‘Keep quiet!’ she said again, perfecting the phrase, as she returned to her mattress. She bit her lower lip and dug her nails into her palms, resisting the temptation to kick her shoes across the floor, or tread on Festa’s outstretched hand, or scream. She’d sleep. She’d dream. She’d eat and work alone. She would not waste herself on any of these men. There’d be a week of silences. She’d hold them in contempt. She was too big and free for them. Too tough and odd. Too ugly-beautiful. ‘Shut up,’ she called out from the veranda. One of the men — smug Victor, she suspected — was trying not to laugh aloud, and failing. ‘Shut up. Shut. Up. We’re sleeping here.’ She had not felt so cruelly liberated for a year. Less preferred than prostitutes, indeed!
It was soon after one o’clock, and Celice was still not sleeping, when Joseph — she’d forgotten Joseph — came back to the study house without colliding with the doors or furniture. The first thing that she heard of him was his small voice. Where had he been, the three men asked, more sober now, and more subdued. And why the torch? And why — some boyish comments here — the muddy knees?
They jeered, of course, when Joseph said he’d only been walking along the coastal track into the dunes to watch the stars and see what nightlife he could find.
‘Nightlife? Oh, yes?’ said Hanny. ‘Was that nightlife in skirts? Nightlife with harry arses?’
‘Furry foxes.’ Joseph’s voice was careful and defensive; the brainy boy unused to body jokes. ‘And there were rock owls and moths and some fine sea bats. This big.’ He spread his hands.
‘Big tits,’ remarked the ornithologist. ‘Come on! You’ve not been prancing on the beach. You’ve found yourself a little farm girl. ’
‘Some short-sighted little farm lass. ’ Hanny squinted into the corners of the room, contorting his face and pursing his lips, acting the half-blind village nincompoop that Joseph might attract.
‘Sea bats. This big, as a matter of fact,’ insisted Joseph, unembarrassed by their drunkenness and delighted, even, by his own eccentricity. ‘I’m not tall enough for girls.’
‘What kind of person — as a matter of fact — goes bat-hunting.?’
‘A zoologist,’ suggested Joseph. And then, more playfully, ‘You’ve seen some fauna of your own, no doubt.’
‘Oh, yes. Wild beasts. We’ve been riding wild beasts.!’
‘Well, that was foolish,’ Joseph said. ‘You took a risk. The light’s all wrong.’ And then, no warning, he began to sing, hardly lifting his voice as if his comic riddle and its innuendoes should not be heard beyond their yellow ball of lamplight. This was not intended for Celice’s ears.
It isn’t safe to ride the beast
When the light is in the east.
All riders of the beast will die
Unless the moon has crossed the sky.
Be still while beast light’s in beast east,
Bestow beast man with your best beast,
For, once beast star bestrides beast sky,
Beast moon bestirs and beast will die.
Who dies? The beast? The sky? The moon?
The light? The man?
We’ll all know soon.
Now they wouldn’t let him go to bed. ‘Again,’ they said. ‘And sing it fast, sing it fast, sing it fast.’ The little man was more amusing than they had expected. He could be the drunkest of them all, by far, even if he’d only drunk with bats and moths. They insisted that he take a bottle of ‘their’ beer and sit with them at the common-room table, staring at the ducking flame in the lamp. They wanted more of his exquisite nonsense.
Celice was now despairing and infuriated. The bantering of Joseph and the drunks next door, her snuffling room-mate, fast asleep, the midnight wind wheezing through the timbers of the roof, the far-off whistling of the sands, the disappointments of the day would still not allow her any rest. She was excluded from the passion and the ardours of the night, and yet kept from the anchorage of dreams by all the laughter that was coming from the common room. She knew better than to show her face again. The joy and whispering would end and, given that her tongue and temper were unpredictable, the shouting would begin. She hoped they’d caught some bad disease, she’d say. She hoped their dicks fell off.
‘Keep quiet,’ she tried again. But it made no difference. They couldn’t hear. The three drunks had begun to sing. Pop songs, at first. The Ballad Kings. But no one seemed to know the words. Then parlour songs, taking it in turns to add new, vulgar, badly rhyming verses to replace the romance and the antiquated comedy. Celice had had enough of the men, and not enough. She wanted capture and escape. She wanted to be free of them and part of them.
There was still something she could do to slow her speeding wheel and bring on sleep. She knew how to soften and placate herself. She rolled on to her back on her short mattress. She braced her legs and closed her eyes. She had only to imagine what might occur if, say, one of them came out on to the veranda, tiptoed past demure and sleeping Festa, pulled down the sleeping bag and pressed his beery mouth on to her breasts. She had only to dream she was a shanty prostitute, available to any one of them in some bright bar. How would it be to lend herself to strangers, to part her legs for them, the iron bed shaking in the backyard room as the aircraft overhead came in to land? How would it be to have these men, with banknotes in their hands, lift up her shirt to rub her spine?
She pushed a hand into her underclothes and cupped herself. Her palm and fingertips were cold. She always had cold hands. Her mother said, ‘Cold hands, cold heart. You’ll never get a husband with hands like that. You’ll make good pastry, though.’ But now, for these brief minutes, her hand could be a stranger’s hand, one of the men’s next door, Birdie’s, perhaps. Somebody she might meet aboard a train. She couldn’t put a face to him or hear his voice. His fingers and her fingers made a parting in her hair. Her heart was hammering. She made good pastry with her fingertips.
Then, as an accompaniment to the drumming of her heart, there was at last some proper music coming loudly from the common room. Someone, not drunk, was crooning a sugar ballad, the kind her uncle used to sing when she was small enough to be rocked to sleep. This someone had a voice as grandly sentimental as the song. It dipped and peaked as Celice herself dipped and peaked in her warm bag. It shook the bottles and the coffee-cups. It played bassoon. It ran through pipes and veins and joists. The singer didn’t try, thank goodness, to add new badly rhyming verses of his own or to undermine the words. He kept the faith:
Stand at your window sill, tonight.
Attend my tide,
And mark the harbour with your light.
I’ll not be far
From your bedside,
My guiding star,
My midnight bride
In moonbeam white
For I’ll be steered across the bar
To you, by candlelight.
He ended with the familiar, mawkish, dipping chorus, sung more softly than the verse, to discourage any of the other men from joining in, perhaps. The voice was so oddly sonorous and womanly that Celice had to hold her breath to catch the words. She had to hyperventilate and grip the wadding of her sleeping-bag to stop herself from spinning in her bed. Then she was indifferent to everything.