Plender

by Ted Lewis

  I looked away, but at the same time the overwhelming feeling grew in me that I wanted her to touch me.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “You’re not frightened, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well then?”

  I said, “Don’t you want to see me?”

  “Not now,” she said. “We’ll deal with you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? How could she imagine I dare come back tomorrow.

  “But look,” I said, “It’ll only take a minute. Then I’ll touch you.”

  She rolled her eyes and tut-tutted.

  “Oh, all right,” she said. “But hurry up.”

  Trembling, I unclasped the snake belt and let my trousers down. I put my thumbs in the waistband of my underpants . . . and then I heard my mother’s voice from the top of the field.

  “Peter! Come here this minute. This minute, do you hear?”

  My stomach turned to jelly. She’d found out. She knew. It was the end of the world. Tears sprang to my eyes. Linda grabbed her dress and furiously struggled it on.

  “It’s your fault,” she said, glaring at me. “You let her know where you were coming.”

  She finished fastening her buttons while I trembled the clasp of my belt together.

  “Peter! Do you hear me? Come here this minute!” and then another voice joined in.

  “Peter, Peter, your mum wants you. Quick.”

  Then I heard: “Now you go home, Brian. It must be nearly your bedtime.”

  “It isn’t,” said Brian Plender. “Honest. It’s ages yet, Mrs. Knott.”

  “Well, you go on home, anyway.”

  Brian. He’d told her. He’d told my mother where I’d gone.

  “Go on, then,” said Linda. “Get going.”

  I stared at her.

  “You don’t think I’m coming with you, do you? I’m staying here till she’s gone.”

  “But you have to come with me,” I said. “If you don’t, me mam’ll know what we’ve been doing. She’ll think you’re frightened and that’s why you won’t go.”

  Linda just looked at me, saying nothing.

  “Peter!” came my mother’s voice.

  I couldn’t stay there any longer; if I did I knew she’d come for me. So I stumbled through the hedge into the evening brightness of the field and saw my mother in the gateway black against the dying sun.

  I meandered up the field, occasionally thrashing the hedge with a twig I’d picked up, trying to look as casual as possible so that my casualness would convince her of my innocence. But when I got closer I knew nothing I could do or say would be of any use.

  Before I reached her she turned and began to march away from me, back towards the house. That was the thing that made me go to pieces.

  “Mam,” I cried, tears coming as I scrambled after her. “Mam!”

  She didn’t turn and she didn’t answer. We rounded the corner into the crescent. Brian was backing away down the pavement on his side of the road, hands in pockets, whistling and dragging his feet.

  My mother went through our gate and into the house by the front door. This was to prevent my father, who was eating his tea in the kitchen, becoming involved and therefore embarrassed. My mother opened the door of the front room and stood back to let me pass. I walked through into the cold unaccustomed tidyness of the front room. The only time there was a fire lit in that room was on Christmas Day. Even though the evening sun was streaming in through the bay window the room felt chilly and still and depressing.

  My mother closed the door behind her.

  “Now then,” she said. “I want to know what you’ve been up to.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You’ve been with that Linda, haven’t you?”

  I just nodded.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. We were just playing.”

  “Don’t tell lies. You were doing something you’re ashamed of, weren’t you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It doesn’t matter whether you tell me or not,” said my mother. “I shall find out anyway.”

  And I knew she would, she always did, so I confessed. When I’d finished, my mother knelt down and dried away my tears and then she took me by the shoulders and looked me in the face, her own face softening a little bit and she said:

  “Listen to me, Peter, because this is for your own good: you want to stay away from girls like her. They’ll only do you harm. They’re nothing but trouble. They could do you a lot of damage. You stick to your pals like Brian and Robert. Do you hear?”

  I nodded, dumbly. Her vehemence terrified me.

  “And listen, let me tell you something else: girls can sometimes be worse than boys. You know what I mean. When a girl’s bad she’s really bad and don’t you forget it.”

  The next day when I saw Brian I asked him why he’d told my mother that I’d been down the fields with Linda.

  “I couldn’t help it,” he said, all careless and casual. “Your mam saw me playing out and shouted across asking me where you were so I just told her you’d gone down the fields. Then she asked me who with so I told her. I mean, you can’t lie, can you?”

  “I would have,” I said. “For you.”

  Brian smiled an odd smile and said, “I bet.”

  I poured us another drink.

  “Thanks,” she said, giggling. “I really shouldn’t have anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave me the look from under the eyelashes.

  “Well, you never know . . .”

  I smiled back the way she wanted me to. Then I let the cloud cross my face.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. “Just business.”

  Her eyes changed expression.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” I said. “Don’t be offended. It’s just that this problem I’ve got, well, it just crossed my mind. Just flashed in, you know.”

  She changed back, moving her shoulder a bit closer to me, almost touching my shirt, cradling her drink to her breasts.

  “What is it?” she said. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Well, I’m in a bit of a spot.”

  “Is it money? Is business bad?”

  I laughed.

  “No, business is fine. It’s nothing like that. No, I’m just in a spot as far as a couple of my regular models are concerned.”

  “I see.”

  “And it’s not like that, either. No, the girls that usually do my lingerie stuff, you’d never believe it, but they’re both ill at the same time. Both got this ‘flu’ that’s going around. So I’m stuck. I have to get the transparencies to the blockmakers by Tuesday morning but I’ve nothing to shoot. Well, I’ve something to shoot but nobody to shoot in them, if you see what I mean.”

  “Can’t you get somebody else. I mean, another model?”

  “I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. But it’s funny. You can get everybody to do bikini shots, draped towel shots, even back-nude shots. But there’s something about bra and pants shots. You can only get the occasional model who’ll do it. I don’t know, I suppose it makes it more personal. Or something like that.”

  “I don’t see why,” Eileen said, seeing very well why. “I can’t see that one’s any different to the other.”

  “I wish some of my models felt the same way,” I said, pouring more drinks. “Then I’d be back in business.”

  There was a short silence.

  “I wouldn’t mind helping out,” said Eileen. “The only thing would be, I wouldn’t want anybody I knew seeing it was me, like.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t, actually. The stuff I’ve got left is just pantie shots. Waist to knee.” I took a drink. “But in any case, it’s very sweet of you to offer, but I couldn’t let y
ou.”

  “Well, if nobody’s going to know it’s me, and if I don’t mind, why not?”

  She was having the same difficulty as I was in keeping the excitement out of her voice. (Mother was right—girls were worse than boys, at least as bad, they always wanted to show you.)

  I took another drink.

  “Well, if you’re sure, and only if . . . well, all right, but please . . . if you find you don’t want to, after the first shot, say, then you must feel you can tell me, you know, if . . .”

  “I will,” she said. “I feel I could say anything to you, Peter.”

  And so saying she squeezed my arm and pushed herself a little closer into me. Not yet, for Christ’s sake, not yet, you stupid bitch. Do you want to spoil things? We’ve all night to do that.

  I pulled away, pretending enthusiastically to get the camera ready. On a purely professional basis, of course.

  “Well,” I said. “This is marvellous. I really didn’t think I’d make the deadline with what’s left of this lingerie stuff. Now then, where are the packs? They should be under this lot somewhere. Ah, yes. Let’s make sure I get the right numbers . . .”

  “Peter,” said Eileen.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I mean, about posing?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well . . . my clothes. My other ones. Shall I take them off?”

  “Well, you can hardly wear two pairs of panties, can you,” I said, making it seem a joke and inwardly delighted when she began to blush, even more so when she had to explain even further.

  “No, I mean gym slip and things. What shall I change into?”

  “I shouldn’t bother,” I said. “Just hoist up the gym slip round your waist and tuck it in. It’ll be out of shot.” I handed her some of the underwear. “Look, these are the ones we’ll do first.”

  “All right,” she said, taking them off me. She paused before she said, “Don’t think there’s much point in using the changing room, do you? I mean I’d be going backwards and forwards all night, wouldn’t I?”

  I nodded pretending to be preoccupied with adjusting the camera tripod.

  “Shall I stand where I was before?”

  “Er . . . yes. Yes, that’ll be fine.”

  I looked through the view finder.

  Eileen pulled her skirt up and tucked it in around her waist. She glanced towards me while she tried to make it stay up, looking to see what my reaction was but my expression was screwed up and hidden behind the camera. My open eye stared through the lens at her underwear. This was the best moment of the evening. After this everything went downhill, became ordinary. Once the underwear was gone, it was finished. But the charade had to be played out to the end. I had to appear as though I liked the girl. As though I wanted her.

  PLENDER

  I opened the inset warehouse door and pushed inwards very slowly. There was light beyond the door. I waited a moment or two then stepped through. There was a neon-lit loading bay and some old vegetables and nothing else except a staircase and stairwell and on the wall next to the staircase there was a sign that said STUDIO with an arrow pointing upstairs. I walked across the paved floor to the loading bay and eased myself up and sat down on the edge of the platform, out of the neon. Outside a car swished by, its sound faint and muffled. I took out a cigarette and put it in my mouth without lighting it. I looked at my watch. The luminous figures told me I’d been hanging about for over an hour and a half. I’d phoned Gurney and told him I wouldn’t be back at Peggy’s and I’d made another phone call and given instructions for the tape of Froy’s phone calls over the last forty-eight hours to be dropped through the letter box at my digs instead of the night safe at the office. I didn’t want any accidents with Gurney.

  I sucked on the cigarette. The excitement of seeing Knott was making me feel slightly queasy and I realised I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  I’d been off sick for a few days. It was one of the few times I’d managed to put one over on my mam. I’d just kept going out to the lav. and sticking my fingers down my throat so that she’d think there was something really wrong.

  The reason I wanted to stay off school was that the end of term exam results were due and, being the end of our first year, I was terrified that I hadn’t done well enough to go up into the A stream with Peter and his mates. And Peter was sure to go up. He’d been joint first with Ann Colman in the half-year exams. I’d been twenty-second. I knew I’d done better this time but I just didn’t know how much better and the worry of it was making me feel almost sick enough not to have to put my fingers down my throat to convince my mam. But I had to go back sometime and find out. Just staying home and thinking about it was making things worse.

  It was evening and I was standing in the front room looking out at the crescent. Although the weather was warm, great motionless banks of dark grey cloud soared like granite cliffs above the houses. The street was empty and the air in the front room was close and sticky. Then I saw Peter come out of his house and begin to walk away down the road. He hadn’t been over once since I’d been off school. I knew where he was going now, only one place he could be going—pictures. Suddenly I felt a great need to get out of the house, have the freedom of the street outside, stroll down to the pictures with as careless a mind as Peter’s.

  I went into the kitchen. Mam was reading the paper and smoking.

  “Mam,” I said.

  “What?” she said. She didn’t look up from her paper.

  “You know I’m off to school tomorrow?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, as I’m all right now, maybe it’d be okay for me to go to the pictures.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Aw, Mam, why?”

  “Cause I say, that’s why.”

  “I’m all right, honest.”

  “I don’t care. You’re off poorly.”

  “But I’m off to school tomorrow.”

  “You can go tomorrow night, then.”

  “But Mam, Peter’s off tonight. I’ve just seen him.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Aw, Mam.”

  I kept on and on at her like this until there was nothing left for her but to do one of two things: she would either fly into a rage and knock me flying, or she would fly into a rage and tell me to bugger off out of it with my moaning and give her some bloody peace. My heart began to sing when she chose the latter. I hadn’t spent my pocket money, not having gone out for a few days, and so I didn’t have to ask Mam for the money. If that had been the case the evening would have been over before it started.

  I rushed out of the house and down the road but I didn’t catch up Peter. In fact I only just got to the pictures as the lights were going down, but I could see where Peter and his mates from school were sitting, all together, filling up an entire row. So I made my way down to the row behind them and waited for the lights to go up after the shorts had finished.

  When the lights came up I tapped Peter on the shoulder. Peter turned around and so did some of the others. He didn’t smile or anything but he said:

  “I thought you were supposed to be badly.”

  “I’m off back tomorrow.”

  “I thought you’d wangle it till end of term.”

  “Now,” I said. “I’m all right now. Mam says I have to go back.”

  “What was up with you?” Dreevo asked. “Wankers’ cramp?”

  “Now,” I said. “Bum boils.”

  Nobody laughed and they all began to turn back, but I said:

  “Eh, up, Pete. Have we had any results yet?” I said the words as though I couldn’t have cared less.

  “Yes,” he said. “Final results last Wednesday.”

  “What happened?” I said, as though it were a big jo
ke. “I bet I’m off down to B stream.”

  Peter shrugged.

  “I dunno,” he said.

  “Haven’t they told you yet, then?”

  He shook his head.

  “What position was I in class, then?”

  “Fifteenth.”

  Fifteenth! That meant I was going up into the A stream. The two first forms had thirty children each; fifteen from each went into the A stream and fifteen from each form went into the B stream. I was safe.

  “Hey, that means I’ll go up with you, then,” I said.

  “Should do,” said Peter.

  I asked him what position he’d been.

  “Top,” he said.

  The big picture came on. I sank back into my seat. Wait till I told Mam! I was off up into the A stream. I sat back and enjoyed the picture more than any other picture I’d ever seen in my life.

  But next day at school I found out Peter hadn’t quite told me the truth. I’d come fifteenth in class all right, but the marks weren’t up to the standard of someone going up into the A stream. In fact all the marks after the first thirteen in our class had been the worst they’d had for years, the headmaster said. Two girls were being kept down to do the first year all over again. So only thirteen children were going up from our class, and the two girls who were too bad to go up made room for two more in the B stream: Harry Clark and me.

  The headmaster had told the class this the day I’d sat behind Peter in the pictures.

  I struck a match and almost lit the cigarette before I remembered where I was. I shook the match out, and turned over in my mind what I was going to do. I was certain he was married. I would have staked my life on it. Old Knottsy was the type that needed some kind of constant female company, even if it meant getting himself spliced. So if he was married, what was going on upstairs in the studio was probably a big secret between him and the kid. In which case he probably cared for his missus. Or for the setup she provided. That was more like Peter Knott. He’d hate to lose the architect responsible for his gracious living. And he’d be living graciously, no doubt about it. All that I had to do was to find out who the girl was. And I could find that out by following him to where he dropped her off and take it from there.

  I slid off the loading bay. I had to get back to the car so that I’d be ready for them.