The Rabbit

by Ted Lewis

  Jean pushed Jackson away from her and pulled her sweater down.

  “Don’t mind me, will you?” she said.

  Jackson replied by grappling with her again, and her resistance was only token.

  “Supposing somebody comes?” Jean said, tearing her mouth away from Jackson’s.

  “They wain’t.”

  “They can see from passage.”

  “I’ll soon fix that,” Jackson said, getting up and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket. He stood on one of the chairs and unscrewed the light bulb.

  “What are you playing at?” I said.

  “They can’t see us now,” Jackson said.

  “You bloody idiot,” I said. “You’ll get us chucked out.”

  “They wain’t,” Jackson said, getting stuck into Jean again.

  I waited a few minutes to see if Jackson was right. So far, he was. I took another drink of my beer and got stuck into Anita.

  At first it seemed to be all right, pushing my hands up her sweater like Jackson had done to Jean. After all, twin sweaters, twin jeans, twin hairstyles, so why not. Her fingers even dug into the back of my neck when I found a nipple and eased it out of her brassiere. Over her shoulder, illumin¬ated from the dim light in the corridor, I could see Jackson pushing his hand into the waistband of his girl’s jeans, and her offering no opposition. I began to do the same with Anita, my advance only to be met by her clenched fist, this time fastening on to my wrist. We were in mid-kiss at the time, but instead of drawing back and complaining, Anita carried on kissing me with some intensity and guided my hand back to her exposed breast. Eventually we had to break for air and I looked over her shoulder again to see how Jackson was progressing. By now half his fore-arm was deep into her jeans and with her own hand she was undoing the buttons of his flies. My eyes bulged and my breath stopped. I’d never witnessed anything like this before, never watched, detached, two people behave like this. Jean’s fingers disappeared inside Jackson’s flies and reappeared a moment later wrapped round his prick. Jackson began to jerk his bottom to and fro, like a dog on heat, so that he was mastur¬bating himself against her motionless hand. Anita’s head turned in their direction and she immediately buried her face in my shoulder and muffled her giggles with my shirt. Eventually her head returned to a position from which she could observe Jackson and Jean again. This time she didn’t giggle but her breathing quickened slightly and after a time I felt her hand on my leg squeeze, then begin to move up¬wards. I squirmed into position to receive her hand and at the same moment the door at the far end of the corridor, the pub’s front door, opened. Jackson and Jean must have been clearly visible to whoever it was entering the pub, but neither of them broke rhythm. From where I was sitting I couldn’t see into the corridor or be seen from it, but I immediately pulled myself away from Anita.

  “Christ, the last time I saw owt like that was in the Middle East,” said a voice in the corridor. The voice was the voice of my Uncle Eddie. The door into the public bar was opened, unleashing a wash of noise, but even so as my father and my Uncle Eddie went through into the bar I could hear my father saying something about the young bugger working for him and he’d soon put a stop to his tricks when he told Walt what was going on in his pub.

  The door closed and cut off the noise. Suddenly I was completely sober. My heart was icy with guilt. I stood up, nearly knocking over the table.

  “Jackson,” I said, “for Christ’s sake. They’re off to tell the landlord.”

  “Who is?” Jackson said, his voice trembling because of his and Jean’s movements.

  “Me dad, for fuck’s sake. Me dad’s just walked in and seen us.”

  Jackson leapt up from the form, leaving Jean empty-handed and astonished.

  “Oh, fuck me,” he said, trying to push his prick back in his trousers. “I’ll get sacked. What are we off to do?”

  “Down the passage before he comes. Come on, for Christ’s sake.”

  The girls were still sitting as they’d been left. I grabbed Anita’s wrist and pulled her to her feet. I hurried down the corridor, half dragging her behind me. I reached the pub’s entrance and flung open the door and rushed out into the street and carried on going. The sound of our footsteps filled the empty street. We kept going until we rounded the corner of Newport Street. Seconds later Jackson and Jean came flying round the corner.

  “What happened?” I said to Jackson. “Did anybody see you?”

  “I dunno. Bar door opened just as we went through front. Doesn’t matter anyhow. Gaffer saw me, didn’t he.”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” I lied. “Don’t worry. He won’t say any¬thing. There’d only be trouble if he knew I was with you.”

  “Why?” said Anita.

  I couldn’t tell her the real reasons so I said:

  “Because he’s an old bastard.”

  On the way to the market place and the girls’ bus Jackson insisted on completing what he’d begun in the pub so we went into Plaskett’s coalyard through the small inset door. Soon Jackson and Jean were at it on the empty coal sacks while Anita and I stood up against the wall and necked. I was dying to get home before my father and invent some alibi in case the barman had given him my description. Also I wanted to be rid of Anita in case she too was keen to continue her exploration of me, because after the shock of my father’s arrival I’d realized, since resuming necking, that I wasn’t responding in the same way as I’d been responding in the pub. But Jackson’s now bare bottom, moonlit against the black coal sacks, was rising and falling, rising and falling, with such a steady repetitiveness that it seemed as though the movements were to go on forever. Anita’s hand slid down my back to my bottom, then I felt it moving round my hips. If I was to take hold of her wrist and stop her, the way she had stopped me, then what would she think? But what in any case would she think when she discovered the state I was in, soft and incapable? Come on, Jackson, for Christ’s sake, I thought. Get it over with. But the rhythm continued. Anita’s hand was at my flies now. I concentrated every nerve in my body to try and regain my stiffness but the more I tried the more useless it was, I felt the buttons fumbled undone and I thought now, now it’s bound to happen, the expectation will make it happen, the breath¬taking intimacy of fingers on underpants will make it happen, but there was nothing. I felt her fingers part the X of my underpants and snuggle through and then there was some brief exploring that only managed to disturb my pubic hairs, having found nothing erect beforehand, and then the fingers moved downwards and took what there was between them. There was a questioning wiggle and then she said:

  “What’s the matter with you, then?”

  Icy sweat was pouring down my face. I shook my head.

  “You what?” she said.

  I shook my head again. She snorted with laughter.

  “Not going to do much like that, are you,” she said, giving me a squeeze and then pulling her fingers away from my flies. “Here, Jean—”

  “Wait,” I began, but I was temporarily let off the hook by Jackson’s girl crying out as Jackson withdrew, causing his semen to splatter coldly on to the moonlit flagstones. I took the moment to draw away from my girl too and re-opened the inset door. Jackson buttoned up his flies and stepped through the door after me.

  “Bloody arseholes,” he said, “Fuck me.”

  Anita was still behind the big double doors, waiting for Jean to rearrange herself. I could hear whispers, then some giggles.

  “How’d you get on? Did you fuck yours? I fucked mine,” Jackson said.

  Happily, before I could answer, Jean and Anita emerged through the door. They both looked at me and giggled but as far as Jackson was concerned the giggling was nothing more than a reaction to what had happened, and supposedly had happened to them both. Jackson grasped Jean’s hand and pulled her to him and gave her a great sloppy kiss and after that t
hey walked off hand in hand in the direction of the Market Place. Anita and I followed behind, not hand in hand, and from time to time Jean would turn round and the two of them would giggle and snort at each other. The only satis¬faction I took was in noticing that Jean’s lilac sweater was covered all down the back in coal-dust.

  The single-decker bus was already waiting when we got there, its cold interior lights threw long shadows across the dark deserted Market Place. I had to wait five minutes for them to get on the bus while Jackson and his girl kissed by the pneumatic door. So that I wouldn’t look a fool not doing the same with Anita I pretended I wanted a pee and walked across the Market Place to the combined bus-shelter and toilets. After I’d had a pee I hung about until I heard the bus’s engine start and then I went out again and as I walked back to the bus I saw the backs of Don and Veronica as they rounded Hopper’s offices, making for home. They were hand in hand. The evening was complete.

  The girls got in the bus and the last I saw of them was their giggling faces through the back window of the bus as it receded into the night.

  Jackson and I walked along together until we reached Hungate where he turned off for home. I was glad to see the back of him. All the way he’d done nothing but talk about Jean and what he’d done to her.

  “Can’t wait till morning to tell them all at work,” were his final words to me.

  I walked up Holydyke towards Westfield Road where our house was. But before that intersection was Ferriby Hill Corner, illuminated by a single central street light. On this corner stood the ruins of Bernard Cox’s garage, which had just been an old corrugated shed until one of the cement lorries had ploughed through it. The petrol pumps were still there but all that remained of the building was half of one wall and some oil drums that had once stood inside. Sitting on these drums were Billy and his mates and two girls who used to hang about with them, Margaret Newbold and Sandra Armitage. They saw me at the same time as I saw them.

  “There he is,” said Billy. “The artist. I telled you he’d be this way.”

  They all slid down off the drums and began to cross the road towards me. There was only one way I was going to escape a thrashing and that was to change direction and get into West Acridge and get to the house through the orchard.

  I ran into Finkle Lane and turned right into High Street. I could hear the slapping of the crepe soles as they rushed after me. I raced past the Star and crossed Fleetgate and into West Acridge. There were no street lights here but the single light on Star corner threw the shadows of Billy and his mates well ahead of me. I was nearly at the entrance of the path between the houses that led up to the orchard. I didn’t know whether Billy knew about this entrance or whether he thought I was just running aimlessly to get away from them.

  I turned left into the blackness of the path. Now I was on grass and my footsteps were silent. I heard them skid to a halt at the mouth of the path. If they were going to follow it would be more difficult for them because in the blackness they wouldn’t know where they were going. I got to the orchard gate. It was half open. I squeezed through and ran up towards the barns. Now it would be really difficult for them because there was no path, just the trees and the long grass for them to stumble about amongst.

  I reached the barns. The garden gate was hooked shut. I lifted the hook and went through and dropped the hook in place again. Fred Metcalf’s geese began to cackle and I could hear Billy and his mates cursing to each other but they were now much farther behind than they had been earlier. I ran up the garden and along the passage that led to the steps that rose up into Westfield Road. I closed the passage gate and took the steps two at a time. I ran the few yards of footpath and turned right along the garden path and then I was ringing the front door bell. I listened for sounds of Billy and his mates but any external sounds were jammed by the pounding in my head and my brain. Ages later the dining-room door opened and the hall light was switched on and my mother’s figure rippled behind the frosted glass.

  “Good God,” my mother said, “have you been running?”

  I nodded and walked past her. She closed the front door.

  “I came back way,” I said. “Fred Metcalf’s geese started up.”

  “Did you run up the garden?”

  I nodded. My mother laughed.

  “We’ll have to tell your Uncle Eddie that,” she said. “It’ll make him laugh.”

  In the dining room the trolley was laid all ready for the return of Uncle Eddie and my father. My mother poured me a cup of tea and I sat down and watched television and tried to hear above its noise if there was any activity in the back garden. I couldn’t hear anything so I finished my tea and told my mother I was going to get my book from the kitchen. I didn’t turn the kitchen light on but stood there in the dark listening for noises. There was dead silence from outside. I went over to the kitchen window and peered out. The moon had come out again and everything outside was cold and still. I sighed in relief and then I heard the front door open. My father and Uncle Eddie. I heard them go into the lounge and my father ask my mother if I was home yet. I knew by the way he asked her that he knew that it had been me with Jackson and the girls. My heart sank like a stone in a pond. I thought of by-passing the dining room by going straight to bed but that would only be putting the moment off: he would be bound to follow me upstairs.

  I walked out of the kitchen and along the hall and into the dining room.

  Uncle Eddie had got his jacket and his shoes off and was already relaxing in my father’s armchair cradling a cup of tea in his lap. My father was still in his overcoat, standing with his back to the fireplace, in the process of lighting up a cigarette. I walked over to my chair and sat down but almost as soon as I’d appeared in the doorway he’d begun.

  “Now then,” he said. “What’s all this with young Simons?”

  “What’s all what?” I said.

  “What’s up?” my mother said.

  “Just keep out of this,” my father told her. “And for a start,” he said to me, “no lip. I’m not in the mood. I’ll ask you again; what have you been bloody up to tonight?”

  “I haven’t been up to anything,” I said.

  “You were in the Packet, weren’t you? With Jackson Simons and two—girls.”

  “So what?”

  “So bloody what? I saw what that young bugger was up to, you know. You’re not going to tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I was too busy myself to notice anything else.”

  “Just what has he been up to, Harry?” my mother said.

  “He’s only been with Jackson Simons and two common lassies in the back room of Packet, that’s all. I saw what was going on with young Simons. Hell’s teeth, anybody could have seen.”

  “Only if they looked,” I said.

  “Not with Jackson Simons,” my mother said, her face full of reproach.

  “Now listen,” my father said. “I don’t want you behaving like that, especially not in public, and especially not with one of my men.”

  “For a start,” I said, “it wasn’t with one of your men, it was with a girl. G-I-R-L. And the other thing is, taking the points one by one, would it have been all right if they hadn’t been common lassies, and if it had been in the privacy of my own home, and with Barry Lee the dentist’s son instead of Mrs Simons’ lad Jackson?”

  My Uncle Eddie laughed.

  “Eddie!” my mother said. “Shush!”

  “Do you know how I’ll look when it’s all round work tomorrow? I’ll be a laughing stock.”

  “You what? You’ll be a laughing stock? What are you talking about?”

  “You know. The men are the men. I have to keep them in order.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I really don’t. The logic is astounding.”

  “I’ll give yo
u bloody astounding. I’m not having it and that’s that. You’re pubbing it too much and that’s going to stop. You’re going to start doing your college work nights, not knocking about with the Jackson Simonses of this world.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just sat there and glared at the floor. There was a silence. Eventually my mother said:

  “What were you doing, Victor?” Her voice was shocked and low, as though my behaviour had appalled her too much for her to be able to speak any louder. I mean, what were you actually doing?”

  This was worse than my father’s anger, this trying to tug the facts out of me, to know the complete awfulness of what I’d done, so that I’d feel even more guilty because of their total extortion of the facts. And of course also the sorrow-more-than-anger angle.