1982 Janine (10 page)

“Don't think badly of poor Hislop, he's very good to his wife,” but Hislop acted very strangely toward me. The two sorts of boys he most tormented in his classroom were the energetic ones who disliked what he taught and could not sit still, and the poor puzzled ones who hardly understood a word he said, especially not his sarcastic little jokes. “The antonym of
blunt
, Anderson, is not
jaggy
. The
antonym of
blunt is sharp
. You have heard the word
sharp
before? Of course you have. So your employment of local slang is either a conscious or unconscious effort to destroy communication between the provinces of a once mighty empire. Are you a linguistic saboteur or are you an idiot?”

And he pressed his lips together and shook with an almost silent little chuckle. I was not clever but I was not a dunce and not rebellious. I was one of the middle people who normally get by without praise or blame. Yet I am 60 per cent certain that I was given the belt more than anyone else in that class. And each time he gave it he told me he had no favourites. He never said that to anyone else. Why? 

One day Hislop did not come to school because his wife had died. For a fortnight we were taught English by the headmaster, an ordinary old man who used the belt lightly and seldom, without dramatic tension. Even Anderson the dunce started learning a few things. On the second Friday the headmaster said, “Next week Mr Hislop will be back. He has suffered a terrible bereavement, so I hope you will all be very good boys and girls and give him no trouble. Our school, you know, is very fortunate to have Mr Hislop on the staff. He was a very brave soldier during the war. He spent three years in a Japanese prisoncamp.”

These words told me something I had never before suspected: the other teachers knew what a hell Hislop made in his classroom. The headmaster was trying to convey what my mother meant when she told me Hislop was very good to his wife: “Eat all the shit he gives you, the poor bugger can't help dishing it out.”

And we got the message. The headmaster's words impressed even me. On Monday when Hislop entered the room I gazed at him with something like wonder. He no longer seemed a monster. He looked small, lonely and haggard, very ordinary and dismal. 

And his eye travelled at once to mine, and his hand shot toward me and crooked its index finger twice. I got up and went to him on trembling legs, and when I got close he bent
down and whispered in a voice nobody else in the room could hear, “How dare you look at me in that condescending fashion? I will have no favourites in this class. Hold out your hands, and double them.”

I did so in a daze of astonishment. Did I cry out at the first blow? Almost certainly, but afterward I did not flinch and certainly did not weep. I was so full of icy hatred that I probably forgot I had hands. Yet when he stopped I did not lower them, I glared at him with a rigid grin I can feel on my face at this very moment, and I stepped toward him and raised my hands till they almost touched his chin and I whispered, “Again!”

He went soft. He smiled and nodded, slipping the Lochgelly over his shoulder under the jacket. He said gently, “Go to your seat son. There's a spark of manhood in you.”

And I saw the whole horrible pattern of Mad Hislop's soul. He was not essentially cruel, just insane. He really believed that teaching small people to take torture from big people, and crushing their natural reaction to it, was a way of improving them. If he was my father (which I doubt) he must have felt belting me was a sort of loveletter to my mother: “You have borne me a child, I am making a man of it.” He was probably depressed by the amount of torture he had to inflict to produce that steady glare of hatred which proved he had made the thing he called a man. But he never doubted that the effort was worthwhile. How could he? As I returned to my seat, frozenfaced and loathing him, it was obvious that I had become more important. The other boys stared at me in perfect stillness, astonished by my newfound toughness, apart from two other tough guys who smiled crookedly, meaning: You're one of us now. On the girls' side of the room there was a slight whispering agitation, a definite stir of interest, and for a moment I hated them almost as much as I hated Hislop. Women don't despise themselves for weeping, why do they admire men who won't or can't? Why are so many of them attracted by bullies and killers? Why are so many MEN attracted by bullies and killers? Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. 

I suppose Hislop produced the man he wanted for I have not wept from that day to this. Wrong. I later wept two
tears, one at each eye when, seated before a television set some time in 1977, Scotland's victory over Czechoslovakia made it certain that we would compete in the World Cup. I have never been to a live football match in my life but as the Scottish supporters cheered and started singing ‘Oh Flower of Scotland', a song I hate (why don't they sing ‘A Man's a Man for a' That'? we don't live by its sentiments but we ought to live by them) as the Scottish supporters started bellowing that cheap bit of spineless chauvinism an irrational heat in my eyeballs produced on the surface of each one a lateblossoming bead of brine. These did not defile my cheeks. I did not let them spill. I sniggered meanly, like Hislop reacting to one of his own jokes, and tilted my head back, and stayed perfectly still until the tears dried by evaporation.

“The Lord Chastiseth whom he loveth,” says the bloody old Bible. Perhaps that is how God behaves but sane people don't. Nobody beats the people they love unless perverted by anxiety or vile examples. In which knowledge I now, in perfectly cold blood, return to my Superb who is being raped up the arse by Charlie. Since the best whisky in the world cannot fill my mind with happy memories I must get back to a fantasy and keep control of it this time. On second thoughts, leave Superb and Charlie for a while and make a completely fresh start. Goodbye to school for ever, I hope.

Firm hands with redlacquered nails grip the wheel of a smoothly speeding car. Ahead of the windscreen a busy sunlit road bends to a curve. Hitchhikers stand on the verge holding out cards chalked with placenames. The firm hands slow down the car past two bearded men bound for Los Angeles, a boy and girl waiting sadly for Chicago, two girls enthusiastic for New York, and stop it beside a solitary girl in short short short white shorts and heliotrope blouse unbuttoned almost to her navel who holds a card saying ANYWHERE. Dark abundant hair hangs down her back. This is Janine, but a more eagerly smiling Janine than the one who sat in the car with Max. She wears white sandals, no stockings, carries rucksack. As she bends to enter the car I have a plan view of her white bum vanishing under the roof of a red twoseater which zooms off along the roadway. I ought to be a film director. I can imagine exactly what I want.

The hard throb of a kettledrum mixes with the bright piano music. Seen through the windscreen from in front the hands on the wheel belong to Helga, who is tall, slender,
handsome, cool, Nordic, with long straight blonde hair, and high cheekbones, and eyes long and narrow with ice-blue pupils. Janine is talking to her vehemently, with many grimaces and nods of the head which shake down a heavy dark curl over one eye. Helga, driving fast but carefully, only shows how her passenger fascinates her by a small sideways glance and enigmatic smile.

A high view of busy motorway with red twoseater leaving it by a small sideroad. A high security fence on one side shuts off a thick wood. The car passes (but does not pass through) a wide-open gate in this fence. It slows down, then parks on grass verge. Cut music.

Faint birdsong and sound of wind among trees. From beside the open gate I see two women leave the car by opposite doors, hear the slight clunk of the doors shutting, see them meet behind the car and kiss. Then hand in hand they walk quickly back along the fence toward me, tall slim handsome blonde, small plump pretty brunette. Janine is not wearing shorts, a clumsy notion, her long loose black skirt, unbuttoned to mid-thigh, is tossed sideways by the breeze the same way that it sways her dark hair. As the women near the gate I see that their faces are dreamy and slightly openmouthed. They are too shy and excited to look at each other. A rear view of them pausing hand in hand, staring through the gateway. A rough track curves into the wood. It is Helga who takes the first step forward. She leads Janine across the track and under the thickleaved branches on the far side. The women enter the lushgreen sunlit windshaken leaves as if entering a thick mist or running river, they disappear almost completely into it. My mind's eye starts to follow them slowly, rising as it follows so that, just as I reach the gate, and it swings shut, I cannot see who has pushed it. I hear the click of a lock, the scrape of a turning key. Along strands of wire at the top of the gate (between which I can see the foliage where the women vanished) appear the words
CAUGHT IN BARBED WIRE: A Superbitch
Production
.

Good. From now on I will subdue my lust for what I create by keeping the eye of imagination as cool as a camera lens, the ear of imagination as discreet as a small microphone. Eye and ear move through the words and wires. They cross the track and stealthily penetrate screen after screen of leaves. A distant bird chirps. I hear whispers, then a blissful moan. I have forgotten to imagine what Helga is wearing. Is my interest in the sexual provocation of women's clothes waning? Please God, don't let that happen. Helga must wear tight jeans because of the boy with the catapult. Another blissful moan. The last screen of leaves parts. I look down on a patch of grass where

Janine is laid out among her loose dark hair. Strands of it stray across eyelids ecstatically closed, lips ecstatically moaning, are caught between breasts spilling out of the satin blouse ecstatically unbuttoned. It is a loose blouse with a few big white buttons. The black velvet skirt hugging her plump hips is fastened by buttons of the same kind and Helga's firm hand deftly undoes them then slips caressingly between Janine's parting thighs to tenderly explore moist secret valley while Helga's tongue probes thick hair to find Janine's delicate little ear. Lightly Helga nibbles lobe then murmurs, “No bra. No panties. You little devil, you were looking for this.”

“Mm. I didn't expect to be so lucky. Don't stop.”

“And won't you undress me?” asks Helga who (apart from big pocketflaps on buttocks and breasts) is dressed tight where Janine is loose and wears cowboy boots while Janine has kicked off her sandals. Janine whispers, “Later. I'm lazy just now. Do some more nice things to me.”

Bright spots of sunlight through the moving leaves dance over their lovemaking.

I must interrupt them soon though I would prefer to join them. It must be wonderful to be among two women who are lazily enjoying each other and want to share a stiff prick. Pricks are made for cunts. Sontag sometimes wanted a sexual trio, but with two men. She told me so. I said, “Ah.”

“Have you no nice manfriend with whom you would like to share me?”

“None atall.”

“Never mind, I know many people. I am sure I can find someone suitable.”

“Oh.”

“Do you not like the idea?”

It suddenly struck me that Sontag, with two men simultaneously entering her from opposite sides or at opposite ends, would be in no position to give bossy little lectures while lovemaking. Perhaps another man and I could turn her into a pure instrument of pleasure. I grew excited and said, “That idea might be worth investigating.”

She smiled and said coyly, “I am corrupting you!”

“Oh?”

“You have never before admitted to wanting a homosexual liaison.”

“I don't want one. You will be between the other man and me. I refuse to lay a finger on him.”

She shouted angrily, “That is ludicrous! That really makes me laugh! Why must you suppress all feeling for your own sex? Do you not realise that you cannot satisfy a woman if you do not love yourself, and you cannot love yourself if you recoil from your own sex?”

“That sounds like trigonometry.”

“Yes yes but you will not evade me by making a joke. It is inhuman not to love people of your own sex, a man of your age
must
have wished to do it once or twice. And caressing another man is much the same as caressing yourself.”

“I never caress myself.”

“You must. You masturbate.”

“Yes, but without touching myself.”

“Impossible!”

It struck me then that most women do find it impossible to masturbate without using their hands. This made me feel slightly superior. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. Sontag scowled and said, “How do you do it?”

I told her that I imagined an exciting adventure with a woman. At the climax I came against my mattress as if it was the woman.

“Aha! You use your mattress like a woman, which is why you wish to use me like a mattress. Thankyou, but no.”

Sontag scored many little verbal triumphs like that over me. They made neither of us much happier.

But she had uncovered something which surprised me. Until she suggested it I had never thought of pleasing my own body with my own hands and the notion filled me with almost fearful distaste, distaste very like my distaste for touching or being touched by another man. I know from experience that embracing a woman brings sweetness mixed with anxiety and leads to pain, but I feel automatically that bodily contact with a man is purely repulsive, why?

“Hold out your hands and double them.”

I refuse to blame poor Hislop for everything wrong with me. He was the only bad teacher I ever had and I had him for less than a year. And my father the timekeeper never hit me, never even touched me after the time when he carried me on his shoulders. He was solemn and conscientious, deliberate in his speech and not much fun, but physically very gentle. Were the fights to blame? On my way to or from school, when I had a slight disagreement with another boy, one of us sometimes ran out of sensible words, lost his temper and used hurtful words which the other, in order not to seem weak, used back. Left to ourselves we usually separated shouting insults as we went, but if other boys were near they surrounded us in an excited ring and we had to swipe at each other until one or both burst into tears or we were mercifully separated by a passing adult. I had some ugly encounters of that sort between the ages of seven and twelve, but not more than most boys. In every school there are Mad Hislops among the pupils who like tormenting folk. I hear there are bullies even among girls. Bullies usually attack smaller children who lack friends. I don't know why, but they never attacked me. Yet I still had a physical dread of football. I though it was midway between a primary school punchup and the Second World War. All these things show my early cowardice and dread of the male body but do not explain it. Some questions will never be answered. Forget them.

Helga's hand softly explores and caresses Janine's secret moist valley, Helga's teeth lightly nibble a pink earlobe
among Janine's dark tangle of hair, bright spots of sunlight through the shaking leaves dance over their lovemaking and I wish I could keep things as sweet at this. But since I cannot join these ladies I can only stay with them by conjuring up an evil spirit. The blissful whispers are cut by a nasty falsetto giggle. Janine's eyes blink open. Helga rolls aside, kneels, gazes sharply around. “I'm up here,” says a voice.

Along a thick bough twelve feet above their heads sprawls a small barefoot person wearing dungaree overalls a size too big for him rolled up to the knee, and a wristwatch with a very thick metal-studded strap. He could be a child often but has the bald wrinkled head of a gleeful old man. He says,

“Don't stop, I like what you do.”

“Little
bastard
!” spits Helga, rising to her feet and looking round for a stone to throw. Janine sits up, brushing back her hair and fumbling with her blouse.

“Leave your tits the way they are, Hugo likes them like that,” the bad boy says. Helga fails to see any stone.

“Come on, honey,” she says, pulling Janine to her feet, “he's crazy. Let's get out of here.”

“You can't!” says the bad boy, “I've locked the gate.”

He holds up a key that shines like silver in the sun. Helga stares at him then says, “Wait here,” and pushes through the branches that screen the track leaving Janine stooping to fasten her skirt. The boy says conversationally, “I don't know why you bother. In a few minutes you'll have to undo it again.”

“Just who do you think you are?” says Janine.

“Hugo calls me Cupid. He
loves
the trespassers I catch for him.”

Helga returns muttering, “Yes, he's locked the gate.”

Hands on hips she stands astride staring up at Cupid who now sits astride the bough, hands on hips and grinning cheerfully back. She speaks in a voice that tries to sound sensible and casual at the same time: “All right, son, you've had your fun with us. Now open the gate.”

“Bluejean dolly, my fun with you is just beginning.”

“Listen kid,” says Helga, “I can climb a tree as well as you! I don't want to, it'll mess my clothes and I hate using violence on an infant, but when I get hold of you I'll thrash
you till you wish you'd never been born. So just throw down that key!”

“No, I'll lose my bounty if I do that.”

“What bounty?”

“A piece of your arse.”

Helga grabs a branch and pulls herself into the tree. Stop. This is America. Go back.

“What bounty?”

“A piece of your ass.”

Helga grabs a branch and pulls herself into the tree.

Cupid drops the key into the bibpocket of his dungarees, takes out a small plastic box and pulls up an aerial from one side of it. He says into it, “Hello Hugo? Hello Hugo. Hello there, two she-trespassers are in at the side gate, I've locked it, they're just the right age and just your type. Hurry. They're under the chestnut tree. A bluejean wildcat is climbing up here to get me, I'm gonna make her squeal for you.”

Helga is almost level with him by now. One foot has just left a lower branch, a leg is hooked over a branch above, her weight swings from upstretched arms clutching a branch higher than the bough where Cupid sits. He pockets the radio, pulls out a big metal fork with a thick elastic sling and takes slow aim saying, “Where will I give it to you honey? I use lead slugs!”

Helga freezes, swinging. Her wide-open mouth and eyes show that she feels she is all target, she stares at the bulging crotch of Cupid's dungarees. He says, “From here I can see one halfmoon curve of your big sweet ass. Will I start with that?”

Suddenly Helga pulls herself upward. There is a twang, she shrieks, then two more twangs and shrieks and a wild threshing of leaves as Helga goes down the tree in something more like a scrabbling fall than a climb. She lands on her feet but with jeans ripped to the knee, her shirt pulled out of them and wrenched off both shoulders (unconvincing) wrenched off one shoulder. And now, getting rapidly nearer, comes the noise of a truck and barking dogs. Helga grabs Janine by the arms and says, “Listen, I'm running, one of us
must
get away, you run too but a different way honey and stall them, stall them if they catch you I'll be back –”