Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (11 page)

‘Blessed art thou . . . ' He could go all night. ‘ . . . amongst women . . . ' Sucking now at the air, hammering her into the floor. ‘ . . . blessed art thou . . . ' He'd needed to prove he wasn't old tonight, to prove to himself he wasn't old.

‘Jack,' she whimpered.

He loved to hear her whimper. He entwined his long fingers in the silk of her hair that the night had turned from grey to gold, and he buried his face in the scent of countryside and still waters, and he was young again, he was king again. If he could stay in this place, hide from old age in this place, driving deeper and deeper into her . . .

She was pleading, her thighs pushing against him, her feet slapping as they strained against the floor, attempting to ease the pressure on her lower spine. ‘Please, Jack.'

‘Yes. Want me, you bitch. Yes! Beg for it. Blessed art . . . Yes! Yes! Oh, Jesus!' he screamed as his strength flowed out of him.

And she took it, as she'd always taken his strength. She took it, and absorbed it.

He pushed her from him, hating her again for stealing his strength, defrauding him of his youth, for burying his hopes and dreams beneath her tribe of bloody kids. And he walked away from her, left her sliding on her back in egg yolk while he went to bed.

She was a pear shaped mother earth, her stomach and tree stump thighs grotesquely moulded by an orange tracksuit. He was a long fine beanpole in black, his white dog collar emphasising his pumpkin stalk neck. I didn't need to see them to know what they looked liked, having seen them daily for thirty years.

‘What's she doing down there, Wilfred?' Her voice gurgles up through a slurry of chocolate bars and Agarol, of marmalade toast and onion rings.

‘You know what she's doing, Mother.' His tone, as always, appeasing, mollifying, if puzzled. Wilfred's only fight for freedom from Mother had been from her womb, where he'd spent two days jammed in her birth canal, his head locked in by determined thighs. This may have led to the elongation of his trunk and the definite point to his dome which now pushed pinkly, glowingly, through his thinning grey hair.

I am the garden gnome, the in-law – or the outlaw – but by law, Wilfred's wife. I live in a gardening shed cum office cum bedroom at the bottom of the garden where I spend my life labouring over hot romance. Three hundred pages of tantalising kisses and the overcoming of problems behind me, I am now attempting to get the heroine to the altar, tomorrow at two, with her virginity intact.
Vacancy for Love
is already three weeks overdue, and I could do without the background noise this morning.

Her sweet innocent lips strained to his . . . meeting
‘No.' . . .
matching the urgency of his hard, demanding mouth. She had run from him in the garden last night, but by God, he would have his will with her this night. The woman had not been born who could deny Robert Carmody when his blood was up.

What have I got myself into here? She's supposed to be in love with Charles, but since chapter fifteen, Robert, the family rebel who's home from the jungles of Botswana for the wedding and who hasn't had a woman in two years . . . and I know just how he feels, give or take twenty-five years, and maybe I'm losing it, but I want to let him have his will with Melissa, force his manhood into her portal of heaven – Oh, good line. Have to use that somewhere. I'll find a space.

My publisher said he'd call me this morning. I've signed the contract, spent the money, so I have to produce. Okay, so think. The contract states that if she must lose her virginity, it must be to her fiancé, so she has to slap Robert's face and run for her life.

Release me now, you cad.

Crap. Delete.

‘She's got the phone down there again. You tell her I want it inside to call that nurse, Wilfred.' Again that woman's slurry seeps into my mind, murdering creativity. ‘What does she need the phone down there for, Wilfred?'

Because I'm the miraculous gnome at the bottom of their garden, the supplier of all good things, that's why. Because I pay for the Agarol, her laxative of choice, also her onion rings – pay the phone bill too.

‘An important call from her publisher coming through, Mother.'

‘Then tell her to call that nurse and get her over here right now.'

There is a garden fence between us, creeper covered, yet I can see through it to the hinged jaw of old mother earth clacking like a ventriloquist's dummy, I can hear his crushed lungs wheezing, hear his spine grinding like an aging door hinge as he peers between the creepers.

‘She told you the nurse called earlier, Mother. She had an emergency and will be here at one this afternoon.'

‘Well I can't wait until one this afternoon, can I? Tell her I need my shower now.'

These two have grown accustomed to discussing me in the third person. I am here, but not here, and that's the way I like it.

His arms were around her, crushing her, her small firm breasts straining to him, as this previously unknown heat rose within her. ‘No,' she moaned against his demanding mouth. ‘Release me, you . . . you . . . '

‘Has Charles ever kissed you like this?' he said, and his lips claimed her own.

Trembling now, her resolve weakening, she clung to him, engulfed by passion –

‘I've got to go to bingo this afternoon.'

‘I know, Mother. You could miss your shower – just for once.'

‘That's what living with her has taught you, Wilfred! She sits out there wallowing in that filth, and no more than I expected the first time I set eyes on her. I warned you about her, Wilfred. Didn't I warn you about her . . . '

His strong brown arms lifted her and for a moment, she submitted to his demanding lips, but as he placed her on the bed, she pleaded with him. ‘No. No, Robert. Not the bed. Not the bed.'

‘You want me, and though you may deny it, your lips speak the truth,' he said, as he held her there, his hands now seeking the buttons of her blouse.

Then the image of Charles and the memory of his patience was like a blow to her heart. With superhuman strength, she rolled to the far side of the bed and stood, her eyes daring him to take one step towards her.

‘How she can hold her head up and walk around town, I don't know. A minister's wife, no less. You should have put your foot down early, Wilfred, like I told you to. If she was a daughter-in-law's boot-lace, she'd help me into that bath.'

‘I know, Mother, but doesn't God tells us to have tolerance in the face of trial and tribulation? Do come inside now. The neighbours are watching.'

‘She thinks she owns that telephone. She thinks she owns this place. She –'

‘She does, Mother. Now do come along, dear, and don't upset yourself so. It's not good for your blood pressure.'

I paid off the house though I've never felt it was mine. They chose it together, she and Wilfred, while I was at work. It was a house, and two streets removed from her house. I could have made it mine if she hadn't chosen the drapes for my lounge room, which for a time I refused to hang. Wilfred hung them. I bought my own drapes for the nursery, a pleasant sunny room, its door opposite our own, but she moved into it the day her husband died, and three months later, when I could not evict her but was effectively evicting her luggage through the front door, Wilfred, unbeknown to me, had removed himself from the battlefield to the front steps. Her heaviest case hit him in the knee joints and he landed on the concrete ten steps below. It happened on the evening of our first anniversary – which set the tone for the rest.

Her eviction was placed on hold. He needed her. His leg was broken, he'd cracked a disc, had a few more slip out of alignment, was concussed and the mortgage still had to be paid. She stayed on to care for Wilfred while I paid the mortgage.

During that first year we prayed nightly together. Please God, forgive her. Please God, heal his back that she might be forgiven. I noticed that my own prayers were altering, until one evening a strident wail came from my mouth: ‘Please God, may she fall down those bloody stairs and break her bloody neck.'

They no longer wished to pray with me and I, having lost faith in prayer, turned to a new god, my computer, my creator supreme, and on its forgiving screen I gave vent to unrequited love. I have since become a household name – in certain circles.

My fingers, well trained by a lifetime of office keyboards, don't miss a beat this morning, while from the other side of that fence there is blessed silence. I am on fire, the story unfolding fast while my nether regions ache with second-hand lust. Robert still hasn't got her into bed but his hands, strengthened, calloused by his labour in the jungle – I do hope they have jungles in Botswana – are driving her wild. Melissa won't hold out long. But what of poor Charles?

‘
Think of your brother. Sanity must prevail. We must think of Charles.'

‘He omitted to tell you, he is gay, my darling. He doesn't deserve all of this.' His lips sought one perfect white peach, his tongue eager to feast on forbidden fru –

‘I'm stuck!' The tremulous wail infiltrates the fence, wall and second-hand lust. My fingers still as I lift my head. ‘Help!' It is the cry of a quavering bullfrog doing a soprano impersonation – and it's coming from the bathroom.

I gaze with hope towards the ceiling: please God – I no longer need to complete my prayer. He's got it on file. My fingers return to the keyboard until the wail becomes an insistent and irritating siren. I know she won't drown; she's immortal. God won't take her and Satan is scared he'll lose his job.

His fingers were cool as they circled the engorged erect nipple, but his tongue was hot, teasing, licking, then those hot lips took that stem and sucked while his calloused fingers reached lower, seeking entrance to –

‘Wilfred. Make her help me! I'm stuuuuuuck!'

Having accepted some years ago that the one thing worse than a healthy live-in mother-in-law is a sick live-in mother-in-law, I leave Melissa and Robert locked in frantic embrace, his mouth full, his hand delving, while I collect the necessary tools from the garage. Screwdriver, hammer – her ‘I'm stuuuuck' scream was a common occurrence before I arranged for the district nurse to call each morning and force her to use the shower.

The first task is to remove the bathroom door from its hinges. Old mother earth likes her privacy and always locks that door. I've taken it off so often, I now only use two of the six screw holes, one top, one bottom. In under a minute the door is leaning against the passage wall and I'm squinting, the better not to see that mountainous plenitude of flaccid flesh filling my bathtub.

I toss her a towel then, hands on hips, consider the best method of attack while I call for the love of my youth to come to his mother's rescue.

‘You know I can't embarrass Mother. She'd be mortified,' he says, hiding behind his study door.

‘Better you than the fire brigade, Wilfred,' I threaten. ‘I warned her last time she got in that bath not to do it again. And she's twenty kilos heavier these days.'

He eventually enters the bathroom, a pillowslip over his head, preserving her modesty and his innocent eyes from the sight of naked female flesh gone mad.

Ten minutes of fishing between her feet gives me the plug. I'm soaked to the skin by her attack, but the water glugs and gurgles away and I've got her high, if not dry.

Wilfred's back problem is ongoing. He must take inordinate care when lifting, but with me doing most of the heaving and him supporting, pillowslip blind, we manage to get her backside on the rim of the bath, and her bareness draped by many towels.

We take a breather. The next step is to get her tree stump legs out, so he takes his shoes off, steps out of his grey flannels, folds them neatly and places them outside the door before straddling the bath, one foot in, one foot out, while she clings to his hooded shoulders. He's going to be in bed for a week after this, but as long as he doesn't lock up, we'll be fine.

We manage to get one leg overboard; we're halfway there when the phone starts ringing. It will be my publisher, the call I've been waiting for all morning.

‘Hold her. Don't let her fall back in,' I say as I run.

The call is from London, costing him a fortune – and there is much to discuss. He wants my new manuscript yesterday, so while I'm lying, saying it's in the mail, I sit and, in order to lie better, light a cigarette.

Amazing things, cigarettes. They make an intolerable world almost tolerable. Three butts later, I place the phone down, run across the garden and back to the bathroom. I'm expecting the image of the hooded man and a fat dame frozen in time. I don't. I don't see either of them for a second. So he got her out? Then I see them.

It wasn't the way it appeared at all, I knew this, but by God it certainly looked the way they reported it in the local newspapers, and on the front page of that city ‘rag': ‘
ANGLICAN MINISTER AND EIGHTY-THREE YEAR OLD MOTHER DIE IN BATHTUB, LOCKED IN LOVERS' EMBRACE
'.

He was jammed between her thighs, his face buried between her breasts, still clad in his dog collar, black vest and boxer shorts. Anyone with half a brain could see what had actually happened, but as he was still wearing the pillowslip, those reporters read what they would into it.
SATANIC RITUAL IN CROYDON
.

Of course I explained how it had happened. I explained it to the firemen first and then the police. It must have been his slipped disc. I mean, he could seize up at the drop of a hat, and with his face buried in that mound of flesh, anyone would have suffocated. She might have died of ecstasy, but she did have high blood pressure.

It's some comfort to me, knowing they went together, and are together in the hereafter. There is no way God could refuse Wilfred entrance, and no way his mother was going to release her death grasp on him. God help you, God.

Anyway, I have to post that disk off this afternoon.

‘
Don't say no when you mean yes, my angel.' Robert said. ‘Say yes.'

Her thighs were open, a hot pulsing need raging through her as his calloused fingers tantalised with the promise of ecstasy. ‘Oh, no, no, no, Robert. We mustn't do this to Charles. How can we do this to your only brother?'

‘Because come tomorrow, you will marry me instead.'

‘Then yes, Robert. Yes, yes, yes, take me now.' And his tantalising manhood finally found entrance to the sweet virginal well of her pleasure.

Perfect. You've got to give the readers a happily ever after. It's in the contract.