Inez and I slept curled up together, her front against my back, and often I would wake during the night, feeling her breath against me in the darkness, warm and fragrant, and find that she had, very lightly, I think always unconsciously, cupped her hand around my balls, so that my scrotum lay in her fingers and palm, like a nest within the bowl of a tree. She never hurt me, and I don't think she ever woke up like that — she'd always have changed position later on in the night — but I must have woken up to find myself held gently like that dozens and dozens of times.
It seemed to me then a sweet and endearing gesture.
But it was a magical time anyway, in that old house.
Once when I'd gone back indoors to fetch a cardigan for Inez, and have a pee (oh, ye gods, during a game of croquet, would you believe?), I stood in the second-floor bathroom washing my hands and looking out through an open window.
Before me were the grounds; a strip of parkland backed by a low hill strung with tall young trees; birch and maple and elm. To one side I could see an edge of the circus tent, pitched on the deeply shadowed park, its pennants fluttering in the wind. It was late in the afternoon; the circus' band was playing on the far side of the house, on the terrace. Music drifted on the breeze like smoke.
The wooded hill opposite me was bright in the autumn sunshine, and people were walking on paths within the wood, their clothes picked out by the gloaming light. As I watched, another strong gust of wind came and shook the trees, and leaves dropped from their branches like rain from a sunlit cloud; glorious and glittering in the warm air. My mouth dropped open, and I watched, quite overcome, as the fluttering shower of golden leaves burst down upon the walking people, like confetti for the wedding of some unseen woodland spirits.
SEVEN
'There's a funny smell in here, so there is, Jim.'
Well, yes. Pigeon crap and dogshit, dog vomit, dog pee, and curry. Apart from that...
I spent a deeply unfulfilling couple of hours yesterday evening, sniffing and searching and mopping and scraping and washing and cleaning. The pigeon is still at large; I can hear the little bastard cooing sadly every now and again, somewhere up in the roof. I have put my umbrella up over the turntable to protect it from further aerial bombardment and, if I remember, I'll take a wander down to one of the specialist hi-fi shops to look for a new turntable cover. I used to have one but Wee Tommy and I broke it one drunken night, testing the point at which more-or-less regularly shaped objects with cavities underneath stopped behaving like frisbees.
Plates; yes. Most hats; yes. Perspex turntable covers; not really.
I threw out both the curried rug and the sheet the pigeon shat on (luckily, I have several cases of Rumanian bedclothes). I could have washed them instead, but my greatcoat had finally become so dirty — following my adventure on the motorway flyover and TB's hairy attempt at copulation — that even my fairly robust sensibilities were becoming offended. So I stuffed the coat into my heavy-duty industrial Czech washing machine and left the pair of them to fight it out.
I didn't have another coat, or even a warm jacket to wear while my coat was in the wash, but I took a look at the weather and decided it wasn't a day for going out anyway. It was a cold, grey day; showers of sleet and hail blew hard over the city, swirling like clouds of frozen white buckshot. A day for staying in.
Besides, I was expecting somebody. No pigeon today; this morning the visitor to my bedroom was an altogether more acceptable one.
I lay on my side, head on hand, watching Betty smoke.
Ah, the following-fornication fag, the post-coital cigarette, the aprés-orgasm gasper. That's the one I miss most of all. Every time Betty lights up I think... just one. Just one, now, for old time's sake. It's allowed; your conscience would understand... but then I think about how I'd feel later. The big G again, rearing its siren head and wanting to be fed.
'Yeah, I spilled some curry yesterday " I said, economising with the truth.
Betty tutted. 'Cannae stand curries. See ma Jack? He'd eat them fur breakfast dinner an tea, so he wid. Basturt used tae smell like a take-away when he didnae smell like a distillery.' She sucked in smoke and held it, obviously enjoying her cigarette. I felt my mouth start to water, but I ignored it. The sheets had slipped off her breasts as she filled her chest, and I was smiling at her rosy nipples. She saw me looking, pulled the sheet back up and said, 'Hi, you,' in a disapproving tone.
Betty is curiously prim in some ways. She won't undress in front of me, and she always pulls the sheets up to cover her chest when she sits up in bed. I find this amusing, almost quaint, but she gets annoyed if I say anything, so I don't. She's been climbing up this tower to this room for the past two and a half years now; two or three times a week as a rule. Keeps me sane, keeps my libido ticking but not boiling over. I really feel quite an affection for her, even if her heart is, as I slightly suspect, pure brass.
Betty is about forty, I think. She won't say. She is petite, she has scrunched up wee toes from far too many pointed shoes, legs she is proud of, and a pale, allowing body. Dyed blonde hair; naturally brown. It's only over the last few months she's told me anything about herself. That wasn't what I was paying for, and none of my business. I think she maintains this rule still with the rest of her clients, but maybe not; we'd all like to think we're special, even when we're just paying for attention.
Maybe it's only because she's been seeing me so long she feels she can talk. I must be boring to her now; we are more like old friends than whore and john. I'm sure at first she was terrified of me; a huge weird-looking guy living in a big church. Nutcase; maybe dangerous. I've always wondered whether she expected my prick to be in proportion to the rest of my body (it isn't, but what a bastard that the one average thing I do have is not the sort of thing you can point to in public and say, 'Look, see? I'm normal! I'm just like you guys!'). I meant to ask her about that, but... I never did get around to it.
She seems to enjoy sex; tells me I'm the only one that makes her come. Somehow, the way she says it, I believe her... but I still half-suspect she says that to all the marks. Maybe I'm just a bad and cynical man, though.
'Have you heard anything from him?'
'That bastard? Not a peep. He can rot.' Betty draws on the fag again. A steely smile crosses her face. 'Ah hope he's missin his curries. They dinnae serve too many a them in the Bar-L.'
Betty's husband is six years into a ten year sentence for assault and armed robbery. He was part of a gang who split a trucker's skull and nicked forty tons of fags from a transport cafe's trailer park. He'd be due out soon if he didn't keep hitting his fellow inmates. Probably after their snout; old habits die hard.
Betty's eyes narrowed. 'Aye, Ah bet there's somethin else the basturt's missin as weel.' She put the fag out in a saucer balanced on her sheet-covered tummy. 'He liked his nookie, did that man. No much good at it, but he liked it. Couldnae go two days withoot it. Wonder whit he's daein aboot that in the jile?' Her face held an unkind smirk. 'Wee chap too; a right hard ticket, but just wee ... an he had dead smooth skin, no much hair... Ah've oftin wondered whit aw they big hard men thought aboot when they saw him take his kegs aff fur the shoors.' She smiled widely at one of the twin peaks her knees made under the bedclothes, plainly imagining her husband stripping in front of twenty large, scarred, sex-starved lifers. I looked away.