dirt before the brush,’ I whispered, at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Do you always feel the need to make crass jokes?’ In bed he made me beg but I couldn’t manage it without laughing. ‘I won’t stop with my hands until you invite me inside properly.’ Rarely had I felt so crazed. ‘Oh just fucking stick it in, please!’ Afterwards he made me sit on the top step and stretch my greased fingers up towards the landing light so he could examine them. When he left I felt shaken and tired. The crust was so hard on the pie it was inedible and there was nothing else to eat until the Tesco shopping arrived the following morning.

  From: Ivan Campbell <666ni@yahoo.co.uk>

  Sent: 08 June 2016 11:22

  To: Rosie Dew

  Subject: Re: Re: Those salt mines

  Salt mines, salt mines … Are you sure they were salt and not iron ore or uranium or something? There are abandoned iron ore mines in Glenariff and Glenravel (just two of the famous nine Glens of Antrim) and we went for a walk once in Glenariff through the trees so that seems likely. As for cliffs near Larne, I think you are imagining that precipitous knobbing scenario as well, confusing it with a story I told you about my wife perhaps? The only clifftop overlooking the ferry out of Larne would be the back of F. G. Wilson’s generator factory, which I am sure has seen plenty of action in its day, but not, alas, by me. I did do you on a bench in a little wood once. Which was nice. I’d love to fuck you again, orgasms or not. Doubt I’ll ever forget that night you almost came. It was freaky but also very powerful, whatever was going on with you. ‘Please don’t, it’ll kill me.’ Christ that was intense! You were also surprised when Katie came, saying she found that hard too. Then again she was off on some pimp-choke fantasy and I had my hands tight around her neck at your request. Takes all sorts. Oh and any time I’m introduced to a woman wearing Angel perfume, I get a massive erection, so thanks for that …

  The scenery was hairy, lumpy, very beautiful. He drove like a motherfucker through it. The red of the fallen leaves looked like blood spatters from a mouldy green Cyclops above. Gushing water from high up in the armpit of the hills was audible even inside the car. His legs bobbed with the changing of the gears. What was I doing in Northern Ireland? Who was it for? Was it a man? Of course it had to be a man. How was I surviving financially? Was I kept? I had harlot-red lips after all. Was I also interested in women? It’d be good practice if I wanted to take this kind of thing seriously. The man was married, had I fallen for the whopper cliché? Low self-esteem. I wasn’t what he would consider conventionally good-looking at all. Sexual magnetism, maybe, but understated. He’d been looking for someone to fit the bill for a while. A spoilt wagon. Ripe for a good hard spanking. Volatile bitch. Maybe the other man I’d moved up for could only meet once a week. Kinked up and waiting to make him feel special for a few dusk-musk hours. How many stints in psychotherapy exactly?

  The nude woman with the snake on her leg looked brothel-weary; cardboard tits bobbing to the contours of the wood chip on the forest floor. She had an amazingly flat belly (they all did then) and her snatch was concealed from view. She probably had to work as a deckhand servant in the mornings. They’re the bits you don’t see. ‘When I pull over you’re going to get out, walk around to my side, open the door and suck me off.’ I wasn’t going to do anything unless he kissed me. That’s what he was best at. ‘Snog me first, otherwise it’ll taste all wrong, like under-grilled halloumi.’ He wasn’t best pleased. I was now ‘in training’. There would be assignments, house chores, porn clips to analyse, costumes, fantasies to pen down. There was equipment in the car including a sling of some sort to yank my legs back. He knew about the operations. But I wasn’t to complain. Never complain. The whole world was complaining all of the time. This was about taking responsibility. He needed to be able to see more. The only training I’d had was a secretarial course in the late eighties that landed me a filing job in a pet insurance company in London. There was also a speculum, some shackles, cat o’ nine tails, bubble wrap. He’d shave me once a week: smooth as a flaked almond. I’d give him a house key. We walked through the trees a bit more and he asked to take a photograph with my head turned towards the hills in the paling light. He glared like a badger. Took the postcard out and began to stroke himself vigorously. Before he came on the Victorian lady he strolled over and removed the popcorn from my cleavage that I’d placed there that morning before we set off. On the way back to the car he completed his estate agent brief by showing me a few sites to build a dormer on. The next day I woke to a stranger looming large at the end of the bed. ‘This is Marcus,’ he said. ‘He’ll be here to clean the cum off you occasionally.’ He looked like an IT goon, a manager from IBM. Yellow hair, yellow teeth, long piano fingers. ‘Put this cushion up under her arse and we’ll take a good long look at the tawdry slut.’

  From: Ivan Campbell <666ni@yahoo.co.uk>

  Sent: 09 June 2016 08:15

  To: Rosie Dew

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Those salt mines

  Those signs are pinned all over Co. Antrim, less so in the other counties. The story is that it was a single Presbyterian minister on a bicycle who went around nailing them up over a period of fifty years or something and then after his death other evangelicals took over. There are definitely fewer than there used to be. Strangely, I saw one on Friday driving the back road from Ballyclare to Larne – ‘Eternity Where?’ – and a bible reference, which is a pretty common one. They sprang up again about ten years ago after a couple of hysterical newspaper articles about dogging in broad daylight. It caused a public outcry, especially at Gleno near Larne, which I could never see being a spot for that sort of thing. The tower (or something) could be any number of things. I took you to Tardree Forest on the off chance we might see some dogging action, but we didn’t. Was very glad at the time because I really couldn’t tell if you would have wanted to join in or not and I wasn’t in the mood for that sort of craziness that day. For the record, I was never annoyed with your bloke. I never met him so why would I be? I always thought good luck to him, you’re a handful!

  My appetites began to shift. I wanted more and more penetrative sex, but without the gimmicks. The Masters online were nothing like him. They had long grey ponytails and rotating wheels in their garages with nipple-clamped pony-girls on permanent spin. There seemed to be a lot of pain
involved that didn’t appeal to either of us. Stretched holes that wouldn’t look out of place featured on The Sky at Night. Women with stunning svelte bodies getting the shit knocked out of them. Candle wax, pins, ropes, the works. ‘Turn it off, please,’ he said. ‘That’s a whole other level of zany, utterly depressing.’ The floor was strewn with leather and latex drudge we’d stopped using. I couldn’t walk the circumference of the bed anymore without stepping on a spike or slipping on an anal douche or plastic paddle or gloves bought in the joke shop as part of a French maid outfit. ‘I feel miserable,’ I said. ‘You just don’t seem to give a fuck.’ He was gathering his things, crab-plucking them into a stripy sports bag, looking everywhere but at me. ‘You need to calm down,’ he said. ‘What would you know about women’s needs?’ I replied, showing him the emails from the men who’d written back. He didn’t seem keen for others to join in. He wanted me for himself, but he didn’t want me at all. ‘It’d be wholesome,’ I insisted. ‘Nourishing even, to have three or four. I’ve seen clips where the woman sits on a hotel room stool and just reaches out for the langers like she’s learning to play a spectacular new instrument. It’d be intense.’ I wondered if the women who got involved with hardcore types started off like this. Did they consider it domestic violence out the other end of the sausage machine? Did they even have a choice? ‘Consensual kink, that’s what they’re calling it,’ I said. ‘Can you fucking believe it?’ He didn’t answer. ‘There must be a sex school in a doorway up over a shop on the Malone Road somewhere for repressed women, to take them in hand, you know, to teach them how to cope.’ He was becoming an anorak. ‘Have you ever considered doing Pilates or aqua aerobics, something to just get out of the house?’ Marcus had apparently pulled out. Grown scared of me. Worried about his wife finding out. Everyone had a wife. The men in the ads were trying to talk me out of it. ‘Why would you do this? You seem like a nice girl. Get yourself a proper boyfriend. Take it easy.’ It morphed into a feminist issue. Misogyny. No one was listening. The stock exchange had crashed.

  It was a good while before I saw him again. By then I’d moved to the Manor house by the sea at Whitehead, taking on a poetry course at Queens. His face was more rubbery than I remembered, he was slimmer, not so tall. I pulled him by the jacket sleeve through the enormous entrance hall to the dual-aspect lounge which still impressed every time I strolled through the rickety door frame to the splat of polished oak floors. Got a bit giddy showing him the landlord’s Doberman ashes, the cabinets full of brass swords, Toby jugs and bric-a-brac antiques, the green velvet chaise longue over three hundred years old. ‘Jesus, what kind of place is this, what the hell are you doing here?’ The sunlight flared through the four windows making glossy crutches of white which he started to playfully maul. ‘I spend my days in cahoots with the sea,’ I told him, which was true. Listening to the callous smack of it in the mornings, soothing myself with the surging anger in the early evening when the lighthouse woke. I couldn’t afford heating so lit the open fire most days. Fantasies about setting myself up as a prostitute at the house seemed ugly and irrelevant, but I imagined for a moment that he might be my first client driving through treacherous bends on the cliff road in furious hail to whinge about his wife being sent silk tights in the post by a stranger. That I would kneel in front of him and push my cold hands up through the hem of his trousers, clawing at the bunched hairs. Taking the full warm weight of his dick on my lips which I knew I was particularly good at. ‘Nothing ever feels real for me,’ I said. ‘But this place is some wacky beautiful shit all the same. Makes me think I might be ready to die.’ I went for a bath and returned with nothing on, which I never do. He knew not to stare, that I’d find that devious, intimidating. We lay on the Indian pile rug with the flames flicking their harsh yellow ink into the ether. How many women had done this, opened their legs for a lover in firelight down through the centuries, hoping it’d make a modest difference to the workings of love? I tried to let them fall apart as wide as I could, but was foiled and obstructed, a faulty mussel shell. Slowly he slid two fingers in. I asked for more, asked him to make sure to remember me. ‘Push it all in,’ I said. ‘Just ignore me if I cry.’

  From: Ivan Campbell <666ni@yahoo.co.uk>

  Sent: 11 June 2016 14:59

  To: Rosie Dew

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Those salt mines

  I have it on very good authority that the salt mines at Kilroot were on a list of three final redoubt locations for the UK executive and some members of the monarchy. They are dry, a thousand feet down with vehicle access and could easily withstand a 1-megaton direct hit. Apparently in the 1970s food, medical supplies and weapons were stored there, but this was absolutely top secret and after Thatcher came to power for some odd reason they were taken off the list. Are you talking about an actual nuclear bunker? Was that on Twitter or are you properly stalking me you little weirdo!? It was one of those Mickey Mouse things that a guy restored, about the size of Father Ted’s caravan. At one point there were fifteen hundred of them dotted around the UK, part of the government’s scam to make the populace think an all-out Soviet attack was survivable (Protect & Survive hide under some doors bollocks). There was a public info film they used to show before Swap Shop and it scared the living crap out of me. That pip-pip-pip sound still spooks me even now. BTW, I’m doing an online course on black holes these days, dark energy and gravitational waves. Theoretical physics suggests we could survive passage into a rotating black hole. Now there’s one hell of a ride, so keep looking out for the spinning ones.

  June I find this amusing you bouncing emails back and forth talking away no problem all on for it all fucking sexy out slutty witch gung-ho then boomf nothing nada off I go and hide again when it suits me playing your poxy upswing downswing manic mind games dangerous fucking mind games do you ever learn? Push and push and push gush. Your cunt can’t even fit a fucking cock properly it’s all wrong up there whatever happened you how your bloke doesn’t smash your fucking brain in with a claw hammer I’ll never know wild horny affairs and why wouldn’t he putting up with the dribbly mentally ill fucking drivel from you? My biggest regret was leaving you and Katie too quickly that night two hours later I woke wishing I’d fucked you from behind up on that big solid table in the kitchen baboon fucking after tying that mad bastard bitch to a chair to make her watch never shut up do you constantly fucking harping on you self-obsessed narcissistic cunt think we really wanted to ride YOU!? Marcus’s email laughing at how you don’t come can’t come don’t know how to come won’t come imagine at your age even your G-spot has given up hope vagus nerve sloppy cervix crying in the dark feeling sorry for yourself finger stuck up looking to us like we owed you who gives a fuck? Ugly fat bastard wanker we were flying the motorway screwing gorgeous women not disgusting ugly dogs who can’t spread ’em or who have trouble even getting up onto a bed for a good going over gorgeous women real women take it up the bum women screaming for more decent bodies great bodies gym sun beach ballerina beautiful whore bodies not fucking a pile of broken hips moles scars women men would stop and dribble over on the street wank over sweaty jocks sore knob smelly fingers fanny cry over better-looking versions of Kirsty Allsop in black halter-neck dresses that do little to cover huge fucking knockers with proper brown banging hard nipples not pink bird shit nipples like yours striking model blondes in black wet-look leggings and tight red tops to show off equally massive tits wonderful tall sexy shapely women who know how to carry it off who know how to cock tease and mean it not small squat hairy arse bitches in terrible PVC shit that they can’t even put fucking on properly looking like a German MILF slut wagon arsehole basement gangbanger with lights turned out so ugly who’d want to shoot their load in that! Look at me me me me me me geebag good mind to drag you by the hair down the concrete steps drag you over to the Ranger’s Club for all them hepped-up lads to piss and shit and cum all over you taking turns you vile bad make-up bitch oh I live by the sea look at me dumb Jane Austen wannabe fuck
ing hogslut open your crooked yellow sticky out teeth fucking small mouth take it white worms whole load of white worms thick cream two lots choke bitch gurgle choke slap dripping down your chin cry your arse out on stinking feet sheets howling like a fucking child who needs the butt of that up your arse piss off roll over fat fuck die cripple cracked.

  We meet in Jury’s Inn on Parnell Street three years on. Him in a black linen suit and khaki T-shirt with meerkats popping their brazen heads out of an army tank. Me with a crimson chin from scratching too much in sleep. We hug awkwardly; polite bash of bones; he makes a pitiful attempt to finger a curling tongs effect into the back of my hair; stops when he feels me wince; we pigeon our way to the lifts. I can no longer remember how to negotiate his size or how to brush him with meaning. I push up on my toes to peck his cheek. He shoves his arms tight into the shoulder sockets. I hold on to his elbow. Two Americans in tweed blazers dangle brown leather suitcases and stare. A janitor whisks through with a brass trolley calling and waving to a high-heeled woman who’s left a laptop asleep on a bed. It feels good that he’s a stranger again. I am turned on by it. Turned on by knowing how much he can hurt me. I keep my head down in the lift while he looks up at the synthetic sky. Red circles on the lift buttons keep climbing. I have practiced what I want to say. I’ve read Freud. Got a better longer lingering understanding of the human condition (through yet another dead man). Sex hurts. I’m learning to drive. I’ve even read some good novels. People belonging to me have passed on. Others are refusing to. There’s no harm in humiliation. No lasting injury at least. I fucking liked it. We learn best from when we mess up most. The humanity in that. Think about that. How do I explain that? Bring on the dancing chestnuts. Bring in the charming psychopaths. How does he not remember the woman who fell in love with the Second Life avatar? A nurse from Carrickfergus. She stopped feeding her kids. They ran out of fish fingers. A vampire from Scotland. They got taken away from her. I had to go talk to her as one of his assignments. We didn’t really make the most of our time. She came to meet me at the seafront. I’ve learnt so much since. Even the funny stuff. The man I slept with in London really did have too much girth. The big cock thing is a tedious lie. Felt like someone was trying to shove a caravan up between my thighs. Let’s have a good laugh about that! Let’s laugh about sex! Let’s go for a drive! My guy sitting in a soft chair in the corner watching. All I could think of was Bart Simpson saying ‘wiener’ over and over. We strolled around London looking for a theatre show afterwards. Didn’t have sex for at least two years. Dead people watching and all that. He shouldn’t feel guilty for the way he spoke to me. The opposite. Where would it have all careered off to? He did me a favour. I deserved it. You did me a favour. I deserve it. Good to be made to feel lonely once in a while. How else do we ever get to feel properly alive? I touch myself when I think about it. How horrified it made me feel. My guy is having an affair with a TED Talks woman. He doesn’t know I know. So much for the open relationship. A beautiful pixie with bony knees, huge eyes. So much for enduring honesty. He’s too busy with his job to satisfy me anyhow. We could do it for just two hours a week. I know someone who’d lend us a room. A man in the arts who organises those kinds of parties. Starched collar orgies! All that talk of funding in between lashes. We could be strategic with our time. Treat it like therapy. Punch in sore silence. Take it far. I so deserve it. Get advice from other people. See where we land. The lift door opens and the waitress says, ‘Sorry, no tables, but check back again in an hour.’ Two window cleaners are suspended from rope outside. Alphabet spaghetti on aluminium glass. The sun lends a mean streak of purple. Glen says, ‘Look, I can’t be doing with the madness of Dublin, sorry, I’ll leave you to it. I’m glad things worked out for you. I always knew they would.’