Taming the Beast (18 page)

Jamie felt a wave of relief. Then rapidly, disgust. ‘You
let
someone do that to you?’

‘It looks worse than it is.’ Sarah looked at her hands. ‘They’re just love bites. You know I bruise easily.’

Just love bites. Bruise easily. Not to worry
. How comforting. Sarah let someone bite her legs hard enough, and for long enough, to cause blanket bruising. What kind of sicko did that to a girl, with or without permission?

‘Was it Mike?’

Sarah shook her head. Her lips were pressed together so hard they were turning white. White lips in a red face. Her colours were all reversed, like on a negative.

‘I need to know who did this to you.’

Sarah opened her mouth wide, the colour flooding back into her lips as she stretched them into an O. ‘You don’t
need
to know anything. I appreciate you were concerned, but now that I have told you there is nothing to be concerned about it is time for you to drop it.’

Jamie tried to drop it. He lasted eight seconds. ‘Is this something you enjoy then? Being beaten during sex?’

Sarah walked out of the room. Jamie hit himself in the forehead several times and then followed her. She was sitting at the kitchen table smoking and pretending to read a book.

‘I only asked because I thought maybe next time we do it you might want me to slap you around or something. I just think it can’t be very satisfying for you to have me trying to be gentle and thinking of your pleasure, when what you really want is a good beating.’ Jamie
hated
himself. He sounded like a nagging, hysterical woman. Seeing her purple thighs had tripped some switch in his brain and he didn’t know how to switch it off again.

She didn’t look up from her book. ‘Our sexual encounters are perfectly satisfying to me, Jamie.’

Encounters? She made it sound like an accident. Like they bumped into each other when they were naked and just happened to have sex while they were there. Was that all it meant to her? Was he just another dick to get her off? And if that was what Jamie was then what was this other man? Was the act that resulted in her bruises just another
encounter
?

‘I hope you at least used a condom. A bloke who’d do that to a girl is probably–’

‘Nope, no condom.’ Sarah looked up and smiled before returning to her reading.

Jamie walked over and ripped the book from her hands. Sarah blinked three times, then her face settled back into its placid mask.

‘You didn’t use a condom?’

‘Wasn’t necessary. I didn’t fuck him.’

‘You didn’t… what did you do then?’

Sarah took her book back from his hand, opened it, inserted her bookmark and placed it on the table. ‘That is none of your business.’

‘If you’re having unsafe sex then it’s my business.’

Sarah laughed without a hint of humour. ‘You’re quite welcome to slap a rubber on before you risk contamination by screwing me. Better yet, how about we just don’t do it at all anymore.’

This was very bad. Not just that she’d said it, but that she’d said it so calmly. Like she didn’t care one way or the other. This was so, so bad. He sat in the chair beside her and took her hands. ‘If I shut up right now will you forgive me for being such a dickhead?’

Sarah looked over his shoulder. He noticed how red her eyes were, and that the always present under-eye circles were darker than he’d seen them in a long time. He had to literally bite down on his tongue to stop from interrogating her.

‘You’re not a dickhead.’ Sarah returned her gaze to his face. ‘What you are is a nagging pain in the bum.’

‘I’ll stop, I swear.’

‘No you won’t. You’ve been nagging me since the day I met you.’ She smiled. ‘Just stop taking everything so personally, okay?’

He had never felt such immense gratitude. He would be happy forever just on the strength of that smile. ‘I’ll try.’

‘I know you will.’ She kissed him then, and all the bitterness of the last half hour dissolved. After that she was normal again, laughing
and telling rude jokes and smoking too much. Jamie tried to be normal too, and on the surface he succeeded. But underneath it all his heart was stained purple. Like the circles under her eyes. Like the bruises on her legs.

*

Sarah was sorry she’d asked Jamie to come over. She had thought his presence would be a comfort; that his gentle attention would be the perfect antidote to the memory of Daniel’s teeth. Usually when Jamie made love to her she felt warm and peaceful, but today his shy, hesitant kisses and cautious thrusting made her feel smothered and lonely. She wanted to shout at him to not be so careful, so bloody controlled.

She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the stinging of her thighs as they chafed against the sheets. She thought about Daniel’s teeth. Daniel’s mean, sharp, little teeth. Then she thought about the pink gums they lived in and the lips that hid them. She thought of his wet, red mouth, with its mean, white teeth, and its rough, hot tongue, and how one day soon that cruel, beautiful mouth would kiss and lick and bite her all over. Jamie kept fucking her politely, and Sarah kept thinking about Daniel. After they had both come – Sarah first with her head full of Daniel’s mouth, and then Jamie with his mouth full of Sarah’s name – she felt that she had stolen something from Jamie, and she knew in that moment that she would never be able to have them both.

She had no idea what she was going to do. Daniel Carr got her so she couldn’t think straight. Since he had reappeared in her life, wet heat seeped from every pore and drowned out sense. Last night, she would have done whatever he asked, but he barely asked anything at all. Today, she was sobered by pain and frightened by
the strength of her longing. Today, she was profoundly unsure of herself.

For a third of her life she had held him in her mind and heart as the only man she could ever love. Each one of the hundreds of men she had been with was compared to him, and none measured up. Her choice of university course was inspired by a barely admitted fantasy that he would come back and she would impress him with how well-read she was. Even her desire to travel had its seed in his long ago assertion that seeing the world was the best education a person could get.

And yet, she was much more than a self-styled Eliza Doolittle. The intensity of her initiation into sex, and the deep loss she felt when he left her, had forced introspection worthy of a mid-life crisis when she was still a child. It had made her strong and self-aware and independent. And although her sexual precociousness was initially sparked by her need to find a replacement for Daniel, she had realised quickly that she had a real talent for sex. In exploring and expanding that natural talent she had found real joy. Her life was what it was because of him, but it was still very much hers.

Giving in to Daniel would be throwing it all away. Like picking up a needle and plunging it into her arm and saying: Hey, this is it. I want to be a junkie and I want the rest of my days on this earth to be junk filled days and I don’t mind if I die or am defiled or destroyed, as long as I feel like this. I am never going to travel to the four corners of the earth or have a family or a career or see my parents again. I am not a ball of fiery potential just waiting to find my niche in the world. I am nothing, and I want nothing except this bliss and this pain and this nothingness, emptiness, love.

And giving herself to Daniel would mean sacrificing Jamie. Was it even
possible
to live without Jamie? Since she was an adolescent
he had been there to shelter her from the worst storms and to soften the sharp edges of life. Without friends, without boyfriends, without parents, she had survived just fine because Jamie picked up all the slack. She didn’t even know who she was without him. She had no concept of what it would be like to live in a Jamie-free world.

But she had lived without Daniel Carr and didn’t like it at all.

He called at three o’clock to tell her he would pick her up at eight. She looked over her shoulder at Jamie, who was pretending not to listen.

‘I have to work.’

‘Don’t you want to see me?’

Jesus
! He had a wonderful voice, and if Jamie wasn’t in the room she would’ve told him so. ‘I already took last night off. I have to go or they’ll–’

‘Fine, I’ll pick you up. What time do you finish?’

Sarah pressed her hand to her lips. She should tell him to leave her alone; she’d call him when she was free. She should tell him that he had real guts ringing her today after the mess he made out of her legs last night. She should tell him that she couldn’t see him anymore because he made her lose every scrap of ambition she’d ever had.

She told him she finished at ten and gave him the address. Conscious of Jamie’s ears turning red with effort, she whispered that she couldn’t wait to see him. It was a pathetic thing to say and as soon as it was out she wished it back, but he liked it.

‘I’ll be early then,’ he said.

Daniel came into the restaurant at nine-thirty, sat at the bar and ordered a scotch. Sarah smiled, her heart lurching as it always did when she set eyes on him. He nodded but did not smile or wave. Sarah didn’t care. He was here and he was beautiful.

She finished her shift in a cloud of self-consciousness. She had worked at the steakhouse for six years but having him watch her made everything feel new and complex. It was hard to get her voice, or her gait, or her balance right. It was hard not to giggle and toss her hair. Hard not to feel as though she was just playing a part in the movie where the waitress is rescued from her dull, degrading existence by the handsome older man who spies her from across the room and falls in love with the way her hair falls, just so, over her eyes.

When the clock hit ten, Sarah had her bag over her shoulder and was motioning to Daniel to follow. She did not get changed, or chat to the guys in the kitchen or have a beer with the other waitresses as she usually did after a shift. When they were in the car park she stopped and gave him a kiss, which he received impatiently before pushing her into the car with a grunt. He drove at a frightening speed and ignored every traffic light. He drove so recklessly that Sarah, who had little fear of physical injury, begged him to stop.

He pulled off the road and down a steep dirt track, coming to a screeching halt in the middle of bushland. Sarah could hear water running, which indicated a river, but they had driven too long for this to be the Parramatta River, and if it had been Toongabbie Creek she would’ve recognised the track.

‘Where are we?’ She unclasped her seat belt and turned to him.

‘Look at you!’ Daniel said, and then he was kissing her hard on the lips. Sarah almost lost consciousness such was the force with which he kissed her. Her head was smashed back into the seat, her nose mashed against his cheekbone. He kissed her with his whole face, but when she tried to pull his body onto hers he withdrew.

‘I loved watching you at work,’ he said, panting. ‘I’ve been hard for forty minutes.’

‘Seeing me clearing tables got you hard?’

‘Oh, yes. You in that tight little dress and those ugly shoes. And a name badge for God’s sake! I had never pictured you like that before. A name badge girl.’

She stared down at the flat white sandshoes. He was right: they were ugly and made her legs look even skinnier and shorter than usual. She should have taken the time to change.

Daniel tugged at her collar. ‘I’ve always had a thing about these dresses. I lost my virginity to a waitress, you know?’

Sarah cleared her throat. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘All the boys lost it to her; she was the town tramp. I remember pulling her name badge right off once… Paula. I don’t think I’d even remember her name if it wasn’t for that badge.’

‘If you’re trying to insult me in some way I’d prefer it if you came straight out with it. I’m extremely bored by middle-aged ramblings about how wild you were when you were a lad.’ Sarah sunk into the seat and looked out the window.

‘Oh, dear,’ he said in the warmest, sweetest voice she had ever heard. ‘I’ve offended you when I meant to compliment you.’

He was good at switching his voice around. It was part of his method of controlling her. Going from hot to cold to sweet to angry to cruel to kind and back again. Sarah was even-tempered by nature and such vacillation disoriented her, which was exactly why
he did it: to lower her defences. As if she even had defences when it came to him.

‘What I meant to say,’ he continued, ‘was that even in that ugly outfit, with your hair all lank and your skin all greasy – even looking your worst – which you certainly do – you are still the most desirable woman in the world.’

Sarah kept her face to the window. She knew she looked horrible, and it wasn’t as though she wanted false compliments; she just didn’t understand why he had to be so intentionally hurtful.

‘Oh, my Sarah.’ His mouth brushed the back of her neck, her ear, her jawbone. ‘
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun
.’

Sarah leant back into him, forgiving him instantly and completely. Shakespeare’s sonnets were the background noise to their entire affair. In the public torture of the classroom he would read aloud, and every word seemed to be written by him for her. His favourite was eighteen:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate
. Now, it seemed trite and contrived, but maybe that was just because it had become a cliché, a Hallmark greeting floating over a picture of daffodils and long green grass, and a girl with her face hidden by a large white hat. When Shakespeare wrote it, it was original and crammed with sincerity, and so it had been when Sarah heard it for the first time. When he had looked at her across the classroom and she had felt her cheeks redden as he recited.
He is such a spunk. If only he didn’t make us do all this lovey dovey crap
Jess had whispered. Sarah couldn’t recall what she said in response but whatever it was she had said it too loudly and he stopped reading, his eyes reproachful.
Something you want to share with the class, Miss Clark?
Sarah had shaken her head, mortified. Mr Carr kept her back after class that day and lectured her on being disruptive. He said she had no respect for him as a teacher. Then
he fucked her while she recited the sonnet over and over.
So you never forget
he said.