Yearn (13 page)

“
Fantastic Four
issue twenty-six,” Eddy whispered to Janey as the shopkeeper—who looked like a younger clone of the man who used to serve them—glanced up from a thick book.

“Done, and I'll have the issue in which Wasp Woman betrays the Hulk wiv the “uman Torch, that's a fair dare,” she whispered back, grinning like a ten-year-old. It was a game the gang used to play—the shoplifter's challenge.

“Can I help you?” the shopkeeper asked, leaning forward.

“That's all right, we'll know what we want when we see it,” Eddy replied, and the two of them burst into laughter that made the shopkeeper conclude they were probably drunk day-trippers in to cruise the sex shops. Resigning himself to a no sale, he returned to his book.

Eddy watched Janey slip to the rear of the shop with professional ease. His mind flashed back to the first time he'd watched her shoplifting, nervous as hell, as he played guard for her, making sure the shopkeeper's back was turned—the way she loosened her school blazer to slip the comic in, the teasing manner with which she let her fingers drift over the comics all carefully wrapped in cellophane, the tightness of her short school skirt over her arse. . . . The fear of being caught fused with her furtiveness in a way he found impossibly erotic and the whole scenario had featured in several of his adolescent wet dreams. He was finding it erotic now, recognizing the echo of the teenage thief in Janey's careful circling of her prize. Five minutes later he realized he had to hurry with his own shoplifting.

Afterward they stood, hearts still thumping, grinning crazily at each other outside, Eddy with his issue hidden down his trousers, and Janey with her comic lodged between her armpit and the lining of her coat.

“As promised, issue forty-five—Wasp Woman does the 'uman Torch and the Hulk gets scorched.” He produced the issue with a triumphant flourish.

“And 'ere is the
Fantastic Four
issue twenty-six, still in its cellophane. We're even. Wot next, Batman?”

Under the streetlamp he could now see the harshness of her life showing a little in her face, around the eyes, giving her beauty a knowing wisdom Cynthia didn't and would probably never have, Eddy concluded, as he battled the impulse to kiss Janey. Not yet, not yet—the timing had to be perfect if there was to be an exorcism.

Eddy glanced down the street. It was past one in the morning and the revelers were now out in force. The damp night air was laced with a tinge of Blitz madness—the existential sensibility that life is very short when one is burning so brightly and at such speed.

What had they done next on that momentous date? The night he planned to lose his virginity. For despite the precociousness of the other members of the gang, Eddy was still a virgin at sixteen. It wasn't for lack of choice, but he'd decided years before that Janey was to be his first and once Eddy decided something, rational or otherwise, his tenacity drove him to achieve it. It was a character trait that was to serve him well later as a businessman. For a good couple of years the teenaged Eddy had joked and joined in with all the sexual innuendo of the other boys, pretending he knew everything and more. In truth all he knew he'd gleaned from his father's well-stocked shelf of erotica and
Playboy
magazines—one of which featured his mother as centerfold of December 1981. Then, on the eve of his sixteenth birthday, he made a pledge—he had to have Janey or face the very real possibility of dying of sexual frustration. The young Eddy began to make plans.

He started rehearsing his first line, his first pass, over and over again, practicing on an old dressmaking mannequin his mother had abandoned when she left his father. He even rehearsed the awkward transition from friend to lover, or at least how he imagined it would be. He'd seen it all in his mind's eye, played the night out so often it was now almost part of his memory before he'd even experienced it. He was so certain nothing would go wrong. How could it? He was in love—that all-consuming, shimmering kind of love that made you invincible, like Superman or his favorite Chelsea player, Ruud Gullit. All he needed now was a strategy to get rid of Janey's constant entourage of boyfriend and best friend for one whole night.

He'd begun by saving the money he'd got working Saturdays at his father's fish stall to buy Sean a ticket to a Premiership match at Wembley. After that he'd tricked Janey into thinking her best friend was going to come along on the date too, then at the last minute bought the best friend a ticket to see her favorite band. He had the whole night orchestrated, climaxing in his seduction of her alone—away from Sean, the confines of his father's grimy lounge room and the ever-present television, away from all that kept them both ground down, unnoticed on the streets of London. They were going to soar, he imagined, on a carpet of both divine love and fantastically explicit dirty sex, having learned from his libertine father that there was no paradox between the two, unless you were a practicing Christian, in which case you were no fun at all. And then Janey was going to fall in love with him and they would run away and live on the top floor of the Savoy Hotel like the Arab millionaires whose cars he had sometimes washed. The sixteen-year-old Eddy was convinced of it, and he was ready, his heart and cock bursting for her.

Then came the pivotal moment, the moment he'd been waiting four whole years for, the moment when he finally had her alone, sitting by him on the damp grass in a place no one would disturb them, her bare leg actually touching his in a forest fire of excitement, his cock so hard in his jeans he was frightened of coming with just one touch. For a minute the air between them was suspended in glass, crystallized by expectation, and he knew if he was to kiss her it had to be then, at that moment—the silent tick of history turning over. But he hesitated, a sickly fear of rejection pinning his hands and arms to his sides, his heart suddenly pounding so forcefully he wondered if a plane hadn't flown overhead. By the time he turned to Janey the opportunity had evaporated like so many other things in his life—his mother, a decent school uniform, a decent school, his father's youth—and he'd stayed sitting there by her side, paralyzed by his own failure, hating himself for his cowardice. Oblivious, Janey had chatted on, sharing confessions she might have shared with a girlfriend or confidant, but certainly not with a potential lover. Eddy couldn't look her in the eye for fear she would see his tears and his anger, so instead he'd stared at his knees and then at the scrubby London summer grass, his hopes now as small as an ant.

They'd spent the rest of the night walking the streets—dodging cops, sneaking around bouncers, stealing the cream from milk bottles on doorsteps, and nicking the morning papers. By the time London was gray with dawn, Eddy knew he'd lost her forever.

“You still wiv me, Eddy?” Janey's adult voice jolted him out of his reverie.

“Funny how time shapes us.”

“Time? Eddy, we're still young.” She checked her watch. “And there's at least five hours to go, big boy.” She began walking him down toward Piccadilly. “Green Park, wasn't it, Eddy?” she chuckled.

“So you remember that night?”

“I might, then again I might not,” she teased, leaving Eddy wondering. The gate was locked at the Piccadilly end of Green Park. After checking there were no police around, they climbed over the railings. Inside the grass glistened under the moonlight and the trees were magnanimous in their shelter. They walked barefoot, carrying their shoes, Eddy's naked toes luxuriating in the soft grass. The trader hadn't felt so calm and complete in years, so authentically himself. Nothing seemed to matter then, only the crisp damp smell of the leaves, the distant sound of traffic, the sudden warble of a blackbird.

Just then his mobile beeped. He knew it had to be a text from Cynthia; without breaking their pace he slipped his hand into his pocket and, feeling for the phone, switched it off, while Janey tactfully said nothing. Eddy scanned the line of mansions that backed the paved edge of Green Park. The old homes of the courtiers of the Royal Palace, the formal back gardens of these huge mansions lay like tantalizing oases behind brick walls and wrought-iron fences, still contained within the perimeters of the park. These were the residences of the most prestigious families in Britain—the Rothschilds, the Spencers, the Duke of Westminster, to name a few. It was in one of the back gardens of these grand residences that the adolescent Eddy had planned to seduce Janey. It would have been the melding of two fantasies—one of having her, and the other of one day owning one of these palaces. He led her to the back fence of the large Georgian mansion, remembering the garden like it was yesterday.

Carefully avoiding the robotic swing of a surveillance camera as it scanned the lawn, Eddy helped Janey climb over the brick wall. Crouching, they ran across the grass toward a clump of trees. In front of them the high arched windows were shuttered up and the mansion stared back at them like a blind man. It was like stepping into a secret Eden as the sounds of London and passing traffic dropped away. Eddy was even convinced he could hear the soft croaking of frogs and crickets. A languid Venus frolicked with a marble Adonis in a fountain, and there was a line of perfectly landscaped gardenia and camellia bushes, the scent of which floated across the garden to mingle with Janey's perfume. “Aren't you frightened we'll get nabbed?” Janey murmured, her eyes wide in the streetlight that fell over the wall and onto the lawn.

“Don't care if we do. Wiv a bit of luck we'll make the
Daily Mail
.”

“Wasn't it over here, Eddy?” She pulled him down beside her under a weeping willow.

“You remembered?” he whispered, feeling as if he was being drawn back into the sixteen-year-old Eddy. The possibility that she too had imbued that night with her own nostalgia filled him with a secret thrill.

“Hard to forget. I was waiting for you to make your move but all you did was rabbit on. All them plans about how you were gonna make your millions, get your dad his own fish shop . . .”

“Yeah, well, that never 'appened—the fish shop, I mean.”

“Yeah, well, if you remember, I was gonna become a TV actress, fancied myself on
Eastenders
 . . . and look at me now—single mum and working girl.”

“You 'ave a child?”

“Daughter. Sean and I only lasted a couple of years. Old bastard's in the nick now. GBH and a couple of burglaries.”

“He always 'ad a short temper.”

“Didn't he just.”

And they both laughed. Janey wriggled a little closer to him and a shiver of anticipation fluttered in his chest.

“So what did 'appen to you after that night? We never did see you after that.”

He looked back over the lawn toward the darkened mansion and its imperial architecture, which seemed to scream “you do not belong here,” and the memory of the profound disappointment he'd felt that morning after walking her home to her mum's council flat came back to him.

“I ran off, see. Went to work for me uncle, who put me straight in the way of trading. He had a client who was looking for an office man and the rest is history.”

“So you did make your millions?”

“I did.”

“And you're 'appy?”

He didn't answer; he was thinking about Cynthia, about how she'd never known what it was like to fight to win something, what it was to survive, how real loss and real poverty—things that had shaped him—remained total abstractions to her. Would she ever really know him if she didn't share these experiences, and how could she love him if she didn't really know him? And yet he'd chosen her. Why? Was it just the opportunity for social mobility? Or did he really love her?

Wanting to escape his ambivalence, he reached across ten years, his arms as long as time itself and, after burying his fingers in Janey's long soft hair, brought her mouth to his own. His tongue searched out hers in a great shuddering collision of familiarity, sharp desire, and lust, a passionate embrace that hardened him instantly. He was kissing her for his adolescent self, for the Eddy he'd lost, and for the man he was now. He was going to take her and he was going to take her now and by doing so, he would right the symmetry of the world—all his confusion would be swept away and he would be whole.

Instead Eddy froze.

“Wot's wrong?” Janey's face was dappled in the moonlight falling between the branches.

“I dunno, memories I guess.” He looked into her face, but her eyes were veiled and it was impossible to read her. His glance fell down to her mouth, the full-blown gorged slash reddened by the smudged lipstick; the haunting of his teenage years came back to him. Oh what he had done to her in those dreams. As if reading his mind she sat up and, reaching across, kissed him again. This was the confirmation he was looking for, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. She looked at him, her cheeks flushed, her lips like bruised fruit, her wide green eyes ironic. Losing control, he reached out and unbuttoned the front of her dress. His hands slipped down into that soft flesh and lifted her heavy breasts out, the hard nipples erect. They were full and ever so slightly pendulous, and he fell in love with their asymmetry. Dropping his head down, he sucked on each nipple in turn, hard in his trousers, his hand touching her face as if to find an echo, a memory, his fingers in her mouth. Moaning, she reached down and pulled him free, then pushed his cock between her breasts. Encouraged, he straddled her and rubbed his swollen cock between them, faster and faster, until he felt as if he might come. Holding the base to stop himself, he climbed off her and threw up her skirt, finding the velvet-soft skin above the tops of her stockings. He buried his face between her legs. She smelt wonderful, the perfume of her sex tangy salt undercut with rose musk. Parting her labia, he found her clit, a hard, erect button. He played it with his tongue, gently at first and then, as he felt her thrashing above him, her moaning muffled by her skirt, he took her whole clit into his mouth and sucked it. His hands cupping her arse, his fingers slipped into both her vagina and anus. Now he was her master and she, the butterfly, was pinned out, spread for both their pleasure. He could feel that she was close to coming, her knees trembling against either side of his neck, and suddenly there it was, the clenching around his fingers, the shuddering wetness. Above him somewhere in the translucency of her dress and the dappled light between the branches were her groans. Fearing someone might hear her, he reached up with one hand and clamped it over her mouth, and she gently bit him in her ecstasy.