Even the oppression I had felt since my mother died began, at times, to lift. But although that grief was fading – the grief that had long been concealed under the drab, smothering garments of sterility and numbness – I could find no solution to the guilt that chafed and cut at me.
My self-recrimination was so unrelenting it was boring, even to me. It had carved out a channel in my head which I paced endlessly. I found the walls too slippery or indistinct to climb. Or – as Henry had suggested to me on one occasion – perhaps I didn’t want to climb out. Henry said that so long as I felt the experience of guilt I could hang on to the illusion that the world was controllable. So long as I believed I might have acted otherwise, I could imagine myself to be powerful. I understood what he was saying. But it didn’t make any difference to the unreachable itch that inflicted itself relentlessly on my conscience. The distance between the language of the mind and that of the heart seemed to span oceans.
Despite the fact that we were roughly the same age – she was born in the same year, only two months previously – Ash appeared more mature than I felt. She listened carefully to all I had to say – I had started to gabble a lot when silence fell and I became ill-at-ease – and seemed able to understand the meanings between the words as well as the words themselves.
She was a serious person, in her way. I saw myself, on the other hand, more as a shallow person being lent the patina of gravitas by my colourless, soul-tiring depression. Nevertheless, despite our differences, we had established a certain closeness that went beyond simply passing the time, flirtation and the accumulations of casual familiarity. I knew that I would miss her, sharply, when the summer was over. However, I wasn’t convinced that she would be more than slightly dislocated by my absence. It was her father who was the chief subject of her love. Wesley Toshack, who – I came to learn – she saw as all-knowing, all good, indestructible.
Ash kept herself at one remove, physically and emotionally. Although we would kiss and touch, and on a few occasions she fumbled with my zip and rubbed clumsily at my crotch – enough, sometimes, to bring me off into a hastily convened pink tissue – it was for the most part innocent stuff. We were little more than children – the 1970s maintained a semblance of innocence, at least in regard to sex, at least in Somerset.
I assumed that Ash had ventured as far as she was going to go, confounding what I now could only think of as a childish, Mills-and-Boon fantasy that she was holding an unruly passion in strict check. But then, one day when we met at the town clock, she informed me in a matter-of-fact tone that her father had gone away for a few days and we would have the whole house to ourselves. The implication – the invitation – was plain enough.
When we arrived at the rectory, Ash took me by the hand and led me into her bedroom. It was the same as ever – plain and pleasant and like any teenager’s bedroom. There was a poster of Marc Bolan on the wall. On the bed, three teddy bears. There were two small tables, each with a single drawer, on either side of a single bed with a pink eiderdown. There was a glass of water on one of the tables. A wardrobe, a larger chest of drawers, a mirror and a dressing-table with flounces.
Ash and I faced one another. I imagined she was waiting for me to do something – perhaps she wanted me to overwhelm her? But Vanya, during one of her drunken lectures at the party at Troy’s, had given me strict lessons about consent between the sexes. I shouldn’t push myself forward too hard.
I just stood there. I could go over and kiss her, but it felt a bit feeble. I sensed that she wanted something more from me. I swallowed.
‘You look nice,’ I said, and immediately regretted it.
‘I’m not nice,’ she answered.
Then, keeping her eyes on my face all the time, she began to slowly undress. I had not expected this – it was so . . . brazen. First her T-shirt, revealing a black lacy bra. Then her shoes, then her jeans. Matching tiny black knickers. Her white socks stayed in place.
My body began to tremble, despite the fierce heat of the room, which faced south and had little in the way of ventilation. For some reason – to ensure privacy from the ears of neighbours? – Ash had insisted on keeping the window closed.
She reached behind herself and unhooked her bra, and it fell to the ground. Her breasts were heavier than I had imagined them to be, on the many occasions when I had imagined them. The skin there was marked by the pale outline of a bikini top. The nipples were raised up in dark islands of pigmented skin, areolas the size of daisies.
She rolled down her knickers. The furze underneath was pale, a sparse crop. Ash’s clothes were in a pile at her feet. One of her legs was held straight, the other had its knee slightly bent. I could see a line of pinkness between her legs. She faced me full on, flagrantly, fragrantly.
The silver crucifix she always wore remained around her neck. But she was working at the catch. She undid it and placed it on the bedside table. It seemed to me that she was separating herself from her vows, whatever those vows were. I allowed myself to imagine, anyway, this was the rune she intended me to read.
Still she said nothing. The wispy triangle of hair seemed to advertise the gap between her legs. Still keeping her eyes on my face, not smiling, her pupils large and black, she threw the soft toys from the bed then arranged herself, reclining on the counterpane. She propped a pillow behind her head, clenched her hands behind her neck and just lay there, looking at me, her face gathering seriousness. She was as silent as a midnight cathedral. She just looked at me, lips slightly apart, legs separated by two or three carefully calibrated inches. And waited.
Then I noticed her tongue moving slowly between her lips and my paralysis came abruptly to an end. I tore off my clothes as quickly as I could, almost tripping over my jeans as I struggled to remove them. I didn’t care what the etiquette was any more. I didn’t care what I was supposed to do. I didn’t care about Vanya and her prescriptions. Ash laughed – a deeper, hoarser laugh than I had heard from her before.
I threw myself on top of her and pushed my tongue into her mouth. She responded, fiercely. I could feel her small hand, the arc of her nails lightly touching the tip of my cock. She tasted intensely of sugar. She moaned slightly – it was like the most beautiful, dark chord that had ever been conjured.
Still on top of her, balanced on one arm, I drifted my hand over her skin – neck, collarbone, the top of the arms, the rise of her breasts, the eruptions of the nipples. I felt I was navigating an uncharted landscape that I nevertheless knew since I had traversed it compulsively in my dreams. A thrill of bliss ran through me, blotting out all the negative feeling that I dragged after me like a leg iron. Henry had once said that the real god was hidden in the present moment, and I suddenly knew what it was to be at one with Henry’s god. Future and past were entirely obliterated.
I hesitated before moving my hand further down. But Ash grabbed it and pushed it towards her groin. She took a single finger – the index – and guided it to the space between her legs. I started to search, gently, not sure what I was aiming for.
‘Harder,’ she said, quite sharply.
I felt— No, I had stopped feeling. I was only being. I was reduced, or rather expanded, to the sum total of my nerve endings, and my instinct, and my imagination. I continued prying and probing, this time more violently, trying to find half-imagined passageways and turnings. I detected an area of swelling that as I touched and rubbed it seemed to produce a reaction in Ash, a vibration, a sigh. Her face was flushed, her lips distended. She was a furnace, a lava pit. Outside, more heat fought to enter the room. It was ninety degrees in the street.
I pulled my hand away and rested myself on both elbows above her now. My cock was at around her stomach level. I knew I was in position but I wasn’t sure what to do.
Ash’s eyes were fierce. It was written in them that this was going to go further than I had ever imagined. The furthest.
Then pragmatism, that passion killer, struck me.
‘Do you have any . . .?’ I said.
/>
Ash looked impatient.
‘There’s no need. Trust me.’
I wasn’t interested in debating the point. But I still wasn’t quite sure what to do next.
She had my cock in her left hand now and was lightly running her fingers up and down the shaft. I thought I was going to disgrace myself at any moment, but I held on.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said.
Suddenly she pushed me off her. I crouched by the side of the bed. She fumbled underneath the left-hand bedside table. I heard the sound of some kind of adhesive tape being removed. She produced a small tube, about the size of a toothpaste tube, with the clinical inscription KY JELLY.
‘What’s that for?’
‘It’s a lubricant.’
‘Oh.’
This took me aback. From the exploring I had done so far she seemed pretty adequately lubricated. It was like a warm, scented, drenched sponge. But then I had no experience of these things.
‘Stay there.’
She squeezed some out and reached down between her legs. Then she dropped the tub, grabbed me by the cock and pulled me on top of her. I balanced on my elbows again. She raised her legs, high, higher. Now her ankles were resting on my shoulders. She guided me with her hand, down, down. Down. And forward.
Almost immediately, before I knew what was happening, there was a pressure, then a parting, then I was inside her. First just the tip. She winced. Then further. She cried out. Further. I thrust. It was tighter there than I had expected. More hollow. Waves of excitement broke over me and felt I myself fighting the largest wave that I could sense in the distance, already approaching, approaching.
I held on. She arched her back and opened her mouth. I could see her teeth. The colour of her eyes had disappeared behind her eyelids. There was only a slit there, and it showed white, like a suffering saint, like a martyr.
I pushed in again, but it was too tight for me to go all the way. She seemed to groan from the depths of herself, from the cellars and sounding-rooms. I pushed harder, and thrust faster. Deeper. She screamed – a quiet scream, perhaps modulated for the neighbours, but a scream. Unable to resist what I thought of as the seventh wave – though it might have been the third or the twentieth – I felt myself go under, nearly black out. Her head fell back, limp, her eyes staring wildly at the ceiling as if she could see nothing at all.
The energy drained out of everything, leaving only a low corona of electric afterglow. It could only have been five minutes since we’d lain down together. But I felt that I had evacuated every part of my being. Lost my soul, gratefully. There were final contractions – mine, hers. Then I pushed myself off her, lay flat on the pillow, loins jerking, legs trembling. Gasping. Fighting for breath.
I felt immediately, as thought returned, that I had fallen short. It was over so quickly. The present now disappeared, pushed away by the past and future moments that always crowded life, strangled it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘What about?’ said Ash.
She jostled up to me, briefly rested her head on my chest. Then she reached for a box of tissues that was on the other bedside table, and wiped me carefully. She threw the tissue in the bin.
‘Remind me to flush that down the lav. Dad checks my room sometimes.’
Then, as if she had been jolted into remembering something, she picked up the tube of KY Jelly and replaced the lid. She found a roll of Sellotape, reached under the bedside table and secured it in the hollow there. From the outside it was entirely invisible.
‘He would never look there, though. Hasn’t got the imagination.’
She returned to me on the bed. We lay in silence. Outside I could hear the faint passing of motor cars and the music of voices. They all seemed very far away.
Eventually I found the honesty I needed to turn and look her in the eyes. She simply smiled at me. It was as if her soul, having been transported, had returned to her body and now was shining out at me.
‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.
‘I’m dirty.’
‘That too. But mainly beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’
She still had her white socks on. One was at the calf, the other was pushed down to her ankle. She sat up and began to secure her crucifix back on her neck again. I helped her to fasten the back.
‘You’re not such a good Christian after all,’ I said – purely in a spirit of teasing.
She glanced at me. Her eyes now seemed to hold a mystery.
‘Aren’t I?’
‘I thought you were meant to save that up until you got married.’
‘Save what up?’
‘Your virginity, obviously. Although, of course, I’m assuming that you’re a virgin. Were a virgin.’
‘I was a virgin, yes.’
‘Me too.’
‘I sort of guessed that.’ She stopped smiling. ‘I still am. Didn’t you get that?’ she murmured, reaching for her knickers and pulling them slowly on.
I had no idea what she meant.
‘But. I felt. It was . . .’
‘I’m still a virgin.’
‘You can’t be.’
‘So are you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Now she deftly clipped her bra on.
‘I’m a Christian, Adam. Pre-marital sex is proscribed by the Church. I shan’t have intercourse with a man until I fall in love and I’m married.’
I felt a deep, deep puzzlement – and not only because I had started to imagine that she had fallen in love with me. Why else would she give herself to me?
‘Are you playing a game with me?’
‘No. But if I am, it was a good game, wasn’t it?’
I thought about the tube of KY Jelly under the bedside table. I was reaching for a solution to the deep puzzle that my mind was shying away from.
‘You’re saying?’
‘I’m saying that I stayed true to my faith. Work the rest out yourself. It’s not that uncommon in Catholic countries, apparently.’
I remained still on the bed as the truth began to soak in.
‘Actually, I can’t believe the real thing would be any improvement. Or any more real, for that matter.’
‘But surely . . . The Bible. Your beliefs.’
‘If something slipped through God’s net while he was telling the faithful how to live, that’s hardly my fault.’
Now, just as I had penetrated her, by gradations, the knowledge finally penetrated me.
I had no idea how to feel. Puzzlement flashed through my head. Then a shiver of revulsion, then finally, and definitely, excitement – the excitement of the dark, the forbidden.
‘You’re debauched,’ I said, with genuine astonishment.
She laughed now. ‘My soul is still spotless.’
I laughed too. I understood, and it was OK, and I had gone beyond the imagined possible without even knowing it.
‘You’re a catamite, Ashley.’
‘A what?’
‘It’s a word Henry taught me.’
My mind wandered across far spaces, making improbable connections.
‘Now I get it!’
‘You get what?’ she asked.
‘Troy.’
‘Who’s Troy?’
‘He’s a friend of Strawberry’s. And mine. You saw him at the boat. With the big hair. I could never understand how he could do that kind of thing.’
Her face did something strange. It was not so much a hardening of the eyes as a withdrawal of the entity behind them.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Troy. The one with the big hair. Surely you must have noticed.’
‘What – that big strapping American?’
‘He’s from the Midlands, actually.’
‘Even so. What? He’s a queer?’
There was something distinctly nasty in the way she pronounced the word, as if she was chewing on a bitter root.
‘He’s gay, yes.’
She reared u
p from the bed and started briskly pulling on the rest of her clothes. She turned back to me, stretching her T-shirt over her torso.
‘A man with a man. How can they do that?’
‘Are you joking? After what you just had me do?’
‘There’s nothing in the Bible against that. Nothing.’
‘What is wrong with you?’
‘How can you be friends with such a person? He probably molests children.’
‘Rubbish! He’s not doing anyone any harm.’
‘It’s not a matter of whether he’s doing harm. It’s a matter of whether what he’s doing is right.’
She opened the window. It was as if she wished to fumigate the room. It provoked me.
‘I kissed him, you know.’
She looked round at me furiously.
‘It was at a party. For a dare.’
‘That’s revolting. What were you thinking of? I can’t believe you.’
‘It’s true though.’
‘Did you like it?’
I decided not to mention that I’d bitten Troy’s tongue.
Twenty-three
I received the results of my other A levels, forwarded by my father with a desultory Well done! scrawled on an accompanying note. I had achieved a B in English and a C in Physics, both which were fine with me. Bs, Cs, As – it was all the same crazy, made-up rat race.
Nevertheless I remained grimly committed to finishing my revision for my retake. I rehearsed all the necessary facts and arguments, and now, at least, I cared enough to make an effort to pass. But the dilemmas of history still pressed on me, which was odd, since I was not a particularly academic child. Why did the First World War happen? Why did anything happen? That was all of it, but who was ever capable of untangling those things? Henry said that history was just ‘accidents that no one could understand’. The idea appealed to me. Perhaps it rather conveniently got me off the hook over my mother’s death. But then, as Henry pointed out, who wants to spend their life dangling from a hook?