Lovedrool, p.3
Lovedrool, page 3
Splash’s arms dropped free. She would have fallen like a stone, completely unable to protect herself from hitting the floor, but Lawrence kept hold of her. Then he lost his footing and they toppled together, landing full length on the mattress with a crash of springs.
Lawrence lifted his head to look at Splash, pulling the scarf from her mouth. She spat out the gag, chewed and sodden into a hard lump of material. “Get me my sweatshirt and pants. Please?”
He got up and found her sweatshirt and briefs; she’d meant her jeans, but didn’t say so. She put the things on.
“Louise told me what she’d done. You and Johnny got on a bit too well. She isn’t a very nice person.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” snapped Splash. “I didn’t get on with him, whatever that means. I danced with him, because your father pushed us together. I didn’t like him. He’s overgrown, years younger than I am and acts like a retard.”
Lawrence actually laughed. Splash looked at him, sitting on the edge of the bed while she lay back on the pillows. “You need a shave, little boy,” she snapped again. “Stubble and lipgloss don’t match.”
Stroking his chin, he stood up. “I’d better be going.”
Splash suddenly realised that she didn’t want to be left alone. “No - I mean - hey, Lawrence, I’m sorry. I mean it. Thank you for untying me. I’m just reacting to what they did.”
“I got this for you.” He reached into the front of his dress, where some kind of padding filled out the bust, and produced a door key. “I don’t think they’d come back, but you can lock yourself in.”
She took the key, reluctantly. He opened the door, and she got up and put the key into the lock. “That’s right, you’ll be okay. Goodnight.”
Alone again, Splash leaned her back against the locked door and surveyed the room: the panelled walls; the dying fire; the massive bed, with its blankets slung to one side in a heap on the floor; the ropes and gag that had been used to overpower her. She shovelled fresh coal on to the fire and poked it back up into a blaze; then she gathered up her bonds and threw them on to burn.
There was an armchair in the room and she drew it close to the hearth to sit. On the mantelpiece, a heavy brass clock gave the time as twenty past three, just about. Five hours to dawn, but she wouldn’t go to sleep if she could help it.
Chapter Two
In fact she dozed off and woke up again more than once and was asleep for maybe as long as an hour and a half by the time she opened her eyes and saw daylight outside. She got up, sore, tired and unwell.
The snow had stopped, but it lay deep on the ground. The fence she’d observed in the night had almost disappeared; only tiny points were left showing at irregular intervals. But it wouldn’t be so deep on the road and if it was, she’d push her cycle onwards and do her best to forget this place existed. She was going and going now, without seeing anybody if she could. She looked around for the rest of her clothes.
They’d been folded up on a chair, but that had been knocked over in the invasion of her room and Lawrence had had to unearth the stuff he’d handed to her from among the bedclothes on the floor. Splash found her jeans and socks and a T-shirt she wore beneath the sweatshirt. Where were her boots? She’d left them standing together at the foot of the bed. Louise or Johnny must have kicked them aside, by chance or on purpose. Splash gathered up all the sheets and dumped them in a corner, to reveal anything they might have been covering; nothing there. She walked all around the room, looking for the familiar shapes, wrinkled black surfaces and unbuckled straps. She got down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed. She got up and walked around the room again, as if to check every inch of it before accepting the result of her search.
Her boots were missing. They were nowhere in the room.
For a long time Splash sat still on the bed, as if what had to be done next could be avoided by leaving it. It couldn’t. She washed, got dressed and, in stockinged feet, went downstairs.
The house might have been deserted; the air had a chill to it and there were no sounds of activity. She hadn’t been shown around and was in no mood to go exploring. She made for the kitchen by which she’d entered yesterday.
As she got there, she heard voices: Louise’s and Johnny’s. She summoned up her courage, and went in.
Louise was seated at the kitchen table. Her straight brown hair was held back from her forehead by an Alice band, she was dressed in a thick woollen sweater and tight black jeans and sat with her feet resting upon the seat of another chair. Her riding boots stood empty nearby. She was eating bread and butter while Johnny cooked something, on a kitchen range of black cast iron.
Johnny looked around from his cooking. Louise paused in the act of taking a bite. “Morning.”
“Louise, where are my boots?” said Splash.
“Which boots are those?”
“My bike boots. I’ve only got one pair. I left them by my bed last night and now they’re gone.”
“Are they? I wonder where they’ve got to?” said Louise.
“I think you know. I think you took them.”
Louise shook her head. “Your boots wouldn’t fit me, love.”
Johnny sniggered. Splash became more angry than afraid. “You two attacked me last night. You stole my boots while you were there. I wanna know where they are.”
“How should I know where your smelly old boots are? Lawrence was in your room last night, why don’t you ask him? He’s more interested in girls’ boots than I am.”
For a moment Splash thought Louise might be telling the truth and putting her on the right track; but in her mind’s eye she saw Lawrence slipping away while she stood ready to lock her door the moment it closed after him. He’d been holding his gloves and that outfit just didn’t have a hiding place for even size four biker boots. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs somewhere.”
“He’s a queer,” said Johnny.
“I like him better than some people I’ve met here,” said Splash. She turned away. The door that gave on to the courtyard was shut and bolted and she had to pull hard to draw the bolts back.
“Are you going outside in your socks?” said Louise. “The snow’s a foot deep. You’ll get frostbite and have to have your feet cut off.”
“You can keep my boots if I do.”
But as she made her way across the yard to the stables where she’d left her cycle, Splash was more than tempted to go back and look for some kind of footwear in the house. Louise had exaggerated about the snow’s depth, but not by much; with each step Splash had to lift her knees, behind her the footprints were pits in the smooth surface. Within a dozen steps, her socks were wet through. Her feet became so cold as to be painful, then went numb at the toes. She hurried her pace till she was running as best she could, with her arms tightly folded.
The stables were unoccupied except for Louise’s horse, Glory. It was a long one-storey building, you entered at one end to find a row of stable boxes; Glory was stabled in the fourth or fifth box up and Splash had left her bike standing in the passageway alongside, as she’d had to wait while Louise attended to him. She should have seen it there as soon as she went in.
She didn’t see it. All she saw was a long stretch of bare, dusty, horribly empty stone floor. The cycle was missing.
Dismay, alarm and rage churned together inside her. She ran up the passageway looking into each box, meeting with nothing but a glance of equine curiosity from Glory, fourth box along. At the top she ran around the corner and found herself in the dimly-lit, tunnel-like passage that led out of the house’s grounds. The double doors at the far end were shut. There was no sign of her bike.
There was one other inside door, a way through to somewhere else. It was locked. Splash beat her fist against the wood. “Hello! Is anyone there? I need to get some stuff from my bike. It’s in there, isn’t it? Hello!”
Complete silence.
Splash rested her head against the wall in despair. But no, fuck it, they had no right to be doing this to her. She left the stables.
Back in the kitchen, Johnny was alone at the range. “Where’s Louise?”
“Gone upstairs.” There was a pause, in which Splash saw that he had something more to say. “I was gonna come and untie you, if Lawrence hadn’t.”
I’m not grateful, thought Splash. “Sure. Did Louise make you help move my motorcycle?”
“Have you got a motorbike?”
“Sure I have. That’s how I’m here, I couldn’t ride it in the snow.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“Oh, c’mon, Johnny,” said Splash pleasantly. “Louise has hidden it, like she’s hidden my boots and you’re in on the joke. Tell me where it is.”
“I like bikes,” said Johnny vacantly.
With an effort, Splash kept pleasant. “I’d show you mine if I knew where it was.”
Johnny shook his head and sighed with regret. “I’ve never had one my own, I just like seeing them.”
“Won’t you come help me look for mine?”
“I can’t, this isn’t done. It’ll be ready soon,” he called after Splash as she left the kitchen.
She was on the stairway up to the bedrooms when she met Louise on the way down. Louise smiled, a smile that was more like an imperfectly suppressed grin. Splash moved into her path. “Where’s my fucking cycle?”
“Which cycle is that?”
“If you wanna play stupid games, that’s your problem. I want my cycle.”
“You can’t ride it in all that snow,” said Louise amicably. “What are you getting worked up for?”
She moved to pass Splash and descend the stairs, but Splash, angry, indignant and not so scared of her now that she was alone, shifted to keep barring her way.
Something hard came into Louise’s smile. “Listen, sweetheart, I don’t need Johnny to knock you flying. If I have to do that, I’ll give you such a kicking when you’re down ...”
Splash backed a step and stood aside. As Louise disappeared down a corridor below, she went on up to her room.
She entered to find the bed made, the fire banked up and all traces of last night tidied away. It hadn’t occurred to Splash that Louise might have been there in her absence; she’d left nothing in the room, except -
There was an empty peg where her leather jacket had been hanging.
Splash sat down in the chair by the fire. She took off her socks and rubbed her wet, cold feet hard with a towel. This whole fucking stupid childish immature game had gone on long enough. With her feet towelled dry, and her socks more or less dried by the fire, she went down again to the kitchen.
Louise and Johnny met her with expectant eyes. “Johnny. where can I find Mr Lovedrool?”
“What do you want the boss for?” asked Louise.
“I’m gonna tell him everything that’s happened, unless you give back my property.”
“Oh,” said Louise casually.
“So where is he?”
“He’s in bed,” said Johnny.
“When does he get up?”
“Not till later. He takes sleeping pills and they don’t wear off till near dinner time.”
“Then I guess I’ve just gotta wait,” said Splash, in a resolute tone that failed to save her from a sense of having been defeated, for the fifth or sixth time in a row. She had an urge to get away from these people, to take refuge in her bedroom while she needed to remain in the house; she remembered that she had the key. But she was hungry. Without speaking again she hunted around the kitchen and found bread, cheese and some fruit and boiled water for coffee.
“Have some of this,” said Johnny. “It’s done.”
Splash ignored him.
She took the improvised breakfast up to her room. With a full stomach and such security as a locked door could provide, she became dog tired all of a sudden. She lay down on the bed and went to sleep.
*****
Someone was tapping politely at the door. “Splash? Are you still there?”
Splash raised herself on one elbow. “What is it, Lawrence?”
“My father wants to see you, if you’ll come down.”
“You bet I will.”
She found Lawrence in a fur hat and a long-sleeved green velvet dress, without padding. The skirt left an inch of pale, hairless calves showing above the tops of a pair of feminine lace-up boots, with low heels but pointed toes. “How are you now?”
“Pretty rough.” Splash didn’t believe he’d touched her stuff, but she couldn’t help asking. “I can’t find my boots. Do you know ...?”
His lips straightened and tensed. “No. I don’t pinch underwear, either.”
“Sorry. Let’s go and see your dad,” said Splash uncomfortably. “Do you wear girls’ clothes all the time?”
“I like wearing them.”
“I didn’t mean there was anything wrong in it. You’re not hurting anybody as far as I can see. Do you wish you’d been a girl instead of a boy?”
“Not really.”
“Do you like boys?” asked Splash curiously.
“I’m not a homosexual,” he replied, with the air of somebody making a proclamation. “As far as sex goes, I really like playing with myself. You’re taught to be ashamed of it, but I’m not.”
He made no comment on Splash’s going downstairs in her socks, but after Mr Lovedrool had greeted her with a genial smile his glance travelled down to her feet, and his expression changed into a look of surprise. “Uh - there are some things I’ve got to tell you about, sir ...”
“Please do. Thank you, Lawrence,” he said, dismissing him from the sitting-room, and he waved Splash towards a chair. “Now, please explain.”
Awkwardly - it was unpleasant to feel she was making trouble in the family, and the things that had been done to her were unpleasant to describe - Splash told him everything that had happened since the previous evening’s bedtime. As she spoke, Mr Lovedrool’s face became grim in a way that increased her discomfort. “Louise must be really jealous of Johnny. I guess it’s hard to meet guys living in a place like this, and she’s not really attractive. I mean, she’s got a lot of what guys go for, but ...”
“Quite,” said Mr Lovedrool with passing amusement. His face hardened again. “There is no excuse for her behaviour towards you, however. None whatsoever.”
“I just want my stuff back. Then I’ll hit the road with thanks for your hospitality.”
“Which has included being trussed up, beaten and robbed, by your account. I can hardly expect you to overlook those few things,” grunted Mr Lovedrool and pressed a bell. Within minutes Louise answered the summons. “Where are Miss Gilfillan’s boots, motorcycle and leather jacket?”
She gave Splash a sidelong look. “I haven’t touched her things. I made her bed after her. She left that room like a tip.”
“She is a guest in our house, Louise. How dare you assault her? You don’t deny that, I hope?”
“We were only messing,” said Louise with her head hung low.
“Very well!” said Mr Lovedrool angrily. He rose from his armchair and looked around the sitting-room in a way that puzzled Splash; he was looking for something, but what it was she couldn’t guess. “Give me your belt,” he snapped at Louise. “Bend over that table.”
He pointed to a low occasional table standing in the bay of the window. Louise obeyed, and as she bent over her large round bottom was raised into the air.
Splash stared on. “Uh - Mr Lovedrool, sir ...”
He turned to her and placed Louise’s belt in her hands. “Beat her.”
“What? I - I don’t wanna beat her, sir!”
“She beat you, Susan, and has refused to reveal what she’s done with your property. Beat the truth out of her.” As Splash sat paralysed with the belt, he turned back to Louise. “One more chance. Where have you hidden Miss Gilfillan’s boots, motorcycle and leather jacket?”
“I haven’t touched them.” said Louise without turning her head.
Mr Lovedrool gave a fierce grunt and made a gesture of disgust. His manner was so stern that there was nothing Splash could do but get up and approach Louise with the belt. “Louise, this is stupid. Tell me where my things are, for Christ’s sake.”
“Fuck off, blondie.”
“Beat her,” snapped Mr Lovedrool.
At last Splash raised her hand and let the belt swing down. It was two inches wide and made of a hard but flexible leather and could have been used to hurt someone. It landed with a mild slap on Louise’s backside.
“Ooh, the pain,” she said in a deadpan voice.
“You insolent young slut!” exclaimed Mr Lovedrool.
Splash found herself getting annoyed, too - not because of what Louise had done to her, which seemed hardly to relate to what was happening, but because of being forced to join in a scene which was getting ridiculous. “Mr Lovedrool - “
“Strike her again! Strike her again!”
Splash landed two more strokes. Louise didn’t even squirm.
“Where is Miss Gilfillan’s property?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“You saw it yesterday,” said Splash. “Then you had to get paranoid about your fucking boyfriend.”
“Beat her until she tells the truth,” said Mr Lovedrool.
All of a sudden Splash wondered, is he getting off on this? She turned to look at him, and in particular to check his crotch; but his dressing-gown hung loosely and voluminously around his waist and even as she turned her eyes met his, stern and intense beneath frowning white brows. She lifted the belt again and beat Louise, landing blows harder and faster. But Louise kept still under the blows and stayed silent. The more Splash exerted herself, the more she was assailed by a sense of being a participant in a grotesque tableau vivant. At one end of the stage there was Louise, who from where Splash stood was just a pair of buttocks in tight black pants and legs in riding boots; at the other was Mr Lovedrool glaring down, the picture of law and order outraged; with her in the middle, playing the role of a torturess to no apparent effect. She hit even harder, as if that could get her back to reality. The leather swished and cracked and Louise was moving now, from side to side, convulsively, making faint sounds which seemed to be escaping through clenched teeth.
