The Insect Farm

by Stuart Prebble

  I was keen that Roger should be out of the house when Harriet arrived back, because I did not trust myself to be able to act normally and to hold it together for long after her arrival. Whatever was to transpire, having Roger on the scene could only add complications. In his own very different way, Roger was probably as attached to Harriet as I was. The realization that we were quite possibly losing her, coupled as it could easily be with the revelation that he was an unwitting player in the drama, might cause unpredictable results. No, if we were losing Harriet, then I needed to be able to manage the way the news was broken to Roger.

  Once again I am ashamed to admit it, but I packed a bag with some overnight things for Roger, and took it with me as I went down early to meet the bus. Terry’s father was already there and waiting.

  “Hello, Mr Harries,” I said, “I wanted to apologize to you for my reaction to your suggestion a couple of weeks ago that Roger might come and spend the night with you and Terry. It just came a bit out of the blue, and Roger usually doesn’t like to have his routines messed up.” He was a very nice man and said that he understood completely. I suspected that he understood only too well, and was used to the sort of slight that I had dealt him. “Anyway, rather than let him have time to get too worked up about it, if by any chance it suited you, I thought we might try it overnight tomorrow night? If it’s not convenient for you, just say. But if it does work for you, I thought you could take his overnight bag with you now, and then you could meet the bus and let him come back home with you tomorrow?”

  I didn’t feel too good about the fact that, for purely selfish reasons, I was accepting the offer which before I had been so keen to reject. However, if he was offended, Terry’s father showed no sign of it and appeared to be very happy with the arrangement. Of course I had no sleep whatever on Monday night, and I waited until Tuesday morning to tell Roger that he would be staying overnight with his friend Terry. He seemed to be excited by the idea, so much so that I then felt guilty about not having arranged something like it sooner.

  I have no clear memory of how I passed the day while I waited for Harriet. I think of it as a blur of images and emotions of a nature and intensity I had never known before. It’s as close as I have ever come, thank God, to having an idea of what it must be like for a condemned man to know that he would die within a few hours. A last meal? How could anyone eat in such circumstances? Last words? What words could possibly sum up all the multitude and variety of thoughts and feelings? I padded around the flat for some hours, then decided that I might be able to get some relief from taking a bath, but in the event I found that when I immersed myself it was as though the weight of water was constricting my breathing still further. I quickly got out and gulped down air. I thought I would faint, but at last my head cleared.

  I watched the clock tick around, focusing hard on the big hand, and found that I could identify all sixty of the tiny movements in the measured minute. Three hundred would take me five minutes. 3,600 would get me to an hour.

  I was alone in the flat at 3 p.m. when Harriet was due to arrive. The train came in at 2 p.m., and usually it would take about half an hour or so to ride on the Tube, and then there was a short walk from Clapham North Underground. My anxiety was at fever pitch, and only increased still further as the minutes ticked by. I thought I heard a sound at the door and turned quickly, nearly tripping over Olly the cat as I did so. It was nothing, only the wind rattling the locks.

  I looked out of the window at about the time that Harriet was expected, and I recall the moment that I saw her come around the corner. Despite everything else, the turmoil going on inside my crazy head, I felt a surge of pleasure at seeing the riot of brown curls which was her hairstyle and the outline of her beautiful face which I knew well and loved so helplessly.

  It was cold outside, the wind blowing with a vengeance, and she was wearing a full-length Afghan coat which she had bought at the Quayside Market in Newcastle, and which I always joked made her smell like a bear. I felt no amusement as I watched her walk the last hundred yards from the corner to the gate of the tiny garden, and then lost sight of her as she covered the last few steps to the front door two floors below. I remember feeling my heart pounding and walking from room to room, unable to decide where I wanted to be when she came into the flat. On the few occasions when she had come back alone from the station, I would certainly be at the street door to meet her. At the very least I would have been halfway down the stairs to grab her bags and pat her on the bum for the last few steps home.

  I didn’t know whether to be in the hallway just inside the door, or at the window looking out, or at the kitchen sink apparently preoccupied with washing dishes. I think I tried all of them in the few seconds in which I could hear her footsteps on the stairs. As it was I was halfway between the window and the kitchen when the door opened and I saw her suitcase being lifted through the gap, and then her leather boot, and then her knee – and then Harriet emerged fully into view.

  Instantly she took my breath away. She was beautiful.

  Harriet knew that something was wrong from the moment she arrived. How could she not? Ordinarily in circumstances like these I was of course desperate to see her, overcome with joy and emotion and utterly unguarded in my enthusiasm. Usually we would take the very first opportunity to embrace, and then remain holding each other for many minutes, whispering endearments and reassurances until we could bring ourselves to pull our faces far enough back to be able to kiss.

  Given the torture and trauma that I had gone through in the previous three weeks, it had been all I could do to act naturally when speaking on the telephone. The fact that at her end she was speaking in a public place made it less obvious that we were avoiding the intimacies which otherwise might have been expected. Even then, I sensed that she knew there was something wrong. Several times she had asked me: is everything all right? I assured her that it was, and that it was simply that I was missing her.

  Oh my God. What is it about seeing someone you love for the first time in a long time? No matter what the anticipation does to you, the reality is so much more powerful. It felt so long since I had looked at Harriet’s beautiful face, and in that time I had conjured her in every mood, guise, aspect and expression. I had pictured her in the distance, up close, kissing me and kissing my body. But also I had pictured her face pressed up against the face of Brendan Harcourt, kissing him with all the passion and the ardour with which she kissed me. God help me, I had pictured her face as he made love to her; I had pictured her face as he entered her, but now here she was, in the flesh, every bit as lovely as all my fantasies had ever envisaged, and much more so.

  At first sight of each other, Harriet and I both seemed to be frozen. I could do nothing but stand and face her; she halfway through the door and struggling with her keys and the lock and her bags and her coat, me halfway through my perambulation through the flat, unable to decide where to be and what to be doing.

  Instantly I could see the look of uncertainty and apparent confusion on her face. A faint knot of lines on her forehead, and a small downturn of the corners of her lovely mouth, said “there is something wrong and I don’t know what it is” as eloquently as the words might have conveyed it. But when she did speak, there was no sign of anything other than genuine confusion.

  “Hi, Jonathan,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  I gazed for a moment at this wonderful woman who was standing in front of me, suddenly seeming so frail and small, but whose life and existence played so overwhelming an influence on my own life and well-being. She had lost weight since the last time I had seen her, and her skin was pale, as if she had been for too long out of the sun.

  “Hi, Harriet,” I said. It was as though a hypnotist had snapped his fingers in front of my eyes, and instantly I was able to collect myself. “So sorry. I just got behind and lost track of the time. I was trying to make sure the place was tidy in time for you getting here.” I managed to get my limbs moving and walked the few paces tow
ards her, reaching for her suitcase. She handed it to me, but again, now up close, I could see the look of confusion on her face. She shook her head, clearly indicating how obvious it was that my explanation was not complete. However, at the same moment, I could see that she had decided not to make an issue of it, but just to see where all this was going. Certainly nothing in her face or demeanour suggested guilt or any inkling of knowledge of what might be the problem. She handed her suitcase to me.

  “Actually, for once I think I am a bit early. The train arrived on time and the connections were fairly straightforward.”

  She wasn’t early, but I did not feel like contradicting her. I put down her bag, and we stood looking at each other for a moment, as if both searching the other for some truth. Then I put my arms around her and pulled her towards me with a longing and desperation which I would not have thought it possible to survive. I clung to her, wishing as I had never wished for anything that what I knew was true would not be true. I was wishing that it could always be like this; that things would never become more complicated than Harriet and I in each other’s arms, embracing at the door. My head was buried in her neck, my eyes held tightly closed and, heaven help me, I could feel my body involuntarily convulse in a violent sob, and the tears running down my cheeks fell liberally onto Harriet’s collar and neck. I felt her tighten her hold on me and whisper in my ear.

  “It’s all right, my darling. It’s OK. I’m here now. It’s all OK. It’s been so long, but now I am back with you, my love.”

  What was it like to hear the very words that I so badly wanted to hear from Harriet – “It’s all going to be all right” – but at the same time knowing in my heart and soul that it was not going to be all right? At that moment, I thought that my head would come apart from the anguish. The woman I wanted so much was here in my arms, telling me that everything was going to be all right. At the same time, a thousand images of her in the arms of someone else swarmed around me like a plague of locusts, biting and stinging and eating into my flesh.

  I managed to pull myself together sufficiently to be able to carry off Harriet’s assumption that my aberrant behaviour was a function of missing her rather than of anything else. She asked me if I wanted to go to bed straight away and at first I said that I did not. Then she looked disappointed and gave me a child-like expression of sadness which sent a wave of affection through me.

  Our lovemaking on that afternoon was like nothing I had ever known before and nothing I have ever known since. Without speaking, and without embracing or kissing, we removed each other’s clothes item by item and lay them on the end of the bed. When she was naked, I stood back from her just to be able to look at her body.

  I have said before that Harriet was not beautiful in the same way that many girls of her age were beautiful. She did not have the stick-thin figure which was fashionable at the time, but rather her breasts were fuller, and her hips were wider. Her long, flowing brown curls fell onto her freckled shoulders, and my eyes followed a few wisps of hair down to her lovely breasts and the soft pale-brown nipples. She smiled a broad smile at me, loving the fact that I was in awe of her, and slowly turned around so that I could enjoy every inch of her. The line of her neck as it met her shoulders, the soft ridges of her collar bone just below her skin, the shape of her shoulder blades, slightly protruding, and then dipping back into her spine and down to that spot where the bottom of her back met the top of her bum. It was my favourite place, there and around the side of her, where the trim valley of her ribs and waist travelled outwards to her hips. That lovely ridge, the softest of most soft skin, the slightest hint of downy hair, and on down to the breathtaking loveliness of her.

  She was still facing the other way, when I at last closed up to meet her, and put my arms around her waist to pull her towards me.. I could feel myself responding to the sensation of her flesh against me, and her head half-turned so that her lips touched mine. Then all of a sudden I was on her, in her, over her, oblivious to the pain and the anguish and the nightmares. My mind and thoughts melted away in the exquisite pleasure of her, and I was possessing her as if to make her completely my own once again.

  I wonder how it is possible for the mind to continue to function when it is being bombarded at the same moment by so many concurrent thoughts, by recalled feelings and moments from the memory, by recent nightmares and by the traffic jam of sensual thrills being transported up the nervous system to end their journey by exploding into the brain. The combination of physical sensation with mental anguish, of the delirium of lovemaking with the trauma of knowing what I knew, threatened my sanity.

  Not that I am getting ready for a plea, mind you. That’s not the case I am making here. It is simply that I want to try to get this down on paper, maybe just so that I may be able to understand it myself, just to know something of what was going on in those few hours.

  After we had made love and Harriet was lying in my arms, I remember once again the turmoil of confusion overwhelming me, and I felt unable to breathe. I sat up in bed, swinging my legs around so that my feet were on the floor, and put my head in my hands. So strong and urgent were the emotions welling up and swirling around inside me that I had to work hard to control the uprising of another convulsive sob, and I swallowed hard in an attempt to suppress the cauldron inside of me. I felt her hand upon my back as she lifted herself onto her elbow, and when she spoke, Harriet’s words were soft and full of love.

  “Are you all right, my darling?” she asked, concerned and yet also apparently understanding. “Is there anything I can do for you? To make you feel better?” I said nothing. She continued. “It’s all right now. You’ve been through a horrible time, but I am back with you, and am here to make everything good for you. We’ll have a lovely time together. You’ll see.”

  And once again I felt my mind rotate from agony to joy as I believed that everything I had dreaded and feared must be wrong. It was not possible that Harriet could be saying this to me if she was also in love with someone else. Not possible.

  We took a shower, not together, because the shower was in the bath and I feared an accident. However, we were naked in the bathroom, and I admit to taking every opportunity to look at her – her shape reflected in the mirror as she bent down, her breasts falling forward as they did when she sat astride me. It was as though I wanted to drink her in, to commit every inch of her to memory. Almost as though I knew what was going to happen, which I most assuredly did not.

  Chapter Seventeen

  An hour later and Harriet was wearing a white cotton robe and towel-drying her hair, while I pulled a string of spaghetti out of the bubbling saucepan and flung it against the wall to see if it would stick. There was a starchy smear on the tiles where the same operation had been performed a hundred times before. I had poured two fresh glasses of red, which were the end of the bottle I had opened ahead of her arrival. I was feeling the first effects of intoxication.

  Did I mention that Harriet had lovely hands? Probably not – so much about her body delighted me that there is no reason to pick them out in particular. I have a strong mental image of admiring them as she twisted her fork around to gather the first mouthful of spaghetti. Her long fingers that would stretch across the keys of her flute to produce the magical music that had the power of transportation. Now, as she put the spaghetti into her mouth, the inevitable few strands failed to comply and I saw her make the shape which I loved so much as she sucked the remnants in between her lips.

  “Delicious,” she said, and put out her other hand to cover mine. Her unaffected smile radiated a warmth which instantly penetrated my aching body. “You have surpassed yourself.”

  There were some moments in which neither of us spoke and I was aware of Harriet glancing at me, as though to check whether our silence was serene or a signal of something else. Olly the cat jumped up on the table, keen to join in the meal, but I pushed him back onto the floor. Nothing further had been said about the odd way in which I had greeted her.

 
The seconds ticked past with neither of us saying anything. I was about to speak when the silence was broken by the sound of the telephone ringing in the hallway. Neither of us rushed to pick it up, and after three rings I could hear the answering machine click in and play my recorded message. The voice which followed it was one I did not immediately recognize.

  “Jonathan? This is Mr Harries. Terry’s dad. You know, the one… well, you know, Roger is staying with us. I just wanted to let you know that there is nothing to worry about. Roger is just a little bit unsettled – probably with his change of routine. Half an hour ago he wanted to come home, but he seems OK now. Just wanted to reassure you. I don’t think we have any problem. Just wanted to keep you in the picture. All things being well, I’ll see you at teatime tomorrow when they come back from the centre.”

  Then there was a click.

  It’s funny how when you look back on the big things that have happened in your life you realize that there were small things you might have done which would completely have changed the course of events. This was one of those moments, which I have gone over and over in my mind. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred on hearing a message like that, I would have taken the call, or would have called back immediately and asked Terry’s dad to bring Roger home. Hell, ninety-nine times out of one hundred I would not have allowed Roger to stay away overnight in the first place. But this was the one hundredth time. I feared and believed that my wife was sleeping with another man, and I was preoccupied with my need to get the matter resolved one way or another. I had endured weeks of torture which was going to be either acquitted or dissolved tonight, and my usual judgement was so distorted that I could not hear the klaxon sound of the alarm ringing in my head.