He took her home, then went out and got very drunk. He slept on the sofa. In the morning he stole a packet of pills from Irene’s stock of them, which she kept in the bathroom cabinet. He just hoped she wouldn’t notice. Actually he didn’t really care. He had arranged to see Jenny again that evening. He picked her up at seven and drove straight to the lay-by. She didn’t protest. He gave her the pack of pills.
‘I’ve got a rug, we can lie down outside if you don’t want to do it in the car,’ he told her. ‘Nobody will see us here.’
She glanced at the pills.
‘Don’t be silly, I’ve got to start taking these after a period and they don’t make you safe right away,’ she said. ‘It’ll be at least a fortnight.’
His lower body was one big ache. ‘I can’t believe this,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring you off again if you want,’ she volunteered, and started to unzip his flies.
‘No you won’t,’ he said. ‘It makes me feel worse than not doing anything.’
He decided on a last try. With the forefinger of one hand he lightly traced the hardness of her nipples. He brought his lips close to her ear and began whispering to her.
‘I won’t hurt you. I’ll make you ready and I’ll slip into you so gently. I won’t hurt you.’
Strange, he meant that too. He would never hurt Jenny Stone. He was sure of it.
‘I know you won’t hurt me, that’s not the point,’ she said rather prissily and with supreme self-confidence.
How could she be prissy at a time like this? And how could she be so cool and confident and in charge? Virgins weren’t supposed to behave like that.
He carried on trying.
‘You know how much I want to be inside you,’ he said. ‘You want it. I know you do. I want to fill you up. I want to drive you wild. You can be wild, can’t you, crazy?’
She pushed him away again. Grumpily he started the motor and drove her home.
She went straight to her room. She sat on the edge of the bed and reached under her skirt, putting both hands on herself. She rocked backwards and forwards. Her act of willpower was extraordinary. But never again would Mark Piddle think he could have her and just walk away. He had to learn to do as she said.
She wanted Mark to lie in bed longing for her body, just as she had longed for his so many times. She shut her eyes and tried not to think about him. She had never had sex, and yet she could imagine so vividly what it would be like.
Mark turned the car round and drove back to his flat. This time he was going to have to give it to Irene, and how he was going to give it to her.
She had been asleep on the couch and was still only half awake when he made her kneel on the floor. He didn’t want to look at her face. He didn’t want to see her compliance. He didn’t want to see her wince when he hurt her inside. Poor little Irene. He was quite detached. She was just satisfying his need now until he could do what he really wanted with the girl who was driving him mad. He pushed himself straight into her. It didn’t take long. But the frustration still burnt in his belly. He made her suck him until he was hard again and then he took her into the bedroom, threw himself on top of her and hammered into her once more. This time she was on her back with her head over the edge of the bed and he maneuvered her like he had before so that her pelvis was pivoted upwards and he could get deeper into her than in any other position. It was his second erection. It was going to last a long time. And it was going to take some satisfying. He pushed into her with all his strength, with all his might.
The next day was a Wednesday. Three days after she had discovered Marjorie Benson’s body, Jenny still could not sleep without having terrible nightmares. And her desire for Mark Piddle was driving her wild. She was determined to stick to her own terms, and to make sure that he would never just drift out of her life again. But all day Wednesday passed and Mark did not call. Had she teased him too much? Had he moved on to some other, easier girl? Every time the phone rang in the tiled hall of 16 Seaview Road, Jenny rushed to pick up the receiver. It was never Mark.
Johnny was at the deckchair stand again. He had turned up as usual every day since Marjorie’s death, sticking to his routine. But oh, how he missed her, and how afraid he was. He thought he wanted to die. He could not eat, he felt dull and listless.
Bill Turpin did nothing but prowl around all morning. Johnny had been acutely aware of the old man’s thoughtful staring. The boy tried desperately to behave normally. But he knew he was not winning the struggle.
He felt that Marjorie had been everything to him, She alone had understood when he had told her all about himself, and he had shared everything with her, the secret thoughts he had never allowed anyone else near.
That morning’s tourists seemed noisier and more mindless than ever. Johnny felt contempt for them. He knew it was hypocritical, wrong even, but he couldn’t help himself. All his life he had watched their convoys arriving, clogging the roads with their caravans and their campers, crawling along in fear of sharp corners and high hedges, winding lanes and steep hills. They threw litter over the moors, at the roadside, and on the beach. They crowded out the pubs on Saturday nights and demanded discos where once there had been only joyous peace. They provided a ceaseless market for the rubbishy souvenirs that appeared in all the shops just before Whitsun, and were relentlessly replaced as fast as they sold until long after August bank holiday.
But take them to the small unspoilt beaches of North Devon where the cliffs are carved out of marble and the rocks have been given muscle by Michelangelo, where the sea is deep green above drowned forests and the sand is the finest in the world, and most of them would feel nothing. Johnny was certain of his own superiority. He revelled in the mighty poetry of nature. It was in his head all the time.
He had explained all this to Marjorie and she had not laughed at him, nor criticised when he told her how in a moment of madness the previous summer, he and a couple of friends had toured the district scrawling ‘Grockles Go Home’ on posters and lavatory walls. Marjorie recognised the true Johnny Cooke, and Johnny had loved that in her. He was no vandal. Underneath his veneer of bravado he was a quiet introverted boy, eighteen years old and already resigned to having nowhere in particular to go, happy to hand out Bill Turpin’s deckchairs and daydream in the sun. At least, until last Sunday he had been.
Brooding adolescent Johnny, sensitive but youthfully arrogant, with his long wavy dark brown hair, black eyes and perfect body, was handsome and he knew it. There had already been a selection of girls in his young life, most of them older than him, but he had never had a regular girlfriend. Until Marjorie. He had never before been interested in making the effort to get to know somebody, to care, to learn to love. By and large he had lived in a world of his own, wandering off for long lonely walks, reading the books he had found he really loved and not bothering or remembering to read the books he needed to read in order to pass his exams at school.
When he was thirteen, Johnny had been taken ill with meningitis, and, during the weeks of convalescence became even more of a loner. Boys of thirteen are not usually very interested in sitting quietly and talking, in putting the world to rights, and Johnny’s friends soon became bored with visiting him while he was sick. It was a thoughtful time for him. His instinctive confidence in the health and strength of his young body had been shaken rigid. He had been brought close to death at an age when death is a lifetime away and a lifetime seems like eternity.