The Stillness the Dancing

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘And you’ve got cramp.’

  ‘Only pins and needles.’

  She helped him rub it, shivering still, as much from fear and excitement as from cold. Even massaging his arm seemed far too dangerous, only the light silky fabric of his shirt between his flesh and her own. She could feel his muscles hard and taut, his whole arm tensed. ‘Shall we … er …’ She cleared her throat, tried again, made her voice more casual. ‘W … We could always get under the covers. I mean, there’s no point freezing, is there, with all these rugs and things?’

  He didn’t answer, just unlaced his shoes. She heard them thud on to the floor, her heart thudding even louder as she kicked off her own shoes, pulled the blankets back, squeezed into the narrow bed, still fully clothed but trying to make herself as small as possible so there would be room for him as well.

  ‘Bit of a squash, I’m afraid.’

  ‘At least it’s warmer that way.’

  They were both whispering, both lying absolutely rigid. Morna’s arm was hurting, doubled back behind her, her head uncomfortable without the pillows which were still downstairs in the parlour. David seemed larger than he ever had before, taking up three quarters of the bed, yet still trying not to touch her.

  ‘Are you all … right?’

  ‘Mm. Are you?’

  ‘I’m … er … nervous. Stupid, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s not. I’m nervous, too. Terrified, in fact. I keep worrying whether you want me to … to …’ He stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, brazen suddenly. ‘I do.’

  His silence seemed an instant reprimand. Why ever had she said that? She reached out and switched the torch off, felt less flagrant in the dark. ‘I … I’ve shocked you now, haven’t I?’

  She heard him clear his throat. ‘Course not. I … I’m just scared that if you say yes, I’ll be sort of … paralysed.’

  ‘All right—no, then.’ She forced a laugh. ‘Better?’

  ‘No, worse. That’s rejection.’

  ‘David, you’re impossible.’

  ‘I know.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘We could just go to sleep.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we could.’ David sounded unconvinced. ‘Except I can’t sleep in these jeans. They’re far too tight.’

  ‘So you expect me to say ‘‘Take them off,’’ and then when I do, you’ll complain I’m trying to seduce you.’

  He laughed again, more easily. ‘Okay, I deserved that. Though actually, I don’t know what we’re worrying about. It’s pitch dark, so you couldn’t see me anyway.’

  ‘All right, let’s both get undressed—purely for comfort.’

  ‘Purely.’ David was already kneeling up, tugging at his belt. She wondered if she ought to help him, or take her own clothes off. She squirmed out of her cardigan—that was fairly simple—but the dress was stubborn, seemed to fight her. She hit her hand against the wall as she struggled with the zipper, fingers clumsy as seal’s flippers; almost panicked as the skirt caught over her head and she was blinded for a moment by choking folds of turquoise silk. She tugged it off, released herself, wished she was wearing a few more clothes—petticoat or vest or girdle—anything to cover up that nakedness, slow the whole thing down. She unhooked her bra, felt her breasts spill out, covered them with her hands, wincing at the cold. There was too much of them, too much of her body altogether. If David had admired it, touched it, made some comment or some overture, she might have felt less ill at ease, but he had slipped off the bed, retreated to the door again. He wasn’t even looking at her, had his back turned, seemed equally self-conscious as he struggled to unpeel his jeans. All she could hear were furtive fumblings and rustlings, a sudden clink as his belt dropped on the floor. She longed for music—some romantic serenade to fill the silence, charge the atmosphere. The present mood was so solemn and constrained, David might have been unvesting after Mass.

  She turned her back as well, to take her pants off, hadn’t hands enough to cover both breasts and pubic hair. Even in the dark, the hair seemed too bushy, too flauntingly red. She felt blatant, whorish, standing there stark naked. She stole a glance behind her. David was naked too, now, his body a pale blur in the gloom. He seemed suddenly too vulnerable, as if his clothes had been a form of armour and he was now totally defenceless. Perhaps they should call the whole thing off, get dressed again, be safe and simple friends once more. But how could she suggest it? She couldn’t even reach her clothes which were scattered on the floor. It would mean pushing past that huge male naked body which was now shambling towards her, bearing down on her, no longer vulnerable but dangerous. Somehow, she managed to keep her eyes only on his top half, but even so, the shoulders looked too broad, the hair on the chest too dark and animal. He might grab her, hurt her … She slipped between the covers, pulled the blankets right up to her chin.

  ‘May I get in too?’ He was standing right beside the bed, leaning down. She could hear his breathing, heavy and too loud.

  ‘C … Course.’ Her voice sounded odd, cracked and rusted up.

  A freezing foot shocked against her thigh, a hand like ice put goose flesh on her stomach. She tried to edge away, although she was already pressed up right against the wall. Her heart was pounding so violently she feared it would start shaking the mattress like those Magic Fingers massage beds you could set off in America by inserting half-a-dollar in a special slot in the headboard. Should she touch him, make some overture? She was terrified of everything—rejection, failure, violence, disapproval. She hadn’t cleaned her teeth. Her breath might smell fishy from the soup, or reek of Mrs Cormack’s vicious brew. Why had David made no move himself? Was he copying those medieval saints who went to bed with women only to prove their strength against temptation?

  ‘Well, at … at least we’re not lying on a bed of nutshells.’ The joke sounded lame, her voice still strained and forced.

  ‘N … No.’

  ‘Nor stinging nettles.’

  ‘No.’

  Silence again. She’d tried, for heaven’s sake. If he wouldn’t even respond, just lay there in that total rigid silence, they might as well go to sleep and done with it. At least she was warming up. She could feel his body clammy with heat (or fear?) thawing the chill from hers. Cormack had told him that in the old days he and the other crofters had often slept with their animals for warmth, and that his father’s father owed his life to the fact that after a near-drowning, he had been laid to sleep in the byre between two cows, so that the creatures’ body heat revived and warmed him. Morna raised her head a fraction, rubbed an aching arm. If only they were simple cows or sheep, so that mating was just a natural bodily function, no more embarrassing than eating. But both their schools had downgraded the word animal. Animal passions threatened the eternal soul. She froze. David was moving, levering up on one elbow.

  ‘Look, Morna, this sounds absolutely crazy, but c … could you take that … cross off?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That cross and chain. It … It puts me off my stroke.’

  She let out a great nervous gasp of laughter. ‘Oh, David, you are funny.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just … just …’

  ‘I understand.’ She was already fumbling for the clasp. ‘What I’d like to remove is the Blessed Virgin and both our wretched mothers. The nuns used to say that we must never do anything with a man which we wouldn’t mind our mothers or Our Blessed Lady witnessing. I keep imagining the three of them standing in a huddle by the bed, looking absolutely shocked.’

  David gave a strangled laugh. ‘Don’t! That’ll really finish me. We were always told to treat our girlfriends like our sisters. But as I didn’t have a sister, it wasn’t a lot of help. In fact, it set me off thinking wickedly incestuous thoughts, which only led to more guilt. My mother’s line was safe at least. She said never to go out with anyone unless she’d come from a devout Catholic family and had been a Child of Mary at school.’

  ‘I come from a devout Catholic
family and was a Child of Mary at school.’

  ‘That’s all right then, isn’t it?’

  It was easier to laugh now. David seemed emboldened, wiped his palms on the blanket, cleared his throat.

  ‘M … May I kiss you?’ he whispered.

  She wished he wouldn’t ask. Neil had never asked for anything, just gone ahead and grabbed. She realised now it had solved a lot of problems.

  He didn’t kiss like Neil did—slowly, expertly, bringing in first lips, then tongue, then teeth, alternating slow with swift, hard with soft, orchestrating the kiss—but just pressed his mouth roughly against hers. She had never kissed a man with a beard, wasn’t sure she liked it—rough coarse prickling hair chafing her lips, choking in her mouth. She pulled back, began the kiss again, moving her lips so gently towards his, they were barely touching, letting the tip of her tongue flick slowly round the outline of his mouth. The mouth opened and relaxed. She probed it with her tongue, gently explored his teeth, found his own tongue. She suddenly realised she was experienced. David was the novice, not herself. She had become the expert, the teacher, taking on Neil’s rôle, displaying skills she had picked up over fourteen years but never really owned. She wanted to show them off now, earn that label ‘sensuous’.

  She moved her tongue to David’s ear, slowly traced its coils, acted the voluptuous daring female. Neil had used his hands as well. She stroked her own down David’s chest, heard him let out a huge great shuddering sigh as if he had been holding his breath for three whole weeks, or since he was a wild lad of thirteen, and had only now expelled it. Yet he was passive still, leaving everything to her. She remembered what he had said—‘Nothing bloody happened’. Was nothing happening now, Big David small? God! If he stayed soft as David Attwood had, she would have to judge herself a total failure, someone men found boring or repellent. She dared not feel, or run her hands that low—let them stray instead on to his stomach, then down a little further, felt the rough grin of a scar beneath her fingers.

  ‘How did you get that?’ she whispered.

  ‘Peritonitis. As a child. I almost died.’ He said it so flatly, so matter-of-factly, she wanted to shake him, tell him he had to live, love, get up off his back. Months ago, he had been urging her to trust life, yet he mistrusted it himself—at least the physical side of it—mistrusted even her. He was limp—she could tell now. The Catholic Church had done that, as it had ruined her own sex life. She would kick out every bloody priest, every straitlaced monk and nun, the Blessed Bigot Virgin, all those smarmy squeamish saints, those smug self-righteous celibates. Bea had better go as well, and prissy Mrs Anthony and every ice-cold Child of Mary who had ever simpered in her pale blue sash. And David Attwood, too, while she was about it—shaming her, reminding her of failure, making her scared ever to try again.

  ‘Get out,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Get the hell out of here and don’t come back.’

  She kicked the blankets off, struggled up, knelt across David, one leg on either side. Okay, so she was risking her eternal soul. She didn’t care. It was her instant immediate body which concerned her. It was warm now and wet now and it bloody wanted him. She was an animal with appetites, and no castrated Pope or cuntless Reverend Mother would muzzle her or make her keep her legs crossed.

  The mattress was rustling, the bed making obscene outrageous noises. Too damn bad. She had to get David stiff, turn his tiny cowering child’s prick into a grown man’s. Those sanctimonious monks had ruled him thirty years. It was her turn now. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, pressed her whole body down on his, felt something stir and twitch beneath her thighs. She had to win, she had to. She used her hands—both hands—slow, then faster, tight, then gentle, used her mouth, her tongue, her will.

  She was winning. He was larger now, much larger, still not fully stiff, but big enough to chance it. Slowly, she lowered her body onto his, inch by gradual inch, until they were almost making contact. She didn’t want to rush him, make him feel she was frustrated or impatient. They were almost almost there. She let out her breath, closed her eyes.

  He gave a sudden gasping cry, his whole body tensing in a shudder. She felt something warm and sticky spurt against her leg, dribble down. She lay absolutely still, listening to his breathing, the excited wind outside, her own heart pounding out its crazy smirking premature elation.

  ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ he was muttering, pounding his clenched fist against the mattress.

  ‘Hush.’ She kissed his neck. ‘It’s not stupid.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s worse than that. It was pathetic, completely and utterly pathetic.’

  She squeezed his hand, tried to find some words which didn’t sound too patronising. ‘Y … You could regard it as a sort of … compliment—to me.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ His voice was gruff, almost unintelligible.

  ‘Well—you know—you found me … exciting, so …’

  He groaned. ‘That’s true.’

  She took his other hand, kissed them both. ‘Don’t worry, then.’

  ‘Yes, but, you … I mean, you haven’t … I didn’t even …’

  ‘I’m fine. I feel absolutely wonderful.’

  ‘How can you? I was hopeless—a total washout.’

  ‘I … liked you coming like that.’

  ‘You’re being sarcastic now.’

  ‘I’m not, David. I did like it. I can’t explain, but it was so sort of … real—you know, surprising and spontaneous and …’

  ‘A bloody letdown.’

  ‘David, stop it. Why keep judging yourself? I know I do the same, but why should we? Who said we had to live up to some mythical five-star standard just because the sex books tell us to? I loathe those books. They’re all foreplay drills and performance-checks and homework, as if making love was a very difficult subject which …’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Look, David, according to those books, what we’ve just done would be judged a … well, not exactly a rip-roaring success. Okay, I admit that. And yet I feel marvellous, really marvellous. How do you account for that? Are they wrong, or am I?’

  David rolled towards her, unclenched his fist. ‘You … You’re not just saying that—to be … kind or something?’

  ‘No, I’m not. I can’t explain it really, even to myself, but I can honestly say it … it never felt so … good before—never in my life.’

  ‘You mean, I pleased you more than …?’

  ‘More than anyone.’

  He grabbed her, started kissing her—neck, throat, down towards her chest, still too roughly, still holding her too tight.

  ‘Gently,’ she warned.

  ‘You see, I can’t even kiss. Will you teach me?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Every night?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Whose bed, yours or mine?’

  ‘You mean the sofa?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Or the floor. There’d be more room on the floor. We could make a sort of double bed downstairs—bring the mattress down and take the sofa cushions out and lay them alongside it and then pile rugs on top and …’

  ‘You’re shameless, Morna. Father Burnett would have put you on the Index.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s dead now. My old form master. RIP.’

  ‘We’ll be spirits, then. To please him. Or angels. We could go down there now. At least it’d be warmer in the parlour, even with the fire out.’

  ‘Spirits don’t feel the cold.’

  ‘This one does.’

  ‘Shall I carry her down, then?’

  He rolled out of bed, hauled the blankets off, wrapped them round her, picked her up like a baby, groped his way in the dark towards the stairs.

  ‘Careful!’ Morna giggled. ‘You’ll fall.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’ve got wings.’

  She kissed his shoulder. ‘Lovely wings.’

  It was more lurching than flying as David clumped down the stairs, she half
-clinging to his neck, half-grabbing at the wall, both of them laughing like a pair of school kids. He laid her on the sofa, picked up the pillows, propped them behind her head.

  ‘I’ll go back for the mattress now.’

  ‘I’d better help. You’ll never manage on your own.’

  ‘Yes, I will. You stay put. Want me to light the lamp?’

  ‘No, it’s nice like this.’ The embers of the fire sent out only the faintest reddish glow, but their eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. Morna lay back, thighs parted slightly, one hand resting on her breast. She was a success, a sensual woman. All right, so David had come in fifteen seconds, before he had even entered her, but they were spirits and spirits did things differently. She could hear David manoeuvring the stairs, weighed down with sheets and mattress; got up to help him through the door. Together they constructed a bed more original than comfortable, piled it with an assortment of covers including the purple velvet curtain-tablecloth.

  Morna frowned at the result. The mattress was higher than the sofa cushions, so the bed was on two levels. ‘We’d better start again. There’s a ridge right down the middle.’

  ‘No, leave it. If you go to all that trouble, I’ll probably find I can’t even …’

  ‘Stop worrying. We’re going to go to sleep.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Yes. So long as you don’t mind a bed with a ridge.’

  ‘And you don’t mind bed with a failure?’

  ‘David …’ Morna hugged him for a moment, fiercely, let him go ‘Let’s never use that word again. Banish it. Put it on Father Barnett’s Index.’

  He didn’t answer, just eased into the makeshift bed, taking care not to dismantle it. ‘This will probably sound even more pathetic, but it’s the first time I’ve ever … shared a bed with … I mean, the others weren’t …’ He broke off. Morna imagined cars, park benches, alleyways. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Stupid, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. It makes it special. To tell the truth, I was always a bit jealous of that cousin in the bedsit. I suspected you were sharing a couch with her.’

  ‘Her?’