Cathexis (29 page)

“Just when I think I can't love you any more”. She nuzzled my hair. “Here”. She tilted a glass of whisky to my lips.

“You'll never stop amazing me” I said. I could hear her mind whirring and waited.

“Remember the time we saw Nancy?” I neither started nor did my heart skitter; Nancy was just someone I used to know. “And you said we were Nephilim?”

“Uh huh” I said, dipping her thumb in the whisky and sucking it.

“Well I think you are” she said, kissing my neck.

“Takes one to know one”.

Dale on top of me, studiously kissing my mouth.

“You were so funny tonight, Mink”.

We
’d spent the evening with Nils, watching his favourite programme (and now mine), Wallander. He'd thoughtfully switched on the English subtitles. However Dale and I were arseing around, drinking vodka and being generally disruptive.

“Be quiet you two” he snapped. “It's hard enough to follow without such mayhem”.

“Sorry” we said, composing ourselves.

Wallander walking along a windswept beach, throwing a stick for his black labrador and when the words 'dog pants' appeared on the screen, I imploded. “Dog pants” I hissed at Dale, her fishwife bark infecting her father until the three of us were locked in a power bout of hysterics.

“Ah, I have lost the plot now” Nils said, wiping his eyes.

Kissing her way down my belly, I flung the duvet back so that she could breathe and I could see her. The boats bumped beneath like spooked horses and the wind chimes clanged crazily, the sea sifted the pebbles and gulls circled the hut like Cherokees.

“There's going to be a storm” Dale said into my coco.

The next morning, a black pall shrouded the sound and within it electric colour stuttered like faulty strip lighting. Dale's curls billowed about her head and an orange bucket tumbled past as if running for its life.

“You girls better stay in the house tonight” Nils shouted above the tuning up. A strangely feminine smell on the wind. “Storms make me horny” Dale whispered. I stood transfixed, the immense grey blanket rolled before us as if there were lovers beneath. Wet rags hung from the clouds and craquelured the distant waves. Then the pleated pewter charged sulphur as the rain drummed the sea into alligator pearls.

“Here it comes” she yelled above the boom and we ran to the house amid a torrent of acid drops that plinked around us like pennies.

Dale hooked the bacon into the pan and we hid our whispers in the hiss.

“Horny” she groaned, her voice a cavern. Nils tapped at his laptop, oblivious.

“Do you have to meet every urge instantly?” I said annoyingly.

“Hey, I've been sitting on this for hours”, her eyes flushed gentian.

After breakfast, she huffed on the sofa. Despite my apparent composure, I was beside myself too, and attempted displacement in washing dishes and making coffee. The wind descanted the sea's bass and the rain snapped as if the house were made of bubble wrap. I parked next to Dale and leafed through an Ansell Adams book, while she chewed a pen and scored letters into a crossword. She nudged me with her foot.

“Minky, can you help me with this one please?”

Tilting the paper towards me, it took a few seconds to register that she had filled most of it with the words 'I WANT TO FUCK FUCK NOW YOU FUCK YOU FUCK WANT NOW'. My chest bowed gallantly in consensus.

“I'd like to help but I don't know the answer” I said, evenly.

“Perhaps I can look for it?” piped Nils. Dale tapped the pen against her teeth, brain whirring.

“Pappa, Minky and I may as well make up the bed”, grabbing my hand.

“Good idea” he
said, without looking up. “The sheets are still from when Björn stayed”.

Closing the bedroom door, she pushed me up against the wall and had my belt undone and jeans off in five seconds. In three more, she had her tongue on me and two fingers inside, fucking me hard – she knew my rhythm so well. My legs buckled and so without taking her face or fingers from me, she leaned back on the floor, positioning me over her mouth. Her arm pistoned, so strong
;
she never let up, no matter how long I took, which admittedly wasn't long with her. Her skill
,
coupled with her desire, gave me more than a bunk up. I felt myself turn the corner and ascend to that perfect, resonating point and something wet happened on her throat.

Falling forwards on my hands, wracked in spasm, she slid out from under me as if she'd just tightened my clutch and pushing down her grey cords and emergency bunny pants (we still hadn't got round to doing a clothes wash), she lowered her hot, self-basted coco onto my mouth, her brackish juices potable. Spreading her with my thumbs, making my tongue hard and long for penetration and soft and flat for her clit. A keening whimper escaped and she clapped a hand over her mouth. I fucked her with three fingers and there was a guttural sound like a dangerous cat
;
it took me a moment to work out it was her. She came with a small cry and squatting back on my chest, gleefully let out a sustained fanny fart.

“Sshh” I hissed and she cupped a hand over our mouths as we laughed noiselessly.

“Quick”, hoisting on her trousers, we hastily scrabbled together the bedclothes.

“May as well put these in too”, bundling up the damp bunny pants with the pillow cases. My fucked bandy legs wobbled unreliably as we descended the stairs and loaded the washing machine. Coffee still warm, we flumped on the sofa.

“I see you found your answer” said Nils, the scrolling screen strobing his glasses.

“What answer, Pappa?”

“To your crossword puzzle” he said, nodding to the paper she'd left face up on the table. Aghast, she sniggered, “Pinsamt”. I hid my face in my hands ...embarrassing didn't cover it.

We slept in the big house, quietly but not chastely, while God vented his displeasure all about us.

“Anchor me” she said. This was a new thing; I must lay on top of her to prevent her floating away. In one ear, her peaceful bellows, in the other, the booming sea. I remained wide-eyed, imagining the boathouse smashed to sticks.

The sea millpond and milky and
the sun flamed triumphant in the cobalt, glowering the last of the wispy clouds into acquiescence. The sandbank had not yet shown itself, but a lonesome white row boat rocked on its submerged crest. We swam out to her with an oar each. Dale snorted on discovering she was called Hulda, a name she said equivalent to Brenda or Margery. We tipped Hulda on her side to empty the sea and as Dale took up the oars to row us back, I meditated on her deltoids and bunching pectorals, like slow motion sex, a female Adonis. Hulda bopped patiently at the jetty as I spread Dale on the bed, her creamy buttocks at odds with her mocha body.

Hulda's cargo, beer, sandwiches and the luxury of towels. We planned to stay there all day as it was our last. Nils ambled towards us, the sun flashing off an array of apparatus around his neck.

“Ahoy!” he shouted and offered a light meter to our faces. Dale slung an arm around my shoulder. 

“Beautiful” he said, “but Minky, smile”.

Dale looked through me, paused and distant. Knowing what was coming, I smiled. Nils took advantage, click, and Dale farted a high pitched squeak. He clicked again as we laughed in each other’s faces. “I apologise for my daughter” he chuckled. “Don't stay in the sun too long”, turning his back and waving over his shoulder. This time I rowed, while Dale sipped beer, even though it was not yet ten o'clock, keen to wrangle every last drop from the day.

“Brun som en pepparkaka” Dale said, slathering my back with lotion. Combining my intuition, her intonation and the odd word I'd picked up, I pretty much understood her these days.

“Brown as a ginger poo?”, I hooted.

“No, silly!” she said, her gruff laugh erupting. “A ginger biscuit”.

Dale nodded and we dived together. Up before her, I cut and pulled between the surface, a bow wave gathering across my head. We'd done this countless times and she remained unbeaten, but this one was mine. Tilting to the right I saw her fearsome hands slicing the water. Digging in, I kicked hard, sending plumes of spray to the sky. Turning again to breathe, her arm arched ahead, followed by the long muscles of her thigh. My next breath, Dale side, her feet flapped past my face, slapping a wash of water into my lungs and I pulled up, choking. She stopped dead in the water and spun round. “Minky, what happened?”

“I breathed your bilge” I spluttered.

“I'm sorry, baby” breasting towards me, “let me rescue you”. By now I was fine, but I lay on her body while she cupped my chin and frog kicked towards the sandbank.

“Easy, Miss” she said, “I've got you”. A cloud resembling a genie above me unravelled before I had the wit to point it out and resting on her skin, I allowed myself to be saved.

After dinner, Dale squeezed my hand and I presented her likeness to Nils. Rubbing his stubble, donning his specs, he studied the picture intently.

“Minette, this is most outstanding” shaking his head. “I had no idea”. Valhalla eyes, made large through lenses, took stock of me. “It is one thing to point a camera at what circumstance provides, but quite another to make a sustained observation such as this. You have certainly captured my daughter”, extending the picture to the still light window. “I will frame it and hang it on the chimney wall”.

“Breast” Dale corrected.

Nils, schmaltzy on schnapps. Dale had gone to the bathroom and he covered my hand with his.

“Now look after her Minky, will you? She's not always so strong as she seems”.

“I promise I will” I said, solemnly.

“She's all I have, you see”.

I wanted to the say the same, but thought it might sound competitive.

“Dale?” In bed in comfortable entanglement, always touching as much of each other as possible.

“Why didn't we use a boat before?”

“Dunno” she
said. “I didn't think of it. I first swam across when I was seven and I've done it ever since”.

“Seven!”

“Yeah, my dad would row with my mum with all the stuff and I'd doggy paddle next to them”.

“That's incredible” I said.

“I got tired at first and he would haul me into the boat like a drowned rat, but after a couple of goes I knew I was safe and I could do it. Then he taught me to swim properly and it's just something we did, him rowing, mum with her green parasol. I expect they were trying to tire me out so they could have some peace”.

I visualised the plucky little paddle steamer and felt a surprising twinge in my womb – my superfluous womb. An empty cow. I held her close, proud of that special little girl and the talented, modest woman she'd become.

“My baby” I said, stroking her hair.

That night my period came.

Chapter 11

My belly housed a sack of rats and as they gnawed and scratched, I woke writhing and, fuck, my arse squelched in a murderous blot. This was bad – a monster truck period.

“What do you need?” Dale asked anxiously.

“A bucket” I shivered.

The pain launched through me in waves and my lips pulled away from my teeth as cramps took hold of my face. Dale returned with the orange bucket and followed the blood skids on the white washed floor to the hatch where I lay puking into the sea, waxen and foetal.