‘Oh dear!’
‘That girl … down there!’ She reached for him as he began to sob. ‘In the – gasp! – the silvery frock!’
‘Now, now …’
‘It was her! I know it was!’ he wept. ‘I’ve missed her so! Boo hoo! And now … !’
‘That’s right, let the tears come, you’ll feel better.’
‘Oh m’um—!’ His chest heaved and he pitched forward into her lap, burying his face there, just as someone or something hit the door with tremendous force, making us all jump.
My mother-in-law swung round to glower at me – then they hit it again. The whole room shook, a string of pennants fell, a crack appeared above the door. ‘Stand back!’ someone shouted – it sounded like the tall cop, Bob.
‘It’s not locked!’ I yelled, lurching for the knob – but too late, the door gave way with a splintering crash, and Bob and Fred tumbled head over heels into the room. They leaped up and sprang at the bed, pitching the mattress over, Mark and all. ‘Hey, wait—!!’
‘We can’t wait, we got a hot tip!’ hollered Fred, scrabbling through the bedclothes and under the bed. I rushed over to help my mother-in-law pull Mark out from under the mattress – his eyes were wide open but so far he hadn’t let out a peep. He didn’t even seem to know where he was. Or who I was as I picked him up. ‘There it is!’ cried Bob.
They ripped Peedie out of his arms and tore it apart, flinging the stuffing into the air like snow. Now Mark did open up: he began to scream at the top of his lungs. The Inspector was on his feet, his back to us, cleaning out his nose with Ginger’s kerchief; he turned to scowl over his shoulder at Mark with reddened eyes. My mother-in-law took him, still howling, from my arms: ‘Now see what you’ve done!’ she fumed.
‘It ain’t in there,’ said Fred; not on the bookshelf now either, I noticed. All that was left of the rabbit was a limp rag. Fred looked up at the people crowding into the room behind me (‘What’s happening?’ a woman called from out in the hall – ‘They’re beating up the kid!’), then shrugged: ‘Ah well, win a few, lose a few. Here, boy.’ He handed the empty pelt back to Mark, who shrank away (‘Yeah? Let me see!’), shrieking in terror.
There was no turning him off now, he was completely out of control. My mother-in-law, in an ice-cold rage, snatched the rag out of the cop’s hands and started gathering up the stuffing, Mark (‘I love it!’ someone exclaimed) still kicking and squalling madly in her arms. ‘Before you go, you can put that mattress back!’ she ordered, and with a murmur of sullen ‘Yes’m’s,’ the two officers dutifully heaved it back on its box springs again.
‘What’s the matter with that damned child?’ Inspector Pardew complained, brushing irritably at his gray suit.
‘I’ll go get his mother,’ I offered, not knowing what else to do. Mark, I knew, could scream like that for hours. Fred looked up at me with raised brows, glanced at Bob, who looked away. ‘And the bedding!’ my mother-in-law commanded. ‘We ain’t housemaids,’ Bob grumbled, but they did as they were told.
‘That young man needs a little discipline,’ remarked Pardew gruffly, nodding at his cops.
I pushed out through the jam-up in the splintered doorway (Patrick was out there, pacing nervously: ‘Do you think I can go in now?’ he asked Woody), thinking that what I needed right now was a long cold drink. It was what my mother always said whenever my father began to wax philosophical. He was never very happy on such occasions; that always made him feel a lot worse. She tried it on me once when I started to tell her what I wanted to be when I grew up; I could imagine how he felt. Of course, an excess of philosophy was not exactly my problem right now (‘Oops! excuse me, Gerry,’ said Wilma, catching me in the ribs with her elbow, ‘is Talbot in there?’), but something of the rotten moods that always attended my father’s disquisitions was working its way deep inside me – sometimes on long family drives it got almost unbearable, and (Mark was still shrieking, Pardew was shouting, his assistants shouting back, I was surrounded by drunk and irascible guests, sour boozy breaths, total strangers, the guy with the TV camera shoved past me like he owned the place, my house was coming down around my ears) it was almost unbearable now, such that when Kitty touched my forearm at the head of the stairs, I nearly threw her down them. ‘There’s someone,’ she whispered. ‘What—?!’ I bellowed angrily. ‘In there,’ she said, shying from my outburst and (‘Oh, get off your high horse,’ my mother would say, my father having just remarked that ‘Beauty is like the rescue of an enchained maiden from some monster from the deeps – but Truth is that poor damned beast,’ ‘and fix me a cold drink!’) nodding toward the sewing room. ‘Waiting for you.’ ‘Ah … ! Sorry …’
I could hardly move. I’d all but given up and now, suddenly … No, no, it’s often like that, I reminded myself, my heart pounding: Don’t be afraid. But I was afraid. I’d waited too long: now (‘And Goodness is the reckless stupidity of the maiden,’ he’d add, turning to me with the cocktail shaker in his hands, ‘the beast’s wistful surrender …’) it seemed unreal. And just an arm’s reach away. I stepped toward the door, ordering my legs to move. The air was heavy near the bathroom, it was almost like swimming. ‘Alison—?’ I whispered. The door was a couple of inches ajar: the lights were out, it was dark inside. I saw the peckersweater on her finger then and, after a quick glance down at the landing (it was empty), followed it in.
‘Hey, keep the door closed,’ someone muttered from across the room. ‘Alison!’ She pulled me inside and threw her arms around me with a whimper almost of pain. I felt it too: a constriction in my chest (the peckersweater was what she was dressed in!) that took my breath away. ‘At last!’ I cried, clasping her flesh in my arms, flooding over with the joy of it, the familiarity, the suppleness – ‘I can’t believe it! I thought you’d—!’ ‘Sshh!’ she hissed, and pressed her mouth against mine, running her hands up inside my shirt, loosening the tie, fumbling with the belt, her excitement making her almost childish in her clumsiness: I was clumsy, too, my hands trembling, my breath coming in short gulps – this was it then! it was happening! ‘Hurry!’ she whispered, dragging me toward the sewing area (the studio couch in the corner was taken, I could hear rustlings and mumblings: ‘Well, it’s different,’ someone acknowledged) where pillows had been tossed down and heaped with clean laundry. I was shackled by my trousers: I managed to kick one canvas shoe off and free a leg. I felt rushed, as though something important (distantly Mark was screaming, I didn’t hear him) had been passed over, but I understood it – it was like what Tania used to say about painting: you plan and you plan, but when it happens, it’s a total shock, sudden and overwhelming, and you have to take it as it comes, trust your craft and surrender to the unexpected. She held my penis with her bare hand (I surrendered it, not at all wistfully, the unexpected encasing me like a condom), stroking my testicles with the furry cock sock, her mouth at my throat. I buried my face in her hair which was almost crackly with excitement, its sweet smell mingling with the deeper aroma now wafting up between her legs, she was spending freely, if that was the word, it sounded too commercial, my hands wallowed there, reaching as it were for that magic moment on the back porch, though everything was harder now, more real, no, for all the familiarity of it, this had not happened before, this was new – and now: the comings and goings were over, it was on!’ ‘Oh yes! good boy!’ gasped some woman in the corner. ‘That’s not him, it’s me,’ another woman said, her voice muffled. I knelt, sliding my mouth (Craft! Craft! I was shouting at my exploding mind) down her taut trembling body toward that sweet flow below, but she pulled away, sinking back onto the pile of pillows and laundry and dragging me with her. Yes, true, it was not to be wasted – she was coming, her whole body was shaking as I rolled between her legs, and my own excitement was surging toward hers – we were rushing pell-mell toward that denouement we’d share, the cracker, as Quagg would say, the blow-off, the final spasm. Which in the end is achieved, as I might have said that night at the theater and perhaps did, neithe
r by art nor by nature, but by a perfect synthesis (I could still remember such words: synthesis) of both. There was such an abundance of secretions between her legs that I slipped right past the entry, squeezing down the greasy aisle between the cheeks of her behind: she reached under (she was clutching my neck tightly with her other hand, her mouth at my ear, the fragrant laundry billowing around us like some kind of magical cloud) and guided me in: she was amazingly tight as though resisting her own mounting excitement, holding back, waiting for me. I thrust fiercely at her (the people on the studio couch were climaxing, too, I could hear them gasping and grunting – ‘God, I’m hot!’ one of them wheezed), just as she pitched upward to meet me, driving her thighs up under my arms, whimpering: ‘Oh, I love you, Gerry! I love you!’ in my ear.
‘Sally Ann—!!’ I bellowed, with such a shout that, startled, her whole body constricted in a violent spasm, locking me into her, my penis gripped just under the crown by the knifelike edge of her half-ruptured hymen. ‘For god’s sake, let go!’ I cried.
‘I can’t!’ she wailed. ‘Owww!!’
‘Damn you, Sally Ann! You’re hurting me!’
‘What’s going on?’ asked one of the women on the studio couch.
‘Are you all the way in, Gerry?’ Sally Ann choked, her voice squeaky with shock and pain.
‘No – ow! – I’m not in or out, it’s much worse than that!’
‘That’s all right, I’m all done anyway,’ a man said. ‘I’ll go splash ’em.’ I could hear him padding across the room toward the door.
‘Please, Gerry! Don’t stop now! I don’t care how it hurts!’
The lights came on, blinding us for a moment. Sally Ann, in anguish, continued to pump away, hugging me tight, trying to lodge me deeper, but I’d long since gone limp with pain.
‘Well, well, what have we here?’ It was Horner, that wooden soldier, at the light switch, one hand holding his pants up. Teresa was frantically pulling on her yellow knit dress, Daffie stretched out naked on the studio couch beside her, legs wearily aspraddle. ‘You could have waited a minute!’ Teresa called out from inside the dress, jerking the hem down past the swell of her midriff.
I had torn Sally Ann’s hands away and was trying to extricate myself, but the door, as they say, had swung shut on that domain. ‘I didn’t know it would be like this, Gerry! I’m sorry!’ she groaned, her eye paint-smudged, making her look like some theatrical parody of the living dead. I drew my knees up under her thrashing rear and leaned back on my haunches – not very comfortable, but I could hold her down that way, keep her from scissoring the thing off.
The door opened and Zack Quagg poked his nose in from the hall – ‘Hey, Horn, I been looking for you, what’s going on?’ – followed by Woody and Cynthia (Horner, winking, licked his thumb as though to turn a page), holding hands: ‘Oh no,’ Woody said, his eyes crinkling up with compassion when he saw me. ‘I’ll go get Jim.’
‘Yes, please!’ I gasped. ‘Hurry!’ I could hear Mark again – his wailing was now sleepy and rhythmical, dirgelike. ‘Stay still, Sally Ann!’
‘I want to – but it’s all moving by itself!’
‘For goodness’ sake! What have you been doing?!’ asked Wilma, arriving short of breath as though after a run. ‘Lloyd Draper’s giving a slide show downstairs, Teresa, and we’ve been waiting for you!’ Cynthia knelt beside us, holding back my pubic hairs to have a closer look. ‘Can you relax a bit?’ she asked, and Sally Ann wailed: ‘I am relaxing!’ Quagg was pulling Horner (‘This place looks too busy,’ said Janny Trainer, peeping in, our plumber Steve in tow), still blowing kisses back over his shoulder, out the door: ‘Come on, we got something on the boil, man – something great!’ ‘Yeah, okay, Zack, but first lemme get something to eat …’
‘He said he was casting me for a part,’ explained Teresa, smoothing down her skirt, looking around on the floor for something more, and Wilma said: ‘Well, just try telling that to Peg!’ ‘What? Is my sister still here?’ Cynthia was wriggling my member back and forth as though trying to free a key from a broken lock: ‘Ow, don’t!’ I cried. ‘That’s not helping!’
‘You’re bleeding, Sally Ann,’ Cynthia observed, looking at her fingers. ‘Am I?’ Sally Ann lifted herself up on her elbows to see for herself. ‘Yeah!’ she gasped, and lay back smiling, her face wet with sweat. ‘God! I’m bleeding!’
‘It may be me!’ I whimpered.
‘And this is our sewing room,’ my wife said. ‘Soyng?’ She stood in the doorway with Iris Draper, Alison’s husband, Hilario the Panamanian tapdancer (‘Ah! Zo-eeng! Weeth the leetle, how you say, pointed theeng!’), that guy with the elbow patches I’d met out in the backyard, and two people I’d never seen before. ‘It hasn’t been redecorated for a few years, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s very nice,’ said Iris, and my wife sighed and said: ‘It serves its purpose, I guess.’ Alison’s husband frowned when he saw me; what’s-his-name (Geoffrey?) from outside smiled and waved. ‘Do you need any help, Gerald?’
‘Jim’s coming,’ I gasped, gritting my teeth, and Wilma, buttoning Teresa up the back, said: ‘You should have seen Cyril just now on television! You really missed it! He’s a natural!’ ‘He’s a pig.’ ‘How can you say that?’ ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Gottfried, that was his name (‘Fiona? Really – ?’), I could hardly think. My head seemed to be full of little sparks. ‘But you’re … all right—?’
‘All right?’
‘The – gasp! – interview …’
‘Oh yes, Woody was very helpful. Some of the things they were doing were apparently illegal.’ She was wearing that plasticky apron with the old soap ad on it, and it made her look stiff and mechanical somehow. ‘He made them take the candle out, for example.’ Iris came by, evidently studying the paintwork, or maybe all the childish decals on everything. ‘Goodness, I suppose it was a mistake to do all that laundry …’
The bearded guy with the video camera on his shoulder pushed in behind the others, viewfinder to his eye, one hand working the zoom. I tried to turn my back to him, but it hurt too much to move. Iris spied the fallen peckersweater and picked it up: ‘Interesting!’ she said, adjusting her spectacles. Sally Ann reached up and covered herself as the cameraman closed in. ‘If you haven’t really done it, Gerry, don’t let him see.’
‘Wait for me!’ called Teresa (Wilma was in the doorway, introducing herself to the two strangers, a stout man in a brown three-piece suit and a white-haired lady in lime slacks, a pink-and-lemon shirt, Iris saying something about having to go through her catalogues when she got home, see if she could find one, Lloyd was always getting a chill). ‘My other shoe …’
‘I think I’m lying on it,’ Daffie grumbled, and Hilario, turning to go, asked: ‘Ees peenk woe-man, no?’
‘Any color you can get, lover.’
‘The only trouble,’ Iris decided, after a stroll through the room (‘What’s she trying to hide?’ the cameraman wanted to know, and Cynthia tugged Sally Ann’s hands away: ‘Don’t worry, dear, it’s all right …’), ‘is that there’s not enough light.’
‘I know, it’s on the north side.’
‘No, I meant the wallpaper.’
‘Well, now, let’s see what we have here,’ Jim said, announcing himself, and the cameraman moved on (‘It’s called “Paintbox Green,” ’ my wife was saying) to pick up Daffie. ‘What do you think about the breakdown of law and order in our society?’ he asked as he zoomed in. ‘She seized up on him,’ Cynthia explained quietly, lifting the root of my penis. ‘Just here at the neck.’ Jim set his bag down and knelt beside us. ‘Hmmm,’ he said, probing Sally Ann’s thighs and the muscles around her anus. ‘All this handcream she has packed in here might’ve helped if she’d put it in the right place …’
‘That’s the sort of sewing machine I’ve been telling you about, honey,’ the lady in the lime slacks said.
‘Ah, yes …’
‘These are our new neighbors from down the street, Gerald. Mr and Mrs Waddilow.??
?
I craned around to look at them. ‘We heard the music and just stopped in to say hello,’ Mr Waddilow smiled. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’ Alison’s husband had disappeared, Hilario as well, but Howard was in the room now, over in the far corner near the ironingboard closet, wearing Tania’s half-lens reading glasses on the fat part of his nose, watching the cameraman as he panned the horizon of Daffie’s body. ‘You’ve got a nice place here,’ said Mr Waddilow.
‘Why don’t you stuff that ray gun up your ass, cowboy?’ Daffie suggested.
‘It’s lightweight and almost entirely automatic, with a special attachment for lace edging,’ Mrs Waddilow called from across the room.
‘What?’ her husband toddled over to look at it, his pantcuffs riding an inch or two above his white socks and two-toned shoes, crossing paths with Howard, who floated out now without saying a word, hands clapped decorously over his brassiere cups. ‘Oh yes, I see. Very good.’
‘Mr Waddilow is an airline pilot, Gerald.’ ‘Does this hurt?’ asked Jim. ‘Yes!’ cried Sally Ann, and I yelped as well. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a real pilot in our neighborhood before, have we?’
‘No … but – ow! – if you don’t mind …’
‘Retired, actually,’ Mr Waddilow said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his brown vest. ‘I’m in travel now.’
‘This old sewing basket is nice, too,’ Mrs Waddilow added.
‘You should check on Mark,’ I gasped, ‘they broke the door down—’
‘I know, I was just in there. Mother’s fixing Peedie.’ That’s right, I noticed now, I couldn’t hear him anymore. ‘Someone put the ears on backward.’
‘I’m afraid that was my fault,’ smiled Cynthia, looking up over her shoulder. ‘I don’t know much about rabbits.’
‘Wah—!’
‘Sorry …’
‘If I can be of any help,’ Mr Waddilow said. ‘I used to raise rabbits.’
‘You can feel here the adductor muscles,’ Jim was explaining (Woody had returned and now squatted by Cynthia, pursing his lips thoughtfully), ‘the so-called “pillars of virginity,” how tense they are, right up into the vagina.’ ‘Oh yes …’ He searched through his bag, watched closely by the cameraman, who, kneeling beside us, focused now on Jim’s hands. ‘What are you going to do?’ Sally Ann asked apprehensively, propping herself up on her elbows.