by Betty Burton
‘I never knew a man as cock-sure as you, Duke Barney.’
He had pulled away, just his head and shoulders, as he tried to see her by the light of the moon and stars, his hips still pressed against hers, the smell of tar strongly about him. He laughed as he leaned back. ‘Buggered if you ever will again, Lu Wilmott.’
She was no more gentle than he, but her body was soft and rounded, so that the thrusting of her hips did not bruise; so she used her teeth and fingers.
For both of them standing against the oak tree, they tempted and teased, holding out against the moment when they must give in to – not a long-awaited love-making – but to fierce, vibrant, earthy lust. ‘This is what you wanted since you saw it showing itself off to you over at Swallitt Pool.’ He was manly, insecure, and needed to know that women wanted him… wanted it.
Often over the last year she had experienced panting, perspiring, erotic dreams. Duke, from an earlier existence in his faun guise. David, with his weight impressing the pleats of the Lascelles gown into her skin. Casual boyfriends who had kissed her. Miss Lake and other people who disappeared at the moment of waking up. Her need to be satisfied by real sex with a real man had been spreading in the way that a forest fire can burn below the surface of the soil, insidiously, until it can no longer be contained.
It seemed inevitable that it would be Duke who would turn up. When he did, it seemed inevitable that he would supply the oxygen that would set her afire.
‘I reckon you didn’t want to stand up for a man till I came and broke you.’
‘Think what you like, Duke Barney, but just stop talking like a horse-dealer trying to talk up your stock to the crowd.’
He laughed, pleased with himself, pleased with her. ‘There wasn’t never no doubt that we’d got a deal.’
When their moist skin came into contact Lu remembered vividly how white his youthful skin had been. Now as it touched her own it felt hot, and soft. He clutched her hips, lifted her, drew her hard against him whilst she held him tightly about his slim waist, responding instinctively. Easily, expertly perhaps, he moved into her. There was no virginal resistance, no momentary recoil. No hesitation. Mrs Steiner’s little device was in the box with her Saturday-night dance shoes, where it was least needed. But at least Duke Barney had come prepared.
What she and Duke were, each to the other, was the missing half of their sexual whole. No matter who or what she might pretend to be at other times, with her body in contact with Duke Barney’s, she was a sexual and lustful woman, and he would have found her no more desirable had she been dressed in the Lascelles gown.
Separately, using each other selfishly, they each strove to satisfy their own lust, but all the while aware that if they were going to experience the profound and supreme climax they expected, they must reach it simultaneously.
To extend the last moments they held one another still. Kissing, hardly breathing. Their bodies alive to every last spark of erotic anticipation before they let themselves go. Their senses were raw as they climbed to the peak of this most physical kind of dervishing. When they reached it, the extreme sensation was almost violent in its power. Not an encounter in any way spiritual, just elemental; lusty hunger being fed the sensation it craved; bodies of positive and negative force drawn by a primitive instinct neither of them questioned.
Their parting was as unceremonious as their meeting a few hours earlier. She let herself out of his car outside the corner shop. David Hatton would have been there holding it open, offering a hand to help her step out. Duke did at least casually walk round to her side, hands thrust into his trousers pockets.
‘Here, I got this for you.’
It felt like a small pebble wrapped in crumpled tissue paper.
‘What is it?’
‘Near as I could get to your birthstone. It’s not polished or set or anything, just its natural self as it was when it came out of the rock.’ His voice had a much gentler edge than earlier. ‘Just put it in your pocket. If it falls in the gutter you won’t find it again.’
‘My birthstone?’
‘Should be a moonstone, seeing as you was born to the summer solstice, but this is better.’
Lu, unable to contain her curiosity, carefully unrolled the ball of tissue paper in the light of the car’s big headlamps to reveal a piece of stone in which another stone swelled like a bubble. ‘I can see it’s not a moonstone. What is it?’
He came round to where she stood and leaned nonchalantly against the radiator grille. ‘It’s an opal – a black one, pretty rare.’
‘I know.’
‘It don’t signify nothing. It’s just that I had the chance to get it, so I did. I always knew I’d be down this way some time, so I kept it about me.’
‘But I can’t—’
‘You can. What would I do with it? It an’t any use to anybody else. In any case, it’s yours now. If you don’t want it, give it away… chuck it away if you like. It an’t mine now.’
‘It must be valuable.’
‘It is. Duke Barney don’t give away trash. Only remember, I said it don’t signify nothing.’
He was lying. It signified that he must have been thinking of her a lot more than she had been thinking of him, knew a lot more, remembered a lot more.
‘When I left home my pa give me his earring. He said, “Don’t be afraid to sell it, but sell it for something worth having. Don’t get sentimental over it: it’s only gold and there’s plenty more where that came from.”’
‘And did you sell it?’
‘’Course I did. When I bought my first stud, I had to put up a year’s rent for the stabling. I didn’t have enough, so I sold the earring. It fetched a good price too. Pa said I got a good deal on it.’
He went back to the driver’s side of his car, and started the engine. For a moment Lu wished that she loved him, or could fall in love with him. For a moment too she wished that she was going wherever he was going and not back home. She hurried along the pavement. The car drew away. The lights in the house were out. Ray and Bar had not waited up. A little way on he stopped the car and began to reverse. He stopped it beside her and, keeping the engine running, leaned over and wound down the window.
‘You don’t belong here. You should get out.’
He revved up the engine and was gone.
She sat for a short while on the front doorstep. Front doorsteps in Lampeter Street were as near as the people there would ever get to the seats on the balconies of the Southsea villas, a place to watch the world go by. She held the stone up to the gas-lamp outside Number 110. In the overnight case she had bought for the Bournemouth trip, she kept certain possessions that would go with her when she left home. Her journal – pages and pages of which were now filled with her clear, round handwriting – the sparkling diamond hair-slide which never failed to bring a great longing to her mood. She never knew what it was she longed for; perhaps that experience when, in the course of a few weeks, the whole world seemed to open up and spread and grow like a Chinese paper flower in water. Ann Carter’s pocket-piece: a strange item, containing a kind of power she did not believe in; yet she often sat holding it, rubbing her fingers over the smooth surface. The photo Ted had given her, the cross and chain that had been her mum’s. Not much else really.
Now she had this. This large and valuable piece of precious stone that Duke Barney said he had ‘kept about him’. She fingered its unusual surface. What made it precious? Rarity. No rarer than the ash pocket-piece which was unique. Her virginity was even more so. What did Duke Barney think of that? Only two men had aroused her to such heights of desire, the kind of passion where, for its duration, only that matters and nothing else. She could have given her virginity to either of them, it wouldn’t have mattered which, really. It just happened to be Duke. Another of those coincidences that had often exercised her mind: the what-ifs. What if she hadn’t hung up on Lady Margaret? Would David have thrust upon her a rare opal still embedded in its rock? A dark stone that had the power to fla
sh out red fire? No, it was not David’s style, he would be more likely to give polished and set moonstones. How different they were, the two men who captured her imagination. Or were they? What did it matter, she had at last experienced real sex as she had always imagined it would be. It happened with Duke, and it had been a marvel.
* * *
Ray had taken Bar to the pictures, a romantic film full of laughter and tears, the kind of story Bar loved and wept at unashamedly. At a point where a baby had hovered between life and death, with tears streaming down her face, she had said, ‘Oh, that poor little mite.’ Ray had been quite unable to do anything but put his arm about her and let her cry on his shoulder until the baby recovered.
All the way back from town to Lampeter Street, he had kept his arm round her as she chattered away giving her own idiosyncratic view of the story. ‘I wouldn’t a let it get that far without doing something about it. Anybody could see that baby was bad. Keep trying to feed it milk like that was bound to make things worse… cool boiled water, that’s all it needed. People in films are so daft at times.’
Ray had let himself go as far as to press her to him and say, ‘I never knew anybody like you in my whole life, Barbara.’
Then, as she had done once before, Bar took the initiative and kissed him. A group of youths lounging outside the billiard hall whistled. Ray said, ‘They’re probably wondering what a pretty young girl is doing kissing an old bloke.’
She waved at the youths and called out, ‘It’s because I love him.’
‘You might think you do, but—’
She cut him short. ‘Ray, I can’t help it if you don’t love me, nor can you help it if you’re set on somebody older.’
‘It’s not—’
‘Let me finish. I know what the matter is. But I think if you just stopped for half a minute and tried to see things like they really are… Lu isn’t your baby sister no longer, she’s a grown woman. Duke knows that, he’ll treat her like a proper woman.’
‘I know she is, but it’s hard to accept, and I have to be honest, when you said she’d gone off with Duke. In her working clothes, too. It’s not like Lu to go off like that. I didn’t like it.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that. Anybody’d have thought he was the goat-king himself had carried her off.’ She was not far wrong. He didn’t reply. ‘The thing is, Ray, even if they was going off to do that sort of thing to each another, it’s their business.’
‘I’m still responsible for her.’
‘You’re not! You still wait up for her when she’s been to a dance – that’s treating her like a child. It’s time you let her go her own way.’
When they were back inside Number 110, she took his face between her hands and gave him a nice, comforting kiss. ‘I don’t know about me being too young for you, there’s times when I feel I’m your wise old grandmother.’ He put his arms round her, linked his hands in the small of her back and looked closely at her. ‘Are you sure about it? I couldn’t bear it if you went off me when my hair starts getting grey and you’re still young.’
‘There’s about the same difference between you and me as between your aunty at Roman’s and Mr Wilmott. She haven’t gone off of him.’
‘I do love you, Barbara. Really love you, and I know I shan’t ever love anybody else.’
‘Well, then… are you ready to go to bed with me?’
He really had no more strength to resist her. He no longer wanted to. It would be a long time before he could face up to what Lu might get up to with a man like Duke Barney but, in admitting to himself that she might get up to something, he was admitting to himself that she was now a woman. ‘Not in your bed.’
‘Of course not. It’s Lu’s bed, anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t want Lu to find us…’
‘Making love like grown-up people?’ She grinned and began unknotting his tie. ‘Best hurry up then.’
Ray’s bed was narrow, but they found as much delight in it as in a four-poster with a feather mattress strewn with rose petals. It would never have occurred to Ray that they might be better on the floor. So, predictably conventional, behind closed doors, curtains drawn, Ray made love to Bar. Man to woman. Lover to beloved. Gentle kisses. Happily satisfying. A real act of love. Not to be likened to the transaction between the other couple, hungrily taking of one another in the open air, instinctive, lustful, hedonistic, standing with the oak tree, joined at the hips.
* * *
As usual that winter, a general invitation was sent to the ‘Queenform’ girls to attend one of the buffet-suppers given to entertain the crew of a visiting ship. It came just at the right time to cheer them up a bit during the dark days. It was a star event for the Ezzard’s girls.
Kate Roles was full of it, all the girls were. Except Lu.
‘It’s only one step up from taking girls out on the bum-boats to entertain sailors like they do in the South Seas.’
‘Oh, shut up being such a Jonah. You’ve always wanted to come, I don’t know why you’re being like this.’
Now that she knew what she knew about David’s background, nothing would induce Lu to put herself in the way of an accidental meeting with Captain Gore.
‘Lu! You haven’t heard a word I said, have you? You’ve been in a right queer mood lately. You need taking out of yourself, you should come.’
‘No, I said I’ll go somewhere with Lena.’
‘I don’t know why she don’t come too. Always shut up on her own.’
‘Not everybody wants to be always gadding about like you and me.’
‘Yes, but it isn’t natural, the way she won’t go nowhere.’ Lu knew that Kate was right, but Kate didn’t know how afraid Lena was of her brother. Lu wished he would hurry up and sign on again. He had been home for weeks now.
Lena found some comfort in repeating that his money couldn’t last for ever, and then he’d have to sign on. But until he did, Lu and Bar did what they could to stop Lena becoming a total hermit when she wasn’t at work. Lena had said that she would go to a show with them, but she probably wouldn’t when it came to it.
Although he would have denied it as too daft for words, Ray was a bit resentful of Lu and Bar’s attention to Lena. ‘I can’t understand why you want to sit in a garret when you’ve got a nice comfortable place here.’ Bar had said, ‘She’s just a poor thing, Ray, how would you like it being shut up on your own?’ and Ray had said, ‘You’re too softhearted.’ Bar had answered back sharply, ‘What would you do then, let her get on with it?’
All around Lu, on the afternoon of the day of the dance at the base, were girls with their hair in pins and covered with scarves tied into turbans. Early in the evening, a coach from the naval base would arrive at the works gate to collect them, dressed, lipsticked and earringed, and looking vastly different from their daytime selves. What they loved most of all was the elaborate buffet, the politeness with which they were greeted by the sailors under the watchful eye of their officers, and the general air of being special for the one night.
‘I shan’t be able to eat a thing,’ Kate wailed. ‘I never can. I starve myself all day, and get that worked up that when I see all that lovely food, I can’t swallow it for excitement. And it’s a Yankee ship, too; they always have the best food.’
‘Rubbish,’ Lu said. ‘One dance with a jivey American sailor and you’ll love it.’
‘I know, it’s just the anticipation. Perhaps nobody will dance with me.’
‘Oh Kate! In your red dress and your hair all in ringlets, they won’t be able to resist you.’ On these occasions, Kate took infinite pains over her thick, blonde hair, keeping it rolled around sausages of cotton wool all day and then teasing it out into a thousand curls.
‘Would it look bad if I didn’t wear my engagement ring?’
Knowing what was expected of her friendship, Lu said, ‘Of course it wouldn’t. If I were you, I’d leave it at home. Then you’ll be sure you won’t lose it.’
‘You’re right, it is a bit l
oose. Only I wouldn’t want anybody to get the wrong idea.’
They were talking quietly without looking up from their machines. Kate had taken out her cotton wool and had wrapped an artificial silk scarf loosely about her head. ‘Damn! The belt’s come off.’ As the belts deteriorated, they slackened: it was a common enough occurrence that Lu didn’t even look up. All machinists were adept at slipping the belt back on to the drive-wheel without the need to call the mechanic.
Suddenly, Kate let out a shriek of pain and horror. Lu was off her stool in a flash. Other girls fell over one another to get to Kate’s station as they realized that her scarf and hair were being twisted around the belt. Kate was screaming and holding on to her hair like grim death. Lu jumped over her own table to get to the belt and help Kate hold on to her hair.
George rushed out. ‘Turn it off… turn off the power,’ Lu yelled.
But there was no power-switch on the factory floor. The belts were power-driven from the basement, and it was only there that the power could be cut.
Nellie thrust scissors into Lu’s hand. Without knowing how she managed it without the scissors being flicked out of her hands by the belt, Lu sliced through the mass of Kate’s yellow-blonde hair which was fast becoming saturated with blood. The belt slapped on and on, free now to take a great bundle of Kate’s hair with it. The security man had run downstairs to get the power turned off there, but it was a bit late now.
Kate fainted, blood running down her face and dripping on to her apron. Lu caught her as she fell and they lowered her to the floor. Lu became almost as bloodied as Kate herself.
