Doing It

  ‘You’re so dumb, Dodo,’ sneered Mat.

  ‘Mat,’ said his mother mildly. ‘We haven’t been away together on our own for ages,’ she explained. Dino stared at her. She smiled fondly at his dad. She looked like a woman with no secrets at all.

  ‘Mat’s going to stay with Gran …’

  ‘No!’ wailed Mat.

  ‘You haven’t been for ages. It’ll be OK, she’ll get some vids out.’

  ‘It’s boring!’

  ‘So you’ll be on your own, Dino. Do you reckon you can manage it? You must be old enough to be responsible now.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Dino. ‘Do I look like a baby? You go. Have a nice time.’ He didn’t mean it but it came out all sarcastic.

  ‘What’s that for?’ his dad asked him.

  ‘Nothing. Everything’s fine, isn’t it?’ Dino glanced at his mum who smiled and – was it his imagination? – avoided his eye. Then, as if to prove him wrong, she turned and looked at him so directly that Dino almost started to blush again. But he didn’t, he just smiled straight back. He thought, I can be as innocent as you can. It went on for too long, though, and they both looked away suddenly in confusion.

  I could blackmail you, he thought, you bitch.

  After dinner, as he was wiping the pots, Dino found himself staring down at his mother’s back as she bent to the dishes in the dishwasher. He could see her bra strap through her blouse. It wasn’t red any more, it was her usual off-white job. Built for comfort, she used to say. She was quite well stacked upfront.

  As he looked down at her, a number of thoughts flashed through Dino’s mind. One was the memory of a story she often told about him, how when he was about five or six he was curious about breast feeding and had apparently asked her if she had any milk in them now.

  ‘No, not now,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps we should have a try just to see,’ he’d told her. She told the story now to make him blush. Another thought was that seeing your mum with nothing on would be like seeing someone stripped of their skin, some sort of carcass. The third was that he wished he’d stayed and lingered at the bay window for just a bit longer, to see if Mr Short was going to lift her bra up, so he could have caught a better look at her breasts. The fourth was, how nice if she’d talk to him about what he’d seen that afternoon. This was one secret he definitely didn’t want.

  Without thinking, he bent down and playfully snapped her bra strap.

  ‘Twang!’ he said.

  His mother jumped upright, blazing at him. ‘How dare you do that to me!’ she demanded, glaring inches from his face. ‘How dare you!’ she repeated, brushing the hair out of her face.

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Dino. He was amazed. He couldn’t work out what the fuss was about.

  ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’ she ordered. She turned and marched out of the room, but at the door she turned and looked back at him curiously.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dino again, shrugging. ‘It was just a joke.’ His mum didn’t say anything but stood there watching him carefully, examining his face, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. She was thinking, Did he see or didn’t he? Does he know?

  ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What?’ And he pulled a grim, mirthless little smile. His mother turned and left the room. A little later, Dino went back upstairs. He was half expecting her to come up and talk to him, but she never did.

  ‘Ah-ha! And you know what that means, don’t you?’ said Ben.

  ‘Party!’ said Jonathon. Yes. Dino had to have a party. He’d made Jonathon have a party when his parents went away, partly by insisting that’s what he’d do. It’d be awful. Ray and Alan Wicks would turn up late and chuck bottles up and down the road. The stereo would get broken.

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ said Jonathon. ‘People help you clear up. Those girls can clear up like magic. My parents never even knew.’

  ‘Until your mum tried on those shoes and found out they were full of puke.’

  ‘I said that was me.’

  ‘Did you tell them it was you pissed on the sofa in the conservatory too?’

  ‘I did mention I had a few friends round in the end. OK, I got caught, but listen. It was a great party. It was worth it.’

  And that was the truth.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Dino. ‘There’s another possibility. Like, Jackie.’

  ‘Ah, right,’ said Ben. ‘Two days all alone in the house. Better than a party.’

  ‘Parents out, Dino in. Yum yum,’ said Jon.

  ‘Except she doesn’t, does she?’

  ‘An empty house,’ said Dino.

  ‘Will it make any difference?’ asked Ben. ‘If she says it doesn’t feel right, why should an empty house make any difference?’

  ‘She’s been stringing me along for weeks, it’s not fair.’ He appealed to them. ‘It could be the perfect chance. Do you want me to stay a virgin for ever?’

  He convinced Jon and Ben, but Jackie was another matter. When she heard about the empty house, she favoured the party. Dino stared sulkily at her.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘It’s just, you know. An empty house. You and me.’

  Jackie chewed her lips and looked at him. ‘You stand more chance of getting a girl into bed if she’s had a few drinks first,’ she told him, and smiled.

  ‘Party’s on,’ said Dino.

  5

  knickers on

  Dino was discovering that despite living with them for over sixteen years, his parents were strangers to him. What did they think, what did they feel? Long ago they used to read stories to him and wipe away his tears and he’d tell them his secrets – but what were their secrets? They might have been secret balloonists or Welsh people putting on an English accent for all he knew. He had assumed that the whole of their emotional selves was tied up in him, his brother and each other, but that brief glimpse through the window of his mother snogging like a schoolgirl had blown that vision right out of the water. They weren’t just parents. They were friends and lovers, betrayers and cheaters and fallers-in-love. There was a whole crowd of them in there.

  Did they have a love life? What did they get up to? It could be anything. Did they get kinky? Did they watch in the mirror? Did they do oral? Of course, he’d wondered about such things before in a kind of shuddery, jokey sort of way. Now, to his disgust, he found himself actually turned on by the thought. Just because he had seen her getting felt up by another man, his mother had turned into a sexual object. It was horrible but he couldn’t stop it. It made him feel like some sort of a machine.

  Whenever he’d thought of parents and sex before, the term ‘making love’ came into his mind – a comforting, elderly kind of union. But it hadn’t looked as if that was what his mum had wanted with Dave Short. It looked more like she wanted a bloody good shag.

  One afternoon that week, he crept into their bedroom to see if he could find any evidence. He went in the drawers and under the bed, looking for stockings and suspenders, vibrators, pornography, membership cards to swing clubs, nipple clamps, peek-a-boo bras, massage oil, anything. He found nothing, not even any contraception. His heart sank. It’d be separate beds next. He crept out feeling like a skunk.

  On the other hand, so what if his mum was having an affair? It’s what people did. Read the papers, watch the telly. They were all at it, banging away at each other like it was keeping the world turning. Who cared any more? On the third hand, though – how did he know for certain that anything had really happened in the first place? What if there had been some kind of misunderstanding? Maybe he had mis-seen what was going on in the front room, like they do in films. His mum could have been doing any number of innocent things with Dave Short. Showing him a piece of jewellery. Looking at a cut on his nose. Having him adjust her blouse. He’d been so horned up over Jacks that he’d hallucinated the snog, the breasts, the urgent hands. It was all a mistake. That would explain why his mum hadn’t come to have a word with him about it.

  The trouble with this theory w
as the images crowding round his brain. It was almost a form of sexual harassment, by his own mother. He considered asking her about it, but that was impossible. He could talk to Jackie, perhaps, but he had no idea how to talk about it. She was coming round on Friday after his parents had left to help him sort the place out for the party. Maybe he’d have a word with her then – sort of drop it in accidentally. She’d know what was going on. He could imagine what she’d say …

  ‘Well, obviously it was a rehearsal for the school play/she was showing him her brooch/blouse … her button fell off and he was helping her with it … And you actually thought they were kissing! You twat, Dino!’

  Something like that.

  But maybe she wouldn’t.

  His parents left after the rush hour on Friday. He helped his dad carry out the bags to the car.

  ‘You expect me to help you pack for your dirty weekend?’ asked Dino. His dad decided it was a joke and laughed.

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ he said.

  ‘Is it just you two, or are you having someone else along? You know what they say – two’s company, but three’s fun,’ he said.

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ said his dad. Too lazy to think of another reply. He opened the back of the car and put the bags inside.

  ‘It might be a good idea,’ advised Dino. ‘Help perk up your sex life. Married for all those years. Maybe you need a bit of a booster pack.’ His dad smiled wanly as his mum hurried out with her walking boots in her hand.

  ‘All ready?’ she said.

  ‘Are you having an affair?’ said Dino.

  He said it so plainly. As soon as it was out of his mouth he nearly fainted. What on earth induced him to say that, of all things? He grinned maniacally, he would have started to laugh but he knew he’d sound like Doctor Strange.

  His parents stopped in mid-movement to stare at him. His father looked just on the edge of getting cross for this over-familiarity; his mum looked horrified.

  ‘I should be so …’ began his dad.

  ‘What?’ said his mum.

  ‘Ahhhh … are you having an affair? It’s like the two of you are off for a dirty weekend. Ha ha!’

  His mother laughed too loudly, and chucked him under the chin. ‘If only you knew, boy,’ she growled. Laughing anxiously, she and he climbed into the car and drove off. As his dad wound the steering wheel round, Dino watched once again as his mum watched him watching them with that curious expression on her face, like someone watching the arrest of the man who had gunned down her family. An incomprehensible look. Dino waved as they got to the end of the road, then rang Jacks.

  When she got ready to go out that night, Jackie was only planning on jeans and a T-shirt, but she got carried away. It started with brushing her hair. She had long hair which shone like copper when she brushed it, and as she watched it come to life in the mirror, she was inspired to spend a bit more time on her make-up. It was fun, but it was too much for the clothes she’d put on. She was going to take it off, but she had some spare time so she went to try on a few dresses and skirts. As she turned and twisted in front of the long mirror on her wall, she found she was getting excited. How much Dino loved it when she dressed up. The transformation from plain schoolgirl to the full vision with lippy and scent and tight T-shirt and a flash of tummy and leg made him go weak at the knees. So she kept it all on, just for fun – why take it off when she’d gone to so much trouble, and it would tickle Dino so much?

  Self-consciously, she hid herself under her coat before she said goodbye to her mum and dad, but even so they spotted it at once.

  ‘Wow – party time!’ said her dad brightly, but her mum scowled.

  ‘I thought you were staying in at Dino’s tonight?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘We changed our minds, all right?’ demanded Jackie. Then she had to invent a bar they were going to before she closed the door and stamped bad-naturedly out of the house.

  ‘Get a taxi back if you’re late. Ring us!’ called her dad after her.

  As she walked the half-mile to Dino’s place, Jackie felt unaccountably furious. Her mum had probably seen right through her even before she had. She was ludicrously overdressed for a night in. She was on the pull. Why had she worn a dress? More accessible, she thought. Maybe, tonight was the night that she was going to make Dino’s dreams come true. For a long time she’d tried, and managed, to enjoy the intoxicating effects of going so far and then stopping, but she had to admit, these days it gave her a severe headache.

  Jackie wasn’t entirely sure why she was so reluctant to go all the way with Dino. The official line was that she didn’t feel sure of his feelings for her and that she was waiting for their relationship to grow, but her hormones had another, simpler plan, which involved getting carried away one night. Unbeknown to Dino, she’d had a pack of condoms sitting accusingly in her handbag for weeks in case the night was now.

  ‘This is a nightmare,’ said a knowing voice in the back of her head.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Jackie. She speeded up to try and drown out the dissenting voice, but it was no use. She looked like a million dollars and she was certain Dino was going to try and have her for a fiver.

  But when the door opened, Dino beamed, he just beamed at her, she looked so beautiful. He took her in his arms, kissed her and leaned back on his heels, lifting her up into the air pressed tight against him. He rocked her from side to side on his pelvis.

  ‘You’re so beautiful!’ he crooned. A warm, tickly glow spread out from her stomach into her arms and legs. And bless him, poor old Dino was so embarrassed at showing his enthusiasm that he blushed bright red behind his smile. Jackie rested her hands on his broad shoulders, looked into his big smiling face and felt she was going to melt away on the spot.

  The poor sap had no idea why she was so touched. Dino was one of those people who thought the world of his bad points and was ashamed of all his good ones. He was perfectly unaware of how attractive his openness and his eagerness to please were, which just made Jackie love him all the more. Already he was beginning to scowl at his own embarrassment. She leaned forward from her perch on his pelvis and kissed him deeply until he melted back down.

  Inside, Jackie took a bottle of Ice Head out of the fridge and started gabbling away. She felt like ripping his clothes to rags and riding him round the room but instead she ran to the CD player to pick out her favourite tracks, talking some nonsense about her mum while he stood there bemused, wondering what to do with his seething blood. As soon as she turned to fiddle with the CD Dino came up and held her from behind. He pulled her dress right up her back, nuzzling her neck and pushing himself into her.

  ‘You’re so amazing. I’d like to take your knickers off tonight,’ he murmured. Jackie spun round and seized hold of his hands as if he was about to do it that moment.

  ‘No, no, naughty boy, naughty,’ she shrieked, sounding like some kind of maiden aunt even to her own ears. She leaned forward and pushed her mouth into his ear and breathed a tickly whisper right inside him. But why not? Why not let him take them off and every other scrap as well? Why not tonight?

  She pushed him off. ‘Come on, let’s make a tart, I mean a start,’ she said. She gestured at the plates Dino’s mother had displayed on the wall. The house had to be made safe for the party, which was why she was supposed to be here. She put down her Ice Head. Dino grabbed her bum again as soon as she turned round and she had to waddle to the wall with him still stuck to her back, where she began removing the plates. Dino felt like something she’d sat in.

  ‘We can do all that tomorrow,’ he complained. But Jackie just smiled at him over her shoulder.

  ‘Go and get the newspaper,’ she told him. After a brief pause, Dino went to do as he was told.

  Dino’s mother was always collecting things. She’d build up a good number of whatever it was, sell them all off and start again. It had been these plates, a 1940s series painted with characters from Dickens, for about a year now. Before that it had been hatpins, and
before that, egg cups. The plates were worth quite a bit of money. Dino had never thought about them on the wall, but now, holding them in his hands, he realised how horribly fragile they were.

  ‘Maybe this party isn’t such a good idea,’ he said anxiously, after they’d taken down and wrapped up the first few.

  ‘It’ll be OK. I know how to pack them up.’ Jackie enjoyed the preparation. Soon all twenty-five plates, some as small as dinner plates, some great round chargers you could serve a swan on, were all wrapped up and coffined away in cardboard boxes ready to be taken upstairs and stowed away in the spare room.

  That done, they pushed the furniture back to get an idea of what the place would look like empty. The room was knocked through; emptied, the space looked enormous.

  ‘Wow, look at it … space,’ said Jackie. Dino pressed the CD to get ‘They Always Do’, Jackie started to rock her hips and they jived about the living room. Dino was a poor dancer, and he felt better when a slow one came on. They cuddled up on the dance floor, big long slow kisses, and in a minute they were in a clinch on the sofa.

  She kissed him deeply as he unbuttoned her dress and exposed her breasts. She could see him peeping down at them secretly, which just slayed her. She wriggled as he eased her dress right up above her tummy and ran his palm over her knickers, tiny low ones that barely covered her pubes. Dino ran his fingers inside the edges, and then began to roll them down, first this side, then the other. Jackie sighed and lifted her bum for him. It was going to happen, they were coming off – but then just as they were about to pass the point of no return, she suddenly sat up, entirely against her will, and lifted her finger.

  ‘Knickers ON,’ she snapped, and she leaned over to pick up her drink.

  ‘Why not now?’ he mewed. He couldn’t understand it. They were alone. They were in lust. He didn’t know that Jackie couldn’t understand it either.

  ‘I – don’t feel right …’ she began.

  ‘It’s never going to be right, is it? Is it?’ said Dino between clenched teeth.

  ‘Yes, it will,’ shrilled Jackie, but she could have howled with frustration, because he was quite right. In some ways that was the most humiliating thing about it – that a dope like Dino, who knew nothing, was in a position to tell her, who was actually quite sorted, what was going on. She could have killed him for that. She got up and started rearranging her clothes.