The Rabbit

by Ted Lewis

  We kissed again, deliberately holding back to make the coming passion seem even greater. It was a long kiss, and during its course Janet’s hand traced a path down the front of my shirt and came to rest at the waistband of my trousers. The room’s silence roared in my ears. I moved my hand until it joined hers. I could feel the warm-cold texture of the taffeta on the back of it. The kiss continued. There was the faint stirring of her hips beneath the taffeta and I pressed the palm of my hand against her and in spite of the wealth of material I could feel the hardness of her hip bone. She moved again and my hand was in a warmer, softer place. I gripped the taffeta and bunched it in my fingers. Then I felt her fingers at the buckle of my belt and then at my buttons and her hand slipped inside and she felt me through my underpants. After that the holding back was over. I pushed up her skirt and her petticoats and my hand was between her legs, furiously massaging the mound of hair beneath the material of her pants. At the same time her other hand pulled down the waistband and gently took hold of me with both hands. It almost happened there and then and I must have pulled back slightly because she moved her fingers to an area less likely to encourage it happening. She arched herself slightly, so that my hand went deeper between her legs, but I was still only touching her through her pants. This was the farthest I’d ever been with any girl except Veronica, who occasionally allowed my hand inside, only to stroke her, never to penetrate. But even with her underwear on, I could feel that it would be different with Janet. There was no tension there, and she was looser and wet where Veronica had been tight and dry. I was delaying putting my hand inside in case my inexperience showed as I discovered how to touch her. But the decision was made for me because Janet bit my ear and then licked it and said:

  “Take my pants off.”

  I tried to pull them down one-handed, without moving from my present position into another position that might betray my awkwardness and lack of expertise, but somehow I couldn’t manage it properly so I shakily propped myself up on my elbow and without looking down her body, I tried again, but my arm wasn’t long enough to do more than lower the position of her waistband slightly. At that point Janet rolled over on to her back and undid the buckle of her belt and arching her back she shed her skirt and her petticoats and as she kicked them away from her they slid off the bed and landed on the carpet with a sigh. She stayed as she was and so I sat up and leant forward, shaking like a leaf in a gale, trying to keep my face expressionless so that I wouldn’t betray my nervousness.

  She was wearing scarlet pants. Brilliant scarlet. Any other implications the underwear might have had were over¬whelmed by my immediate reaction to this heart-stopping sight. All my previous thoughts of romantic love were for the time being frozen.

  I pushed the pants down almost to her knees and by moving her legs she did the rest herself but after completing the operation she kept her legs slightly parted. In leaning back to my former horizontal position, hardly daring to dwell on the sight, I glanced, my eyes bulging, at the black curling hair between her legs. As I lay down again I opened my mouth to let out my bursting breath and I was con¬vulsed by a great shudder. Janet rolled over to face me again and took hold of me so that the tip of me was brushing against the triangle of her hair. I put my hand between her legs and she parted them even wider. My fingers touched her hair and then moved lower so that I was touching her lips and I found that I didn’t have to fumble or explore in order to gain entry because my fingers just slid into the hot void without any effort from me. We kissed again and I couldn’t believe the heat and the size and the softness of her and these thoughts and the movement of her own hand were bringing me to my climax and she must have sensed this because again she let go and broke from the kiss and pulled me on top of her and raised her knees and locked her fingers behind my back and her movement caused me to support myself on my elbows for a second but then one of her hands moved up to the back of my neck, pushing my mouth down to hers, and so we now lay stomach to stomach and her hand moved back to lock with the other one at the base of my spine. I began to panic because suddenly I knew I was unable to enter her. What had been exciting when explored by fingers alone now filled me with a mixture of awe and depression, making me feel sick to my stomach. I just didn’t want to penetrate her. My tip was resting against her lips and on the evidence of the ease with which my fingers had entered her, it would only be necessary for me to move very slightly and the act would be accomplished. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wanted to cry with shame and anger. I’d not expected to reach this stage. This had been unthinkable and so the prospect had never entered my mind. Once again, Janet took the lead and moved down¬wards slightly so that my tip parted her lips and I was enveloped above my foreskin in her stickiness. Involuntarily, I pulled back. I couldn’t help it. Nothing in the world could have induced me to go forward at that moment. I buried my face in the hair by her ear and I said:

  “We can’t. It’s too dangerous. Something might happen.”

  “It won’t,” she whispered.

  “We daren’t risk it.”

  “Yes, just for a moment.”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “Besides...”

  “What?”

  “Besides, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t want you to think I came here just—you know.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “Maybe not now. You’re bound to later.”

  She began to say something else but I prevented her words by kissing her and as I kissed her I slid off her and pulled her to me so that she was lying on her side.

  “It’s best,” I said.

  “All right,” she said.

  We kissed again and a little later I put my hand between her legs and furiously worked my fingers inside her to try and compensate for any disappointment she might be feel¬ing. Soon she began to respond and she took hold of me again, writhing about in her ecstasy. Luckily the incident hadn’t affected my ability to come so I was spared the embarrass¬ment of failing to respond to her in that way.

  After it was over we lay for a minute or two, side by side. I was in a well of depression. Now that the climax had made my mind cold again I couldn’t prevent myself begin¬ning to doubt my own romantic reading of her reasons for wanting to make love to me. Surely it wasn’t just me that inspired her to want to make love to me. I looked into her face. She smiled at me and her eyes seemed filled with affec¬tion for me. I didn’t know what to think.

  She squeezed my hand.

  “I’ll have to change my blouse.”

  “What?”

  “That’s where it went.”

  “Oh.”

  “You go down. I’ll only be a minute.”

  We got off the bed together. Before I left the bedroom I caught sight of the scarlet pants, screwed up at the bottom of the bed, half draped over the woodwork.

  In the dining room everyone was that little bit more pissed than they had been before I’d gone upstairs and when I went through the door there were great whoops and shouts to greet my arrival. Only Moira was silent, grinning her knowing grin. I responded to the cat-calls in the way I was expected to respond, heroic but coy with it. I took the top off a pint bottle and downed half of it at one go and when the gas had settled I drank some more and while I was drink¬ing I heard the chimes of the doorbell rising above the din of the record player. Moira jumped up out of her chair, and looking at her watch she dashed over to the door and went out. I thought nothing of it and a few minutes later the dining room door opened and a young man in his early twenties came into the room. His hair was done in the Boston fashion and he was wearing black jeans with green piping and a black shirt with a loose bootlace tie and slung over his shoulder was a midnight blue gabardine wind¬cheater. He surveyed the scene with contempt and came over to the table and took the top off a bottle and rested his back¬side against the tabl
e and drank. I tried to imagine what he could be doing here when he took the bottle from his lips and saw that I was staring at him, so I nodded and said hello.

  “You what?” he said.

  “Hello.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  He put the bottle back to his lips.

  Moira came back into the room and came over to where the newcomer and I were standing.

  “Well?” he said to Moira.

  Moira shrugged.

  “She’s in the bathroom. She should be down in a minute.”

  The newcomer grinned at Moira. Moira gave him a frosty look and then as if the look had been deliberately put on she grinned slyly at him and went and sat in her chair again.

  There was a feeling of ice at the bottom of my stomach. I moved away from the table and sat down on the arm of Moira’s chair.

  “What’s happening?” I said.

  “You’d better ask Janet,” she said, smiling a tight, trium¬phant smile.

  “No, come on,” I said. “You’ve got to tell me.”

  At that point Janet came into the room. She folded her arms and weaved in and out of the furniture and the bodies as if she was trying to find somewhere to sit, her face blank and cold, her eyes deliberately avoiding the end of the room where the newcomer was. Eventually she arrived at Moira’s chair and just stood there, arms still folded, her gaze fixed somewhere at pelmet level. Why didn’t she look at me, for Christ’s sake.

  I stood up.

  “Janet,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

  She didn’t answer and she didn’t look into my face and her cold expression didn’t change in the slightest.

  “Look...” I said, but before I could say any more the newcomer planted himself between us and said to Janet:

  “Better have a word, hadn’t we?”

  Janet turned her head away and studied one of the other walls.

  “We can either say it all here or where it’s more private,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

  Janet sighed and as if extremely bored with the situation she turned away and walked back towards the door. The newcomer followed and closed the door behind him.

  Moira stood up and poured herself a drink.

  “Come on,” I said. “Just tell me.”

  Moira shook her head.

  “I’ll bloody find out myself, then,” I said, beginning to make for the door. Moira grabbed my arm.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “They’ve been going together for years. Since she was twelve. She’s always been crazy about him. She’ll never learn. Treats her like muck and she always goes crawling back to him. They had a big bust-up a couple of weeks ago and this time I thought she was going to stick to it, but no. Steve came round last week and found out about the party and said he was coming whether she asked him or not. I think she was hoping he would, and see you, so she could pay him back. I think that was in her mind when she phoned you up.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But now she’s out there talking to him,” said Moira. “It won’t take long now.”

  I rushed across the room and flung open the door and ran into the hall. There was no one in the kitchen or in the lounge. Then I noticed the blue windcheater draped over the bannisters. I ran up the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door. They were sitting on the edge of the bed exactly where Janet and I had sat only an hour earlier. He had his arm round her and she was crying, her head resting on his chest. The scarlet pants still lay where I’d last seen them. She hadn’t even put them back on.

  Steve got up off the bed.

  “Steve, no,” Janet said. “It’s my fault, not his.”

  Hearing her voice in the same surroundings as I’d heard it an hour before, remembering all the other things she’d said, remembering the earlier tone and the other pleading, just took all the fight away. What was the point, now?

  I closed the door behind me.

  I opened my eyes and my brain capsized. I closed my eyes again but my brain didn’t find any stability. Even closed my eyes ached. My mouth was stiff and full of gravel. I opened my eyes again to try to find out where I was.

  I was in Janet’s front room. Sunshine streamed in through the bay window. I had no memory of anything that led up to my being there. I lifted my head slightly and saw that I was lying on a settee, covered by a couple of coats. One of the coats was the reversible raincoat belonging to Janet’s father, the one I’d admired as it hung on the hallstand. And of course the sight of it brought back the memory of every¬thing that had happened the night before.

  I lay there for a quarter of an hour, staring at nothing and feeling totally sick.

  Then I became aware of sounds of washing-up drifting in from the kitchen. Without thinking about what I was going to do, I got off the settee and went into the kitchen. Moira was at the sink washing glasses, and she turned when she realized I was standing behind her in the doorway.

  “Feeling better, are you?” she said, turning back to the sink.

  Fuck off, I thought. I just didn’t want to know.

  I went into the lounge to get my jacket. There was still a lot of clearing-up to be done. Sometime during the evening someone must have got hungry and cut themselves a slice of bread and marmalade because the remains of it were face down on a silent record as it revolved round and round on the turntable. The sight made me feel even more depressed. I put my jacket on and went back into the hall. The wind¬cheater was still draped over the bannister. I opened the front door and went out.

  I walked down Marlborough Avenue and waited for a trolley bus to take me to the city centre but it was Sunday morning and I had to wait for over half an hour. When I got off in City Square I walked down the empty dockside to the ferry and found I’d got an hour to wait until the next boat so I sat on one of the wrought iron seats that overlooked the river and tried to forget the events of the night before. My head was pounding and I felt sticky and dirty. All I wanted was a pint of milk followed by a long soak in a hot bath. And the memory of the party to stop filling my brain.

  When the ferry finally arrived I went to the buffet but of course, being Sunday, the buffet was closed so I went back up on deck and stretched out on one of the seats and dozed off. When the ferry reached the other side I found that besides myself there’d been only three other passengers on board.

  On the platform, the humming diesel was empty, too. Everything was empty. Marlborough Avenue had been empty, the dockside had been empty. There was just me in the whole fucking world.

  At home I was received with suspicion. It was quite odd to enter the familiar pattern of a Sunday morning halfway through. It was like going into the cinema in the middle of a film: the actors were familiar and so was the dialogue but it took a little time to orient oneself into the action. The house seemed darker, the actions of my parents seemed overdone, the silence more complete than it would have seemed if I’d started the day in my own bedroom. It was unreal and depressing, like someone else’s home viewed by an outsider when to the tenants the familiar sounds and smells and actions added up to make a reassuring whole.

  I dodged questions as much as I could and lied and said I’d had breakfast and as soon as possible I went upstairs and changed. Of course when I went downstairs again and told them I was going out there was almost an argument based on the premise that having just come in there should be no reason for my going out again. It was Sunday, and I should want to spend the day at home.

  But I went out anyway and got my bike from under the passage and threaded my way through the garden and the orchard and set off for the old cement works, where I knew the boys would be. When I was within half a mile of the cement works I could see them, black specks on top of one of the tall brick kilns that rose up like
a piece of Aztec architecture from the reeds.

  I parked my bike near theirs and walked the hundred yards or so along the raised bank that overlooked the river. The boys saw me and waved and I waved back and soon I was sitting on top of the kiln with Mart and Cec, smoking, looking out over the broad river. They were both interested to know how I’d made out at the party and of course I couldn’t tell them the truth but as I wove my story it was ironic how much of what had happened I could actually use without needing to distort. That made the recollection of it all even more sickening. I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the outcome might have been different if I’d act¬ually made love to her, that perhaps Moira’s explanation had been more vindictive than truthful, and what if I’d acted differently when Steve had arrived? I toiled in the nostalgia of what might have been but of course the finality of what had happened cancelled out that sweet speculation. The plain fact remained that she had gone back to Steve. How¬ever, I ended up in reinforcing my heroic image with Cec and Mart and transmitted to them the secondhand pleasures of an all-night party spent in the company of a truly all-time great and smashing bird. How they envied me.

  I got back from the river in time for Sunday lunch which was always taken in the dining room, the one day in the week the room was used for its real purpose. Uncle Eddie’s case was in the hall outside the dining room door, ready to be collected as soon as lunch was over. The meal itself was a subdued ritual, my parents and my Uncle Eddie avoiding contact with each other’s eyes, focusing instead on mem¬ories and feelings a long way away in the distance. There were only a few jokes from Uncle Eddie, and these were only in the very lowest of keys. I was depressed that he was going, mainly because his departure would leave a cold vacuum in the house, make it even more enclosed and formal than before. When he finally picked up his suitcase and walked out into the sunlight and put the case on the back seat of his Hillman, I felt like calling out to him and asking him to stay. But instead Uncle Eddie and my father and I shuffled about, looking into the sky in response to a specula¬tion as to whether or not it would keep fine for the journey, studying the car as if we were assessing its ability to complete the journey, anything to prevent a demonstration of the real feelings about Uncle Eddie’s leave-taking. Then abruptly the hands were shaken and the take cares said and the door was closed and the car had disappeared round the corner, leaving a light dust in his wake.