by Lisa Jewell
Dig could feel Delilah caressing his back through his wet clothes and—boing—right on cue, there he was, Mr Happy, in his trousers.
‘Oh Delilah,’ he murmured into her hair, bringing his nose up towards her face, ‘oh Delilah.’ He closed his eyes and puckered up, almost exploding with the intensity of the desire he was experiencing, and then, suddenly, she was gone. Slithered from his embrace like a Vaselined cat.
She was half-way to the hallway. ‘Sleep tight,’ she said, and threw him a little wave before disappearing into the bathroom.
Dig shook his head in confusion.
Fuck.
What happened? One minute she was…and the next she was…And now he had a huge hard-on. And…and…
He sighed, turned off the central light, looked briefly around at the four crystals hanging ominously in the corners of his living room and went to bed.
TWENTY-ONE
Nadine wasn’t sure how she and Phil had got here.
They had walked in and out of a few of the rooms in his flat at first, all of which had been occupied by small groups of people in shadow who looked up guiltily from whatever they were doing as the door opened. Then they left by the front door of the flat and walked along a corridor, under an archway, through a door, through another door, and Nadine had lost track of where they were by the time they emerged in a small lock-up garage with a low ceiling.
The floor was concrete and the atmosphere was scorching hot and dry, heat emanating from three wall-mounted gas fires on full power. The air was rank with the smell of used cat litter and Whiskas Supermeat and a dozen or more cats of varying shapes and sizes were dozing, eating and playing in the room.
Before Nadine had a chance to ask about the garage or to wonder why all these cats were locked up in it, Phil had his tongue half-way down her throat and was running his hands up and down her back like he was playing a zither. Within seconds they were tearing at each other’s clothing: they were unbuttoning, unzipping, unpopping, pulling off, pulling down and pulling over.
Her clothes were in a heap on the floor at her feet, Phil’s jeans and lambswool jumper were draped over a trestle-table, their underwear was in varying stages of removal and a coffee-and-cream Persian with a face like Les Dawson had begun sharpening his claws on Phil’s abandoned trainers.
He picked her up; she wrapped her legs around his back. He carried her and deposited her gently upon the edge of the trestle-table. A large marmalade with odd-coloured eyes mewed loudly and leaped out of their way. Phil deftly removed her knickers, even more deftly removed his own (yellow cotton briefs, Nadine observed for one fleeting, worrying second). He bent down and fiddled around inside the socks that he was still wearing, and bizarrely, and Nadine thought miraculously, came up bearing a condom.
‘Gosh,’ she said breathlessly, ‘that was a bit of luck!’
Phil smiled and tore open the glossy purple packet with his teeth. He unfurled it expertly and then, effortlessly, without Nadine even really noticing, he was inside her.
For a few moments they stayed like that, barely moved, staring into each other’s eyes, breathing in rhythm. Nadine surrendered all conscious thought to wave after wave of pure physical sensation. Nadine had never before felt so in tune with the rhythm of her own body, with the rhythm of someone else’s body. It was like making music, like playing the most sublime duet on the piano, singing together in perfect harmony, two pairs of hands caressing the same harp. It was beautiful…
An elderly black cat with white whiskers snaked nervously around Phil’s bare ankles, sniffed at them delicately, turned slowly, raised his tail elegantly and then silently released a squirt of bright yellow urine all over the backs of his legs.
‘Shit,’ hissed Phil, kicking backwards at the cat, who scampered off nimbly, avoiding the blow.
They were moving faster now, but still together, still as one, and Nadine found herself lost in mesmeric synchronicity. And then she started to think about the beautiful, beautiful differences between them, the way she was soft and he was hard, and how she was smooth and he was hairy, and he was strong and she was weak, but that when they were together like this it all made perfect sense, it was like a key in a lock, and how come she’d never noticed any of this before, how come she’d never realized before how beautiful sex really was and how this must be what God meant it to be like…
A skinny blue cross-eyed Burmese stared meaningfully at her from a tartan bed, looked away, abruptly cocked one back leg stiffly into the air and proceeded to lick his anus, meticulously and enthusiastically.
Nadine closed her eyes, dug her fingers into Phil’s hair and was amazed by the feel of his scalp underneath her fingertips, by the fact that you could see it but you could never touch it because there was hair on it, and then she wondered what it would feel like if Phil was to shave it all off, but then there’d be stubble, so you’d have to wax it off, wax it off, to be able to really feel what that scalp skin felt like. She began to imagine spreading hot wax on to Phil’s scalp, hot, red, wet wax, and peeling it off with big bits of white paper…
A fat-faced English Blue who’d been sniffing the end of her nose jumped through the air with a blood-curdling howl and landed on Phil’s back.
Phil screamed.
Nadine opened her eyes to find Phil staring into them. ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’ she exclaimed.
Phil nodded and kept thrusting.
Nadine found herself lost again in the natural rhythm of their movements, in the way their bodies produced sweat where they touched, in the whiteness of the skin on Phil’s shoulders, in the feel of him moving up and down inside her, so smooth, so slick, so in and out and in and out, and just perfect, perfectly designed pieces of machinery, working in perfect hydraulic harmony. In and out and in and out and in and out…like a well-oiled piston. Imagery flooded her head: huge shining, gleaming chrome apparatus and engines moving constantly and smoothly…
The machinery pumped away, and Nadine was oblivious to everything. She didn’t notice the passage of time, she didn’t notice that her arms had gone numb, she didn’t notice the cats, didn’t notice how sore she was getting or how fast Phil was now going. She didn’t notice his eyes suddenly screw close, and she didn’t hear him saying, ‘oh thank Christ oh thank Christ I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming.’
They dropped to the floor, kissing, sweating, sighing. Phil wrapped his legs around Nadine and held her tight, very tight. He kissed the top of her sweaty head and stroked her face. The English Blue approached stealthily and began sniffing Phil’s bottom.
They lay together silently for a while and Nadine let her eyes close. She was suddenly very, very tired and wanted to sleep. It was hot in here, like a jungle, and Nadine felt miles away from anywhere, detached from reality. Her head was full of lovely, meandering thoughts.
‘That was very special, Nadine Kite,’ Phil whispered in her ear, ignoring the cat now licking the soles of his feet, ‘you’ll never, ever know how much that meant to me.’ He kissed her eyelids and brought her head back into his embrace.
Nadine smiled and let herself drift away.
‘Saffron! Amber! Dill! Jethro! Here babies! Come to Mummy!’
Nadine awoke.
‘Murphy! Mack! Topaz! Where are you, my angels?’
Nadine sat bolt upright, covering her naked breasts with her hands.
‘Sienna! Mummy’s here.’
Phil sat up, too. They looked at each other.
‘Shit,’ whispered Phil, looping his frighteningly yellow briefs around his ankles and working them up his legs. ‘Shit. It’s Freda. Hide!’ He lifted the plastic cloth from the trestle-table next to them and indicated that she should scoot underneath. She grabbed her clothes and slid under. A pair of alabaster-white Siamese shot out from under the table.
‘Who’s Freda?’ hissed Nadine.
‘Shhhhh.’
‘Philip?’ She could hear the woman’s voice, maybe a couple of feet away from her. She could see her feet. She
was wearing enormous silver platform shoes, and her fat ankles were covered in broken blood vessels and fleabites. Nadine scratched an imaginary itch.
‘Philip? Whatever are you doing in here with my babies?’ The woman had a bizarre telephone-voice accent.
‘Sorry, Freda,’ said Phil, sheepishly, ‘just…er…just wanted to come and say hello to the cats…make sure they were all right…hello, boy, hello.’ He put on a rather silly voice and waggled his fingers at a passing Persian with an imperious face who sniffed haughtily at his fingers, regarded him with disdain and immediately began curling himself around the woman’s legs.
‘At two o’clock a.m. in the bally morning? With half of your apparels removed?’ she said, sounding unconvinced.
‘Oh—yeah—right. Well. It’s pretty hot in here. You know.’
Nadine could see his feet nervously stepping from side to side.
‘Hmmmm,’ said the woman. ‘Well. I must say that I think the hour for visiting my babies has passed. And by the by,’ she began in rather a loud, deliberate voice, almost like she wasn’t talking to Phil any more, was talking to somebody else, ‘by the by. There’s been an almighty commotion in the vicinity of your so-called flat this evening, Philip. A rather elderly and distressed gentleman claiming to be your father and wailing about a portable television set. He was taken away by the caretaker but he voiced his intention to return most vociferously and to keep on returning until he and his portable television set are reunited. So I suggest that you return to your “flat” and to your so-called “flatmates”, forthwith, Philip.’
Nadine saw her lean down to stroke a few of the cats, who were knitting themselves around her legs. She was about seventy, with an extraordinary meringue of yellow spun-sugar hair and a dazzling spectrum of apricot and baby-blue cosmetics trowelled all over her features without, it appeared, benefit of a mirror. Nadine watched her lavishly mascaraed eyes sweep along the floor of the room like searchlights, sweep under the cat hammocks and behind the scratching posts and then under the trestle-table. Nadine flinched and brought her feet closer into her body, made herself into a smaller ball.
‘So, Philip,’ continued Freda, straightening herself briskly, ‘might I suggest that you move upstairs, immediately, and maybe you and your young friends could contemplate the prospect of bed. Tonight. Soon. You understand, of course, that no one appreciates the party esprit like Freda appreciates the party esprit. But it is no longer the hour for festivity and jolly-making and it is, in fact, the hour for sleeping. Please. Philip. Thank you.’
And then she went. Nadine watched her platformed feet clomping across the concrete floor. She heard the door at the other end of the garage slide open and closed and heard the footsteps recede to a distant echo.
She began to breathe again. She scrambled out from under the table and Phil pulled her into his open arms.
‘Who the hell was that?’ she said, gently extricating herself from his embrace, which suddenly felt constricting and overpowering.
‘Freda,’ he said, nuzzling her ear.
‘Who’s Freda?’
‘Mad old coot. Lives next door. This is her garage. Used to be an erotic dancer or something in the fifties—thinks she’s a famous film star.’
‘These hers?’ asked Nadine surveying their feline company.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘she keeps them in here because she doesn’t like all the hair and smell in her flat.’
‘Bit cruel, isn’t it?’
He shrugged and kissed her shoulders.
‘And what was all that about old men and televisions?’
‘Fuck knows,’ he sighed, ‘this building’s full of deranged old pensioners who think their mother’s still alive and the country’s still at war. He probably thought I was someone else. Probably never even owned a TV. Anyway,’ he drawled, ‘anyway—who cares about senile old men, come over ’ere, you gorgeous sex-goddess.’ He grinned and pulled her firmly towards him, leaving her little choice in the matter. ‘You are incredible,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I could fuck you for ever.’
Oooh, she thought to herself, I wish you hadn’t said that. I feel all weird now. In fact, Nadine was starting to feel all weird about this whole situation. What the hell was she doing in here? What was she doing disappearing into some stinking, cat-pissy hole in the middle of the night to have sex with a deeply damaged man, on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol. It might have been rock ’n’ roll but it certainly wasn’t her style.
She knew that he’d tugged her heart-strings nearly to oblivion in the pub earlier on and then, in his living room he’d been a really good listener, he’d been sympathetic and attentive and kind, and then she knew that he’d hit her with some pretty powerful compliments and that she’d agreed quite willingly to come down here with him, and she particularly remembered how much she’d enjoyed the sex—it was mind-blowing—but now…well, what the hell was she doing down here?
Despite her lingering feelings of love and affection for him, Phil really wasn’t her type, at all. Too thin, too pale and all that very black body hair that stood out in such stark contrast to his lime-washed flesh that you could see each individual follicle. And those long, shapely legs that looked like women’s legs. She’d forgotten about those. His hair, which she had been so enthusiastically grabbing hold of a couple of hours ago, looked like it could do with a good wash, and his hands didn’t have any hair on them, were all smooth and fleshy like he didn’t have any bones, like he was wearing surgeon’s gloves. But worst of all were those underpants—Nadine had never slept with a man who wore underpants before, particularly not bright-lemon underpants.
She was just starting to notice his eyes, too. Those denim-blue eyes she’d loved so much at poly. There was something strange about them now. They stared too much, ate through what they observed like blowtorches through a metal door. He was like a manta ray. Nadine shuddered a little.
‘We could just stay here—no one will find us in here,’ he was saying, ‘no one knows about this room except me.’
And he had bad teeth! Really bad teeth.
‘Just another half an hour. Give me another half an hour and I’ll see if I can make it even better this time.’
Oh what! Oh no. No no no no no. Nadine dragged her knickers up her legs and over her hips as quickly as she could, using them as some kind of symbolic chastity belt.
She stood up and pulled on her crocheted dress. ‘Sorry, Phil,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got to go home now. Really.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Shit! It’s nearly two! We’ve been in here for ages.’
‘Yeah,’ smiled Phil proudly, ‘I know.’
‘Better get back then, eh?’ she said brightly, starting to pull her cardigan sleeves up her arms.
She looked at Phil. He was sitting in his lemon briefs, cross-legged, strangling a strand of his grubby-looking hair into a knot. His stomach had folded itself into a small pale flap of skin over the waistband of his briefs and an aged Siamese cat with only one eye was gingerly settling himself into his lap.
Nadine shuddered.
She wanted to go home.
The girl called Jo was waiting anxiously in the hallway when they finally walked back into the flat, picking at the skin around her nails and holding a smouldering cigarette.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ she demanded rudely of Phil. ‘It’s been a fucking nightmare here.’ She threw Nadine a contemptuous look and blew a cloud of cigarette smoke into the air around her head. ‘Your old man turned up and had a screaming fucking fit about some fucking TV, and then that old hag from next door started snooping around and moaning about the noise, and then…’
‘Chill, girl,’ said Phil, putting a hand firmly on her shoulder and turning to smile at Nadine. ‘Just chill. I’ve been showing Nadine Freda’s cats, that’s all. I’m here now.’
‘Yeah, but what about your old man? He said he’s going to come back every night until…’
‘Just. Chill. He’s just a senile old man. OK?’ he said fir
mly, putting a finger to Jo’s lips and turning her around. And then he turned and winked at Nadine before placing his hand firmly on Jo’s back and disappearing with her into one of the many rooms leading off his hallway.
Nadine stood blinking for a moment or two, feeling slightly foolish. Was he coming back? Was she supposed to be waiting for him? Was she supposed to have followed him? And what the hell was all that about his ‘old man’? He didn’t have an ‘old man’. His father was dead.
After a couple of minutes she decided that he wasn’t coming back and that she was presently making a giant fool of herself, so she located a mini-cab card on the telephone table and started to dial.
She didn’t want to be here any more.
She arranged to meet the cab on the street outside the flats and paced up and down agitatedly while she waited. A few minutes later a dark-blue Granada Ghia pulled up and she gratefully fell into the back seat and explained to the Turkish driver where she wanted to be taken.
The entire area between her legs felt raw and used and her thigh muscles had begun to ache tenderly. The skin around her mouth was taut and sore and her head felt thick and woolly and dense with confusing images and blurred thoughts. The streetlights and window displays danced in front of her eyes and made pinhead patterns of light on her retinas.
Nadine didn’t know what had happened tonight. She didn’t know who she was or where she’d been or where she was going.
She was all alone.
She wanted a bath.
She wanted to go home.
TWENTY-TWO
Dig woke with a start at seven o’clock, emerging from a very peculiar but pleasant dream involving ice-cream cones and Kylie Minogue to find a greasy-snouted, curry-breathed Digby frantically snuffling at his ear.
