by Peter Wells
‘Like Horton?’ I breathe.
‘No, no,’ he says laughingly then. ‘Not like Horton at all.’
‘How then?’ I ask.
Tell me.
Tell me.
Tell me.
‘TURN AROUND,’ HE says.
‘Why?’ I say to him whining. ‘Why? I doan wanna turn around.’
‘You have to undress.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is the costume. I have certain parts of it ready.’
I am silent. He has stood up from the heater.
Our eyes are level. I search in his eyes for the missing letters, the missing word.
‘Where?’ I say glancing round the hut.
‘I have hidden it. It is a surprise,’ he says then urgently so that I understand and partake of the miracle, ‘You can’t see it all just yet.’
No, think I, I must earn it and suffer for it.
‘You want me to turn around?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I have hidden it so I may produce it like a magic act and you must understand there are proper forms and rituals to which you are an essential part but you must learn to play your part. You are clumsy and know nothing: you must first of all begin to understand that. You must leave everything outside this door when you enter here. You must swear eternal allegiance.’
So this afternoon, this play pretend night in which we wrap round ourselves the solemn and rich garments of the crisply smelling soil of night the dark, this pretend afternoon I must undress totally and stand there before him as if I have just been born, for I am being brought into birth under his fingertips, and first of all I must learn to stand naked and vulnerable in front of him, so that I understand my own poverty, and also, my own richnesses. He will investigate them for me so I understand the meaning and uses that these can be put to, then he will invest me with dress.
He will create for me the first real garments I have ever worn. The first and freshest ones since I struggled out of my afterbirth. For he makes me understand now, in the sharp uplift of breath as it races up my windpipe, and as the pupils blossom in my eyes, he is dressing me as I was always meant to be dressed, he is making nascent what is always implicit; this is his magic touch, his ability to read and translate and spell out, even blindly, even dumbly, with fingers that have been blunted by being rounded into fists with which he must defend himself. He is bringing out from my body a layering of wings and a unicorn horn, of all magic things he is singing as he brings them to birth through my flesh.
‘You mustn’t hurt me,’ I moan. ‘You promise.’
‘Turn your back. Close your eyes. You must stand still. You must …’ and here his voice is so still I have to strain to hear it, ‘… you must hold still and not move, and …’ here his voice again finds its perfect form, its flower, ‘… trust me. You must trust me.’
In all my wirrrld of warm darkness I stand there.
The flame from the heater is no more naked than I.
It peoples the dark with warmth. Through my lids.
‘Don’t peep. You must not move. If you do so, you will spoil it.’
He is savage to me with his word. His sword. Just think by adding a single hissing syllable what a difference you slice.
‘I will tie you up if I need to.’
Tears burn in my eyes.
‘But I’m not,’ I wail. ‘I’m not even moving,’ I say.
And the dark takes wings which are scarlet, the softest pinkiest red so bled I am inside the silent heart of the world.
I feel his breathing inside my own chest, its hollow barrel, but I realise it is my own breathing, falling in perfect symmetry with his.
‘Hurry’, I say. ‘I’m getting giddy.’
‘Lean forward,’ he says then sternly. He is almost frighteningly close behind me. I feel the soft featherings of his breath on my back.
Cold speckles of saliva spray prickle tickle.
‘You won’t hurt me,’ I say then. ‘It’s not a trick is it? You won’t tie me up and then leave me here. Will you?’
He doesn’t even answer me. Instead, he takes my hands and places them against the top bunk.
‘Lean against that,’ he says sternly yet simply. ‘For your balance.’
‘It won’t take long, will it?’ I moan. ‘Ponky’s waiting for me,’ I lie then. ‘Ponky and Aunty Gilda. They’re gunna take me into town. To the five o’clocks. We’re gunna see How the West was Won. Cinerama. Curved screen. The latest. So don’t take long. Promise.’
Behind me I hear the key turn inside the lock.
As if the key within me is turning.
I feel his breath on my calves, warm. The hairs on my legs prick out.
‘What you doing?’
‘Relax. You’ve got to relax. It only works this way.’
I am almost whimpering now, with pleasure. ‘Please, Maddy,’ I say. ‘Please. Maddy.’ I no longer know what I am saying please for, or about.
About my calf muscles he binds silver wings, made of oven foil. He tightens them, the string.
‘Too tight?’
‘Yes,’ I murmur peacefully. ‘Too tight.’
He loosens them a little.
‘Not too loose,’ I say then out loud so our voices startle us.
‘Phhssst!’ he hisses to me and we both hold still.
Outside it is a leaf falling. Coming to its natural rest.
That is all.
‘You’re not allowed to look,’ he says to me again.
‘No, I say.’
Now across my shoulders and then round my waist, brushing against my nipples so chill I let out an involuntary cry.
‘Shut up, you stupid fool,’ he says to me then, like in a spy movie.
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur. ‘It’s just that it’s cold. What is it?’
‘You’ll see soon enough,’ he lances into me solidly.
‘Hurry,’ I murmur now to Matthew. ‘Please hurry I don’t think I can wait any longer. Please hurry now.’
‘O!’
But he must take his ease with me.
Now round my thighs and belly, round past my behind my buttocks, round by my stamen my thing my cock a soft warm tactile darkness brushes against them all.
The air has turned velvet.
I feel — still without seeing — that the air round me is being restricted. It rushes up, seeking an entrance to my centre, he tightens whatever it is round my hips, firmly, so I am suddenly thrust forward, losing my grip. He laughs then, with a full round ball of pleasure.
‘Wake up,’ he says then. ‘Wake up. Cleopatra. Queen of the Nile.’
And I unseal my eyes, take off my bandages. My flesh fresh stings as the adhesive is peeled off.
The sight of the hut, its wallpapered walls, the books on the shelves, the pictures from PanAm calendars pinned up, the drawings of my fashionplates in chalk — it is as if suddenly I can see, removed and separated from me, all the images of my childhood around me — yet I am losing them all at precisely the same time; I am giddy and the room sways sideways.
He catches me and holds me upright.
Still.
I see in his eyes the fire of love, of pride, which has freshly, fleshly this moment created me.
‘Here,’ he says to me then. ‘I will get you a mirror.’
And as he turns away, I realise he is in his own trance as equal to mine, that in some senses he can only come alive to the extent that he creates me and that in a strange tangential yet utter way neither of us may be complete without the other. He says to me:
‘It isn’t finished yet,’ he murmurs proudly.
‘But I still haven’t said I’ll wear it,’ I warn him. ‘This is only a try out,’ I say to him, or is it to me? ‘This is only pretend. Isn’t it?’
Dark
IT WAS DARK the following afternoon, threatening rain. I was inside at Ponk’s, playing with her cut-outs then growing so sick of them I packed them away, not realising this was the last time I would ever
play with them. I had made myself a cup of coffee, feeling quite adult. Now the cup lay empty on the bench. I watched first one, then two, then four ants emerge and begin to make their way towards the cup. I killed one, almost abstractly, raising my forefinger up to my nose so I could smell it. It smelt of rain. I licked my finger clean, eating it. I thought about what it tasted like.
I wandered away, off through the shadowy interior, back into Ponk’s room. I turned the radio on. I turned the radio off. I turned the radio on. I turned the radio off.
I listened. Eyes closed.
There was the faint ruminating echo, the tug and whistle down the trolley bus wires.
A window somewhere closed.
In the near distance I could hear the over-animated women’s voices of an afternoon radio serial:
‘Well, if that’s the way you feel, Olwyn, it’s goodbye forever.’
As I strained my ears to listen, another woman’s voice replied:
‘No, don’t say goodbye, I beg of you, Alicia. Just because Gordon …’
A newer sound emerged. More close at hand. It was a car drawing up. I opened my eyes. Ponk’s bedroom in all its hyper-detail rushed at me. The pink organdie curtains. The little bowers of flowers in the wallpaper pattern. I felt briefly yet intensely homesick.
I looked out through the curtains.
It was Mr Webb, the local policeman. I recognised him. I watched him lock his car door and his eyes scan the front of the house.
I ducked down below the windowledge.
Mr Webb’s footsteps (so grave and measured, so like, I think, the sound the feet of an executioner might have made) moved over the gravel footpath then hit, with a smoother percussion, no less dramatic because they were coming nearer, the concrete path which led to the front door.
I crawled on my hands and knees, fast as a spider, out into the hall then, behind one of the moquette chairs in the living-room, the room furthest away from the front door.
I hunched myself up, wrapping my arms round my legs.
There was first one, then four knocks upon the glass pane of the front door.
I had begun shaking, as much through suppressed excitement as fear.
The pause between the first knocks and whatever might come next was so extended as to be almost a trial — a form of test — about who might make the first sound. I sensed he was listening deeply. It was not beyond Mr Webb’s powers to have a form of x-ray vision which would diagnose, not so much my physical presence, as pick up the oscillating vibrations of my guilt: at not answering the door.
His next knock was abrupt, thundering into the interior with so much violence that I jumped. I leant my face which was hot, moist, against the coarse moquette. I saw my own face in the chrome arm of the chairs. I saw a boy’s face, white, freckles drawn in a loose map all over it. Africa. I looked guilty. The metal frosted over with steam from my breath.
There was an unendurable silence.
Though I had no idea why he was there, I wanted to jump up and scream out, ‘Yes, yes, it was me who did it!’
The next sounds were disassociated. He must have been out at his car, without having made any transition from the back door.
The car door slammed.
He drove off.
I got out and, continuing the charade, which by this time had become enjoyable, I crawled on my hands and knees and crept under the bed in which I slept at night, happily breathing in the dust and falling instantly into a sweet deep sleep.
FIRST OF ALL there was the sound of a key nudging round the interior of the kitchen door lock. It knocked so bluntly, so inaccurately at first, on awakening, I was convinced someone was breaking into the house. I thought Horton was out again, but some rational voice in my head told me that Horton did not require keys: he ate through the wood, or simply flowed through the gap under the door, or emerged inside the lightbulb hanging over your head.
Footsteps in the kitchen. I recognised the sound of the footfall. I rolled out from under the bed, and rubbed my eyes, I stood up. Stretched.
I was covered in dust.
I sneezed.
Uncle Ambrose came into the hall, quietly.
‘It’s you Uncle Ambrose!’ I cried out, smiling.
He was swinging his key in his hand, looking at me pensively.
‘You’re all covered in dust,’ he said to me. ‘What you been up to, Jamieboy? Playing games?’
I shrugged.
I wasn’t sure what to tell him about Mr Webb’s visit. Perhaps it had all been a mistake. A wrong number. It would slip out easier to Aunty Gilda. Uncle Ambrose, as if sensing such a thought passing through my mind, came over towards me. He reached a hand out and his fingers ruffled through my hair.
‘What say we clean you up? What say we have a bath, eh? Nice and fresh,’ he said to me as he disappeared into his room, to hang up his suit jacket.
I waited there uncertain about what to do.
A bath in the middle of the afternoon seemed a strange, an unusual rite. But I was covered in dust from under the bed. And who knew, really, what strange customs were followed at Aunty Gilda and Uncle Ambrose’s house. It was a bit like having the cutlery on the table without a tablecloth. You could never be certain how other people lived. ‘You must do what you are told.’ I heard the faint, the last shadow of my mother’s voice lingering on the air. ‘I know I can trust you to be a good boy, Jamie.’
Uncle Ambrose went in and turned on the bath.
A good boy.
‘How about a bubblebath, Jamieboy,’ he called to me, exultantly, ‘I think you’ll like that.’
THE WATER, THE hot water, flooded out with such force the bathsuds foamed up instantly, crackling in the still air, joining effervescent bubble to bubble until soon the entire bath was afroth with the perfect whiteness of a film-star bath.
I stared down at it mesmerised: it had the pure whiteness of Jayne Mansfield’s hair and teeth: it even had the unreal emphasis of her exaggerated bust. I knew she had a heart-shaped swimming pool, which seemed to me the epitome of chic — the unreason of chic, the unattainability.
Uncle Ambrose had, as befitted someone who was rich, scattered a liberal amount of bathsuds into the bath.
He did not so much ask me to undress as offer the opportunity to me.
I had no compunction in unwrapping myself.
I wished to wear the film-star’s ermine.
For this was what I saw it was: I saw in my mind’s eye the soft sling of a white fox fur which luxuriantly, like a living animal, curved round her body, suffocating the white-white flesh of her neck. I could feel and hear the stamens of fur moving in the light: I longed like an animal to re-enter that fur covert and feel the fur brushing against my face. I saw the film-star’s stole had slipped off and lain there, down below, awaiting that moment when my slim and eager nakedness would sink below it, through it and then emerge under it, wearing it, at which point I, too, would be ready.
‘Ready?’
There was something drugged and still in the atmosphere of the bathroom. Almost subterraneously I heard him go to the door and the slight echo of a key knocking round as it carefully turned in the lock — for one moment like a fish moving downstream I attempted to reverse myself, but the irreversible motion of the water surrounding me, pleasurable soft silent moving, nudged me further on.
Now everything became very slow.
I felt in that instant, as my clothes fell away from me, the eternity of two patterns floating in towards being one pattern, which was readable: the sound in the universe had dropped away and I was intent, alert in a way I had never been before, and every hair on my body was flowing with energy and my eyes became holes into which flowed and curved the entire world: now I understood.
But understood what? This was what I was about to find out. I knew this. I was now, I understood, for the first time, alive. I felt a delicious will-lessness, which at the same time was protective; just as, the instant after a sting, or a cut or a burn, there is a momentary
numbness before the great pain exacerbates the system. In my blankness, I witnessed everything in the bathroom: the taps; the doorhandle; and above all the small window; I saw the small dots of rust on the chrome tapheads, I saw the faded brushstrokes left by a paintbrush on the plaster wall and finally I saw the whirls in which the world outside was reproduced in the bathroom glass.
I worked out, as a passage of survival: if I could become like that glass and held there I would survive. It was simple. It was so simple. That simple.
‘The water will be warm enough in a tick. We don’t want to hurt you,’ he said and reached in and felt.
‘It mustn’t be too hot, or too cold.’
He spoke to me tenderly.
I did not know whether I was nodding or not. I was trying to assume the naturalness of the moment as I continued to work out, experiment with what exactly this moment actually was. So standing there naked I felt preternaturally aware, over-aware, as one prepared for some great mystery.
I was about to step in. I was arched, my leg poised. I was about to leave the safety of land and step into the strange world of heated water, of glittering, faintly evanescent bathbubbles.
‘What’s going on in there?’
The sound of knuckles rapped sharply against the bathroom door.
The lurch of returning to my body was so severe it was as if two worlds were colliding.
I was momentarily deafened.
My return into my body was violent and rough.
I felt winded by the impact.
I seemed to possess no power, I had lost the power of locomotion, and I could only turn my head slowly sideways and, the door unlocked, saw a stranger standing there: Aunty Gilda. Everything became rushed and awkward and jagged.
‘Put your clothes back on, Jamie,’ Aunty Gilda said to me in a voice which was strangely terse. I saw her eyes playing fleetingly about my body.
Slowly, with the real exhaustion of one who had made an immense journey, yet not reached any destination, I began to dress again. I felt drowsy, yet deeply mystified, for Aunty Gilda, with anxiety in her face, her voice like a whip, had forced Uncle Ambrose into their bedroom. The door had been slammed shut, and in there I heard subdued but raised voices.
