As the Clock Struck Ten

by Gill Mather

  Alex was of course a master of devilment, but Emma wondered as she cleared tables and laid places whether she couldn't pre-empt Alex’s attempts to cover her tracks and get more information out of Alex. Therefore at the first break she wasted no time saying to Alex once they were on their own:

  “Luke’s living with us now. It’s such a pain. And a slob as you said. Honestly, he can't take a hint. He obviously thinks he’s God’s gift! I avoid him as much as possible but I was wondering if that little room in your house might still be free for the rest of the summer. I can't put up with it much longer!”

  “Oh,” said Alex, “I rather thought you liked him. But actually, my own room’s going begging for at least the next three or so weeks if you’re interested.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, I pay three twenty a month. So, pro rata, it’d be….” she got out an iPhone and punched some numbers in, “just over seventy three pounds a week. For three weeks that works out at two hundred and twenty one pounds.”

  It was a new iPhone, very expensive-looking and Emma wondered if sugar-daddy had paid for it.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, thinking that if Alex was taking this seriously, she would have over-stated her monthly rental and expect a bit of bartering. “You obviously need to give me some discount. One fifty max.”

  “You’ve got to be joking! It’s a nice house and we have some real laughs. Fifty quid a week is ridiculous!”

  “So why have you left then?”

  “It’s just temporary. I don't suppose it’ll last very long.”

  “OK, so it’s temporary. You can't expect to get the full weekly rate. I’d be helping you out wouldn't I?”

  Alex had gone silent and sat slouched in her chair, puffing and apparently thinking and looking at her iPhone. In fact, it looked as though she might be reading a text. Then she sat up, threw her fag down, got up and crunched it underfoot. “No, we’d better leave it,” she said. “You’ll just have to put up with Luke’s attentions for the time being.” Alex walked off.

  She was such a player, Emma thought. I wonder if she rattled me. But at least for thirty seconds or so, it had seemed as though Alex had taken it seriously and been prepared to sub-let her room for a few weeks which must mean that she was living somewhere else. Emma knew she was no good at subterfuge. It seemed likely she’d given herself away somehow or other. Or else, Alex was just too suspicious to trust anyone properly. With an up-bringing like she’d had, this didn't seem unlikely. Or indeed, she might for some reason have to go back to the shared house sooner rather than later. Or maybe she’d had a better offer for the room than fifty pounds a week. Perhaps that was what the text was about. Who could say with Alex?

  Emma spent several more breaks with Alex when Alex chatted generally with her. If Emma tried to introduce again the subject of a sub-let of Alex’s room in the shared house, Alex expertly diverted the conversation to something else, something completely inconsequential. A film she’d seen, TV programmes, gossip about other staff at the restaurant, her mother’s latest boyfriend. Anything. Emma was no match for her but she wasn't naïve enough not to realise that Alex had some sort of agenda. It came to her that Alex wanted to be seen talking to her. About anything. Alex leaned in towards Emma and whispered when saying these apparently insignificant things, giving them a semblance of importance and subterfuge to any casual observer. Perhaps Greg was directing her to do so but if so why? Or perhaps it was nothing; Emma’s imagination running away with her again.

  However yet again Emma felt that she was being hopelessly manipulated by Alex and wished she hadn't made her earlier pitch for taking over the rented accommodation. She felt that Alex knew perfectly well that she wouldn't have wanted the room anyway even if a price had been agreed. She had been completely out-manoeuvred by Alex without even finding out anything concrete at all. She should instead have offered to spend a drunken girly evening with Alex and, during the course of it, wheedled some admission out of her about her relationship with Greg. But instead, she’d chosen a stone cold sober fifteen minute restaurant waitress’s break to try to solicit information from an expert. Bugger!

  As usual, it was impossible to fathom Alex’s designs or motives. And as before, Emma was dreaming away her waitressing shift! She sighed, squared her shoulders and adopted a fixed smile as she went to take the next order.

  Later as she was collecting her bag from where the staff hung up their stuff, she reflected that it wasn't at all secure. Anyone could go into your bag or pockets and take anything. They ought to be provided with lockers. She’d never bothered before but today she suddenly felt uneasy and vulnerable. She decided to keep her debit card wallet in a pocket of her work clothes from now on or not bring it with her at all, nor her purse. That just left her house keys but she wasn't sure how she could stow those about her person while working. They were quite heavy on the key ring. They would weigh down her work skirt and create an unsightly bulge pulling it out of shape. The obvious solution came to her as Alex was collecting her own stuff and telling Emma in an unnecessarily conspiratorial way about her tips that evening. Emma decided she would bring just her second back door key with her, thread a length of ribbon through the hole and hang it around her neck.

  EARLIER THAT AFTERNOON, Don had padded guiltily to Emma’s room, looked around and then had gone in and shut the door. Luke had his own key to the house but it was unlikely he would come in. When he came in to have a shower it was usually during the early evening by which time his mother had come home. He obviously felt more comfortable venturing into the house when his mother was there.

  Don hated to do this, but he felt that it was essential to make sure that Emma wasn't being taken advantage of by a young man living on their premises. He was therefore that afternoon going methodically through Emma’s room for evidence. He’d put the bins etc. out last Friday and now cursed himself for not having gone thoroughly through them. But that didn't mean to say that fresh evidence might not have accumulated since then.

  This wasn't like him he knew. He didn't like to pry. Emma had been away at university for a full educational year and her affairs were her own business. It was just that he felt responsible. He had started a full-on relationship with another woman after years of asexual co-habitation with Carol. Emma had chanced upon them in intimate circumstances. Don, on re-considering, realised that his and Grace’s display in the kitchen had been overtly sexual and not really acceptable to have been seen by a young impressionable teenager, particularly his own daughter. It was terribly wrong that she had had to come back for her summer break and witness such a display in her home.

  Emma’s reaction suggested that she was probably still a virgin herself. What she had seen might have spurred Emma to think that she had to be at least as sexually free to follow her urges. Or worse, if she didn't actually have any urges, then to feign some. That promiscuity was the appropriate course to follow. If he had caused his daughter to be influenced in a direction that didn't come naturally to her, then he was very sorry indeed. But how, he reasoned, could he take any steps to get her to backtrack from that path without finding out if she’d followed it at all.

  Don therefore started on her pockets, going through the garments in her makeshift wardrobe and the coats hanging up on the hook on the door and outside in the passage. He sifted through the bins, opening any discarded envelopes or bags and peering into them. He searched her shoes lined up in a row on the floor under the hanging clothes. He looked behind her books aligned on makeshift shelves fashioned from larger tomes with thin planks of wood placed on top of them.

  He even took some books out that felt a bit thicker than they ought to be and hung them up and shook them in case any might have had individual foil wrappers between the covers. However all that fell out were hand-written notes apparently about cells and bacteria that he couldn't understand. He hoped he was putting them back in the right order.

  He felt terrible doing this but he needed to know. She was after all on
ly eighteen. She was young for her educational year already and had been put up a year. She’d been studious, possibly owing to her mother’s condition and the serious air about the house. She had been young to go to university but Don hadn't worried about her. He hadn't thought anything about sex or sexual gratification for years on end himself. But he had himself suddenly introduced a different atmosphere into the house and….he felt responsible for any change it might have wrought to what would otherwise have been Emma’s normal steady unhurried development.

  Finding nothing so far, Don went over to the bed. He pulled back the covers and looked for any signs of sexual activity but there was none. No marks, no stains. But of course he thought, Luke used condoms! But condoms had packaging; metallic sleeves. They would be somewhere. He put his hand down the back of the bed, resting his head on the pillow as he did so. He moved his hand along the side of the bed, straining, with his head on the bottom sheet. It was a divan style bed with an enclosed base otherwise he would have burrowed under the bed. Before finishing with the bed, he put his hands under the pillows and in the pillow slips and felt about. Nothing!

  There was a small table next to the bed but he couldn’t see anything of significance on or under it, just books and face cream and a hair brush and other wretched paraphernalia.

  Frustrated, he pulled the bedclothes back into position and straightened the books and went and looked in the toilet next door. Condoms sometimes wouldn't go down. But there were no giveaway floaters in the loo.

  Aha, he suddenly thought. And he rushed outside through the second back door to the manhole cover in the path outside the wall where the old toilet was. Grasping the handles, he heaved at it but the cover wouldn't give at all. He tried again and again but without any result. He wasn't going to give up! He went and got a steel rod from the garden shed, put it under one of the handles and, using all his strength, he managed to lever the cover up to a ninety degree angle. The heavy metal cover wavered for a second then went crashing down on the path. It made a helluva noise and Don looked over at the summerhouse but couldn't see that it had attracted any attention. He lay on the path and practically buried his head in the inspection chamber but there were no tell-tale condoms visible along the concrete base so far as he could see in either direction.

  He got up and put the drain cover back. Luckily neither it nor the path had suffered any damage. The house was on a septic tank. Don wondering whether to take a look in that but he abandoned the idea. The septic tank was in the ground to the rear of the summerhouse. Luke might, probably would, notice him and, while there was nothing wrong with going and inspecting one’s septic tank, his reasons for doing so he felt sure would be writ clear across his face by now for anyone to see. He went inside instead, washed his hands and arms, and stomped off to his study.

  LUKE HAD WATCHED FROM his summerhouse Emma being dropped off the night before and letting herself into the house. He had wanted quite badly to go and visit her but didn't. It would be asking for trouble and she would be tired anyway. He thought about texting but just sighed and went back into the summerhouse and, by the dull light from the table lamp, he carried on with a medium sized charcoal drawing of Emma pictured from an angle lying naked on a rumpled bed looking up at him. He only worked on it when he thought he would be safe from interruption by Don or his mother or even by Emma who didn't know about the drawing and he wasn't sure he would ever show it to her. Or of course anyone else for that matter.

  He was doing it from memory but he was sure he had got the face right. Yes, he thought as he stepped back, it was unmistakably Emma. The drawing had about it a pleasing fuzziness as he had had to work on it mostly in the half light. He might perhaps draw another version not so obviously Emma to use in his submission to Northampton uni. He was working flat out to get enough work together for that. He hoped also to be able to go home soon and retrieve some of his work. He would tell his father it was for an exhibition. Any other father would have been proud and pleased but Greg was such a wanker! Luckily he had plenty of photos on his laptop to help make a decent portfolio. Perhaps the uni would be understanding if he explained his circumstances.

  After a time he yawned and, hanging a cloth loosely over the piece, he went and cleaned his teeth, used the Kampa Khazi, splashed water over his face and hands and fell onto his bean bag bed where he lay and thought of Emma.

  LUKE WAS STILL thinking about Emma when he awoke early the next morning. He was recalling the morning after the night with her at his house in his own bed. It had been wonderful. Well worth the monumental amount of hassle he had got from his dad about the empty condom packet in the bathroom. He was breathing quickly as he thought about it, his body reacting accordingly. He thought Emma would have her period by now which would mean they could do it without a condom. He licked his lips in anticipation and swallowed.

  It was still very early. His mother wouldn't be up for at least another hour. He stepped out of the summerhouse and cast an eye over the fields to the rear, noting the beauty of the band of fine mist lying irregular and low between the ground and the branches of the small copse of trees signifying that it was going to be another hot day. The scene was captivating with a field of cattle off to the right and in between another field striped gold with stubble from the ripe corn that had been growing there before it was harvested. In the distance beyond, over a rise, a church spire and some roofs hinted at human habitation and activity. The scene was entirely rural and timeless and utterly beautiful. He almost stopped then and there to get the bones of it down on paper before the mist evaporated and the day proper began.

  But another more insistent call was urging him to turn the other way. In the middle of summer, it was already light with a pink blush still reflecting off everything and the birds were singing away. The house looked quiet and closed, curtains drawn, no lights on inside, no movement at all. He would he decided chance it, both an encounter with Don and, if it turned out that way, a rejection from Emma. If he was very quiet and careful he judged the former to be unlikely. And as to the latter, he sent Emma a quick text which he hoped might awaken her and be read, lest she might otherwise mistake his entering her bedroom unannounced for a burglar and scream the house down. Not a good idea!

  DON HAD PASSED a broken and troubled night. He wanted to tell Grace about his fears and apprehensions, about his guilt at the effect their own relationship had had on Emma, the effect it might have had on her attitudes and behaviour and what he had done yesterday as a result, rifling through his daughter’s things. It was all terribly wrong. But he hadn't told her. She would probably have been appalled as he himself was at what he had done yesterday. Further than that though, she might think he regretted starting his relationship with her which couldn't be further from the truth, but that was how she might interpret his worries and actions if he didn't express himself very well. And she might also feel that her son was being cast in the role of a vile seducer, which actually was in fact rather how Don saw it in his mind, though whether any seduction had taken place was in doubt.

  As sleep was impossible, Don whispered to Grace that he was going downstairs to do an hour or so’s work, kissed her head and left the room quietly. He went to his study first to switch on his PC before going to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He had filled the kettle and was about to switch it on when the sounds reached his ears. He knew immediately. Possibly Emma was having a bad dream but he really didn't think so. He crept to the back of the house and stood silently listening. It was quite unmistakable. He put his hands over his face and remained standing like that for a moment before he crept back to the kitchen.

  IT WAS LIGHTER NOW as Luke tiptoed to his summerhouse. The tiptoe-ing wasn't so much to keep quiet but because his feet were bare and the grass was damp and a little cold underfoot despite the continuing heatwave. He frowned, noticing through the open door that the drawing of Emma was uncovered. He could swear that he had put an old piece of material over it the night before and hadn't touched it this morning,
but the cloth must have not been far enough over the easel and fallen off. Had he looked harder he would have noticed that one of the chairs was missing from around the table in front of the summerhouse. But he felt so happy. Ecstatic. He knew quite well that this was necessarily what sex did to you; the physiological and chemical changes and effects were specific and unavoidable. But all the same he felt wonderful and he didn't care why.

  Luke walked slowly into the summerhouse and stood facing the drawing, looking at it both critically as a piece of work and admiringly because it was Emma.

  His mouth was silently framing the words “beautiful Emma” when he heard a quiet noise behind him. He knew what it was straight away but he didn't turn around. If her father was going to come here and remonstrate with him, then he, the father, would have to make clear his business. Luke wasn't going to hand the father a stick with which to beat him with no effort on the part of the father. A large part of Luke’s upbringing had been devoted to dealing with parental tantrums by, of course, his own father, or rather standing by and watching these episodes and learning how not to behave himself. Not reacting caused the greatest distress though laughing seemed to stoke it up even further. So Luke stood and looked at the picture of Emma as Don sat and looked at Luke.

  The stalemate had to come to an end at some point. At length Don said: