by Ellie Eaton
I took a drag on my cigarette but all I sucked was air. It had gone out. Stuart fished his Zippo out of his pocket again and sparked the flame. Then he smoothed his hair behind his ears and tilted back on the sofa as if to size me up.
“Couldn’t sleep then?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“So what trouble did you and my sister get into tonight?” he probed.
“Nothing,” I said, inhaling quickly.
Stuart’s eyebrows climbed back up his forehead.
“Bollocks. Come on, I won’t blab,” he said and tapped his nose. “Mum’s the word.”
There was something confessional about the dark room with the yellow streetlight coming through the net curtains. Like being in church. I could tell him anything, I felt.
“We rode horses.”
“What horses?”
“I’m not sure, just a horse in a field.”
“Lauren dared you to ride it, did she?”
I nodded.
“Jesus,” Stuart snorted. “My sister.”
He cracked open another can of beer. One unsteady finger waggled in the air as he spoke.
“She’s always had her own way that one. Don’t let Loz push you around. You stand up for yourself, Josephine, yeah. Wear the trousers as they say.”
He patted me on the leg as if I was a puppy. I realized now that was how he had really thought of me all along, Lauren’s little pet, a pathetic playfellow that followed her around. A toy. I sat there next to him, chewing on my lip unhappily.
“Come on, I was only teasing.” He reached over and gave me another nudge with his arm. “You’ve got to take a bit of rough with the smooth with us McKibbins. Don’t look like that.”
He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in towards his chest, patting my shoulder a few times. When I closed my eyes, I could smell the pub on him, the smoke and the beer and the musty smell of aftershave. Even though he was very drunk, I let myself imagine that he was my boyfriend. His palm was rubbing me gently on the back, in smooth circular motions. I pressed slowly into him and he continued to rub me. My head was nestled under his chin. I lay it against his chest. Gaining confidence, I took the beer out from between his thighs and took a sip, lifting my chin so our faces were just a few inches apart.
I can see now the kind of impression I must have made. The neckline of my nightie had slipped so that one shoulder was showing. My face—coy looking, tilted to one side—staring up at him through long lashes. The rim of the beer can pressed suggestively against my bottom lip. Working at the school Stuart must have been told stories by the other maintenance men, heard the foulmouthed way we discussed boys, endured our wolf whistles and heckles.
My fingers were trembling, my heart thumping so loudly I thought he must be able to hear it. I inched closer to muffle the sound.
Stuart’s hands stopped rubbing. He cleared his throat.
“You’re Lauren’s . . .” he started to say.
“It’s fine,” I whispered.
“Yeah?” Stuart said, surprised, tilting his head.
He studied me for a moment, uncertain. I reached out and put my hand on his cheek, our lips pressed together, and all of a sudden he moved very fast, tugging his belt, hitching his hips so he could pull down his trousers. He flopped back on the sofa, his gaze resting on the patch of light on the ceiling as if he expected me to know what to do next.
I was clueless of course.
Despite our promiscuous reputations I knew next to nothing about my own body. For a long time the only way I knew I had a clitoris was sliding down a gymnastic rope.
Stuart’s eyes fluttered open.
“Here,” he said in a strange, rasping voice. He took my hand and moved it onto the bulge in his boxer shorts. His other hand came to rest in an encouraging way on the top of my head, like the blessings that Padre offered during Holy Communion. I bowed forward, parted my lips. My mouth was so wide I thought my jaw might split.
“Christ,” Stuart muttered with pleasure, pushing me deeper.
When I gagged and pulled away, my front teeth grazed over his skin. Stuart groaned. I sat up, terrified I’d hurt him.
“What? You hear someone?” Stuart looked panicked for a moment. Perhaps he thought it was Kerry, lurking in the shadows. The last thing I wanted was for him to think of his girlfriend.
“No,” I said quickly. “Sorry, there’s no one.”
“Well then,” he said, and he lay back on the sofa and opened his arms and patted his chest. “Get over here.”
I climbed in next to him, my head beneath his armpit, my feet reaching to his ankles.
“You’re a sly one, aren’t you? It’s always the quiet ones you’ve got to watch,” he said, and he slid a hand up inside my nightie.
His thumb made clumsy circles around my left nipple then the right. How rigid I must have seemed to him, a plank, the rough surface of his thumb sanding my breasts. He tugged my knickers, pushing them below my knees with his foot, and pinged them onto the floor. I could see the white school nametape sticking out of my underwear in blue letters. He rolled on top of me, his elbows either side of my head, and he snaked down the sofa so that his head was between my thighs. I was horrified. I hadn’t taken a shower since early the previous morning. I could only imagine how terrible it smelt down there, so close to where I did my business. He parted my pubic hair and tongued me a few times, bottom to top. At the top of each one he glanced up at me. He reminded me of a cat cleaning itself. Very pleased with itself. I could barely look at him I was so embarrassed.
“Relax,” he said. “No one’s there.”
I let my head flop back, watched the orbs of the anniversary clock turning like golden apples. I tried to forget about Lauren, sleeping in the bedroom just above us. Stuart persisted between my legs using the same little cat licks. Then his finger slid suddenly inside me. I jerked in surprise, let out a yelp. He laughed, taking this as a signal. Then there was the soft patting of his palm on the floor searching for his jeans, the Velcro sound of his wallet opening as he looked for a condom.
“This okay?” he checked, holding it up.
Fear flickered through me, my throat felt very tight.
“Yes,” I managed to say.
He hunched over—simian looking, I thought, grunting—and rolled the condom on.
“Shit,” he said.
“What?”
He held up the split condom.
“Fucking hell.” He let out a groan of frustration and bowed his head, resting on top of me. “That’s that then.”
There was the smell of his aftershave. His stubble prickling my shoulder. I could feel him start to soften, his body slipping away. Soon, I knew, Stuart would sober up, get dressed, go back to Kerry. I felt a stab of jealousy and dug my fingers into his back.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“What?”
“We can still, you know.”
I nudged closer. Lifted my hips a little.
“Honestly, it’s okay.”
“Really?”
“I’m on the pill.”
How easily the lie came out.
“Oh right? You are?”
He hovered uncertainly in between my legs. I wasn’t sure if he believed me. Perhaps then he remembered all the rumors he’d heard.
I nodded again, looped my arms around his neck as if I knew what I was doing, pulled him towards me.
“Nice one,” he said.
I felt a sharp pain, like a graze, as if I’d skinned my knee. I bit my lip. Stuart began to move mechanically in and out of me. How many nights I’d spent picturing this moment. The flowers and candles, the declarations of love, the transformation I thought would occur. It was nothing like the descriptions in women’s magazines. I felt none of the sensations Henry Peck had raved about. While he worked up a sweat, I lay there, completely superfluous. I might as well have been picking my nose.
Stuart’s jaw clenched, his lips curled over his teeth, he let out a strange m
ewl. I remember the weight of him as he collapsed, my arm trapped beneath my back, a dripped sensation between my thighs.
“Shit, sorry,” Stuart said and rolled off.
He wiped between his legs with his underwear and offered it to me like a napkin. Then he gave me a pat on the hip and rolled onto his side, his arms crossed over for warmth. I was pinned in the small space between his body and the backrest. My vagina was throbbing, a pain akin to a toothache or twisted ankle. How I yearned to be held. I would have swapped being a virgin again in an instant for just one sign of affection.
“Stuart?” I tried to rouse him.
“Hmm.”
He began to snore.
32
I woke to the sound of a kettle boiling in the kitchen, the clink of a teaspoon in a mug. Stuart whistling. The smell of a cigarette already on the go. I crept upstairs, treading towards the bathroom silently along the corridor edge where the boards wouldn’t creak. I winced as I peed. On my knickers was a crust of dried blood like brick dust. I looked under the sink for a sanitary towel but couldn’t find one, so I wrapped my hand in loo roll, wedging it down my pants. My face looked ghoulish, mascara flaking beneath my eyes, my skin pale and greasy looking. I brushed my hair with my fingers as quickly as I could, tried to do the best I could with the makeup I found lying on the windowsill.
Halfway down the stairs I heard the jingle of keys in the lock and the front door opened. Joan. She was carrying two plastic bags of shopping and stopped dead when she saw me, her lips pressed together.
“You’re here, are you? Where’s Lauren?”
I began to sweat, fixated on the wedge of loo roll stuck down my pants. All I wanted was to sneak out of the house unnoticed. I couldn’t face talking to any of them, not Stuart or his mother, especially not Lauren.
“She’s asleep,” I said.
Joan nodded, a slight tremor in her body I could see, exhausted by the weight of the bags.
“Make yourself useful, will you, and hold these while I get my coat off.”
She handed me the shopping bags. I stood there looking at her dumbly as she set aside her cane and shook rain from her parka.
“You can put those in the kitchen.”
“Okay,” I said, and I carried the bags along the corridor. My heart began to thud.
When I walked into the room, there was Lauren, sitting beside her brother.
“Oh,” I said. She must have woken up while I was in the bathroom.
The siblings glanced up at the same time. So alike in that sudden turn of the head. Stuart looked quickly back down at the table, staring awkwardly into his beige swirl of tea, hair tenting his face. Lauren squinted at me, then him, then back to me. Cogs turning.
I didn’t know whether to stand or sit.
“Your mum’s home,” I said.
I couldn’t look at either of them. I saw that the box of Belgian truffles I’d bought at Paddington Station—a thank-you to Joan for having me to stay—was open on the counter. Lauren picked at them, taking three or four in a row.
“Pig,” Stuart said.
“Yeah, well. Someone ate all the sodding bread, didn’t they.”
She nudged the box towards me.
“Here you go. I’m hungover as fuck,” she said.
“Actually, I don’t think I can stay,” I mumbled. I glanced at Stuart as I said this, waiting for him to look at me—a wink or a nod—but he barely acknowledged I was in the room.
“What?” Lauren’s head snapped up.
I felt my cheeks burn.
“I have something at school.”
She stared at me.
“I forgot, sorry,” I muttered.
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged, clearly annoyed.
“I’d better go and pack my stuff.”
I put Joan’s shopping down on the counter and went up to get my overnight bag, wondering if Stuart might follow me. He sat very quietly, nursing his tea. Upstairs I stuffed my suit into my overnight bag, zipped it up, kicked through Lauren’s dirty clothes on the floor for my missing sock, slid open her drawer for a fresh pair. There, tucked between her clean clothes, was a flash of blue. Gerry’s pin. Relieved, I quickly put it into my bag and went back down to the kitchen.
The siblings fell silent.
“I’m off,” I said.
I glanced at Stuart as I said this. His head was still down over his cup of tea, barely registering.
“Um, well, bye then,” I said, my voice reedy, very high.
My eyes began to prickle. I felt the humiliation of standing by the table, waiting for him to throw me a scrap. Lauren looked up at her brother, and then at me, and I could see her lips crumpled together censoriously. She let out a mean snort.
“Toodle-oo, Josephine,” she said. “Tally ho.”
“Pack it in, Loz,” Stuart said.
He got to his feet.
“I’ll walk you out. Come on.”
He took my elbow and led me into the hall where we saw Joan, standing in the doorway of the front room, her hands on her hips. She gestured at the mess on the floor, the cans, the half-eaten sandwich, the overflowing ashtray, photos everywhere, the ruffled cushions, her china ornaments in disarray.
“Oh, hi, Stuart. You’re here, too, are you? Look at the state of this room,” she muttered. “I’ll kill your father.”
I stared at the sofa where I could see a smear of blood.
“Leave it, Mum, I’ll sort it.” Stuart slid between his mother and the room.
He gave Joan a squeeze around the shoulders, then picked up my leather bag and carried it to the front door.
“Bye, Joan. Thanks for having me.”
“Fine,” she said.
Stuart closed the front door behind us. He stood on the front step in his bare feet, his jeans very baggy, slipping down off his hips. He had no underwear on.
“You got everything then, yeah?”
I was standing on the step beneath him, one leg twisted around the other, squeezing my thighs together so the roll of paper wouldn’t fall out, a dull throbbing in my vagina. It was drizzling. He put his hand on my arm and started to say something, but a girl in a purple tracksuit pushing a buggy up the road slowed and waved. Her toddler held a plastic umbrella and wore green boots with yellow crocodile eyes.
“Bollocks,” Stuart muttered.
He was embarrassed to have been caught talking to me. I knew from the abrupt way he pulled back into the doorway, the speed with which he removed his arm. His eyes darting about, looking at the air around me instead of at me. This was what it felt like to be Gerry Lake.
“All right, Stu?” the mother called.
“Yeah, you?”
“Not bad.”
On the girl rolled into the park, turning once or twice to see if we were still standing there. Stuart stared after her in the direction of the playground, rocking from foot to foot with his hands in his pockets.
“Fuck,” he swore loudly.
One of Kerry’s friends, I guessed.
“Um, look,” Stuart said, rubbing his forehead, squinting a little at the white sky. “I was a bit pissed up last night. You know, after the pub.”
“Oh.”
“Off my face, to be honest with you.”
I stared at his feet. They were very wide, large toes with big knuckles.
“Absolutely. Me, too,” I said, exaggerating how drunk I’d been.
Stuart looked relieved at that. He tucked his fringe behind his ears and smiled.
“I think you’re fit, don’t get me wrong, you’re great, but you know, Loz is my sister. And, you know, I work at the school and what with Kerry and everything . . .”
“Yes,” I said.
“So, it’s cool then? We’re cool?”
I felt my stomach cave in. I smiled, I flicked my hair.
“Yes,” I said. “Totally, no problem, of course.”
“Good girl.” He gave my chin a little nudge.
Reeling, I picked up my bag and turned. Stuart
doffed an invisible cap and took a step back inside the house. When I tripped on a paving slab, he pretended not to see. I turned to wave but the door was already closed.
33
It was only ten o’clock. Sunday morning. Church bells and football cheers. Hours before the school gates would be open. I sat in the bus shelter at the top of the road as if I had somewhere to go. I was shivering, my teeth rattling with misery. When the drizzle stopped, I walked down to the mill stream and found an unoccupied bench where I tried my best to read the only book that happened to be in my bag—A Streetcar Named Desire, a set text I had studied for my exams. My eyes skimmed over the words, not taking anything in. Every time anyone walked by my heart raced and I looked up, willing it to be Stuart. I had a series of very long, romanticized daydreams as I sat there, about him chasing around town trying to find me, slamming open the door of the chip shop and the tea house, standing on the streets in bare feet like Stanley Kowalski, shouting my name. Of course, this was complete fantasy—he never came. Everything ached, inside and out. I felt very dirty and bruised. Still bleeding. At eleven o’clock the Regent screened two children’s films back to back, a short cartoon and Babe, the one with the talking pig. It was a parochial cinema; the films they showed were always months out of date. I ate a bucket of popcorn—my breakfast and lunch—and when they were over I watched a third film, Jerry Maguire this time. Then it was time for me to go back to school.
All the housemistresses were sitting in the Egg, I remember, despotic looking in their wingback chairs, dogs at their sides. Their hands resting on their enormous domed stomachs like Henry VIII. I looked down the row of my classmates’ names for a friend—George or the twins or Skipper—if they were still my friends, I wasn’t sure. But I was the first girl to sign in.
“Good afternoon, Josephine,” Miss Graves said. “How was your work experience?”
One of the two golden retrievers that belonged to a housemistress sat up, wagging its tail. It padded over and stuck its snout in my groin. I was sure that the roll of paper wedged in my underwear, now stiff with blood, would fall down my trouser leg.
