Breaktime

  On firm ground again, she exhaled her tension and looked back across the poppling ropes.

  ‘Mmm,’ she crooned her satisfaction.

  He turned and led the way, zig-zagging up the backbending slope, and then on to the wall of the scar, finding footholds and a safe path for her.

  They trudge, she two paces behind him, for ten minutes without pause or word. A steady plod is his way with steep hills; but he admires her perseverance and uncomplaining willingness to follow his lead. Occasionally he glances back at her. Each time her head comes up, as though she is waiting for him to look at her, and she smiles. Soon her face glistens with so fine a sweat she seems to glow. The sight of her like that, warm, her loose shirt clinging now so that he can see the shape and movement of her breasts, stirs in him a desire he has not yet felt that day. He begins to tremble again, this time almost uncontrollably, and dares not look back at her again till the emotion has worn to an ache of anticipation. He can hardly wait to reach the top, to be with her in his secluding tent, and has to restrain himself from increasing the pace of their ascent. All the time he wants to turn and hold her under pretext of helping her safely over some supposedly difficult ground. But he resists that urge too, fancying she will detect his real motive for touching her and reject him, something he knows will embarrass him; worse, she might tease his crude duplicity.

  (All this was in my mind—and body—as I climbed. But much more at the same time. As I climbed and lusty desires climbed in me, I also thought and felt much more in parallel, so to speak, and in a reasonless stream. Like:

  the pleasurable exertion in bone and muscle pushed to the point of pain

  which led me to dwell for a minute or two on how often pain and pleasure are but a hairline apart—is sexual pleasure painful too?—as are sanity and madness, laughter and hysteria, hate, they say, and love

  but even while these thoughts and sensualities occupied me, I was aware that my pants were snarling my testicles and hitched my jeans to release myself from discomfort

  I worried about my feet for a while: would they smell if/when I took off my boots? I’d have to take off my boots, wouldn’t I? Would FO put her off? An ironic chuckle had to be suppressed into a cough

  rabbit droppings, like raisins, lying in the spikey moorgrass sent my eyes searching for burrows and my mind turning over snatches of Midge holding forth on the theme ‘Is Watership Down a fascist book?’—he thought yes on the whole and argued undeniably as Midge always does, only Sayers challenging him, as on such occasions Sayers always does

  needed to urinate but decided I could wait till we reached the top

  suddenly without clue I thought of Robby and Jack. Yesterday seemed a dream away, yet vividly present so that my stomach lurched as if I had suffered a shock, even a blow. ‘We’re all users,’ Jack had said. Me too now, I wondered. And Helen? Of course

  would the wine be okay? Would she think it pretentious? Silly?

  dad, I wondered about, felt guilty about because I had not telephoned today. But pushed from my mind

  Even to list these things like this is to suggest they came in sequence and order. It was not so: they were random, scrambled, disordered. Everybody’s being is like a collage. And a mobile. A multimovement of circumsensethoughts. And no one can ever record them all, not at once, or singly, or ever. All literature is incomplete history.

  history is a pattern

  Of timeless moments.

  [T. S. Eliot, you’ll remember, Morgan.]

  So why do we try, why do we make the certainly hopeless effort to record our experience? Why do I? Now, here, on this hillside, and here on this white paper? Because [T.S.E. again]

  each venture

  Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

  Or just because there is nothing better to do? Or nothing to do that’s a better way of spending the time between birth and death?

  I thought all this too, on the scar as we climbed.)

  We reached the graveyard monument to Willance’s survival and flopped gratefully down, side by steaming side, our backs against Willance’s cooling stone, our beaming faces drinking the conquered view.

  Breath recovered, bodies relaxed, I said:

  ‘Want an epulation?’

  Without taking her eyes from the curving dale below she said, ‘At it again, word child?’

  ‘Only to confirm my consistency.’

  ‘You know, people at school said you weren’t very clever, just a plodder.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You don’t seem exactly birdbrained to me.’

  ‘Does it matter to you, one way or the other?’

  ‘Not really. Brains aren’t everything by any means. Just interests me. Does it bother you?’

  ‘It did, when I was about fourteen. Not so much now. I’ve begun to find my feet a bit. I don’t imagine I’m a budding genius, anything stupid like that. But I don’t agonize about what people think of me as much as I used to. People at school, I mean.’

  ‘But you do agonize about what some people think of you?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come on, confess. Why should I be the only one to play at telling secrets?’

  ‘Touché. Yes, all the time.’

  ‘You always seemed so confident to me.’

  ‘You always seemed so standoffish to me.’

  ‘So why the picture and the letter?’

  ‘Can you bear the truth?’

  ‘I can bear honesty. Let’s decide afterwards if it’s the truth.’

  ‘Brum-brum!’

  ‘Pompous. Sorry.’

  ‘But clever. Exactly what I mean about you. The people who put you down couldn’t even have thought it.’

  ‘Thanks. Morgan could.’

  ‘Morgan doesn’t put you down.’

  ‘Doesn’t he? That surprises me.’

  ‘Then you don’t know Morgan very well.’

  ‘I thought I did, but . . .’

  ‘Never mind Morgan, let’s get back to us.’

  ‘How about my epulation first?’

  ‘Is it nasty?’

  ‘Soused herring, lettuce, brown rolls. Meat pie and sauerkraut. Wensleydale. Pears. A bottle of wine.’

  ‘And thou beside me. Sounds like a feast.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘However did you manage it? Up here, I mean.’

  ‘To the pure all things are possible.’

  ‘How much longer do you expect to keep your purity?’

  She was looking directly at me, our faces only a shoulder apart.

  ‘As brief a time as I can.’

  She leaned to me; kissed me softly on the mouth, unhurried.

  ‘Then we had better eat at once,’ she said.

  ‘Each other or my epulation?’

  She laughed. ‘Stop using that silly word. Your feast will be a good appetiser.’

  ‘I’m not going to say I love you or anything of that sort.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just pretend. You think too much.’

  ‘Isn’t pretence a lie?’

  ‘Not always,’ she said, kissing me again. ‘It can just be make-believe.’

  ‘You know a difference?’

  ‘Isn’t lying a way of deceiving? It can hurt. Is usually meant to hurt. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Moral rape, that’s what lying is. But everybody makes believe, don’t they? Like children playing. Taking part. Making life how they want it to be, what they wish it was.’

  ‘Pretending life into happening?’

  ‘Exactly. Couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be the clever one.’

  ‘I just let you think so!’

  She kissed me again, pushed herself to her feet, laughing.

  ‘I think we should eat,’ she said.

  There are days when everything goes w
ell, when everything fits. This was one of them. We felt now at ease with each other, happy to be together. The food was tasty, the wine (I silently thanked my grey-suited military adviser) was soft and smooth. We drank beer with the herring to help shift the vinegar and take the edge from our climbers’ thirsts. Until we reached the cheese we spoke of nothing but the meal and the view and of Willance and his Leap (I was made to tell the story) and the satisfaction of lounging half-in, half-out of a tent, itself hidden yet providing such a vantage. But this was nothing more than chat, entertaining, but, we both knew, no more than pleasantry before the business of our meeting.

  By the end of our leisurely meal the wine was settling the thoughts in my head, leaving me happily drowsy.

  Then Helen said, ‘Are you fortified against the truth?’

  ‘Against your honesty, I thought we agreed. Lay on, MacDuff.’

  ‘The laying may come later.’

  ‘Letter and picture.’

  As though preparing for battle, she cleared from around us the detritus of our meal, pushing it into the plastic bag I had carried the food in, and stowing the bundle out of sight behind the wall of the tent. That done, she settled herself on her back, comfortably at my side, her head pillowed by my pack, her long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Through the bushes we could glimpse the curve of the valley bending away: focus for our self-conscious eyes.

  ‘I was bored,’ she began, as if telling a story. Something in her tone told me she had carefully rehearsed the words. (So she expected the question and prepared a reply; was I hearing an honest account, after all?) ‘You’ve no idea how much I hate living in the country. The country is lovely for days out,’ a lift of the head, turned to me in proffering manner, ‘days like this.’ She leaned toward me, brushing her lips against mine; relaxed back again. ‘But to live in it’s ghastly. I’m a town mouse.’

  She paused. If I was meant to say something, I could not. Her deliberate performance amused me but irritated me too somehow. I stared at the view knowing she would go on.

  ‘One day I was tormenting myself by looking through my old rubbish. You know, the sort of stuff everyone keeps. Old diaries, letters, silly mementoes, photographs. Having a wallow down memory lane. Among the photographs was one of a gang of us on a school trip to York. D’you remember? Charlie Dawson was sick in the coach. Susan Parker got lost in the railway museum—so she said, I’ve my own ideas about that ha ha. Miss Cobbs was goosed by a verger in the Minster and hit high C. A reverberation of ecstasy such as those ancient stones had not echoed in centuries. The line was Midge’s, you’ll recall. All the usual stuff. Anyway, I was looking at this photograph and thinking that I’d been out with every boy in it except one.’

  Another pause. Another turn of the head, this time displaying a pert grin.

  ‘You, of course,’ she said, lying back again. ‘I thought, why should he be the odd man out? Why should he escape my deadly charms?’ She laughed, self-mocking. ‘So I sat down, wrote the letter, chose a suitable photograph, and sent them off. My stratagem worked. We’re here.’

  As though a curtain had dropped at the end of a play, she gave up her role as storyteller, flopped on to her stomach and stared into the tent, hands supporting chin.

  ‘D’you believe that?’ she asked, the flippantly anecdotal tone quite gone, replaced by a seriousness that betrayed anxiety.

  I thought a moment, not quite sure which direction our conversation was taking.

  ‘Superficially.’

  She glanced at me, playful no longer. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It could have been like that, but sounded phony the way you told it.’

  ‘If it was like that, would it . . .’

  Larks. Breeze-brushed grass and leaves. A question hanging.

  ‘Make any difference now?’ I said.

  She nodded, face held away, as though expecting a blow.

  ‘We haven’t come here under any delusions, have we?’ I said. ‘It was you who said pretend.’

  ‘I know. Now . . . I’m not sure.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I hoped you’d tell me.’

  I laughed, finding nothing funny. ‘I’ve problems enough of my own to sort out. Sorry.’

  She sat up, cross-legged, facing me. Her fingers picked at the ground between us. She seemed then very vulnerable, very attractive. In a movement too quick and awkward, I laid my hand over hers.

  ‘I’m not sure I can explain,’ she said. Taking my hand, she began playing with my fingers, a disturbing pleasure.

  ‘Try,’ I said but wishing only to attend to our intimate touching.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re right really. Superficially, that is how it happened. You know—that was the plot. My plot. But you know what old Midgely says about plots? Plots . . . what is it?’

  Fingertip provocation.

  I managed to say, ‘Plots more often conceal meaning than reveal it.’

  ‘That’s it. What a frightening man he is!’

  ‘“Look behind the action, boy, that’s where the true meaning lies.”’ Mimicking Midge is my one successful histrionic, as you know, Morgan.

  Helen laughed, and bending in her laughter kissed my hand in hers.

  ‘What lies behind your plot, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve been puzzling about that one ever since we were climbing the scar and I realized there was more to my plot than met the eye.’

  ‘And?’

  She breathed in deeply and out again, gathering herself for something difficult to say.

  ‘I know I’ve got a reputation as an easy lay and I play up to it. But boys are shocking boasters. You give them a sweaty grope for five minutes and to hear them talk afterwards you’d think they’d outclassed Casanova. As a matter of fact, I’ve gone all the way only four times. No more. Honest. Well, four and a half times.’

  ‘And a half!’

  She chuckled, her brittle everyday school self breaking through. ‘The half was a dishy mutual acquaintance from the first fifteen reputed to be an experienced randy stud, a challenge therefore not to be passed up. He enticed me—so he thought—into his room when his parents were out one evening. We were at a point of no return when we heard his mother’s voice in the street outside. By then I wasn’t in a state to care. But you’d be surprised what a mother’s voice can do to a boy!’

  We neither of us laughed.

  Helen released my hand, turned bodily away, facing the dale.

  ‘I’m sorry. That was cheap.’

  ‘Inappropriate just now, that’s all.’

  We stared at the distant river; she, no doubt, regretting her words, me regretting the withdrawal of touching hands. For a moment we lost contact.

  ‘I can be cheap,’ she said after a while, so quietly I could hardly hear her. ‘Loud. You know? Blowsy. Maybe I get my reputation as much because of that as because of anything I . . . do. It’s just that there are times when I can’t help being . . . I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Crude?’

  ‘Yes, not to put too fine a point on it. Bloody crude.’

  ‘Like sometimes wanting to fart in public. Just to shock.’

  She laughed and flopped on to her side facing me. Closely.

  ‘You understand.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It’s as though two people are inside me, quite different people who have to take it in turns at being me.’

  The nearness of her body was intoxicating, like the wine, going to my head. My body tingled with paradoxes. Drowsy yet every cell aware of Helen’s warm presence. Relaxed yet trembling for her touch. Unrestrained yet afraid of making the slightest wrong gesture which might break the spell. Careless of meaning and consequence yet anxious for reason and purpose.

  ‘Tell me about your two people,’ I said, wishing only to preserve somehow the presence of this moment.

  ‘O,’ she said, her eyes avoiding mine, ‘one of them is always wanting to go new places, meet new people, do new things. The
other is scared of all that, is shy, I suppose, afraid, never sure of herself, not wanting to fail and always feeling she has. One of me is always wanting to break the rules and outrage everybody, especially my parents. That’s why I’m crude sometimes and like being thought an easy lay. I started taking the pill just to shock my parents. Or was it because the other one inside me was scared things might go wrong? Because the other one hates upsetting people or getting into trouble.’

  ‘Which one is you now?’

  Her eyes found mine and held them with a cool firmness a little frightening in its strength.

  ‘Which one would you prefer?’

  I tried to smile, to joke, ‘Can’t I have both?’

  She did not smile in reply. ‘I’ve never tried being both at once before. Is it possible, do you think?’

  How could I answer?

  Her slim length lay patterning mine so closely I could feel the warmth of her body, yet nowhere touching. My eyes explored her face; her eyes travelled mine. But looking was not enough. I raised my hand, ran my fingertips slowly over her forehead, down the curve of her cheek to the soft firmness of her jaw, round the bow of her chin, up to her lips.

  She kissed my fingertips, a sensual caress.

  I bent over her, kissed her mouth tentatively, but then, finding eager response, with force. She gripped me to her, pulled my shirt from my jeans, thrust her hand beneath, stroked my back, firmly searching.

  Time collapsed, obliterating memory.

  Clothes were suddenly an intolerable encumbrance. I plucked impatiently at her flimsy shirt as if it were riveted armour.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ she said. A laugh as hasty as her breathing mocked my careless urgency. She sat up and pulled the shirt off over her head.

  She wore nothing beneath. Her bare back shone before me and then she turned in a quick, self-conscious movement, showing herself to me. The narrow length of her neck, framed by her hair. The fall of her shoulders, marble smooth. The rounded, lifting nipple-budded breasts above her incurving belly. The pale flush of her skin.

  The breathcalming pure pleasure of her made redundant any photograph. I felt no wish to rush ahead. Only I had to reach up and touch with privileged fingers the hard bud of each breast. A confirmation of reality; no self-abusive fantasy this. Then feast my eyes a while.