First love3 last rites From the beginning of summer until it seemed pointless, we lifted the thin mattress on to the heavy oak table and made love in front of the large open window. We always had a breeze blowing into the room and smells of the quayside four floors down. I was drawn into fantasies against my will, fantasies of the creature, and afterwards when we lay on our backs on the huge table, in those deep silences I heard it faintly running and clawing. It was new to me, all this, and I worried, I tried to talk to Sissel about it for reassurance. She had nothing to say, she did not make abstractions or discuss situations, she lived inside them. We watched the seagulls wheeling about in our square of sky and wondered if they had been watching us up there, that was the kind of thing we talked about, mildly entertaining hypotheses of the present moment. Sissel did things as they came to her, stirred her coffee, made love, listened to her records, looked out the window. She did not say things like I'm happy, or confused, or I want to make love, or I don't, or I'm tired of the fights in my family, she had no language to split herself is two, sc I suffered alone what seemed like crimes in my head while we fucked, and afterwards listened alone to it scrabbling in the silence. Then one afternoon Sissel woke from a doze, raised her head from the mattress and said, 'What's that scratching noise behind the wall?' My friends were far away in London, they sent me anguished and reflective letters, what would they do now? Who were they, and what was the point of it all? They were my age, seventeen and eighteen, but I pretended not to understand them. I sent back postcards, find a big table and an open window, I told them. I was happy and it seemed easy, I was making eel traps, it was so easy to have a purpose. The summer went on and I no longer heard from them. Only Adrian came to see us, he was Sisscl's ten-year-old brother and he came to escape the misery of his disintegrating home, the quick reversals of his mother's moods, the endless competitive piano playing of his First lov«, last rites 89 sisters, the occasional bitter visits of his father. Adrian and Sisscl's parents after twenty-seven years of marriage and sis children hated each other with sour resignation, they could no longer bear to live in the same house. The father moved out to a hostel a few streets away to be near his children. He was a businessman who was out of work and looked like Gregory Peck, be was an optimist and had a hundred schemes to make money in an interesting way. I used to meet him in the pub. He did not want to talk about his redundancy or his marriage, be did not mind me living in a room over the quayside with his daughter. Instead he told me about his time in the Korean war, and when he was an international salesman, and of the legal fraudery of his friends who were now at the top and knighted, and then one day of the eels in the River Ouse, how the river bed swarmed with eels, how there was money to be made catching them and taking them alive to London. I told him how I had eighty pounds in the bank, and the next morning we bought netting, twine, wire hoops and an old cistern tank to keep eels in. I spent the next two months making eel traps. On fine days I took my net, hoops and twine outside and worked on the quay, sitting on a bollard. An eel trap is cylinder-shaped, sealed at one end, and at the other is a long tapering funnel entrance. It lies on the river bed, the eels swim in to eat the bait and in their blindness cannot find their way out. The fishermen were friendly and amused. There's eels down there, they said, and you'll catch a t€W uUl yOil WOÜ i íjj3k£ uOüVÄDg OD it. luč tluc u tCS6 yOUT uCíS läS! as you make them. We're using iron weights, I told them, and they shrugged in a good-natured way and showed me a better way to lash the net to the hoops, they believed it was my right to try it for myself. When the fishermen were out in their boats and I did not feel like working I sat about and watched the tidal water slip across the mud, I felt no urgency about the eel traps but I was certain we would be rich. I tried to interest Sissel in the eel adventure, I told her about the rowing-boat someone was lending to us for the summer, but she had nothing to say. So instead we lifted the mattress on to the table and lay down with our clothes on. Then she began to talk. We pressed our palms together, she made a careful examination of the size and shape of our hands and gave a running commentary. Exactly the same size, your fingers are thicker, you've got this extra bit here. She 90 Fir« love, la« rites measured my eyelashes with the end of her thumb and wished hers were as long, she told me about the dog she had when she was small, it had long white eye-lashes. She looked at the sunburn on my nose and talked about that, which of her brothers and sisters went red in the sun, who went brown, what her youngest sister said once. We slowly undressed. She kicked off her plimsolls and talked about her foot rot. I listened with my eyes dosed, I could smell mud and seaweed and dust through the open window. Wittering on, she called it, this kind of talk. Then once I was inside ber I was moved, I was inside my fantasy, there could be no separation now of my mushrooming sensations from my knowledge that we could make a creature grow in Sisseľs belly. I had no wish to be a father, that was not in it at alL It was eggs, sperms, chromosomes, feathers, guts, claws, inches from my cock's end the unstoppable chemistry of a creature growing out of a dark red slime, my fantasy was of being helpless before the age and strength of this process and the thought alone could make me come before I wanted. When I told Sissel she laughed. Oh, Gawd, she said. To me Sissel was right inside the process, she was the process and the power of its fascination grew. She was meant to be on die pul and every month she forgot it at least two or three rimes. Without discussion we came to the arrangement that I was to come outside her, but it rarely worked. As we were swept down the long slopes to our orgasms, in those last desperate seconds I struggled to find my way out but I was caught like an eel in my fantasy of the creature in the dark, waning, hungry, and I fed it great white gobs. In those careless fractions of a second I abandoned my life to feeding the creature, whatever it was, in or out of the womb, to fucking only Sissel, to feeding more creatures, my whole life given over to this in a moment's weakness. I watched out for Stssel's periods, everything about women was new to me and I could take nothing for granted. We made love in Sisseľs copious, effortless periods, got good and sticky and brown with the blood and I thought we were the creatures now in the slime, we were inside fed by gobs of cloud coming through the window, by gases drawn from the mudflats by the sun. I worried about my fantasies, I knew I could not come without them. I asked Sissel what she thought about and she giggled. Not feathers and gills, anyway. What do you think about, then? Nothing much, nothing really. I pressed my question and she withdrew into silence. First love, last rites 91 I knew it was my own creature I heard scrabbling, and when Sissel beard it one afternoon and began to worry, I realized her fantasies were involved too, it was a sound which grew out of our lovemaidng. We heard it when we were finished and lying quite still on our backs, when we were empty and clear, perfectly quiet. It was the impression of small claws scratching blindly against a wall, such a distant sound it needed two people to near it. We thought it came from one part of the waU. When I knelt down and put my ear to the skirüng-board it stopped, I sensed it on the other side of the waU, frozen in its action, waiting in the dark. As the weeks passed we heard it at other times in the day, and now and then at night. I wanted to ask Adrian what be thought it was. Listen, there it is, Adrian, shut up a moment, what do you think that noise is, Adrian? He strained impatiently to hear what we could hear but he would not be still long enough. There's nothing there, he shouted. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He became very excited, jumped on his sister's back, yelling and yodelling. He did not want whatever it was to be heard,'he did not want to be left out. I pulled him off Sisseľs back and we rolled about on the bed. Listen again, I said, pinning him down, there it was again. He struggled free and ran out of the room shouting his two-tone poUce-car siren. We listened to it fade down the stairs and when I could bear him no more I said, Perhaps Adrian is really afraid of mice. Rats, you mean, said his sister, and put her hands between my legs. By mid-July we were not so happy in our room, there was a growing dishevelment and unease, and it did not seem possible to discuss it with Sissel. Adrian was coming to us every day now because it was the summer holidays and he could not bear to be at home. We would hear him four Soors down, shouting and stamping on the stairs on his way up to us. He came in noisily, doing handstands and showing off to us. Frequendy he jumped on Sisseľs back to impress me, he was anxious, be was worried we might not find him good company and send him away, send him back home. He was worried too because he could no longer understand his sister. At one time she was always ready for a fight, and she was a good fighter, 1 heard him boast that to bis friends, he was proud of her. Now changes had come over his sister, she pushed him off sulkily, she wanted to be left alone to do nothing, she wanted to listen to records. She was angry when he got his shoes on her skirt, and she had breasts now like Us 92 First love, last rites mother, she talked to bim now like his mother. Get down o9 there, Adrian. Please, Adrian, please, not now, later. He could not quite believe it all the same, it was a mood of his sister's, a phase, and he wem on taunting and attacking her hopefully, he badly wanted things to stay as they were before his father left home. When he locked bis forearms round Sissel's neck and pulled her backwards on to the bed his eyes were on me for encouragement, he thought the real bond was between us, the two men against the girl. He did not see there was no encouragement, he wanted it so badly. Sissel never sent Adrian away, she understood why he was here, but it was hard for her. One long afternoon of torment she left the room almost crying with frustration. Adrian turned to me and raised his eyebrows in mock horror. I tried to talk to him then but he was already making his yodelling sound and squaring up for a fight with me. Nor did Sissel have anything to say to me about her brother, she never made general remarks about people because she never made general remarks. Sometimes when we beard Adrian on his way up the stairs she glanced across at me and seemed to betray herself by a slight pursing of her beautiful lips. There was only one way to persuade Adrian to leave us in peace. He could not bear to see us touch, it pained him, it genuinely disgusted him. When he saw one of us move across the room to the other he pleaded with us silently, he ran between us, pretending playfulness, wanted to decoy us into another game. He imitated us frantically in a desperate last attempt to show us how fatuous we appeared. Then he could stand it no more, he ran out of the room machine-gunning German soldiers and young lovers on the stairs. But Sissel and I were touching less and less now, in out quiet ways we could not bring ourselves to it. It was not that we were in decline, not that we did not delight in each other, but that our opportunities were faded. It was the room itself. It was no longer four floors up and detached, there was no breeze through the windows, only a mushy heat rising off the quayside and dead jellyfish and clouds of flies, fiery grey flies who found our armpits and bit fiercely, housefUes who hung in clouds over our food. Our hair was too long and dank and hung in our eyes. The food we bought melted and tasted like the river. We no longer lifted the mattress on to the table, the coolest place now was the floor and the floor was covered with greasy sand which would not go away. Sissel grew tired of het First love, last rites 93 records, and her foot rot spread from one foot to the other and added to the smell. Our room stank. We did not talk about leaving because we did not talk about anything. Every night now we were woken by the scrabbling behind the wall, louder now and more insistent. When we made love it listened to us behind the wall. We made love less and our rubbish gathered around us, milk bottles we could not bring ourselves to carry away, grey sweating cheese, butter wrappers, yogurt cartons, over-ripe salami. And among it all Adrian cartwheeling, yodelling, machine-gunning and attacking Sissel. I tried to write poems about my fantasies, about the creature, but I could see no way in and I wrote nothing down, not even a first line. Instead I took long walks along the river dyke into the Norfolk hinterland of dull beet fields, telegraph poles, uniform grey skies. I had two more eel nets to make, I was forcing myself to sit down to them each day. But in my heart I was sick of them, I could not really believe that eels would ever go inside them and I wondered if I wanted them to, if it was not bener that the eels should remain undisturbed in the cool mud at the bottom of the river. But I went on with it because Sissel's father was ready to begin, because I had to expiate all the money and hours I had spent so far, because the idea had its own tired, fragile momentum now and I could no more stop it than carry the muk bottles from our room. Then Sissel found a job and it made me see we were different from no one, they all had rooms, houses, jobs, careers, that's what they aQ did, they had cleäfief rooms, be»cr jobs, we were any-where's striving couple. It was one of the windowless factories across the river where they canned vegetables and fruit. For ten hours a day she was to sit in the roar of machines by a moving conveyor belt, talk to no one and pick out the rotten carrots before they were canned. At the end of her first day Sissel came home in a pmk-and-whtte nylon raincoat and pink cap. I said, Why don't you take it off? Sissel shrugged. It was all the same to her, sitting around in the room, sitting around in a factory where they relayed Radio One through speakers strung along the steel girders, where four hundred women half listened, half dreamed, while their hands spun backwards and forwards like powered shuttles. On Sissel's second day I took the ferry across the river and waited for her at the factory gates. A few women stepped through a small tin door in a great windowless wall and a wailing siren sounded all across the factory complex. Other 94 First love, last rites small doors opened and they streamed out, converging on the gates, scores of women in pink-and-white nylon coats and pink caps. I stood on a low wall and tried to see Sissel, it was suddenly very im-poriant. I thought that if I could not pick her out from this rustling stream of pink nylon then she was lost, we were both lost and our time was worthless. As it approached the factory gates the main body was moving fast. Some were half running in the splayed, hopeless way that women have been taught to run, the others walked as fast as they could. I found out later they were hurrying home to cook suppers for their families, to make an early start on the housework. Latecomers on the next shift tried to push their way through in the opposite direction. I could not see Sissel and I felt on the edge of panic, I shouted her name and my words were trampled underfoot. Two older women who stopped by the wall to light cigarettes grinned up at me. Sizzle yerself. I walked home by the long way, over the bridge, and decided nor to tell Sissel I had been to wait for her because I would have to explain my panic and I did not know how. She was sitting on the bed when I came in, she was still wearing her nylon coat. The cap was on the floor. Why don't you take that thing off? I said. She said, Was that you outside the factory? I nodded. Why didn't you speak to me if you saw me standing there? Sissel turned and lay face downwards on the bed; Her coat was stained and smelled of machine oil and earth. I dunno, she said into the pillow, I didn't think. I dWn't think of anything after my shift. Her words had a deadening finality, I glanced around our room and fell silent. Two days later, on Saturday afternoon, I bought pounds of rubbery cows' lungs sodden with blood (lights, they were calkd) for bait. That same afternoon we filled the traps and rowed out into mid-channel at low tide to lay them on the river bed. Each of the seven traps was marked by a buoy. Four o'clock Sunday morning Sisseľs father called for me and we set out in hi» van to where we kept the borrowed boat. We were rowing out now to find the marker buoys and pull the traps in, it was the testing tune, would there be eels in the nets, would it be profitable to make more nets, catch more eels and drive them once a week to Billingsgate market, would we be rich? It was a dull windy morning, I f.^ no anticipation, only tiredness and a continuous erection. I half dozed in the warmth of First love, last rites 95 the van's heater. I had spent many hours of the night awake listening to the scrabbling noises behind die wall Once I got out of bed and banged the skirting-board with a spoon. There was a pause, then the digging continued. It seemed certain now that it was digging its way into the room. While Sisseľs father rowed I watched over the side for markers. It was not as easy as I thought to find them, they did not show up white against the water but as dark low silhouettes. It was twenty minutes before we found the first. As we pulled it up I was amazed at how soon the clean white rope from the chandlers had become like all other ropes near the river, brown and hung about with fine strands of green weed. The net too was old-looking and alien, I could not believe that one of us had made it. Inside were two crabs and a large ecL He untied the closed end of the trap, let the two crabs drop into the water and put the eel in the plastic bucket we had brought with us. We put fresh lights in the trap and dropped it over the side. It took another fifteen minutes to find the next trap and that one had nothing inside. We rowed up and down the channel for half an hour after that without finding another trap, and by this time the tide was coming up and covering the markers. It was dien that I took the oars and made for the shore. We went back to the hostel where Sisseľs father was staying and be cooked breakfast. We did not want to discuss the lost traps, we pretended to ourselves and to each other that we would find them when we went out at the next low tide. But we knew they were lost, swept up or downstream by the powerful tides, and I knew I could never make another eel trap in my life. I knew also that my partner was taking Adrian with him on a short holiday, they were leaving that afternoon. They were going to visit military airfields, and hoped to end up at the Imperial War Museum. We ate eggs, bacon and mushrooms and drank coffee. Sisseľs father told me of an idea he had, a simple but lucrative idea. Shrimps cost very little on the quayside here and they were very expensive in Brussels. We could drive two vanloads across there each week, he was optimistic in his relaxed, friendly way and for a moment I was sure his scheme would work. I drank the last of my coffee. Well,! said, I suppose that needs some thinking about. I picked up the bucket with the eel in, Sissel and I could eat that one. My partner told me as we shook hands that the surest way of kQling an eel was to cover it with salt. I wished him a 96 First love, bst rites good holiday and we parted, still maintaining the silent pretence that one of us would be towing out at the next low tide to search for the traps. After a week at the factory I did not expect Sissel to be awake when I got home, but she was sitting up in bed, pale and clasping her knees. She was staring into one corner of the room. It's in here, she said. It's behind those books on the floor. I sat down on the bed and took off my wet shoes and socks. The mouse? You mean you heard the mouse? Sissel spoke quietly. It's a rat. I saw it run across the room, and it's a rat. I went over to the books and kicked them, and instantly it was out, I heard its claws on the floorboards and then I saw it run along the wall, the size of a small dog it seemed to me then, a rat, a squat, powerful grey rat dragging its belly along the floor. It ran the whole length of the wall and crept behind a chest of drawers. We've got to get it out of here, Sissel wailed, in a voice which was strange to me. I nodded, but I could not move for the moment, or speak, it was so big, the rat, and it had been with us al] summer, scrabbling at the wall in the deep, clear silences after our fucking, and in our sleep, it was our familiar. I was terrified, more afraid than Sissel, I was certain the rat knew us as well as we knew it, it was aware of us in the room now just as we were aware of it behind the chest of drawers. Sissel was about to speak again when we heard a noise on the stairs, a familiar stamping, machine-gunning noise. I was relieved to hear it. Adrian came in the way he usually did, he kicked the door and leaped in, crouching low, a machine-gun ready at his hip. He sprayed us with raw noises from the back of his throat, we crossed our lips with our fingers and tried to hush him. You're dead, both of you, he said, and got ready for a cartwheel across the room. Sissel shushed him again, she tried to wave him towards the bed. Why sshh? What's wrong with you? We pointed to the chest of drawers. It's a rat, we told him. He was down on bis knees at once, peering. A rat? he gasped. Fantastic, it's a big one, look at it. Fantastic. What are you going to do? Let's catch it. I crossed the room quickly and picked up a poker from the fireplace, I could lose my fear in Adrian's excitement, pretend it was just a fat rat in our room, an adventure to catch it. From the bed Sissel wailed again. What are you going to do with that? For a moment I felt my grip loosen on the poker, it was not just a rat, it was not an adventure, we both knew that. Meanwhile Adrian danced his dance. First love, last rite« 97 Yes, that, use that. Adrian helped me carry the books across the room, we built a waD right round the chest of drawers with only one gap in the middle where the rat could get through. Sissel went on asking, What are you doing? What arc you going to do with that? but she did not dare leave the bed. We had finished the wall and I was giving Adrian a coathanger to drive the rat out with when Sissel jumped across the room and tried to snatch the poker from my hand. Give me that, she cried, and hung on to my lifted arm. At that moment the rat ran out through the gap in the books, it ran straight at us and I thought I saw its teeth bared and ready. We scattered, Adrian jumped on the table, Sissel and I were back on the bed. Now we all had time to see the rat as it paused in the centre of the room and then ran forward again, we had tine to see how powerful and fat and fast it was, how its whole body quivered, how its tail slid behind it lite an attendant parasite. It knows us, I thought, it wants us. I could not bring myself to look at Sissel. As I stood up on the bed, raised the poker and aimed it, she screamed. I threw it as hard as I could, it struck the floor point first several inches from the rat's narrow head. It turned instantly and ran back between the gap in the books. We heard the scratch of its claws on the floor as it settled itself behind the chest of drawers to wait. I unwound the wire coat-hanger, straightened it and doubled it over and gave it to Adrian. He was quieter now, slightly more fearful His sister sat on the bed with her knees drawn up again. I stood several feet from the gap in the books with the poker held tight is both hands. I glanced down and saw my pale bare feet and saw a ghost rat's teeth bared and tearing nafl from flesh. I called out, Wait, I want to get my shoes. But it was too late, Adrian was jabbing the wire behind the chest of drawers and now I dared not move. I crouched a little lower over the poker, like a batsman. Adrian climbed on to the chest and thrust the wire right down into the corner. He was in the middle of shouting something to me, I did not hear what it was. The frenzied rat was running through the gap, it was running at my feet to take its revenge. Like the ghost rat its teeth were bared. With both hands I swung the poker down, caught it clean and whole smack under its belly, and it lifted dear off the ground, sailed across the room, borne up by Sissel's long scream through her band in her mouth, it dashed against the wall and I thought in an instant, It must have broken its back. It dropped to the ground, legs in the 98 First love, bat rites air, split from end to end like a ripe fruit. Sisscl did not take her hand from her mouth, Adrian did not move from the chest, I did not shift my weight from where I had struck, and no one breathed out. A faint smell crept across the room, musty and intimate, like the smell of Sissel's monthly blood. Then Adrian farted and giggled from his held-back fear, his human smell mingled with the wide-open rat smell. I stood over the rat and prodded it gendy with the poker. It rolled on its side, and from the mighty gash which ran its belly's length there obtruded and slid partially free from the lower abdomen a translucent purple bag, and inside five pale crouching shapes, their knees drawn up around their chins. As the bag touched the floor I saw a movement, the leg of one unborn rat quivered as if in hope, but the mother was hopelessly dead and there was no more for it. Sissel knelt by the rat, Adrian and I stood behind her like guards, it was as if she had some special right, kneeling there with her long red skirt spilling round her. She parted the gash in the mother rat with her forefinger and thumb, pushed the bag back inside and closed the blood-spiked fur over it. She remained kneeling a little while and we still stood behind her. Then she cleared some dishes from the sink to wash her hands. We all wanted to get outside now, so Sissel wrapped the rat in newspaper and we carried it downstairs. Sissel lifted the lid of the dustbin and 1 placed it carefully inside. Then I remembered something, I told the other two to wait for me and I ran back up the stairs. It was the eel I came back for, it lay quite still in its few inches of water and for a moment I thought that it too was dead till I saw it stir when I picked up the bucket. The wind had dropped now and the cloud was breaking up, we walked to the quay in alternative light and shade. The tide was coming in fast. We walked down the stone steps to the water's edge and there I tipped the eel back in the river and we watched him flick out of sight, a flash of white underside in the brown water. Adrian said goodbye to us, and I thought he was going to hug his sister. He hesitated and then ran off, calling out something over his shoulder. We shouted after him to have a good holiday. On the way back Sissel and I stopped to look at the factories on the other side of the river. She told me she was going to give up her job there. We lifted the mattress on to the table and lay down in front of the open window, face to face, the way we did at the beginning of summer. We had a light breeze blowing in, a distant smoky smell First lore, last rites 99 of autumn, and I felt calm, very clear. Sissel said, This afternoon let's clean the room up and then go for a long walk, a walk along the river dyke. I pressed the flat of my palm against her warm belly and said, Yes. nil '' pallor of her upturned throat he thought he sal f m &C bright morning in his childhood a field of dazzlhto f^111 one which he, a small boy of eight, had not Awd^™ saaw prints. ^r with foot» 93 Pornography O'Byrne walked through Soho market to his brother's shop in Brewer Street A handful of customers leafing through the magazines and Harold watching them through pebble-thick lenses from his raised platform in the comer. Harold was barely five foot and wore built-up shoes. Before becoming his employee O'Byrne used to call him little Runt At Harold's elbow a miniature radio rasped details of race meetings for the afternoon. 'So,' said Harold with thin contempt, the prodigal brother ...' His magnified eyes fluttered at every consonant He looked past O'Byrne's shoulder. 'All the magazines are for sale, gentlemen.' Hie readers stirred uneasily like troubled dreamers. One replaced a magazine and walked quickly from the shop. 'Where d'you get to?* Harold said in a quieter voice. He stepped from the dais, put on his coat and glared up at O'Byrne, waiting for an answer. little Runt. O'Byrne was ten years younger than his brother, detested him and his success but now, strangely, wanted his approbation. 'I had an appoint» ment, didn't I,' he said quietly. 'I got the clap.' Harold was pleased. He reached up and punched O'Byrne's shoulder playfully. 'Serves you,' he said and cackled theatrically. Another customer edged out of the shop. From the doorway Harold called, TU be back at five.' O'Byrne smiled as his brother left He hooked his thumbs into his jeans and sauntered towards the tight knot of customers. 'Can I help you gentlemen, the magazines are all for sale.' They scattered before him like frightened fowl, and suddenly he was alone in the shop. A plump woman of fifty or more stood in front of a plastic shower curtain, ňäkeďbut for panties and gasmask. Her hands ii hung limply at her sides and in one of them a cigarette smouldered. Wife of the Month. Since gasmasks and a thick rubber sheet on the bed, wrote JN of Andover, we've never looked back. O'Byme played with the radio for a while then switched it off. Rhythmically he turned the pages of the magazine, and stopped to read the letters. An uncircumcised male virgin, without hygiene, forty-two next May, dared not peel back his foreskin now for fear of what he might see. I get these nightmares of worms, O'Byme laughed and crossed his legs. He replaced the magazine, returned to the radio, switched it on and off rapidly and caught the unintelligible middle of a word. He walked about the shop straightening the magazines in the racks. He stood by the door and stared at the wet street intersected by the coloured strips of the plastic walk-thro. He whistled over and over a tune whose end immediately suggested its beginning. Then he returned to Harold's raised platform and made two telephone calls, both to the hospital, the first to Lucy. But sister Drew was busy in the ward and could not come to the phone. O'Byme left a message that he would not be able to see her that evening after all and would phone again tomorrow. He dialled the hospital switchboard and this time asked for trainee Nurse Shepherd in the children's ward, ffi,' O'Byme said when Pauline picked up the phone. 'Iťs me.' And he stretched and leaned against the wall. Pauline was a silent girl who once wept in a film about the effects of pesticides on butterflies, who wanted to redeem O'Byme with her love. Now she laughed, I've been phoning you afl morning,' she said. TKdn't your brother teB you?* 'Listen,' said O'Byme, 'I'll be at your place about eight,' and replaced the receiver. Harold did not return tul after six, and O'Byme was almost asleep, his head pillowed on his forearm. There were no customers. O'Byrne's only sale was American Bitch. Those American mags,' said Harold as he emptied the till of £15 and a handful of stiver, 'are good.' Harold's new leather jacket. O'Byme 1* fingered it appreciatively. 'Seventy-eight quid,' said Harold and braced himself in front of the fish-eye mirror. His glasses flashed. 'Iťs all right,' said O'Byme. Tucking right it is,' said Harold, and began to close up shop. *Never take much on Wednesdays,* he said wistfully as he reached up and switched on the burglar alarm. 'Wednesday's a cunt of a day.* Now O'Byme was in front of the mirror, «-ramming a small trail of acne that led from the comer of his mouth. 'You're not fucking kidding,' he agreed. Harold's house lay at the foot of the Post Office Tower and O'Byme rented a room from him. They walked along together without speaking. From time to time Harold glanced sideways into a dark shop window to catch the reflection of himself and his new leather jacket Little Runt. O'Byme said, 'Cold, moitr* and Harold said nothing. Minutes later, when they were passing a pub, Harold steered O'Byme into the dank, deserted pubfic saying, "Since you got the clap FU buy you a drink.' The publican heard the remark and regarded O'Byme with interest. They drank three scotches apiece, and as O'Byme was paving for the fourth round Harold said, 'Oh yeah, one of those two nurses you've been knocking around with phoned.' O'Byme nodded and wiped his lips. After a pause Harold said, 'You're well in there ...' O'Byme nodded again. 'Yep.' Harold's jacket shone. When he reached f or Ins drink it creaked. O'Byme was not going to tell him anythiner. He banged his hands together. "Yep,* he said once more, and stared over his brother's head at the empty bar. Harold tried again. 'She wanted to know where you'd been.. ."I bet she did,' O'Byme muttered, and then smiled. Pauline, short and untalkative, her face bloodkssly pale, intersected by a heavy black fringe, her eyes large, green and watchful, her flat small, damp and shared with a secretary who was never there. O'Byme arrived after ten, a little drunk and in need of a bath to purge the faint purulent scent that lately had hung about his fingers. She sat on a small wooden stool to watch 13 him luxuriate. Once she leaned forwards and touched his body where it broke the surface. O'Byrne's eyes were dosed, his hands floating at his side, the only sound the diminishing hiss of the cistern. Pauline rose quietly to bring a clean white towel from her bedroom, and O'Byme did not hear her leave or return. She sat down again and ruffled, as far as it was possible, O'Byrne's damp, matted hair. The food is ruined,' she said without accusation. Beads of perspiration collected in the comers of O'Byrne's eyes and rolled down the line of his nose Bke tears. Pauline rested her hand on O'Byrne's knee where it jutted through the grey water. Steam turned to water on the cold walls, senseless minutes passed. "Never mind, love,' said O'Byme, and stood up. Pauline went out to buy beer and pizzas, and O'Byme lay down in her tiny bedroom to wait. Ten minutes passed. He dressed after cursory examination of his clean but swelling meatus, and wandered listlessly about the sitting room. Nothing interested him in Pauline's small collection of books. There were no magazines. He entered the kitchen in search of a drink. There was nothing but an overcooked meat pie. He picked round the burnt bits and as he ate turned the pages of a picture calendar. When he finished he remembered again he was waiting for Pauline. He looked at his watch. She had been gone now almost half an hour. He stood up quickly, tipping the kitchen chair behind him to the floor. He paused in the sitting room and then walked decisively out of the flat and slammed the front door on Ins way. He hurried down the stairs, anxious not to meet her now he had decided to get out. But she was there. Halfway up the second flight, a little out of breath, her arms full of bottles and tinfoil parcels. 'Where d'you get to?* said O'Byme. Pauline stopped several steps down from him, her face tilted up awkwardly over her goods, the white of her eyes and the tinfoil vivid in the dark. The usual place was closed. I had to walk miles ... sorry.' They stood. O'Byme was not hungry. He wanted to go. He hitched his thumbs into the waist of his jeans and cocked his head towards the invisible »4 cdfing, then he looked down at Pauline who waited. TVeD,' he said at last, *I was thmlting of going.' Pauline came up, and as she pushed past whispered, 'Sflly.' O'Byme turned and followed her, obscurely cheated. He leaned in the doorway, she righted the chair. With a movement of his head O'Byme indicated that he wanted none of die food Pauline was setting out on plates. She poured him a beer and knelt to gather a few black pastry droppings from the floor. They sat in the sitting room. O'Byme drank, Pauline ate slowly, neither spoke. O'Byme finished all the beer and placed his hand on Pauline's knee. She did not turn. He said cheerily, *Whaťs wrong with you?* and she said, 'Nothing.* Ahve with irritation O'Byme moved closer and placed his arm protectively across her shoulders. Tell you what,' he half whispered. *Leťs go to bed.' Suddenly Pauline rose and went into the bedroom. O'Byme sat with his hands clasped behind his head. He listened to Pauline undress, and he heard the creak of the bed. He got to his feet and, still without desire, entered the bedroom. Pauline lay on her back and O'Byme, having undressed quickly, lay beside her. She did not acknowledge him in her usual way, she did not move. O'Byme raised his arm to stroke her shoulder, but instead let his hand fall back heavily against the sheet They both lay on their backs in mounting silence, until O'Byme decided to give her one last chance and with naked grunts hauled himself on to his elbow and arranged hfa face over hers. Her eyes, thick with tears, stared past him. 'What's the matter?* he said in «signatory sing-song. The eyes budged-a-fraction and fixed on his own. 'Yon,' she said simply. O'Byme returned to his side of the bed, and after a moment said threateningly, 'I see.' Then he was up, and on top of her, and then past her and on the far side of the room. 'All right then ...' he said. He wrenched his laces into a knot, and searched for his shirt Pauline's back was to him. But as he crossed the sitting room her rising, accelerating wail of denial made him stop and torn. All white, in a cotton nightdress, she 13 "rľT^WTM was there in the bedroom doorway and in the air, simultaneously at every point of arc in the intervening space, like the trick photographer's diver, she was on the far side of the room and she was at his lapels, knuckles in her mouth and shaking her head. O'Byme smiled, and put his arms around her shoulders. Forgiveness swept through him. Clinging to each outer they returned to the bedroom. O'Byme undressed and they lay down again, O'Byme on bis back, Pauline with her head pillowed on his shoulder. O'Byme said, 'I never know what's going on in your mind,* and deeply comforted by this thought, he fell asleep. Half an hour later he woke. Pauline, exhausted by a week of twelve-hour shifts, slept deeply on his arm. He shook her gently. 'Hey,' he said. He shook her firmly, and as the rhythm of her breathing broke and she began to stir, he said in a laconic parody of some unremembered film, 'Hey, there's something we ain't done yet...' Harold was excited. When O'Byme walked into the shop towards noon the following day Harold took hold of his arms and waved in the air a sheet of paper. He was almost shouting. *Pve worked it all out I know what I want to do with the shop.* *Oh yeah,' said O'Byme dully, and put his fingers in his eyes and scratched till the intolerable itch there became a bearable pais. Harold rubbed his sn*»U rank harwfa together and explained rapidly. 'I'm going All American. I spoke to their rep on the phone this morning and he'll be here in half an hour. Fm getting rid of all the quid a time piss-in-her-cunt letters, ľm gonna carry the whole of the House of Florence range at £4.50 a time.' O'Byme walked across the shop to where Harold's jacket was spread across a chair. He tried it on. It was, of course, too small. 'And I'm going to call it Transatlantic Books,' Harold was saying. O'Byme tossed the jacket on to the chair. It slid to the floor and deflated there like some reptilian air sac. Harold picked it up, and did not cease talking. 'If I carry 16 Florence exclusive I get a special discount and,' he giggled, *they pay for the fucking neon sign.' O'Byme sat down and interrupted his brother. *How many of those soddin* inflatable women did you unload? There's still twenty-five of the fuckers in the cellar.' But Harold was pouring out Scotch into two glasses. 'Hell be here in half an hour,' he repeated, and offered one glass to O'Byme. 'Big deal,* said O'Byme, and sniped. 'I want you to take the van over to Norbury and collect the order this afternoon. I want to get into this straight away.* OHyrne sat moodily with his drink while his brother whistled and was busy about the shop. A man came in and bought a magazine. *See,' said O'Byme sourly while the customer was still lingering over the tentacled condoms, *he bought English, didn't her* The man turned guiltily and left. Harold came and crouched by O'Byme's chair and spoke as one who explains copulation to an infant. 'And what do I make? Forty per cent of 75p. Thirty p. Thirty fucking p. On House of Florence I'll make fifty per cent of £4.50. And that,' he rested his hand briefly on OTiyrne's knee, *is what I call business.' O'Byme wriggled his empty glass in front of Harold's face, and waited patiently for his brother to fiD it... little Runt. The House of Florence warehouse was a disused church in a narrow terraced street on the Brixton side of Norbury. ©"Byrne entered by the main porch. A erode plasterboard office and waiting room had been set up in the west end. The font was a large asn-tray in the waiting room. An elderly woman with a blue rinse sat alone in the office typing. When O'Byme tapped on the sliding window she ignored him, then she rose and sHd aside the glass panel She took the order form he pushed towards her, glancing at him with unconcealed distaste. She spoke primly. *You better wait there.' O'Byme tap-danced abstractedly about the font, and combed his hair, and whistled the tune that went in a circle. Suddenly a shrivelled man with a brown coat and clipboard was at his side. Transatlantic *7 Books?1 he said. O'Byme shrugged and followed him. They moved together slowly down long aisles of bolted steel shelves, the old man pushing a large trolley and O'Byme walking a little in front with his hands clasped behind his back. Every few yards the warehouseman stopped, and with bad-tempered gasps lifted a thick pile of magazines from the shelves. The load on the trolley grew. The old man's breath echoed hoarsely around the church. At the end of the first aisle he sat down on the trolley, between his neat piles, and coughed and hawked for a minute or so into a paper handkerchief. Then, carefully folding the tissue and its ponderous green contents back into his pocket, he said to O'Byme, Here, you're young. You push this thing.9 And O'Byrne said, 'Push the fucker yourself. Iťs your job,1 and offered the man a cigarette and lit it for him. O'Byme nodded at the shelves. *You get some reading done here.' The old man exhaled irritably. 'It's all rubbish. It ought to be banned.' They moved on. At the end, as he was signing the invoice, O'Byrne said, *Who you got lined up for tonight? Madam in the office there?' The warehouseman was pleased. HSs cackles rang out like bells, then tailed into another coughing fit. He leaned feebly against the wall, and when he had recovered sufficiently he raised his head and meaningfully winked his watery eye. But O'Byrne had turned and was wheeling die magazines out to the van. Lucy was ten years older than Pauline, and a little plump. But her flat was large and comfortable. She was a sister and Pauline no more than a trainee nurse. They knew nothing of each other. At the underground station O'Byrne bought flowers for Lucy, and when she opened the door to him he presented them with a mock bow and the clicking of heels. 'A peace offering?' she said contemptuously and took the daffodils away. She had led him into the bedroom. They sat down side by side on the bed. O'Byrne ran his hand up her leg in a perfunctory kind of way. She pushed away bis arm and said, 'Come on then. Where have you been the past three days?* O'Byrne could barely remember. 18 Two nights with Pauline, one night in the pub with friends of his brother. He stretched back luxuriously on the pink candlewick. 'You know ... working late for Harold. Changing the shop around. That kind of thing.' Those dirty books,' said Lucy with a little high-pitched laugh. O'Byrne stood up and kicked off his shoes. 'Don't start that,' he said, glad to be off the defensive. Lucy leaned forwards and gathered up his shoes. 'You're going to ruin the backs of these,' she said busily, 'kicking them off like that.' They both undressed. Lucy hung her clothes neatly in the wardrobe. When O'Byrne stood almost naked before her she wrinkled her nose in disgust. 'Is that you smelling?" O'Byrne was hurt. 'I'll have a bath,' he offered curtly. Lucy stirred the bathwater with her hand, and spoke loudly over the thunder of the taps. 'You should have brought me some clothes to wash.' She hooked her fingers into the elastic of his pants. "Give me these now and they'll be dry by the morning.' O'Byrne laced his fingers into hers in a decoy of affection. 'No, no,* he shouted rapidly. They were clean on this morning, they were.' Playfully Lucy tried to get them off. They wrestled across the bathroom floor, Lucy shrieking with laughter, O'Byrne excited but determined. Finally Lucy put on her dressing gown and went away. O'Byrne heard her in the kitchen. He sat in the bath and washed away the bright green stains. When Lucy returned his pants were drying on the radiator. 'Women's Lib, innit?5 said O'Byrne from the bath. Lucy said, 'I'm getting in too,' and took off her dressing gown. O'Byme made room for her. *Please yourself,' he said with a smile as she settled herself in flic grey water. O'Byme lay on his back on the clean white sheets, and Lucy eased herself on to his belly like a vast nesting bird. She would have it no other way, from the beginning she had said, 'I'm in charge.' O'Byme had replied, 'We'll see about that.' He was 19 horrified, sickened, that he could enjoy being overwhelmed, like one of those cripples in his brother's magazines. Lucy had spoken briskly, the kind of voice she used for difficult patients. 'If you don't Eke it then don't come back.' Imperceptibly O'Byme was initiated into Lucy's wants. It was not simply that she wished to squat on him. She did not want him to move. 'If you move again,' she warned him once, 'you've had it' From mere habit O'Byrne thrust upwards and deeper, and quick as the tongue of a snake she lashed his face several times with her open palm. On the instant she came, and afterwards lay across the bed, half sobbing, half laughing. O'Byrne one side of his face swollen and pink, departed suUdng. 'You're a bloody pervert,' he had shouted from the door. Next day he was back, and Lucy agreed not to hit him again. Instead she abused him. 'You pathetic helpless little shit,' she would scream at the peak of her excitement. And she seemed to intuit CByrne's guilty thrill of pleasure, and wish to push it further. One time she had suddenly lifted herself clear of him and, with a far-away smile, urinated on his head and chest O'Byrne had struggled to get clear, but Lucy held him down and seemed deeply satisfied by his unsought orgasm. This time O'Byrne left the flat enraged. Lucy's strong, chemical smell was with him for days, and it was during this time that he met Pauline. But within the week he was back at Lucy's to collect, so he insisted, his razor, and Lucy was persuading him to try on her underwear. O'Byrne resisted with horror and excitement The trouble with you,' said Lucy, Is that you're scared of what you like.' Now Lucy gripped his throat in one hand. 'You dare move,' she hissed, and closed her eyes. O'Byrne lay still. Above him Lucy swayed like a giant tree. Her lips were forming a word, but there was no sound. Many minutes later she opened her eyes and stared down, frowning a little as though struggling to place him. And aU the while she eased backwards and forwards. Finally she spoke, more to herself than to him. 'Worm ,..' O'Byrne moaned. Lucy's legs and thighs tightened and 20 trembled. 'Worm ... worm ... you little worm. I'm going to tread on you ... dirty Httle worm.' Once more her hand was closed about his throat. His eyes were sunk deep, and his word travelled a long way before it left his Ups. Tfes,' he whispered. The following day O'Byme attended the clinic. The doctor and his male assistant were matter-of-fact, unimpressed. The assistant filled out a form and wanted details of O'Byme's recent sexual history. O'Byrne invented a whore at Ipswich bus station. For many days after that he kept to himself. Attending the cfinic mornings and evenings, for injections, he was sapped of desire. When Pauline or Lucy phoned, Harold told them he did not know where O'Byrne was. 'Probably taken off for somewhere,' he said, winking across the shop at his brother. Both women phoned each day for three or four days, and then suddenly there were no calls from either. O'Byrne paid no attention. The shop was taking good money now. In the evenings he drank with his brother and his brother's friends. He f elt himself to be both busy and tlL Ten days passed. With the extra cash Harold was giving him, he bought a leather jacket, Hke Harold's, but somewhat better, sharper, lined with red imitation silk. It both shone and creaked. He spent many minutes in front of the fish-eye mirror, standing sideways on, admiring the manner in which his shoulders and biceps pulled the leather to a tight sheen. He wore his jacket between the shop and the clinic and sensed the glances of women in the street He thought of Pauline and Lucy. He passed a day considering which to phone first. He chose Pauline, and phoned her from the shop. Trainee Nurse Shepherd was not available, O'Byme was told after many minutes of waiting. She was sitting an examination. O'Byme had his call transferred to the other side of the hospital. 'Hi,' he said when Lucy picked up the phone. *Ifs me.' Lucy was delighted. 'When did you get back? Where have you been? When are you coming round?" He sat down. 'How about tonight?1 he said. Lucy whispered in sex-kitten French, 31 'I can 'ardly wait...' O'Byme laughed and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his forehead and heard other distant voices on the line. He heard Lucy giving instructions. Then she spoke rapidly to him. Tve got to go. They've just brought a case in. About eight tonight then ...' and she was gone. O'Byme prepared his story, but Lucy did not ask him where he had been. She was too happy. She laughed when she opened the door to him, she hugged hhn and laughed again. She looked different. O'Byme could not remember her so beautiful. Her hair was shorter and a deeper brown, her nails were pale orange, she wore a short black dress with orange dots. There were candles and wine glasses on the dining table, music on the record player. She stood back, her eyes bright, almost wild, and admired his leather jacket. She ran her hands up the red lining. She pressed herself against it. 'Very smooth,' she said. 'Reduced to sixty quid,' O'Byme said proudly, and tried to kiss her. But she laughed again and pushed him into a chair. 'You wait there and 111 get something to drink.' O'Byme lay back. From die record player a man sang of love in a restaurant with clean white tablecloths. Lucy brought an icy bottle of white wine. She sat on the arm of his chair and they drank and talked. Lucy told him recent stories of the ward, of nurses who fell in and out of love, patients who recovered or died. As she spoke she undid the top buttons of his shirt and pushed her hand down to his belly. And when O'Byme turned in his chair and reached up for her she pushed him away, leaned down and kissed him on the nose. 'Now now,' she said primly. O'Byme exerted himself. He recounted anecdotes he had heard in the pub. Lucy laughed crazily at the end of each, and as he was beginning the third she let her hand drop lightly between his legs and rest there. O'Byme closed his eyes. The hand was gone and Lucy was nudging him. 'Go on,' she said. 'It was getting interesting.' He caught her wrist and wanted to pull her on to his lap. With a little sigh she slipped away and returned with a second bottle. 'We should have wine more often,' she said, 'if it makes you tell such funny stories.* S3 Encouraged, O'Byme told his story, something about a car and what a garage mechanic said to a vicar. Once again Lucy was fishing round Ins fly and laughing, laughing. It was a funnier story than he thought. The floor rose and fell beneath his feet. And Lucy so beautiful, scented, warm ... her eyes glowed. He was paralysed by her teasing. He loved her, and she laughed and robbed him of his will. Now he saw, he had come to live with her, and each night she teased him to the edge of madness. He pressed his face into her breasts. 'I love you,' he mumbled, and again Lucy was laughing, shaking, wiping the tears from her eyes. Do you ... do you...' she kept trying to say. She emptied the bottle into his glass. 'Here's a toast...' Tfeah,' said O'Byme, To us.' Lucy was holding down her laughter. 'No, no,' she squealed. To you.' 'All right,' he said, and downed his wine in one. Then Lucy was standing in front of him pulling Ids arm. 'Cmon,* she said. 'Cmon.' O'Byrae struggled out of the chair. 'What about dinner then?' he said. •You're the dinner,' she said, and they giggled as they tottered towards the bedroom. As they undressed Lucy said, 'I've got a special little surprise for you so... noiuss.' O'Byme sat on the edge of Lucy's large bed and shivered. 'I'm ready for anything,' he said. 'Good ... good,' and for the first time she kissed him deeply, and pushed himgently backwards on to the bed. She climbed forward and sat astride his chest. O'Byme closed his eyes. Months ago he would have resisted furiously. Lucy lifted his left hand to her mouth and kissed each finger. 'Hmmm ... the first course.' O'Byme laughed. The bed and the room undulated softly about him. Lucy was pushing his hand towards the top corner of the bed. O'Byme heard a distant jingle, like bells. Lucy knelt by his shoulder, holding down his wrist, buckling it to a leather strap. She had always said she would tie him up one day and fuck him. She bent low over his face and they kissed again. She was licking his eyes and whispering, "You're not going anywhere.' O'Byrae gasped for air. He could not move his face to smile. Now she was tugging at his right arm, pulling as it, stretching it to the far corner of the bed. With a dread thrill of compliance O'Byrne felt his arm die. Now that was secure and Lucy was running her hands along the inside of his thigh, and on down to his feet... he lay stretched almost to breaking, splitting, fixed to each comer,spread out against the white sheet Lucy knelt at the apex of his legs. She stared down at him with a faint, objective smile, and fingered herself delicately. O'Byrne lay waiting for her to settle on him like a vast white nesting bird. She was tracing with the top of one finger the curve of his excitement, and then with the thumb and forefinger making a tight ring about its base. A sigh fled between bis teeth. Lucy leaned forwards. Her eyes were wild. She whispered, 'We're going to get you, me and Pauline are...' Pauline. For an instant, syllables hollow of meaning. 'What?* said O'Byrne, and as he spoke the word he remembered, and understood a threat TJntie me,' he said quickly. But Lucy's finger curled under her crotch and her eyes half closed. Her breathing was slow and deep. 'Untie me,' he shouted, and struggled hopelessly with his straps. Lucy's breath came now in light little gasps. As he struggled, so they accelerated. She was saying something ... moaning something. What was she saying? He could not hear. 'Lucy,' he said, *please untie me.' Suddenly she was silent, her eyes wide open and clear. She climbed off the bed. Tour friend Pauline will be here, soon,' she said, and began to get dressed. She was different, her movements brisk and efficient, she no longer looked at him. O'Byrne tried to sound casual. His voice was a little high. 'What's going on?* Lucy stood at the foot of the bed buttoning her dress. Her lip curled. 'You're a bastard,* she said. The doorbell rang and she smiled. 'Now that's good timing, isn't it?* *Yes, he went down very quietly,' Lucy was saying as she showed Pauline into the bedroom. Pauline said nothing. She avoided looking at either O'Byrne or Lucy. And O'Byme's eyes were fixed on the object she carried in her arms. It was large and silver, like an outsized electric toaster. 'It can plug in just here,' said Lucy. Pauline set it down on the bedside table. Lucy sat 34 down at her dressing table and began to comb her hair. Til get some water f or it in a minute,' she said. Pauline went and stood by the window. There was silence. Then O'Byrne said hoarsely. 'Whaťs that thing?" Lucy turned in her seat 'Iťs a sterilizer,' she said breezily. 'Sterilizer?' Tfou know, for sterilizing surgical instruments,' The next question O'Byrne did not dare to ask. He felt sick and dizzy. Lucy left the room. Pauline continued to stare out the window into the dark. CByme felt the need to whisper. 'Hey, Pauline, what's going on?* She turned to face him, and said nothing. O'Byrne discovered that the strap round his right wrist was slackening a little, the leather was stretching. His hand was concealed by pillows. He worked it backwards and forwards, and spoke urgently. Tjodk, let's get out of here. Undo these things.' For a moment she hesitated, then she walked round the side of the bed and stared down at him. She shook her head. 'We're going to get you* The repetition terrified htm. He thrashed from side to side. 'Iťs not my idea of a fucking joke,' he shouted. Pauline turned away. 'I hate you,9 he heard her say. The right-hand strap gave a little more. 'I hate you. I hate you.' He pulled till he thought his arm would break. His hand was too large still for the noose around his wrist He gave up. Now Lucy was at the bedside pouring water into the sterilizer. This is a sick joke,' said O'Byrne. Lucy lifted a flat, black case on to the table. She snapped it open and began to take out long-handled scissors, scalpels and other bright, tapering, silver objects. She lowered them carefully into the water. O'Byrne started to work his right hand again. Lucy removed the black case and set on the table two white kidney bowls with blue rims. In one lay two hypodermic needles, one large, one small. In the other was cotton wool. O'Byme's voice shook. 'What is all this?* Lucy rested her cool hand on his forehead. She enunciated with precision. This is what they should have done for you at the clinic' The clinic .. .?* he echoed. He could see now that Pauline was leaning against the wall drinking from a bottle of Scotch. Tes,' said Lucy, reaching down to take his pube. 'Stop you spreading round your secret little diseases.' 35 'And telling fies,' said Paufine, her voice strained with indignation. O'Byrne laughed uncontrollably. Telling lies... teümg lies,' he spluttered. Lucy took the scotch from Pauline and raised it to her lips. O'Byrne recovered. His legs were shaking. 'You're both out of your minds.' Lucy tapped the sterilizer and said to Pauline, This will take a few minutes yet We'fl scrub down in the kitchen.' O'Byrne tried to raise his head. 'Where are you going?1 he called after them. 'Pauline ... Pauline.' But Pauline had nothing more to say. Lucy stopped in the bedroom doorway and smiled at him. 'Well leave you a pretty little stump to remember us by,' and she closed the door. On the bedside table the sterilizer began to hiss. Shortly after it gave out the low rumble of boiling water, and inside the instruments clinked together gently. In terror he pumped his hand. The leather was flaying the skin off his wrist. The noose was riding now round the base of his thumb. Timeless minutes passed. He whimpered and pulled and the edge of the leather cut deep into his hand. He was almost free. The door opened, and Lucy and Pauline carried in a small, low table. Through his fear O'Byrne felt excitement once more, horrified excitement. They arranged the table close to the bed. Lucy bent low over bis erection. 'Oh dear ... oh dear,' she murmured. With tongs Pauline lifted instruments from the boiling water and laid them cut in seat silver rows on the starched white tablecloth she had spread across the table. The leather noose supped forwards fractionally. Lucy sat on the edge of the bed and took the large hypodermic from the bowl. This will make you a little sleepy,' she promised. She held it upright and expelled a small jet of liquid. And as she reached for the cotton wool O'Byme's arm pulled clear. Lucy smiled. She set aside the hypodermic. She leaned forwards once more ... warm, scented... she was fixing him with wild red eyes... her fingers played over his tip ... she held him stín between her fingers, lie back, Michael, my sweet' She nodded briskly at Pauline. 'If you'll secure that strap, Nurse Shepherd, then I think we can begin.' 36 Reflections of a Kept Ape Eaters of asparagus know the scent it lends the urine. It has been described as reptilian, or as a repulsive inorganic stench, or again as a sharp, womanly odour ... exciting. Certainly it suggests sexual activity of some kind between exotic creatures, perhaps from a distant land, another planet This unworldly smell is a matter for poets and I challenge them to face then-responsibilities. All this ... a preamble that you may discover me as the curtain rises, standing, urinating, reflecting in a small overheated closet which adjoins the kitchen. The three walls which fill my vision are painted a bright and cloying red, decorated by Sally Klee when she cared for such things, a time of remote and singular optimism. The meal, which passed in total silence and from which I have just risen, consisted of a variety of tinned foods, compressed meat, potatoes, asparagus, served at room temperature. It was Sally Klee who opened the tins and set their contents on paper plates. Now I linger at my toilet washing my hands, climbing on to the sink to regard my face in the mirror, yawning. Do I deserve to be ignored? I find Sally Klee as I left her. She is in her dining room playing with used matches in a musty pool of light We were lovers once, living almost as man and wife, happier than most wives and men. Then, she wearying of my ways and I daily exacerbating her displeasure with my persistence, we now inhabit different rooms. Sally Klee does not look up as I enter the room, and I hover between her chair and mine, the plates and tins arranged before me. Perhaps I am a little too squat to be taken seriously, my arms are a little too long. With them I reach out and stroke gently Sally Klee's gleaming black hair. I f eel the 27