by Priya Sharma
This part jest, part test made Tom suddenly tender.
“Is that what you think I want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look at me. Tell me what it is you think I want from you. And more importantly, what do you want from me?”
Everything.
*
Sex with Tom, clothes half on, half off, left her breathless and invigorated. She didn’t imagine herself to be in love. She knew herself to be in lust. Desire was a means to its own end. Tom was vigorous and selfish, making Vivien claw back satisfaction with her teeth and nails. It left her sore and satiated. She didn’t chide herself for such recklessness. Her time of having regrets had passed, or so she thought. She lay back on the pillows, Tom beside her, close but not touching, nursing the feeling inside her, of wanting, of taking but not needing.
*
The lovers slept with the bedroom window open. A swarm of males stood among the trees in vigil, gazing up to where she lay. They could smell her. Her fertility was fragrant. It carried on the breeze.
They were in rapture.
*
“Vivien, wake up.”
There was a gentle voice and clammy hand upon her shoulder.
“Vivien, please.”
There was breath against her cheek. It smelt of honey. Her eyes snapped open. She was naked and chilled, the bed sheets twisted at her feet. Vivien’s hand roamed across the mattress. The space beside her, the place that Tom had filled, was empty.
It was Bea, her hair tied up in a yellow ribbon, a school girl’s decoration. It brushed against Vivien’s skin and she pushed it away, her other hand snatching at the sheets. For all her new powers, she wasn’t ready for such exposure yet.
“Vivien, it’s our mother.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s ill. Will you come?”
“Shouldn’t you call a doctor?”
“We have.” Bea blinked. “Tom asked me to come for you.”
“He sent you?”
“Yes,” Bea was too old to look so sulky, “but I wanted you to come too.”
Whatever for? Vivien nearly said but stopped herself. “Tom has taken such a shine to you.” It was a sly lure.
“All right.” Vivien swung her legs over the edge. “Turn around.”
She retrieved her discarded clothes that lay in puddles on the floor. Bea watched in the looking glass, a pale figure glowing in the mirror.
Vivien was luminous.
*
They were on the threshold. The carved doors were ajar, the innards of the house reduced to a long strip of shadow and greasy yellow light. Bea turned to Vivien.
“Not just anyone can come here.”
“I know.”
“Are you absolutely sure that you don’t mind me fetching you?”
Vivien looked at her with irritation.
“It’s just that I like you. So does Tom. We’ve all agreed how special you are. That we can trust you.”
“I’m not sure what it is you think I can do to help.”
“You’ve brought us so much comfort, just by being here. Come in now, Vivien, and be our willing guest.”
Vivien followed her into the entrance hall. She expected the same evidence of industry that she’d seen in the garden and orchard but in the gloom of the electric lights everything was shabbiness and neglect. The wooden panelling was dulled by dust and she could smell the mildew in the walls. The tiled floor was tacky underfoot. She could hear the wavering, nasal hum of air conditioning, a ridiculous thing in such a tatty old pile.
“Where’s Tom?”
His sudden presence calmed her. He came to her with outstretched hands. His face was tears.
“I knew you’d come.” He enfolded her in an embrace, which she returned. “Didn’t I say she’d come?”
“So did I.” Bea’s eyes were angry hollows. “Don’t make out that I ever doubted her.”
“Is she very ill?” Vivien looked at Tom, wanting Bea to leave them to each other.
“She’s dying.” His mouth was compressed. “It’s no surprise. She’s so old.”
“I’m sorry.”
Still enfolded in him, she rubbed his back, feeling the strength in his muscle and bone. His mother was dying and he pulsed with life. The thought inflamed her. Inappropriate but an affirmation of life all the same. She wanted him again and could tell he wanted her too. Before she wouldn’t have known such a thing and it thrilled her that she knew with such certainty.
“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered in her ear, “you’re here now and nothing else matters.”
*
The corridor they walked along was kinder to the house. Lit only by candle, the dirt and decay was lost in their warm glow. Bea and Tom walked beside Vivien.
“We’ve been waiting such a long time for you.”
“Shut up, Bea.”
“No. Shut up yourself.”
Vivien halted. The corridor seemed very narrow suddenly. “What do you mean?”
“Once our mother’s dead we’d have to leave here. I’ve no idea what we’d do. Thank God you’re here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“None of us could ever replace her. We were so relieved when we met you.”
“Relieved?”
Tom had taken her arm. She shook him off.
“Vivian, we’ll take such good care of you. We’ll be your girls. You’ll want for nothing. Mother never had to lift a finger, we’d never let her. Let us show you how good we can be. You’ll have to stay then. You’ll see how much we love you.”
Her relief and sorrow paralysed Vivien. Tom put his arms around her. Holding her. Restraining her. She was overcome, overwhelmed by their love. It brought bile up in her throat and made her limbs like lead.
Not so heavy though that they couldn’t lift her.
*
Here in the great hall was the sound she’d mistaken for air conditioning. It was a buzz. A hum. An Om. The sound that underlies the universe. The hive was humming.
The sun was rising, spilling through the long windows. Vivien could see the room had been made fit for their purpose. The walls were lined with honeycomb, a construct of man sized hexagons. The honey within made the growing light liquid amber. Some of the chambers were darkened by the figure curled up, grub-like, foetal-style, within.
On the wall opposite was the old woman’s bower, where she was kept safe, even from herself. The honey light made her look jaundiced. She was a queen lying in state. The hive sensed her dying. She was withered, drying, desiccating, her chemicals waning.
Vivian saw that she hadn’t yet expired. Her ribcage heaved, erratic gasps as she tired of the task of respiration. Her eyes rolled and her heart threatened failure. The hive was in the act of entombing her in this state of semi life, of packing her in wax. She would be an effigy within her cell for Vivien to gaze upon. This was the old woman’s fate, her successor had come too late for her to abdicate.
Vivien had her own cell. Disrobed by a multitude of hands, her hair let loose, her rings and earrings were removed. She would be adored without the need of such adornments.
Bea patted her hair and then sniffed at it. As if invigorated by the smell, she did a little dance of celebration and kissed one of her sisters full on the mouth. These grinning, buzzing women were no longer comical. They were monstrous. They all wanted to be near her, to touch her.
The men hung back. Crooning, swaying, waiting creatures. Vivien could not see Tom. She’d heard his shouts and then his silence. The women swept him up and carried him off to where he wouldn’t be in the way.
She felt distant from the proceedings. They’d filled her up with ambrosia. They made her gorge on it. She would soon sicken of the taste and texture clogging up her throat. Sickened but she would wait for it, this addictive sedative, its arrival marking the divisions of her day.
It was getting darker instead of lighter as the morning became midday. Bees had lined the windows, crowding the panes, block
ing out the light. The building crawled with them but they would not enter uninvited. They were excited. They wished to witness this rare spectacle. The coronation of the queen.
*
The mating flight is not polite. It is an orgy, during which the queen is serviced by the drones. This is no gentle love making, no prelude to a lifetime of tenderness together but the panicked ejaculation of the selfish gene. The drones will deposit a lifetime of sperm, distending their queen’s abdomen with thousands of fertilised eggs that will keep her hive bound and bearing baby bees, both workers and more drones, for the glorification of the hive.
*
Vivien Avery came into her summer late. As she blossomed, the men buzzed around her, enthralled.
A Son of the Sea
Cadogan stood at the end of the bed.
“Feeling better? Good. Now, ground rules. Scream and I’ll stuff rags in your mouth and break your legs. And you eat and drink or I’ll make you.” He pulled a funnel and a hose from a bag to demonstrate.
After we talked I lay on my side trying to get comfortable, and eventually fell asleep. I dreamt of the sea.
I stood on the shore, the rim of the aquatic world. Its shallows were pale and translucent. I wanted to be further out, in its dark depths. The surf rushed up to me, covered my feet and ankles in welcome, then rushed off again. I waded in until I was waist deep. A wave broke against the underwater slope, sending up spray that looked like a fan of molten glass.
In my dream, as in life, just looking in the water, just knowing I was going in was enough. My body readied itself. It relaxed. I took three deep breaths, working the muscles in my stomach and chest. Then I started packing, the act of gulping air, forcing it into my lungs.
The housemaster at one of my boarding schools once said to me, “Leave before you’re expelled, you lanky streak of piss.”
He wasn’t to know the ways in which I’m made for water.
All the wonders that have blessed my eyes, they were there in my dream, when I needed them most.
*
I’ve always sought the ocean. Rivers are insufficient. I need water in the thrall of the moon. I need tides not just currents.
I’d spent six months working as a barman in Greece when Cadogan found me. “Mick’s Shack” was a concrete box with plastic tables and chairs but I liked it because it was on the beach. I had a sea view as I poured drinks.
We were getting ready to open for the evening. In an hour we’d be heaving with island hoppers, pumped up on pheromones and their own immortality. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t that much older than them but I’d never had a night of drinking, pill popping, and fucking, followed by a day lying on the beach cooking a melanoma.
I was bringing up crates of beer from the cellar. I could see Suzie’s flip flops as I came up the steps, her feet skimmed by her thin, long skirt. She was talking to someone. One look told me he wasn’t looking for work. He was in his fifties and his hands were spread on the bar in a proprietorial manner that made me dislike him straight away.
“Thomas Briggs.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Who’s asking?” I felt like he was about to arrest me.
“I’m Paul Cadogan. I need to talk to you.”
“Do I need to talk to you?”
“It’s important.”
“Still not interested.” I picked up a cloth and wiped down the bar, making him move his hands.
“In that case, I’ll have a beer.”
Suzie went to the fridge but I pulled a warm bottle from the crate I’d just brought up and levered it against the bottle opener on the bar. The cap dropped into the bin beneath with a tinkling sound.
“Ten euros.”
His laugh was sour. He shook his head as he pulled out his wallet. “It’s all on expenses anyway.”
Knowing what I do now I would’ve made that beer ice cold and gratis but I was thorny because I suspected he had something to do with my father.
“You were difficult to locate. Why don’t you get a bloody mobile and a Facebook page like the rest of the world?”
“Because nobody gives a fuck where I am.”
“Poor little lost boy.”
“I’m not lost.”
“If you say so. You’re certainly not poor anymore.” Cadogan took a long deliberate pull from the bottle. “That got your attention, didn’t it? Why don’t we go outside?”
I followed him out to the chairs and tables under the canopy, not because of the prospect of a fortune but because I thought I might as well get it over with.
“Your father’s solicitor been anxious to find you. Your father’s dead.”
“How?”
“Diving in Mauritius. He had a heart attack. It happened two months ago. We couldn’t find you in time for the funeral.”
I looked towards the sparkling, dark blue waves. The Mediterranean is relatively placid, being a landlocked sea. It calmed me.
“How did you find me now?”
“You cashed one of your father’s cheques.”
“Oh, right.”
“You’re wealthy.” He couldn’t keep all his bitterness from his voice, not entirely. All he saw was a twenty-five-year-old who’d piss a fortune he hadn’t made up the wall.
He slid something across the table at me.
“What’s this?” I picked up the business card.
“It’s how you cash in. She’s your father’s solicitor.”
“Where was Dad buried?”
“In Sussex.”
“Did many people go?”
“A lot.”
“Did you know him?” I tried to sound casual.
“Never met him but I did a lot of research about you two when I was trying to find you. Did you know that he kept the apartment in Hong Kong where you both lived? Perhaps you should go. You might find out more about him.”
I made a non-committal sound. Cadogan had done his homework. He knew Dad and I barely spoke.
“It’s on Ma Wan, the island where your mother was from.”
I stared at the card, turning it over in my fingers, angry that I’d learnt more about my mother from an ape like Cadogan than my father had ever told me.
*
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
Suzie threw her bag down on the sand and sat beside me. The bar had closed and the punters had taken the party out onto the beach. They gathered in the firelight. I sat apart, where I could hear the waves.
“How do you know?”
“I can just tell. Are you in trouble?”
“My father died.”
“I’m so sorry.” Suzie meant it.
“It’s okay. I didn’t know him.”
She didn’t press me. I liked that about her. She knew when to leave things alone. She clutched at the rough grass that pushed up through the sand in clumps, pulling the coarse blades through her fingers.
“I’m sorry you’re going. This is going to sound selfish but you’re the only person here that I’m comfortable with. Everyone else thinks I’m bossy and stuck up.”
By everyone, she meant the other staff.
“I reckon we’re a lot alike.”
“Are we?” I tried not to frown. I didn’t want to hurt her.
“I was carted about as a kid,” she said. “Army brat. Never settling makes you seem more self-reliant than you are. What’s your story?”
“Boarding schools. Lots of them.” I didn’t elaborate.
“I knew it. I could tell. You’re different to all the others.”
I was different but not in the way she thought. “We’re all misfits, Suzie. We can’t outrun ourselves.”
“No, I suppose not.” She sounded disappointed at that. “You don’t care what people think of you, do you?”
I shrugged. I had no idea if I cared whether people liked me or not anymore. Loneliness was a constant friend. I nurtured it.
Suzie poured sand from palm to palm. “I envy you. You’re comfortable in your own skin.”
There was always one in the group, wherever I went. I was a blank canvas on which they projected their own desires and hopes. Suzie dusted the sand off her hands and reached for my beer bottle. She drained it.
Her face told me everything she wanted from me. I envied her ability to make herself that plain. She pulled her t-shirt over her head, revealing her bikini top. Her skirt sat low on her hips and she leant back, forming a long curve from her ribcage to her waistband.
I reached out and touched the tattoo on her side, tracing it with my forefinger. It was perfectly formed from its coronet to its curled tail. Suzie had spent proper money on it. The fins were picked out in fine lines and the shape of the armour beneath the skin gave it substance. Its colours were delicate yellows. Seahorses give me heartache. Little fishes of surreal grace. Ground up for medicine as a panacea for asthma, skin issues, heart disease, and erectile dysfunction. Taken from the wild and sold as pets only to die within a few weeks without expert care. Weight for weight, they command the same price as gold in some quarters.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful.”
She thought I meant her, in a roundabout way. I hadn’t noticed how she’d closed the gap between us. She mistook my concentration for sexual tension, letting out a gasp as her mouth found mine. My hand drifted to her waistband. I could smell the monoi oil on her neck. Her hands crept inside my t-shirt and examined the hard edges of my shoulder blades.
I envied Suzie’s hunger. It stoked something inside me. I wanted her sex, her seahorse tattoo. I wanted relief from the sudden ache that had sprung up in my groin.
Maybe, just maybe, this time will be different, I thought.
I undid her bikini top and ran my fingertip around one areolar and then the other. I sucked each nipple until she stifled a cry, her hand in her mouth. Her skirt was tangled around her legs and I pushed it up around her waist. Suzie fumbled with the buttons of my fly. She reached into her bag and pulled out a packet of condoms. I recognised the brand from the vending machine in the bar’s toilets.
“I don’t want you to think that I do this all the time. I got them for us. Not that I assumed…”
“I know.” I kissed her, just to shut her up. Talking would make things more likely to go wrong.
