Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (38 page)

Anger unlocks you. You’d never be able to talk to him but for this.

‘I’m stuck. I need to get home but the gate was locked.’ Indignant, slow; as if it’s him, now, who doesn’t understand. ‘I’m not
staying
.’

‘Well off you go then.’ He scoops up his groceries. ‘I left the gate open
again
, I’ve just realised,’ he mutters absently, furiously. ‘And yes, it’s the last time that’ll be happening.’

As if he suddenly can’t bear to have you here, in his secret place; an uninvited encroachment from the surrounding world – he’s been found out and he’s consumingly distracted by the thought of that. As he lifts up his groceries they tumble out of a slit in the plastic: tin cans and sausages, bread, chocolate biscuits.

‘Blast.’

He has to bend to scoop them up, awkwardly, with those gammy hips. It makes him curiously vulnerable and it spines you up.

‘I need a pump.’

You’re reaching down to help; he’s snatching things up, doesn’t want you or need you – scat!

‘
What?
’ Incomprehension. ‘Could you go now, please, or I will call the police.’ And he bundles away his groceries, awkwardly cradling them in his arms and they’re tumbling to the floor but he doesn’t pick them up, he’s in too much of a hurry to get away, to his study, to get you out.

‘Wait.’ You stride after him but he shuts the workroom door, leaving the dog and you looking at each other in perplexed solidarity. The dog whines, you rap loudly. Silence. Almost laugh, ‘Haven’t you got the wrong room there for the shopping?’

No laughter in response.

Right.

‘Um, my bike has a puncture. I need a pump. That’s all. To get home.’ And never come back, you almost add.

‘I am not a cyclist.’

Quick as a flash: ‘What about that shed? Out the back.’

You had a look earlier. Behind a dusty window was a stack of cobwebby bikes.

‘So what else have you sized up?’

Silence. Your hot cheeks.

‘Help yourself to a pump – if there is one – then go, immediately. Thank you.’ You’re a pest, nothing else. ‘And don’t even think about the bikes.’

Yep, you know exactly what he thinks of those Beddy people.

‘Or the books.’

I bet he never even knew he
had
bikes until this moment. The anger rises in you, magnificent.

‘I wasn’t taking your book, I was
reading
it.’

God this would never work. You want to throttle him.

‘And don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of coming back,’ you throw at him in parting, in the voice of a kid with their tongue stuck out.

There
is
a pump, of course; you know bike sheds. You find it in the fumbly gloom, dragging cobwebs furiously from your face. Fill the tyre outside, fast, the light is now rapidly fading. He’s watching from his kitchen window; watching like you’re going to curl up in that shed and make a right home of it or grab for the taking a different bike.

You fling his pump back inside the shed. An almighty clatter. Don’t care. Ride off without looking back. Cycling fast, swerving wildly at a twisted bit of muffler rearing up like a petrified snake and righting yourself hurtling on but in less than three minutes the tyre is flat, again; now you’re speeding on the rim and feeling every jeering bump. You fling the bike down in disgust, it’s not going to work. Turn back to the window. Yep, still watching. Of course. The little girl inside you screams. You sweep your hands out theatrically before the carcass of your useless bike: behold. You’re going to have to go back, whether he likes it or not.

A loud rap on his workroom door.

‘I’m stuck.’

‘So I see.’

‘You’ll have to drive me home or I’m here all night. And you’ve got a lot of books.’

Despite himself, the snort of a laugh.

The door snaps open. Car keys are in his hand. The voice is low, warning, but there’s just a hint of a smile.

‘Never, ever mention that you’ve found this place.’

‘What’ll you give me?’ You grin, can’t help it, naughtied up. ‘My uncle knows the inside of every house in this valley … except this one.’

The shudder is almost visible. You eye the book in his pocket. He clamps his hand protectively to the little Victorian volume and turns on his heel, to the car.

‘Your reward is a lift home which I’ve really got no time for because I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to finish. Tonight.’

He pats his pocket, his back to you.

‘And besides, she may have something to teach me. Thanks for that.’

You’ve overtaken him, leaping into the passenger seat before he’s near his car. Bec is flurrying all over you with snuffles and licks, all the unconditional love which you return, laughing in relief; at least someone appreciates you in this place.

‘You’re very …
alive
… aren’t you?’ the man says in bemused distaste, as he starts the ignition.

‘And you’re not?’

Annoyance is smoothing your self-consciousness, and being in a car, and with a dog; if you were in any other situation you’d never be able to talk like this. Just the careful way he’s dressed would usually stumble your talk – all he’d need is a Gauloises to complete the image and Lune has told you, wild-eyed, about the men who smoke them. He takes a deep breath.

‘I’ll drop you on the outskirts of Beddington. And remember, you’ll never be able to come back here, I’ll see to that. Don’t even think about it.’

Intrigued. By all of it. Too much you don’t know and it’s right at your doorstep and you’ve got weeks of holidays ahead of you and a home you need to escape and he’s reeling you in and has no idea of it.

His voice is smooth and sure, a hidden creek overarched by the bush, strong and cool and self-sufficient. You, on the other hand, are a desert before him: wide open, ready, aching for nourishment. And he smiled, he laughed – was it once, twice – you got him to do it, just.

The car roars through a cathedral of trees, you’ve never driven so fast.

‘Whoo hooooo!’ You’re suddenly laughing, winding down your window and butting the wind with your face.

‘Get your head in,’ he snaps, ‘or you’ll lose it.’

Silence, glary, as he flies down the axle-breaking road. Trees lean in close, branches slap against the car and your hand sneaks back outside: trying to grab the night’s coolness with your palm.

‘Get
in
!’

You withdraw your hand from the slap of the air but put your bare feet on the dashboard, as you always do.

Violent braking.

You jerk forward.

The car’s clicking stillness.

He looks at you in that stopping as if he’s never come across anything like you: half wild, half human, utterly incomprehensible, impossible to contain.

You spurt a laugh, in nervousness as much as anything. ‘What?’ You shrug, perplexed. Your feet remain on the dash.

He revs and shoots forward, your feet can’t grip, they drop.

‘Good one, mate,’ you giggle and raise your thumb.

He chuckles, shaking his head; he’s given up. For a moment there’s a slipping into something else.

His hand. On the leather gearstick. The fingers you’ve never seen before. Not worker’s fingers. No coarseness, no calluses, no grubby black collecting in crevices. You want to lick them, like an animal; learn them. Hold each tip still and savouring in the cave of your mouth. You lift up both your own blunt hands in front of your face and turn them around in wonder, as if you’ve never seen the like of them before; staring at the dirt compacted in crescent moons under the nails and the river map of lines in the cracks of your palms and not just your hands, of course, but your bare feet, too; you sit cross-legged on the seat and drag them up – yep, filthy black, as they always are, with the skin ridged up the sides in deep fissured cracks; and then your knees, you’re curving right over now and examining the coal dust permanently tattooed across them in thin leeches and you lick them and of course the black doesn’t come off and how bizarre you must seem to someone like him and it is as if you have awareness of your bush self, for the first time in your life – all the raggedness, the loudness, the rawness in this place – the vast affront of who you are and what you represent. To someone like him.

You stare across, at his eyes, resolutely not engaging with you.

With everything he is not.

The gate to his property.

Locked.

You burst out laughing. Despite himself, he does too.

‘Yes, I
am
going mad. Alright. You win. Don’t ask. Too much in my head.’ He shakes it as he stops the car, as if trying to clear it out, takes the keys from the ignition and hands them across. Looks at you. Cocks his head.

‘It’s the small silver one.’

Well, that’s one rule of the bush he’s absorbed. You jump out grinning and swing the two halves wide. Glad to help, mister, glad to help. He drives through and stops abrupt.

‘Padlock it.’

‘Aren’t you coming back?’

‘You might get back before me.’ He raises his eyes to the heavens. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

You fiddle with the lock, standing with the sole of one foot resting on your knee, as you always do; it takes a while, you can’t make the loop click. He toots in exasperation.

‘Come on. Your dinner’s getting cold.’

‘But it’s not fair, I want to come back,’ you tease, standing tall at the front of his car, your feet on his bumper and balancing with your hands on the bonnet, the ten year old wheedling to her dad. ‘Pleeeeeeeeease.’

Something shuts down his face like a roller door on a shop. In an instant his mood has changed. You’ve gone too far. He gets out of the car.

‘I have
work
to do. Alright? And you’re not welcome in this place.’ He grips your shoulders hard and lifts you out of the way and propels you towards the passenger seat. You rub your collarbone and examine the affronted skin on your upper arms, the bruises like pale yellow petals already rushing onto it.

A clotted silence.

That you’re wrong in some way. That you have no idea.

A silence you have faced for much of your life.