Fortnight of Fear (25 page)

I suppose I had a vague idea that I might make some money as a deckchair attendant, or working in a fish-and-chip shop, but I wasn't really sure. I'd taken my A-levels in English and Geography and French, but my marks had been so bad that there hadn't really been much point in trying to get a place in college. Lack of application, the teachers had called it. I think I'd just run out of any desire to carry on. I just didn't want to participate any more. I wanted to think, and do menial, unimportant things. If I'd been religious, I suppose I would've joined a monastery; but going to Worthing was just about the next most mortifying thing.

There was a stringy roller-towel on the back of the door and I dried myself. I had a wet paper carrier-bag with yesterday's shirt in it, which wasn't quite as wet as today's, so I changed. Then I counted out my last remaining cash, which was actually three-and-sevepence-halfpenny, and decided to go out for some lunch.

As I came down the stairs to the middle landing, Nancy was just closing the door behind Room Two.

“Settled in, then?” she asked me.

“Sort of. I've got to buy some sheets and stuff.”

“Is that where you're going now?”

“I was going to the pub for some lunch, actually.”

Without hesitation, she linked arms with me. Even in her stiletto heels, she was only about five-three. She smelled of tangeriney hairspray and Shalimar. “That's good, you can buy me some!”

“I've only got three-and-seven.”

“You're
joh
-king.”

“No, I'm not. Look.” I held out a halfcrown, a shilling, and a penny and three ha'pennies. “The sum total of my worldly wealth.”

Nancy laughed. “Looks like I'm paying then, doesn't it? Fancy the Thieves Kitchen?”

“Don't know. Never been there.”

We borrowed Mrs Bristow's broken pink umbrella and scampered out into the rain. The Thieves Kitchen wasn't far, only two streets away. A large pub-restaurant offering Traditional Lunches. It was dark and smoky, with pretense oak beams and horse-brasses. We sat in a booth and ordered pork chops and fried eggs and pints of Red Barrel bitter. Nancy was chatty and flirtatious and changed the whole of my outlook on life in the space of one meal.

She talked and ate and laughed and I just ate. I watched her the whole time. She was absolutely smashing. Underneath those double sets of false eyelashes and that white pancake make-up she was deliciously pretty. She had a babyish face, with pouting lips and a little snub nose and big wide blue-lilac eyes, and I think I fell in love with her after the third mouthful of pork chop. Everything about her entranced me. Her cheapness, her outspokenness, the tiny gold studs in her ears, and that deep, pressed-together cleavage, which exuded Boot's talcum powder and unimaginable promise.

“I should never 'ave married Vince, never,” she said,
swallowing beer from a pint glass. “I was a fool to meself. But then 'e was ever so good-looking and 'e 'ad a bike and a sidecar, and 'e was ever so
moody
, do you know what I mean? And I was only sixteen. I was really stupid then. But ever since I've 'ad Simon … well, you 'ave to be more machewer, don't you?”

“Where is Simon?” I asked her.

“'Aving 'is nap,” said Nancy. “I give 'im 'is lunch at twelve o'clock, and then 'e sleeps through till 'alf-past two; every day, regular as clockwork.”

She asked me what I was doing in Worthing; and I told her. She listened sympathetically but I don't think that she really understood. It was like trying to quote Paul Verlaine to somebody at a noisy drinks party. “
Les sanglots longs des violons de l' automne … blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone
…”

Nancy paid for the whole lunch herself, out of a white vinyl purse. “Oh, don't worry, Vince is ever so good to me. 'E sends me seven pounds a week and I don't usually spend it all.”

We walked back to 5a Bedford Row arm in arm, under Mrs Bristow's wounded umbrella. Outside Room Two, Nancy said, “D'you want to come in for a cuppa coff?”

Room Two was almost four times larger than my room. Nancy had drawn the thin flower-patterned curtains so that Simon could sleep. He lay in his cot in the corner, his thumb planted in his mouth, his blonde hair sticky, his cheeks like fire. I stood over him and wished that he were mine, instead of Vince's. I turned back to Nancy and she was just standing there, looking at me.

“Mrs Bristow says that Room Two is idyllic,” I told her.

“Can't say that I've noticed,” Nancy replied, without taking her eyes off me.

“No, well,” I said, uncomfortably. I looked around. The room was freshly-papered with a strange yellowish
crisscross pattern, Woolworths' best. There was a 1950s dressing-table by the window, with a semicircular mirror; a large cheap varnished bed; a chest-of-drawers that somebody had painted powder-blue; and a huge Victorian wardrobe, in carved mahogany.

“Fantastic wardrobe,” I remarked.

“Oh, yeah, 'cept that she always keep it locked.”

I tried the brass handle, but the door wouldn't budge. “What's in here, do you know?”

Nancy sat on the edge of the bed. “Personal stuff, that's all. Says she 'asn't got nowhere else to keep it.”

I sat on her bed next to her. “You don't 'alf talk posh,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you're all kind of posh and poetic. Everything you say. Like the clouds being like mad dogs, that kind of thing. You ought to be a writer.”

“Hunh,” I told her. “There's no money in writing. I'm going to be a deck-chair attendant.”

“Well, you'll pick up some girls.”

There was a long silence. The room was silent; Simon slept silently. Then Nancy said, “Do you want to see something really shocking?”

I stared at her. Her eyes were deep lilac in the subdued light of Room Two.

“What do you mean, shocking?”

“Well, just look. Tell me if you're shocked.”

Without hesitation, without taking her eyes off me, she lifted her black sweater and dragged it off over her head. Then she unhooked her lacy black bra, and bared her breasts. She gave a little wiggle, so that they swung and bounced.

Her breasts looked even bigger than they had before. They were full and white like two huge milk puddings; their skin imprinted with the pattern of her bra. Her areolas were wide and pale, and her nipples were crinkled
tight. What fascinated me, though – and what was obviously supposed to shock me – was that both her nipples had been pierced with thin gold rings.

I had heard about girls piercing their nipples, I mean everybody's
heard
about it, but I had never met a girl who had actually done it. Let along found myself face to face with one, on a double-bed, on a wet afternoon in Worthing. My cock uncurled inside my jeans, and I felt a hot flush color my cheeks.

“What do you think?” she asked me, giving her breasts another little jiggle.

“I don't know. It's fantastic.”

“Vince wanted it done. I didn't want to, at first, but now I quite like it.”

“It's fantastic,” I repeated. I didn't know what else to say.

“You don't think it's shocking, then?”

“It's surprising.”

“But not shocking?”

I shook my head.

She looked at me seriously. “You can touch them, if you like.”

I hesitated; then reached out, and felt both nipples, and rings. The rings could be rotated through the nipples quite easily.

“You can lift them up, if you like.”

I stared at her. It wasn't what
I
liked; it was what
she
wanted. I hooked my fingers through both rings, and lifted her heavy breasts with them, until both nipples were stretched. She closed her eyes and arched her head back, while I gently tugged at her breasts again and again, as if they were disobedient puppies.

Without a word, she lifted my hands away from her breasts, and unfastened the hook-and-eye catches of cheap white skirt. Underneath she wore fishnet tights, no panties. The dark pink flesh of her vulva bulged through the fishnet in diamond patterns. I smelled the pungent erotic smell of sex and urine.

We made love tightly, quietly, fiercely, for nearly forty minutes. It seemed like a lifetime went by. Eternity. That same eternity I had glimpsed outside, when they were carrying Miss Coates away. But then I opened my eyes and we were lying together in Room Two, with the curtains drawn, under an embroidered sampler which said,
Work Out Your Own Salvation With Fear And Trembling
.

Nancy turned her head and blurrily smiled at me. There were pearls of semen still clinging to her false eyelashes. She said, “You're good, you are, David Moore.”

I kissed her. I could have married her then and there. “You too, Nancy Whatever-Your-Name-Is.”

“Bright,” she said, and kissed me again.

It was then that Simon stirred, and coughed, and opened his eyes.

For the next two weeks we went everywhere together and went to bed at every possible opportunity. The August rain blew over and left us with warm and windy weather, and we took the bus to Littlehampton and made love naked in the grassy sand-dunes while Simon built a castle with a real sea-water moat.

Nancy was dirty-minded and mad and she didn't care what she did. She never wore panties; she didn't even own any. She lay face-down in the dunes with her bottom lifted and her vagina pulled open with her fingers and yelped like a seagull when I pushed myself into her. She loved rolling around and filthy language and sucking and kissing, and all the delights that the flesh can be heir to.

I had never met a girl like Nancy, ever. I've never met a girl like Nancy since. Vince could keep his bike and his sidecar. Nancy was everything I could have dreamed of. Perhaps I couldn't have taken her home to meet my parents. (“Oh, mum, this is Nancy, she has a two-year-old illegitimate son and she wears nipple rings.”) But who cared about that? With Nancy, I was in nineteen-year-old heaven. With Nancy, I forgot about depression and despair.

I deferred looking for a job, and we spent days on the beach; or took the train to Arundel and walked around the castle; or climbed on the chalky dinosaur backs of the Sussex Downs, while the huge clouds sailed over-head and their shadows sailed across the water-meadows below. Days of sunshine and silliness and not much money. Days of country pubs and picnics with doorstep sandwiches and walks down fragrant Sussex lanes; kissing in the shadow of ancient oaks.

When the last day came, I didn't even know it was the last. We'd been to the funfair at Littlehampton, and come back by bus. We finished up by walking along the seafront at sunset, one of those gray warm evenings with the sun stirred into the Channel mist like damson jam into a pudding. Simon was riding piggyback on my shoulders and Nancy was walking beside me in white hot pants and a black nylon blouse knotted over her midriff. Somebody was playing a tranny on the pier,
Hey Joe
by Jimi Hendrix. “
Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand
…” Jimi Hendrix was Nancy's favorite, after the Stones.

“Do you think you'll ever get married,” Nancy asked me.

“I don't know,” I said, guardedly. I suppose I was already convinced that I was going to marry
her
.

“I'm not goin' to get married again,” she told me, emphatically.

“Oh.”

Simon tugged at my hair, and said, “Giddyup, horsey!”

“What about Simon?” I asked Nancy.

“What about him?”

“Well, he'll want a father, won't he? Especially when he's older. My father used to take me to Farnborough Air Show.”

“There's more to life than fathers,” said Nancy. She looked away, and for some inexplicable reason I knew then that I had lost her; that something had changed between us. Simon jiggled up and down and said, “Giddyup, horsey! Giddyup, horsey!”

I galloped along the seafront with him, in that gray-plum evening light, and Nancy followed along behind us with a tight distracted smile, looking small, and different.
Goin' down to shoot my ole lady … 'cause she's been runnin' around with another man
…”

That evening I came downstairs from Room Seven and knocked gently at Nancy's door. It was half-past eight, and Simon should have been asleep by then.

Nancy was a long time answering. She whispered through the closed door, “
Who is it
?”

“It's David. Can I come in?”

“I'm not dressed.”

Not being dressed had never stopped her opening the door before. I stood on the landing, hesitant and confused.

“I thought we could go to the pub.”

Another long pause, then, “I haven't got any money.”

“I've still got a pound.”

“Oh, great evenin' out we're goin' to have on a pound.”

So that was it, I thought. She was fed up with my having no money. “Listen,” I called, “I'll go out and get a job tomorrow. They're looking for attendants at Peter Pan's Playground.”

“Do what you like.”

I ran my hand through my hair. She was beginning to make me feel distinctly desperate. “Look, can we talk?”

“What about?”

“Well, us. You and me.”

“There isn't anything to talk about.”

“Nancy,” I said, on that gloomy wallpapered landing, “I love you.”

“No you don't. You want somebody posh and poetic.”

“I want you. I want to marry you.”

“Oh, come on, Dave; don't talk stupid.”

“But I do. You can take this as a formal proposal of marriage.”

“Dave, for goodness' sake, go away.”

I rattled the doorknob but the door was firmly locked. And it was then that I heard heavy swaying footsteps on the stairs, and Mrs Bristow hove into view, in her stage-magician cloud of Guards cigarette smoke. She stood at the far end of the landing watching me, and there was nothing I could do but retreat back to Room Seven and close the door.