‘Sorry, Miss Henry,’ I mumbled, and squeezed past.
Her body, its imprint glowed against mine as though we were naked. For the first time I was exposed to the sexual appetite of the female of the species, and realized that it essentially differed little from that of the male. That was a lesson I would remember. The moments after work, the staff sitting together in the bar, tired and satisfied; the collective fatigue lent the alcohol added wallop. Julie Henry remained commandingly close, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with it. Drunkenness seemed a safe enough strategy, it was like handing over the tiller to a more experienced pilot than yourself. This, all this, was nothing but a misunderstanding. That misunderstanding continued out on the street, where I waited for Julie Henry after she had closed the bar and the night clerk had locked the glass door. After asking where I lived, she said, ‘Then that’s where we’re going.’
Her heels clicked down the hollow street, clenched together inside me were the cold and warm hands of fear and excitement. There was a glistening at sea and the lights of ships in the distance. The trembling of my hands was something I noticed only after having bounced the key off the sides of the lock a few times. She stepped into the hallway behind me and closed the door. Then she pushed me against the wall and kissed me. Concerning the rest I can say that I was not coerced into making any decisions. Her body was a command.
Next morning she was gone, and that seemed to apply to what had happened as welclass="underline" the body bears no memories of lovemaking, there is only the river racing between the darkened banks. But one walks down the street like a different person, the world has revealed to you a few of its secrets, you alone know what that smile means.
Worth recounting perhaps is that, that evening in the Whaler, I thought I needed to act like a lover — as though required to publicly account for what had happened. That Ludwig Unger had lost his virginity to Miss Julie Henry. Hear ye! Hear ye!
‘Act a bit fucking normal, Ludwig!’ whispered the woman whose anus had shortly before been suspended above my face.
It was all very confusing.
I phoned my mother at the only number I had for her, the Belfort in London. The receptionist said she had checked out a few days ago.
‘You must be mistaken,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but Mrs. Unger is no longer a guest at this hotel.’
I hung up. The helpless feeling, as though a loved one were on their deathbed on another continent and would die before you could get there. Disgust at the prima donna facet of her character, the irresponsible whims, the way she took for granted that the world would forgive her her fickleness; the way she acted like a little girl.
‘A bit irresponsible at that, yes,’ Paula Loyd ventured.
Ashley was humming. I looked at the cell phone in my hand, the screen that had stayed black for days.
‘What will you do now? Wait till she calls?’ Paula asked.
‘I don’t even know if she still has my number.’
‘Would you like to take a cut of something or other along with?’ Ashley asked.
‘I can’t remember her ever calling me at this number.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be in contact soon. Maybe she’ll try to phone here, or to the Feldmans. She’ll always be able to find you. As a mother, believe me.’
I was ashamed of these things, around the Loyds, the impression of coming from a poor social environment. But the need for comfort, for reassurance, was stronger.
Yet another day. In principle, nothing special about it, like so many other days it disappears beneath your feet like a treadmill. It assumes meaning only later on, when you think back on it in the knowledge: that was the last day.
It starts in the dressing room, where Samuel Titterington says, ‘Did I tell you lot that I swallowed a 5p piece last night?’
And then the rumor that John Davies, our club Negro, had fucked Harriet Tooke in a beach cabin. John remains silent, smiling beatifically. We’re playing against the second XV from Lowestoft & Yarmouth. A low, cold sun is shining on the grass. I’m flanker, a nice position, you hang at the edge of the scrum so that you’re the first one off when the ball is scrummaged. There’s always a great struggle amid the forwards, it’s physical and aggressive. Bodies, shoulder. I pick up the ball from a ruck and charge a hedge of opponents — sometimes the wall gives, sometimes it doesn’t. Then you’re knocked to the ground with six or seven men on top and every last bit of air knocked out of your lungs, this is the end, the grass against your lips, flesh and swathes of sport tape in your field of vision — they don’t notice! Not enough air to scream for them to get off you!
So you drown in that sea of bodies.
A little later you’re walking around again in a daze, you’re still there, they rolled that oxcart off your chest and you sucked up oxygen like it was medicine. The relief at finding that everything still continues for the moment, the chalk on your knuckles and the wind from the sea that blows the last brown leaves across the grass.
A little later I was smacked in the eyebrow. Blood ran down beside my eye, a rip.
‘Wipe it off,’ Leland said.
If I didn’t the game would be stopped for a blood bin. We’d already run through all our substitutes. It was a hard match, but we won easily. Everyone did what he had to do, we played strongly, plainly. In the showers the elation, the flushed bodies covered in abrasions and bumps, flattered by the steam rising up from the cold floor.
‘I think it’s going to need two stitches,’ Ashley Loyd said.
He’d been watching the match from the sidelines. In the fading light outside the canteen, he looked at my eyebrow. Then he went in and rummaged about in the silver-colored first aid kit behind the bar, until he found a packet with needle and thread that was still intact. He grumbled about how we needed to replenish the kit. In the beer closet, beneath the light of a bare bulb, he peered at my brow.
‘Jungle medicine,’ he mumbled.
And, a moment later, ‘This will sting a bit.’
The long, calm glide of the needle through my skin, the doctor is a god making me whole again. Outside the door people were shouting orders to the barman, rashers hissed in the pan. From the little kitchen, Mrs. Packton shouted I’m not a bloody magician, you know! And just as I was retrieving my wallet and cellular from the crate of valuables, the phone went. A long, foreign number. My heart leapt. I answered it.
‘Hello?’
‘Ludwig? This is Mama. Where are you? What a horrible noise.’
I walked outside, her confusion in my ear.
‘Ludwig? Are you there?’
‘Where are you?’ I asked once I was outside the canteen.
She laughed.
‘It’s so nice to hear your voice, sweetheart.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In America, California, I’m in Los Angeles! What time is it there? Here it’s. .’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Do you know Rollo Liban? Haven’t I ever told you about him? Rollo’s an old friend, a good friend, he invited me to come here.’
‘You haven’t been in touch for more than a month.’
‘You can’t imagine how busy I’ve been!’
‘You’re in America. .’
Her giggle.
‘At a hotel on the beach! Everything’s changed so much here, but somehow it’s still the same. You’d hardly believe your eyes.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Oh, I have no idea, angel. For the time being I’m just taking things as they come. I’m sitting on my balcony now, in the sun. The first few days were very gray and somber, but the weather’s been beautiful lately. Maybe someday we can live here, I think you’d find it very special too. Of course, it’s still America, but. .’
A little later, after we’d hung up, I realized she had not answered the essential questions: where she was exactly, and what she was doing there. I thumbed back to calls received and punched the last number. A woman’s voice, with the enthusiasm of good news.
‘Loews Hotel, can I help you?’
I hung up and looked around the canteen. The windows were steamy, the walls seemed to bulge a bit from all the light and life inside there.
I tore my eyes off it, turned and walked towards the lighted edge of the village in the distance.