Case study, p.15
Case Study, page 15
‘The Everly Brothers?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t believe I’ve met them.’
He sneered and gestured towards the jukebox to indicate that they were responsible for the record that was playing. It sounded like a children’s song and I said so.
Martin leaned across and jabbed his thumb towards my chest. ‘She prefers jazz.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I prefer jazz.’
The boy opposite said, ‘Jazz is for queers.’
‘I like jazz,’ Martin said.
‘Case closed,’ said the boy. He took a swig from his bottle of cola, before placing it emphatically back on the formica table-top. Then he brazenly looked me up and down, as if I were a prize in a school tombolo.
I was touched that Martin had taken my side. Now that I saw him among his peers, he seemed quite grown-up. I took a ten bob note from my purse and asked him to buy me a packet of cigarettes from behind the counter.
He leapt to his feet, delighted to perform this service for me. ‘What do you smoke?’ he asked.
I scanned the array of packets behind the counter. Navy Cut did not seem very ladylike, Rothman’s too working class. I settled on Craven ‘A’. I had seen them advertised and I liked the picture of the little black cat on the packet. Martin returned with the cigarettes and I offered them around, playing the munificent Londoner. We all lit up and a cloud of smoke enveloped us. The boy who had asked me about the Everly Brothers told me that he liked jazz as well. I said that he and Martin should come up to London sometime and I would take them to a club.
‘You would?’ he said.
I told him that they would have to wait until they were old enough. He assured me that they were already old enough. They began to discuss when they might be able to take up my offer and I regretted my silly showing off.
Another record came on. ‘I like this one,’ said Martin. He pushed his chair back and asked if I would dance with him. The other boys sounded an ironic chorus of oohs. Martin shot them a look and as I felt sorry for him and wished to curtail the discussion of the excursion to London, I agreed. We stood facing each other in the space in front of the jukebox reserved for this activity. Another couple already had their arms draped around each other’s necks. Martin bent his arms upwards at the elbow and moved his hands slowly back and forth in front of his chest. He swayed his hips slightly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in approximate time to the beat. I mirrored his actions and we continued in this fashion for some time. The melody was repetitive but inoffensive. On the third verse, Martin took a step closer to me. He mouthed the words of the song, which appeared to mostly involve the endless repetition of the sentiment, ‘Yes, I’m the great pretender’, accompanied by much harmonic ooh-ing.
He placed his fingers lightly on my hips and continued his arrhythmic swaying. Other than backing away, I had little alternative but to place my hands on his elbows. He took this as encouragement and slid his hands further round my body. His fingertips rested on my back, just above the waistband of my skirt. Our chests were almost touching. It was quite indecent, but given my earlier boasting about jazz clubs and coloured men, I could hardly start acting the squeamish virgin. As the song reached its insipid climax, Martin drew our bodies together, accompanied by a cattle-like lowing from the boys at the table. Our hips now moved in unison, his chin resting on my left shoulder. Then I felt a firmness in his groin pressing against the front of my skirt. I pushed him away, though not violently. The song ended. Martin looked at me. Despite the fact that our dancing had hardly been energetic, he was breathing in short, shallow gasps. I resumed my seat. Martin visited the WC. When he returned I told him I was ready to leave. He nodded.
As we walked home, he attempted to make conversation, as if nothing irregular had occurred. I answered as best I could, as this was preferable to confronting what had taken place in the café, and somehow our dialogue acquired more spontaneity than it had ever had before. When we reached Recreation Road, the house was already in darkness. We stood listening to the silence in the cramped hallway. The knowledge that we had, albeit unwittingly on my part, engaged in something illicit made accomplices of us. Having established that his parents were in bed, Martin cast his eyes towards the ‘front room’, as they called it. I followed him in. It was a horrid little room, in which Aunt Kate spent her evenings knitting and watching television, while her husband dozed over his newspaper, or muttered the answers to quiz shows under his breath. The curtains were open, but Martin did not bother to draw them. Instead, he closed the door and turned on the lamp on the nest of tables next to the settee. He then knelt on the floor in front of the walnut-veneered cabinet under the television. I sat down on the settee. He glanced over his shoulder at me with a conspiratorial look. He threw open the little doors of the cabinet and rubbed his hands together: this was where The Clacton Lot kept their booze.
‘What’ll it be?’ he asked.
I shrugged.
He took out a dark brown bottle and, with an exaggerated show of not making any noise, two glasses. He poured out the drinks and handed one to me, before carelessly tossing his mother’s knitting on the floor and sitting next to me. We clinked glasses and drank. It was sherry, the sickly taste of Christmas. Martin knocked his back and poured himself another. I resisted the urge to ask whether his parents would notice. That was his look-out. I had no desire to be there, but in the atmosphere of low lights and hushed voices it was hard not to feel a sense of intimacy. I reminded myself that, as the elder, I was in command of the situation and could retire to my room whenever I wished. Martin topped up my glass.
‘Not bad stuff, is it?’
I took another sip. I had to admit that it engendered a relaxing effect. Perhaps, along with taking up smoking, I would set my sights on becoming a raging dipsomaniac. This seemed as worthy an ambition as any other. Martin suggested that I might be more comfortable if I took off my coat. He was, of course, correct, but as I did not know where such a wanton act might lead, I kept it on. He suggested putting on the gas fire, but I shook my head and said that that would not be necessary, as I would soon be going to bed. Martin nodded meaningfully, as if this constituted some kind of invitation. He drank more sherry.
‘I hope this evening wasn’t too much of a drag for you,’ he said.
I assured him that it been perfectly pleasant and thanked him for inviting me. He kept his eyes fixed ahead of him. I noticed for the first time that he had inherited my father’s Roman nose.
‘Your friends are nice,’ I said.
‘They’re idiots,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait to get out of here.’
I finished my sherry and told him I was tired.
‘I’m tired too,’ he said. Then he leaned across and kissed me. He started on my cheek and then moved to my lips, which I kept clamped shut. It was not wholly disagreeable, however, and I did not turn my face away. Taking this absence of rebuff as encouragement, he placed his hand on my knee and squeezed it. My own hands remained on my lap. He started to snort like a little horse. Then he removed his hand from my knee and pushed it inside my coat. At this point I gripped his wrist and told him that that was quite enough. I stood up. He looked so crestfallen I almost felt sorry for him.
‘Aren’t you a little young for this sort of thing?’ I said.
He protested that he had gone further with Cynthia.
I congratulated him but told him that he would not be going any further with me.
I performed my ablutions as normal and went to bed. I cannot be sure how much time passed or even if I had fallen asleep, but at a certain point, the bedroom door clicked open. Martin slipped into the room. In the dim light I could see that he was in his pyjamas. He took two or three paces towards the bed, then pulled back the blankets and got in beside me. He was in a state of what is termed ‘arousal’. He started to kiss my shoulder and then my neck. His left hand fumbled at the hem of my night-dress. I held it firmly in place. He mumbled a request for me ‘just to touch it’. I said I would do no such thing and told him that if he did not go back to his room, I would call his parents. Then his body went rigid as if he was having a seizure and I felt a sticky puddle form on my stomach. Once his breathing had subsided, he got out of bed and apologised. He begged me not to tell his parents. Of course, I had no intention of doing so, but I said I would have to think about it. Afterwards, I wondered whether it might, after all, have been so unpleasant to let him do what it was he wanted.
I became suddenly self-conscious and glanced towards Braithwaite. His hands were clasped across his paunch. As he did not appear to wish to interrupt, I continued.
The following day, I did not see Martin before I left, and I had the feeling that he was avoiding me. On the train back to London, I found a compartment with the window seat free. I sat down with my back to the engine. I like the sensation of being drawn away by an irresistible force, which one does not experience when facing in the direction of travel. A woman of spinsterish appearance occupied the middle seat of the three opposite. We exchanged a rudimentary greeting. Her choice of seat struck me as proprietorial. By choosing the central berth, she was establishing her jurisdiction over the compartment. Although the train had not yet moved off, she had arranged her knitting paraphernalia on either side of her. She was wearing a skirt that reached almost to her ankles and would not have been out of place in the Edwardian era. On the lapel of her jacket she wore a cameo brooch, and on her head a green felt hat with a feather in it. The skin of her hands and cheeks, however, was pink and had the elasticity of a younger woman. It was possible that, despite her septuagenarian garb, she was no more than forty. Whatever her age, she had the air of one who exists in a state of permanent annoyance. Life had let her down and to guard against future disappointment, all hope had been banished from her fiefdom. She was knitting a child’s jumper. As she wore no wedding ring, I imagined it must be for a niece or nephew. How her sister must dread her bi-annual visits and raise a secret hurrah when the front door finally closed behind her. I wondered if once she had spurned the advances of a young man and ached with regret ever since.
I closed my eyes and leant my head against the window, as if I intended to go to sleep. A few moments after the train pulled out, the door of the compartment was yanked open. The sound caused me to look up. A young man with rosy cheeks, well-oiled hair and a fawn raincoat stood in the doorway. He had a suitcase in his left hand and an unlit pipe in his right.
‘You don’t mind, do you, ladies?’ he said with exaggerated joviality. ‘It’s not a meeting of the suffragists, is it? Not that I’m against it, mind. All for it, in fact.’
The spinster looked at him without a trace of a smile. She was clearly not ‘all for it’. I smiled welcomingly, if for no other reason than to disassociate myself from my fellow passenger.
He slung his briefcase onto the rack above our heads and, clamping his pipe between his teeth, pulled off his raincoat with such urgency that one might have thought it was on fire. Beneath, he was wearing a tweed three-piece suit of a cut that even my father would have discarded before the war. He struck me as the sort of young chap—a junior in an accountancy firm, perhaps—who thinks that by dressing in this fogeyish way, he might curry favour with ‘Sir’ and hasten his advancement.
Given the seating arrangements, it would have been customary for him to take the rear-facing seat nearest the door. Whether on omnibuses, park benches or in cafés, we humans instinctively position ourselves as far from one another as possible, and any deviation from this practice is rightly viewed with suspicion. Despite this, the young man took the seat next to me. This not only had the effect of cramping me but necessitating our travelling companion to shift her knees to accommodate his legs. She glared at him, before pointedly lowering her eyes to the knitting on her lap. The young man turned to me and pulled a face like a comically chastened schoolboy. I rolled my eyes in sympathy, and thus we were in cahoots. He took this as an invitation to introduce himself. His name, if I remember rightly, was George Borthwick. He passed his pipe from his right hand to his left and we shook hands awkwardly. As it would have seemed rude not to, I told him my name.
‘A good solid name,’ he said, as if it were a walking boot.
I must have made a face, because he then became flustered. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest that you were solid, only that it’s a good solid name. Reliable, trustworthy, that sort of thing. I mean you yourself, you don’t seem at all solid. Quite the contrary, if I may say so.’
His idiotic monologue trailed off and I diverted my gaze to the window. The outskirts of Clacton gave way to wheatfields, or fields of something at any rate. George was not at all discouraged by my inattention. Was I from Clacton? he asked. He was from Clacton, but was working up in London these days. He had digs in Elephant and Castle, but he had come up for the weekend to see his dear ol’ muvva (this last phrase being pronounced in the most dreadful Cockney accent). He could see that I was a London girl, he said. I had that air. I was pleased to be told that I had an ‘air’, even if it meant little, coming from a provincial. George, it turned out, was not a junior accountant, but a clerk in an insurance firm. ‘It might not sound it,’ he told me earnestly, ‘but it’s actually damn interesting work.’
I told him that I was sure that it was, but if he didn’t mind I was rather tired.
‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Too much sea air and all that.’
‘Exactly,’ I replied with a smile. I then told him I was a little cold and could he be a dear and lend me his raincoat. He was only too happy to be of service. He fetched it from the rack and laid it over me like a father putting his daughter to bed.
I leant my head against the window and closed my eyes. George fidgeted beside me. He was filling his pipe. I heard the sound of a struck match and immediately the air was filled with an aroma of tobacco that made me feel as if my father had stepped into the compartment. I drifted for a time in a state between sleep and wakefulness. Contrary to what I had told George, it was warm in the carriage and the motion of the train was pleasant. Whether I dropped off, I cannot be sure, but I found myself recalling the previous night’s events. The song Martin and I danced to had inveigled itself into my head. I recalled Martin pulling me close to him. Had he plotted the whole thing in advance? The idea that he might have, appealed to me. Under the guise of sleepily shifting my position, I slipped my hand beneath the waistband of my skirt. I began to amuse myself with the tiniest movements of my middle finger. The sensation was quite exquisite. I clamped my thighs tightly together like a child preventing itself from watering. Whether it was the motion of the train that pulsed through my buttocks or the proximity of George—lunk that he was—and the familiar aroma of his tobacco, I cannot say, but my crisis, when it came, was quite violent. I felt my throat constricting and could not restrain myself from emitting a series of short breaths, which I had the presence of mind to disguise as a fit of coughing. George leapt into action, giving me a few manly slaps on the back, before dashing off down the corridor to fetch a glass of water from the guard. The spinster stared at me. My cheeks felt flushed and I was sure she knew exactly what I had been up to. I was relieved when George returned, and I took the proffered glass of water gratefully.
‘You must have had a bad dream,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said, glancing demurely at him. ‘I must have.’
I sipped the water. It would have seemed churlish after such a display of chivalry to refuse him a cup of tea when we pulled into London. I spent forty-five minutes with him in the cafeteria at Liverpool Street, listening to him explain the workings of the insurance business. He departed, poor fellow, thrilled to have obtained the telephone number of a girl with a Londony air. It shamed me that he would later discover that the number was as fictitious as the air.
Perhaps because I was prone on the settee, I had rather lost myself in the telling of this story. Dr Braithwaite had remained by the door throughout and had interjected no comments. I had almost forgotten he was there. In the ashtray on the table there were three cigarette ends, but I could remember neither lighting nor smoking them. This period of silence felt like a pause for breath after an exertion. I understood why people were willing to pay for the service of having someone do no more than listen to them.
Braithwaite looked at me for a minute or so. His expression was neutral. In my short acquaintance with him I had become familiar with the feeling that, even when no words were being spoken, a conversation was taking place; a conversation played out through the minute movements of hands and eyes. I swung my feet to the floor and sat upright. I did my best to still myself, but I was aware that he was reading me; that my twitches and tics were hieroglyphs revealing everything I wanted to hide.
In the event, it was he who spoke first. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how much of that was true?’
‘All of it,’ I said indignantly.
He repeated my words in a sceptical tone.
‘I couldn’t swear to every last detail,’ I admitted. ‘It was a long time ago.’
He stood up and walked across the room, spun the wooden chair around and planted himself on it, his legs splayed apart, his chin on the backrest. ‘So you made it up?’
‘Certainly not,’ I replied.
‘The thing is, petal, it doesn’t actually matter to me whether any of it actually happened. What matters is that this was the story you chose to tell.’
I started to protest, but he waved away my objections.
