Maeve Kerrigan 04: The Stranger You Know

by Jane Casey

  ‘They were Catholics, as you might imagine. Irish background. Same as you.’

  ‘I’m one of two,’ I pointed out.

  ‘So your mum’s frigid or your dad couldn’t get it up more than twice. That wasn’t Mr Naylor’s problem.’

  ‘It sounds more like Mrs Naylor’s problem. Eight pregnancies is hard work.’

  ‘More that that. She had hundreds of miscarriages too. It was a four-bedroom house so God knows where they got the privacy to have sex.’

  ‘Or the time.’

  ‘Anyway, it was a madhouse, so we couldn’t go there.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  He had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘The cemetery.’

  It was a good summer that year, no hardship to be outside. And the cemetery was easy to climb into, and had secluded corners where the trees and bushes grew close together, and had benches in it where you could sit for hours, staring at the stars. It was, by definition, quiet. They could be alone together which was more than you could say for any of the local parks. They were full of teenagers drinking and carousing once the sun went down. Josh didn’t really want an audience when he was with Angela. It might damage his reputation if people saw him handling her like she was bone china.

  She was the one who made all the running. She was the one who whispered the things she’d like to do to him. She was the one who stroked his cock through his jeans, who went out with no bra on so he could see her nipples through her top, who bit his lip when they kissed and left purple love bites on his neck. She was the one who sat on his lap, straddling him, and ground her pelvis against him until he came in his pants.

  I blinked. ‘You’re really not holding back, are you?’

  ‘You need to understand how it was.’ He picked up his beer but stopped before he drank from it. ‘That hasn’t happened since, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Josh got in the habit of bringing a rug and a bottle of wine when they went to the cemetery. He was careful not to let Angela drink too much because she wasn’t used to it and it made her silly. She had to face her parents when she got home and they were wary enough of her being out at all hours without her being blind drunk when she came back. She always left the house looking modest, with a cardigan hiding whatever skimpy top she was wearing to excite him, and her hair in a little-girl ponytail. Somewhere along the way she shed the cardigan, the hair-tie and her inhibitions. It scared him, sometimes, the way she was. It worried him. He was the one who tried to slow things down. But Angela had other ideas.

  ‘She wanted to pop her cherry before we went back to school. She had a thing about it. One of the reasons she was with me was because everyone knew I’d shagged around a lot.’ A long swallow of beer. ‘Which was a total lie. I’d never done it. I didn’t mind, obviously, because it was a lot better for my reputation. And the girls didn’t mind because it was a status thing to have shagged me – no one wanted to admit I hadn’t done it with them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He started peeling the label. ‘I couldn’t admit that I hadn’t. I couldn’t take the risk that when I lost it, whoever I did it with would tell everyone I was crap. I was scared, basically. Vinny had done it a few times, with a few different girls. Shane had a girlfriend called Mags and she was into all sorts. She had a copy of the Kama Sutra and she was making him work through it.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Poor bloke. She wouldn’t let him skip anything. I still remember him saying, “Sometimes I just want a hand shandy and a nice lie-down”.’

  I laughed with him. ‘Are you still in touch with Shane?’

  ‘No.’ The answer was quick, the change in his mood instant. The room felt colder and darker.

  ‘Back to the story,’ I said.

  Josh wasn’t going to tell Angela he was a virgin too. There was plenty of time to confess when they were older. He’d already decided he was going to propose to her on her eighteenth birthday. If he trained as an electrician, he’d have to do an apprenticeship but then he’d be earning good money. There was always a demand for sparks in the building trade. His uncle was an electrician; he’d told him about it. The careers teacher at school shook her head over it because she wanted him to go to university, but he told her he’d made up his mind.

  ‘I thought the sun shone out of Angela. I’d have done anything for her.’ He sounded bemused. ‘Never felt that way about anyone before or since.’

  ‘The first time you fall in love is special.’

  ‘It was going to be the only time,’ he said coldly.

  ‘You were very young.’

  ‘I knew what I wanted. It was her.’

  I nodded, thinking of my first serious boyfriend, Gerard, and how very glad I was that we hadn’t got engaged. He had cried every time we had sex.

  Every. Time.

  The charm of that kind of thing wore off after a while.

  ‘Anyway,’ Derwent said. ‘We were serious about each other is what I’m saying. And I’d have killed myself rather than hurt her.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I’m going to need another beer.’ He stood up and bolted out of the room and I could only wonder what was so bad that he wasn’t prepared to share it with me, given everything else he’d said without turning a hair. He came back with two bottles and handed me one.

  ‘I know you said you didn’t want one—’

  ‘But now I do.’

  He opened his, then threw me his keys so I could use the bottle opener on his key ring. It was in the shape of a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Cute,’ I observed.

  ‘It was a present.’

  ‘From someone who knows you well?’

  ‘Someone I was going out with a while back. She liked shagging a copper.’

  ‘Did you have to use your cuffs on her? Wear your uniform?’

  He smirked so I knew he had, and I concentrated on swapping the bottle for the glass on the precious coffee table. Never ask a question if you don’t want the answer.

  ‘I appreciate you doing this, you know,’ Derwent said.

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘Do you need to call Rob to tell him where you are?’

  ‘No. He’s not my keeper.’ No need to tell Derwent he was thousands of miles away, I thought. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Young. Happy. In love.’ He sighed. ‘Then everything turned to shit.’

  I sat and listened while Derwent told me about the end of Angela Poole’s short life. I kept my mouth shut this time and let him tell it his way. And after the first couple of minutes, I think he’d even forgotten I was there.

  1992

  The mirror in the bathroom was steamed up, which wasn’t all that surprising after the – Josh checked – twenty-three minutes he had spent in the shower. The bathroom was tropical and he’d used all the hot water. He swiped at the glass with a towel and succeeded only in smearing it. He still couldn’t see himself clearly enough to risk shaving.

  ‘Fuck my luck.’ He ran a hand over his chin, feeling the velvety fuzz of a day’s growth. It wasn’t so bad that he had to shave, not really. But he had a bit of a thing about showing respect for Angela. When they spent as long snogging as the two of them tended to, any stubble at all made her skin go blotchy, which made her folks suspicious, and made him feel guilty.

  So. Shaving.

  He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his hips, as low as he could sling it without it sliding off altogether. Then he leaned over and opened the bathroom window wide, resting his elbows on the sill. A lawnmower whined in the distance and some kids played on a trampoline in the garden behind, singing pop songs at the tops of their voices. Summer made him happy.

  Angela made him happy.

  The mirror was drying off and he could see himself in it again. He looked at his torso critically, wondering if it was his imagination that his chest and shoulders were bigger. He’d worked on them enough. He curled his arm, staring at the bulge of his biceps. Not bad.
/>   He shaved quickly, without cutting himself, pulling faces in the mirror for his own amusement. God, it was boring. A lifetime of this, unless he grew a beard, but Angela wouldn’t like a beard. So no beard. He finished off with a handful of Cool Water, the aftershave she loved. It stung like a bastard on his skin and he swore, his eyes swimming in sudden tears. It was good pain, though. Part of the ritual, like wearing a clean T-shirt or checking the condoms were in the side pocket of his backpack.

  The condoms. If she’d known they were there, they’d have done it the previous week. He didn’t know why he hadn’t said they were in the bag. He wanted to do it – God, he wanted it so much the anticipation sat in the middle of his brain, blocking all logical thought. He had to think around the sides of it as best he could. But when it came to it, he couldn’t just say it to her. Now, in the bathroom, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. She wanted to as much as he did, if not more. She’d have been delighted.

  But tonight was the night. At last. He gave a shiver of anticipation and stared at himself again, wondering afterwards if he would look different or just feel different.

  He was looking good, he decided. He was tanned. His hair hung down from a centre parting as far as his eyebrows. From the nape of his neck to halfway up his head he had a blade two cut. Mrs Beale at school had told him he looked like he should be in a boy band with a haircut like that, and he’d just looked at her without saying anything until she went red and walked off. It was common knowledge that she fancied him, undoing an extra button on her blouse before his class came in for their geography lesson. He didn’t mind. He never minded when women liked him. He liked saying things to see if he got a reaction from them – a catch in their breath, the blood coming to their cheeks, their pupils dilating. And it was so easy.

  He tilted his head back to give his tough-guy stare, his come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough look. It looked good, he decided. It wasn’t a shock that he was popular with the girls, when all was said and done. But he was still young. No hair on his chest to speak of. He ran his finger down the trail that went from his belly button to beneath the towel, imagining Angela stroking the hair with her small, perfect fingers. His cock sprang to life instantly and he held it, thinking about later. Thinking about what she’d said to him the previous week, her hand sliding up and down on it the way he’d shown her.

  ‘I want to suck it.’

  He hadn’t allowed her to. She’d be disgusted with herself afterwards, he thought. And he didn’t want her doing that kind of thing, not at her age. Fifteen was too young to be giving blowjobs. But the idea of it – her tongue flickering around the tip, her pretty mouth stretched wide to accommodate him as he thrust, his hand on her head, pushing her down on it …

  Fucking hell. He groaned, checking his watch. He had time, he thought, for a wank before he finished getting ready. It was a good idea to relieve some of the pressure.

  And it wouldn’t take long.

  He felt ten feet tall, walking along her street with his backpack slung over one shoulder. He’d got a bottle of wine from a mate who worked at an off-licence in town and the bag was heavy. She was outside her house already, sitting on the brick pillar beside the gate. Her father had grown a massive hedge in front of the house, for privacy, and it needed cutting back. All he could see of her at first were her feet, crossed at the ankle, neat in white Converse. He liked that about her – that she didn’t feel the need to mince around in stupid heels when they had walls to scale and grass to trudge through. She was brave, he thought, and steady. Not a squealer. She was like him.

  He got right up close to her before she realised he was there. ‘All right, babe.’

  ‘Josh!’ She went to slide down off the pillar but he got there in time to stop her, sliding between her knees and reaching up for a long, greedy kiss. She wrapped her legs around his waist, laughing a little as her denim miniskirt edged up towards her hips.

  ‘This is risky.’

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘Yeah. Getting ready to go.’

  ‘He’ was her dad. He drove buses, and this week it was the night bus. He worshipped Angela. If he knew the truth about what they’d been doing together he’d castrate Josh with rusty scissors and smile while he did it. Then he’d never speak to her again.

  Josh didn’t give a fuck at that precise moment. She was so warm, so real in his arms. He kissed her again, her tongue teasing his and he remembered what she’d said, and how he imagined her running that tongue over his bell end, and he was rock hard, which she could feel, which made her laugh, again. He turned his head to let her nuzzle his neck – she had a thing about it, especially when he’d just shaved – and his eyes wandered to the house next door, and up to the front bedroom, where a figure was standing in the window, watching them. Fat Stu. Fifteen, like Angela, but that was all they had in common. He was short and podgy with a feathered fringe, like Princess Diana, and buck teeth that would pay for an orthodontist’s five-star beach holiday if his parents weren’t too mean to get them fixed. He wore black at weekends and listened to the Smiths, very loud, which was enough for Josh to be sure he was gay. He looked like a beaver, Josh thought, and that was what he called him – beaver boy. Or Fat Stu. Or dickhead. Or gaylord. Or anything else that came to mind.

  Josh held Fat Stu’s gaze while he took a good handful of Angela’s arse and squeezed it, his fingers sliding towards the cleft of her buttocks. He ran the other hand up her back, the middle finger extended. Go fuck yourself, beaver boy. Even at that distance he could see the colour rushing into Stu’s cheeks before he turned away and disappeared. What was he doing, anyway, standing there in his mother’s bedroom? Probably trying on her clothes. Josh had a vision of him wearing high heels and stockings with suspenders on his invisible bottom half, and had to turn his head to bury his face in Angela’s hair so she wouldn’t notice him grinning and ask why. He didn’t want to talk about Fat Stu.

  The distraction had at least taken his mind off sex so his erection had subsided enough to allow him to walk down the street.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Sure about this?’

  Another emphatic nod.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  It was nine by the time they got to the cemetery and the sun had set but only just, the sky still streaked with pink and purple clouds. Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. August was a funny month: hot, but the nights were getting longer, and the trees were starting to turn here and there. Summer wasn’t going to last much longer. Josh didn’t want to think about that, though. Didn’t want to think about A levels and university versus apprenticeships and homework and stress from his folks and not seeing Angela. They’d have to abandon their cemetery soon and he couldn’t think where else to go. Keeping the gloom to himself, Josh helped Angela climb the wall, her skirt riding high as she scrambled over. He swung himself up and over, landing on the grass beside her with a thud.

  ‘Usual place?’

  ‘Where else?’

  The usual place was the far side of the graveyard, away from the houses, in an area that was mainly old gravestones. They were mossy, broken, the inscriptions faded away by years of polluted rain. Long ago, grieving families had planted trees around their loved ones’ graves, and they had grown tangled and unkempt, draped in ivy, climbing roses blossoming on briars that threaded through the branches. Sensibly, the council hadn’t attempted to fix it. The health and safety types had stuck a notice up warning about entry at your own risk and someone had donated a bench to go under the largest tree, and there was a patch of flat ground in front of it that was just right for the rug. It didn’t feel like they were in a graveyard, there.

  The hardest part was getting across the graveyard in the gathering dusk. Josh had eyes like a cat and didn’t mind it, but Angela often stumbled. They had to go fast in case anyone saw them. He didn’t fancy explaining what they were doing to a nosy groundsman, or a neighbour, or even the police. This time, t
hey made it without difficulty, though his heart was thudding in his chest like a heavy bass beat.

  That would be excitement, a detached part of his brain observed. He looked at Angela, whose chest was rising and falling rapidly, and grinned at her.

  ‘So here we are.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiled, sliding the bag off his shoulder and unzipping it, taking out the rug and unfolding it.

  She was complicit in her own downfall.

  She was happy.

  Later, much later, and the sky had darkened to a brilliant blue that was as clear as glass. Angela’s knickers were on the ground beside them, her top pushed up, her skirt around her waist. She smiled up at him, her eyes hazy with lust and alcohol, and let her knees fall apart.

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘Ange.’ He was breathing hard.

  ‘Go on.’ She propped herself up on one elbow and ran a hand up his chest to stroke his face, then down again to his cock. ‘I want you in me.’