by Nesta Tuomey
She shook her head.
‘It won’t be long.’ He smiled across at her. ‘You are very mature for your age, Claire. Anyone would take you for older. Did I tell you that before?’
She was silent.
‘And extremely pretty. But that’s not the only thing... you have an air of fragility that is very appealing. You don’t mind me saying so?’
Her head swam, her mouth felt dry. She had a sense of unreality again. The room was bathed in the reflected glow from the lantern in the driveway. Meeting his intent gaze in the pearly half-light she became shy. A little scared. She sat rooted, unable to move as he leaned over and stroked her bare knee, pushing her skirt right up till his fingers brushed against the vee of her pants. He talked dreamily about Sheena’s exploits with the Waterford boys and stroked her as if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. Her head felt thick, confused, her blood was drumming in her ears.
‘Do you like that, Claire... it’s nice, isn’t it?’
His whispering voice seemed to come from a long way off. She licked dry lips and lay back helplessly as a warm glow spread up her thighs while from on high, another self looked down, noting what he was doing and registering a feeble protest. His fingers slipped inside her pants and the sensation between her legs became so intensely pleasurable that she was terrified she was going to lose all control and wet her pants. She closed her knees convulsively on his hand. He gave a long sigh and sat back in his seat.
She got up. ‘I must go home.’ She looked uncertainly at him. He sat slumped in the chair, a hand covering his eyes.
‘Yes, do that,’ he said, without looking around.
She let herself out of the house and ran across the street. The News at Ten was on the television as she passed the sitting-room door and went on up the stairs. In the bathroom she took off her pants and looked at them. They were in a damp string. She scrubbed them under the tap and hid them at the back of the hot press
The next evening she wandered in his garden again. She saw the light in the kitchen and knocked on the window. He came to the door and looked at her almost angrily.
‘Yes, Claire... what do you want?’
She was taken aback. She thought he would be glad to see her. She looked at him tearfully. She didn’t quite know what she wanted except to be with him.
‘I saw the light.’
He stared at her, obviously uneasy. His unease communicated to her and she glanced behind at the darkening landscape as if fearful of someone or something watching them.
‘You’d better come in.’
She stepped inside and he closed over the door. He went at once to the window and jerked across the curtain although the garden was not overlooked.
‘So why have you come?’
She was silent. She stood before him, eyes cast down. She was trembling. He gripped her by both arms and shook her. ‘Oh what have I started,’ he said, so softly it was almost a whisper. He stroked her hair back from her averted face and, with closed fist, gently bopped her chin. She was trembling in the agony of expectation.
‘If you had any sense,’ he said, ‘you would run now and not stop running until you were far away from here.’
Sense didn’t come into it.
He took her up to Ruthie’s bedroom. There were posters of tigers and lions on one wall, giant Pandas on another. She looked at them as he sat her down on the edge of the bed and stroked her small breasts through her T-shirt. The tiger’s eyes seemed to follow the movement of his fingers, bare his fangs at her. She closed her eyes. He bent his head and pulled gently at her nipples, worrying them through the cloth, leaving damp patches where his mouth had been.
When he lifted her skirt and began the slow pressure, she involuntarily arched against it.
‘You are a very quick learner. Do you know what part of you this is?’ he asked, stroking his finger up and down between her legs.
She shook her head.
‘A very important part. Without your clitoris you couldn’t achieve orgasm.’
The telephone rang in an adjoining bedroom and he went to answer it. Claire fiddled with her socks, stretching and neatly turning down the tops.
‘No, I can’t... not tonight.’
It was just possible to hear what he was saying.
‘Look, another time. Yes... yes. Soon. I’ll let you know.’ Pause. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake! Don’t be like that. Tonight’s just a bad night for me. Okay. I’ll call you.’
When he came back he was smiling.
He switched off the light and left the door open so there was enough illumination from the landing to see by. He lay down beside her, on his side, stroking her hair.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this, should we?’ he murmured.
What did he want her to say?
‘Is it so wrong?’
He laughed. ‘Only if you believe it is. Some people are of the school of thought that all pleasure is sinful but then again there are those that believe a little masturbation is a healthy thing.’
She lay still as he placed his hand on her stomach and gently traced her appendix scar, slipped lower to massage her belly and crotch. She was reminded of her mother’s hand soothing her in the night. It wasn’t so very different.
The next time she was with him he asked her if she realised that the family would be home at the end of the week. She said that she did. He sighed and caressed her.
‘You’re a lovely girl. I’m going to miss our evenings together.’
She had vaguely hoped they would continue.
‘Will you tell anyone about us?’
She shook her head.
‘Good girl. We have something precious. We don’t want to spoil it.’ He rocked her in his arms. ‘Claire... pretty little Claire. Strange to think that in years you aren’t much older than Ruth. Yet she’s still a babe with her animal pictures and toys. My men-aja-wee,’ he mimicked his daughter, not unkindly.
Claire felt sudden hatred for him and, at the same time, anguish and shame that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t be able to keep away from him.
On Thursday, the day before he went down the country to collect Jane and the children, he handed her a little package.
In the package was a delicate gold cross and chain. He made a big thing of putting it on her and fastening it about her neck.
She felt both disappointed and uncomfortable with the gift. How nice if instead of a crucifix, she thought wistfully, he had given her gold stud earrings like Sheena had, or maybe a Claddagh broach. She would have loved that. She had absolutely no jewellery of her own.
She brought it home and hid it at the back of her cupboard (she didn’t know how she would explain it to her parents), thinking she would leave it there for ever.
TWO
In County Waterford the weather held as fine as at home. For Jane McArdle the holiday had gone very much like any other except that she was conscious, at the start of this one, of feeling more carefree than other years. Thankfully the three older children were well and truly past the clingy, dependent stage and Ruthie, just turned four, was prepared most of the time to trek off in their care. It left Jane free for what she desperately needed: time to herself.
Jane was aware how Sheena felt about being lumbered with Ruthie. Her daughter was always complaining that her little sister cramped her style with boys, but Jane was just as pleased with anything that put a halt to Sheena’s gallop. Girls grew up far too fast these days. Teenage years should be as they were intended, happy and carefree and unclouded, in so far as possible, by money considerations or sexual pressures. There would be enough of these in the years ahead.
Even with Ruthie determinedly tagging along, Sheena was still the most popular girl on the holiday site.
‘Quite the belle of the ball,’ Eddie remarked to Jane with a pleased grin. Jane had grinned herself, amused to see that her husband took his daughter’s success with the opposite sex as a personal compliment to himself.
Now they were into the la
st hours of the holiday. In a little while Jane knew she would have to begin the chore of packing up. ‘But not yet,’ she told herself, clinging to these last precious moments by the sea. She dug her hips more comfortably into the sand and draped her cardigan about her shoulders. The day was becoming decidedly cooler. Pity, but it would be less of a wrench heading off next day.
Jane did not really mind going home. These few weeks had been pleasant enough, but she was a city girl at heart and became restless when too long away from the bustle of town. She only regretted not bringing Claire on holidays with them. The sea air would have done the child good, Jane thought, and she, in turn, would have been good for all of them. It was an undeniable fact but the children behaved far better when Claire was around. She would, besides, have been a help with Ruthie.
Not that Jane was looking for a mother’s help, but she was aware how popular Claire was with her youngest child and, indeed, all her children. Even with Terry, for all his pretence to the contrary. Jane had seen the way her older son showed off in front of Claire, airing his knowledge and making witty remarks at her expense. Typically male, Jane thought with a sigh, and so like his father.
She reluctantly reached for her book and marked her place. Better get moving. She gathered everything up and, shading her eyes, spotted her children dashing in and out of the waves and called strongly. ‘Time to be going.’
As they came running back Jane was reminded again of Claire. Yes, she really regretted not asking her along.
Hugh was sorry too when he learned how near his mother had come to inviting Claire. Oh, if only she had, he thought. He took from its hiding place the photograph Sheena had snapped of Claire holding the little black and white pup she loved best, and which he had wanted her to keep.
‘She’s so pretty,’ Hugh told himself, gazing at it. And she was really nice too, which was even more important. So many girls were full of themselves, he thought, but not Claire. She always had time for him, even though he was so much younger. Hugh rather thought he loved her.
In September Claire’s mother declared her intention of going back to teaching. She had applied for a vacancy in a privately-run Montessori school teaching six-year-olds. It was time to take it up again, Annette said, before she became too rusty.
‘It will be nice,’ Annette said, ‘although I expect it will take some getting used to.’ She shrugged and sighed. ‘You get out of the way of small children.’
Claire wondered if she was thinking of the baby. She would have been three that year, just starting play-school.
‘I’m getting to be a right old lazybones,’ Annette said. ‘Should have gone out and looked for a job months ago. ‘So it’s back to school for both of us,’ Annette smiled. ‘In a way I’m quite looking forward to it.’
So was Claire. August without Sheena had been lonely, and with all the rush of buying their uniforms and books for the new term they had met only twice since she returned from holidays. School started in less than a week and there were too many things to be done.
Claire had grown three inches since June and the hem of her gymslip, which had already been let down twice, was way above her knees. Her mother had considered adding on a false hem but, to Claire’s relief, decided against it.
‘Just as well I’m going back to work,’ Annette said. ‘We never needed money more.’ Claire nodded, knowing how much her mother dreaded September with all the extra expenses to be met. At least, Chris still had another year to go at the National School. Annette had applied to several secondary schools and would be required to sit the entrance exams in the spring. With a bit of luck, he would be admitted to one of them. Christopher didn’t care which one, so long as they had a good football team.
Claire knew that Hugh McArdle did not have this dilemma. He had been in the prep school at St. Gabriel’s, Terry’s school, since he was eight and when the time came would automatically pass into the senior school. Like herself, Hugh had shot up a few inches over the summer and he had acquired spectacles. Claire thought they looked out of place on his chubby face and gave him an elderly, slightly scholarly air. Christopher expressed relief that he didn’t have to wear glasses. They would have interfered with football. Once the term started he was never home before six o’clock in the evenings, either training or playing matches with other schools.
Claire did not care much for sport, preferring to go straight home after school and get her homework done so that she could tuck up early with a book. Normally she dreaded the winter term because of having to play hockey. All those fierce Amazons hacking at her shins as they flew down the field unnerved her, but this year she viewed it less fearfully because Sheena would be playing alongside her.
The day of their first inter-school match Claire was surprised to see Eddie watching from the sidelines in the second half. It never occurred to her parents to come to watch her matches, though her father sometimes went along to see Christopher play soccer on Saturdays. She had seen Eddie only once since the night he’d given her the cross and chain, driving through his gates one evening as she was returning from the corner shop with the evening paper for her father. He had waved casually to her and gone inside.
She peeped at him out of the corner of her eye as she hovered, stick in hands, waiting for a piece of the action. When the ball came her way she surprised herself by the fearless way she tackled the full-back, slipping past her guard and neatly tapping the ball to the waiting centre-forward. She felt like cheering as the other girl sped it past the goal-keeper, scoring a goal and bringing the score up to two all. Claire was normally a timid player but now, conscious of his eyes upon her, she felt supercharged, darting from the wings again and again, to tackle and harass her opponent.
The days grew colder as September gave way to October. Claire had got in the habit of calling over to Sheena’s after school and doing her homework with her. The heat in her own house was never switched on until Annette came in and it was nice and cosy in the McArdle’s front room, she and Sheena sitting at opposite sides of the big mahogany table, their heads bent over their work. Sometimes in her kindly fashion Teresa Murray, Jane’s receptionist, brought them in steaming mugs of cocoa which made it all the more cosy and companionable. Claire was not so happy about, though, about the way Sheena unashamedly copied her maths homework.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Sheena asked, the first time she did it, already drawing the copy to her side of the table.
Claire shook her head, but she did. Claire had a natural aptitude and loved spending time working out problems and neatly setting down the answers. By contrast, Sheena’s work was hasty and erratic, pages of her copybook disfigured by numerous crossouts.
Claire tried hard not to let it affect their friendship and even went to the bother of explaining to Sheena how to work out a ratio problem, jotting down an example on a sheet torn out of her notebook.
‘Thanks but it’s a waste of time,’ Sheena brushed it aside. ‘Fling us over your copy.’ When Claire hesitated she held out her hand, impatiently wiggling her fingers. Suddenly, Claire wanted to slap her for being so careless and ungrateful and selfish. ‘No!’ she wanted to shout. ‘Go and work it out for yourself.’ Maybe I should tell her out straight, she thought. She stood up and gathered her books into her satchel. Sheena did not even notice her going.
For the next few days Claire kept away from Sheena’s house, her homework at her dressing-table, but it was chilly in her bedroom and lonely. By the end of the week she was back across the street again.
A few days before Halloween, Eddie came in unexpectedly one afternoon and said he needed Claire’s help. He didn’t say what it was about but he laughed and winked at Sheena as if he had already discussed it with her. He was dressed in sweater and pants, not the dark suit he wore to the hospital, and Claire thought he was very jolly and relaxed.
‘Just you, Claire,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you long.’
Sheena went back to her books, a little smile playing about her mouth.
> Claire got obediently to her feet. She wondered what he was doing home so early.
Eddie went out the door, leaving it ajar. He seemed in high good humour. She followed more slowly, uncertain as to where they were going.
In the hall he reached for her school gabardine and handed it to her.
‘Better put it on,’ he said. ‘It’s cold out.’ He opened the front door and stepped aside to let her go before him. His car was in the driveway. He motioned for her to get in.
Eddie drove out the gate and turned on to the road. Claire fastened her seat-belt and leaned back. She watched absently as the roads became narrower and darker. They passed Daly’s farm, where Hugh had got straw for the pups, and went on up the mountainside.
‘Where are we going?’ Claire asked.
‘You’ll see in a minute.’ He kept the nose of the car steeply climbing. Every so often he glanced at her and chuckled. Once he put his hand lingeringly on her knee and squeezed it. She shivered at his touch.
Eddie turned down a dirt lane and brought the car to a halt outside an old farmhouse. He got out and crossed the yard to knock on the door. A man came out and led the way to one of the outhouses.
Claire waited, wondering what it was all about. When they reappeared, Eddie was carrying a box, which he placed on the back seat. She twisted around to see half a dozen globular orange-coloured fruits.
‘What are they?’ she asked, curious.
‘Don’t you recognise pumpkins when you see them?’ His tone was light, almost gay. He got into the driver’s seat and drove back along the lane. Then, instead of returning the way they had come, he drove on up the mountain for about half a mile. He turned off the road and parked amongst the trees.
It was very dark. Claire could just distinguish his features in the gloom. He moved her closer to him so that his arm was cradling her. She grew rigid.
‘I’m not going to touch you,’ he whispered, ‘unless you want me to.’
She wasn’t sure what she wanted. She was excited and afraid as he aroused her with the deft touch of his fingers. That part of her yearned to be stroked and, almost of their own volition, her hips lifted towards him. When he slipped his hand between her thighs and gently caressed her she involuntarily arched towards him, sickened by her own shame and desire. He angled her on the seat and continued to stroke her. She moaned with pleasure, feeling dizzy, light-headed almost. She heard herself as if from a very long way off.
