Innocents (10 page)

I think the force of your passion bruised me, too. All those kisses. Your hand always curled over mine. Those soft eyes sliding helplessly, endlessly, over my face. It was too rich a diet, for someone who's lived for years on sketch paper and thin ink.

The truth is that, the third time we had sex, I lay on my back on the green leather sofa, revelling in your face but wishing your penis would
stop
.

*

Separately, we skulked to school and home again. Between one class and another, we met surreptitiously in corridors, sharing quick strained confidences. At lunchtimes, we walked together harmlessly in far corners of the grounds. But only when you didn't have staff meetings.

I could have fobbed the world off with a farce, indefinitely. Fobbing people off with farces is my trade. God forgive me.

But you, precious creature, are too good for those ways. You wore deceit badly. It stuck out on you, like a bright colour. And it grew brighter, all the time.

I remember when Mrs Taylor made my day.

She was the young, cool drama teacher. She liked Mel Gibson and she usually gave us an early mark for lunch. She strode about the school in jeans. Everyone liked her. She was boundlessly enthusiastic and wore her curly hair in high French twists. I can just imagine you in the staff room at recess—before I moved in, when your conscience was bothered by nothing more awful than man's general inhumanity to man—nibbling your sandwiches and listening to her loud laugh and boisterous anecdotes with that shy smile on your face.

Mrs Taylor made my day by saying ‘No’.

I was walking at your elbow through the quadrangle. You were telling me, in ponderous tones, about Henry V. I wasn't really listening; just enjoying travelling in your shadow. I liked to watch your hands in their quick gestures, shaping people and events from the air, for my edification.

Mrs Taylor, her arms loaded up with plastic swords and white-fringed royal robes, put her shoulder against the glass panel of the door at the bottom of the Drama Room stairs as we passed.

Instinctively chivalrous, you strode out of your way to open the door for her.

And from over that armful of props, she eyed you balefully. She refused to pass through the opening you'd made for her. She stood in the doorway while you kept your hand uncertainly on the knob.

‘Need a hand?’ you offered.

Her white be-ringed hands clasped her bundle a little tighter.

‘No!’ she snapped. The disapproval in her voice cut into you like ice. Your mouth swung open with the shock of it. Mrs Taylor turned her pretty face away, scowling, and pushed herself through the door.

You cleared your throat, nodding desperately at the doorway.

‘Um,’ you said, reddening painfully. ‘Well. Um.’

Bending like a soldier from the waist, you shut the door, carefully. This was a supremely ridiculous gesture. The weight of the door was designed to swing it shut without help.

You had nowhere else to find refuge from her harshness. You turned to me. You were smiling terribly in your embarrassment.

‘Don't worry,’ I said. I curled my fingers around yours.

Your smile melted into a look of appeal. Your hand, having nowhere else to go, gripped mine tightly, just for one ecstatic second.

Your nobleness crumbled all away, and you were mine.

I had come to you like a refugee. I had a bag full of pencil sharpeners and be-doodled exercise books, and the clothes I stood up in.

I delighted, in those first few days, to run around the house in nothing but one of your enormous white shirts.

‘We'll have to get you something to wear,’ you said.

We went shopping in the city.

I tried on everything. You stood, hands in pockets, looking at your shoes, looking at me. The shop assistants thought you were my father. The middle-aged ones cooed over me with you, making you blush. The young ones ignored you.

I clothed myself with infinite care. I'd never really cared what I wore before, so long as it hid me from the world, but now my wardrobe was as important to me as a hook to an angler. It was a vital tool.

I judged the effectiveness of the outfits by the depth of your flush.

It was almost going to be little turtleneck tops and overalls. Just think—I was almost Punky Brewster for you, darling! What a scary thought.

In the end, I settled on short skirts, skimpy T-shirts with tiny hearts on the front, knee-high socks, and little raver sneakers.

‘You'll freeze!’ you said, when at last you stood on a street corner with the new me.

I let you buy me a sensible new dufflecoat.

‘Come on. Put it on.’ You grasped it by the lapels, there in the street. Plastic bags full of clothes hung from your wrists, swishing as you leaned forward to settle the shoulders over mine.

I was glad you'd insisted. It really was chilly.

‘I look like Paddington Bear in this. Or a spy.’

You did the coat up to the neck. ‘At least you'll be a warm spy,’ you said.

*

It never occurred to me that you would lose your job.

Honestly.

I came downstairs that first, glorious Saturday after I'd moved in. I had one towel on my head and another round my body. My arms and legs were sleek and wet. I glowed pink.

You sat on the sofa, your long pelican's legs stretched out before you, and hid your face behind the newspaper.

‘Hello!’ I said, kissing the top of your head.

You were fully clothed. You were wearing
shoes
. Blushing slightly, you answered with non-existent casualness. ‘Good morning.’

Sitting down beside you, I nuzzled my head between your arm and your side, and laid it in your lap.

I read the newspaper with you. My eyes skimmed across the words, but I didn't bother to find their sense. I was feeling you breathe. I was worming my hand into your sweaty fist.

You spoke in a sudden burst, like a car not quite catching: ‘Look, I've—’

‘Am I wetting you?’ My arms were soaking your trousers.

‘No!’ You stared blankly at me. ‘No. I've got to leave St Mary's.’ The newspaper made a tent over both our faces.

‘But aren't you too young to retire?’ My naiveté, for once, was real.

‘Of course I am!’ You tightened your hand around my wrist. ‘Of course!’

‘I thought you liked being a teacher.’

You shut your eyes against my gaze. You looked as though you had a headache. ‘I love being a teacher,’ you explained carefully. ‘But there are some things that a teacher just can't
do
—’

‘Oh.’ The possibility that you would chuck me in for professional reasons bore down on me with terrifying suddenness. I felt dizzy. The sounds of the suburb outside seemed to recede, as though I had put my head under the bath water.

‘It's only a matter of time.’ There was a struggling misery in your voice. ‘I mean, for now it's only rumours. They give me dirty looks. But there's bound to be some … official interest, soon.’

Your leg under my head seemed to be the only solid thing in a vaporous universe. An overwhelming fear of being left alone again, to wander through twisted corridors of my psyche, rose up in me. I felt shivery. I tasted bile.

You shrugged sadly. ‘They all
know
.’

A strange lightness flooded all my limbs. ‘Okay.’ I jumped to my feet. ‘That's okay. I'll go.’

And then I stood before you, weeping shamelessly.

They were real tears, believe it or not. I really was distraught. But you see how only the most enormous catastrophes could force me to show you anything honest. And even this display of truth was for reasons of my own. For even then, in the most extreme moment of despair, there was some voice in me, somewhere, monitoring the game of You and I. Threatened with your disappearance, it whispered to me that I had nothing to lose, that I might as well gamble with the truth and see if it worked to my advantage.

It just shows what a strange, alien creature I am! Real tears were worked into the fabric of my deception in a matter of seconds. They were just another tool.

Those sharp tears burnt my cheeks. I thought my chest would burst. I stood there, uselessly, crying loudly like a toddler. I wrung my hands, weaving strange incoherent exhortations in the air.

And all the while I watched you from behind the heat of my hysteria, alert for your reaction.

At first, stunned into silence by my barefaced tantrum, you sat shocked, completely still. The newspaper lay in a sad forgotten heap at your feet. The expression on your face was the same one you wore when watching something appalling, like graphic violence against children on the news—some image abhorrent but mesmerising. You were aghast.

Then, suddenly, you were by my side, your big solid arms restraining my little flailing ones. My body was sunk somewhere in the soft folds of your shirt.

Starkly, you looked down at me. There was panic on your face, as though you'd broken something precious. I kept crying, just to be sure.

‘Hey, hey, hey,’ you comforted me, speaking too rapidly, contorted with frantic tenderness. I was reminded suddenly of the cat you ran over, and the way you had touched its crushed body—wretchedly, but bound by a duty too powerful to ignore.

You clutched me to you so tightly I could hardly breathe.

‘You're not going
anywhere
!’ you insisted fiercely into my ear.

I crossed my fingers in superstitious thanks, light-headed with relief.

Guilt made you treat me like an invalid; a sick child. You lay me on the couch and dressed me in the pink pyjamas you'd bought me. You brought a blanket from upstairs and tucked it in around me. You spoon-fed me ice-cream, crooning nonsense songs under your breath.

I was filled with the elation of the narrow escapee; the woman who climbs out of the car wreckage unhurt. My powers over you seemed twice as great for their brush with oblivion.

‘Kiss me!’ I ordered you extravagantly. Obediently, you bent your head to my lips. I pressed my cold sweet chocolate-flavoured tongue against yours. I felt tears slide out of you and over my forehead.

The next day—Sunday—we went house-hunting.

I stood in a hallway, hands on hips, glancing up the stairs.

I sized the place up. The stairs would be good for clattering hurriedly up and down when I needed to seem madcap. And I liked the overstatedness, the melodrama, of the place. The ceilings were expressively high. The doorways arched meaningfully. There were plenty of dramatic, shadowy places, strange recesses to plunge into. The polished wood shone dully. The darkness of the interiors made my skin look paler—this meant I would draw the eye more easily. The echoes added significance to every word, every movement.

‘This'll do.’

‘What?’ You blinked in surprise. ‘This's the first place we've seen! We've only just walked in!’

The big-haired agent jingled the keys seductively. ‘You haven't seen upstairs, yet.’ She clipped upwards, heels snapping at the bare floors.

We followed.

Christmas-cake plaster ceilings, slightly peeling. Lumpy paint on white banisters. Wallpaper like a Chinese restaurant; furry designs on satiny backgrounds, in red and gold. The floors were the best thing of all: dark wooden boards, polished till they shone like brown ice. The mahogany and the thick curtains made me think of theatres.

We stood in the centre of the main bedroom.

‘It'll be
freezing
in winter,’ you hissed.

‘Easy to care for,’ advised the agent knowingly. ‘No shampooing. They don't have to be replaced like carpets.’

I was slapping my sneakered feet against the floor, clunking out a tap-dance. ‘They're pretty,’ I said. My body was reflected dully, a white smear trapped beneath the varnish. Hands on hips, I peered down at this submerged self. ‘I like them.’

‘My sister,’ confided the agent, ‘lives in a place just like this.’

‘Does she?’ you murmured politely, playing the game.

‘Up the road,’ the agent insisted, flashing fingernails like red plastic rose petals, as she gestured out the wide window.

‘Fuck it!’ I insisted. ‘The roof works. The floor works. That's all we need.’ I wanted the place badly. It was just perfect.

You continued with the standard, ambiguous, house-hunter's patter: ‘Well—er—I think we should … I mean, we ought to shop around a bit more.’ You glanced doubtfully around. ‘It'll need a lot of work.’ You ran a hand over the splintered paint that clung to the banister.

‘Work?’ I said. ‘It's fine how it is.’

‘It has to be
perfect
!’

‘We'll take it,’ I said. ‘I hate shopping.’

It was more than a week until we could move in, but the spell of the new place hovered over the old one. Your house now felt thin and insubstantial, like faded sixties colour TV.

On the couch, you took me on your knee and nuzzled my shoulder-blades. Now that you'd committed yourself, you wanted praise for your enormous act of generosity.

‘Do you like that suburb?’ you wanted to know.

‘Yeah. The buildings are older.’

‘It's nearer to the city, too,’ you reminded me.

‘Yep.’

‘You'll like that. You can go and buy silly clothes every weekend.’

I stretched out my leg in its above-the-knee black sock, pointing the toe provocatively. Under my hip, I felt you go hard in an instant.

‘They're not silly,’ I said.

You went to school for half an hour on Monday morning, clutching your letter of resignation and the news that I was leaving.

By the time you came back, with a bootful of cardboard boxes, I had already started sweeping your books off the shelf and piling them neatly on the floor.

You couldn't quite believe yourself. There was a kind of recklessness on you. It was cute. You were like a schoolgirl underlining a rude word in the dictionary.

You tried to explain. ‘It's one of those defining moments. I mean, when you just throw away everything, because it's incompatible with the one thing you really want.’ You made expansive gestures in the air with your long arms. ‘I've never
done
anything like this before!’