1982 Janine (9 page)

She goes into the garage. He follows. As she lays her hand on the car door he embraces her from behind, folding his arms round her waist, pressing his face into the back of her neck. She sighs patiently and stands absolutely still. He whispers, “Terry, I'm sorry I said that, you look great, really great. Please stay with me this one weekend, Terry. I need you.”

She remains perfectly still until he releases her. She gets into the car saying, “Some other time, Max. Momma expects me.”

She drives off dressed exactly as her lover wants her, all nude and ready under the one-piece denim dungarees.

At six o'clock exactly (to hell with 18.00 hours, I hate digital clocks) she drives into a multi-storey car park knowing that Charlie has checked in two minutes earlier. She sees his car before docking her own in a nearby space. She recalls his last words on the phone: “I don't want you wearing anything but those dungarees, right?”

An excited little smile comes to her face. “
Right
,” she whispers, and slips off her shoes before leaving the car. A feeling of cold gritty concrete underfoot, a feeling of fear as she quickly crosses a cold space to the red rolltop twoseater. Car parks are inhuman places, bleak warehouses for machines, a setting for any kind of evil. But Charlie opens the door to her, she slides into what she thinks is safety, the door closes, they kiss. His hands touch her briefly all over. She whispers, “I'm exactly like you told me to be.”

“Good,” he says, withdrawing a moment.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere yet.”

He reaches across the car, snapping shades down over all the windows. A dim red light above the windscreen makes her suntanned skin look warm negro, the dungarees look pink. The two seats are upholstered in thick fleece with very high backs which he folds down flat. I suppose the gearlever between the seats can be unscrewed or folded down so that he can take her in his arms, unbutton, undo her etcetera. Will I imagine their lovemaking in detail? Certainly not.

Thousands of people must enjoy imagining what mouths, hands and pricks do to other mouths, breasts and cunts because long descriptions of this activity fill magazines sold on station bookstalls. It strikes me as innocent stuff but no fun at all, mere sliding anatomy. Yes yes yes the greatest and most essential good in the world is two people feeling safe enough, at home enough, to give and take delight in each other's bodies without haste, worry or greed. Once I could enjoy such lovemaking for over an hour, it led to sleep from which I emerged into more of it. I grew so thin and lean that when I went home one weekend my mother asked if I had taken up football? When I said I had not she looked at me closely then said, “Aye well. Just you be very careful,” and we dropped the matter. So I cannot read these descriptions without feeling completely separated from what I most enjoyed. In this bed in Selkirk or Peebles I only find entertainment in sexual dramas between selfish bitches and sneaky plotters, between lustful bullies and their slaves. But it will not bore or overexcite me to imagine that Charlie, in his smart red rolltop woo-grotto, makes love to Superb like I made love to Helen in the two years after we married. During the last fortnight of a magnificent summer – a summer more rich and strange than any millionaire, president or king ever enjoyed – I loved her shyly, wonderingly, without ever once touching her. I was unable to believe she cared a damn for me. But after she came to my closet, after the threats, tears, hypocrisy, the false smiles and falser speeches we lay side by side in a bed legalised and blessed by the Church, I was still almost unable to touch her. Sometimes I placed an arm across her shoulders feeling a lonely pity for us both. We were victims of a complicated trick which nobody had planned. But I could not, would not make love until she indicated that she wanted it, and then I roused myself by caressing her as if she were the slave of a completely selfish lust, and I entered her vindictively with a penis which I thought of as a truncheon or redhot poker. Let Superb be so sick of her husband's timid caresses that Charlie's hard truncheon and redhot poker technique is exactly what she wants. He applies it hard to her twice and afterward, dozing in his arms, she murmurs, “Mmm I needed that, honey. You're so good, you know.”

Helen seemed to enjoy that sort of lovemaking. It was over quickly but she held me tight afterward when I allowed her to. Sometimes the coitus made me feel so vigorous and hopeful that I had to rise, dress and go for a walk through the dark streets wondering how to improve this life of mine. Should I leave her? Should I emigrate? Could I not find a woman to love who would respect me and whom I could respect? Sometimes after a difficult day the lovemaking pleasantly exhausted me and I lay in her arms feeling that life was not a bad business. One evening I came home and saw on the living-room table a pile of photographic bondage magazines,
Hogtie, Harlots in
Harness, Knotty
, that kind of thing. Perhaps I blushed. Certainly my face went hot. Helen said, “These were in your desk. I wasn't spying, I was looking for a spare envelope. If you wanted to hide them you should have locked the drawer.”

I said, “Yes, I suppose I should.”

“Why did you buy them?”

“They help me.”

“With what?”

I decided not to mention masturbation. Helen wanted sex only two or three times a week, I needed it more often. I said, “They help me with you.”

“How can they?”

“They help me to come. Ejaculate.” After a long pause she said flatly, “You don't love me.”

“I love you more than anybody else I know.”

“But when we make love you have to imagine doing horrible things to me.”

“Only for fun.”

“I need a cup of tea.”

She left the room. I took the magazines out to the midden and buried them under old bottles and potato peelings knowing she could see me from the kitchen window. Later, when I bought new ones, I did keep the desk drawer carefully locked. But after that day we did not make love again till nine years passed away. Why? She had liked my lovemaking till then, I certainly had not forced it on her. Perhaps she was shocked to discover that my brisk truncheon was more than a tame animal she summoned to serve her.
Perhaps she had fantasies of totally dominating me. Certainly she hated feeling subordinate. So do I.

I hate feeling subordinate so Superb, comfortably truncheoned, lies in a lazy dwam while Charlie sits up, places a rug over her and raises the back of his seat saying, “There's no need for you to move.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“A quiet little place in the country.”

“My bag is still in the other car.”

“Leave it. This quiet little place has everything a woman can possibly want.”

“It sounds like heaven.”

He drives off and Superb falls asleep. I suppose a bossy woman can relax with a man of the same type if she thinks she can get rid of him whenever she likes. 

She wakes when the car stops. The rug is gently removed and Charlie leans down to kiss her. He says, “We're here.”

“I don't want to move.”

“Lie on your front.”

“Why?”

“I've a surprise for you. A present.”

She turns over. She feels him grip her right arm and something cold is clicked round it above the elbow, then her left arm is pulled hard back and with another click she discovers that her elbows have been handcuffed behind her. She cries, “Hey that
hurts
, Charlie!” and starts struggling on to her knees but his hands, suddenly rough, force her face down into the fleece again pressing hard on her shoulders as he kneels astride her. Where are the dungarees? In a tangle round an ankle, she is otherwise naked. “Charlie,” she gasps, “what are you trying to do?”

His answer makes her forget the pain in her elbows.

“Listen Terry. Listen hard or you won't understand a thing. We're in the basement of an organisation which will pay me big money for bringing you here. But before I hand you over I'm going to give you something extra special to remember me by.”

And his hands cruelly grasp her buttocks and DANGER OVEREXCITEMENT DANGER OVEREXCITEMENT,
THINK OTHER THINGS QUICK WHAT? ANYTHING, THESE I HAVE LOVED THE ROUGH MALE KISS OF BLANKETS, GOOD STRONG THICK STUPEFYING INCENSE SMOKE and jellies soother than the creamy curd.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote sharked up a list of lawless resolutes where wealth accumulates and men decay bird thou never wert. I am an idiot.

“You require an exercise to focus your mind. I have no favourites in this class. Go to the blackboard, pick up the chalk and write out three simple words which I will dictate to you. For each mis-spelled word you will receive a stroke from my famous Lochgelly. Are you ready? Station. Passion. Cushion.”

I was not a very bad speller, these words did not usually bother me. I wrote,

STATION PAS

and stuck there.
Passion
suddenly seemed highly unlikely. I compromised and wrote,

PASTION

A girl giggled. In Hislop's class the girls were expected to giggle at certain times, especially the attractive girls. I now knew I was going to get one of the belt at least and the word
cushion
, fully formed in my mind's eye, suddenly seemed altogether incredible. I wrote CU and could go no further. Hislop sighed and sat down at his desk with elbows on lid and face in hands like a weary and defeated man. He said, “Was it for this the clay grew tall? Perhaps one of you ladies, Heather Sinclair, will show him how to spell cushion.”

So the best speller in the class came out and corrected passion and completed cushion while Hislop produced the famous Lochgelly and told me to hold out my hands. I should never have held out my hand. It allowed him to look dignified while he was hurting me. But nobody ever disobeyed Hislop. When he gave two strokes of the belt he used both hands and drew it from behind his shoulder so it was almost as sore as the legal maximum of six delivered with one hand from the elbow. I cried out at the first blow
and at the second crouched almost double over my crippled hands. He said, “Now look me in the face!” and his voice had that hysterical edge to it which is why we called him mad. I looked at him. I was not sobbing but I was weeping, the tears he despised were flowing down my cheeks. He said, “You are nothing but a big soft lassie. Get to your seat!”

The worst thing he could call a boy was a lassie yet the girls quite liked him. He was gentle and polite with girls, almost courtly, he never patted them playfully or placed an arm round their shoulders when correcting their exercises like some men teachers did. And women liked Hislop. I did not tell my mother that he had belted me because I believed that getting hurt that way was a shameful thing, but a classmate must have told his mother who told my mother, for she suddenly said, “I heard poor Hislop was hard on you last week.”

I shrugged my shoulders. She said, “Don't think too badly of him. He's very good to his wife.”

Mrs Hislop was a bedridden invalid. Out of his not very large salary Hislop paid an old woman to attend her while he was not himself at home. 

Could my mother and Hislop possibly have? Could
he
be my real? Oh no no no but. But I was once in a railway carriage with an old man who would not stop furtively staring at me. At last he said, “Excuse me, but you have a strong resemblance to someone I used to know. Is your name Hislop, by any chance?”

I said it was not. He said, “But you're from the long town?” That was the local nickname of the town I grew up in. I said, yes I was from the long town, and a Hislop had been my English teacher, but my father was the timekeeper at the pit. He said, “Oh that explains it.”

I said, “Explains what?”

He frowned. A moment later he said that Hislop belonged to the old breed of Scottish schoolteacher, hard but just; if a boy in his class showed the slightest spark of talent or manhood he would move heaven and earth to encourage it; many a lawyer and doctor from the long town owed their university degrees to Hislop. The Hislop he spoke of
seemed a few years younger than the one I remembered who had encouraged nobody very much, but perhaps there were no sparks of talent in my class at school. And the old man had avoided my question, he had not told me why my father being timekeeper explained my resemblance to Hislop the English teacher, a resemblance which I never heard anyone else refer to. It lies in the mouth and eyes and can easily be explained without the notion of paternity. If you are much impressed by someone you do come to resemble them. That is why people who live together can acquire a family expression which embraces husband, wife, children, yes even the dog or cat. So there may be a look on my face which belongs to Hislop because he taught it to me. True, I am the same height as Hislop and both my parents are taller people but that it not unusual. True, when my father the timekeeper died I discovered from documents that he had married three months before my birthday. But in Scotland premarital sex is as common as anywhere else in the world. A registrar once told me that since the start of the last century, when the public records first made it notorious, over half the marriages in our county have taken place after pregnancy. But surely SIX months after pregnancy is a bit unusual? I married Helen six weeks after she stopped bleeding. My father the timekeeper was a man who always did what he thought was right. In spite of his socialism, or else because of it, he was the most decently conventional man I have ever known. He never drank, never swore, never said a hard word against a private individual. Why would a man like that wait half a year before doing the decent thing by the mother of his child? What was my mother doing, what feeling, in that half-year? I am a completely ordinary man but my birth is as mysterious to me as my death and I will never learn the truth of it now.