Little Fingers! (16 page)

I turn to
Steve. “Hi, Steve.”

“
Hi.”

“
Dave here
tells me you want to rape me.”

Steve mutters
uncomfortably “I wasn't planning on doing that.”

“
It certainly
feels that way.”

“
I am sorry.
We won't be long.”

“
Rapists
seldom linger, Steve.”

“
Yeah. Well.
I'm sorry.”

“
Just a shot
of the house full frontal from here, Steve. I don't think we will
bother with the garden after all..... However, on second thoughts,
as Tom was the guy who did it, perhaps that would be a neat bridge.
Then a few of Julia, looking lovely, eh, Julia, and maybe just a
touch forlorn.”

“
You don't
want me to be sticking my fingers up at you, then.”

“
You're
joking. I can't think of anything better. We might even be able to
get you on the front page if you did that. The editor would love
it. However, if I were you, I would stick to 'demure' and page 7,
unless old Frampton can pin the murder on you, that is. Yeah, take
a few shots, Steve, just in case.”

* *
*

Mary and I are
back together again. It is wonderful. She came round this morning,
there was a slight hesitation while we stalked around each other,
then we were straight into each others arms, naked and satisfied on
the sitting-room floor.

It is so calm
holding Mary. I know it is love. I know she is in love too. I can
hear her, twittering and trilling away, so happily. It is worth
listening to all that multitude of unsolicited moaning and whining
voices in my head to be able to hear Mary's private conversation
about her love for me. I am so sorry that I cannot reciprocate. It
would be a total revelation for her to hear my thoughts, although
we would probably get stuck in some infernal loop, both sharing the
one thought round and round and round.

It is so
unlike making out with those girls when I was sixteen, just after
my mother died. I was distraught because she was a fantastic, if
tragic and exasperating, mother, and to lose her suddenly like that
to suicide was a blow I shall never fully recover from.

Why was I not
enough? I used to ask myself that before she died, when she was
deep in her depressions and threatening to kill herself, and of
course afterwards. I adored her. She loved me. We were extremely
close. And it wasn't anything like enough.

I asked her
once if she had always been depressed. She said it had no doubt
started when her parents were killed in a car crash when she was
seven, and she was adopted by a couple where the woman did not want
anything to do with her after a while because she was so hard to
handle. Her younger sister had been adopted by another, very
respectable family, where she was also severely mistreated. At
fifteen she was raped by my father, and had me. She followed this
with a series of failed relationships, after one of which she gave
birth to Louise. Then Louise died. Life was too much for my mother.
It did not give her a chance.

After she died
I went totally out of control. All these young girls came round to
console me, and would do anything for me. I was of the age and the
mentality to take total advantage, so I made love to many of them
in my bedroom as I now had the house otherwise to myself. In a way
I was getting my own back on my mother. Look, mother, at what you
have done to me. Look what you are making me become. As if my
mother deserved any more punishment. The girls and I got very
sticky together, sometimes more than one at a time. It was a huge
release for me, a necessary one. I think that they must have felt
pretty guilty about some of the things we got up to, especially
after I started introducing the drugs to enhance the experience.
Yet, if they got nervous, they still came back for more, and I have
never heard that anything untoward ever resulted from our
activities.

That lifestyle
naturally continued when I became a City trader, the pressure of
which encouraged cathartic release into alcohol, drugs and women,
paid and unpaid. It stopped with the car crash that mutilated me,
and psychologically and physically took years to recover
from.

So being here
with Mary is totally different from that. We are together, we are
in love, and we are talking and thinking incessantly. Occasionally
I get caught out responding to a thought that she has not yet said
out loud. She stops and looks at me, and asks “Did I really say
that?” and I say “Yes.” And she says “I certainly thought it but I
cannot recall saying it. Weird.” And I say “How else could I have
known?” and she says “Weird. Weird.”

I am afraid I
am deceiving her already. I am not telling her the truth about
myself and what I can do. I will. I promise I will. It is not time
yet. We have also started discussing whether and when we should
tell Frank about us. Mary is extremely scared of doing this, for
obvious reasons, but she thinks we have to. It is only fair to
Frank. She does not want to humiliate him by leaving him as the
only person in the village who does not know what is going on. He
does not deserve that in return for all his loyalty to her
throughout their lives. The village does not know about us getting
back again, how could it? It was only about an hour ago (so give
them another hour). We have a little time.

Mary asks me
if I would be prepared to accommodate Frank, sexually speaking. He
only likes it occasionally, although, with a young girl as pretty
as me, he might work himself up into a frenzy for a week or two,
until his fishing and the pressures of business drag him down to
earth again.

I say that I
would. He is a nice man, and a considerate one. I am sure that it
cannot be too unpleasant.

Mary replies
that Frank is not Tom, not by a long chalk. She laughs. It suddenly
occurs to me that Mary actually knows that Tom had a long chalk.
“You did it with Tom?” I exclaim incredulously.

“
No.”

“
It sounds
like you did.”

“
No, I have
never been unfaithful to Frank before you, and I am not 100%
certain that it even counts as adultery with you, being a woman.
Can a woman commit adultery with another woman, technically and
legally speaking?”

“
I don't
know. So how do you know about the length of Tom's
chalk?”

“
I have never
slept with Tom, but I know many others who have. Tom's chalk has
slipped out into the conversation, so to speak, on more than one
occasion. I have never consulted Tom about gardening, and I have
never even sat on a sofa with him, so I am untouched. Sadly,
forever.”

“
Yes.”

“
I am sorry
to bring Tom up.”

“
Well, I did
more really. He was in my thoughts first, before you mentioned
him.”

“
So I can
read your thoughts too, now, can I? It must have been terrible,
terrible, terrible for you.”

“
It
was.”

“
And I got
you into it all by breaking off with you because I was so scared of
what Frank would do, and what the village was thinking. I was such
a coward, such a fool. I am honestly, honestly sorry.”

I am wondering
why Mary is apologising to me. If she were anyone else on earth,
she would be demanding abject apologies from me, and then still not
forgive me, maybe forever. To bury my own confusion, I hug Mary
close and give her a deep kiss.

To celebrate
our getting back together again, we are starting a new game. We are
sitting on each others' knees, our thighs and our buttocks splayed.
We are totally open to each other. I slip my finger inside Mary,
withdraw it, and suck it.

“
Ugh,
disgusting,” says Mary.

“
No, it's
not.” I do it again. “Strawberry flavour.”

“
I bet it
jolly well isn't.” She dips her finger inside me and tastes it.
“That's not strawberry, that's melon.”

We try it a
few more times. We come to the honest conclusion that it does not
taste of anything much at all except the perfume we are
wearing.

Mary then
offers her finger for me to suck. “Try yourself,” she suggests. I
do. It is strange tasting yourself as a coating on someone else's
skin. I like her finger in my mouth. That is really sexy. I return
the flavour.

So, there we
are, being extremely intimate, more intimate than I have ever been
with anyone, as perfect a moment as one could conceivably
have.

The thought
has just popped into Mary's head of what would happen if she
slipped her finger up my bottom instead. Would I still lick it? She
wouldn't, she decided. Bliss has its limits.

The jury is
out on this side of the twin-backed beast. I think I probably
would. After all, it would only be me.

* *
*

“
I don't know
why you admire him so much. Let's face it, Tom was nothing better
than a common rapist.”

The whole room
draws breath at the same moment, and they begin to stutter their
protestations. They are probably also wondering whether I killed
him after all.

Melody is the
most composed. “He certainly slept with anyone he could,” she
admits, “including you, Julia, but I have never heard anyone even
suggest that he raped them. You all fell for his charms, or for his
technique, willingly enough, as I understand it. That isn't
rape.”

Under some
pressure to respond and to justify my provocation, I take a moment
to collect my thoughts. “My mother would have called him a rapist,”
I assert.

“
What has
your mother got to do with it? Does she know him?”

“
No.”

“
So?”

“
My mother
was always very precise about the exact boundary between right and
wrong, and she would have called him a rapist.” I am fully aware
that my statement has a private meaning that I have no intention of
communicating. This is a conversation with myself, a monologue, in
the presence of strangers.

“
Bully for
her, Julia.” Melody turns to Sam. “Do you think Tom raped
you?”

“
Of course
not.” Sam flushes slightly, despite her usual brazenness on such
matters. “He most certainly didn't rape me. Not all those
times.”

Everyone
laughs, even me.

“
Sam was a
bit of a favourite,” Julie explains. “She has no sense of guilt,
only of fun.”

“
Right on,”
Sam declares, throwing her arm into the air.

“
He lied to
you,” I challenge her,” didn't he? Didn't he make you feel
special……?”

“
Very,” Sam
giggles, and they all giggle along with her.

“……
.and
didn't you think that you were more than a quickie?”

“
Yes. Still,
I should have known better. Not that we were all that
quick.”

More
laughter.

“
Perhaps he
should have known better. Definitely he should. He lied to you,
without question, and you cannot consent to a lie, so that
constitutes rape. He had sex with you by means of
deceit.”

I can see that
around the room they are starting to realise what I am alluding to.
As my argument becomes clearer, they are beginning to relax with
it.

“
I still
think that you are being very harsh,” says Julie. “And he has just
been murdered. Spare him some generosity of spirit,
Julia.”

“
Well, my
mother would have called him a rapist, and so would I. As it
happens, I was about the only woman he did not rape, so I feel that
I am capable of being entirely objective here. I came much closer
to raping him.”

Melody again:
“I still don't see why your mother keeps turning up in this
conversation. I think you should leave her out of it. You are a
little too old, if I may say so, Julia, to keep invoking your
mother. With respect, what she might or might not think is
irrelevant here.”

“
Not to
me.”

“
Is she still
alive?” Julie asks carefully.

“
No. She died
a few years ago.”

“
Then she is
past caring,” Melody cuts in.

“
She cared
very much.”

The room
lapses into silence.

“
Have you
seen Brian, Sam?” inquires Julie.

“
Not really.
He has gone strangely quiet since Tom's death. I think he has gone
to ground.”

“
Kate will be
pleased,” remarks Mich. “She can have him to herself for a change.
Here comes number five!”

I do not
really take any further part in the conversation. As an outsider,
here at Sam's invitation, I have the privilege of being able to
appear and disappear as I wish, and I am not sure that her friends
will ever resent my silence as much as my presence. Perhaps that is
to be overly neurotic. Melody is the most aggressive towards me,
and she is like that even with Sam, so I am probably simply no-one
special to her in any sense. Julie is friendly enough, if somewhat
perplexed by me, as is Mich, who has a tendency to say very little,
especially if the conversation is tendentious.