Nature and Necessity

by Tariq Goddard

  ‘Do shut up!’

  ‘You what? I’ve put my foot in it again haven’t I?’

  ‘Stop talking. You know, you’re far prettier when you just say nothing. And go red.’

  ‘When I do what?’

  ‘Red. Like a girl. A stupid little girl. A tart. Which I think you are in part.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘No, you don’t do you, getting it isn’t your forte. You’re more of a thing to be got.’

  ‘I’m a what?’

  ‘Very slow on the uptake; all Regan wants is what any female who could stand being honest with herself for two seconds wants. But self-honesty isn’t her. She trusts myths, resides on surfaces and holds to the stories we tell about life. I know myself, I should have encouraged her to know herself too, but I couldn’t without spoiling her.’

  ‘I thought you two were meant to be alike? Regan said they call you “sisters”.’

  ‘That’s for idiots who think they’re being clever. How could we be? I was forced to understand what I am from an early age. I know my wants, she has no idea what hers even are. Even an ox like you must know what I want.’ Petula drew up to him.

  Jeremy practically squeaked, positive that he must have misheard Petula’s words, if he were not so excited by the intention they laid bare. ‘I don’t think I follow, are you saying Regan is actually a bit thick?’

  Petula was now so close that she knew he would be able to sniff the alcohol on her breath. She avoided touching Jeremy, though her smell and aura were as good as inside his, and lowering her eye over his crotch, noticed that his penis was hardening into the thing she could trust to close the conversation. ‘Can’t you find anything more interesting to talk about, or is it that I scare you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Do you even know what is under here?’ Petula asked, raising her vest and pointing her breasts, far larger than her daughter’s, into Jeremy’s unbelieving face, ‘would you like to twist these as you fill my jacksy?’

  ‘Jacksy! That’s your arse, isn’t it?’ muttered Jeremy, his hands dropping to undo his belt buckle.

  ‘Arse, fanny, you put it where you like.’

  ‘Now? You’re having me on. Right?’

  Petula paused, her damp hand on Jeremy’s waxed chest stuck like melted marshmallow to plastic; ‘I’m asking you to be so kind as to put the fire out in my nerves and fuck me, you stud.’

  Jeremy already knew that, it was his experience that physical contact was always more assured if he kept himself waiting, however artificially, a moment longer than he had to. Any more than that and he might succumb to the kind of shock that did not favour the spontaneous maintenance of the male member.

  ‘Well then?’

  He grunted; when reality exceeded his wildest fantasies it was best to just go with it. And go he did. To his unconcealed satisfaction, Petula was as good as her word and over the next forty minutes did not try and stop Jeremy doing what he wanted how he liked, drawing him deep into his bovine nature by whispering, during the finale, ‘I can smell the lion reek of the other brutes that have possessed me,’ her finger dug deep into his anus. That was enough and Jeremy noisily relieved himself in her for a second time, almost putting her back out, his previous climax having wreaked havoc with her bad leg.

  ‘I told you I wasn’t going to come in you,’ he said, just after he had, hoping she would not mind.

  Petula trembled; God it had been ages since anyone had got sounds out of her like that!

  ‘I’m too old to have children, silly.’

  ‘Uh, I didn’t want to assume.’

  ‘Okay, now shhh.’

  It reminded her of those orgasms of long ago, which rose out of nature and physical activity, rather than a conscious decision to move things along a bit so that one could get up and put the kettle on. She reached over and patted Jeremy’s arse, admiring his pornographic tan line, bubbling with a lusty goodwill that she had difficulty recognising as her own. Sex like this belonged in its own space, whatever reassuring stories one made up later about it being like the other times. Erotic pleasure had once been tremendously important to her, the very point of her social preening, before the dance itself became the object and the thing to be looked forward to. For a tottering moment Petula wondered whether she got her priorities confused: were not social snakes and ladders meaningless if they did not end in the recuperative and immersive wholeness that only a good shagging could afford?

  She was thinking about this when she heard Jeremy mumble from his pillow, ‘Is it normally like this for you?’, his neck hissing sweat.

  ‘Always. Because I’m just so good,’ Petula replied immodestly, glad that chutzpah was not reducible to morality.

  Jeremy gazed up at her reverentially, his chin propping up his head, trying, though not too hard, to take in what had happened. Generally he was scared of discovery; insight interfered with his enjoyment of things. This coupling was different and unlike any other; there was more here than there had been with anyone else, and his body had become a source of new information that he did not dread the burden of. Complex and exciting configurations were suggesting themselves to him, their approach cerebral, though softly so. Quickly he tried to remember the key metaphor or picture that would make his thoughts as necessary to others as they always seemed to him; he knew his vision was still within reach but he would have to be bold to see it. Yes, it was there alright. Petula’s vagina was a cave without a roof, and, high in its vast expanses, was her true self and all that had been hidden by her formidability; there a different person awaited him, wet, playful and unassuming. He was not sure if he could ever get round to saying that, but it was wonderful to watch it be from his place in the shallows below. Jeremy could imagine not wanting to masturbate the following day, as even his onanistic tussles would have the consequence of reminding him that they could never top this. His muscles were turning to fluid, he was adrift in deep waters and there was no land in sight, and he did not mind in the slightest, for what use was terra firma when he was at once useless and utterly justified before the goddess?

  ‘What are you thinking, you beautiful interruption?’ Petula asked, stroking his thick sticky neck.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ he lied, only just stopping himself from saying to her that her pussy was the sea and her anus the earth, ‘I just don’t want us to ever have to leave here. This room. It’s like its own world in here. No one can disturb it. It’s perfect.’

  For once, Petula had to agree with such isolatory sentiments, her thoughts moving away into a most pleasing waltz of their own; lost impressions and once-cherished memories, fleeting and profound, bobbed about the etheric surf with newer sensual creations, a merry-go-round of the past and present that washed away the hurt of the morning, relinquishing it as barely there. She tried to picture Noah naked with his new lover and found she could not. It was a waste of time to attempt to concentrate on any one idea. If she tried to ground her perceptual arsenal, all she found waiting for her was sex, the flux and not the fact. Closing her eyes, she succumbed.

  Perhaps she had been asleep, but before Petula was properly aware of it, she was nimbly hurrying through the subject in a more cut-and-dried way, airy mediations superseded by the dates and times of all of the fucking she had ever had. It was incontestable: there was a lot of it, and remembering herself as the one who did it all was not nearly so nice as the way she had been feeling earlier. For one thing she did not know why she had never admitted to herself that she had failed to properly re-sexualise after having Regan. That birth had left her as awkward in her body as one who had never had sex, a disjointed maladjustment lingering for years after. Putting her beauty into the service of societal advancement helped conceal the obsession that things were over for her as an erotic player. Not that she had stopped having sex; indeed, Petula had embraced an industrial policy towards fucking that sought to obliterate the fear that inspired it. In her defence, it had not seemed so desperate or sordid at t
he time, simply the only thing to do.

  Petula could no longer feel Jeremy’s body against her own, the room was as motionless as before but something had come over her, best characterised as an indigestible clump of regret. As a believer in ‘natural’ law, over the humane or moral kind, sex with whichever of her friends’ husbands she liked was as pure a reflection of nature’s pecking order as could be found outside a wildlife documentary. Over the years she had re-written the Ten Commandments as she had gone along, her circle of acquaintances large enough to support a vigorous approach to infidelity, and there being no point searching further afar, with heaps of pliable flesh within driving distance. Formally successful as she was, the experience seemed to damage the men she chose as well as their wives, and on her second or third romp round the circuit the difference was noticeable; her lovers had either given up or wanted to run away from her. And what, in a man, was natural about that? She had robbed these beta-boys of their natures as well as their wives’ trust, forgotten or blanked those whose appetite for abuse was not endless, and kicked her heels at home when there was no one left to fuck, complaining that Shatby was not Ashbury. Had she really enjoyed any of it? No, she had put up with the mechanical ritual of undressing, humping and dressing which, save for a second of sharp relief before the end, was all it amounted to. And she had continued in the hope that one day she would get better and enjoy it again, and, even more hopefully, not be afraid anymore. But fear of what? Of so many things, not least that an honest appeal for help would result in her extinction.

  Petula noticed that her hand had left Jeremy’s neck and was trembling in mid-air, the configuration of snow-clouds produced by the dust floating through the light had darkened into hailstones and the room was slowly beginning to re-situate itself in the world. It was time to interrupt herself and exercise grip; she needed to get out of there, fast.

  Jeremy knew nothing of this, his mood lighter than a troop of helium fairground bunnies. Nakedness had always carried the stigma of exposure, and in his nightmares he was often chased in his birthday suit through public buildings, his clothes disappearing as quickly as he found them, the jeers of his pursuers getting closer as he struggled for breath. For Jeremy, concealing his nakedness in suggestive clothing meant remaining in control of it; total nudity was as bad as a leaked secret. As much as he enjoyed showing his body off before sex, he would rather have made love with his clothes on, and could not wait to cover up and withdraw as soon as it was over. But not today. The room could have been packed with the Aberystwyth male-voice choir and his cock would not have crinkled an inch: bare-arsed nudity was the perfect condition to reside in, proof of his triumph. Unfortunately for his newly-earned serenity, this conclusion drew him towards a crude summary of events that somehow sold them short, quite unfaithful to the sleepy wisdom he had only seconds earlier been afloat in. This was a lecherous version that begged for an audience to delight in a vulgar overview of his achievement. Put simply, and once thought of in its most basic form, there was no other way of putting it; it had taken months of ground work with Regan to get on the wrong side of a rigid scolding, yet here he was having splayed the hips that bore her wide open! What need did he have of her daughter’s approval when he had rammed Petula senseless – the view of her on all-fours asking for the door to be slammed again likely to provoke erections well into his old age! This was, he knew, deliberately getting it wrong, even though it was strictly what had happened, but the facts minus beauty and mystery did not amount to the truth. Even so, the tabloid editor in him was simply too stubborn to revert to ethereal delicacy now that his horn had taken over. If he got Petula to take it a step further, which would not on this evidence be difficult, and ply Regan with one too many glasses of wine over dinner to loosen the pole from her hole, they’d probably end up in a threesome by the fireplace! The erotic possibilities were multiplying quickly, and Jeremy could see a future ‘arrangement’ developing where they could meet for an orgy every month, maybe not always at The Heights, that might get boring, but in posh hotels and maybe other countries, and even film themselves doing it. Why the hell not, lying still and being fucked on camera would tick both of Regan’s boxes – passivity and making an exhibition of herself – and ‘the sisters’ could easily afford the equipment, so what was to stop them? Had not the last hour shown all things were possible? The momentum was unstoppable, Jeremy could not help it, and though he knew he was losing something precious for good, he moved his hands roughly up Petula’s thighs, and lifted his forefinger to commence proceedings.

  ‘Ouch! Careful.’

  There had been a marked change in her, of that there was no doubt; Petula was as dry as a Saharan drought, and her hand, dead and cold, slapped his away angrily. Jeremy sniggered, and tried again, this time even more forcefully, ready to instigate a new game for them to play.

  ‘No, it’s too much, Regan could be back any minute, there’s nothing to stop her just walking in,’ she snapped, unable to disguise the tremor in her voice. What had she done?

  ‘Relax, come on.’

  ‘No, I can’t!’

  ‘Don’t worry about Regan.’

  ‘One of us has to!’

  ‘No really. About Regan, she might not mind as much as all that… she might even think, think it’s funny…’ But Jeremy could already feel that particular hope evaporating; he must not get too far ahead of himself, Petula was obviously toying with him again. ‘Stranger things have happened, eh?’

  To show she was not on the verge of becoming a different person, Petula brushed her hand over the battered end of his throbbing phallus and forced the corners of her mouth up. If the spell had broken for her there was no point ending things as quickly for him, he had done nothing worse than be himself in the face of unspeakable temptation. ‘I’ve got to hurry away, we can’t be found like this. I’m sorry, but we can’t.’

  Jeremy had a stupid look on his face, the possessor of a secret that could enhance his standing if only the world knew, its arrogant simplicity amusing Petula as she exited, and annoying her madly when she entered the kitchen four hours later to find it still there.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN,

  missing and misunderstanding.

  Was it too late? In the showery mist it was hard to tell whether the day had already turned dark or not, and Jazzy found that he was no longer sure of where he was. That he was still in Shatby, and outdoors, was not open to question, though from there his narrative tailed off into conjecture, notions of sequence and temporality suspended until such a time as they made sense again. When that would be, Jazzy did not know, though tomorrow morning might not be a bad bet, if ever it came, and without any attempt to conceal what he was doing, he released a bilious swell of streaky hops over his trousers. Swearing at what he thought was an unfortunate gust of wind, but no more than his stumbling backwards into a public bench, not a speck of puke having missed his person, Jazzy pulled off his woollen hat and fumbled about wiping himself down, before giving up and throwing the soggy item over a wall.

  ‘Shit!’ he yelled at the elements, ‘Motherfucker! Mother made you mother fuck you!’

  He had stopped at two or three pubs he had not noticed the names of, since dodging his date with Noah at The Elephant’s Nest, and, frowning so as to remember them better, Jazzy tried to focus on what had occurred in their interiors. That he had been poisoned, he was in no doubt. The landlord at the last boozer was a notorious pervert, famed for drugging customers so as to have his way with them over a keg in the cellar. It was the dodgy pint that tasted of eggs that could be blamed for the digestive purge he stank of, and thank God he had run and retched without paying, or else he’d be in a coma by now, chained to a radiator and made filthy sport of.

  The other two pubs, or one, he was not sure, they looked alike and may have been different bars in the same building, had refused service. Remembering that spooked Jazzy, as he had been many times drunker in the past and still been obliged by friendly publicans who could see he was a good
lad only letting off steam. Which implied that the management’s decision to first ignore him – he had waited at the bar for an eternity – followed by telling him he should go home, portended to something worse than a comment on his sobriety. Could it be a pronouncement on his mental health? Whichever authority decided these things had judged him not right in the head, all because of something he could not help; his essence, soul, or whatever it was he gave off when standing there waiting for a pint. It was horrid to be picked out and reviled, to arrive at the same fate as Evita, his sister, sanctioned off in a clinic refusing all contact with her family: is this what awaited him? Stumbling a few paces forward, Jazzy deliberately sat down with the intention of registering a protest against his condition, just as a braking lorry spotlit him and a voice called: ‘Get out of it, you’re on the fucking road, cunt!’

  A little later Jazzy discovered his legs again and checked his pockets to see if he still had his wallet and keys. On finding both miraculously there, he gazed slowly from port to starboard in time to see the mist lift from the sign of The Saint Elmo’s Fire. He had accidentally contrived to walk all the way back down to the pier without realising. Bringing his finger up to his temple he tried to unpick how this could have happened, and finding, after a while, that he had forgotten what he was standing there for, Jazzy decided he needed the reassurance of familiar surroundings.