Voyage XIII – The Leaving Do

I don’t think I was expecting very much but I have to hand it to Paul – he knows how to throw a party. Of course the bar was always free but he managed to get them to relocate up onto the deck and he asked the chefs to do a barbecue there too. I was involved in going through the library after some likely looking tunes to play. A few passengers had musical instruments with them and there were other performers among us – a poet, a contortionist and a rather risqué cabaret singer. (This is what happens when your catchment area includes Brighton.) Another group insisted on organising party games. We arranged the chairs for an audience but planned to move them back later if people felt like dancing. Tuxedos were obtained from somewhere for the men and the girls were very secretive about what they would be wearing. Normally I wouldn’t have been caught dead in a tux but it seemed a bit late to be worrying about that. There were lights and bunting and we decorated the rails and ropes with them as best we could. By the time it was dark there was quite an excited atmosphere.
I was determined not to let things get to me. As will be obvious by now, parties had never been a good place for me – not because I don’t want to have a good time. Possibly I want to have a good time too much. Anyway the strategy I decided on here was to sit toward the back and remain a little detached – do some people watching. This was not the first time I’d attempted this strategy but I was willing to give it another go tonight.
The first hitch was Fiona dragging me to a seat near the front and insisting I ‘loosen up’. Paul was sitting joking with the Asians and making an unsubtle play for one of the women. She didn’t seem to be objecting as much as I’d have expected.
‘You take yourself a bit too seriously Gabriel if you don’t mind my saying so’ he said, leaning over and ruffling my hair. The booze seemed to be working better than usual. Trevor grinned at my discomfort.

I shan’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say the revelry went on until dawn and I did not get off with Fiona. I still couldn’t find her attractive enough. I spent the whole evening half expecting Andrea to make a fabulous entrance in a gorgeous low cut frock or something, but I did my best to enjoy myself, and I did a lot of dancing and eating and drinking, and even got chatting to a few people I’d not talked to before. Isn’t it strange how easy it is to make friends when you know everything’s coming to an end? We chatted about where we would be going next, and whether we’d be able to choose who we travelled with. We were all quite excited at the prospect. As we’d neared our destination over the last few days we’d seen the land in more and more detail and could make out fields and buildings among the hills and woodlands. It all looked very verdant and well tended. For the first time I really began to think about what it might mean to stay here, to find a place to be and let the years slowly melt into one another until time became meaningless and the day-to-day was all that mattered. I could imagine that happening in the landscape we were passing. I wondered if there would be a woman there I could fall in love with. I wouldn’t have to be unemployed and homeless and mad and she could see me for who I genuinely was and for the first time ever, I knew that that would be a good thing. I went back and I danced with Fiona and with Cathy and I really did have a good time.

Harvey said he’d been talking to his guide about what I’d said about being reborn. I said I couldn’t remember what I’d said and he had to remind me.
‘There’s a problem with two people both being reborn and both changing their lives’ he said. I looked confused at him.
‘Ok’ he said. ‘Supposing you arrange to meet a young lady you’ve met here, in your next life. Both of you will be changing your lives in order to meet.’
‘Ok’ I said.
‘But...’ he continued. ‘But Brian, my guide, maintains that the only changes in your new life can be those wrought by yourself, so...’
‘So she cannot be expecting to meet me?’
‘Precisely, but it’s more complicated than that, because this girl might be engineering a meeting with you in her new life, as you will be in yours, but the chap she meets (you) will not be expecting her, and your girl will not be expecting you. You see?’
‘Because their lives will be the same as the ones they lived during my previous incarnation...’
‘Except to the extent you alter it for them.’
‘What?’ Bryony has been listening in on all this and looks doubtful. ‘What the hell are you guys blathering about?’ She looks quite drunk and holds her wine glass at a worrying angle. She certainly is wearing a fabulous low cut frock, but made of something black and clingy. I’d love to say something meaningful about it but as usual, can’t think of anything. I tell myself I’m waiting for Andrea anyway.
‘Parallel realities my sweet’ says Harvey putting on his most unctuous voice. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ She slaps him playfully with her fan and walks away swaying her arse provocatively at us. We both take a moment to appreciate it and Cathy comes over and slaps him too, with her gloves. ‘Hey...’ he says and she sits herself down into his lap and surveys the crowd, which is getting lively. After a time she turns and drains his glass and asks what we were talking about. She looks fabulous too in a little creamy number. In fact everyone looks fabulous and I begin to well up. Harvey gets up, dropping Cathy in his place, says do I want another? and heads for the bar. Cathy leans on me and giggles. I want to put my arm around her – just in a friendly way but feel uncomfortable about it, with Harvey and her being together and all.
‘You’re a silly boy, aren’t you’ she says.
‘Am I?’ and suddenly I’m eight again, with one of my sexier aunties.
‘Will you promise me something?’ she says.
‘I’ll try’ I say, brightly, hopefully.
‘Not try’ she says. ‘Do. I want you to promise me that when you go back into life you will grab it by the bosom with both hands, and stop all this shilly-shallying about. Find yourself a nice young lady and travel the world with her. Will you do that for me?’
I want to say it’s not as simple as that, but I say ‘Yes, absolutely’ and mean it, more or less.
‘The thing is’ interjects Harvey returning suddenly and pulling up a third chair opposite us. Cathy has her arm around my shoulders. He doesn’t seem to mind. ‘The thing is, what this implies is a whole lot of people going back, all intent on changing their lives, all needing an unchanged world to go back to, hence, multiple worlds. And if you have billions of people doing this, each going through several incarnations, we are talking about a very large number of parallel worlds indeed. Do you catch my drift?’
‘Yes, but Brian said that doesn’t happen didn’t he darling’ says Cathy languorously sliding back onto his lap.
‘Well, with all due respect, perhaps he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ says Harvey nuzzling under her hair.
‘And perhaps you don’t know what you’re talking about, darling, with all due respect.’
‘Maybe you need a good spanking’ he whispers, rather too audibly in her ear and she leaps up and grabs his hand and forces him onto the dance floor. Harvey looks back helplessly at me but what can I do? I just grin at him. Then Fiona is with me and asks how I am getting on. I say I’m ok and point out Harvey hoofing clumsily to some Sly and the Family Stone we miraculously found in an old box in the forward lounge. Fiona laughs and then points out Paul with the Asian girl, evidently getting on very well indeed.
‘Well my date hasn’t turned up at all’ I say, looking around, again. Fiona does not seem put out I am pleased to note. The alcohol is apparently not that effective, and I still don’t find her attractive.
‘I saw her down in the bar. You mean that guide, what’s her name?’
‘Andrea?’
‘That’s her. She said all the guides were coming up soon...’
And I can feel my heart leaping about in its cage. I almost feel sick. Should I go down and find her? Suppose she changes her mind? What if she’s pissed off that I’m hassling her? And then I realise it’s not up to her. It’s up to me. What do I want to do? I want to go down and find her, that’s what. If it’s the wrong thing to do, well, maybe she’s not the girl for me after all. I get up to go. ‘Sorry’ I say to Fiona.
‘Go’ she says waving her hand to dismiss me, but smiling nevertheless.

I arrive in the entrance to the bar in my waistcoat, tie askew, and see them, the guides, also in their suits and posh frocks, crowded at a table in the middle of the room, laughing and joking. I hesitate to interrupt. They’re still in charge after all, and they seem to be having a good time without us. Then I catch sight of Andrea, sitting on the table in their midst, laughing at something with a champagne flute in her hand. I can see she is indeed wearing something low cut, but it is something ethnic, as she would put it, something in cerise. I move a little closer and hate myself for my hesitancy. Then I think ‘Sod it’ and stride up and she turns and beams at me and I grin back.
‘What kept you?’ she says happily. All the others turn to look at me. I don’t care.
‘You look absolutely beautiful’ I say and smile and nod my head sideways indicating the stairs and the party above and she hops down and pushes her way through the others, glass aloft, gives me her arm and lets me lead her on deck. I have nothing to say. I am just so deliriously happy.

I’d like to say we spent the night together in the fleshly sense but we didn’t. After much dancing and laughing with the others we cuddled up in a lounger and watched the land get closer and the sun loom up out of the distance like a train coming out of a tunnel.
‘This doesn’t often happen you know’ she said as the sky turned from black to lapis lazuli.
‘What, the party?’
‘Oh no - this is quite normal, but no, I mean us, like this.’
‘Unprofessional?’
‘Well, there is that, but being a guide – it’s a difficult situation.’
‘Do you think I’d make a good guide?’
‘I honestly believe you have too much to live for Gabriel. You need to go back.’
‘What about you?’
‘I will, someday. I’m not done yet.’ And we sit and chat and I take the chance to ask her more about her life. She tells me about her father and how he wouldn’t talk to her for years because she wouldn’t go into practice with him and ‘justify his investment’. She goes on to tell me a little more about Africa – not about the horrible things, but how she loved the people she met, and, toward the end, how she had such hopes for the future there. She’d been HIV positive for years when they finally brought her home to die. She’d been one of the last people ever to die of AIDS. She didn’t say it with any anger. She reckoned she’d had a good life.
We sit quietly for a while and then I ask her about what Harvey said about the billions of parallel universes, if that was all true.
‘No’ she says. ‘They’re always arguing this at the academy...’
‘There’s an academy?’
‘It’s like a university. Guides can go there to get trained, and there’s research, publishing. It’s all very disorganised but they do seem to have some insight into what’s going on here – how all this works.’
‘And what do they say, about this parallel universe thing?’
‘People who know they’re living again recognise each other sometimes. I don’t know how it works, but there is just the one universe apparently.’
I want to ask if she thinks we could really meet again but in a way, I don’t want to know. I let it go. We look at the view some more. It’s a beautiful view but I am not relaxed. Sitting half behind her, with her half on my lap I feel her weight pressing against me, and with my arms around her I can feel her soft curvy body through the thin material, and I cannot help but watch her breasts rising and falling, soft and pale. She turns and kisses me on the lips and I am shaking from it.
‘It’s not professionalism I’m worried about’ she says quietly. ‘I can’t go further with this because I know we will have to go our separate ways tomorrow. Can you just hold me and talk to me – is that ok?’ She looks away. I nod and kiss her behind her ear and find I am suddenly very relaxed. And I’m more than ok with it. It’s far more than I ever realistically hoped for.

Journey XII – Escape from paradise

I didn’t leave the next morning, or the morning after that. I told myself I was gathering as large a group as possible to give us the best possible chance of survival, and that was partly true, but I was also waiting for Sophie to change her mind. Back in my mushy pea bedroom at the hostel, it hadn’t been occupied during my absence and seemed smaller and drearier than ever. What was more, autumn had put a damp chill in the air again. I’d never had a girlfriend before so I’d never split up before. The pain was deep and throbbing in my heart and my head and I didn’t know what to do about it. Part of me just wanted to go back and be with her for however long it took but the old wise man part of me knew we couldn’t be happy like that any more. We both knew she’d have to move on sooner or later but I knew my staying would not help. I hung onto the piece of paper with our date on it and wished.

So far, I knew James and Liam were interested in coming, and there were three or four others who’d said they had grown bored of this place but whose eyes betrayed something else – some disturbance they would not admit to. Ian said he’d come along ‘for a laugh’. He had little time for my attachment. ‘She’s just a wet dream’ he told me. ‘She’s the love interest. She’s not real. Nothing here is.’
I couldn’t help wondering if he was right. It didn’t seem real.
On the fourth day Gina turned up. Although of course I was overjoyed to see her I thought this might be a set back – further proof that my theory about the disappearances was just paranoia but she hugged herself miserably and wasn’t at all the way she had been before. ‘Can we just go?’ she said. I asked about Aaron but she just shook her head. I put word out that we were leaving as early as possible next morning. She slept in my bed. I lay on the floor.

In the morning, not as early as I’d have liked, I found twelve people on the lawn outside, waiting for me. James and Liam I recognised, and a couple of the girls. Ian wasn’t there. ‘He went out last night’ explained one of the girls, shrugging. I wasn’t surprised. Gina was standing behind me too so that made fourteen. I’d never been a leader before. The responsibility struck me quite forcibly and I didn’t know what to say. I felt like telling them all the problems I’d listed in my head – why we probably wouldn’t get anywhere, and then wouldn’t be able to find our way back. Gina evidently saw my expression and stepped forward.
‘We all know we have to get away from here, don’t we?’ Everybody nodded, more or less apprehensively. ‘Ok’ she said and turned to me. ‘Tell us what you have in mind Gabriel.’ I smiled and thanked her.
I had explained a lot of this to James and the others over the last few days, and to Gina the previous night. Basically I wanted to stick to the ‘head east’ plan. I had some rope from my room (‘Don’t ask’ I said. Only Gina smiled) and we roped ourselves together like mountaineers. ‘Won’t they have knives...to cut it with?’ said someone quietly. We all looked at her, and then at each other. Then they all looked at me. ‘It’s better than nothing’ I said and carried on knotting.
‘Ok’ I said when it was as good as it was going to get. ‘The plan basically is to head as close to due east as possible all day and just get as far as we can, then find somewhere indoors to stay for the night, stay together, keep an eye on each other. Don’t let anyone go missing. Ok? Have we got everyone?’ They all nodded. I was growing into my part. I looked back at Gina. I felt like breaking down inside.
‘I think she’ll be ok’ she said, guessing what was on my mind. I nodded but wasn’t convinced.

We walked in a huddle, passing through increasingly unfamiliar but endlessly similar streets, parks and alleys. It was a nice, bright day and we were in good spirits and one of the girls came up with some songs to sing – mostly old Abba and Duran Duran songs everyone knew. About mid afternoon Ian rushed at us out of a side street. We all thought we were being attacked and screamed appropriately, which amused him greatly.
‘Is this a private conga, or can anyone join in?’ he said. We roped him in and carried on.

The party atmosphere fizzled out somewhat as it got dark. Looking around us everything was much the same as where we’d come from and more than one of us said something about going around in circles. As luck would have it we found a party, which we crashed and that was us sorted for the first night. In the morning there were only thirteen of us. None of us could think who was missing but we comforted ourselves with the opinion that we’d all considered going back and that was probably what had happened. Someone at the party said he wanted to come along so we roped him in too and said our goodbyes.
The next day went largely as before, although the atmosphere was less jolly, more stoical. We marched in silence, stopping from time to time for a breather and to get our bearings. I was grateful the sun was out or we wouldn’t have known where we were going. That night another, more sedate gathering was found and we were invited in for dinner with some very posh people. The house though was in the same dilapidated, half decorated state as all the others we’d seen. Gina sat beside me on a cushion after we’d eaten and we drank a bottle of wine together.
‘How are you bearing up?’ she said.
‘I honestly don’t know’ I said.
‘You’re thinking about her.’
‘Yes.’
‘I really do think she’ll be ok.’
I showed her my piece of paper and she smiled. I’m not sure either of us believed it was likely to happen, but it proved she had existed. My handwriting had never been that neat.
‘She said it would be perfect that day. She’d be twenty-six, I’d be thirty-five. Looks like she’d given it some serious thought.’
‘She really cared about you. I suppose you guessed she wasn’t exactly chaste before you met her...’
‘It did cross my mind.’
‘She never stayed with anyone for very long bless her. But she stayed with you, and she would have...’ and I’m crying, silently into my hands. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said...’ she says, putting her arm around me, not in a formal way, but genuinely, generously. She rests her head on my shoulders as I bend over, weeping.
‘Maybe I should have stayed with her’ I blub into my lap, and all she can say is ‘It’ll be ok, you’ll both be ok’ because there really isn’t an answer, and we both know that.
‘You loved each other didn’t you’ she says, once I’ve pulled myself together.
‘I think so, yes. I loved her. I never told her.’
‘I think she knew.’
‘Can we stop talking in the past tense please?’
‘She knows.’
‘We love each other.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s probably sleeping with someone else already’ I say, trying for levity.
‘Actually I don’t think so’ says Gina seriously. ‘I think it’s going to take a while.’
‘But at least then she wouldn’t be alone.’
‘That’s very true’ she says.

The morning of the third day is the worst. There are five people missing, including Liam, and I can’t believe he would have just wandered off. We stand around indecisively and it takes Ian, physically pulling us out the door yelling ‘Ta for having us’ over his shoulder to get us moving.
Wandering around that day the streets seem to be arranged deliberately to send us back on ourselves, curving back the way we came. We eventually resort to cutting through gardens – hacking through hedges and scaling walls to get to the next street over. It’s very slow going but Ian is like a one man SAS team and actually finds himself a machete from somewhere to cut us a path through the undergrowth. A couple of times we have to untie ourselves to scale a wall and that must have been when we lost two more of the group. Nobody heard them go but we are aware of strange distortions and reverberations in the air around us, as if one scene is being replaced by another. Spot the difference. As dusk approaches I notice brightly lit upstairs windows and I know for sure that’s where they are, because it’s not like the horror films, this place. Here it is the monsters that turn all the lights on so they can see what they’re doing and play loud music while they do it, because it is they who own this place, not us. Here it is we who have to skulk around in the dark.
What’s more there are no signs of other people anywhere – no parties or other gatherings. It occurs to me that at least we are away from where we started but I’m not sure we are in a better place. We look around for somewhere to spend the night but cannot bring ourselves to go inside anywhere. On top of that the night is overcast and tending to drizzle and we don’t want to keep walking. We stand in a tight huddle, all looking restlessly outward, jumping at every tiny sound, real or imagined. Then we find a tree in an open area of grass and huddle around it. It’s cold and wet. None of us can sleep. We watch the night away. Even so, by morning we are two down. Ian is nowhere to be seen. Someone suggests, only half joking that maybe he went to do a recce. It would be just like him – stupid bastard.

But it was a sunny day again, the trees beginning to turn for autumn and we stretched and untangled ourselves and started out.
It took us a while to realise that things had changed. As we walked along it became obvious that there were more open spaces here, the gardens were bigger and the houses further apart. The road had something of the look of those ‘unadopted’ roads you come across sometimes among otherwise ordinary suburbs – potholed and overgrown. Coming to a rise in the lane there was some new sense of open spaces in the distance – of a less curved, claustrophobic world, more of a landscape. In short, we were coming into the outskirts and our mood lifted decidedly. Once more there was song and silliness in the ranks. ‘Told you’ I said to anyone who would listen.

Of course it wasn’t over yet. We were still stuck in the edge of town that night. The houses out here were mainly bungalows, or low, wide two-storey buildings. Since two of us had disappeared when we were outside in the open the night before it was decided we might as well be warm and dry in danger as wet and cold in danger. We broke into a likely looking house while it was still light and got ourselves settled in. It was fairly simple art deco place with big curved steel framed windows at the front. We felt like the owners might come home at any moment and demand an explanation.
There was food in the freezer, which was still somehow working, and tins in the cupboard and a microwave so we got ourselves things to eat and drink. Then we made our way up to the main bedroom, which had plenty of soft furnishings to curl up in and a huge window taking up the whole of the front and with a panoramic view across the roof tops. There were only seven of us by now. James had gone. I didn’t notice when that had happened. We looked at each other with a grim resolve and prepared ourselves for a siege. We barricaded the door with cupboards and chairs and arranged all the bedding we could find on mattresses on the floor, making a kind of fortress between the twin beds next to the window. It was like being a kid again, playing soldiers and we settled in there with books and munchies as it began to get dark. We half-heartedly attempted to organise a watch rota but were aware that such attempts at organisation never seemed to work here – not least because there were no clocks.
We thought we might as well introduce ourselves. There were four girls and three guys, Gina and I included. Lisa and Diane seemed to have paired off with Warren and Nicholas. That left Meg, who luckily was the most cheerful and organised of all of us – the one who had lead the singing on the way here. She was quieter now since her friend, Alice had gone missing but she kept a very stiff upper lip throughout. We lit the lamps and settled down to our books, all together under the blankets and quilts. Nobody spoke much. Meg tried to start a game of charades but none of us was in the mood. Slowly, everything outside the room dropped into darkness and we were lost together on our tiny island of light. We hardly dared speak, just waited, painfully awake for whatever had to happen to us.

Andrea IX – First moves

‘Ok’ she says as soon as I come in the door. ‘Let's cut to the chase.’
I wait to see what she will say next but she indicates my seat and I obediently go and sit down.
‘I’d have had you’ she says. ‘I’m not going to, in case you were wondering, but you’re a good looking bloke, funny and intelligent, or can be when the mood takes you, when you’re not being a pompous ass, and I for one, would have been only too happy, in life, to give you a damn good seeing to, probably.’
This is very odd, and I have to smile. Up until what seems like a few months ago I was a dodgy old geezer with a paunch, in a shed, taking pride in his parsnips.
‘The trouble is’ she continues, ‘you don’t ever seem to have realised this. You went through your life treating sex as if it was charity – like some caring soul might give you a shag if they felt sorry enough for you, and as I’m sure you realise, it ain’t like that, so...’ She sits heavily down in her arm chair. ‘What are we going to do about it?’
I love this woman. She is truly magnificent.
‘We could do it now’ I suggest. ‘That might help.’
‘No. That would be cheating.’
‘All’s fair and so forth...’
‘Whatever. I was thinking about what you said the other day and it seems to me that the moral of the story is not that you have to have the biggest cock, but that you have to be prepared to get it out and use it.’
‘But not in the middle of the road.’
‘No, but you know what I mean.’ I nod. I can see she means business now, so I settle down and pay attention.
‘So I’m over by the buffet as you will recall. You’re eyeing me up...’
‘You probably wouldn’t have noticed – I was very surreptitious.’
‘I’d have noticed. Trust me. But you, for your part, do nothing because A. you’re afraid of making a twat of yourself and B. I’m too good for you anyway. Yes?’
‘Guilty as charged.’
‘Ok, let’s tackle point B first’ and she gets up, comes over and shouts in my face ‘I am not too good for you! Ok?’
‘Maybe you know that, but I don’t’ I mumble.
‘Exactly.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t know that.’ She’s still shouting a little, exasperatedly pacing around the room again, gesticulating. ‘You don’t know anything about me. You just assumed I would not be interested because of what you assumed I was like.’
‘But I know what I’m like, and I know how people tend to see me...’
‘I don’t think you do. It’s like those rants you entertained me with early on. Why did you do that?’ I start to reply but she cuts me off. ‘I know why. It was because you thought I was talking down to you, treating you like you were some naïve fool and so you had to go on the offensive and prove you did know what you were talking about, even if it meant hurting me, because (you reasoned) I hadn’t minded putting you down therefore it was ok for you to put me down. What you didn’t get, from the start, was that you were the one in charge, from the start. You were the one pointing out all this stuff I hadn’t really thought about, because you aren’t stupid, and you do have something to say, and it was me on the defensive, trying not to look stupid.’ She sits down heavily, out of breath. ‘Don’t you get that?’
‘But you went to Africa...’
‘And you were on the streets for years. So what? We all have our experiences Gabriel. One guy I knew, doing a sabbatical from Harley Street would you believe. Spent three years in Rwanda, right through the genocide and still went home at the end as big an upper class twit as he went in. It’s not what you do, Gabriel – it’s what you learn from it that counts.’ And she stops. We look at each other quietly for a while. She takes a sip of water.
‘I’m sorry about all that... ranting’ I say quietly after a while.
‘Nothing to apologise for’ she says. ‘What we’re here for.’
‘But you nearly swapped...’
‘Not really.’
We sit for a bit longer
‘I was still wearing my old school shirts until I was twenty one.’
‘Ah, ok. You’re right then. I wouldn’t have fancied you.’
‘Fair enough.’
She looks at me and shakes her head. ‘You really do think it would have mattered though, don’t you, the shirts and all that?’
‘Well what would you have been wearing. Honestly?’
‘Designer gear’ she admits. ‘Not all the time. I wore a lot of ethnic frocks later on, hippy stuff.’
‘Just my type.’
She smiles. ‘Ok, if I’m honest I probably wouldn’t have noticed you when I was twenty-two. You’d have been somewhat older than me anyhow I think. When were you born?’
‘1965’
‘I was born in ‘72. Oh well. I used to go in for older guys though, so there’s something. The point is, you don’t know what people are going to be attracted to. You can’t assume anything. I was all over the place when I was in my early twenties, I mean – who wasn’t? But later on I could have done with a bit of rough. What about that guy Vince somebody – used to be on that Dickhead show spinoff?’
‘Vincent Michaels.’
‘Aha! So you weren’t completely cut off from civilisation.’
‘Radio 4. They probably reviewed ‘Dickhead – The Movie’ at some point.’
‘Right. Anyway – did you see what he looked like?’
‘Not on the radio, no.’
‘Ok, well anyway – he’s a bloody mess. Really. Grubby shirts, bad teeth. Horrible toes...’
I shrug.
‘But women love him Gabriel. Think he’s fantastic, and you know why?’ I shake my head. ‘Because he doesn’t give a toss. That’s why. He’s overweight, hairy, short.’
‘Money?’
‘Yeah, but they all have money over there – it’s Hollywood. But nobody picked the short straw – “Oh, Jennifer, your turn to go out with the short fat film star this week”. They love him. Honestly.’
‘Money is an issue though, you have to admit.’
‘Not now so much. I earned loads more than Graham. I didn’t care. I loved my work.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Very little, but to be honest that was more of a problem for him than for me. Depression, booze, computer games. You know the kind of thing.’
I can’t see her with someone like that. She deserves better. She deserves me. I’m better than that. Hey, that’s a revelation.
‘Ok’ I say, sitting up. ‘I’m up for it. You’re there, with the crudités, I’m across the room with my plastic cup of wine or whatever. What would you want me to say?’
‘Now you see that’s your trouble. What do you want to say to me? That’s the question.’
I think about it for a second. She’s absolutely right. What do I want to say? ‘Wanna fuck?’ I say, knowing how she’ll react but my mind genuinely has done a blank. Ok, I concentrate. ‘I want to say...errm...’ I sit and think, she waits, betraying no impatience. ‘Everything I can think of sounds so trite or ridiculous.’
‘Such as?’
‘You look beautiful...?’
She wobbles her head equivocally.
‘I saw an Irish guy walk up to a woman he’d pissed off at a party and say “You’re a fine looking woman you know...” and she was all over him after that.’
‘Better’ she agrees ‘but best with an Irish accent.’
I nod in agreement. ‘They can get away with such blandishments. Actually, that’s also true of the Spanish and French...’
‘And the Italians’ she says with appreciation.
‘Exactly. Being English is a not a good place to start.’
‘And yet here we are. You could do a Hugh Grant with it.’
‘True. But I’d rather not.’
‘No. Ok, go on, what else could you say? What do you want to say to me?’
I think for a while. ‘It all sounds so predictable – “What do you think of the music?” “Who do you know here?” “What do you do?” Oh God that sounds so feeble. I don’t know...’ and I slump back. I can’t think of anything worthwhile.
‘Or maybe “Hi, I’m Gabriel”‘ she suggests ‘or yes, questions are good. “How’s the buffet?” or “Where are you from?” et cetera et cetera. And listen. Don’t just be thinking what you want to say next. But the main thing is to walk up and say something for god’s sake. If she likes the look of you she’ll do the rest. If she doesn’t it won’t matter what you say. And if you thought those guys there chatting the women up were all being terribly witty and original I’m afraid you were sorely mistaken. Only in the movies Gabriel. Only in the movies.’
‘But everything I say comes out so weak...’ I whisper, hopeless again all of a sudden and as I’m saying it I’m eighteen again at that party, watching Gill. I can remember it all so bloody clearly. It’s true, I’m not an old man here, I’m thirteen at the school disco, watching the girls dance together, and I’m in my twenties on the streets of Brighton, watching the girls go by with their short skirts and their strappy tops and their high heels, and I’m in my thirties, at the festies, watching the women wooing fathers for their sticky kids and then I’m in my fifties having to avoid watching them with their children in case they get the wrong idea. And all the time it was the same – I’m there, watching them – not having a clue what I have to do to join in. How could this have happened? Andrea looks at me. I can see she doesn’t get it. I don’t get it. What did they know that I didn’t?
She sits up straight and looks at me closely. I brace myself for the judgement, the dismissal. But instead she says softly ‘It came out weakly because you thought that you were crap and that they were goddesses. You didn’t see yourself as worthy of them. Let me tell you Gabriel...’ she gets up and looks out the window. ‘I know a lot more shit-awful people than you that don’t die alone. I’m not saying I envy their relationships (but then I don’t envy a lot of people’s relationships), but still... Secondly...’ and I can suddenly see her as a doctor. She has a very cool authoritative presence once she gets going. ‘Chances are that somewhere out there, there are people who could love you, and who, just as importantly, you could love too, and you won’t have to impress them with your wit or the size of your knob. It’ll come more or less naturally. They’ll just want you more or less as you are and it’ll be easy – or relatively easy anyway. Thirdly... it’s a numbers game Gabriel. People come out with this “one true love” crap, like there’s just one ideal person in all the world for each of us and if you don’t find them, well, you’re stuffed... but actually I think there may be loads of people out there that you could love and be really happy with, in different ways, at different times. We generally consider ourselves lucky if we just meet one of them in a lifetime but I think that’s pessimistic. What you’ve got to do, Gabriel, is meet loads of people. It’s no good just meeting a few and trying to make them work. For instance, I know guys who just ask almost every woman they meet if she fancies going to bed, or some equivalent innuendo, and sooner or later, someone says “yes”. Which actually brings me to a subsidiary point...’
(Wow. “A subsidiary point” Crikey what a woman...)
‘Girls just wanna have fun Gabriel. Young girls especially just want to have a laugh, they want to look trendy, they want to go out and get pissed. Sometimes they want sex, but mostly they don’t want anything heavy, and they don’t want to have to dump someone who’ll be hurt by it, so nine times out of ten they choose a good looking moron they don’t care much about because it’s easier that way. Later on – late twenties, thirties – that’s when girls wanna have love and security and babies and candle-lit meals and flowers and all that, and actually, we want more sex too, and we’re better at it and we come easier. So go for a slightly older demographic Gabriel. Trust me on this.’
We sit quietly for a while. Part of me wants to argue. Why wasn’t I entitled to have a young woman like everyone else? But then again I never really was much fun was I? Oh hark at me – self-pitying old fool. I can’t really disagree with her on the main point.
‘It’s a bit sweeping though isn’t it?’ I observe, casually. ‘I imagine there’s a few young women might raise objections.’
‘Yes, but you have to remember Gabriel; men are much much worse. They won’t reach the love and security stage until well into their forties, if at all.’
She sits back, evidently finished. I grin at her. She is fabulous.
‘Come for a drink?’ I say.
‘No. But thanks’ she says, smiling warmly. ‘I would have done though, if you’d said it like that. You’re alright Gabriel. You just don’t know it yet.’

Journey X – With or without

I really wanted us to leave before the next winter set in and I wasn’t sure how long that would be. Sophie watched me, confused and apprehensive, as I paced around the room. I’d run out of ideas about how to convince her that something very horrible was going on around us. I was sure that everyone must have witnessed things but had somehow repressed the memory or explained them away, as Ian had. And then I had to ask myself if it was just me and if so, maybe there was something wrong with me. We didn’t seem to be able to talk to each other as easily as before, but I always went with her when she went out so neither of us would be alone. I thought maybe I could defend her somehow if they came for her. Meanwhile, despite her concern I could see she was losing patience with me.
I talked to some of our friends too, Aaron in particular, but he found it hard to take me seriously, or anything for that matter. Gina had disappeared not two nights before but he appeared unconcerned. He assumed she had just fancied a change of scenery. He was cool about it he said. I kept my fears to myself. The image of Gina, tall, elegant, funny Gina who I had grown very fond of over the months, tied up and cut to pieces left me panic-stricken but I couldn’t think of anything I could do. I’d tried taking Sophie and some of the others around, looking in windows, trying to find evidence. I’d tried asking around, to see if anybody else had seen what I’d seen. I got nowhere.
I don’t know what it was broke my spiral of anxiety. One day I was out in an open area with trees and a pond and I realised that even without the horror I couldn’t stay here forever. And I knew maybe Sophie would come with me if I gave her another reason. Maybe some of the others would too. Sometimes we had discussed our next lives, and what she would do next time around. I’d remind her of our date on the Palace Pier in the year 2000 (or on Devil’s Dyke at midnight, or Kensington Gardens for lunch, as the mood took us. We’d need to sort that out. It might actually happen and then we’d look very silly, waiting for each other in different places).
And then there was the question of how to get out. I decided the only way was to pick a direction and stick to it. I thought we should head east, or whatever the place where the sun appeared from was called in this place. I was sure we must come out eventually. We’d got in somehow. Views from the ship toward the end of the voyage had been of mountains and forests and farmland. It must be out there somewhere. I put all this to Sophie one morning in the kitchen after breakfast. She just huffed and shrugged but said she’d give it some thought. Then she stepped out of her knickers, leaving them in a white figure eight on the kitchen floor, and came and sat astride my lap. It was her way of changing the subject, and to be honest I was grateful for the distraction.

I also met James about that time. Sophie and I were at a party a little like the ones I’d been to before we met. We had been laughing at some skinny girls doing their routines in their underwear and the boys, shirtless, trying to look cool, watching them. I recognised James as one of the elusive lodgers from the hostel and I was surprised to find him being quite extrovert, dancing crazily to some raucous hip-hop. When he’d finished he slumped down beside me, flicked his floppy fringe out of his eyes and clinked bottles with me. I was watching Sophie doing her usual thing across the room, working the crowd. Actually I was bored with it all.
‘Hey dude’ he said.
‘Hey’ I said and I prepared myself for the usual half inaudible, half irrelevant twaddle these exchanges normally consisted of.
‘Torture’ he said in my ear. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I looked at him quizzically.
‘You were asking people about torture. I’ve seen it too.’
‘When? Where?’
‘Several times. I thought I was tripping. Look, can we go somewhere, you know, quieter?’
‘I need to keep an eye on...’ and I pointed to Sophie and he nodded. We stood up and moved to the other end of the room.
‘I don’t want to leave her alone too long’ I shouted.
‘I can imagine’ he said, raising his eyebrows approvingly.
We stood for a time in the window bay, looking around, sipping from our bottles.
‘Anyway...’ he said, looking at the floor. Neither of us knew where to start.
‘Do you think it’s real?’ I say.
‘I thought so at first, when we first got here, I saw something you would not believe...’
My expression says ‘Wanna bet?’
‘Well anyway, nobody seemed much troubled by it, so I just let it go, but it happened a few times after that. I didn’t leave my room for weeks man – just ran down to the bathroom sometimes.’
‘I saw you.’
‘Yeah, well, then nothing happened for a while and I just got into what was going on. I put it out of my mind, you know? But it’s still in there.’ He taps his head with his finger. ‘It’s all still in there.’
‘I want to leave, leave town’ I say, ‘but I don’t want to go on my own.’
He nods, contemplatively, pushing his hair out of his eyes again, taking another swig. Sophie comes over and sits on me as usual. I kiss her affectionately and introduce her. They shake hands lightly.
‘What are you two talking about?’ she asks. I shrug - nothing much, as usual.
‘Didn’t look like nothing much from where I was standing’ she says. She’s been watching me and I’m crap at lying. James looks at his boots.
‘I do know what you’re doing you know’ she says, and abruptly gets up and stomps off. I’ve not seen this before. We never argue normally. I wonder whether to let her go and cool off or to follow her. Then I see she’s heading out to the entrance hall and I’m up in a second, after her.
And she’s gone. I stand in the hallway, I look in toward the stairs, and then run out into the front garden and look up and down the lane. It’s a narrow twitten, and it’s hard to see very far down it. She can’t have gone far – she’s got no shoes on. Hell, she’s got hardly anything on, as usual. I shout frantically up and down the lane, turning in panic circles in the middle of the path. All around are tall houses and rampant undergrowth. I can’t see anything but I am very aware that everything can see me. I look around at all the empty windows and they are like eyes, vacant yet observing, waiting. I am torn between rushing into these places and hunting for her - getting her back before they have a chance to really start on her, and staying where I am and shouting her name because I am so afraid of what they might do to me if I go in alone. I turn around and James is there, looking up and down the way. ‘I can’t see her’ I say, and I think of my beautiful girl and her soft, white body and how badly it would handle being cut and broken.
‘Will you come with me?’ I say to him.
‘Uh uh’ he says. ‘Sorry man. No way.’
I run back into the house and shout at people to come and help me find Sophie, because she’s disappeared into the dark, and I run over and turn off the music and plead with them to help. No one moves. I swivel around and look at their faces – especially the little group of guys she had been talking to only minutes before. I am close to breaking down in frantic tears. I run out again, barging into James on his way in. Then I run back in and half way up the stairs. I’m pretty sure she didn’t go that way. It’s light and there’s plenty of people up there anyway. I go back into the lounge. They’re all looking at me. I remember an episode back in Brighton like this when I had one of my minor freak-outs, everyone looking at me, embarrassed, a little fearful, somewhat pissed off. But no, it’s not like that here. They’re not embarrassed and angry, they’re scared and worried. They all know. They all know but they won’t do anything. I stand in the space that’s been made for me and they slowly turn and go back to their conversations and try to shut it out again. The music resumes quietly, respectfully.
I turn and look at James again. He shrugs. ‘Sorry man’ he says again. I walk outside again. He comes with me.
‘Just walk up and down with me will you?’ I say. ‘We don’t have to go in the houses. I don’t think I can anyway.’ I’m not proud of myself for this. Otherwise I’d do anything for her, I swear.
Another figure emerges from the house. A young lad, calls himself Liam. ‘Can I help?’ he says. A girl trails out after him.
Strength in numbers, we go up and down the lane, looking over fences, into gardens, calling her name. A couple of other people join us for a time, then Liam’s girl wants to go indoors. She's cold she says.
‘Do you think you'll be here in the morning?’ I say to him.
‘Probably’ he says, looking around. Where else would he be? His girl stands with her arms folded by the gate. She lurches toward the entrance and stumbles up the steps. Liam moves to follow but I catch his arm.
‘We can talk then’ I say.
‘Ok, I suppose...’ He heads in after her.

A cold dawn rises and there are five of us hunched on the steps by the front door, dozing or watching for movement. Someone’s brought out some cushions and blankets.
‘People disappear all the time man’ says James, trying to be comforting. It’s not.
‘Exactly’ I say, ‘that’s exactly my point. People do disappear all the time.’
‘You disappeared’ says another one I recognise from the hostel, one of the quiet girls from upstairs.
‘I didn’t’ I say defensively.
‘You did as far as we were concerned bro’ says James, and he actually sounds hurt about it. He’s got a huge mug of black coffee in his hands. I want to know where he got it from. I go in to look. They may be right about the disappearances, but then, maybe whoever these horrors are, maybe they rely on the fact that people come and go all the time here and no one pays much attention. I find the kitchen and the coffee machine and stew up a fresh batch. As I’m heading out into the hall again I see Sophie coming down the stairs followed by a dishevelled and confused looking boy, trying to work out which way his sweater goes on. I look at her, relieved and crushed at the same time. She looks guiltily at me from beneath her fringe. ‘Bye Gareth’ she mumbles as he passes disappearing out the door. ‘Nothing happened’ she says irritably to me, and slides past me into the kitchen, avoiding any sort of contact.

I tell the others not to worry about Sophie. She’s turned up, and they all give me the ‘I told you so’ look and make their goodbyes. I make another coffee and sit with Sophie in the lounge. We sit as close as we can, but it is not cosy. It is terribly cold.
‘Do you trust me?’ I say. She looks warily at me. ‘It’s not a trick question.’
She sits silently for very long time.
‘You think I’m mad don’t you’ I say.
‘Nobody’s mad here’ she says, still very cross. ‘It’s not possible to be mad, apparently’
‘Ok, gravely mistaken then.’
‘I don’t know’ she says at last, shaking her head. ‘Can we go home now?’ and I am relieved to say yes. I hunt around for her flip-flops and we get up to go. She looks so weak and sorry and I hold her all the way. At one point she makes a grab for my penis up the leg of my shorts, attempting to be playful but I can’t and she pulls away and walks on her own.
‘Now you don’t even want me any more’ she says, pretending to be a little girl sulking.
‘I’m just so tired babe’ I say.
‘It’s not possible to be tired here either, at least not physically’ she says and I know she’s just being pedantic to wind me up.
‘Ok, perhaps I'm not physically tired, but I have been up all night worrying about you.’
‘I never asked you to do that. You sound exactly like my mother.’
‘Look, I know you don’t think there’s anything to be scared of but I do, and I believe I have good reason. Can’t you at least respect that?’
‘Not if it means you thinking you can tell me what to do’she says, really angry now, striding ahead.
‘Oh look, I’m not your bloody mother. And I don’t think I’m mistaken. You can’t know what it was like, imagining your body, what they do to it. I couldn’t stand it. I was terrified for you. Ask the others. I was a mess.’
‘I heard you’ she says.
‘So why the hell didn’t you...?’
‘I didn’t feel like it. Why the hell should I?’
‘Well, because...’
I want to say ‘Because we’re together’ or ‘Because we’re in love’ or maybe ‘Because I want to spend all eternity with you’ but perhaps the truth is I’ve done it again - gone completely silly over a woman who just wants to have fun. Anyway, we walk in silence the rest of the way. She appears to take a casual interest in a flower, a cat, some wind chimes. I can’t take my mind off the argument. When we get back she goes through for a shower and I take my clothes off and lie on the bed. Now I want sex. I just want us to be together, at least physically.

She takes longer than I expect and so I go down to the kitchen to see if there’s some wine in the fridge. One of the other girls is down there and observes my de-tumescence coolly. I just don’t care any more. Half the town has seen me naked by now anyhow.
When she comes in I am sitting in a wicker chair by the window with a glass. She has her kimono on, a diaphanous purple silk thing.
‘Have I been a bad girl?’ she says in a small voice. Normally this would be the trigger for some soft and silly S&M games but today I take it as an apology. Anyway I never felt entirely comfortable with my role as authority figure (and never found it sexy to be in the submissive role). I think one has to have at least a trace of misogyny to really get off on it, and I’ve been glad to discover I don’t. I like her too much. Normally I go along with it though, and her response can be very exciting, but today I just can’t. Today I just want to... I suppose ‘make love’ is the phrase I’m looking for.
‘Come here’ I say, holding out my arms and she comes and curls up against me and I kiss the top of her head and we spend the day there, reading, watching old movies, eating fruit and eventually, carefully, tenderly, making love. It’s going to be our last time together. I think we both knew that, even as we were doing it.

Andrea VIII – Role-play

Andrea gives me a huge and cheeky grin as I enter the room next time, hugging my folder to her bosom.
‘You quite fancy me, don’t you?’ she says.
And I’m suddenly very flustered and splutter a bit as I sit down. This isn’t playing fair. ‘Well, I um...’ I say.
‘Ok, let’s do a little role-play. Chat me up.’ and she sits there, looking sideways at me, pouting provocatively and puffing her breasts out.
‘I can’t do this’ I say, giggling nervously.
‘Of course you can darling. Look at me. Nothing’s going to happen. I won’t let it.’
I look at her. She looks candidly back, her rich red hair flowing around her face and over her pale, almost blue-white cleavage.
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you’ I say and she smiles evilly through her fringe.
‘Say you’re at a party,’ she says ‘and you spot me across the room. You think “Kworh!” or whatever and then what?’
‘And then nothing usually. Look, this is all a very long time ago.’
‘Think back’ she says, but I don’t need to. Since I’ve been here my whole life’s memories have been horribly fresh in my mind.
‘I wouldn’t have done anything.’
‘Why ever not?’ She pretends to be outraged. ‘Look at me for god’s sake. Check out my gorgeous hair, my luscious lips. Look at the size of my boobs for god's sake! You have to have me. Come and talk to me.’
‘It’s not as simple as that’ I say, laughing nervously.
‘Why not? Look, I’m alone. I’m over by the buffet, suggestively munching on the crudités. I’m just begging for someone to come over and say something for god’s sake. So say something. Anything.’
I look over at her for a time. I decide to turn the tables. ‘Did you actually do that? To meet men?’
‘What? Well, er... no... Of course not...’
Hah! Got her this time.
‘...sometimes, maybe. Not with the crudités. I don’t do celery.’
‘What did you think of the men you met that way?’ I say. ‘Not a very representative sampling method is it? I wonder how much this contributed to your “All men are wankers” hypothesis?’
‘I never said that’ she says, pretending to be aghast. ‘Not out loud anyway. Did I?’
‘I heard you, a few weeks ago, up on deck.’
‘Well, maybe I have a soft spot for wankers’ she says, slumping and grinning ruefully. We sit quietly for a bit. ‘I was a bit of a tart back then’ she admits. ‘But then that should have made it easier for you. I was up for it. Hello boys! Rrrr!’
‘I know, I know...’
‘So why not?’
I think about this. Several reasons jostle for position.
‘First, I’d have felt really self-conscious in front of a whole room full of onlookers. Plus, you wouldn't have been alone. You'd have had all your friends with you. Second, I know my mind would have gone completely blank and I’d have stood there like a squashed lemon. Thirdly...’ I have to think about how to explain this.
‘What?’
‘Well... frankly you’re fairly fabulous. I think I’d have had to assume it was a trick, or something...’ I tail off. It’s a pretty pathetic list, but it's all true. She looks at me, pondering.
‘Well, firstly, thank you’ she says quietly, bushing a little. I’m blushing too. ‘But did you actually ever seriously try to chat a girl up in your life?’
‘At school, quite a few times.’
‘And?’
‘Oh look, I was just such a nerd. It was embarrassing for all concerned.’
‘Who did you chat up?’
‘What? You want names?’
‘No, I mean, for example, were they the girls you really fancied, or just the girls you thought were less likely to say no?’
I nod, the memories coming back thick and fast. ‘Really fancied’ I say, somewhat wistfully.
‘So what made you give up?’
‘Well it was getting pretty humiliating by then. I think I knew deep down what they thought of me and what they’d say but I don’t think I realised until too late how ridiculous I looked, asking all the best looking girls in the class to go out with me. Nobody ever said anything. I just realised one day that everybody knew.’
‘Didn’t you ever talk to your friends about it?’
‘Not really. We didn’t really talk about stuff like that. Remember, they were even geekier than I was. And they seemed happy that way.’
‘Hmm... so when did all this begin? When do you remember first looking at the girls in that way?’
‘I don’t know really’ I say, but I do remember obsessing about Donna in Mr Philbert’s class. ‘I’d have been about nine’ I say at last.
‘Ok...’ she says as if suddenly realising something important. ‘So this all went on for quite some time.... I see. I don’t suppose you asked your dad for advice about it? No. Didn’t think so. What about your sisters? You had two older sisters, right?’
‘Amelia and Justine, yes. But no, not really. They were a lot older than me. They had a lot of other things to worry about, kids and stuff. I think I used to keep all this sex stuff fairly private. My dad was always hassling me to talk to girls at family dos. That was embarrassing in itself. I think he decided I was gay in the end. Mum would never have wanted to know.’
‘Did you talk to anybody about it? I thought young lads talked about nothing else. Don’t disappoint me on this.’
‘They do... I suppose... But it’s all for show.’
‘Explain?’
‘Oh, you know, ogling girls at the disco, making smutty comments, looking at fantasy art.’
She looks at me quizzically.
‘Sci-fi paperback covers? You must know what I’m on about. It’s all Swordsman and dragons and buxom girls with their negligees in tatters. You must know the kind of thing.’
She nods. ‘Actually I kinda liked all that stuff’ she says putting on a camp Bronx accent and squirming a little. I try to stay focussed. ‘My last boyfriend, Graham’ she adds, ‘he was a bit of a sci-fi geek - into some weird metal bands too. Of course he was a complete arse most of the time, but he had his moments.’
‘So, when were you in Africa?’ I ask, not entirely to change the subject. She goes quiet for a while.
‘Right up to the end, almost...’ she says sadly. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it right now. Do you mind?’
‘Not at all. Sorry’ I say and we sit and look at nothing for a while. I’ve noticed the sunlight getting stronger over the last few days and I want to ask what will happen next, after we get off the boat, but now is not the time. Our time is up for today and we get up to leave.
‘I am going to pursue this you know’ she says. ‘I have this theory that if you could just get laid when you’re about seventeen all the rest will slide into place... so to speak.’
I smile. I suspect it’s more complicated than that, but it’s got to be worth a try.

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 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.