She's Leaving Home (40 page)

‘I have to open you up a little or it will hurt you. Trust me now,’ came the words in her ear. She felt his hand slide down to the place between her legs, but he kept her head buried in his neck so she could not see, only feel. His fingers found her and began to rub. She seized him and looked into his eyes in amazement: it was as if pulses had sprung up where none had existed before. Is that what Aunt Gertie meant by the buttons? Oh, my God –

‘Oh, Michael – I am on fire for you!’

Suddenly he had two fingers inside and was massaging her. It was a fantastic sensation, terrifying, frantic. She could feel herself moisten, tissues fill and engorge and open. She spread her legs out to make it easier for him. ‘Now. Oh, please, now.’

For a second he could not enter, then with a grunt he pushed strongly. A jagged edge of pain shot through her as he shoved himself deep inside and she cried out. He put a hand lightly over her mouth.

‘Hush. We don’t want anyone coming to investigate.’

‘I’m OK, honestly. Don’t stop.’ Hoarsely.

‘I wasn’t intending to. Hold on tight, here we go –’

Then came thrust after pounding thrust: he was big and she pulled her knees up and around his trunk to accommodate him, as above her his head blocked the faint light from the window; then he rose above her on his arms, muscles bulging, his brow reddened and sweaty, and she was filled with his strength and power, and let herself go completely to him and called his name in yearning … at last with a long sigh he came inside her … and then slowly, slowly, subsided over her until their two damp bodies in the rumpled bed seemed about to coalesce into one.

They lay still until with a regretful lunge he slipped himself carefully out. Gingerly he removed the condom which was streaked in blood. ‘Couldn’t send you home pregnant,’ he joked to cover the manoeuvre. ‘Your father’d cut my balls off.’

He knelt up. She let her eyes roam over his body, and gazed with undisguised inquisitiveness at his private parts. She ran her index finger over the wizened brown skin.

‘Not as pretty as yours, little lady,’ he chuckled. ‘You never seen a man before?’

She shook her head. ‘Is everyone as big as you?’

He laughed out loud. ‘Now there’s a compliment! We’re available in every shape and size. But I’m told that
your
equipment is remarkable and can expand to fit any measurement.’

She shifted uneasily. ‘I wasn’t planning to try anybody else just yet, Michael.’

‘Pleased to hear it. You’re my girl now.’ And he relaxed beside her contentedly, and kissed her, and nibbled her ear.

Eventually he looked up. ‘Jeez, it’s nine thirty. We’d better get a move on. Go take the first shower.’ He had to show her how to operate it.

When she came back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel it was to find a rueful Michael stripping the bed. The bedclothes in his hands were widely stained with her blood. She bit her lip, horrified.

‘You were a virgin, Helen. This is normal. It’s a bit torn and sore down there, yes? In the old days sheets like this would be hung out of a window the morning after a wedding to prove the marriage was consummated. So congratulations. You’re a woman now.’

He dropped the bed-linen and took her in his arms. ‘I hope it wasn’t too awful. Next time will be easier. But you were marvellous.’

She nestled her cheek against his bare chest and smelled the reek of sex on him. To her own surprise she wanted to stroke him again, and watch him rise, and laugh with him over it, the funny, ridiculous thing. A great warm rush suffused her.

‘It wasn’t awful. It was just – new, that’s all. Next time. I shall dream of next time. Oh, Michael, I love you so.’

He had not meant to say it. He had never said it before to any woman, not with any sincerity.

‘Dearest Helen, lovely girl. I think I love you too.’

Elizabeth Plumb put away her passport, kicked off her shoes and stretched out her legs. Outside the train window slid the flat green lands to the south of Paris. Within half an hour clumps of forest would appear. She would be struck as usual that the trees were much taller than the tidy red-roofed farmhouses. That was seldom true in England.

Near Tours the sun beat down on the first neat rows of vines. Tiny in the distance, an old man in blue overalls with a cart and a shabby horse ignored the train. He would be on his way home to his
déjeuner du midi
, Miss Plumb calculated, and would not expect to return for at least an hour and a half. And he would drink wine with his meal, as she would every day for the next three weeks. Bliss.

At Tours she must change to the local service which meant an hour’s wait. On the station forecourt she bought a coffee and baguette larded with
rillettes
, the spicy meat paste, and chewed contentedly at a table under an umbrella.

Charles would be at Chinon in his big silver Citroën. The low-slung car, the type which featured in French gangster movies, thrilled her to the core. The chauffeur knew about them, but would have been packed off to the Riviera to take care of Madame, and to phone Monsieur le Comte should his wife take it into her head to return early. Miss Plumb smiled, and spoke his name the French way,
Sharl
, slurred and sexual, under her breath. At times like these she felt like a minor character in a film whose real stars were Louis Jourdan and Leslie Caron, but despite the slight corniness she relished the opportunity thus afforded her.

It was such a delight to escape. The last few days had served as a reminder of everything distasteful at home. It had rained, heavily. That had drowned out the Orange Lodge march on July 12. Miss Plumb had hugged herself over the
Echo
picture of the school caretaker in a bedraggled bowler hat as the wet sluiced off the shoulders of his one and only suit. In the city centre, sodden orange lilies soon lay broken in the gutters. The excursion to Southport for Lodge members’ families had also been a wash-out. Their return off the train, the men drunk, the children bawling, had been the signal for Catholic matrons to close the curtains and drag their own belligerent and hardly sober menfolk inside.

Not that the Catholics were any better. St Patrick’s Day, 17 March, was mainly celebrated indoors – in the pubs. Fighting, even riots, were
de rigueur
. One of her pupils had told her, as a simple and unremarkable fact, that in her street off Scotland Road twenty pubs existed within a hundred yards. Before the war there’d been more: one minor point in the Nazis’ favour, Miss Plumb reckoned grimly, though it looked as if the Corporation would in its slum-clearance zeal demolish more than German bombers ever had.

One would mind less if conditions were improving. But they weren’t. Since her school drew pupils from the whole metropolis she could observe what passed for progress. As the last of the
back-to-back
properties with their windowless rooms and dank cellars were bulldozed, some families were transferred nearby into municipal flats – monstrous towers which, once the lifts were vandalised, became hated prisons. But most tenants were moved out and areas rapidly became depopulated. The pubs remained, often isolated on street corners and surrounded by heaps of rubble, but still open. No brewery would willingly give up a licence.

Elizabeth Plumb was no teetotaller, far from it. Yet the demon drink dominated and destroyed the homes of too many of her pupils. The poor children had no chance, despite the fact that their natural aptitude afforded them the chance of elevation via the grammar school system.

Take that dreadful man O’Brien, for instance. He had barged into school just after four o’clock one day and demanded to see her. He must have been imbibing for hours; she could not avoid inhaling the sour winey smell from his skin and his hair, its odour like peardrops as the alcohol
metabolised. He stank, and so did his disgusting donkey jacket and leather bib. He had carried with him two unopened bottles of whisky, which he deposited on her desk.

‘Now that’s for you, for all yer doin’ for my lass,’ he announced.

Miss Plumb picked up the bottles and examined them. Sixty per cent proof was unusually strong. Nor did she recognise the brand name, though the product was Scottish right enough. Around the neck of each was a narrow gilded label: Export only.

‘You didn’t purchase these in Yates’s Wine Lodge, Mr O’Brien,’ she said sternly.

He shuffled and shrugged. ‘I’m a docker, Miss. Them’s perks.’ At her glare he swayed, then remembered why he had come. ‘I want to ask you. Our Colette. She will pass her exams, won’t she?’ He nudged the bottles a little further across the desk.

Miss Plumb was frosty. ‘I have not the least doubt, Mr O’Brien, that she will perform well without any extra assistance. What precisely is your question?’

‘Well, it’ll help when she leaves school. Get a better job. I didn’ want her to stay on: we could do with the money. But if we ’ave to wait, it’d be best if she gets her grades.’ He spread his hands. ‘I mean, if she’s gonna fail, then she can leave now. But you can keep the prezzie. Thass for you.’

Mr O’Brien, Miss Plumb wanted to say, you are an utterly horrible creature. Instead she bristled.

‘If I have anything to do with it, Mr O’Brien, your daughter will go to university. She has an excellent mind and will gain entry I am sure.’

‘University? Don’t talk daft. The likes of us don’ go to no university.’ The man’s eyes flickered. ‘Don’ you go putting stupid ideas like that into her head. Gotta getta job, our Colette. An’ if she’s that smart, she’ll get more dosh. Yeah.’

He peered at her, then marched unsteadily up to the desk and picked up one of the bottles. He wagged a stubby finger.

‘You go givin’ ’er daft ideas and I’ll be back. I’ll smash this ’ere bleedin’ bottle over yer head, see? University – bloody rubbish. Good girl, our Colette. Does what her Dad tells her.’

And with that he had slouched out, the single bottle cradled in the crook of his arm.

The
locale
chugged to a halt, stood like a patient donkey until its straggle of passengers arranged themselves, then groaned and tugged, and with puffs of black diesel smoke swung to the south-west. Each name whispered magic: Ballan-Miré, Druye, Azay-le-Rideau, where she caught a glimpse of the exquisite chateau in its tiny lake. As the two-car vehicle emerged on to chalky hillsides between more vineyards Miss Plumb craned her neck out of the window. The white limestone fortress of Chinon dominated its escarpment, its battlements glinting in the sunlight, like all the magic castles of fairy stories. Beyond it was the sheer drop to the river Vienne.

‘About as different from Liverpool as could be,’ breathed Miss Plumb in satisfaction. ‘In fact the only thing the two spots have in common is King John. He trod these slopes as King, and gave Liverpool its first charter in 1207. And he was a miserable good-for-nothing. How appropriate.’

The train slowed and stopped. She pulled down her small suitcase; experience had taught her to travel light. She stepped out on to the platform and shaded her eyes.

Half an hour later Miss Plumb was still on the platform. In her hand was a crumpled note. At the last moment, Monsieur le Comte had written, he had been obliged to accompany his wife. A room had been reserved for her at the Hostellerie Gargantua in rue Voltaire, to which the boy who had brought the note would lead her.
Chère Élizabeth
, he was
désolé, mais
…

Miss Plumb allowed the boy to pick up her valise and followed him numbly into the sunshine.

That same evening Maurice Feinstein sat in the back room of the shop, surrounded by boxes and packing cases. On the desk were scattered papers and bills. A bag of flour had burst earlier in the day; the fine white dust hovered and shimmered. In the background he could hear Nellie banging about
with bucket and mop. The cleaner had gone to Morecambe for the week with her grandchildren. His routine disturbed, Mr Feinstein felt out of sorts.

‘Haven’t you finished that yet, Nellie?’ he yelled testily. ‘I could murder for a cup of Nescafé.’

The response was indistinct, but soon Nellie had washed out the bucket in the yard and stored the implements by the sink. She appeared looking as irritable as her employer and rolling down her sleeves.

‘I was off home, to be honest,’ she said shortly.

Maurice Feinstein blinked in surprise. There was a time when Nellie would have leaped at the chance to make him a hot drink and waste a few moments in idle chat. In fact she used to spot his needs before he recognised them himself. She would, indeed, have put a mug, sweetened the way he liked it, before him without being asked. He frowned.

‘Nellie, come here a mo’.’

With evident reluctance Nellie complied.

‘I’m having trouble with these accounts. When I was in hospital the shop did fine and we had money in the bank. Now I’ve got a five hundred quid overdraft. Where’s it gone?’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting –’ Nellie bridled.

‘No, no. I just can’t make it add up. Here.’ Absent-mindedly he patted the old chair by his side. A dust cloud rose and lingered. ‘Take a look. I’ll make the coffee. Two spoonfuls?’

‘I don’t take sugar,’ came Nellie’s answer as she sat down. ‘All these years and you’ve forgotten? That’ll be your lady friend, not me.’

Maurice opened his mouth but decided not to argue. Nellie’s co-operation was urgently required.

When he returned from the kitchen, mugs in hand, his assistant’s blonde head was tilted towards the ceiling and her eyes were half closed in concentration. A pencil was clamped between her teeth and both hands were outstretched to count on her fingers. Her lips moved rapidly despite the pencil. He tiptoed around her and put the mugs on the desk.

‘Got it?’ he asked hopefully.

She opened one eye, removed the pencil, sucked her teeth, rummaged about among the bank statements and scribbled a couple of numbers.

‘Oh, yeah. I know where your money’s gone.’ She paused to let her superiority sink in.

‘Well then?’

‘It’s here. See? It’s not the shop; turnover is down a bit for the summer, but that’s normal. But you hardly take any out usually. Then since May – whump! You’ve withdrawn a hundred quid every other week or so. And other big cheques. What are you up to? Gambling? It’s your money and nowt to do with me, but…’

‘Gimme that here.’ Maurice scrutinised the columns where Nellie indicated. ‘Christ, you’re right.’ He gazed at her mournfully. ‘No, I haven’t been near the bookie’s. Lost a bit at the Majinsky barmitzvah but that’s a one-off. It’s that woman. Vera. Likes to eat out. Never anywhere cheap. Last week it was the Adelphi – can you imagine? She must think I’m made of brass.’

‘If she’s only after your money, Mr Feinstein, she has a disappointment coming up. At this rate you’ll be bankrupt before you can get her to the altar.’

‘Call me Morrie,’ Feinstein muttered. ‘I shouldn’t have to keep telling you, Nellie.’ He perused the paperwork with the utmost gloom, tried a few calculations then threw down the pencil and chewed his fingernail in silence.

‘If she’s nice, you can explain to her,’ Nellie suggested tentatively. ‘After all, if she’s going to be your wife –’

Her boss was still engrossed in his thoughts but did not correct her. She rose and stood before
him, hands on hips.

‘Well: it’s none of my business. But this is. I think you should know I’m considering emigrating.’

Feinstein groaned and held his head in his hands. Through his fingers he peered at Nellie who stood uncertainly by. ‘I’m not sure I can cope with any more bad news tonight, Nellie. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’ Her face was stony and he saw she was upset. He sat up wearily. ‘OK, tell me. Emigrating – where?’

Nellie turned and flounced out, earrings oscillating wildly. ‘A long way from here!’ was all he caught as she banged the door, but there was also a strange noise, as if she might be crying.

Three thousand miles away to the west it was not yet lunchtime. The temperature was in the high eighties and men sat about in shorts cut off just above the knee. Even respectable men, and their sons.

‘It has been a long, hot summer, and more to come, son.’

Colonel Levison wiped his brow with a white handkerchief. They were seated in the yacht club bar overlooking Fire Island, New York. Before him the daiquiri glass misted over with condensation then dried in the sticky heat.

The Colonel was of medium height, thickset but not flabby, in his early fifties. His steel-grey hair and piercing blue eyes made him attractive to women while his directness and lack of mannerisms endeared him to men. He wore an open-neck shirt and navy-blue Bermudas. After lunch he and his son would take a club boat for a sail.

The Colonel’s rank had been earned in the Supreme Commander NATO’s HQ in Europe but he was a lawyer rather than a career soldier. Nevertheless it had suited him to remain in uniform. In Washington titles counted. Should Capitol politics get him down he could shift to less fraught pastures. In the office of the Attorney-General, however, neither boredom nor disillusion was a problem.

The Colonel raised his glass and toasted his elder son.

‘So, Michael. How is the Air Force? Better than the Army?’

‘It’s fine, Pa. Though if I were to stay I’d want to train as a pilot.’

‘They all do. But I don’t suppose you get much flying at Burtonwood?’

Michael chuckled. His father did not miss much and would have checked. ‘Not a scrap. If I wanted lessons I’d have to sign on at the civilian weekend glider school.’

The two men were at ease in each other’s company. Michael prompted. ‘You having a tough time in Washington?’

The Colonel leaned back. ‘You could say that. What with violence in Alabama, burning crosses in Mississippi, the clamour for rights and votes – and noises off in Vietnam. Madame Nhu is a bitch of the first order, I swear. One of these days somebody’s gonna cut off her nose and ears and make her eat them, if he hasn’t chopped off her husband’s head first, and Diem’s too. Won’t be long. I’m afraid we’ve backed losers there.’