by Nesta Tuomey
Terry was a doer, not a dreamer and anything he was unable to settle with his fists made him uneasy. He always had to be in control and usually was. Since the previous summer he had put on an extra four inches, which brought him up to six foot in height, and although slim, he was sturdy and strong. There was a fearless streak in Terry which had the effect of disconcerting his fiercest opponent. The tougher and bloodier the fight, the better Terry liked it. Once he had identified his enemy’s Achilles’ heel, he coolly went for it, pounding away until he was victorious. He was not a dirty fighter. He was even a chivalrous opponent. But as he said himself, he just didn’t take crap from anyone.
For some time Terry had found himself strongly attracted to Claire. The strength of his feelings puzzled him, for he considered she was everything that he was not: Intellectual, refined, sensitive. Not his usual kind of girl. A real little Miss Dainty-Dot.
He’d always had a curiosity about her from the days they had played nurses and doctors in the stone garage. She was so cool and fair, remote. The day up the mountains, seeing her lying there in the sunshine, permitting liberties... exchanging kisses like she was some high priestess conferring an honour, yet managing somehow to retain that dreamy, untouched quality. She confused and excited him. Ever since the school opera he had found himself thinking of her, remembering the sensuous kiss she’d given him before the whole cast. Terry hadn’t encountered anything like it, not even the night he had lost his virginity to an older girl on the holiday site two years earlier. With that one kiss, Madonna-faced Claire had relegated his earlier experience to the inept fumble it had been. He thought of the other kisses stolen on the sunny mountainside and felt confirmed in his opinion that Claire Shannon, though she appeared so gentle and reserved, was breath-takingly sexy.
He wasn’t the only one on the holiday site who was attracted to her. Denis and Barney, two local lads, were always angling for introductions. Down on the pier at night after the disco, the beer sizzling in their bloodstream, they leaned on the wall and spoke lewdly of what they’d like to do with her if they ever got the chance. Even Terry was a bit taken aback the first time he heard them.
The boys were older than him which was part of their attraction for Terry. Denis was nineteen and Barney a retarded twenty-three, and they were hard drinkers, which also appealed to Terry. Most of the gang he and Sheena knocked about with were their own age or younger and, after one or two beers, were on their ear.
One night, after their usual drinking session on the pier, Terry and the two older boys walked back to the cottages. Well primed. Denis and Barney began jumping up and down scrunching the empty beer cans. Terry walked on ahead.
‘Hey, McArdle,’ Denis called after him, tripping on his training laces and falling over. ‘Come back here, you effer!’ Barney began shouting too. He did everything that Denis did. They were making an appalling racket.
Terry quickened his steps down by the side of the cottage, fully expecting Garda Deveney to open his window and bawl them out for disturbing the peace. Last time he’d threatened to take them down to the station. He was probably pulling on his pants right now, Terry thought, and would appear any minute, like a maniac in the doorway. When it happened he, for one, intended to be safely tucked up in bed.
The kitchen light was on and he wondered if Sheena had brought her current boyfriend Killian in for a snog, but when he slipped inside he found Claire on her own, heating milk on the stove. Her skimpy night-gown barely covered her thighs. When she turned he noticed the childish transfer on the front. Sleepytime Bunny. At the same time his senses registered the swell of her breasts. Anything but childish. He swallowed uncomfortably.
Claire angled the saucepan and poured milk into a mug. In her hurry to get away she spilt some on the counter. ‘Ruthie woke,’ she told him, mopping furiously. ‘I thought warm milk might get her back to sleep.’
Terry nodded, for the first time struck by how little Sheena helped with Ruthie. He felt an irrational anger at his twin. Always out enjoying herself, he thought. It didn’t occur to him that he was being equally selfish.
‘You should come out with us more,’ he said lamely.
‘I’d like that,’ Claire said. But who would stay with Ruthie? hung unspoken between them.
‘There’s another disco on Friday. Mum will be home then. You could come.’
‘Maybe. I’ll see.’
She turned off the stove. He stared at her indecisively. A picture flashed in his mind of Claire sprawled on the grassy knoll, eyes closed, knees apart. His desire flared. He wondered what she would do if he kissed her. Drink made him bold. He moved to bar her way.
She looked up at him, her face flushed, the expression in her grey eyes enigmatic. He bent his head and kissed her hotly on the mouth. She did not at once push him away.
To the boys outside the window, peering in, Claire seemed to be encouraging Terry. By the time she had freed herself from his embrace, they had ducked back around the side.
‘Did you see that?’ Denis rounded on Barney. ‘Standing there with her backside hanging out?’ He pretended to stagger. ‘McArdle has it bloody made.’
Barney chortled and went out of his way to kick a beer can. He would have begun stamping on it again only Denis shoved him on.
Terry roamed his room, all thought of sleep gone, his pants uncomfortably tight. ‘Dynamite, she’s dynamite,’ he kept telling himself. That one kiss had been even better than the ones he had stolen on the mountainside. Now he couldn’t concentrate on anything, not even getting into bed. He thought he was in love. He was damned sure he was in love. He wanted to go and tell her, to kiss her again.
Terry went out on the landing, now thoroughly aroused, and tapped gently on Claire’s door. There was no answer. He went inside.
‘Claire,’ he whispered urgently, overcome with a desire to kiss and hold her, find some release for this sweet aching tension. He stopped short at the sight which met his eyes. Claire and Ruthie lying side by side, with their eyes shut and their blonde heads nestling close together. Childish, pure.
Claire opened her eyes and looked at him.
‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered.
Terry felt as though he had been caught doing something criminal.
‘I thought Sheena was back,’ he gulped. He turned and stumbled out of the room.
While Claire was away in Waterford, Annette took things easy. She spent a lot of time in the garden, sunning herself and reading blockbuster novels.
With the advent of the school holidays Annette had lost not only her children but her lover as well. Austin had returned to Cork, leaving a big gap in her life. She had outlined her summer, stressing how peaceful and private the house would be. Austin had talked vaguely of a walking holiday in Germany with some other athletic youth. Annette still half-hoped that, missing sex if not herself, he would come up for a visit. One postcard from Bad Godesberg mid-July confirmed her suspicions that she was strictly term-time relaxation.
At the end of July Christopher returned home briefly, before going on a camping holiday to France with his father. Annette suspected it was to be a threesome. She washed Christopher’s grubby shorts and T-shirts and repacked them, with her usual disregard for niceties, in the same fraying plastic bags he’d taken with him to the Gaeltacht.
Three days and he was off again. She missed him to about the same degree as before, which was a good deal less than she missed Austin, and settled back to her solitary routine in the garden.
A fortnight later they drove right to her front door: Jim, Christopher and the Other Woman. Annette invited them all in. As she made them tea - Marissa declined to have a drink and Jim shook his head in the slightly censorious fashion of one who has once spent his evenings drinking himself unconscious - Annette kept up a string of bright inanities. She was both fascinated and repelled by Marissa. So strikingly ugly. She searched her mind for a suitable expression and came up with ‘belle laide’. Annette thought Jim was out of his mind.
She wondered at him openly flaunting the relationship, until later when he phoned to tell her that Marissa was expecting a baby. He hadn’t liked to mention it before her. Why not, Annette wondered. It was his, wasn’t it? He said they wished to make the fruit of their love legitimate. His actual words. He was seeking a Church annulment. Annette put down the phone feeling she had somehow been nullified herself, the past twenty years cleanly erased.
She reached for the whisky bottle and poured herself a stiff one, wishing there was someone with whom she could share this disturbing new development. What about Jane? She hadn’t seen her in ages and maybe now was the right moment to bridge the gap. But when she went across the street and rang the bell Jane’s latest teenage assistant, yet another of Teresa Murray’s many daughters, told Annette that Dr McArdle had just left for Waterford.
That same evening, in his mother’s presence, Terry asked Claire to come with them to the disco. When she hesitated he appealed to Jane.
‘Mum,’ Terry said. ‘See if you can get her to come.’
Jane squeezed Claire’s arm. ‘Off you go, love,’ she said encouragingly. She was looking forward to an early night and had given in to Ruthie’s plea to be allowed share her bed. They had taken the portable television into the downstairs bedroom and would watch for a while before falling asleep. ‘You’d like to go, Claire, wouldn’t you?’
Claire nodded. She had been a little shy of Terry all week, remembering his kiss and the way he’d come into her room afterwards. Of course, he and Sheena often went searching for each other in the night, to share some plan or thought. Admittedly, not as much these days as when they were younger. Now she felt pleasure at the prospect of an evening out with other young people, dancing, having a good time. She wore a red skirt, over a lightly boned petticoat, and a white, sleeveless blouse. She left her hair loose on her shoulders.
The disco was held as usual in a hall near the quay. Claire danced with Terry a few times, and then other boys approached and took her on to the floor. Sheena, who was with Killian, looked plump and provocative on a diet of chips and alcohol. She was wearing her low-cut frock and a pair of red heels, which Jane hadn’t seen yet.
Barney and Denis slouched about, feeling-up the girls. Every few dances the pair of them disappeared outside to tank up on beer. Claire could not understand how Terry was friendly with them. She shivered when Denis approached and put a hand like a brown glove on her bare arm.
Terry held Claire carefully, not with his usual careless swagger, shielding her from more boisterous dancers and, every so often, gazing wonderingly down as though to check it really was her in his arms. At the end of the evening, he hoped to kiss her again. Maybe even go a bit further and feel her breasts. Any more than that he did not envisage.
The disco over, Terry and Claire held hands and walked in step along the pier. They passed, without seeing, the usual intoxicated group under the quay wall, aware of nothing but each other. They spoke in short animated bursts, laughed self-consciously and then fell silent. An almost full moon shone luminously down upon a dark sea, quilted with waves.
At the end of the short pier, as if at some pre-arranged signal, they came into each other’s arms and kissed. When the earth steadied they turned and went, hand-in-hand, back to the bungalow.
Claire felt she could never get enough of Terry’s kisses. It was the afternoon on the school stage all over again, but with no witnesses. Not to begin with anyway.
They had come in to find the fire still smouldering where Jane had left it well banked.
In the beginning Claire had felt uneasy, though she didn’t know why. She felt it had something to do with the flickering fire only she couldn’t be sure. She wanted to stop Terry when he began poking and easing the sods, making them burn brighter. The fire had not been lit regularly on this holiday, not indeed since the days when Hugh took it upon himself to light it each morning. This night it cast an eerie glow about the room, throwing light on a footstool and on the spines of books in the bookcase.
A tall figure was poised motionless to the side of the bookcase, but it was merely Jane’s belted raincoat, hooked on the back of the door.
‘Clairey,’ Terry sighed, holding her very close.
His passion thrilled her but, at the same time, made her self-conscious. As she returned his kiss, she wondered how much longer she could hold out. She was like a foundered fish, desperately gasping air through its fins.
When he unbuttoned her blouse she made no attempt to stop him. He undid her bra and consigned it to the darkness. Her breasts jutted rosy and startlingly plump in the firelight. Terry gently stroked them, his expression a mixture of lust and reverence. Claire watched him, her own expression shy and proud by turns. It was a long time since her body had been so openly offered to another. She felt confused and, at the same time, conscious of a sweet aching desire to surrender.
She grew even more lax and allowed him to remove her skirt and petticoat. They were on the rug now. She had a sense of déjà vu. She shifted and made to sit up but he murmured pleadingly and she lay back again. He knelt between her legs, caressing the inside of her thighs with steepled hands, long sweeping strokes bringing her to a state of trembling arousal. Now he could have done anything with her, but Terry was holding back, unwilling in the throes of this new loving sensation to jeopardise their burgeoning relationship.
They were still in this position when Denis and Barney crept low under the window and reared up to look in through the uncurtained glass, blurry with condensation.. In his eagerness to see better Barney shoved Denis and a stone from the rockery dislodged, and thudded softly on the grass.
The noise, thought slight, was enough to recall Claire to herself and she came out of her daze and looked down in horror at her exposed breasts and pearly parted limbs. She snatched for her blouse and, holding it against herself, scrambled up. What was she doing here? Oh God, was she out of her mind? On the very spot where with Eddie...
With a shamed, inarticulate cry Claire gathered up the rest of her fallen clothing and ran up the stairs. Terry watched her in surprise, his senses drugged by heat and the sweet uprising of flesh, not at once connecting her exit and the faint noise beyond the window. Then came the ribald shout.
Terry’s mind cleared instantly. He hastily adjusted his clothing and went outside and stood on the moonlit roadway, his eyes raking the area. His earlier euphoria was replaced by a raging disappointment. Bloody morons! If he laid hands on them he’d leave them for dead.
The road was quite clear.
Terry went back inside and shot the bolt, then remembering that Sheena was still out drew it back again. He put the guard before the fire and went upstairs. Outside Claire’s door he hesitated, full of regretful longing.
Jeeze! He’d really blown the whole thing. Really messed it all up before it even got going. Remembering the sweet trustful way she had let him touch her naked body Terry felt like weeping. Oh Clairey. He turned away in despair and went into his room.
Terry threw off his clothes and went to the window. The sky had grown a shade lighter. Denis and Barney, he thought bitterly. Bloody bastards! As he reached his hand to jerk across the curtains, he looked down and saw the pair of them, hunched like predators, on the garden wall.
On Monday morning when his mother asked him, Terry was glad to drive her back to town. Claire avoided him, refusing to speak to him or let him explain. He didn’t think he could have stuck it another day.
Left to themselves the girls passed the week much as usual. Sheena said that she was going to the disco with Killian, taking it for granted Claire would stay home and mind Ruthie.
Claire didn’t much care if she never went to another disco. She was only sorry she had given in and gone to the last one. She would never forget Terry and herself hand-in-hand on the moonlit quay, talking, laughing, kissing. And then what had followed.
It wasn’t fair.
Tears welled and fell on the toast she was burning. She threw it in the bin and
cut more bread. She found it hard to concentrate on anything. All the time she kept seeing the firelight and her own naked body. She tried to put it out of her mind but it kept creeping back. She grew hot whenever she recalled their jeering shouts.
She piled scrambled egg on triangles of toast and carried the plates into the other room. Ruthie toyed with crumbling egg. It was not her favourite tea but sometimes it was hard to know what to give her.
‘Eat it up,’ Claire told her. ‘It’s good for you.’
Ruthie pushed it away. She didn’t care if it was good for her. Upstairs, Sheena was an inordinate length getting ready for the disco. She came down at last wearing one of her mother’s silk blouses that was practically see-through.
Sheena winked and did a pirouette before going off to meet Killian. Claire raised her hand and let it fall. When was the last time she and Sheena had held a conversation. Sheena hadn’t even asked her how she had got on with her twin. It hurt to think how little interest her friend showed in her life. Sheena seemed to see or hear nothing outside her own pampered existence. Claire sighed and went to get out the draught board. She sat opposite Ruthie, absently moving pieces from square to square.
‘You’re letting me win,’ Ruthie complained. She hated it when any of them played down to her.
‘No, I’m not.’ Claire contradicted. She made a determined effort to concentrate. Even so, Ruthie won four games out of five.
‘My game again,’ she said triumphantly, ‘and I wasn’t even trying.’ She began straightaway laying out the pieces but Claire stopped her.
‘Why don’t we play beggar-my-neighbour,’ she suggested. Ruthie agreed enthusiastically. She loved cards even better than board games. Claire pushed all thoughts of Terry out of her mind and forced herself to pay attention but it was a relief when it was time to prepare the cocoa.
Claire tucked Ruthie into bed then went into her own room. She supposed it was better for the little girl to get used to sleeping by herself - Jane was trying to encourage her to become more independent - but she missed the warm feel of the little body curled beside her own. She took her time weaving the strands of her hair into one heavy golden plait. She snapped on a rubber band and tossed it back, got into bed and picked up her book.
