‘Are you tired?’ she said. Grinning, he raised his head up and his face was on a level with hers. He kissed her, his lips touching hers so lightly that he could still pull back, claiming it was a mistake. I’m sorry — I overstepped the mark. I thought that perhaps, that you … But her mouth moved against his, accepting what was happening. Not only did she lean into his kiss but she moved her own lips on his with a pleasant writhing sensation. Jesus, this is getting very interesting. She made a noise as if to say something but it was just a voice in her throat which never made it to a word. The next thing he knew was that her tongue was flickering into his mouth. Like a little lightning. In and out. Almost before he knew what it was. And again — quick like a viper. He nudged into her mouth with his tongue. She tasted like soft copper, in there. Rough, like suede. Then before he knew what was happening she had turned her face to the side and was dancing with her head up smiling at him. She said, ‘Would you look at us? Dancing in a dead house.’
‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’
‘What age are you, Martin?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
She shrugged.
‘Maybe you look younger than you are?’ Before he could say anything she added, ‘That’s meant as a compliment.’
The music stopped. Cindy began to walk towards the light of the lab. Martin followed her. Inside she hoisted herself up on to the bench.
‘Is this OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll not get a disease in my backside or anything.’
‘No.’
She swung her legs to and fro. Martin walked to her side of the island bench and switched on a blow heater beside his desk to MAX. The stream of air was warm around his ankles almost immediately. It also made a lot of noise, which masked the sound of the knife sharpener. He walked back to where the cage of rats was and dispatched another one.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Working.’ When he had finished he washed his hands and dried them on the roller towel. He came round to her side of the lab. ‘So what’s your plan?’
‘I dunno — it’s a bit late to go out looking for a place now. Can I crash here?’
‘Sure.’
‘Doss on the old sleeping bag.’
‘Good.’
‘This coat makes me feel like one of your nuns or something.’ She slipped down from the bench and took off the white coat, then opened her rucksack. She pulled out a white wool sweater and slipped it on. She handed the coat back to him and he hung it on the hook on the back of the lab door.
‘Oh wait, I got something in my backpack. You must see this.’ She reached into the rucksack and pulled out some sort of a doll. ‘Isn’t he just fabulous? My very own little leppercorn — one of the Little People. He was just so cute I just couldn’t pass him. His green hat and his little stick. Look at that face. The woman in the shop called him a little rascal. She also had a name for that stick.’
‘A shillelagh.’
‘And another fabulous thing is, you get forms to fill in to say that you will love him for the rest of his natural. Look.’ She produced the forms. ‘A kind of contract.’ Martin looked at them for a while then gave them back to her.
‘I married a leprechaun,’ he said.
‘Leppercorn? How do you say it?’
‘Lep-ra-hon.’
‘Lep-ra-haun?’
‘Correct.’ Martin laughed, then looked at his watch. ‘Do you want to see the animal house?’
‘I’m easy. What’s in it?’
‘Guess.’
‘Animals.’
‘Spot on. I’ve gotta get another batch downstairs. Or maybe you wanna stay here?’
‘It pongs a bit,’ Cindy said. The animal house was full of twittering and scuffling noises. From floor to ceiling was shelved with zinc metal cages, each with its plastic water bottle. He showed her around. She crept from one small room to another looking down into the cages, at the same time holding her hair to each side of her head. She took one of the water bottles in her hand and tried to feed a rat some water. One sniffed and began licking.
‘Hey look — he’s taking it.’ Martin told her that that was one of the jobs he hated. Filling those water bottles. The cold tap on full — holding each bottle underneath until it overflowed. Then replacing the dropper. His hands would throb with the cold. The only feeling he had was pure pain. It reminded him of the cold pain when he gave out the Holy Water in the church at Easter. When the hundreds of cages had had their water changed he would dry his hands and try and warm them at the fire.
‘They are so cute with their little pink eyes and their whiskers. Are they all rats?’
‘Some mice.’
Martin checked the label and selected the cage he wanted.
‘Hey Martin! C’mere. Would you take a dekko at this.’ In the corner of a cage a rat had had its litter. They looked awful — five or six pink things. They weren’t shiny or slippery, but dry and pink, covered with a powdery bloom — like on raspberries. Their heads and faces were blunt, no sign of ears, their eyes still closed. Blind — hairless — yet, all the time, moving.
‘They’re like five little baby fingers,’ she said in a baby voice.
‘That’s your mothering instinct coming out.’
Martin put coal on the fire and roared it up a bit. And they sat on a couple of stools getting warm, holding out their hands. She said it was like a place you would tell scary stories, and then covered her ears when Martin started to tell her one. He told her about the room next door where bodies were prepared by the mortician — veins and arteries were differentiated by having blue or red dye injected into them. He told her about the animal house attendant, mean Frank, who at one time kept quail for some experiments. He collected their eggs every day and fried them — about fifteen of them, tiny yellow and white fried eggs the size of ten pence pieces. And then he shovelled them between two slices of bread. Fried quails’ egg sandwiches. Her favourite sandwich had been condensed milk — white jam, she called it — on bread. The coals burned away quickly and collapsed in grey ash. The back of the chimney was sooty and dotted lines of yellow lights threaded their way up and down.
‘They call those soldiers marching,’ he said.
‘Hey, my face is getting red,’ she said, feeling it. Martin kept his eye on the time.
As they climbed the stairs back to the lab they heard voices and laughing, car doors slamming and cars driving off. It must be coming up to midnight. The jazz was over. Martin was carrying a cage and he leaned it on the banister as he stopped at the top of the stairs to listen. The main front door closed loudly and it echoed up the stairwell.
‘That’ll be that prickly bastard leaving.’
‘Who?’
‘The stroppy guy on the door.’
Apart from the scrabbling noises in the cage there was silence. Martin looked at Cindy. She winked at him. At that moment the thought occurred to him that she might be an animal activist type. All the signs were there: the unmistakable hippieness — the way she sentimentalised dolls and creatures — the fact that she’d never mentioned anything to do with the animal cause, which meant that she must be hiding it. Maybe she was a journalist in disguise who would write a damning article which would mention him by name and give his address. Or she was here to release all the animals and burn the place to the ground.
In the lab Martin said, ‘I have to do this.’
‘Is this the killing?’
Martin nodded.
‘Yeah.’
‘How sweet. What are you going to kill?’
‘One of these.’
‘What did it ever do to you?’
‘It’s an experiment.’
‘I’m on the rat’s side,’ she said and sat down on his office chair and spun around. She switched on a small radio and began immediately to change the station. It hissed and beeped and roared as she searched. She settled on some music — an old thing of the Beatles — and turned up the vo
lume.
He went back to his work. Cindy nosyed around in the desk and found a cardboard box of glossy, black and white photographs.
‘Can I?’
‘Sure.’ She leafed through them.
‘Did you take these?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hey, you’re really good.’
‘Thanks. I want to get the best of them and make a book.’
‘A book? You’re going to have a book of pictures published?’
‘No. I mean I’m going to make up my own album.’
‘Got ya. What are all these boys doing?’ She held up the photo. Martin looked over his shoulder.
‘Standing about. It was a religious weekend. A retreat.’
‘Are you religious?’
‘Not any more.’
She looked at him and he shrugged. Then she turned to the photographs again.
‘There’s you. Who are these two guys? This one’s cute.’ Martin stopped what he was doing and went over to her at his desk.
‘That’s Kavanagh. He’s the guy I’m doing this experiment for. We were at school together.’
‘He’s really good looking. And him?’
‘That’s Blaise. Another guy at school. Mad bastard.’
‘He looks it.’
‘He got a bad kicking in school. We thought he was dead.’ Her eyes widened.
‘Who did it?’
‘Some guys — in football boots — it’s not important. They took him to hospital but he regained consciousness after a day. They had to get somebody to write his exams for him — they discovered he’d broken some bones in his hand. An amanuensis.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The one who writes out your paper. You sit there with your arm in a plaster and tell him what to write.’
‘I’d hate that. If I had to do that I’d fail everything.’ She laughed a bit. ‘I failed everything anyway. Where’s this guy now?’
‘Blaise got the highest marks ever in A levels in Northern Ireland. He went to Cambridge. To do Law.’
‘A bit of a genius.’
‘He was a great schemer. People said the amanuensis was open to bribes.’
‘Is that true?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since the day of the kicking.’
‘So this one’s doing Medicine,’ she stabbed with her finger at the photo, ‘and this one’s doing Law … Are you going to be doing this all your life?’ she asked.
‘I dunno.’
‘What d’you reckon?’
‘It’s like a man rowing a boat. We’ve our backs to the way we’re going. We can’t see the future.’
‘That’s really neat — the way you said that. Ah! but what about astrology — do you read your stars?’
‘Rubbish.’
‘It’s a bit scientific. I read my stars every day.’
‘Stars, hide your fires, let light not see my black and deep desires.’ She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
‘What’s that all about?’
‘It’s from Macbeth. Did you do it?’
‘No.’
‘What was school like for you?’
‘Crap.’ They talked about the awful teachers they had. Hers were always ‘yabbering their heads off, his were always ‘droning on’. But he didn’t tell her about the stealing of the exam papers. She’d be sure to ask him what marks he got and he’d have to admit that he only just passed even though he knew what the questions were. It made him look completely thick. When she’d finished with the box of photographs Cindy put the lid back on. Martin walked to the other side of the lab. She raised her voice and talked over to him.
‘What’s your experiment?’ He wondered if this was the animal activist interrogation beginning.
‘It’s not my experiment. It’s Kavanagh’s. For his BSc. thesis.’ The German excuse — we were only following orders. ‘I’m the bottle-washer and Kavanagh’s the scientist. Servant and fucking master. Naw — it’s not as bad as that … It’s hard to explain.’
Because she was there he put a fresh wad of cotton wool on the bottom of the pot, then he splashed some fresh ether in.
‘There’s that smell again’ she said loudly.
‘I love the smell of it,’ said Martin. She picked up the Dymotape machine off the desk and began fiddling with it. It was like a mobster’s machine gun in chrome with a circular dial, which, when you turned it showed each of the letters of the alphabet. She pressed the handles together like a nutcracker. With each click the tape moved forward to allow another letter to be imprinted.
‘I thought you were going to do some work.’
‘The time is important.’ At midnight Martin popped another rat into the stone jar. After he had removed the leg and disposed of the carcass he crossed the lab to where Cindy sat.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I deserve a break.’
‘Look. I’ve done my name.’ She pulled out the printed tape and snipped it from the machine with the little guillotine. She held it up for him to see — white letters printed on black. CINDY ATKNS. She grinned up at him.
‘That was very nice,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The kiss in the corridor.’ The office chair swivelled back and forth as she moved, pivoting it with her feet. He put his hands on her shoulders and began to massage her muscles lightly. Like a masseur — pressing with his thumbs, pulling with his fingers. But he was at the wrong height to kiss her again. She didn’t stop him working with her shoulders, but put her head back. She straightened up again and stared at her piece of Dymotape.
‘Shit — I left out the “I”.’
‘How very unselfish of you,’ Martin said. She spun to face him. The toecaps of her boots touched his shins. ‘Is it possible to perform an unselfish action? We used to argue about that kind of stuff all the time. You know, you lead a completely unselfish life in order to get to heaven. You do something for a stranger because you want to be liked. That mate — the one in the photo who got the kicking — he was very keen on philosophy.’
‘Or you do things to people just because they’re nice?’
‘Nice people or nice things?’
‘Both.’ She turned the chair through 180 degrees and pointed to her shoulders. She lifted her hair in a two-handed bunch at the back. He began thumbing her muscles inwards towards her spine.
‘That’s your trapezius.’
‘I don’t care what you call it,’ she said and leaned her head forward. Her eyes were closed. He wondered if he dare try. He hated the uncertainty — hated not knowing whether to proceed or not. He didn’t know if touching her breasts would bring the whole episode — excessively pleasant to this point — to an end. Would she jump to her feet in a temper saying ‘How dare you! Who the fuck do you think you are anyway? Who told you you could do a thing like that? Jesus — men! Men!’ And she would be away with her rucksack over her shoulder stomping down the stairs to sleep the night on a park bench. Even worse was the thought of her mockery. ‘And you thought I’d want to do that with a skinny bastard like you? I’ve refused real men twice your size. Have you ever seen the guys on Bondi Beach? You just don’t know about sex, do you? You haven’t a clue, have you? All you want it for is so’s you can tell your mates.’
‘Your trapezius is tight because of you carrying a rucksack,’ he said. At least that is what he wanted to say. But it came out wrong. There was a catch in his voice. And he coughed a bit to try and cover up.
‘Backpack,’ she said. His voice was shaking because of what was happening. But he was trying to keep what was happening — still happening. Didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that his voice was shaking because he was touching her.
‘What?’ She still had her eyes closed. Her head was revolving slowly and in response to the pressure from his thumbs. The sweater she’d put on was thickly knit, full of cable stitching and blackberry patterns, and he couldn’t sense too much of her shoulders beneath it. But he could smell the smell o
f her coming up to him — a milky, sweet soapy niceness, shampoo from her hair maybe. The heat from the blower now filled the place, stirred the strands of hair at the side of her head. His hand sheltered her from the moving air. To get closer to her he inched his hands beneath the material of the sweater at the back of her neck. Her T-shirt material. Cotton. The DJ on the radio prattled on. Martin hoped he wouldn’t say anything or play anything which would change the mood — a triumphal march or something. Or worse — a ceilidh band. And yet it would be too pointed if he turned the radio off. The DJ put on a slow bluesy track Martin didn’t know. Cindy made the sound in her throat she’d made in the corridor. Then she put her hands on his hands to stop them. Held them firmly. This was it — this is where she drew the line. She will now turn to me and say something like: no this is not a good idea at all. Or there is no point in getting all worked up if it leads to nothing. I really think I should go now. But her hands remained on his only for a moment or two while she took off her sweater. Without him having to say a word she seemed to know what Martin wanted her to do. And she took off her sweater in such a way that he was astonished by it — not tugged off over her head because it would pull up her T-shirt with it and bare her midriff, but by extracting her arms downwards from the sleeves, modestly so that nothing rode up. Then enlarging the neck hole sufficiently to have it come off over her head without destroying her hair — like a priest getting out of his chasuble. Her white T-shirt was warm and the cotton barely distinguishable from what was beneath. She lolled back and, as she did so, let her legs relax and fall open. All the time he was waiting for her to stop him, to say something snappy like: that’s enough, why don’t we go for a walk. Or — I only agreed to stay because I trusted you. What amazed him was that she did things without being asked to do things. It was as if she wanted to do this and to have this done to her. That was what was so extraordinary. He touched her breasts through her T-shirt and they moved. She turned her head slowly and looked towards the uncurtained windows and asked if anyone could see in. He told her that the building which overlooked them was Theology and that there would be nobody there at this time of night. There wasn’t a single light to be seen anywhere. He was going to say, even God’s away home — but decided not to, for fear of breaking the spell. What if she were to laugh at his joke — slap her thigh and demand another cup of coffee. So he kept quiet. Not talking was good — it meant he was allowing her to concentrate on what was happening. Outside the window it was now completely dark, the only thing they could see was their own reflections. A girl swirling in a chair, a boy behind her massaging her neck and shoulders. He bent over and began kissing her. With their mouths together she still swung the chair to and fro. In the same way as she’d taken off her sweater, without being asked, she drew off her T-shirt. She was very brown — the colour of caramel — and her breasts were bare. There was no white bikini bar across her back. He knelt before her, between her knees. His face tilted up to her, she bent over, kissing down on him so that he felt a rush of her saliva into his mouth. When the kiss was finished he looked at her upper body. He said, may I? and she smiled and he touched her breasts as if they were an idea. The hematoxylin dye was still on his fingertips — like schoolboy ink. She paused and stopped his hands to have a closer look.
The Anatomy School Page 34
