In this way Alan Strachan tempers the molten stuff of self-indulgence into the keen blade of defiance. He has a plan. He will not sink into the sweet seductive arms of melancholy. He will celebrate.
The celebration is shaped by its component parts. In the cupboard under the stairs there rests a bottle of Meursault, given him at the end of last summer term by a child he has now forgotten, no doubt pulled from daddy’s cellar by mummy, who didn’t know quite how good it was, and saved since then for an appropriate occasion. It should however be given time to chill. To eat he has eggs, he has bread, he has olive oil. An omelette and a glass of wine. Who said that? And while the white burgundy achieves its perfect drinking temperature, let the self-pleasing begin with the simplest and the best life has to offer: the premeditated wank.
Now that’s what I call a plan.
He leaves the car as always in the street outside his house, and unlocks his front door for the second time this day, humming the melody of ‘Stranger on the Shore’, which a child practised on a saxophone in his hearing in afternoon break, and has lodged in his brain. He hums when he’s nervous. Lorraine Jones is waiting for him.
Moving rapidly, looking only at what he needs to see, he extracts the bottle of wine from the under-stair cupboard and lays it horizontal in the fridge in the kitchen. He passes through into the front room, in which he has been accustomed to pursue the activity about which he is not thinking, and opens the bottom right-hand drawer of an item of furniture that has no known function. In the drawer, beneath crammed paper files, his fingers feel for the shiny surface of a magazine. Passing back through the kitchen, magazine in his right hand, he scoops the cordless phone with his left hand from its cradle on the wall, and so makes good his escape up the narrow stairs.
Do your worst, Lorraine Jones. I have faced your crack troops and come through unscathed. Watch and weep.
In the bedroom he tosses magazine and phone onto the bed and draws the curtains closed against the afternoon daylight. He switches on the reading lamp by the bed and switches off the harsher more God-like centre light. He stacks the two pillows, one on the other, against the bed head. He feels inside the box of Kleenex that sits on the bedside table, and eases out three tissues to form a graspable bulge for future use. He takes off shoes, trousers, underpants. He settles himself on top of the duvet and bedcover, his back supported by the pillows, and taking up the magazine, begins to turn the pages from the back towards the front.
Yes, the look is inherently ludicrous: clothed to the waist, naked below as far as the socks. But who is there to see? Unobserved by all, he creates his own reality. He is about to enter another world, a world where everything is as he wants it to be.
In no hurry, he lets his eyes roam over the advertisements for phone sex services. ‘Fuck my tight hole.’ ‘Stick your cock in me from behind.’ ‘Just wank as I finger my wet cunt.’ The crude words are balm to his troubled soul. Here is an unequivocal promise that will be delivered. That for which he longs will come to pass. Lorraine Jones has no power here. Lorraine Jones is helpless.
Lorraine Jones is waiting for me, naked, legs spread in invitation.
He laughs aloud. Is this just a touch obvious? Too much of a give-away? What the fuck. It’s all a game.
Will you do this for me, Lorraine? Not reluctantly. Anything but reluctantly. You have to get into the spirit of the thing. You have to give it all you’ve got. And in return, I will make you beautiful. I will illumine you with the flattering glow of my desire.
‘Thirty second wank-off action. No long intros, no boring rubbish. Dirty hard fuck talk which will make you cum over your hand and phone GUARANTEED!’
Tell me about it. Like at one pound a minute you’re going to let me get away with a 50p orgasm? Hope springs eternal. Once, dialling a number he was never able subsequently to rediscover, he stumbled in medias res, with no preamble of any kind, and experienced the essential wonder of a joy granted before it was looked for, without struggle; a sweet grace. But never since.
He only uses the pre-recorded services. Many, perhaps most of the services cry LIVE! ONE-2-ONE!, but the presence of a living woman on the other end of the line would contaminate the dream. What could he say to her, or she to him? Better by far the scripted recorded voice, with all its mock eagerness and its mock cries of ecstasy, because what is this but the performance of a play, a one-woman show for an audience of one?
He dials the number. A cheery female voice, English attempting American, begins thus:
‘Cock, cunt, fuck, spunk are some of the words used on this line.’
Alan Strachan is impressed. As an English teacher and sometime stylist he appreciates the unusual construction: lead with your aces, seize the attention, turn the object into the subject. Rules exist to be broken. Moreover, now reverting to his role as consumer of this service at one pound a minute, he understands that a contract has been made. Correct terms will be applied throughout. No nonsense about proud manhood, melting hunger, sweet jets of passion. There’s a time for imagery and a time to tell it like it is.
‘You must be over eighteen to use this service,’ continues the cheery voice, ‘because our girls are kinky, horny, dirty tarts who love to fuck.’
So that will have weeded out the seventeen-year-olds. But mock not, this is excellent material, and entirely beyond the reach of irony. As a matter of fact irony can fuck off. No such thing as an ironic erection.
Tenderly, like a fond parent waking a sleeping child, he tickles his curled cock in his lap. An answering tingle runs down his bare legs as far as his socks.
‘We have no stuck-up bitches on this line, only girls who when they see cock, take cock! In their mouths, in their arses, up their cunts! Your climax is guaranteed! The girls on this line will leave you with spunk dripping all over your phone! You have been warned!’
This is beginning to sound like the boring intro which the mendacious advert promised to omit. He could hang up and try another number, but the likelihood is that he’ll come in at the start of another intro, and so be at least two pounds behind. He might as well stay where he is. In due course, another two pounds or so later, the promissory future tense will give way to the present tense, and the party can begin.
‘Are you ready for some seriously hot sex action? Get your cock out and get ready, because in just a minute we’ve got a gorgeous girl coming on line. She’s got her knickers round her ankles and her fingers in her pussy and she just loves to wank herself off.’
Pussy? This is breach of contract. We English wankers do not thrill to the feline. Give us back our unlovely but erotically charged cunt.
‘You’ve dialled the UK’s number one porno wank line. All our fuck-hungry tarts guarantee to give you the wank of your life. All our girls have tight hard asses, and juicy moist pussies. So, stiff boy, I hope you’ve got your cock in hand…’
We’ve been here before. Lose marks for padding. Even so, past experience suggests that the most brazen smut-peddler starts the show in the end. When that happens the intro tape gives way to a second tape, with a different voice. Please God I don’t get a script about her first fuck or some such past-tense shit. I don’t want another man in the room. Don’t tell me about his giant dick. I want her talking to me, alone. I want her saying she wants to have sex with me. That’s the game, that’s the show, that’s what I’m paying for: no memories, no promises, in the present, now.
Here it comes, the new voice. Is this you, Lorraine?
‘Hi, there. In a moment I’m going to bend over the sofa and let you fuck me from behind. But what’s the hurry, big boy? First, why don’t I give you a sexy view of my wet pussy from below?’
Bingo! This is the real thing. Direct speech, real time. Do it for me, Lorraine!
Alan can feel his cock responding with an equal enthusiasm. He runs his fingers up the insides of his thighs: this such a precious moment, the moment before, the time of awakening, when he feels his entire body tense and become alert, as his cock fills and
grows.
‘Now I’m standing over you. There. Look up. I’ve still got my panties on, but you can see how wet my pussy is, can’t you? Look, I’m pulling my panties tighter, so you can see the shape of my cunt lips.’
Aah. Pussy has become cunt. The more powerful for the delayed use. A real writer at work here. This piece has the dramatic quality necessary for compulsive radio listening.
‘Reach up. Feel my arse. Feel my pussy through my panties. You like that? My, that’s a fine hard cock you’ve got there!’
And so it is. In so short a time his cock has reared up into full erection. His fingers stroke it, up and down, up and down, not yet applying pressure. His body shivers with fuck longing. Ah, Lorraine! Who would have thought you would know what I want, to the word, to the acted act? See – I’m reaching up.
‘Pull my panties down. Take it slowly. Down they come. Now look up. You see how I’m parting my thighs, bending my knees, all to give you a good view right up my naked cunt?’
Christ! I’ll come if I’m not careful.
‘Keep rubbing that gorgeous cock as you look. But don’t come yet. Remember, I want you fucking me from behind!’
Mind reader. Reader of the minds of men. Pure interactive radio drama. And yes, there’s going to be a satisfying climax.
* * *
The voice on the phone is still talking, but now from far off. At some point as his orgasm began he must have dropped the phone from his ear, he has no memory of doing so. With one trembling hand he recovers the phone and switches it off. Then he closes his eyes and lies perfectly still, allowing the sweet flood of orgasm to withdraw, sucking back down the million pathways of his body. He feels his cock shrinking, leaving behind a cooling trail of sperm. He pulls out the bulge of Kleenex and mops his belly, moving carefully over his cock-head, which is still sensitive even in retreat. Only then does he become aware of an alien sound.
Bang bang bang!
The front door. A voice calling.
‘Mr Strachan! Please come quickly!’
Talk about timing. Reality intrudes, in the form of Mrs Temple-Morris. Alan Strachan jumps off the bed, pulls on trousers, fumbles for shoes.
She’s standing on his doorstep, trembling.
‘Please. Upstairs. Noises.’
She can hardly form the words. Her teeth are chattering.
‘Yes. Of course.’
Why am I doing this? I have no weapon, no means of self-defence. I’m not even wearing underpants.
He goes into the next door house and stands at the bottom of the stairs, stamping his feet. He shouts, ‘Who’s there?’
No answer. He listens. No sound. He goes up the stairs, his heart hammering, and opens doors, and looks without entering, and then enters. An unused spare room, empty. A main bedroom, also empty. He forces himself to look in a wardrobe, makes a token sweep behind hanging coats and dresses. Nothing.
‘It’s all right. No one here.’
‘I’m so sorry to trouble you. Are you sure? When my husband’s away overnight I get so nervous. I am so sorry.’
‘No problem. I understand.’
‘I heard banging noises. I thought it might be an intruder upstairs.’
‘Not this time, I’m glad to say.’
‘I’m most grateful. Most grateful.’
He returns to his house next door, which is divided from Mrs Temple-Morris’s by the thickness of a party wall. Up in the bedroom Alan Strachan sees the copy of Men Only lying on the floor, on top of his unretrieved underpants. He sees the phone and the crumpled Kleenex still on the bed. He sees the pillows crushed against the bed head. He sees how the bed head tilts on the uneven floorboards, leaning against the party wall. The memory of orgasm has gone, obliterated by the three minutes of fear he felt in Mrs Temple-Morris’s house, before he learned that the man she had heard making banging noises upstairs was himself.
As he clears the bed, pulls the bedclothes straight, replaces the pillows, he is struck by how little remains. The pleasure so intense, now so entirely gone. Our revels now are ended. Though there’s still the bottle of white Burgundy chilling in the fridge. Meursault against the void.
An omelette and a glass of wine. Yes, it comes back to him now. The cookery writer Elizabeth David.
He goes down to the kitchen and turns on the television for company while he cooks. Some football game. He lets it run. The commentator’s voice fills the room, together with the baying of the crowd. He glances at the screen from time to time, but makes no attempt to follow the action. He cracks eggs and drinks wine and discovers he is forming a new idea about his play. He lets the idea grow without making any further demands on it, while he cooks and then eats his omelette, and drinks his wine.
His idea makes him laugh. Not for the BBC of course. Some small London theatre, the Bush or the Gate. Give it a shot. Nothing to lose.
He switches off the television and carries his glass through to the front room. He turns on his computer and opens the file that contains the latest version of his play. His idea requires him to change one character. Give her a new occupation. Change her name, too. To what?
He summons up the Find/Replace box and commands that the name SHANA FINN be replaced throughout with the name ELIZABETH DAVID. Then he starts to work on her dialogue. Elizabeth is a foul-mouthed young woman. In her defence, she is a single mother who needs the money. She charges a pound a minute. Her objective is to keep the audience on the hook for the duration of the play.
ELIZABETH— Hi there. In a moment, I’m going to bend over the sofa and let you fuck me from behind.
19
Alice Dickinson sits in her grandmother’s house staring out of the window.
What I don’t understand is why does Granny have to go on? Other people’s grannies give them treats and keep chocolate biscuits in a drawer and don’t go on at them with every single thing they do. I’m supposed to be perfect just because I’m her grandchild or something. So how come she’s not perfect? Which she is not. She’s cruel to her little dog in my opinion, hitting him when he yaps, and in general she’s always angry and she says things. But I don’t care. It’s all totally random.
‘Alice dear, don’t just sit there staring into space. Why don’t you read that book I found for you?’
Because that book you found for me is super dull and I don’t understand a word and Mum told me it’s sad in the end and I don’t like books with sad endings. Also as it happens I’m not staring into space I’m looking out of the window to see when Mum is coming.
‘Alice. I spoke to you.’
‘Did you, Granny?’
‘You know you heard me. You’re not deaf.’
‘Sorry, Granny.’
Sorry I’m not deaf. I wouldn’t mind being deaf. There’s not so much people say that’s worth hearing and there’s lots you’re better off not hearing.
‘You know, Alice, it’s not easy for me having you after school like this. I do think the very least you could do is speak when you’re spoken to.’
‘Yes, Granny.’
Now she’s going to do that noise she does, that’s like she has a problem breathing and may die soon. I wish she would. Pip, pip, pip, here is the news. Grannies are not the only ones having a hard life. You try being in 6B with Chloe Redknapp and Emma Biggs staring at you and not saying anything when you speak and saying to each other, ‘Did you hear a sound, Emma? I thought I heard a faraway squeaking.’ Actually I don’t care because Chloe and Emma don’t have friends they have slaves and I’m not the slave type.
‘If you’re not going to go on with Black Beauty then I think you can make yourself useful.’
Oh God she’s going to make me pick flowers or something. Hurry up, Mum. I know you said to be helpful to Granny because she’s helping us but you don’t know how awful it is. What I’d really like is for you to have a taxi take me home like Victoria Clemmer does and I’d wait there till you get back from work. I could make you your supper and have it waiting for you when you come
in, when you’re always so tired and hungry. I can do pasta I’m pretty sure and I could certainly lay the table. You could ring me on your mobile when you’re nearly home and I’d have everything ready.
‘You could help me sort out the photographs. I’ve been meaning to do that for a long time. I think it would interest you. I have photographs of your mother when she was a little girl of your age.’
‘Actually, Granny, I’m feeling quite tired.’
‘Tired? Too tired to look at photographs?’
‘Well yes, really.’
Now she’s going to get all stressy, she’s making that shape with her mouth. I don’t care, it’s true, I am tired. And anyway I don’t want to see photographs of Mum when she was a girl because Granny will start telling me how Granddad left and that is so ultra boring.
‘I simply don’t know what to do about you, Alice. You have no interest in anything. Are you like this at school?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Doesn’t it make your teachers very cross?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘So why do you do it? I can’t believe you’re just a lazy, selfish, badly-brought-up little girl.’
‘I expect I am really.’
Just stop going on at me. I don’t care. Think what you like about me. Mum’ll come soon now. It’s Mum and me and all the rest of the world can blow itself up we don’t care. If Mum died I’d die too at once, I’d kill myself. Maybe if I ask her she’ll let me not go to school. Only who’d look after me when she’s away at work? She works for both of us, she’s brave and clever and I’ll do anything she asks me, even sit here for hours with Granny going on at me.
A car in the road outside. Yesss! Slowing down. Heaven heaven heaven soon.
‘I think that might be Elizabeth now.’
Everyone else calls her Liz. She’s her own daughter, why does she have to talk about her as if she’s a stranger?
‘Don’t be in such a rush, Alice. I need to have a word with your mother before you go.’
Car stopping. Car door opening, shutting. Quick footsteps on gravel. Mum always walks fast. Her hand on the front door handle—