Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  Though I’m not concerned with deathbeds at the moment. I’ll come to those in time. I’ve got to live right now, so I can earn enough to buy up all those pictures – and the sculptures, if they’re his – every last damn one of them. If other would-be purchasers object (and I didn’t see one ‘SOLD’ sign at the show), I’ll simply outbid them, offer the gallery so much it can’t refuse. If I’m going to stop my sessions with John-Paul (and there seems no point continuing when he’s not a proper doctor, and his chief concern is art), then at least I’ve got to own that art, not let a single rival get their hands on any work. All his life and spark is in those pictures, so by buying the collection I’ll own him, in a sense, harness all his potency, hang the word ‘omnipotent’ all round my bedsit walls.

  The taxi driver’s trying to chat, or maybe chat me up. At first, I don’t reply, simply haven’t got the energy, find it hard to move out of my head. I’m thinking about faithfulness, a steady doggy sort of word I’d like to get to know. The trouble is it never seems reciprocal. No one’s faithful back – not therapists, not fathers, not men who pick you up.

  ‘Been to a party, have you?’

  The poor chap’s really trying, must have glimpsed my sick blue ruffles, my flimsy party shoes. ‘Yes,’ I say impassively, then realise he could help. Taxi drivers get to see the whole spectrum of humanity – including the stinking rich, so if I want to rustle up more clients, I could use him as an ally.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, in my most seductive voice. ‘I’m … expanding my small business, and it might be worth your while to remember my address. I’ll write it down, shall I, and perhaps we can work out some arrangement which could benefit us both.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Forty-two!’ yelled Mary, as she dropped her gold vibrator in a final jerking spasm, clawed her still stiff nipples, shook back her tangled hair. Five within five minutes, and that last one really violent. She wiped the perspiration from her breasts (the sheets were damp already, damp with sweat, with juices); reached out for her score card, crossed out thirty-seven, wrote in forty-two. Not bad for just a week. Her Orgasm Chart was proving more a challenge than her Pain Score. She no longer chalked up just a list of numbers, but the colour, size and shape of the vibrator she had used, the intensity and duration of the feelings, and whether the climaxes were multiple or single. Five in a row had been her limit up to now, but weren’t limits set to break?

  She staggered out of bed, legs strangely weak and shaky, limped into her own room, the one she shared with James. The double bed accused her, not, as always previously, for being tense and frigid, but for being gross and greedy. Strange how James seemed to have gone off sex just recently (since she’d become more eager), or perhaps he’d not yet quite recovered from discovering her on Guy Fawkes night, lighting her own rocket. It could be just coincidence, of course. He’d had an extremely heavy week at work, with extra meetings, crises; his chief assistant rushed off to St Thomas’s with sudden serious chest pains.

  She crouched down by her bottom drawer, so full and heavy-laden now she could hardly tug it open; removed the giant-sized pack of Kotex which hid her new collection of vibrators. Which one should she choose to achieve that vital run of six? She didn’t like the Teddy Bear – it seemed flippant, sacrilegious – and she was far too hot already for the light-up one called ‘Beacon’ whose tip had really scorched last time. She had never dared the black. It was the largest of them all, with ribbed gold bands around its shaft for extra stimulation and the name ‘Black Stallion’ stamped around its base.

  She weighed it in her palm, felt its heaviness, its power, slipped back to the other room, dipped it in the lubricant. (She had graduated from ‘Joy Jelly’ to ‘Vie-en-Rose Xstasy Oil’ which was pink and very slippery and smelt of candyfloss.) She paused a moment to gaze at her new icon which dominated the room. She’d had the tiny head and shoulders from the dust-jacket blown up by a photo-shop to very nearly life-size, so that John-Paul’s eyes were black pools she could drown in, his open mouth a cavern she could fall down and down and down. The picture had gone fuzzy, but she didn’t really mind. All her life seemed fuzzy now, her once-important jobs and chores strangely out of focus. There was no longer time for pressing James’s trousers, or making jams and chutneys – not with so much else to do. She had to catch up with her reading, her whole missed education, including even Latin.

  ‘Labia majora,’ she said dutifully, out loud, as she explored them with a ringer. ‘Mons veneris. Labia minora.’ She had discovered and identified all her different parts now, with the help of a small hand-mirror which the sex-books recommended, and the special pull-out diagram they’d printed for young girls. She was seventeen again, but a different seventeen – not Catholic, not a virgin, but a Lolita, a nymphet, just mounting her black stallion, her brutish bucking stallion. Already he was gathering speed, first off from the starter’s gate, heading for the water-jump, rising up and over, as John-Paul in the commentary-box screamed out ‘Forty-three!’ She spurred her stallion on again – five more jumps to go – sweat sliding down her body as they galloped on together.

  ‘Forty-four!’ she shouted, voice whipped away by wind and sheer excitement, her breathing fast and dangerous as she cleared the brush, raced towards the five – no – six-barred gate. ‘Forty-five, six, seven, eight – AAA-AAAAHHH …’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bryan sat up in bed bolt upright, sweat soaking his pyjamas. He’d had a dream, a nightmare – not his usual Parcel Dream, but a serpent with the head of Eve curled up in the salad-drawer of his Mother’s tidy fridge. Nothing else was tidy in the dream – terrifying fragments which made no sense or reason; amputated portions of his Father, B.K. Skerwin, skulking in a knickerbocker glory glass, and covered with whipped cream. He hated dreams, abhorred their lack of order, their random rambling muddle, the way they broke all rules. If it were a matter of an office desk, you could restrict paperclips to one drawer, staples to another, but dreams mixed and jumbled everything, lacked any proper structure, any beginning or firm end. The Parcel Dream was bad enough, but at least it wasn’t sexual, whereas this particular nightmare was awash with sexual symbols – serpents, Eve, ice cream and glacé cherries – maybe even salad-drawers. John-Paul had never mentioned salads, not once in four whole years, but they were bound to be erotic – all those lush and damp green leaves, and things with seeds like peppers and tomatoes; and cucumbers and celery which went limp if they weren’t used.

  He reached out for the bedside light, hands fumbling in the gloom. The frog-shaped green glass night-light he’d had since early childhood and never quite grown out of, emitted only a faint and ghostly glow. He snapped the stronger light on, peered down at his watch. Four a. m. In just three hours he’d be lying on that couch again, trying to analyse a knickerbocker glory. Was the dream a ghastly warning? Was his Father in some danger that he’d landed up like chopped and pulped fruit salad beneath a white shroud of ice cream? He must return to the class and check up on its tutor. Today was Friday – class night – or rather Rambo night. He’d spent the last three Fridays watching Rambo, instead of ogling Skerwin; been too terrified to face his Father, or a shocked contemptuous Mary who’d shun him as a liar. He hated violent films, but he’d misread the tiny entry in What’s On, assumed the Piccadilly Plaza was showing Dumbo, the one film he’d really warmed to in twenty years or more. M60s and Kalashnikovs couldn’t compare with baby elephants (and there were no doting weeping Mothers reunited with their sons), but at least it passed the time, saved him from the class – or his Mother’s mocking triumph that he’d abandoned it so soon.

  He’d sat through the bloody shoot-outs the following two Fridays, been forced to hide his eyes when Rambo wreaked revenge by circling in his chopper and destroying everything below him – men, women, children, dogs, howling from the carnage, charring in the flames. But at least it had spared him all the anguish of another grim decision, another three-hour grapple with What’s On. And by the time he’d seen the
film three times, it had set up a sort of pattern in his life, a blessed continuity, so that he was beginning to feel the need to watch it every Friday for the next thirty years or more; sit in the same seat (right-hand rear, no smoking), buy the same chocolate-nut King Kone. But now Rambo’s run had ended, disrupted his routine, and they were advertising Heat and Lust instead, which sounded most alarming, even worse than rocket-launchers or fragmentation grenades. He’d just have to make an effort and go back to the class – face his fears, his Father, the Chaos of the Universe – maybe get some courage from John-Paul.

  Unlikely. John-Paul would favour serpents over tutors, spend all the session poking at the snake, or trying to scrape the bottom of the knickerbocker glory glass, so there’d be no time left for simple help, encouragement. It might be safer to stop sleeping altogether, to make sure he couldn’t dream. Except he was so worn out already, he’d never do his work; had hardly had a good night’s sleep since he’d been going to John-Paul. He fumbled for his own snake, found it at the bottom of the churned and tangled bed, a victim of his nightmare. ‘Poor Anne,’ he said, stroking its soft head. Nice if it could speak to him, say a word or two in comfort, listen to his dream with just a little basic sympathy, not John-Paul’s sexual probings.

  He could hardly wait for Christmas. He loathed it normally – a whole week trapped with Mother, who stirred guilt-soaked recrimination into her mince pies and laced her Christmas pudding with complaints and disapproval. But this particular Christmas John-Paul would be away not just for the Christmas break, but for the first two weeks of January as well. That spelled freedom of a different kind – if not from Mother and the whole Christmas sham itself, then at least from pre-dawn rising and the torments of the couch. John-Paul was going to Rome, as one of the main speakers at an International Congress of Psychiatry, and had warned his patients in advance, to prepare them for the trauma of his absence. Trauma! He could hardly wait. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, would become normal working days again, with no need to go burrowing deep into his psyche, digging up old turds or phallic worms. A blessed month of sleeping in, ignoring any dreams, or merely emptying, them like slops straight into the toilet bowl, flushing them away without a glance. He wished John-Paul would stay in Rome, permanently, indefinitely; turn his scholarly attention to all those ruined phallic-columns and Colosseum-wombs.

  He couldn’t even dislike the man in peace. His hostility was pounced upon, always probed and analysed; John-Paul claiming coolly that it was directed not at him at all, but really at his Mother – those dangerous murderous feelings he’d repressed since infancy and was now transferring to his therapist. If his Mother was a problem when he’d started therapy, she was now a can of worms. According to John-Paul, his longing to escape from her really masked a terror of abandonment, while his dreams of getting rid of her covered up a fear she’d murder him.

  He frowned, smoothed out the blankets. Life was difficult enough without these complications. He’d started with one Mother, who’d been more than he could cope with – now he had a second – another all-intrusive figure of authority, criticising, larding him with guilt. He sat up against the pillows, tried to root John-Paul out from those compartments in his head which weren’t labelled with his name. Strange how his slick therapist could sneak in everywhere; not just into drawers marked ‘Science Class’, or ‘Mary’, or even ‘Strictly Private’, but also into bedrooms, trains and (bolted) lavatories, as if he, too, were a snake and could slither into crevices barred to normal humans. He checked his watch again – still half an hour at least before he needed to get dressed. He daren’t risk another nightmare, must use the time, distract himself, try to read, instead. He fumbled for his physics book, found his place, then let it slowly close again; could no more grapple with neutrinos than with flaccid celery.

  He rifled through the bedside drawer, found Amateur Photographer, Coin And Medal News, and two old Reader’s Digests. The Digests would be safest – no sex, no smut, and nothing too demanding, just cosy homespun stories, tales of courage, hints for self-improvement. (‘It Pays To Increase Your Word Power’, ‘Teach Yourself Chinese’.) He turned first to the humour – ‘Laughter Is The Best Medicine’ – scanned the little anecdotes, the simple jolly jokes.

  It was difficult to laugh. He paused a moment, tried to remember when he’d last achieved it – four years or so ago, perhaps – before John-Paul, most definitely. He flicked on through the pages, found ‘The Secret Life Of Cats And Dogs’, span out the next ten minutes on feline scent-glands and how tail-wagging in dogs could indicate not pleasure, but conflict, indecision. So even dogs had problems. He fought a wave of sadness as he recalled the shaggy mongrel in the paper-shop, which wagged its tail so wildly when he went to buy his Mail. He’d assumed it really liked him, was pleased – no, thrilled – to see him; now he saw it was merely indecisive, like himself.

  He shivered in his cramped and chilly bedroom, wished it had a fan-heater, a tiny silent one he could use without his Mother listening through the wall, and a bookcase for his science books which Mother called a ‘Danger’, not because she’d read them, but because they were piled up on the floor. And a picture would be nice, as well – perhaps a match-girl or a flower-seller; someone shy and sweet and female, to share his long dark nights.

  He turned back to the magazine, hardly really concentrating until he found himself waist-deep in what had seemed a harmless article, entitled just ‘Big Crunch’. He’d assumed it was a piece about the nation’s eating habits: the switch from eggs and bacon to healthy breakfast cereals, or from things like Twix and Aero to those nutty oaty Crunch Bars – then realised to his horror that he was back with science, physics. The article reported that in just five billion years or so our own sun would collapse, followed (slightly later) by the universe itself – the Big Bang which had begun it all ending in an even Bigger Crunch. The author described this grim finale in terrifying detail: stars and galaxies plunging together at ever-increasing speeds, colliding in one single scorching fireball – the Apocalypse come true. Brian stared down at the print, imagining the noise, the total devastation, the turmoil and upheaval as everything broke up. The article assured him that man himself would have vanished long before, but that only made it worse, in fact. Who else would clear the mess up, untangle the confusion, sort out stars from planets, continents from seas?

  He closed the magazine. He couldn’t blame John-Paul for fifty laughless months. How could anybody laugh in such a world? He struggled out of bed, wincing as the chilly air nipped his wrists and ankles. He’d get dressed right away, just to beat the cold; could always use the extra time to let his morning tea cool down, instead of gulping it at scalding-point. He tiptoed to the bathroom, scared he’d wake his Mother, who rose at five-fifteen on John-Paul mornings, bitterly complaining about what she called the slave-drivers who whipped him off to work before first light. He loathed the dark himself, felt Chaos creeping up on him once the sun had set, all shapes and colours snuffed, all boundaries extinguished, his normal world eclipsed. He lifted the net curtain, gazed out into black. If only there were curtains he could hang up in his mind, kindly white frilled gauzes to stop Terror peering in.

  He replaced the curtain, washed in melted ice, shaved with his old Remington, begging it to make less noise as it grumbled through his stubble. He crept back to the bedroom, put on his white shirt and grey-striped suit, which he’d laid out late last night, after hours of indecision about which grey suit, which shoes. The shoes were all plain black, of course, but there were still four separate pairs, which could drag out the whole process until one or two a.m. He was sometimes grateful to John-Paul for extracting all his money, so he couldn’t buy new clothes. At least it cut the choices down – or some of them.

  He pulled his socks up, eased on both his shoes, bent down to tie the laces, stopped half-paralysed. Which one should he tie first, the left shoe or the right? That was a decision he’d never really made before, never even thought about. How incredible, how ca
sual, to have simply done them up, without working out the order, deciding on priorities, and for all those years and years. He stooped to tie the right, hands seizing up immediately. Why the right and not the left? He pounced towards the left instead, paused again, uncertain. He needed some fixed system, some principle or rule. There must be someone he could ask, use as guide or guru John-Paul himself, perhaps?

  No, he’d never get to John-Paul’s in the first place with his shoelaces undone; might trip and break his neck, especially in the ill-lit streets, the gloomy blinkered tube. And his Mother would start nagging if he dared go down to breakfast what she’d call ‘half-dressed’; would order him to do them up immediately. He wished she’d do it for him, as she had done as a child. He tried to recall her tying up his laces, buttoning his coat, but the small screen in his head remained obstinately blank. Had he ever been that tiny, or she ever had the patience to bother with a weak and helpless child? Wait! The screen was coming to life now – another woman stooping down to help him tie his laces – Mary, from the Winston Churchill Centre. He could smell her milky-mother smell as she bent towards his shoe, glimpse the plunging valley in her Eden-lily breasts. If he was going to the class tonight, he’d see her; could explain about his Father, confide in her, perhaps – except he was back to the same problem: how could he go anywhere until he’d tied his laces?

  The left – he’d start with that one. His left foot was positioned just a fraction in front of the right, which was perhaps some sort of sign. He bent towards his left shoe, straightened up again. No, if everything was chancy in the universe, then the position of his feet was purely accidental. Sweat beaded on his forehead, despite the chilly room. Surely someone had laid down the Rules for Shoelaces, worked the whole thing out? He tracked back through his store of rules – office rules and school-rules, rules for witless children, rules for messy babies, rules for keeping neat and tidy in his Mother’s cramping womb. Or how about cadet corps – that sweating red-faced drill sergeant who had always known the answers, had marched them round the drill hall yelling ‘Left, right, left, right, left as if left had some priority. So he was back to left again. He stuck his left foot out once more, bent wearily towards it, only pausing as he examined his right hand. When it came to hands, the right one was superior (unless you were left-handed), so how could he be sure about the feet?