Journey VIII – Soul mates

The next few weeks were baffling but extraordinarily pleasurable. Mostly I just wanted as much sex as possible, and luckily Sophie was more than happy to oblige. We were both making up for lost time it turned out. As I looked around at this community of perpetual adolescent ennui and excess, our deliberate and intense sexuality stood in stark contrast to their absent-minded and passionless fornication. Whereas they just seemed to do it because they could and there didn’t seem to be anything better to do, we went at it with glee and gusto. I came to pity them, if this was what eternity was going to be like for them. I even felt smug.
A lot of the time I couldn’t understand why a sexy woman like Sophie would want to spend so much time with a sad old git like me. I was reassured when she told me she’d been very old when she died too (she wouldn’t tell me exactly how old) and I tried to remind myself what Andrea had said about not presuming to know what women want in a man but I couldn’t help being jealous and possessive sometimes – particularly when she insisted on chatting up absolutely everyone wherever we went and her natural manner was intimate and flirtatious. In truth, in the whole time we were together she never gave me one reason to doubt her and she accepted my insecurities as a compliment and was always reassuring. I know sometimes I was somewhat clingy and suspicious and frankly a bit of a drama queen, but in retrospect I think she must have genuinely liked me or she wouldn’t have put up with it.

‘I was married to the same man all my life’ she told me one morning. It was early that spring. We were in my room letting our coffees cool. I was sitting leaning against the window, feeling the cool glass on my skin. She had her head on my leg. ‘How boring is that?’ she added.
‘High school romance?’
‘Hardly. I went to a convent school, so no. We met at a family thing when I was about thirteen, started dating, and then as soon as we were eighteen we got married. We were big on going to church in our family.’
‘This place must seem a bit...wrong – if you believe in all that.’
‘Totally wrong. Oh everything was wrong.’ She gets up abruptly and wraps a sarong around herself. ‘Shan’t be a sec’ she says and heads along to the bathroom. When she gets back she hands me a plate with a jammy muffin on it. ‘They were doing them in the kitchen’ she says, licking her fingers. I think of her trotting along there with nothing but this thin piece of material around her – everyone eyeing her up. I feel proud and uncomfortable at the same time. Thankfully the discomfort is somehow erotic too and just makes me need to stake my claim again, which is always good.
After we’ve done that (just a quickie) I ask her about her married life.
‘Five kids would you believe...’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Big house in Southampton – in jolly old Shirley – what a tip.’
‘Why did you stick with it? For the kids?’
‘Partly, but no, it was ok. He was good man. Not terribly bright...’
‘What did he do?’
‘Estate agent.’
‘Wow’ I say, surprised, but she thinks I’m impressed.
‘Don’t. It wasn’t me. I swear, if I ever go back my house will be a mass of random furniture and non-matching crockery and there’ll be stuff everywhere. And there will be one sweet child, and I shall dress like this...’ (She flashes her bottom.) ‘...all the time.’
‘Excellent. Where shall we meet?’
‘On the Palace Pier in Brighton. Midsummer’s day 2000, three in the afternoon.’
‘It’s a date. I’ll buy you a doughnut.’

Another day – an evening a few weeks later – we are in my room and she’s got out one of my magazines and is lying on her stomach, reading. I look at her back and wonder if Paul would have thought she was fat. Probably – she’s no stick insect. She has a very womanly belly and a nice plump bottom. I love looking at it. At the moment it’s got the pattern of the bedspread imprinted on it.
‘You’re in good shape for a mother of five’ I say, slapping her bum. It wobbles most satisfyingly.
‘Gardening’ she says and tenses and relaxes her buttocks at me a few times, making them wobble some more – tempting me to smack them again. ‘This is me just before I got married’ she adds, turning on her back, as if showing me a photograph from her family album. ‘Pretty wasn’t I?’
‘I think you’re very beautiful’ I say, stroking her belly.
‘Hmm...’ she says, smiling coyly and turning over again, but then adds, ‘I wasn’t very pretty later on.’
‘Well who ever is?’
‘Oh come of it. I bet you were quite a chiselled old dude in your later years.’
My turn to be bashful.

‘So... was he any good in bed?’ I enquire nonchalantly.
‘Who?’
‘Hubby.’
‘Why?’ she says, grinning at me. ‘Do you think I’m comparing?’
‘Of course. You know me.’
‘I don’t know... He smelt funny. I never got used to that. I don’t think he washed enough really. I don’t know, he had that soapy sweaty Old Spice smell, you know?’
‘Didn’t you say anything?’
She turns and sits up in front of me, then picks up a pillow and hugs it to herself. We’ve got some chocolates from somewhere and she reaches over to get one. I hold the box for her. She sits and chews for a while.
‘What you’ve got to understand’ she says, ‘is that I didn’t know any different. When you marry that young, you’ve just got nothing to compare it with. It’s all just the way it is.’ And she shrugs and lies back, still covering herself with the pillow. I don’t think I’ve seen her want to cover herself before. It bothers me slightly. We sit silently for some time – me wondering what to say next.
‘I’m sorry’ I say eventually, ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘It’s ok, really. It’s sad more than anything. I did love him.’ and she chucks the pillow away and reaches out and pulls me to her and kisses me and we fuck ferociously again.
‘For the record, he was nowhere near as good in bed as you are’ she tells me afterwards but I can’t help feeling there’s something like regret in her voice.

Over the next few months she tells me a little more about her life.
‘I was the eldest of six would you believe.’
‘Didn’t they believe in contraception?’
She shakes her head and looks away. ‘Sex is for making babies’ she says. ‘Contraception is irrelevant. That’s what they said. I don’t know. I was home-schooled until I was eleven then they sent me to the church school. I didn’t really know anything else.’
‘Didn’t the other girls tell you anything?’
‘A bit. It was pretty shocking. They had pictures from a men’s magazine. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was a bit of an outsider to be honest.’
‘I can sympathise.’
She smiles and rolls over and lays her head on my leg. I stroke her hair away from her face. She takes a bite out of a plum and says. ‘It was pretty crazy. I went straight from looking after my brothers and sisters, straight into looking after Doug and then our kids. I never did anything else.’
‘Didn’t you want to get out, do something different, get a job, travel?’
It seems impossible to believe that she wouldn’t have, the way she is now.
‘Honestly it just didn’t seem realistic to me. I couldn’t imagine it. It’s just not the sort of thing people like us did.’
‘But you’re bright, independent...’
‘Now I am. I wasn’t then. You wouldn’t have known me back then. I failed all my exams, left school at sixteen... I don’t know.’
‘But you weren’t thick, surely?’
‘No. I just didn’t think that way. Oh look can we talk about something else?’
‘Sure. Sorry.’
‘What do you make of Gina and Aaron?’

And so it was. We left it at that, for the time being at any rate. Later I learned more, by little clues and hints. I felt she wanted to talk about it but wasn’t ready, or didn’t want to bore me, or put me off her perhaps. I have this image of her in a frock that would not have looked out of place in The Depression – grey and shapeless and with varying quantities of insulating and obscuring layers beneath, depending on the season. Her parents were not insanely religious but very old and extremely traditional – hard and judgemental and anti everything about the sixties. As with my parents, there would have been no point in making a fuss. You just had to put up with it. Sophie never went to work or took any courses but at the same time it was quite obvious that she was very well read (much more so than me.) She told me she used to go to the public library during shopping trips, hide the books under the baby’s things and then sneak them out to the allotment shed. Like me she’d gone down to the shed for her illicit pleasures, but hers were coffee and literature. The allotment was her haven. She took the children down there to play in the mud while she tended the vegetables and read her book. Doug apparently didn’t like his shoes getting dirty so never found out. He came over as being a fairly harmless but obsessive individual.
‘Couldn’t you see what you were missing?’ I asked on more than one occasion. She just shrugged.

She was good for me though. We mucked about and laughed a lot. She even laughed at my anxieties, but in a generous way, not in a cruel way and I didn’t mind. She told me I was gorgeous, and when we were alone, I almost believed her. She seemed to understand why I didn’t quite believe this could be happening to me.
‘I chose you, remember?’ she reminded me. ‘Don’t imagine I give that sort of performance every night. I knew you’d be worth it’.
I wondered sometimes how often she did ‘perform’ like that before she met me, but I sensed that it would not be a good thing to ask. She was with me, I told myself, and that’s what counted.

The spring slowly unfolds and the streets begin to wear the first tentative tendrils of their summer exuberance. The weather is still chilly but she comes with me on my explorations – usually dressed in jeans and tops like normal people but sometimes she surprises me – on one memorable occasion coming out in just a plastic mac and wellies. She loves to do it then and there, on the wet grass or bent over a wall. We’re not very discreet about it and we got caught a couple of times. But we never go into any of the houses. Sometimes I swear I see faces at the windows but I don’t let on.

We still go to quite a lot of parties too and, as I say, I spend a lot of time watching her. They’re a different sort of party to the ones I went to early on – more classy I suppose, more mature perhaps, and she wears somewhat more than she did the night we got together (underwear, for example), but there’s still a sense that she’s not really decent. I watch her being charming – everybody loves her and I can tell that when people talk to her she has a way of making them feel fascinating, and, as a result, they are. Plus they perhaps think they have a chance with her. I’m never entirely at ease at times like these, but then, from the middle of a conversation she’ll turn a little and, without directly looking at me or giving any obvious sign, she’ll let me know she is looking forward to coming over to me. Sometimes I go over and she introduces me and I join in the conversation. When they see we’re together you can see their disappointment, but it is always brief because she is just too lovely to be upset with and I feel very proud.
I ask her about the way she behaves one night in someone’s lounge. It’s been a session rather like that first time, except the lights are dimmed and nobody else in the room seems to be very awake. In retrospect our behaviour sounds appallingly decadent but we were far from being the only ones. Sometimes it seemed like no one was doing anything much else. In fact our monogamy came to be seen as rather sweet and old-fashioned.

She is still straddling my lap – I am softening inside her and, as usual, sitting in a puddle. She has no top on at all and her neat breasts catch the green light from the stereo. I ask her how she comes to be such an exhibitionist after such a blameless God-fearing life like hers.
‘Well, I just don’t have anything to worry about here do I? I mean – I can’t get pregnant. I can’t get AIDS. I can’t die of pneumonia from not wearing enough’ she adds with a wicked grin. ‘It’s just such a release. You weren’t married were you?’
‘No.’
She nods ‘I don’t blame you’ she says, pulling a shawl over her shoulders. ‘Oh don’t get me wrong’ she adds. ‘I’m glad I did it – got married I mean. I wouldn’t appreciate this half as much if I hadn’t, but I wouldn’t do it again. Been there, done that’ she says, and gets up to rearrange her skirt. She goes and gets us a drink to share, still topless, and then we snuggle down for the night on a huge cushion and covered in other people’s coats and things.
She tells me that her behaviour probably has something to do with the frustrations of sleeping with no one but the same boyish control freak all that time.
Later on I did get around to telling her that my single status had not been a matter of choice and that led on to me telling her a lot of other dreary crap about my life. I knew it was a risk but I wanted to be honest with her as much as possible. I was afraid perhaps her idea of me would be diminished by knowing about my failures but she just hugged me and kissed me and told me how impressed she was with how far I’d come since then and how great I was going to be next time around.

Andrea VII – It’s so very different for girls

‘It doesn’t sound like you had much of a love life’ she observes.
‘That’s putting it mildly’ I say.
‘What was the most exciting thing you ever did? – best sexual experience of your life.’
I think about it but I can’t think of anything much. Then I wonder why she’s suddenly so interested in my sex life.
‘I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours’ she says, mock flirtatiously. I wish she wouldn’t mess with me. She must have twigged what effect it has by now, surely.
‘I honestly don’t know’ I say wearily. I want to make something up but she’s right about the lying. I can’t seem to formulate a fabrication. I decide to go for comedy.
‘There was this time in the sauna at a festival.’
‘Really?’ she says. ‘They never seemed very sexual to me. Too hot for one thing.’
‘True, but on this occasion there was a woman in there I really fancied – amazing looking woman – amazon-like and we’re all in there, chatting as usual and it’s dark and there’s the burner in the middle and candles and the herbs and the steam – you know. And this woman asks me if I would like a massage.’
Andrea grins broadly at me. ‘What did you say?’
‘Well I said “Yes” of course, and I turn around and she’s kneading my back very expertly and making comments about how tense I seem and I’m like “You don’t know the half of it lady”, and I don’t know what to think.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well you’ve been there. There’s an etiquette, isn’t there. The festival sauna is not about sex. It’s about relaxation and fellowship with nature or something. I mean sure – we all check out each other’s bods don’t we.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But it would be bad form to do anything about it actually in the sauna. Am I right?’
‘Broadly.’
I look at her doubtfully. ‘Broadly’ she says. There was so much I didn’t understand in life.
‘Anyway, so I have to assume she’s just being a hippy. Nakedness – it’s no big deal and she just wanted to help me relax. That’s what I told myself.’
‘Did you think her behaviour was unusual?’ she asks.
‘No. Not really. I told myself she was just being friendly.’
‘She probably was.’
‘Very probably, but anyhow, I don’t feel friendly. That’s the problem. I feel horny, and if there’s one total no-no in festie sauna etiquette it’s getting a hard-on.’
‘What did you do?’ she grins, waiting for the punch line.
‘Well I passed out in the shower, didn’t I.’
She falls about, clapping her hands and rolling back in her seat.
‘Really?’
‘Really. I think all my blood had rushed to my – I don’t know where. It wasn’t in my penis and it clearly wasn’t in my brain.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Nothing. I think she really was just being friendly. Maybe a bit flirtatious, but I don’t think she was really interested in me.’
She’s unconvinced I can tell.
‘I’m not entirely sure either, but I tried to talk to her afterwards and nothing happened.’
‘Do you want to hear mine?’ she asks gleefully. I don’t really but I shouldn’t be rude.
‘Does it involve public nudity?’
‘Yes, and cunnilingus. Me and a mate on the top of a late bus in Aberystwyth.’
I shake my head. ‘I can’t take this any more’ I say jokingly, but I’m not really joking. Why had everyone been having so much more fun than me?
‘What’s wrong?’ she says finally realising I am not laughing.
‘It’s not funny’ I say. ‘Really it’s not. I don’t want to sound like some pathetic whinger but it’s not funny when everybody else is doing it and...’ and I shake my head. ‘Actually it wasn’t just me. I knew a few other lads like me – nice ordinary lads, not weirdos, not unsanitary – went years without once getting any. Can you imagine what that’s like?’
‘Not really.’
I look into her eyes. She really doesn't. She doesn't get it at all.
‘Well’ I shrug, ‘It’s different for girls, as the man said.’
It seemed to me at the time that any of the girls I knew, with a few rather gross exceptions, could have had it any time they liked with no more subterfuge than a smile. We on the other hand were just gagging for it. Maybe the girls didn’t really want it, maybe they did, but, short of rape, it was their choice. We, on the other hand, because we were not rapists, were forced to wait.

‘Do you know how sexualised your average adolescent boy’s life is?’ I say.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Porn, fantasising, looking at girls, wanking, permanent hard-on, all day, every day, nights too. Not getting to sleep before three in the morning some nights because you can’t stop thinking about it. And you look around at the girls in the class and that little group of ‘cool’ lads and you hate them and want to be them at the same time. And that’s it – just girls looking at you like you’re something someone’s walked in off the road. So much power...’ I take a moment to think about that, how utterly derisible it made me feel. ‘And it goes on forever, years.’
I can see she still doesn’t get it.
‘Some days’ I say, ‘I’d be out walking in the countryside and I’d come across some fragments from a porno mag all tatty and stuck together in a hedge and it would be like treasure trove.’ I sit and shake my head slowly. ‘You want to know my best sex story? Well that’s it pretty much.’ I know I’m being melodramatic but I can’t help it. ‘The pressure is awesome – I mean that literally, in every possible sense. You can’t imagine.’
‘But you did lose your virginity eventually?’
‘Yes I did.’
‘And?’
‘It was alright.’
She looks quite shocked. ‘Just alright?’ she says.
‘It wasn’t great. They were just drunken one-night-stands. I barely remember the first one.’
‘Did you not fancy any of them?’
‘Some. A bit.’
She looks disappointed by that. She’s not the only one.
‘But before that, weren’t there parties and so on, when you were younger? You know, teenage girls and boys out to have a good time? Clubs? Gangs?’
‘I was a bit of a loner to be honest. We’ve talked about this. I couldn’t do the flirting and the showing off and the chatting up thing.’
‘Maybe you didn’t really want it badly enough?’
I look coldly at her. I hate that phrase. I think of all the people I’ve known who weren’t really bothered but got it handed to them on a fucking plate. A fucking plate. That’s exactly what it would have been served on – like one of those stainless steel platters with spikes for carving the joint on. I can see it now.
‘Maybe I wanted it too much’ I say. ‘I know I looked kind of desperate sometimes. It’s not attractive.’ She nods. ‘It makes you rather humourless and intense – not much of a laugh.’
‘Yes’ she says at last. ‘I get that.’
I've got an example for her.
‘There was one party I went to – this would have been after everybody else had gone off to uni and I was left working in a DIY shop. There was a girl – Gill her name was – one of those rare and magnificent Bardot types. Fabulous woman. Way out of my league, although she was always pleasant to me.’
I can still picture her...
‘Anyway, the party was ok. I was feeling a bit out of place, as usual. I didn’t really know anyone and it was getting really late and I was just about to go for a walk, clear my head... Anyway, something stopped me... I don’t know what... I just had a bad feeling about it. So anyway I headed out the front instead and there she was, Gill, and she was with this guy Dave, who was bit of a jack-the-lad and he came and grabbed me and put his arm around my shoulders and dragged me up the steps onto the pavement and he said “Gill quite fancies you. Do you know that? She says she thinks you’re quite ‘dishy’” and she looks absolutely mortified and I don’t know where to look and he says “Ok, lets have it out” and everyone’s laughing – all the lads from the shop and some others and we’re out in the street and it’s a rainy night and he’s being really loud and he goes to undo his flies, in the middle of the road and he gets it out right there and then and says “Let’s see yours then” or something like that. “Lets see who’s the best man.” That’s it. And I look at it, and he’s got his hard-on alright but it’s not actually very impressive – sort of thin and pointy - a bit like a dog’s, and I’m not bragging but I knew mine would have been a lot more impressive than that thing.’
Andrea’s grinning at me, clearly enjoying herself.
‘But here’s the thing – I’m not going to get my cock out in the street am I? And even if I did it’d probably shrink up to the size of a walnut. So I just stood there, like a lemon. And I couldn’t do anything, and he flips this... thing back in his trousers like he’s a rock star or something and strides off down the street, a girl under each arm, one of them Gill, and I remember thinking ‘This is it. This is what it’s going to be like. You don’t have to be better. You just have to act like you are.’
‘You poor bugger’ she says without humour. ‘And that’s when you stopped trying?’
‘No, of course not. Well, not just that. It didn’t help. It encapsulates the situation nicely though, don’t you think?’
‘Did you see Gill again?’
‘I left that job soon after. Couldn’t face them. Worked for an accountant for a bit – can you imagine?’
‘Down hill from there?’
‘More or less.’
‘Do you think having a girlfriend would have helped?’
‘Who knows? It would have depended what she was like. She’d have had to have been quite tolerant.’
‘Well the girlfriends of young men usually have to be very tolerant in my experience.’
I laugh a little. It’s quite true. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
‘Maybe next time’ I say.
‘Maybe’ she says and we end the session there.

A few sessions later she says ‘Actually you can’t have been that desperate.’
I say ‘Why do you say that?’
She says ‘Well it’s not like nobody wanted you.’
I run through, in my mind, the images of the one or two women I knew had wanted me – sad, neurotic, lonely women.
‘So you could have had someone, if you’d wanted to.’
‘Well yes...’
‘What were they? Really disgusting old sluts or something?’
‘No. Absolutely not. I just didn’t...’
‘Fancy them? Did anybody else fancy them?’
‘I don’t know. They weren’t hideous or anything. A bit needy perhaps...’
She looks at me like I’ve just said something very funny.
‘They just weren’t quite what you were after’ she says.
I shrug. I suppose not. ‘But why should I? Why should I settle for something...’
‘No reason. You shouldn’t. But you’d be surprised how many do just settle for someone, because they can’t bear the thought of being alone or not having children. How many of the people you knew were in relationships that were even remotely enviable? Seriously. Think about it.’
‘Well...’
‘You didn’t settle. You held out. You didn’t give up. You thought you deserved better. I actually find that quite laudable. Good for you Gabriel.’
‘Thank you’ I say, not quite sure how to take that.

Journey VII – A Bad Dream

It was a horrible shock when I awoke. It was still dark out and I seemed to be alone in one of the upstairs rooms. It occurred to me that maybe I’d never been downstairs and the woman had been a dream, but of course there’s no dreaming in the afterlife. I looked down and my shorts were still very damp and had been split from front to back. I clearly remembered her ripping them to get better access to me. I felt terribly exposed and I felt sure there was something else there with me, waiting.
I think back now and I try to work out how to describe it. Hackneyed phrases come to mind – “Night Terrors”, “Nameless Dread” but they’re too obvious. I’d co-existed with this fear since that first night but had learned to ignore it because I felt safe enough at the hostel and I was rarely alone at night. I’d locked my door and pulled the curtains of my room. I’d kept music playing. Sometimes I’d kept a light on. Now I was alone, in a strange house, at night, virtually naked, and cold and wet too. Why was that? I’d read of female ejaculation somewhere but never experienced it. It didn’t smell at all bad – rather good actually – warm and fleshy and not at all pissy. The scent gave me a powerful thrill. I supposed most blokes were used to this sort of thing – women flooding the place when they had an orgasm, but it was new to me. It was all new to me. I wanted to call out for her but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and also didn’t know her name. I scurried to the door and opened it a fraction. There was a light on, a hallway but no sign of the stairs, lots of doorways. I couldn’t find my boots or vest. I did my shorts up as best I could but still felt very vulnerable. The zip did up but my nuts fell out the rip. I was walking with my legs crossed. It was ridiculous. I’d wandered around naked at festivals before – around the saunas. It’d always felt quite a powerful thing to do – strong, individual, defiant. I knew I’d feel better like that than I would crouched down trying to hold my trousers together so I took them off and carried them. It was exactly like one of those dreams where you’re in a strange place and you’ve somehow mislaid all your clothes. I thought maybe I could find a towel or something to put around myself later.
I started off down the corridor, keeping an eye out for nails and broken glass on the bare, paint-splattered floorboards. I padded silently along, peering cautiously into the doorways, if they were open, as I went along. I saw nothing but knew there was something about. Sounds took me by surprise but were impossible to locate. The air felt terribly hot and close. The wall behind me was warm to the touch. I swivelled around to try to catch them out but just saw the other end of the corridor with its broom cupboard at the far end, silent and somehow waiting – the reason I hadn’t gone that way to begin with. I stood against the wall, my hands pressed against it, trying to concentrate. Everything was dusty and stained – not like the second floor I’d seen before. Old cobwebs choked with sooty dust hung from the ceiling. The unshaded bulb showed dust on everything. Crumbled plaster revealed broken laths and worrying holes in the walls. Decomposing and singed carpet lay in a heap in the far corner. An ugly bedside cabinet stood incongruous by a window. The broom cupboard had a pile of junk in it and a mop, head up, standing in the middle. (How was it doing that?) I carried on away toward the far end of the corridor. I needn’t have worried about my penis hanging out – it’d shrunk to the size of an acorn.
At the end of the corridor was a landing and a staircase down. I leaned over the banisters. The floor below was in darkness. There was some rubbish at the bottom but I couldn’t see any further. That was when I heard it behind me – like a rush of breath in a throat. I snapped around and immediately noticed that the pile of old carpets was in a different place and the broom cupboard’s contents had spilled out onto the floor. Some of the things were right beside me. It made absolutely no sense and seemed laughable but I hadn’t actually seen anything move and I was terrified. I looked down the stairs. There was nowhere else to go and I was panicking now anyway. Only later did I survey the damage to my feet where the little nails had gone in. At the bottom of the stairs I found a corridor going back the way I’d come and more doorways. The sound behind me I can only liken to a babble of voices, coming from the stairs and the floor above. They knew I was there – maybe not exactly where I was, but it was only a matter of time. I moved forward into the dark corridor. I had a feeling that I might be safer in the darkness. There was a sound like something big coming down from above, not using the stairs, just falling, and I ran. I didn’t see it, I just ran. I was running toward where the broom cupboard was above but this corridor took a right turn and I found myself in a once plush dining room, dimly lit by the street lamps outside. I went to the window and found I was not at the front of the house as I’d expected. There seemed to be a back garden instead, one floor below. The garden was dark and overgrown as far as I could tell, with more trash lying about. I tried the window but it wouldn’t budge. There were sounds in the corridor briefly and the light was now on out there. I considered breaking the window. Maybe later, if all else failed. I looked around me – stacked chairs, tables. I considered wrapping myself in a tablecloth but modesty really didn’t seem a high priority. I still had my shorts gripped tight in my hand. I sniffed them. She smelt fantastic. Maybe this is hell, I thought. Maybe they have that woman already. Or maybe she was bait, getting me ready for them. I didn’t want to think about it. Anyway they didn’t seem to be very bright. I was utterly defenceless and lost and yet they didn’t seem to know where I was. Or maybe they knew I had nowhere to go and this was part of the game, part of the torture – letting me stew in her juices.
As I stood there, trying to breathe silently I realised I’d known this was coming all along. I knew if I let myself be lost and alone they’d find me, like all the others, being kept and tortured somewhere alone. We would never see each other again but we would be all around, in the walls, under the floors, gagged and trussed. Maybe in all these dead-eyed houses it had been going on around me all along. That’s how I knew about it.
‘Stop’ I said to myself. I needed to think. I needed to get out. I looked around for some sort of weapon but couldn’t imagine a way to defend myself. I couldn’t imagine a way to hide. All I could think of was to keep moving. A door at the far end was open and I looked through. There was a narrow flight of stairs down, a light on, and muffled voices. I heard a man’s laugh. They could well be waiting down there. I could smell blood and shit. That was where they wanted me to go. I went toward the door I’d come in by and looked down the brightly lit passage. I looked toward the stairs I’d come down. They could be waiting there too. I didn’t know what to do. I was completely stuck. Why weren’t there guides with us? They should have come off the boat with us. This shouldn’t have been able to happen. I crouched down by the window and covered myself with a tablecloth and stared at the door, and waited.

Time passes. It’s a very long night. I hear nothing. I can’t sense them any more but I still can’t risk moving. Maybe day will come and I’ll be ok. I think about the woman. I don’t regret it. It was the most amazing sexual experience I ever had and we didn’t even fuck. We hardly even spoke. That was a good thing. She just came and took me and it happened, just like that, just right – no words, no opportunity for me to say something stupid, fluff my lines. What a woman. A faint grey light seeps in through the window without me really noticing. I must have dozed off. I look about me – plaster dust and spilt paint on a worn out wine red carpet. I can still smell offal and excrement. It gets lighter out and I move to the door, and look out. It feels safe, cool and airy, not like last night. I pad quickly along to the far end and find a main staircase down on the right. I take it and stand in the morning light in a hallway with the front door ahead. Outside on the step I turn and see that the house where the party was is next door. I’m in a run-down guesthouse. I don’t remember coming here. I put the shorts on as best I can and walk down the path, along the pavement and up to the front door, which is ajar. Two or three guests are still about and music (sounds like something by the Apricot Wallflowers) is playing quietly. Someone is making coffee, thank whoever. I find my vest on the floor and put it on. It also smells strongly of her, and of wine.
‘You look like shit my man’ says the coffee maker, grinning. He’s a tall man with a ponytail and what I’ve always thought of as a very Australian face. There’s definitely something of the Great Grey about him.
‘Thanks’ I say, wearily. ‘Did you see the woman I was with last night?’
‘Hard to miss’ he says. ‘What did you do with her?’ and I explain my exploits next door and that I’m worried about her. I leave out the bit about the torture – I don’t want to seem completely insane. The man – Aaron, hands me a coffee, indicates the sugar bowl and goes to ask his ‘lady friend’ if she knows where Sophie went, for that’s her name apparently.
‘Next door’ is the answer. ‘She said she was going next door to crash. I thought she was with you.’
‘We got separated’ I say, lamely. ‘Can you come and help me look? I’m a bit...’ and I shake my head and look dazed. It’s not entirely an act.
‘Sure. Give us a mo. Drink your coffee – it’ll get cold.’
I can’t help worrying that we’ll be too late, but I wait anyway and I drink my coffee. It’s really getting light now. She’s probably in no more danger now than she was five minutes ago. At least I know she’s a real person, with a name and all, not just some demon temptress come to lure me to hell. My exploits quickly come to seem absurd in the chilly morning light. It feels like a bad dream. The details are already receding. I ask a bit more about her. Gina, the ‘lady friend’, has met her a few times at parties and says she seems really nice. Last night was unusual – she’s not seen her do that before, ‘but she does tend to approach things in a fairly unorthodox way’ apparently.
‘If she wants something badly enough she does tend to go for it full on’ adds Aaron admiringly.
Evidently she wanted me badly enough, I think to myself, and feel very chuffed. I do like a woman who knows her own mind.

We go next door, Aaron, Gina and I, and we find Sophie sitting on the front step looking, if anything even blearier than I do.
‘Hey babe what happened to you?’ she says looking sleepily up at me.
‘I got completely lost’ I say. ‘Long story. I’ll tell you later. Do you want breakfast?’ She nods happily and I give her a hand up. One of her breasts has come free again and the demolished state of my shorts quickly becomes apparent. She giggles, pulls her strap up and reaches down to cover my modesty. ‘Oops’ she says. ‘Better get you sorted out. Sorry about that. I got a bit carried away didn’t I.’ and we walk back with her giggling, bending down, holding her dress out in front of me like a curtain, while I pretend to try to look dignified.
The four of us ate an excellent breakfast and I dismissed the previous night’s horrors from my thoughts.

Journey V – Sophie

My explorations around the town occupied an increasing part of my days but I always seemed to be going round in loops. I still couldn’t find a road out. Some areas near home became familiar and I could find my way around easily, but further out I continually came across parts I couldn’t remember seeing before. It was permanently cold and overcast by now, but not uncomfortable. I just wore more layers – fleeces and waterproofs.
I particularly liked to visit a little close on top of a nearby hill that could only be reached by a narrow lane between the houses. The lane had a steel frame covered in vines arching over it. That part of the town was all small terraced houses without gardens, in concentric rows, curving around the flanks of the hill, so it was surprising that first time to pass under the pergola and come out into a bright little oasis of evergreens overflowing onto the cobbles at the summit. On the other side of this close, opposite the entrance, there was a gap between the houses with a wrought iron rail and a view out across the trees and the roofs of the houses below but there was no sign of the sea, nor any countryside beyond. It seemed as if, whereas there’d been no horizon at sea and the view had looked as if it went on flat indefinitely, here it seemed as if the horizon was closer, more curved than usual and the view was distorted, almost like looking through a fish-eye. It was as if this town was on a tiny world of its own. Sometimes it felt as if it didn’t matter how far I walked, I could never walk away from here, only back. It was a disturbing thought.

It was just as the days were getting noticeably longer that I heard about a party at a house that actually had the owners living in it. It was another big old Victorian affair with huge windows and high ceilings, but double fronted. We arrived with bottles and met a woman who looked to be in her early forties and with the hopeful disappointed face of the depressive and the alcoholic, sitting at her breakfast bar on a stool in her open-plan kitchen-diner with a huge balloon of red wine and a cigarillo. The house appeared to be in the middle of being renovated. She greeted us in a friendly but distracted way and told us to make ourselves at home but she implied that everything was beyond her control anyway. The unmistakeable sound of Jefferson Airplane was coming from the lounge across the hall. Everything in there was stripped pine but nothing was finished.
I looked around at the other guests and many of them seemed to be a bit more my age or older and there was a very different ambiance to the usual – more conversation, less giggling and passing out, and less nudity. I settled in on a huge grey sofa next to a couple talking very animatedly. I had a large glass of red in my hand and felt fairly cool. I even found myself joining in a reasonably intelligent conversation – about how to incorporate a fish tank into a room without it looking ‘terminally naff’. I knew a bit about this because a guy I knew had a tank like a large paddling pool in his lounge, full of freshwater stingrays I think he said they were. He was forever having trouble keeping his nitrates down or something. We talked a bit about the ethics of trying to keep really big fish, and importing specimens from the wild that stood no chance of ever breeding in captivity. Then we went on to talk about houseplants and how very 1970s they were (except for palms apparently) and various interior design ‘horror stories’ generally. Given that most of the conversation had been about doing up properties as an investment, they were fascinated to learn that I’d spent much of my life homeless but seemed unable to comprehend it as anything other than a lifestyle choice. I didn’t pursue it. It was funny really. They seemed to see me almost as some sort of holy man and went on to talk about their travels in India and the Far East. At no point did they seem to acknowledge that we were all dead now and all this was somewhat academic. It was fun though. In life there had been times when we got back from the festies and I was invited around to parties at the homes of middle class hippies in Brighton and we’d had conversations just like these in houses exactly like this and I felt quite at home, in an ironic sort of way.
There was still a very odd atmosphere though, even by the standards of this town. I got up and wandered about after a while and found the house was a lot bigger than it had looked at first, with a low, unlit corridor going back beyond the staircase, and there were at least four floors. No wonder they could never finish the bloody decorating. The hostess looked quite tired in the middle of it all as random guests milled about. I said hi and we chatted a little about where I lived and what she was planning to do with this place. I had a look upstairs and found darkened and largely empty rooms on the first two floors with just some bits of timber and a ladder to indicate that anybody ever came up here. There was a cold, green tiled bathroom with a very bright bare bulb in it and a very old porcelain bathroom suite. The uncurtained window reflected me darkly and gave me the very clear sensation of not being alone looking at myself. I turned but saw only the empty doorway to the bedroom across the hall. Then I went down to the first floor landing and found a blonde, round-faced woman in what appeared to be a white silk nightdress standing at the top of the stairs smiling at me and I found I couldn’t look away. 

I remembered what Andrea had said and smiled back as confidently as I could and she came down to the lounge with me. I offered to get her a drink and she asked for some wine, following me through when I went to get it. When I turned with her glass in my hand she was right there, almost up against me. We raised our glasses and smiled at each other. I remember thinking how clear and confident her smile seemed. 

We stood close together in the lounge and began to sway with the music, still looking intently into each other’s eyes and smiling. I put my glass down and laid my hands on her hips lightly. The material she was wearing was incredibly fine, just a couple of layers of thin cotton tissue and I could feel the smooth soft skin underneath it. I became oblivious of everything else going on around us, of the people coming and going and the other couples dancing, and the flimsy straps slipped down over her shoulders so that her dress was just barely held by the curve of her breasts. She pressed her body closer but still looked intently at me, now smiling just a little, then resting her head under my chin.

I couldn’t believe it. I was having trouble breathing I was so excited. This was so unexpected, and so sudden. I looked up at the ceiling, trying to get some breathing space before I collapsed. I looked over toward the kitchen and the owner of the house was smiling broadly and toasting us with her glass. That was when I knew this couldn’t be happening. Something was seriously wrong but I couldn’t stop it. I was caught between knowing I was in terrible trouble and knowing that I would have to take my chances because I wasn’t going to pass up whatever this fabulous woman had to offer. I knew it was all up to her anyway. I had no choice. I was hers.

The party had quietened down now anyway. Lou Reed was playing. A lot of the guests were seated around the room on cushions and couches and she lead me over to a large red velvet cushion half way along a wall and said ‘Lets sit down’. I sat back, leaning against the wall, extremely aware now of the other people around us – the soft light and the quiet music. She knelt down and sat astride my leg. I was in shorts as usual and could feel the heat from between her legs, and the moisture and then the soft lips of her vagina brush the skin of my bare thigh. I almost stopped breathing. She leaned forward, one arm either side of my head and one breast came free and jiggled in front of my nose. I looked around. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention. I put my hand on her leg, under her dress, moved along her thigh over her hip to the small of her back and then down over her smooth bottom, I ran my fingers between and confirmed that she was indeed wearing nothing under her dress. She leaned back and smiled wickedly at me. I went to kiss her but she drew back and watched me, neatly tucking her breast back in. She stopped for a moment, then I felt a sinuous movement of her hips and her rubbing herself lightly against my leg, taking deep breathes through her nose. Looking down at me, she gripped my cock through the material of my shorts, smiling nastily and moving her hips. I moved my other hand to her front and began to feel my way under her dress and she shifted slightly over and lifted the dress away so that anyone interested could have seen her neat little cunt, with all its sweet pink insides exposed to my fingers. I looked around one last time and registered that we were now attracting some attention. I didn’t care. Her top had come down completely, becoming nothing more than a roll of material around her waist and she had unzipped me and held my cock, its hard swollen tip an inch from the hot wet lips of her vagina, which I fingered luxuriously. She was biting her lip, looking intently at me now, not smiling any more, concentrating, she was holding my cock tight, and shifting a little forward so that my tip met her clitoris and I felt something like electricity pass through me like a jolt to the heart, starting my life. She leaned forward and gripped my face and kissed me hard, forcing her tongue between my teeth, while her juices soaked me and the cushion we sat on. 

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. There were very few people around when we came to and the lights were dimmed. The owner of the house was still there, chatting quietly to some late guests, all sitting on bar stools. I looked down at the mess between us and smiled. She was slumped against me, her breasts still exposed, cool and white, their little pink noses now inverted. It was too dark to see lower down but my movements roused her and she looked groggily around and fumbled between our legs as if to see what had happened. ‘Hmm’ she said approvingly and smiled tiredly at me. ‘Need a bit of a clean up’ she added and kissed me tenderly on the lips.
We straightened ourselves up and stood around – me wondering what to do next, she trying to decide what to have to drink. She looked divine, one of her breasts still bare. Once she’d got her glass she collapsed into an armchair and patted a cushion for me to sit down beside her. There we sat until almost everybody had gone and then we spread out on the cushions and slept.

Journey III – Teenage Kicks

It must have been about midday when I awoke again. I went back down to the kitchen and slumped on the sofa in my shorts. I had toast and peanut butter with a cup of instant coffee for breakfast, then thought I might do some washing up but on closer inspection thought better of it. As the morning progressed I saw most of the people from the night before come in and get something to eat. Some took their food back where they’d come from, others sat blearily in the kitchen to eat and flick through a magazine. As the afternoon wore on, the booze and the dope came out (it never seemed to quite run out) and I was content to sit about in a warm aromatic haze.
That was my first day, and pretty much indistinguishable from every other day for the next few weeks. I stopped keeping track. There always seemed to be something to eat in the fridge – not necessarily something appetising, but something nevertheless. As for the washing up – like everyone else, I just rinsed off the utensils I needed and left the rest. There was conversation but generally I couldn’t hear what they were talking about because they tended to mumble among themselves and the music was always on quite loud in the background. They didn’t so much ignore me as not notice me. It was intriguing but there didn’t seem to be any malice to it so I had to accept it.


Eventually the monotony was broken with news of a party that weekend. (I had no idea what day of the week it was.) I asked the buxom girl, whose name was Maureen and who had been the most approachable of them, where it was and how we were going to get there. She shrugged and laughed and said something I couldn’t make out. ‘I’ll follow you then’ I said loudly in her ear and she gave me a look that suggested I’d finally realised something important but I couldn’t imagine what that might be. She wasn’t terribly pretty and looked a bit too young for me but I certainly wouldn’t have said ‘no’ at that stage. Maureen’s hardly a young girl’s name after all. She might have been even older than I was when she died for all I knew.
Anyway, Saturday night came and they put on some loud music and smoked and drank quite a bit before leaving and we were quite raucous by the time we set out. I hung back a little to watch and see what would happen - fully expecting to see the group whittled down as we wandered the streets aimlessly all night. I was apprehensive to say the least.

The streets were empty as before as we noisily made our way. Somewhere a dog barked. Somewhere I could hear the unmistakeable sound of partying, but all the houses we passed were silent and dark as before. We lost a couple of our group at some point but had gained three others by the time we arrived. Nobody seemed much concerned about it.
When we got there I was surprised to find there really was a party going on. It was in a tall Victorian house with high ceilings and huge windows and a basement lit with red bulbs. That seemed to be where most of the action was. The whole place had much the same neglected charm as our place, but much more spacious and with no furniture to speak of. We came in the front door and looked in on the lounge. It was dark and nobody was in there, despite the fact that the windows were wide open and dance music was spilling out into the front garden and across the street. We went down a narrow staircase to the basement to find something more melodic playing and everyone sitting around on cushions on the floor or leaning against the walls. We settled in amongst them, squeezing into the gaps and taking our turns on the ever-circulating joints and wine bottles. I felt warm and oddly at peace despite the fact that I still couldn’t hear a word of what was being said, even when the bloke with dreads next to me talked directly into my ear. I just smiled and nodded, which seemed to be the right thing to do. Later on I went for a wander and found a bunch of lads had congregated in the back room to look at torture porn on the TV. A naked girl was strapped to a chair and apparently having her face cut away. I quickly went through to the lounge and had a look at the record collection, then stood in the bay window looking out at the night and took some deep breaths. It was all so familiar – this noise, this light, this smell. What was that smell? There was a couple just along the wall near the stereo. They were mostly in shadow but I could see enough to know she was down to her underwear and he was working hard on her breasts with his mouth and on her crotch with his fingers. I decided to go downstairs again and give them some privacy but found that now a few more people were up dancing and that at least one of them – a small dark girl, had taken all her clothes off and was moving about among the others, apparently oblivious of the fact that she couldn’t dance. I couldn’t help but watch her nonetheless. I found myself an unopened can and settled down on a beanbag by the stereo to observe the fun.
It occurred to me that I’d never really understood what this ‘having fun’ business was all about. I understood pleasure and excitement, beauty and awe, humour and fascination, but not ‘fun’. Everyone here was laughing but nobody was doing anything particularly funny. People moved on the dance floor but none of them danced well. A few people seemed to be getting off with each other but there was nothing very erotic about it or even particularly illicit. Every record sounded the same. I longed for punk and techno and psychedelia. Even a bit of rock ’n’ roll or jazz wouldn’t have gone amiss. I felt somewhat superior and hugely inadequate at the same time. They knew no better and they were happy. Envy and contempt – how typical!
I leaned back and watched the girl stumble about.

I’m not sure when we got back to our place. It was getting light but I was still half expecting never to find it again. We sat in the kitchen having toast and coffee (I found some real coffee and a coffee pot, which I was fairly sure hadn’t been there before) and then we retreated to our rooms to sleep for a few hours. Later it stopped raining and I went out for a walk through the willows, down to the stream, and along the path to where the road crossed it at the far end. I still didn’t entirely trust that I could find my way back or that I wouldn’t be snatched by something as I passed but I got back ok, and just in time for the start of the evening session.

And that was more-or-less how things were. The weather got somewhat colder and damper and the days shorter, and an increasingly stale humid brown fug hung over the kitchen. People came and went and nobody seemed to wonder where or why. There was music on most of the time and either a spliff or a pipe doing the rounds to accompany it. There was a TV lounge further up the hall but it was not really comfortable and I didn’t go in there often. Mostly it was the boy’s room where they played computer games or watched horror movies on video. I found the violence in both seriously disturbing. The only relief was the parties. I liked to pretend I was above it all but I always went along hoping things would get interesting, and sometimes they did. Sometimes one or two of the girls would begin dancing close together, ‘inadvertently’ showing their knickers to us ‘boys’ sitting on the floor. Or there would be a game of dares – an obvious excuse for people to take their clothes off – usually the girls. (Why was it usually the girls? Not that I was complaining.) Later on there might be someone streaking through the house and out onto the street. That was more of a mixed event.

I wish I could say I knew how to handle the situation, with all my maturity and wisdom. I was at once disappointed in myself for not being able to just let go and join in, and disgusted with myself for not being able to tear myself away. It was not even especially sexy for much of the time. The girls were silly and giggly and ungainly on the dance floor. Very few of them would have turned my head under any other circumstances and the real exhibitionists were often the least attractive. I’m sure that wasn’t a coincidence.
The boy’s reactions (our reactions) were invariably crass and laddish or mumblingly self-conscious and we very seldom joined in with what the girls began. The most we’d do was take off our shirts and jig about ineffectually in the girl’s general vicinity, trying not to look too keen and in fact looking totally inept. As a result, much of the sexual activity, faked or otherwise, was among the girls. The only regular exceptions to this were when a few mean looking dudes with crew-cuts, tattoos and scars turned up. They’d be all but stripped and on the dance floor the moment any of the girls looked like they might try some of their routines. The men’s grimy or tanned arms seized the girl’s soft white bodies like a gang of snakes setting about a pet shop. We could do nothing but watch as they moved in on them, puppies and kittens, bunnies and chicks – powerless to save themselves.

Those occasions were unusual though. Generally the action was altogether less hard-core and I told myself that I was a voyeur – Lautrec at the Folies Bergere or some such. I even took to carrying a small sketch pad with me. (Quelle poseur!) But in truth, no matter how arrhythmic their routines, no matter how artless and staged the amateur lesbo porn – breasts nonetheless wobbled in low-cut tops and bottoms jiggled under short skirts. Tongues still writhed together and fingers explored and I throbbed fit to burst. You couldn’t fake that. I was at once sardonic and detached and hugely turned on. Disgusted as I would have been with myself, the fact is that I would have stripped off too and made any of those girls submit to me, if I could have, using nothing but raw self-confidence. And I’d have done it right there, shameless, in front of everyone (but perhaps with a little more dexterity.) Superficially I looked a lot like the mean dudes – mature and somewhat swarthy and grizzled from the streets. I was not an awkward youth any more, not like these numpties I hung around with most of the time. Was I a snake or was I a puppy? The truth is I was neither. I was a tortoise or an axolotl perhaps – peering out at them from my tank at the back of the menagerie.

One night two girls, one topless and hugely over-endowed, the other more slender in her bra and knickers, fell on top of me on the sofa. They’d been slow dancing and snogging in front of me for a while and now they were lying all over me, kissing and writhing, using my face as a pillow and my legs to rub themselves against. I suppose they were aware that someone was underneath them and perhaps found using a human being as a couch more interesting than just lying on an inanimate piece of furniture. It should have been a fantasy come true but I couldn’t see anything or hear what they whispered to each other. My hands could only reach their backs and they didn’t seem to want my lips to join theirs so there I was, squashed. Not wanting to poop on their party, I waited for them to finish. When they finally got off me one of them gave me a very lascivious smile. I suppose she thought they’d given me a very big treat but in fact by then I was as limp as a used condom. I found a book and went and sat on the stairs and waited for morning.

Voyage XVIII – Life-drawing

I felt so good yesterday. Seems like a very long time ago.
I’ve done it again. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how fucking stupid I am – every time. Unbelievable.
We’d been up on deck sitting in the sun, Lucy, Damian, Matt and I, and some of the others. I looked over the side and there was a branch floating by with green leaves on it still. I couldn’t believe it, after all this time, I don’t know how long – feels like months, there’s life out there. Huge black shapes, as long as the ship, rise and wallow a little way out. Fergus was with us. He told me they were not whales – they had the fins of fishes with rays and spines, and scales too. He said he’d never seen anything like them. The birds were not familiar to him either. Although they generally resembled the seabirds he’d known back in the world, they were wrong in detail. He couldn’t even work out what family they belonged to for sure. Matt and Damian were very interested in what he had to say. Damian couldn’t resist making comments about how you’d go about catching one and what they’d taste like. Lucy told him to stop being disgusting, but Fergus went on to tell us in great detail about some of the revolting things he’d been given to eat on his travels.
I was sitting directly opposite Lucy. She had her sunglasses on, so I couldn’t tell where she was looking. I tried not to look at her too much but I couldn’t help it. Once, when I realised I’d been staring at her legs for ages I looked up and she had this really knowing sort of smile on her lips - an ‘I know what you’re thinking’ expression. I know I went really red, but then she shifted a little and I could see almost all the way up her skirt. Those soft white thighs... I could have sworn she did it on purpose. Then she crossed her legs again. Everybody was laughing. I don’t know what at. I’m sure it wasn’t anything to do with me, but I hadn’t been paying attention. She looked over the top of her shades at me and asked me if I was alright, grinning dirtily at me all the while.

Later on it started to get chilly and we were going to go down to the bar. I wasn’t keen – not because I was scared of Harry and the others, but I just wanted to relax. Near the hatch, after the others had gone on ahead, Lucy turned to me and said ‘You could do some drawings of me now if you want to.’
I tried to act cool ‘Sure’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ll just get something to drink’ she said ‘and I’ll be with you. Ok?’
‘I’ll get set up in my cabin’ I said, my voice wobbling a little.
‘Ok. Can I get you anything?’
‘Some bubbly?’ I said. She looked a little surprised but I’d been drinking champagne a lot recently. And it seemed appropriate.

It seemed like ages before she arrived, and the champagne was a bit warm. I’d got a book out to try to look relaxed about it all but I was very tense. ‘You’ve made it nice in here’ she said as she came in the door, bottle in one hand, glasses in the other. I’d lit some candles and arranged cushions and covers on the bed.
‘How do you want me?’ she said smiling a little.
‘I don’t know’ I said. ‘I’ve not done this sort of thing much before. Errm... on the bed?’ and then I thought I should take charge more, so I showed her how I’d like her to pose.
‘Ok’ she said and began to take her boots off. I made vague noises – getting the easel adjusted, and arranging paper, glancing over – she was pulling her top over her head, smiling sideways at me, turning away from me, unclipping her bra – her breasts, I could see, falling free, moving the way only breasts can. She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it and then slipped her red silky knickers down. Turning toward me, I tried not to stare at the mass of thick, almost glossy black curls between her legs. She slid onto my bed, leant on my pillows, and arranged herself the way I’d asked, waiting to see what I’d do next.
I’d seen naked women before of course – in magazines. I knew what to expect. But I’d never seen a real one, still less been in my room with one. Still, I tried to maintain a pretence of cool. I fiddled with the paper, took some deep breaths and looked, I hoped, appraisingly at her again. I could see everything. I looked at everything, closely. I looked, long and hard. I was vaguely aware of the wicked smile on her face but I couldn’t stop looking. I wanted to strip off and climb onto her and writhe about, and thrash and tear at her and swallow her, sink myself into her.
‘Everything alright?’ she said. ‘Would you like me to move at all?’
I looked at her again. Now I could almost feel a different part of my brain taking over, leaving the other part to have its way with her. Yes I did want her to move a little. It occurred to me that the shape would be better if her hand was close to her thigh rather than actually on it. I went over and picked it up (Oh my god, the skin under her wrist, so silky soft) and laid it on the bed beside her. (I could smell her now, a scent I’d never come across before, but which I knew was simply pure, unadulterated woman. I went to bed with that scent until we disembarked.) I stood back. I looked at her. I looked at the paper until I could see her there, and then took up my charcoals and chalks, and began the process of sculpting her out of the grey, two-dimensional surface.
A tutor once tried to tell me that real art has nothing to do with sex, that working from a nude is no different from drawing a bowl of fruit (although the still life we then attempted was a banana and two apples, so perhaps he wasn’t being completely straight with us). The truest art, we were told, was as disinterested as mathematics. It was simply a matter of exploring shapes and colours. Nudes were simply a different shape to apples, and, he pointed out, they had the advantage of being mostly just the one colour all over, allowing us to concentrate purely on form. Any erotic sentiments, he said, talking specifically to girls giggling at the back, could only compromise technique and lead to second rate work.
He was a pompous prat, and now I knew he was wrong too. I’d never drawn so well, nor so easily in my life. Her form grew out of the paper as I ran my eyes over her, feeling exactly the shape and texture of every part of her, and transferring it precisely. I managed five drawings in different poses before my artist brain finally gave out and the part of my brain that was poised to fall on her and dive in took over. I almost passed out.
I didn’t know what to do next. I said something about taking a rest and sat down beside her. She smiled a little uncomfortably and moved over to give me room. ‘How about a drink?’ I said and went to fill our glasses again. The champagne was very warm now, but still better than nothing. She asked if she could put her socks on because her feet were cold.
When she’d done that and we were sat down together again I told her I thought she was very beautiful, that she had beautiful skin, and I held her hand and caressed the skin under her wrist.
We were at an uncomfortable angle. She was slightly behind me as I sat half on the bed, so when I turned to kiss her it was awkward. I hadn’t done this kind of thing much before – just Naomi really, but she had always been fully clothed, so I wasn’t feeling very confident. Anyway, when I twisted around and moved toward her face with mine she stopped me, firmly with her hand flat on my chest. I opened my eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, angry and apparently surprised. Her reaction simply made no sense so I pushed forward again. I suppose that part of my brain that was in control now had assumed that there must be some sort of hallucination going on and chose to ignore it, but she pushed again, slid out sideways and stood beside the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ she said again, this time with some derision in her voice. I looked at her again. She was still naked (apart from the socks), I could still smell her, I could still have touched her. I couldn’t think of anything whatsoever to do. I let her get dressed and go. She didn’t look at the pictures at all. I went up on deck. It was a nightmare.
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Journey VIII – In The Wilderness

We soon discovered why nobody had tried to stop us. They knew no one would be stupid enough to go running out into the wilderness.

It seemed like the best thing to do was to move on as quickly as possible. Miranda agreed. I checked the equipment, took one last look the way we’d come and we set off up the slope into the forest.
Later on, sitting at the campfire, chewing on the bones of some sort of wild chicken that Miranda had chased down, I asked her, just conversationally, if that was how all after-life settlements were going to be. She looked at me with a troubled expression and said nothing. I was happy though. If that was the case then that meant I wasn’t going to be settling anywhere any time soon and we’d have more time together, but I sensed she didn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to spend time with me she told me and I believed her. It was just... ‘complicated’ she said and then I just felt sad again because I knew she would have to go at some time. I’ve never been any good at putting things out of my mind.
The night passed uneventfully but I didn’t feel sleepy. I watched Miranda sitting there. She was thinking but she wouldn’t tell me what about. It felt like she really wanted to be somewhere else. Sometimes she looked up or turned around – like I’ve seen small animals do when they’ve heard something inaudible to the human ear, or picked up a scent. Then she turned back, glancing over at me, propped up in my sleeping bag, to see if I’d noticed. I pretended not to. (I remember realising, with some surprise that she was about a foot tall now. When had that happened?)
We kept moving – she insisted on it. She said we’re not out of the woods yet and I thought of making a joke about it because obviously we were deep in the forest, but I didn’t say anything. I was just enjoying the scenery. I’d felt nothing of the ‘presence’ I’d felt before. As far as I was concerned it was just another fabulous spring day.
And I watched Miranda’s little body, no longer very thoroughly covered with my scarf. Its hem barely covered her bottom now and I stayed alert for glimpses of what lay underneath, following her as we climbed whenever I could. I couldn’t help it. Of course she knew what I was doing but I didn’t realise I was so obvious at the time. I felt guilty and horny more or less equally and very immature but after all, there were larger pieces of fabric in the bag. She didn’t have to keep on wearing that one. And it was wearing very thin in places too. She said she liked the colour.
Anyway, we travelled uneventfully for the next week or so and our conversation fell into the same half playful – half serious groove it had been in before. She told me more about her childhood and the friends she’d had and places she’d been when she was alive – things she said she’d not thought about for a very long time, things about her mother and the place they’d lived in when she was little, up in Snowdonia. She told me she’d finally ‘checked out’ in ’74, but she’d done everything, and didn’t regret any of it. I knew that wasn’t quite true but I didn’t argue. She had good memories of the sixties and a lot of parties and festivals. She’d seen Bowie and T Rex and The Small Faces and I was very envious. She described for me some of the parties and the bizarre things that had gone on. She didn’t talk about the drugs specifically but I got the impression that they were heavily involved.
And it was good that summer – sleeping in the sun, swimming in ponds, watching the animals and plants do their things. One morning we watched a vast herd of immense shaggy beasts pass by in the valley below, crashing through the undergrowth and churning up the ground. They were accompanied by tall, stocky grey giraffe-like animals and some long-legged birds. I thought it was all fabulous and Miranda was very excited too. She said she was so happy she could show me all this. Then she told me to keep very still and pointed out another animal, something like a cross between a wolf and a wild pig moving stealthily along, keeping pace with the herd.
‘It’s ok’ she said. ‘They’re not very bright and I still remember some of my old guide tricks, but better safe than sorry.’
I’d never been so scared in my life but I thought it was magnificent. Later on, after dark we could still hear the herd going past. There must have been millions of animals out there on the move, each as big as a bus. I asked her what she meant by guide tricks and tried to make a joke about baking cookies and doing the ironing but she ignored me and said some vague things about covering our scent and camouflaging ourselves but I knew that wasn’t the whole story. She was hiding something. I also asked if the animals were in their afterlives, like we were and she said they probably were. They ate and hunted and mated and migrated just as they had in life because they still had their instincts. But they never died, and they never reproduced. ‘They just keep on going, forever’ she said, a little sadly I thought. I wanted to ask how they could survive being eaten but decided I didn’t want to know.
Another night, a few days I suppose later on, we were sitting by the tent looking out across an infinite ocean of grassland with patches of woodland and pools of water like islands randomly scattered across it. It was a clear night and everything was picked out in silver, and quite suddenly I realised there was a sound coming from across the way. I suppose I’d been dozing or maybe just thinking. Miranda looked up at me to see if I’d noticed. The sound was so subtle, like the wind in the trees or rippling the water. It was hard to tell where it was coming from. We sat very still.
‘Best not to disturb them’ she said and nodded a little to our right. There was a ghostly movement in the grass. When I looked directly at it there was nothing to see but I knew they were there. I could feel them somehow. It was as if I could perceive their feelings. It was as if they were nothing but feelings and I could plainly feel them passing by - sad, confused, lonely, and yet wondering vaguely if perhaps things might be better somewhere else.
‘Where are they going?’ I whispered to her.
‘Home’ she whispered back to me and cuddled my arm, like she was suddenly very cold.
‘Where’s that?’ I said.
‘No one knows’ she replied.
Gradually they passed by, in little groups or lone individuals. The yearning in them so strong by the time they came parallel with us I swear I could almost see them – just the merest trace of a person, a feint grey sketch, all substance erased and just this one thought left – to find a place to rest.

The next day we packed up and moved purposefully on, as if we had somewhere to be, but I could see Miranda was even more preoccupied than usual and I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking ‘That’ll be me, one day.’ And she didn’t know if it was better to keep going like this for as long as possible, with me, or to just give in to it.

Anyway, before long it looked like the decision was going to be made for us. Some of the lost were less content to pass peacefully into oblivion.

Something woke me up. I still don’t exactly know what. It was like a sudden drop in temperature or pressure. The woods were utterly silent. I glanced around looking for Miranda and there was just enough light to make out her tiny crouched form staring fixedly at the entrance, waiting, petrified.
I said ‘What’s happening?’ and she just said ‘They’ve found us.’
I got up and slithered toward the door on my belly but she leapt on me and begged me to be still. I wanted to ask what had happened but she fiercely shushed me and made me lie flat.
‘They might not have seen us’ she said in a desperate shrill voice but then there was a sound, a deep groan that I felt through the ground rather than heard exactly. I thought maybe it was a machine, something huge. It reminded me of the sound of the engines, thrumming constantly in the background when we were at sea. But we were in a forest, on a mountainside. And in any case it wasn’t a mechanical sound. It was a voice, or many voices. We felt it become quieter, moving away down the slope and I thought it had gone but then there was another sound, harsher somehow, rushing across the place where we were lying flat on the ground, sweeping down through the tree tops and then whining back in from another direction, flattening us again. I whimpered a little from the pressure in my skull.
It happened three more times that night and each time was like it might never end. I waited in dread for the next one and we were both sat rigidly upright when the dawn came, staring at the doorway (as if something like that would bother with a door.) By morning I was utterly incoherent and we sat in the sun, twitching at every sound.
As soon as there was enough light we packed everything up and moved on.

After a lot of seemingly random scurrying about I had to ask her if she knew where we were going. For the first time since I’d left the boat the path seemed to be petering out and Kevin had told me the most important thing was to stick to the path, whatever happens. Now, here, there seemed to be a whole maze of weak, twisting, overgrown paths, and places that looked as if they might once have been paths but were now just random clearings among the trees. Time and time again we came to places where the way was blocked and I knew we were in trouble. Miranda said nothing to me but her movements had an increasingly frantic pace and she began to mutter to herself. When I asked her what was happening she told me to let her sort it out and there was nothing I could do. She looked at me with contempt and exasperation, then tried to apologise when she saw the hurt expression on my face but there was no time to talk. All too soon the sun was motoring off into the distance again. It was too late. The path disappeared altogether and we came to a slope of boulders, come down among the trees off the side of the mountain above. We hopped and slipped and staggered our way some way up. I knew she no longer knew what she was doing. We were just trying to get out into whatever remaining light there might be, as if that might stop them, whatever they were. She still hadn’t told me.

Miranda and I made it to a relatively large clearing just as the light failed. We sat on a rock too small and craggy to pitch a tent on, surrounded by thorn scrub and watched the night move in among the trees. The forest here was like a spruce plantation. Ranks of tall, perfectly vertical black trunks surrounded the clearing on all sides and receded endlessly into the wet fog, apparently into infinity. I looked up at the canopy of sea green needles above, merging into the haze as night and drizzle descended on us. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I felt her reach for my hand and huddle against me. ‘I’m so sorry’ she said and began to cry, slow heavy tears. ‘I have been so selfish’ she said. All I could do was hold her close and stroke her hair. I said ‘It’s ok. We’ll be ok’ and she just looked at me with an expression that simply asked how I could be so dim. But she was grateful for it. I sensed that.

When nothing happened immediately I asked her what it was we were running from and, because she knew there was no point wasting time hiding any more she sat up, dried her eyes and told me I wouldn’t see them probably. They would come for us, cautiously at first because they were afraid of us too, and they couldn’t see very well or move very easily, but when they knew where we were, and how alone we were, and how powerless... Then they’d come. I asked who ‘they’ were and she told me they were the lost – her kind, the hopeless and the despairing. The way I looked at her I suppose showed my scepticism. They sounded tragic, certainly, but not dangerous. She shook her head. ‘You don’t get it’ she said and at that moment I saw the first movement among the trees at the foot of the slope. She saw it too and at the same time I heard that same low mournful note echoing up and down the valley below, hunting for us it seemed, blindly, casting about.
‘What’s doing that?’ I yelled over the row. We heard it coming up towards us again and crouched down against the rock as it came down. I looked up and all the trees were bending and twisting as if something was trying to wrench them down. But of the thing itself, all I saw a darkening wave in the air as it went past – nothing more.
‘Despair’ she said. ‘Endless despair’ and I was immediately aware of figures watching us from the edge of the clearing, barely distinguishable from the silhouettes of the ferns and brushwood they stood amongst, but undoubtedly there. They were just pale forms standing about in the undergrowth with just the trace of a face – just a smudge for eyes and mouth. I never saw one move but every time I looked back they were a little closer. I swung around and found they were standing all around us, just a few feet away, and with that impossible clamour in the air, swirling like a tornado above us, thrashing the branches about, I stood up and yelled at them. I stood up and I screamed ‘Fuck off! Fuck off and leave us alone!’

Everything stopped. The noise tailed off and settled to a hum. They were all very close. Miranda was crouched at my feet transfixed and shaking somewhat, waiting for the worst and I stood there watching them all, staring them out, not taking my eyes off them. Eventually I couldn’t stand up any more and I crouched down but I watched them all night, with Miranda sat there beside me, waiting for a move that never came. When the sun came along she was asleep and I carried her out of the clearing and along the ridge and onto a well-worn path, exactly where I knew it would be.
After a while I pitched the tent and lit a fire, all the while letting her sleep. Then, by mid morning I had to lie down too, just as she was blearily beginning to move about. She let me sleep.
Later, when we had both recovered a little she said ‘It’ll be a bright night tonight. No clouds. They won’t be back tonight.’ We knew they’d watch us but they weren’t going to try anything. I wasn’t even sure now that they were going to do anything to us. They just seemed to want to look at us. I was sure they weren’t like the first group we’d seen, out on the savannah. The feeling was quite different. 
Looking at them standing around in that clearing the night before, the only thing I’d felt was emptiness and loneliness and cold but they were attracted by our warmth and liveliness. They wanted it and hated it at the same time and if they got close enough I knew they’d extinguish it. I wasn’t sure whether they understood that, or anything, for that matter. They just had to come and find us, to be near us, to look at us. I wondered where Miranda fitted into all this.

After several uneventful nights she began to tell me a few things. We’d been travelling along broad ancient roads cut into the hillsides and with traces of cobbling still visible in some places. We were making good time, beginning to talk more normally, as we had before, but I knew she was keeping things from me.
We were sitting looking into the embers and she said ‘That was very brave of you, back there, swearing at them.’ I knew she was being sarcastic but I pretended to take it as a compliment.
I said ‘I was just sick of waiting for them to do something.’
I suppose I was being a bit cocky.
‘Well you were lucky’ she replied after a while. ‘We both were.’
‘Well it was a lot of noise and so on but really, what could they do?’
‘We were lucky’ she said again, looking intently into my face.
I couldn’t accept that. I’d been the hero after all. ‘I don’t know’ I said ‘I just thought they needed a bit of standing up to. I think they responded...’
‘You confused them. That’s all. They didn’t know what to do about you. And yes, you may be right. Maybe they’ll just leave us alone now. I don’t know.’

Something about her tone brings me back down to earth, or wherever. I want to know what she knows about them, what her connection with them is and she begins to prevaricate again but I push her for an answer.
‘You know them don’t you.’
She looks away, then finally, she nods.
‘Ok. Are you one of them?’
‘In a way, yes. But it’s not that simple. Gabriel please...’
‘Why aren’t you with them. Why didn’t you stay with them? I mean, I don’t want you to go, but...’
She sits and says nothing again but I think she will talk eventually so I wait. We sit and look into the embers a bit more and I decide to get up and throw some more wood on, to keep it going a bit longer. I stand up. They’re still out there. I know it. She knows it. It occurs to me that maybe she fell in love with me, like in those old stories about squaws and cowboys and now she’s trying to protect me from her people. Maybe that’s it. I can’t ask her though. It would sound ridiculous.
‘The thing you have to remember Gabriel’ she says at last, almost inaudibly ‘is that nothing’s cut and dried here. It’s not them and us, or you and us rather. It’s all rather confusing...’ I watch her trying to formulate her sentences, explain to me without getting herself into even more trouble, because she is in trouble. I can see that.
‘But you are one of the lost spirits, right?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. Please Gabriel. I’m trying to...’
‘You’re nearly lost, or something. You said something like that. Is that why you’re so small?’ And I see her begin to cry. I reach out to her but she turns her back on me and curls up. She looks especially small now and I suddenly realise it’s because she’s far away. It’s a trick of perspective. She doesn’t shrink and grow at all. She gets further away or closer. How strange. I sit down and want to cry a little too. It all seems too terrible but she turns on me and says, very fiercely ‘Don’t you start’ and I’m not sure if she’s joking. I look about to see if they’re closing in again. I can’t see anything.
‘I...’ she begins, leaning back ‘I just sort of hitched a lift, you know? With you. I liked the look of you, so I... We do that some times. Like a final fling, you know?’
‘Did you want to trap me, get me lost too?’
‘I don’t... No. Not really. You don’t... we don’t, think, exactly. It’s not planned. We don’t think “Ooh I’ll have him. I’ll make him one of us.” It’s not like that.’
‘But you could have.’
‘Could have what?’
‘Made me like you. Couldn’t you?’
‘Maybe...’
‘Maybe?’
‘You looked like... I thought you might be. I don’t know...’
‘You thought I looked hopeless. But I’m not, am I?’
She says nothing for a while, then looks up at me and says ‘Make us a coffee will you?’ and I can see exactly how she was when she died, that sadness on her face. I know it. I’ve seen it before.
I get the coffee pot out and find some water. She just sits and looks into the newly roaring fire.
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