Hot Breath

by Sarah Harrison

  I saw Gareth and waved. Someone waved back, but it was not my son. It was Constantine Ghikas, dressed predominantly in white, hallmark of the single and childless person. He looked, though not angelic, like an angel. And I felt like a soul in purgatory, clamouring at the gates.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as I went over to him, ‘you look as if you ought to be on the pitch instead of watching.’

  ‘I’m not sure how to take that,’ I said.

  ‘You look delightful,’ he assured me. ‘All that jogging pays off, take my word for it. Now tell me,’ he went on smoothly, saving my blushes, ‘is your boy playing here?’

  ‘Yes, this is the Tomahawks, in red and white,’ I explained. ‘And that’s Gareth, in central defence.’

  ‘He’s a tall boy.’

  ‘Yes, he’s very mature for thirteen. I hope he’s going to do me credit.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry …’ Constantine placed his hand, for a fleeting moment, between my shoulder blades, where it seemed to scorch a hole in the primrose T-shirt. ‘After all, I shall be a servant of the club, shan’t I? Rather than the other way round.’

  In the event, the match was one of those draws after which the opposition (Byefield Badgers) asseted with vehemence and some justification that they had been robbed. The Badgers were all over the Toms for ninety per cent of the game, scored one blinder, and peppered the cross bar with chances. But at the eleventh hour, as a result of a scuffle in the goal mouth which Trevor was powerless to untangle, they suffered an own-goal and had not been able to redeem themselves in the remaining minutes of the match.

  ‘Well?’ I asked Constantine, as the two teams moved contentiously off the field. ‘What do you think of them? Of course that’s not the full team.’

  ‘Gareth is a useful player,’ he said. ‘No, I really mean that. And the other big boy … the one with the moustache—’

  ‘Brett Troye.’

  ‘No, honestly? He’s not bad, either. The rest are so-so.’

  At this moment Robbo bustled up, clasping Eric round the waist as if he might at any moment try to escape.

  ‘Would it be Dr Ghikas? The name’s Makepeace.’

  ‘How do you do, Mike,’ said Constantine.

  ‘Sorry? No, Makepeace, Robbo Makepeace, how do you do.

  And this is Mr Chittenden, our rector, who is also secretary of the Tomahawks.’

  ‘Eric, please,’ said Eric.

  ‘Eric,’ said Constantine.

  Trevor, perspiring and agitated, joined us from the pitch and wrung Constantine by the hand.

  ‘Trevor Tunnel,’ he gasped. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I walked into something.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Consantine.

  We stood round him like a barber shop quartet with our heads on one side, waiting, as it were, for the nod.

  Robbo rubbed his hands together. ‘ Well, doctor,’ he said, with an air of gleeful anticipation. ‘Can we take it that your presence here is a positive indication that you will be joining the club next season?’ His eyes flicked to me. ‘Harriet here said she would approach you.’

  ‘Oh, she has,’ said Constantine, ‘ and she was most persuasive. I’d be delighted to help out if I can. I’ve just been acquainting myself with the talent.’

  Robbo’s eyes rested for a second on my exposed upper thighs. I saw an uncharacteristic lewd joke rising from the long-forgotten depths of his mind like a leviathan, and stepped in quickly to deflect it.

  ‘I think Dr Ghikas feels we were rather lucky there,’ I said. Over their shoulders I caught sight of Brian Jolliffe, a picture of dejection, sitting on the steps of the hall. ‘Badgers should have won.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ said Eric. ‘But it’s a funny game, football.’

  This was the cue for a positive hail of clichés.

  ‘That’s so true,’ said Robbo. ‘Live a hundred years, you’ll never understand fupbore.’

  ‘It’s one thing out here,’ said Trevor, a shade pettishly, ‘ and quite another in there. Quite another.’

  ‘But this is the game’s great charm, isn’t it?’ said Constantine, joining in with a will, ‘its unpredictability? It’s not always the best man who wins, that’s part of the fascination. I freely admit that football’s a passion with me.’

  ‘Oh, doctor …!’ said Robbo, shaking his head and clasping Constantine’s shoulders, much affected. ‘You don’t know what that does to me, hearing you say that. Fupbore!’ He looked round at the rest of us. ‘Greatest game in the world when it’s played right. And it starts here—’ he thumped his left pectoral with the side of his fist. ‘If it’s not here—’ more thumping—‘you can’t appreciate fupbore, and you can’t play it.’

  ‘And that goes for all of us,’ said Eric, looking faintly embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t run off with any ideas, doctor,’ said Trevor. ‘That wasn’t such a bad game those boys were playing, looked at from my position.’

  ‘Nor from mine, I assure you,’ said Constantine suavely. ‘The talent is there, without a doubt. And I’m sure they’ve been soundly coached,’ he added tactfully. ‘But the thing isn’t quite jelling.’

  I smiled appreciatively. I knew all about things not jelling. He was using the same terminology that I employed when the Erans asked to read my book. It sounded okay, profound even, but it meant nothing.

  ‘All I can say is, doctor,’ said Robbo, having said a good deal, ‘it’s really good to see you here and welcome you to the club. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say how much we looked forward to working with you, promoting good fupbore in the area. I hope our lads put on a reasonable show for you—they’re good lads really, but they need motivating.’

  ‘Yes, we shall have to see what we can do,’ said Constantine.

  ‘Will you join us at our end-of-season family disco next Saturday?’ enquired Eric. ‘ It’s usually a good evening.’

  ‘I’m planning to come. Thank you.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Trevor. ‘I’m on.’

  This was the signal for our group to disperse, with more hand-wringing and shoulder-clasping. You’d have thought Constantine had just personally rescued the entire club from immolation.

  ‘Golly,’ he said as we walked away. ‘ They do take it seriously.’

  ‘Having second thoughts?’

  ‘No, not at all. Commitment’s the thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘It sounds right, yes.’ I felt an incipient giggle contorting my face, but feeling that levity at the club’s expense might queer my pitch I quickly smothered it, and said: ‘ Shall we see where the Tomahawks are playing next?’

  From the fixtures board we ascertained that the Toms would be next but one on pitch two. This was on the far side of the rec, on a gentle downward slope which meant that from the village hall only the top halves of the players were visible. Beyond the pitch the rec was bordered by a row of weather-warped cypresses, planted by the parish council some years ago to protect the playing field from the biting wind which hurtled each winter across the flat farmlands of Barfordshire, direct from the Russian steppe. At this time of year that part of the rec would be a pleasantly secluded sun trap.

  ‘Shall we walk round and sit in the sun?’ I suggested. ‘I brought a picnic.’

  ‘Did you really? What, enough for two?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful. I was just thinking it was Mrs Atkin’s hot dogs or nothing.’

  ‘No contest,’ I said, a shade uncharitably, but fortunately he laughed.

  Down on the south side of pitch two it was hot and virtually unpopulated except for a linesman with his back to us. We sat on the grass and Constantine accepted a chicken leg and a mugful of Valpolicella. Badgers and Cougars got under way, but we didn’t pay them much attention.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Consantine in a conversational tone, ‘ do you miss your husband?’

  I nearly choked on my pepperami. ‘ Sorry?’

  ‘Your husband—do you miss him?’

&
nbsp; Now this was undoubtedly the moment at which the woman practised in the arts of extramarital coquetry would have been ready with some amusing quip, both ambiguous and alluring, with which to wind in the fish. Sadly, I was not that woman.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I mean,’ I continued, in an awkward rash of elucidation, ‘ you asked if I actually missed George and I—’

  ‘Said no.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perfectly straightforward.’

  I glanced at him. He wrapped his chicken bone in his paper napkin and licked his fingers. Then he picked up his beaker of plonk and very delicately removed a small insect from its surface with his finger and thumb. I had the unnerving experience of not only not knowing the score, but not having the foggiest whose court the ball was in.

  I took refuge, as I so often did, in food, and rummaged in my holdall.

  ‘Would you like some cherries? Or a yoghurt?’

  ‘Cherries sound nice.’

  As Badgers and Cougars changed ends, I placed the brown paper bag on the grass between us and we helped ourselves, in silence. My silence was the hot-cheeked, dry-mouthed one of the totally tongue-tied, his the serene and contemplative one of the man in charge. Occasionally, as the final action-packed minutes of the match were played out before us, our hands met in the bag, fingers scrabbling and feeling for the fruit, prising the ripe ones off their stems and carrying them to our mouths. Some of the cherries were overripe and bruised, exuding a good deal of sticky juice. It was impossible, surely, for him to ignore the resemblance between the cherries and those parts of the body with which our fingers might otherwise have been engaged?

  We ate the cherries and stared unseeingly as whistles blew, flags were waved, fouls declared and free kicks awarded. As we ate, we blew out the stones, which soon formed a ragged line in front of us—the asterisks, as it were, which in the past I had used to such good effect in my novels—his a little further away than mine.

  The match ended and Badgers, Cougars and attendants moved away over the rising ground towards the administrative nucleus, while the rogue elephant trumpeted instructions. We were left alone.

  ‘The other night,’ said Constantine, ‘ when I came back, after the dinner party …’

  ‘Yes?’ I barked.

  ‘I can’t pretend my motives were entirely polite.’

  ‘Weren’t they?’ I was overtaken by a dizzying sense of absurdity. We were still neither of us looking at the other, but eating cherries at a terrific rate and blowing out the stones like machine gun fire. Even at this moment of delicate sexual tension I could not help thinking that the inevitable loosening of our respective bowels might pip us, so to speak, at the post.

  ‘You don’t behave like a grass widow,’ he said. ‘ You’re so—’

  I caught my breath. This was it, he was going to supply the missing link.

  ‘So—tempting,’ he concluded.

  It was, like the rest of him, perfect. I could not have dreamed up an ending to his sentence which more smoothly married flattery with expediency. The word ‘tempting’ projected on to me the luscious, passive availability of a cream cake … and in the same way portrayed him as the helpless victim of a powerful, but inert, allure. We were both, by virtue of that word, innocent flotsam tossed on a wild and raging sea of lust.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  It never occurred to me that it might not be a compliment. And any doubts were dispelled, galvanically, by the feel of his hand slipping inside the elasticated waist of my running shorts, beneath the clinging edge of my St Michael briefs, and between the cheeks of my backside, until it rested beneath me, his long, knowledgeable fingers exploring, gripping and probing as they had not two minutes since in the bag of cherries.

  I sat motionless, a human shishkebab, all thought and feeling concentrated on my skewered cunt. I pictured his finger, as on a TV screen, like one of those enchanting little rodents so beloved of David Attenborough, bustling about its cross-sectioned burrow, fitting as snugly as a cock in a condom.

  ‘Golly,’ I squeaked, like Merril of Mallory Towers on hearing she’s been voted most popular girl in the school. ‘Steady on.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Constantine. ‘I shall.’

  I closed my eyes. He continued with his deluxe four-star internal examination. I remembered, swooning, the appearance of his hand, muscular, tapering, scrupulously clean. Undoubtedly he must have handled, in the course of his work, the private parts of innumerable thirty-five-year-old women, and remained unmoved. Those same fingers which now had me reeling on the turf of pitch two like a thing possessed must have probed a hundred vaginal passages, kneaded breasts without number, conducted foraging parties round many a shrinking cervix … had plunged the hypodermic into Declan.

  ‘Please …’ I gasped politely. My head was beginning to go back, I couldn’t remain sitting much longer, and his breath, too, was now coming thick and fast. Coming, coming, coming … The rogue elephant announced that Tomahawks would now play Chevely Wildcats on pitch two.

  ‘Yes?’ replied Dr Constantine Ghikas, belatedly.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Hold on—’

  ‘My God—’

  ‘Just go with it—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You can do the same for me some time—’

  ‘Oh—!’

  The scarlet and white phalanx of the Tomahawks appeared over the rise like an Apache raiding party, and behind them came their old rivals the Wildcats, in a bilious livery of purple and yellow. As all twenty-two thundered towards us I reached a tumultuous and bumpy climax on the hard summer turf, and was still riding its eddying wake as they clustered round the ref for the toss.

  It seemed incredible that they could not see what was going on. Surely I was scarlet, my eyes bulging like cue balls, my knees quivering and my pelvis threatening to bore a hole straight through to Australia? But no, the game began, Gareth even managed a small wave, the linesman was charging back and forth in front of us as if nothing had happened. Never had I watched a game of soccer with such concentration. But as we sat there watching Cheveley take the ascendancy, so we were both conscious of a small noise behind us. I was washed up on the dry land of reality with a sickening thud. We both glanced over our shoulders, and as we did so Constantine removed his hand with exquisite delicacy from my knickers.

  We were just in time to see, beyond the grim ranks of the parish council evergreens, the yeti-like back view of Lance Lowe, lumbering stealthily away. From one pudgy hand swung the half-empty bottle of George’s treasured claret. Out of nowhere, there came into the forefront of my mind the closing lines of a popular verse. ‘You can tell a man who boozes from the company he chooses … and the pig got up and slowly walked away.’

  Taking our cue from the pig, Dr Constantine Ghikas and I rose, and set off round pitch two, in opposite directions.

  Talk about post-coital triste. If anyone had apprehended me as I plodded behind the Wildcats’ goal I should first have brained them with the half-full bottle of Italian red, and then burst into hysterical tears. As it was I paused for a second while a goal-kick was taken, and there was Constantine, a solitary figure in sparkling white, apparently gazing back at me from the opposite end of the pitch, through the Tomahawks’ net. The obvious metaphor was too much for me, and I emitted a loud honking sound which in TRT would have been described as a choking sob.

  The Wildcats’ goalie, all of thirteen, glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Bless you,’ he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  The first few days of the ensuing week were the purest purgatory. Constantine and I had spent the remaining hours of the soccer tournament staying as far apart as was commensurate with our roles of committee member and manager-to-be. He behaved with absolutely spine-chilling poise (though I noted, with some small satisfaction, a grass stain on the seat of his white jeans), whereas I was a quivering, knock-kneed wreck. The suspicion that
Lance Lowe might have been watching us was almost too horrible to bear, so I pushed it to the back of my mind, there to fester like an unattended sore. Guilt at the enormity of what I had done, or at least allowed to happen, hovered over me like the smoke from the Crazy Horse Saloon, and there was no opportunity to smooth things over with Constantine, for the others now took possession of him and even bore him off for a drink at the Wagon when the tournament was over. Greenhorn that I was, I could not decide whether digital sex on the touchline constituted the start of something big or the end of a beautiful friendship.

  I was not to remain in ignorance for long. Wednesday was the date agreed on by Nita and myself for our trip to the Regis cash-and-carry, and from these inauspicious beginnings there sprang a sequence of events which was to leave me in no doubt as to which way the wind blew.

  We set off at one-thirty in the Nutkins’ camper-van, and spent a good hour at the cash-and-carry discussing the relative merits of different brands of crisps, and meticulously counting the pickled onions in catering-size jars. Or at least Nita threw herself into these calculations with a will, while I pushed the trolley and endorsed her conclusions. Much as I disliked the feeling that she had a hook in me after the night of the dinner party, I could not afford to ignore it, particularly after the events of Saturday.

  ‘Toms did well on Saturday!’ she remarked, scrutinishing monster drums of frankfurters in brine. ‘You must be pleased, Harriet, putting up a good show for the doctor.’

  ‘What?’ I felt the proverbial chilly moisture beading my brow.

  ‘Gareth and the other lads—they did well for the doctor. Middle of the league, weren’t they?’

  ‘Oh—yes, I believe so.’

  Nita selected two tins of the frankfurters and moved on to the giant flagons of ketchup. I trundled rebelliously in her wake.

  ‘He’s a charmer, Dr Ghikas,’ she said. ‘ We had a little accident on our country evening, you know, and he couldn’t have been more obliging, really entered into the spirit of things.’

  I remembered the hat after Baloo’s accident, but didn’t like to mention it, since for me to have seen it he would obviously have had to call on me in the small hours.