by Clay, Josie
Stamping pigeons into flurry and vaulting puddles. “Merry Christmas, Shopping Mall!”, I shouted in my head, skirting Nag's Head market. Blackstock Road, a memory in minutes, I pelted up Highbury Hill. Normally I hated running, grinding my knees and juddering my face, but I was bounding boundless, flying in fact, sprinting up Palladian Road, touching Fritz's bonnet for luck.
Slowing to a jog, scaling the steps two at a time, I drew back the heavy knocker, but anticipating the noise, replaced it soundlessly. Inside, stairs clubbed in haste. The front door swung open a crack. A cascade of curly coils showed, then retreated like a sniper.
“Well?” I panted. “Have you got it out of your system?”
“No”, the plaintiff reply. With that, an outstretched hand grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me in. Bitter coffee and cigarettes as if she'd been up all night. She mauled my mouth ferociously, only pulling away to announce that she couldn't stop thinking about me. She moaned this like an animal.
Pushing me up against the wall with freak strength, she ripped open my shirt, sending buttons skittering to the skirting and a standard lamp crashing to the floor. Mouths locked, we sidled along the hall as if I were feeding her oxygen in an underwater scene. Gathering herself, she led me up the stairs. I reached between her legs and cupped my hand on her crotch and she held it there for the ascent.
Of course I knew what was happening, but still panting from the run a sizeable part of me had yet to catch up. We sat on the bed and she fumbled with my buckle and zip. Yanking at my clothes, she screamed in frustration; her pyjama bottoms and t-shirt had presented no such problems. Now naked before me, her curls falling around her bare shoulders and circling her dark nipple like a monocle.
Her eyes drank in my bra. Tightening her fingers around the fabric, she tugged it down. Her mouth fastened on my nipple, sucking it keenly and helping it with her hand. Now the part of me that had previously been delayed burst into the room, flustered.
We set about each other in a rigorous bout and approximately five minutes later had assumed nearly every position. In the same way a dog can't hold a ball and a frisbee in its mouth at the same time, a decision had to be made.
“Hey, hey” I said, stopping her with my body, pinning her wrists. She bucked beneath me and then eased up against my inertia.
“What?” she said “Am I not sexy?”
I smiled. “You're the sexiest thing I've ever seen, but Nancy, you don't have to set out your stall all at once; it's not the January sales”.
From a pouting zero, her mouth broke into a broad, lascivious smile, dilated pupils contracted, predator like, allowing the green more limelight. Flowing under me.
“Show me” she said.
Three hours later, opposite M8 in Wendyland, our favoured greasy spoon in Hornsey Rise, a parking ticket in my back pocket.
“M8, you are glowing with a bluey whiteness I've never seen before; I trust your assignation went well”. We curdled into giggles over milky coffees.
“Indeed M8, thank you for asking. I'm all of a tizz, on account of just having had the dickens royally fished out of me”.
M8's nose wrinkled, first in a silent guffaw and then in a loud one.
“Oh dear” she breathed, patting her chest, “now I've roughed my throat up”.
Remy watching 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' through eyelashes. Nica grumbled when I parked myself on the sofa. Saturday afternoon and Sunday disappeared down a smoky hole, thinking of nothing but Nancy's hair trailing over my body.
Chapter 9
I'd knocked at her door at six Monday morning, unable to contain it. Now naked next to me, her head in the crook of my neck and her hair obscuring my left breast, the span of her thumb and forefinger fitting comfortably under my right, she was telling me in decorous English of her very unladylike want. Her voice resonated in my collar bone and for some reason, I saw a poor old dancing bear.
It had started in February when she'd first seen me, her attraction swiftly crystallising until she was overwhelmed by its intensity. Something bizarre had taken hold, a fixation bordering on madness. She would sit at the window hoping I would go by on my motorbike, oscillating with a desire so profound and manifest she had to wear sanitary towels. In May, the epic self-possession she'd had to muster to look at me with any degree of composure. And now unable to eat or sleep, but strangely focused on her studies and occupied with thoughts of me.
Although this was only our second tryst, we'd covered a lot of ground. Her proficiency in this new craft was awesome, imaginative, dextrous, single-minded and wickedly dirty. During one experiment, I got the disquieting feeling that I was nothing more than an engrossing project, but I didn’t care because her face during our sessions was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Her expression wanton, liberated, charged with desire and at times, a shadow of confusion as if she were emerging from a deep trance. She was months ahead, all the signs were there. Soon, something more would be required of me. “Not yet” I told myself, “not yet”.
She had no qualms about us in the marital bed; there had been no sex there for some years. When quizzed about her 'needs', she maintained she hadn't really had any, she'd never masturbated and was greatly aroused by my insistence on looking at her vagina, point blank, something she said no one else had done. I smiled to myself; it was like her - small, tastefully convoluted and with a surprising capacity.
Aroused again, she straddled my face, lowering herself onto my mouth, my rough hands over her ivory back and porcelain buttocks. She came with a mournful sigh, just as the guttural engine of the Triumph Triple died outside.
Not adept at concealing my emotions, I was worried it was written all over my face.
“Morning, guv” said Quincy, tramping along the basement corridor. Some people, like Quincy and Remy, are oblivious to the nuances of others; either because they occupy their own parameters entirely, or because they choose not to notice.
Clive however took one look at my beatific smile and altered full lips: “The deed is done then” he said, in his creepy old man voice.
Nancy materialised, descending the stairs, her footfall perfectly in sync with the hollow thunking, coming from the garden as Quincy banged out a plastic bucket, dislodging dried cement. An accidentally powerful entrance.
Clive settled his arm across her shoulders. “You're one of the family now” he said. I squirmed at the mawkish comment, but Nancy gazed up at him adoringly. That's how you look at men, I thought.
Secret looks all morning which set off small, lustful rockfalls. At least I had something to do. Clive watched with interest as she became increasingly tactile, interfering with my wrists and face.
Matt was off for two weeks so it was just the three of us. Quincy, unfamiliar with the ways of women, probably perceived mine and Nancy's intimacy as nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did he bat an eyelid when she took my hand.
“Clive, I need to borrow Minette for a while”. Horribly, I sensed he was turned on. I left my boots at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway as it was carpet thereafter.
“We can't make a habit of this in work hours” I said. “It's not fair on the others”. A pathetic, toothless stab at assertion. She tutted and ruffled my hair, giving the comment the short shrift it deserved.
“It makes me feel like a boy when you do that” I said, pawing my hair defensively.
“You are my boy” she said. “My boy with the beautiful breasts”.
A series of approaching coughs. “Oh deary me” he sighed. Quincy's shire horse shamble creaking the stair boards. Another volley of hacking followed by a trumpeting nose blow. We froze mid-fuck. Quincy's relentless, heavy gallows walk now on the carpeted scaffold.
“Why is he coming up here?” she hissed. I knew he was looking for toilet paper having exhausted the supply in the two downstairs loos, investigating the possibility of an en suite in Nancy's bedroom. How many times had I told him to bring his own?
“Twas brillig and the slithey toves!” he
boomed, entertaining himself on the climb, trudging in time to his pedantic delivery. He seemed to know the first line of many poems and numerous snatches of Shakespeare. “When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning and in rain?” he announced in a croaky, hag voice. I stared at Nancy in panic and outrage. He had no business being up here. He knew it was wrong. A violent, protracted throat clearing heralded his arrival on the final landing. Whimpering, I ducked under the duvet. He was at the door.
“Quincy” she said calmly. I saw him in my mind's eye, head tilted like some listening Disney dog.
“Yes?” he replied tentatively.
“Go away”.
“Right you are”. His footfall retreated.
“Do you think he saw your boots?” she asked. Even if he had I said, he wouldn't have made the connection.
We lingered on the top landing, looking down on my team. Quincy, extracting a length of decking from the radial arm saw and about to offer it up to its resting place.
“That's a centimetre too long” I said.
“You can't possibly tell that from up here”.
Quincy scratched his head as the board wedged against the brick wall, some two degrees from level, about to bring his foot down on it.
“No” I whispered.
Thinking better of it, he snatched it up.
“A tad too long” he shouted to Clive.
“…I can see everything now” I said.
Increasingly less time at Remy's, not returning until gone midnight only to leave at a quarter to six the next morning. Jasmine was in crisis and needed my support. Remy praised my self- sacrifice but was concerned I looked tired.
“Minsk, you're running yourself ragged”.
Chapter 10
It was evening, a new nip in the air. We strode along Highbury Park to buy wine. Nancy had dressed me in a fluffy, bottle green jumper that smelt like her. She curled her warm hand around mine, a brazen thing to do given the proximity of neighbours and shopkeepers. Also foolhardy; she hadn't been a lesbian before and knew nothing of the dangers inherent in such public display.
As if on cue, a group of Turkish boys ambled towards us, casually scanning the street for something to prick their interest. Men often looked at Nancy, sometimes stopping in their tracks to see if the rear view was as good as the front, craning their necks as they drove past. Occasionally, a lewd compliment, or obscene suggestion raised my gorge, but Nancy, accustomed to it, would walk on focused on a distant thought.
“Look man, le le le lesbians” leered one. I looked up challengingly, unsure which had spoken, locking eyes with one.
“Yeah, but look man” he said. “They're beautiful”. He grinned at me without guile and they swung past. Nancy smiled at the ground, squeezing my hand.
Nancy bent over, her legs as far apart as they would go. A paintbrush swished across the deck between her spread feet. She reversed towards me in shuffling steps, her arse level with my face, helping me now. Clive and Quincy had moved on to the next job in De Beauvoir and so I'd enlisted my alibi, Jasmine, to assist in tying up the loose ends at Palladian Road.
Jasmine, a single parent with two boys: a three year old who her mother looked after if she had work, and one of six months, baby Harris, currently nestled safely in the armchair structure that I'd constructed from bags of peat while his mum dug planting holes.
Jasmine had shivered with vicarious excitement when I'd told her about Nancy and me: there was little in the way of light relief in her life. She was small but effective, her eyes, guarded brown codes, which she allowed a select few to decipher, me among them. Thick black hair, like summer sable already threaded with silver, simply existed on her head; she had no time or money for such treats as haircuts. Her approach to life was robust and pragmatic, but if you could peel back her wrapper and take a good bite, you'd see 'victim' in red letters through her core – no fault of her own.
Jasmine and Nancy chatting animatedly while I traipsed back and forth through the house, loading Fritz with detritus and tools, a satisfying sense of sisterhood settled on me. I touched Fritz's chrome wing mirror in appreciation of my current lot, despite the dynamic of three. I didn't like three, commonly regarded as a harmonious number. I saw it as ominous.
Three cars passed in quick succession. My obsessive disorder created violent aversions and mercifully redeeming preferences, which allowed me to rectify any perceived imbalance. I mistrusted trinities, threesomes, trios – three blind mice, three little pigs, three bears, three wise men. A number weak and incomplete, trapped in triangular repetition needing a fourth to break the cycle. The farmer's wife, the wolf, Goldilocks and baby Jesus.
I lingered in the street unable to move until a fourth car went by. Four better , but not ideal. Already protected against the double disaster of 33 by adding the two digits together to make six. Six was good. Pleased with my fancy footwork, I consolidated the correction by counting two more cars before hurrying down the basement steps, through the house and back to the garden, where Nancy's broadly spread fingers rested on Jasmine's back. A green, toxic thistle flowered in my chest . Narrowing my eyes, gathering armfuls of offcuts, I marched back to the car and hurled the blocks into the flat bed with unnecessary force, more in fear than anger. On my return, Nancy was gone and Jasmine placidly patted soil around a lavender plant.
“Where's Nancy?”
“She's just gone to get some stuff from the attic” replied Jasmine, without looking up.
I turned on my heel.
“Minette?”
“Yeah?”
“She's really nice”.
“I can't do ladders”. Nancy was pensively eyeing the steps that had miraculously unfolded from the trap door in the ceiling. Her mission, to give all her old baby paraphernalia to Jasmine. I passed down carry cot, booster seat and sacks of clothes, but left the gruesome contraption that was the breast pump, unable to palate the thought of Jasmine's knockers squidging into the perspex pods where Nancy's had been - an intimacy too far.
She and I stood in the landing window watching Jasmine sitting in the peat armchair, staring into space, Harris's pink face pressed against her white breast.
“Go!” I said. Clive pacing around the kitchen in De Beauvoir, running his hands through his mousey hair. He reset his baseball cap. Becky was having contractions. “Go to her, you fucking idiot”.
He kissed me shakily, his face in rictus, a snowman with black coal eyes and a crazy, imprinted smile. He smelt of elation and terror. Shoving the company mobile in my hands. “Let me know what...” I shouted at the slammed door.
It was hard on your hands and shoulders. Jasmine and I, staggering through the house in De Beauvoir, laden with two buckets each, full to the brim with shingle. She also toted Harris on her back in a sling. Quincy was bashing about, erecting a fence at the back. At least it was shorter than Nancy's house and there were no steps. Great tides of fatigue swirled about my legs and I shifted into the zone, clenching my buttocks and marching, four wheel drive, one foot in front of the other, hands winches, shoulders a crane, spine a metal, flexible thing. Too exhausted for further motivating metaphors.
Out on the street, I climbed into the almost empty tonne bag on the kerb and visualised falling asleep as I scooped the flinty stones into the bucket wedged between my knees. Nancy! The word floated before me in the puffy, intestinal letters of a sky writer. The message urgent, but fleeting. I peered over the edge of the bag like a gopher. Across the road and some way down, the purple Saab. An apparition hanging behind the windscreen, its expression unreadable, startling me even though I knew it was a friendly ghost. Dropping the bucket, I broke into a jog. She refused to wind down the window for a few seconds and then depressed the button to explain she'd only wanted to see me and not to interrupt my work.
“Hey, Nancy” Jasmine beamed, not unduly surprised as I led her up the stairs to the client ’ s bathroom. She perched on the edge of the Victorian bath while I washed my hands.
“I'm sorry”
she said. “I didn't mean to disturb you”.
Standing her up, I dispensed with her pants and pressed her down again, bunching her skirt up around her waist, my calluses catching on the black chiffon. I guided her knees apart and regarded her glistening, fluted furrow. She remained rigid, knuckles whitening as she gripped the roll top, impeccably upright as if her cello were missing. The mood music was the brassy scrape of Jasmine raking the shingle and the asthmatic wheeze of Quincy's hand saw. First I made her come with my tongue and then with an oral, digital combination which induced her to cry out my name and gush fluid over my hand.
Emerging into the sunlight holding hands.
“I was thinking of getting some lunch” Quincy said . “Does anyone want anything?”
