Goodness, Grace and Me

by Julie Houston

  ‘So you frightened them half to death by arresting them?’ Nick remained calm, but a muscle was twitching in his cheek, and his fingers were beginning to drum the wooden table.

  ‘Mr Westmoreland, we haven’t actually arrested them,’ Barbara tutted, obviously exasperated by Nick’s last comment, ‘though maybe we did come on a bit strong. However, I certainly wouldn’t want a child of mine anywhere near those perverts.’

  ‘As neither would we,’ Nick agreed. ‘Let’s have them in and see what they have to say for themselves.’

  All six boys, looking pale and terribly young, shuffled into the kitchen, lining up in front of us as if summoned to their headmaster’s office. All refused to meet our eyes, preferring to look at the floor, which, I noticed, needed a good clean after India’s party.

  ‘Kit,’ I said, feeling terribly sorry for him, ‘did you all know what was going on down in Butterfield woods? Is that why you wanted the binoculars?’

  Kit nodded. ‘Sam Sheridon at school said he’d heard there was this thing going on in the woods near our house. So we just thought we’d take the binoculars and have a look for ourselves. We didn’t really see anything. Just a couple of cars driving up the lane in front of the woods, and some headlights flashing. Then the next thing we knew we were being pounced on by her’– Kit acknowledged Barbara’s presence with a slight nod of his head – ‘and a couple of others. She gave us the right willies sneaking up behind us and jumping on us like she did.’

  Hmm. A rather unfortunate turn of phrase, given the circumstances.

  ‘Kit, we were on a surveillance operation. Trying to locate these people without being seen ourselves. Your flashlights and giggling didn’t really help.’

  ‘Isn’t it trespass going into people’s gardens without permission?’ I asked.

  ‘No such thing,’ snapped Barbara rudely. ‘If we’d started knocking on your door, actually asking your permission, you may have been able to warn these people we were trying to watch.’

  ‘Like we know a whole load of people who spend their Sunday evenings shivering in their pants in the woods?’

  This was getting silly and I’d had enough. People we know tend to spend their Sunday evenings scrubbing mountains of fat-encrusted roasting pans that have been soaking in the sink since lunch time in the hope that someone will eventually get round to actually washing them. People we know spend Sunday evenings sewing on the name-tapes that should have been done months ago because there is a kit inspection at their offspring’s school the next day, before trying to work out their children’s maths’ homework that should have been handed in before the weekend.

  ‘You know this Ralph Ulysses,’ Barbara said, with some degree of triumph. ‘You’d have been able to warn him.’

  Nick rubbed his hands over his eyes. They were hollow with tiredness. ‘Look, I assume you’ve finished with the boys? We’d all quite like to get to bed now.’

  Barbara glanced at her wristwatch, a huge, very masculine model, and nodded. ‘I’ll be off then. See what’s happening down the road.’ Turning to the boys who appeared to be relaxing somewhat, and were even managing to give each other knowing looks and little surreptitious grins she added, ‘Make sure you behave yourselves, boys. This really could have turned out very unpleasant.’ She turned up the collar of her huge padded coat and headed for the door.

  ‘Well, Harriet, I don’t see you for almost twenty-five years and then bump into you twice in one weekend,’ Barbara said as I opened the front door for her. It was really quite nippy out there; how anyone could even contemplate flashing their bits and pieces in zero temperatures such as these was beyond me.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ I trilled, trying to get her through the door. If I remembered rightly, I hadn’t liked her much when we were at school. I certainly wasn’t overly enamoured with her now. It wouldn’t surprise me if it had been her who had shopped us to Amanda all those years ago in the games shed. Getting in some practice for when she was head of the Crime Squad or whatever it was she was now jack-booting about in.

  Barbara laid a leather-gloved hand on my arm. ‘You know, Harriet, if you ever need someone to talk to about anything, anything at all, just give me a ring down at the station.’ She handed me her card and headed into the night.

  ‘I’ll do that Barbara,’ I called after her. ‘No problem. Off you go, now, and catch some more perverts.’

  I closed the door behind her, locked it and leaned heavily against it for several seconds gathering my thoughts and strength before going back to the kitchen to see the boys.

  The penitent looks had all but disappeared in the atmosphere of relief and cocky bravado that now permeated the kitchen. Nick and the boys, all suddenly lads together in an accepted male complicity, were drinking hot chocolate and eating the remains of India’s birthday cake.

  ‘Why didn’t I get a birthday cake this year, Mum?’ Kit asked through a mouthful of Bratz-tattooed sugar paste.

  Guilt at having forgotten to buy him one, let alone design and actually make one, made my retort sharper than was necessary. ‘It’s not your actual birthday until tomorrow, Kit, and from what you’ve been up to this evening, I would have thought you felt yourself far too advanced in years to want a birthday cake.’

  ‘Come on, guys, bed,’ Nick said. ‘It’s all over and done with now. It’s up to you what you tell your parents about this – if anything. Harriet and I …’ and here Nick gave me a warning glance, ‘won’t mention anything to them.’

  They all trooped out, making their way to the camp beds and sleeping bags that had been organised in Kit’s bedroom earlier in the day. The atmosphere in the morning after six triumphantly flatulent fourteen-year-old boys, together with their assorted trainers and socks, had spent the night in there didn’t bear thinking about.

  Kit, ensuring he was the last one out of the kitchen, hugged me fiercely. ‘Sorry about all this, Mum. Love you,’ he whispered before going up to join the others.

  Ah! Still my beautiful boy, then!

  ‘I’m off up too,’ Nick said, not meeting my eyes, as I made to collect the abandoned hot chocolate mugs. Birthday cake crumbs lay resplendent on the floor as well as on the table. The tiny field mouse that Bones was too fat and idle to even flirt with, let alone play with and kill, would be able to fill its little boots.

  ‘If field mice have boots,’ I muttered, skirting past Nick and heading for upstairs.

  ‘Sorry, did you say something?’ Nick asked politely.

  ‘No,’ I sighed, ‘not a word’.

  Chapter 16

  Both Nick and I were obviously in need of sleep. We politely kept to our own sides of the bed and, despite the rain lashing down outside, slept like babies. I’ve never understood that turn of phrase – ‘slept like a baby’: any babies I’ve ever known have categorically not slept.

  The next morning, the first day of the half-term holiday, I woke early out of habit then, realising I didn’t need to get up, turned over, luxuriating in the knowledge that I could go back to sleep for an hour or so. Both Liberty and India weren’t at home of course, and I doubted whether I’d see any signs of the boys before midday.

  Nick emerged from the en-suite bathroom, towelling dry his hair while looking down across the wet garden at something that had obviously caught his eye. His back, towards me, was still tanned and I watched the movement of his muscles as he continued to rub his hair. I don’t think there’d ever been a time since that very first morning at his student house when I hadn’t desired him, hadn’t wanted to be a part of him. A simple, unconscious movement of his broad, toned shoulders was enough to make me want to catch my fingers in the thick hair at the nape of his neck and bury my nose in it.

  And I’d thought he’d always want me. Never thought there’d come a time when I’d have to feign sleep so as not to risk being turned down by Nick. There was a time – in fact when wasn’t there a time? – when we couldn’t get enough of each other.

  Nick was only my third lover.
There’d been the quick, disappointing ‘thank god I’ve finally done it, but what was all the fuss about?’ fumble in the Upper Sixth with a boy from the boys’ grammar school. Then, of course, there was Michael, my boyfriend before Nick. He was quite a few years older than me, gave me my first orgasm, and was more than willing to allow me to practise a variety of techniques Grace had already tried and recommended.

  But with Nick it was Martini time –‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ – all the time. Each time I was invited down to Surrey to stay with Nick at his parents’ house before we were married became a mind-boggling feat of opportunistic sex under Sylvia’s ever-watchful eye. I would sit, politely talking to my future mother-in-law at the Westmoreland’s dining table, while Nick, lounging opposite me, would inch his foot up my bare leg until his toe made contact with my knickers. He became adept at very gently shifting the flimsy lace of the crotch to one side and, while apparently deep in conversation with other guests, circle the fleshy pad of his toe against me until I almost came under cover of the white, starched tablecloth and the debris of a Sunday lunch abandoned in Sylvia’s prized Wedgwood dinner service.

  Every morning, once I’d unofficially left my shared student house and moved in with Nick, was a race against time to get to lectures.

  ‘Come on.’ I’d say, slapping Nick’s groping hand and heading for the shower. ‘I’ve been late for lectures every day this week.’

  ‘What about this?’ Nick would beseech, his chocolate-brown eyes indicating something standing to attention under the duvet.

  ‘No time for that now. Put it away please.’ This in my best teacher’s voice.

  ‘But I can’t possibly get dressed with this in the way. And it is your fault, you know. You are soooo gorgeous.’

  I would hesitate, weaken, glance at my watch and then reach under the duvet. And I was never disappointed. His penis, thick and silky would be at a one hundred and eighty degree angle (amazing how young rampant males manage such a mathematical feat) against his stomach and I would be lost once more.

  When I took Nick home with me to Yorkshire for the first time he insisted on walking the purple moorland that stretches for miles at either side of the highest point of the M62.

  ‘But you said you fancied a hike,’ I remonstrated as he immediately tumbled me into the heather, his erection nudging my thigh, eager for release.

  Nick had laughed, reaching under my skirt. ‘You fell for that one didn’t you? The only thing taking a hike is your knickers.’ And with one fluid movement they were off and sailing through the air towards the distant sheep. For years after, Nick said he was unable to drive on the M62 past that particular bit of moorland without the stirrings of an erection as he recalled my legs, wrapped around his waist, urging him to go faster and faster.

  And now here I was, pretending sleep, continuing to watch him through half-closed eyes while he dressed. I assumed he would don jeans and a sweater prior to his spending another day at his laptop, but he moved to the wardrobe bringing out a navy suit which he lay on a chair before buttoning himself into a shirt the colour of Amanda’s eyes. His tie, maroon silk, was one I’d chosen myself for his last birthday.

  Curiosity got the better of me and I yawned, shifting slightly before sitting up, not wanting him to know I’d been awake and watching him while he dressed.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ I asked.

  ‘Got a meeting with David Henderson and a couple of his financial people in Leeds.’

  ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’ Nick smiled but his tone was bleak.

  ‘I just did,’ I said indignantly. Why was he taking his bat home? It was me who’d been left once more to sort out the kids yesterday while he’d hotfooted it upstairs with Little Miss Goodness.

  ‘Whatever,’ Nick sighed, distancing himself from further questioning with a single word. ‘I’ve several things to do in Leeds, and I’m probably going to have to drive over to Manchester as well later on, so I don’t know what time I’ll be back.’

  ‘So is Mandy going with you as well?’ I couldn’t resist it. The desire to know what she was up to was becoming, I realised, compulsive.

  ‘No, Harriet, Mandy’s essential knowledge of Italy and all things Italian won’t be needed either in Yorkshire or, if I do go to Manchester, Lancashire. As far as I recall they speak, albeit rather strangely I grant you, English in both those counties.’

  Pompous or what? If he didn’t like living in the North, he could jolly well sod off back down the M1 where he came from. He was beginning to sound just like his father.

  ‘You do know that Mandy still sees John, don’t you?’ John had sworn me to secrecy, but I’d already spilled the beans to Di. Damage done, I reckoned.

  ‘Sorry?’ Nick adjusted his tie in the mirror, bending slightly to accommodate his upper body and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Mandy? And John? He came round to see me when you were in Italy, absolutely distraught that you were in cahoots with the Hendersons. He’s still seeing her, you know.’

  ‘What?’ That had obviously got his attention. ‘Well, that’s all I sodding need. My brother-in-law still having a thing with my boss’s wife. What’s the matter with him? Is he out to wreck this deal of mine? You just tell him to back off, Harriet, because if you don’t, I certainly will’ and without a backward glance he turned on his heel, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

  I lay there, my stomach churning. Had Nick’s reaction been a result of worry over David Henderson throwing in the towel if he were to become aware of Nick’s relationship with my brother, or was it the fact that Nick couldn’t cope with John’s continuing involvement with the woman with whom he himself was now in love?

  Sighing loudly, I pulled the covers right up over my head and tried to get back to sleep but I knew I was going to have to face the world sooner or later. And I didn’t want to: it was pouring down outside, I had six adolescent boys to sort out, and if I didn’t go down to Sainsbury’s and buy myself a pregnancy test in order to set my mind at rest that I wasn’t up the duff, I’d be unable to enjoy any of the days ahead.

  Maybe my period had actually started and I’d be able to save the tenner or however much the little blue packs cost these days. Jumping out of bed, I had a furtive grope of my bosoms as I made my way to the bathroom. Mmm, still rock hard, but then they were always like that in the days before I actually started bleeding.

  Finding no evidence to assure me that a trip to Sainsbury’s wasn’t necessary, I quickly showered and pulled on jeans and sweatshirt. At least I didn’t feel sick any more. Feeling, instead, more confident, I crossed over to Kit’s room and opened the door slightly in order to work out the state of play amongst last night’s Peeping Toms. Greeted by six inert, sleeping- bagged hummocks and the all-consuming fug of boy combined with enough cheap aftershave to overcome a Parisian whore’s bathmat, I hastily withdrew and went downstairs.

  Crossing the sitting room and making my way over to Sylvia’s flat, I found India already up and breakfasted, but still in pyjamas, intent on making a papier mâché witch’s mask in preparation for Hallowe’en. Bertie sat at her side, wheezing asthmatically, surrounded by torn pieces of soggy flour-and-water-pasted newsprint.

  ‘Hi, you two. I’m just dashing down to Sainsbury’s before it gets too busy. Do you want anything, Sylvia?’

  ‘That’s very kind, dear. Could you get me a couple of packets of Bath Olivers? I seem to have run out. What was all the commotion about last night?’ Sylvia peered over her glasses, fixing me with an intent stare.

  ‘Commotion?’ I glanced over at India’s bent head, her tongue protruding slightly as she concentrated on building up the cohesive layers. The last thing I wanted was her overhearing and then relaying how Mummy and Daddy and all of Kit’s friends had spent last Sunday evening involved in something called ‘Dogging and Piking’ when asked to write down the events of the half-term holiday in her Monday Morning Diary.

  Looking mean
ingfully at India and her apparent lack of interest in Sylvia’s question, but knowing, from experience, that she was taking it all in, I answered, ‘I’ll tell you later. Little pigs etc.’

  ‘I’m not a little pig,’ India retorted indignantly, looking up from her task and catching Bertie’s ear with her glue stick while confirming, by her reaction, my good sense in not telling Sylvia of last night’s little debacle just at that moment.

  Praying that my latest salary cheque had not only been paid into my account but that its contents were still in situ, I headed for the town centre. At ten in the morning Sainsbury’s was already a haven for mothers and childminders harassed by the first few hours of a wet half-term Monday. The florid orange and black glow emanating from the multitudinous Hallowe’en pumpkins and plastic witches displayed in the entrance to the store demonstrated the vulgar commercialism of this heathen celebration. In my day it had been an unyielding swede from Dad’s allotment that had had its innards gouged out to make a lantern and which we’d carried round while indulging in nothing more daring than smearing treacle on door handles. Now, influenced as ever by what was happening in the USA, not only had Mischief Night been shoved out of the way by ‘Trick or Treating,’ the humble swede had been unseated, superseded by the larger, fleshier pumpkin.

  I made the decision to do my other shopping before making my way to the pharmacy department, but halfway round the store realised I needed a pee. Oh hell. Was this a result of the butterflies in my tummy that were going into overdrive as I approached the aisle which boasted an amazing, but thoroughly confusing, medley of pregnancy-testing gadgets? Or was it, God forbid, another little sneaky sign of pregnancy?

  Parking my trolley outside the ladies’ loo, I opened the door to find a woman struggling with a furious toddler as she tried, without much success, to disrobe him of his little blue and white striped OshKosh dungarees in order to change his very stinky nappy.

  Under normal circumstances I would have given her a little smile of sympathy, uttered a couple of words of encouragement or even offered a helping hand, but today, faced with what was, in effect, a manifestation of my very worst nightmare, I hastened into the nearest loo without a word.