Feelings of Fear (10 page)

He stripped off his flying jacket and his gray cable-knit sweater. It was so cold in the bedroom that his breath smoked, and he wondered how Anne could stand to lie there on the quilt with nothing on at all. He pulled off his pants and already his cock was rising. “Come on, let's get under the covers.”

“I want to look at you first.”

He knelt on the bed between her legs. She ran her fingers around his shoulders and down his chest. She sat up, wincing again, and kissed his nipples. She bit them, too, and he said “Ouch!”

“Why don't you do that to me?” she asked him. Those rainwater eyes were unusually dark, the pupils widely dilated.

“You mean,
bite
you?”

She held up her left breast in her hand, offering it to him. He looked at her for a moment, very unsure of what she really wanted him to do. Then he tentatively kissed her nipple, and sat up straight again, smiling. In return, however, she gripped his penis so hard that her nails dug right into it.

“Hey, ouch, Jesus,” he said, trying to pull away, but she gripped him even harder.

“Why don't you bite me?” she repeated. “You're not frightened, are you? I'm only a stupid tart with no morals at all! What does it matter if you bite me? What does it matter what you do to me?”

Still Cliff hesitated, but then Anne took hold of his balls and caught the skin with her fingernails, pulling it upward. It hurt, but in a strange way he was beginning to find it exciting, too, and his penis swelled even harder. He bent forward and took her nipple between his lips. He could feel it stiffen against his tongue. She clutched his balls even more painfully, so he nipped her nipple between his front teeth.

“Harder,” she demanded. “You can bite it right off if you want.”

He bit it harder, and she gasped, and lifted her hips.

“Hey, look. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it so doggone hard.”

“Harder,”
she panted. “For God's sake, darling, do it harder!”

He took a deep breath, and then bit her nipple so hard that he tasted blood. She let out a high, strangled yelp, and bucked up and down on the bed so that the springs scrunched. Cliff bit her again and again, first one breast and then the other, biting them until he could almost feel his incisors closing together, and then chewing them with his molars. All the time she gasped and shivered, and there was a thin slide of blood coming out of the side of her mouth where she had bitten her tongue.

Cliff lifted his head and said, “Anne – Anne, listen to me – I can't hurt you any more. I'm just not—”

But Anne opened her legs wide and said, “Fuck me, Eager. Fuck me just as hard as you can.”

“Anne, I—”

“Fuck me, you bastard, if you care for me at all!”

He took his penis in his fist and guided it into her wide-open vulva. He had never known a girl so wet. Her upper thighs were smothered in juice and even the quilt was soaking. He thrust himself into her as hard as he could, but even that didn't seem to be enough for her. She rolled him over and sat on top of him, straight upright, so that he penetrated her as deeply as he could physically could. With every thrust he could feel the neck of her womb touching the head of his cock, and with every thrust she shuddered and wept.

She reached behind her and tried to force two or three sharp-fingernailed fingers into his anus, and it was then that his muscles tightened and he climaxed, far too soon but he couldn't help it.

Anne literally hissed with rage and disappointment. “You bastard! You complete bastard! How could you do that to me?” She pummeled his shoulders with her fists and then started to tear at his chest-hair.

“For Christ's sake, Anne—”

But she climbed off him, and worked her way up until she was kneeling over his face. “Now bite me some more. Bite me
there.
”

“Anne, forget it, honey. I'm not going to do it. I'm not that kind of guy.”

In a sudden and explosive rage, she seized hold of his hair and sat down on his mouth with all of her weight, so that her vulva was forced
right into his mouth. She dragged her hips from side to side so that her lips were scraped against his teeth, and her pubic bone bruised his nose. All he could taste was salt blood and starchy semen.

This time, he took hold of her wrists, gripped them tight, and bodily twisted her away. She hit her head against the wall, but he rolled off the bed and stood up, panting for breath.

“What the hell—?” he asked her. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

She stayed where she was, with her back turned to him, shivering, saying nothing.

“Come on, Anne, what the hell is this all about? I can't hurt you. I love you, if you must know. You can't expect me to – Jesus, I don't know.”

“You love me?” she asked, without looking around. “You really love me?”

“What do you think, goddamit?”

With her fingertip, she traced the pattern of one of the brown flowers on the wallpaper. “If you really love me, then you'll do what I ask you to do.”

Cliff stood on the threadbare rug beside the bed, wondering what to do. In the end he felt so cold that he pulled on his clothes. “Listen,” he repeated, “I love you.”

Still she said nothing. He looked at his watched and realized that he should have been back on base over twenty minutes ago. He bent over and kissed her shoulder but she didn't respond. Her fingertip kept on tracing the pattern of the flower, over and over, as if she were trying to memorize it.

“Major Browne?” he asked, one hand clamped against his ear to suppress the deafening droning of a taxiing Fort.

“That's correct. How can I help you?”

“I'm not too sure. My name's Captain Cliff Eager, I'm stationed at Bassingbourn.”

“American, by the sound of it.”

“Yes, sir. That's right. Well, the truth of it is, I met your daughter Anne just before she left for Torquay.”

“Oh you did, did you?”

“Yes, sir. We sort of struck up a friendship. But I saw her this afternoon, and I have to tell you that she didn't look too good. I'm worried about her.”

There was a lengthy pause. Then, “You say you saw her this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir. Anything wrong with that?”

“Well, nothing. Except that she's still in Torquay.”

“She couldn't have come back to see you? I mean, maybe she's on her way now.”

“Impossible, I'm afraid. Her contract won't allow it. You must have made a mistake.”

“A mistake? What kind of mistake?”

“Well, you know, mistaken identity. One young English rose looks very much like another, don't you know?”

“You're trying to tell me that I didn't meet Anne, I met some other girl who just happened to look like her?”

“It's the only feasible explanation, old man.”

“Major Browne, I hate to contradict you, and I hate to shock you, too, but Anne and I were more than just good chums. And we were more than just good chums this afternoon.”

Another pause. Then, “Look here, Captain Eagle or whatever your name is, what you are describing is not only impossible but scurrilous. I seriously recommend that you forget all about Anne and get back to the business that your government sent you here for. Otherwise I shall have to have strong words with your commanding officer.”

“But, you listen here, major—”

“No, captain, you listen to me. Anne has gone to Torquay, and she has not yet returned. And if you know what's good for you, you'll believe that, too. For her good, if not for your own.”

Cliff hung up, and sat for a long time staring at the telephone as if it were going to ring, and it would be Anne.

A week and a half later, it did, and it was.

Cliff had just returned from a mission over Brunswick and Halberstadt, and he and his crew were so tired that they were hallucinating. Everything had gone wrong. Unexpected easterly winds had slowed them down on their way to the target, and the
three-stream bomber force had failed to rendezvous with their fighter escorts as they crossed the Dutch border. Altogether the US Eighth Air Force had lost sixty-five aircraft that night, 650 men, and Cliff had lost so many friends that he couldn't even count them.

When the phone rang and he heard her saying, “Eager? Eager, is that you?” he couldn't believe it at first.

“Anne? Is that really you? Where are you calling from?”

“The Dog & Duck, where else? Aren't you coming to see me?”

“Your father said you were still in Torquay.”

“Well, let's put it this way. I am, and I'm not.”

“You sound tired,” he told her.

“Well, my darling, I haven't been getting much sleep. The people here keep me awake most of the time. They're very demanding.”

Cliff smeared his eyes with his hand. He was still trembling from six hours of battling with the Fort's controls. “Listen … how long are you going to be there? I just finished debriefing. I need to take a shower. I've been flying all day and I stink like a polecat's armpit.”

“Don't worry about a shower. I need to see you now.”

“Anne, honey – can't it wait until tomorrow morning?”

“I need to see you now. I
have
to see you now. If you don't come to see me now, I'll never forgive you.”

“Listen,” he said, “why don't we—” but he heard the click as Anne put down her receiver, and then the endless purring of the dialing tone.

“Oh, shoot,” he said.

At that moment McClung came past, and said, “Problems, captain?”

He had a sudden apocalyptic vision of all the Forts he had seen that afternoon, plunging through the clouds with blazing young men on board them. He wondered what they were thinking about as they fell to earth, 23,000 feet below? Did they pray? Did they think of their mothers? Or did they calmly accept that their lives were over?

And McClung was asking if
he
had problems?

It was already dark by the time he reached The Dog & Duck – windy, and very cold, but dry. It was a real bomber's sky, eight-tenths cloud,
with just enough breaks to see the stars. Across the road, in Poulter's Farm, a dog was barking.

There was a darts fixture taking place and the pub was crowded. He asked for a Scotch, paid for it, and tipped it back in one. Tom said, “All back safe?” but Cliff shook his head. There was a roar from the crowd as somebody scored a double top.

When Tom had his back turned, Cliff went through to the back of the pub and climbed the stairs. It was so dark that he barked his shin on the top step. He cautiously made his way to the back room door, and opened it. He had never realized before how much it creaked.

Inside, the blackout curtains were drawn tight and he couldn't see anything at all.

“Anne?” he said. “Can't you switch on the light?”

“Not yet,” she replied. Her voice sounded oddly clogged, as if she had a bad sore throat. “Come in, darling. I'm here on the bed.”

He groped his way into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Lock it,” said Anne. “Now come over here, and sit on the bed.”

Cliff did as he was told. Immediately, she sat up and put her arms around him, and kissed him. She was naked and she was very cold, as if she had been lying there uncovered for hours.

“You're freezing,” he said. “Come on, get under the blankets. You'll catch your death.”

But she ignored him, and kept on kissing him and kissing him. It was while she was kissing him that he realized how swollen and puffy her lips were. He fumbled for the bedside lamp.

“No!” she said. “Please don't! You won't understand!”

But he did, and when the light abruptly flooded the room, he couldn't believe what he saw. Anne's body was covered in weals and bruises. Both of her eyes were swollen up, so that they looked like scarlet plums. Her lips had been split and the sides of her mouth were crusted in scabs. Whole hanks of her hair had been pulled out, revealing patches of raw scalp. There were criss-cross marks across her thighs, and it looked as if her pubic hair had been actually burned.

“For Christ's sake,” said Cliff. He was shaking with shock. “Who did this to you? What the hell bastard could have—”

She reached out and gripped both of his wrists. “Please, Eager, I'm begging you. Don't be angry.”

“How can I not be angry? Look at you! I'm going to call the police!”

She gripped him even more tightly.
“No,
” she pleaded. “Please, Eager, no.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? Sit back and allow this lunatic, whoever he is, to beat you to death?”

“Just be loving, Eager, that's all I ask. Just tell me you need me.”

Cliff took a pack of Luckys out of his shirt pocket, shook two out and lit them both with wildly wobbling hands. He passed one to Anne and took a deep, long drag on the other. “You need a doctor,” he told her. “For Christ's sake, you need two doctors. One for your body and one for your brain. How can you let anybody
do
this to you?”

She stroked his cheek. “I love it, when we're together,” she whispered. “It's all I have to live for.”

“This has to stop,” he insisted.

“Yes,” she said, trying to smile. “And I promise you, Eager, it will.”

“Promise?”

“There's only one more thing I want you to do for me.”

“I'm not biting you again. Forget it.”

She took hold of the hand in which he held his lighted cigarette. “I want you to write your name across my breasts. Then I want you to stub it out inside me. You
must.
”

He pulled his hand away. “Are you kidding me, Anne? What the hell's wrong with you? Come on, I can't take any more of this! You're going to have to see a doctor, and then I'm going to call for a cop!”

“Please, Eager,” she begged him. “Please, Eager. I can't bear it unless it's you.”