Ireland, 1987
When Suzanne handed over her references, Pauline made a face and tore them up.
'We won't be needing
them
. Can you start this Saturday?'
Don stared at his wife before starting to laugh.
'I reckon you're hired,' he said.
His handshake was firm, traces of wetness beneath talcum. Suzanne had no idea what age he was. Late thirties, maybe. At seventeen, anyone above twenty is
old
. He had fair, greying hair, soft hands. An accountant, according to Norma, her predecessor. Both of them were. Norma had sat for them for two years but was going away to college that autumn.
They're cool, so long as you don't mess around. Slip you the odd fag or can. And Matty's no trouble. A bit of a Mammy's boy...
Pauline took her to the kitchen to meet the boy. Her hair was set in a tight plum-tinted perm and she was wearing a blue trouser suit, the jacket lined with two rows of gold buttons. The get-up made her look middle-aged, however much she went on about her youthfulness of heart.
'I love your house,' said Suzanne.
'It needs a lick of paint.' Pauline guided her to the left, towards a door of frosted glass. 'When he decides to get off his arse...And now,
here's
the man of the house...'
Matty was a doughy and sullen 6-year-old. When Suzanne held out her hand, he didn't look up from his colouring.
'Hello, Suzanne,' he sighed, prompted by his mother.
Back in the hall, Pauline made excuses for him.
'He was very fond of Norma. We all were...But he'll be fine.' She smiled. 'So we'll see you on Saturday, then. There'll be a probation period, blah, blah...'
As she opened the front door, she became serious.
'As long as we all trust each other...' Her voice was like caramel, '...we won't have any problems.'
Suzanne shook her hand, a serpent uncoiling in her guts.
*
The paused video sputtered upon a frame of Nicolas Cage singing to Kathleen Turner. Suzanne's face in the mirror above the fireplace was as wary and haunted as a burglar's. She looked at the ceiling...Nothing. Matty had gone down before she had finished reading to him. He had been no trouble, almost worryingly pliable. Now she was alone in a strange house. The anticipation made her want to pee...
She sat into a black leather armchair and examined the contents of a magazine rack at its side. Old copies of
The Sunday Independent, U, Image, Reader's Digest
and
Time
. A novel –
Madeleina
– book-marked with a Queen of spades. On opening the page, she felt her neck blush explosively.
Tolomeo's phallus...her swollen breasts...
Suzanne snapped it shut, then opened it and read on. The heroine was making love with a shaman by a fountain of youth.
His powerful arms...his silver hair...
Hungry for more, she searched through the pages. Now a crazed patriarch, who had tried to fashion Madeleina into a version of his dead wife, lashed her across the breasts, raising a strip of blood upon the whiteness of her blouse.
This was Pauline's book...
Suzanne didn't know why she found the thought so exciting. She imagined her sitting in the same chair, the room mid-week banal, no movement apart from the TV screen and the back and forth of her eyes over the page, the deepening pits of pleasure at the corners of her mouth.
Had Don read it too? Sneaking a look when she was out of the room, touching himself hard...?
She crossed to the TV cabinet and took out the uppermost of a collection of photo albums stacked upon its bottom shelf. The pictures within were recent. Don and Pauline at functions, mostly christenings and weddings, and on holiday with Matty in the Isle of Man. Suzanne recognized the Laxey wheel...Towards the back, a loose picture fell out. Pauline and Don, posing in tennis whites by a chicken-wire fence. It was older than the others in the album – Don's hair was still blonde, Pauline's straight and boyish. She was half-turned towards him, her bare leg cocked insolently. He held his cased racket like a weapon. They both looked pleased with themselves, their vanity somehow corrupt. Proud of their physical bodies, relishing their recent victory. Suzanne ran her fingers along Don's image, picturing his ruthlessness at the net, the violent finality of a smash. His legs were thick with golden hair, though smooth upon the upper thighs.
Was he hard, oh God, he was...
Her breath condensed upon the photo's surface as she touched her fingertips to the creases at the front of his shorts. She saw him naked in the dressing room, unashamed as he watched her approach.
Do you want to touch it?Look how hard it is, how hard you make it...Is it like you imagined it would be? No...It's going to hurt you. It's going to hurt but you won't want it to stop...
Her hand was beneath her skirt, kneading the softness in the facing of her panties. She had touched Colm Kane through his jeans when they had shifted after the Institute disco that Sunday, but nothing had ever been inside her except for the leg of one of her old Sindy dolls. Foot-first, the toes piercing her hymen, blood upon pink bakelite...Later, she had discovered that the girth of the upper end was far more pleasing, even though she had to be careful. The ragged plastic had torn her more than once. She learned how to coat it in saliva, both for ease of insertion and to create the illusion, if only for an instant, that it was a living thing.
Hard with blood...how was that possible?
She wanted to feel it for herself, watch it swell and unsheath beneath her touch, feel the tenderness and violence of the stretch, his impulsive mass bearing down on her...
...Had the VCR not gone into standby, she would have got there. It ejected the tape and the TV came back on, Pat Kenny interviewing a tearful folk-singer.
The purity, the innocence of Irish melody...
Suzanne turned it off and smoothed down the front of her skirt. Her tea had gone cold but she swallowed it avidly. The photo lay face-up where she had dropped it, Don and Pauline's smiles now full of derision. Shame loosened her bladder...
In the bathroom, she threw water on her face and resisted the temptation to look through the cabinet above the sink.
Enough snooping for one night...
Yet she paused on the point of re-entering the front room, looking back and up at the cool darkness of the staircase.
Check on Matty...
It was a plausible excuse.
The banister's smoothness was reassuring to touch. She attempted stealth but activated the trip-wire of every loose board. Matty's room, behind the first door of an identical pair to the left on the landing, was spectral with night-light, loud with his adenoidal breathing. She left the door ajar as she had found it and opened its neighbour. A box room turned dumping ground. There was light enough from Matty's room to allow her to examine some bin-liners just over the threshold. Old toys, children's clothes, Mills and Boon novels, a stringless Spanish guitar, forgotten Easter eggs gone white. The folds of the drawn curtains reminded her of the tennis photo...
Which was their room?
She had seen an alcove just beyond the head of the stairs...
The door was locked but the key was still in it. This time she said,
Fuck it,
and turned on the light. A double bed, dressed in blue, its askew headboard flanked by a pair of chipboard bedside lockers. A window to the right and built-in wardrobes to the left. She could smell aftershave, the expensive and mouth-watering perfume that Pauline had told her she saved for special occasions. There was the bottle, upon the dressing table...
Chanel N
o
5
...Suzanne smiled, feeling vindicated.
I knew that...
She smeared a dribble upon an index finger and pushed down the neck of her t-shirt before dabbing at the cups of her bra.
Have they grown bigger? No, it's the light...
She opened a drawer at the foot of the wardrobe to her right and smoothed her hand over its planned community of socks and boxers. Some of the latter had buttons on the front...She bit her lip, seeing herself on her knees in front of him, gauging the bulk that threatened to push them free of their holes.
Undo the buttons...Look at me. You've never seen it, have you? How it loves to burst free, to breathe...It's alive...
I need to know what he smells like...
Suzanne bumped the drawer shut and crossed to the bed.
He sleeps on the left, I know he does...
His pillow smelled like meat. It stifled her, filling her mouth, snagging at the back of her throat. She lay down, squirming into the groove left by his body, wanting more than just his cock. His bones, his nipples, the hole of his mouth...She kissed a stain of drool on the pillowcase, frustrated at its lack of taste.
Does his breath smell like meat? Are his kisses stink with it...? Oh God, these pants will be destroyed...
She turned on her side and pushed up her skirt, kneading the length of her vulva with the ball of her hand. He would know how to do it. She had watched him smoke earlier, his wet lips pursed as they drew on the tip with a measured yet deep sensuality. A mouth that craved sensation, stimulation...He would adore her wetness, her swollen lips. She nipped the pillow as she found her cleft through her knickers, feeling his strength as he raised her body towards his face.
I'm nothing to him, no effort...He could hurt me if he wanted. But he won't. He wants me too much. He wants me...
Her mouth was half-open on the pillow, breathing deeply as her other hand pinched her clitoris, each stroke racheting up the tension in her flesh.
Fuck me...
She saw herself astride him, his throat, her torso, gleaming with sweat. Their hands were clasped on either side of them on the bed, both of his raised like a captive's. They squeezed her fingers violently but she took the pain, just as she took and revelled in the exquisite ache in the virgin muscle and bone of her pelvis.
I can take you, all of you...Don't be afraid, you won't hurt me...
She saw herself lean forward to kiss him, tasted the final loss of control in his mouth as she succumbed to her own. In the psychosis of climax, she channelled Pauline, sensing the ghosts of the intimacies she and Don had shared down the years.
This is where he got her pregnant...
The thought made her come a second time, set off a ferocious longing in her womb. She saw his sperm clustered about her ova, the binding of membranes, the bedding down in the bloody swaddling of her uterus.
You'll have such beautiful children.
It was the same tone of voice Pauline had used at the door that first time.
Won't she make a beautiful mother-to-be...?
...Fuck it, the
bed...
There was a black circle of moisture upon the duvet cover's pale blue. She sat up, her bottom lip curled down and to the left as she looked behind her. The house remained quiet even as she had the sense of having been observed all the while.
What do I do now...?
She did her best to soak up the dampness with strips of Pauline's cotton wool.
As long as we all trust one another...
There was a threat in there somewhere. In the end, all she could do was try to conceal the stain in a fold and hope they wouldn't notice.
*
They wanted her again the following Wednesday.
'The Yacht Club.' Pauline sounded unenthusiastic when she rang her on Monday evening. 'A surprise Fiftieth..I know it's short notice love, but you'd be doing us a huge favour....'
If she sounded weird at all, Suzanne didn't pick up on it. She thought of the drive home on Saturday night, the smell of upholstery and drink mingled with the stink of vulva she hallucinated upon her fingers. Pauline had asked her a string of questions, oblivious to her discomfort.
What would you like to study? What kind of points do you need for Arts nowadays? A very versatile degree...it gives you a lot of options...
They had been at a Race Night in The Bay Inn. She was wearing black jeans, a white blouse, one of Don's old waistcoats, its buckles rattling in the darkness... A silver crucifix drew attention to her cleavage. Suzanne thought she looked old, her outfit somehow pathetic. She had been hoping that Don would drive her home but it had been his turn to get drunk that night.
Next time, it'll be me on the tear...
