Cathexis (26 page)

Lionel’s speech gave way to cheering and clapping, the tree boys piercing me with whistles. Dale squeezed my arm. Lionel piped up “I think Maisie has something for you from all of us”.

A framed photo of me and four kids, all bent over with our arses to the camera, intent on constructing a bird box, a fan of art supply vouchers and a bottle of Glenfiddich, plus a card signed by dozens.

“Speech, speech” slurred Todd.

Now emotional, I moved into a space to speak.

“Thank you for these wonderful, thoughtful presents”. I nodded at Maisie who curtseyed. “I'd like to thank the Council for allowing me to inflict my warped ideas on public spaces. I'd like to thank my colleagues for making an office-based job bearable and at times hilarious. I've learnt a hell of a lot from you all. Thank you once again” I said “...except Todd”.

The laughter faded to warm murmur.

“She'll be sorry she said that when I die behind the wheel tonight” he said.

People went back to their drinks and conversations grew louder. Dale, her lips to my ear.

“They love you Minky, and so do I”.

I smiled goofily before she squeezed my hand in departure to mingle.

“She's lovely, your Dale” grinned Maisie. Kika hung on my arm, “Oh Bracewell, now I've met Dale I know I've got no chance with you”.

“Maybe you'll stop being a sex pest then” I laughed.

“Are you talking about me again?” Todd said.

My eyes tracked Dale as she captivated the room, some of them getting a little too excited, showing her much more animation than I'd ever received. It was OK, I knew she could handle herself. Last orders, my hand pumped and my face kissed. “Keep in touch” they all said.

Her fortifying hand in mine, probably inadvisable given this was Holloway Road at chucking out time. We went unnoticed until a group of Muslim youths angled into our path. We dropped the connection too late. They passed ululating grotesquely and I thought that was the end of it until, backtracking, they followed us, cat-calling.

“What's in the bag, lesbian?” One of them made a grab for it and I snatched it to my chest.

“Dildos, innit” said another. Turning his attention to Dale, “Hey Baby, you need a good fucking from a man, you won't be wanting no pussy again, I tell ya”.

Dale and I exchanged a glance. Her eyes molten platinum
,
she spun round.  “Come on baby”. The youth agitated his fingers in a lascivious beckon.

“Wa arnalem emaki, puvir bardalahktiruem” she growled, disgust total. Halting as if she'd pulled a gun, comprehending both her words and her eyes.

“Ana aasif” said the mouthy one meekly and retreated respectfully.

“What did you say?”

“I told him I knew his mother” she said with a wink.

In the morning, eye make-up smeared; a more convincing depiction of Mary Magdalene I'd never seen and me, daubed divine in her unctions.

“I'm not much of a gardener” Cath said, eyeing the wisteria which had forced its tentacles through the louvre windows above my balcony doors. Apart from desiccated herbs, the wisteria posed the only horticultural challenge, so Dale and I muscled the brute into the flat bed of the Hilux, wedging my bagged belongings around it. I watched it flailing balefully in the rear view mirror as she brought me home.

Chapter 8

The plane banked until our window became a picture of nothing but cross-hatched green, while the people across the aisle got clouds. Once the horizon levelled, Dale handed our surprising amount of detritus to the steward.

“So” she said, “what do you think my dad's like then?”

“Oh you know, Max Von Sydow driving a Volvo”.

“Close, but he drives a Mercedes”.

Nils Knudsson had been an architect and met Dale's mother while working in London. She was attached to the Jordanian Embassy. He hadn't remarried ...'because we Knudssons mate for life’ Dale had said.

The seatbelt sign 'ping-ponged', consolidated by an announcement and the plane inclined more adamantly. I watched fascinated, as our slanted shadow rippled over expanses of water and forests of pine and silver birch. Dale gripped my hand as the droning engines and modulating pressure were underpinned by a rumble, hurtling past fir trees in a blur.

I spotted him immediately, a tall, wistful man waiting patiently at arrivals. His face creased into a smile when he saw us.

“Hey Pappa” Dale said, embracing him.

“Hey Sötnos” he said.

“Pappa, this is Minette”.

“How do you do?”, extending his hand. I was never sure how to answer this question.

“How do you do, Mr Knudsson?”, giving his hand a manly pump.

“Please, call me Nils my dear”.

We hurried along with our cases, keeping up with his stride while he and Dale conversed in that twinkling, syncopated language. She must have mistaken my delight for polite perplexity.

“English from now on, Pappa” she said.

She sat on the passenger side and snaked her arm through the gap between the driver's seat so she could hold my hand, but after five minutes she unclipped the seat belt and squeezed her body past the headrest to join me.

“Dale, vad fan gör du?” Nils said shaking his head. She landed on me in a slow somersault and I pictured that boisterous little girl in the photo, squirming on her mother's lap.

“So Minette, I hope you like to eat cod pudding” Nils said jovially, his accent kind.

“I'll give it a go” I said.

“Relax” he chuckled, “tonight we have meatballs”. Eyes a tamer version of Dale's fixed me benignly in the rear view mirror. We drove through twilight forest where there were no people and soon our heads rocked together in sleep, her hair cushioning my cheek.

The house, an essay in Scandinavian restraint. A wooden clad, modernist structure with glass frontage and a pitched tin roof slanting to fir trees at the rear, the air permeated with that exciting sea smell. Dale showed me the bedrooms.

“We're not sleeping here you know”. Her eyes fizzed with withheld secrets. “Come on” she said, leading me downstairs where a rich, savoury smell rose up to meet us. Nils stirring meatballs in a pan.

“Don't be rude” he said, “get our guest a drink and get me one also”.

“I'm taking Minette to the boat house, Pappa”.

“OK, but dinner is in fifteen minutes”. We shouldered our bags and balanced brimming glasses of schnapps as we headed for the sea. The sky still light
,
but the buildings were drawing the darkness around them from the northern summer night and several silver sagas flickered in the pink gloaming. Heralded by squealing sea birds, we climbed the timber steps set land side into a rust-red stilted structure. “The boat house” I whispered.

“Yeah, it's my place ...always has been” she said, as she pushed the unlocked door. Varnished plank walls ambered with embers of a wood-burning stove, banked with split logs, the room redolent with an incense, resinous and Gothic. At first the windows were paintings hanging each side of the double doors, so calm was the view. But when Dale flung them wide, it all made sense, the sea before us and below us, buffeting the boats under our feet. A jetty stretched from the doors, its ashy slats petering into nothing. She struck a match for the paraffin lamp, shedding light on a tangle of boating paraphernalia and sending a snarl of shadows up the wall. A salt breeze wafted through the floor as if we were flying. Attempting to block it, she only embellished the sensation when she kicked aside the floats and oars and unrolled a huge Persian rug.

I studied her childhood choice of art: a lighthouse, sweeping its beam over the rocks, some red Indians around a fire, engaged in a pow-wow, a poster of Abba and of the Esso tiger. The images, like the room, reflected her – adventurous but cuddly. I sat on a blue duvet on a proper bed. Unworthy. I am unworthy.

“You're quiet Minky, are you OK?”

She was special. “This is special” I said.

“Look”. She tugged at a rope, opening a small hatch in the floor. “I used to wee out of this when I was a kid” she chuckled, nostalgic. Then crawling towards me, she straddled my lap. “You're the only one I've ever brought here”.

“I'm honoured” I said, “it's wonderful”.

Galaxies bloomed in her eyes and she began to undulate slowly on my thigh.

“Your dad said fifteen minutes” I reminded her.

“Foffan” she groaned.

She took a back seat that evening and watched her father appraise me. We talked art, religion and Shakespeare until he'd ascertained I was intelligent. He offered me Norse mythology, shivering my timbers with tales of Balder the Beautiful, Vidor the Silent and fathers of giants in a land of ice and purity. In return, I offered Basil the Gardener and Todd the Knobhead, rolling out before him my fabric of hard work, humour and self-deprecation.

He asked if I played chess.

“Not tonight Pappa” Dale said, “it's late”.

“Oh of course, you girls go to bed”, removing his glasses and ending the interview. “It is very nice to be in such stimulating company for a change”.

“Perhaps Scrabble?” I said. “Then we could all join in”.

“Come on Minky”. Dale grabbed my hand. “God natt Pappa”.

Grendel was knocking at the door, but wasn't that Beowulf? Coming to, unsure of where I was until the boats bumping beneath gave me context. Spooning into Dale, her body foetal, I breathed in her hair and caressed her boxer's laterals. Kissing the last nubbin on her nape and pushing my nose against her to get the best of both worlds; her smell and warmth stirred me. Let her sleep, but I could die to touch that soft place under her arm, where her breast was bound to her body. Leave it Bracewell. Instead, I ran my hand over the dormant straps on her flank, each part of her equivalently exquisite.

She nudged her bottom into my lap and
drew her right knee to her chest. My pulse danced in recognition of this gesture. Either she'd fall back to sleep or do the next thing. I waited and there it was, an almost imperceptible rocking of the hips, which set in motion a serious slinky down my stairs. Timing was everything; too slow and she'd drift away, too quick and it would reflect an unceremonious expediency. And so, in answer, I fondled her haunches, allowing my little finger to encroach upon her strand line, without taking a dip. Safe in the knowledge her message had been received, she stayed inert until I stroked the silk of her inner thigh, my thumb tracing the beautiful crease where buttock meets leg, index finger absently grazing her pubic hair. A slow gyrating, forcing contact with her coco, the point of no return.

My thumb the perpetrator, only usually used in auxiliary, wanted to prove its stumpy self and she accepted it as a stop gap, while sliding over the length of my forefinger, so wet for me I could have wept. Pushing my left arm under her waist, reaching round, I handled her breasts. A deep, creaking moan of arousal and I couldn't help but indent the bar of flesh on her shoulder with my teeth.

“You're my world” I breathed, as two more fingers joined my thumb, fucking her slow and hard.

“More” she gasped and the two remaining fingers were engulfed. Reaching down, she gripped my wrist, forcing my fingers in over the knuckles with no resistance.

“OK?” I whispered. She nodded fiercely and then my hand was gone, inside Dale, amputated. She wailed a titanic catharsis and in it was grief.

“Stay with me” she implored.

“I'm right here baby”, the back of my fingers brushing some anatomy, “take me with you”.