Demons (6 page)

‘
Yes, well,’ said Mum.
‘That’s good.’

‘
So if I wanted to,’ I
said, knowing I was being

provocative, ‘I could have sex before I got
married.’

‘
I didn’t say that
either.’

‘
No but I’m asking. The
church says I shouldn’t but you’re implying I can. If it’s a
guideline and not a

rule. Everyone has sex before they’re
married these days.’

‘
Not everyone,’ said Mum.
‘Don’t generalise.

What are they teaching you at that
school?’

It’s not what the teachers
are teaching. It’s what we talk about out of the classroom,’ I
said. ‘
Most
people then. And most people don’t even get
married.’

‘
If you can square things
with your conscience,’ said Mum, ‘I suppose so. Right, that’s the
casserole done.’

Conscience again. I was
starting to enjoy this and wished Mum wasn’t in such a hurry. As
I’d told her, our teacher encouraged debate and discussion. Taking
sides you might disagree with but had to argue
for
. Taking sides you agreed with
and arguing
against
. We had a class debate once every month. He would have been
delighted to hear how well I was doing now.

‘
What about it?’ said poor
Mum. ‘Have you seen my watch?’

‘
It’s on your dressing
table,’ I said. ‘I saw it there yesterday.’

‘
Good girl.’ Mum made a
dash for the bedroom.

I followed her.

‘
Ms Proctor used to say
that conscience was the little voice inside your head that told you
whether something was right or wrong and we had to listen to the
voice so we did all the right things.’

‘
Hmm . . . Ah, there it
is.’

‘
Well. If my little voice
said it was OK to have

sex before marriage then I
wouldn’t be doing any-thing wrong if I did it. Right?’

‘
You’re trying to paint me
into a corner,’ said Mum. ‘And you’re far too young to even
be

considering any such thing.’

‘
Go on, answer
me.’

Mum sighed. ‘I suppose so. Depends on
how

well you’d considered all the facts relevant
to the situation.’

For the sake of the argument I disregarded
that and went on:

‘
So, if I decided to murder
someone and my little voice said it was OK then I wouldn’t really
be a murderer, would I?’

‘
If that were the case,’
said Mum slowing down for a second, ‘your little voice would be
coming from one hell of a deranged personality. And you’d have a
tough time convincing a judge and a jury.’

‘
But it’s no different . .
.’

‘
Of
course
it’s different Andrea.’ Mum snapped on her way out the door.
‘In the first scenario, the sex before marriage one, you’d most
probably end up hurting only yourself if you did it before you were
ready; but as far as the second one goes you’d be hurting lots of
other people not to mention the person you
murdered.’

‘
I know Mum,’ I said
pacifying her. ‘I was only being the devil’s advocate.’

We both had to laugh when we realised what
I’d said. As she got into her car Mum tried to have the last word.
‘How would you know your ‘little voice’ wasn’t the devil whispering
in your ear?’

‘
Well,’ I started, ‘does
the devil really exist?’

‘
I’m out of here!’ said
Mum. She started the car, began backing down the drive, before
putting on the

brakes.

‘
Hurt emotionally is what I
was really talking about,’ she said, a lot more seriously this
time. ‘People who think sex is just a physical thing try
hard

to separate it from feelings, one of which
may be love, but I don’t think it’s possible. So, the way I look at
it, sex has to be more than just ‘doing it’, it’s got to

be with the right person at the right time
for the right reasons.’

‘
Yes Mum, I know all that,’
I said.

‘
But do
you
believe
it?’
she asked.

Entranced, not

If I hadn’t believed it then, I certainly
did a few years later when I was at high school. The reason was
simple. I went to a Year Ten dance with a guy called Robbie. It was
the first time I’d been out with a guy so I was pretty agitated
about the whole thing even though it was just a school event. I had
friends in the youth group who were boys and made new male friends
at high school but that’s all they were, friends. No boy had ever
seemed especially interested in me for any other reason. At that
time I thought it was because I had grown too tall and too oddly
shaped to

be regarded as proper girlfriend material.
My (admittedly) very brief experience with Robbie made

me in no hurry to get more intimately
acquainted with

the masculine gender, not until Chris came
along three years later.

Robbie was really keen on the live band that
was going to be playing and he said he was keen on me. That was a
new experience so I said I’d go with him.

I quite liked Robbie, in a passing sort of
way. He

was moderately good-looking, from my point
of view and, unlike most of the boys I knew, his sense of humour
wasn’t too silly or smart-arsed either.

‘
Who’s the band?’ I asked,
more out of politeness than genuine interest.

‘
TranceSonic
Boom.’

‘
Haven’t heard of
them.’

‘
Haven’t heard of
TranceSonic Boom!’ Robbie

was amazed. ‘Where’ve you
been?’ ‘They’re the greatest,’ he repeated. ‘Trance dance is
their
thing.’

‘
Is it?’ I said.

‘
You’ll love it,’ Robbie
assured me. ‘Let the music take you out of your mind.’

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. I
preferred to keep my mind and me together.

‘He’s asked you to do what?’

‘
Go to the school dance
with him.’

Michelle shook her head at me in disbelief.
‘And you said . . .?’

‘
I said yes.’

‘
He’s not worth it,’ said
Jo.

‘
Why not?’

Michelle and Jo looked at one another
deciding whether or not to tell me. ‘You say,’ said Jo.

‘
Come on, spill the beans,’
I said to them.

‘
Well,’ said Michelle, ‘we
heard him talking to

Anita and he said to her,
“I’m going to ask Andrea out but if
you
ask me I’ll say yes to you
instead”.’

Anita had obviously declined this
invitation.

‘
He’s a slime ball,’ said
Jo. ‘No mistake.’

‘
It’s too late,’ I said.
‘I’ve already said yes.’

‘
Well, you’ve been warmed,’
said Michelle.

Dad dropped me off at
school where I met Robbie, as agreed, outside our classroom. He was
swigging from a can.

‘
This event is supposed to
be alcohol free,’ I said.

‘
It is,’ said Robbie,
tossing the empty can under a bench. ‘Inside. Come on
gal.’

Gal! Great start, not!

We walked over to the
school hall - me full of

regrets - as if we’d
arrived together under our own steam. As none of us were anywhere
old enough to have driver’s licences yet I don’t know who Robbie
was so keen to impress. Himself perhaps?

Electronic music pulsated
from inside the hall, a steady and danceable beat with repeating
riffs that seemed to loop back into themselves and then explode
with a kind of soft grenade sound, something like a muffled sonic
boom. So different from the Irish music Dad played endlessly at
home, not to mention the trad Catholic songs which were Gran’s
speciality (although she hadn’t requested them at her own funeral).
Their oh-so-familiar tunes, like the family rosary of years ago,
had stitched themselves into my brain even though no one sang them
at modern-day masses. Of course I knew there was other music but I
never seemed to feel a need to listen to it. My musical education,
as Michelle and Jo regularly pointed out to me, was sadly
lacking.

‘
Man,
listen to it!’ said Robbie. He seemed to have gone into some kind
of trance already, before we’d even started dancing. I didn’t like
this. I suddenly wanted to go home. Why
had
he asked me, I wondered. Had
Michelle and Jo overheard correctly after all?

‘
Gidday Rob,’ said several
people, who looked

sideways at me as if I was
some sort of alien being.
What was this
pinhead doing here
I was certain they’d be
wondering. The dancing was soon in full swing. Robbie dragged me by
my arm into the middle of the floor.

‘
Hey, slow down caveman,’ I
said.

If he heard, he took no notice. Instead he
issued instructions. ‘Let yourself go babe.’

Not likely, I said to myself. Despite this,
it

hadn’t taken me long to understand the
attractions of Trance. The music could infiltrate your head so it
was as if the pulse of the universe beat inside it and you were an
integral part of the world instead of just an onlooker. You were
the stars not just the astronomer peering at them through a
telescope. Praying an endless rosary, strangely, could be like this
I thought, although naturally I didn’t tell Robbie this oddball
fact. He wouldn’t have come even close to understanding what I was
on about.

What he did still understand, despite being
transported by TranceSonic Boom, was that I was a girl and he
intended to take full advantage of that fact. Before too long, he
moved in close as we swayed, reaching behind me with his hands,
curving his sweaty palms round my bum and pressing his chest, and
his groin, hard into mine.

‘
Stop
it
!’ I said.

As I pushed him away, ungluing his hands
from

my behind I couldn’t help but think, this is
a sort of sex with no emotion, no feeling, no love.

He just grinned - leered was more the look -
and angled in for another landing. I shoved him again and this time
he stumbled backwards, bumping into a few other dancers. I didn’t
stay around for a third coming.

Pushing myself through the throng, past
some

teachers gas-bagging to each other alongside
the wall, I made it out of the hall.

My ears were ringing and I felt shivery-cold
after the warm press of bodies inside. I thought Robbie would come
to find me, angry perhaps, apologetic

maybe, but neither of those things happened.
I could have been nothing, nobody, for all the interest anyone
took. Neither Michele nor Jo, assuming they were in the hall, had
seen what had happened otherwise

they’d have come to console me. Wouldn’t
they?

I called home. Dad hadn’t
been long back and was very surprised, naturally, that it was me
ringing, asking to be collected, I’d had enough already. Still, he
didn’t argue, but arrived in about fifteen minutes. He didn’t say
much either on the way home, just asked briefly what had happened
to cause the turnaround. I verified that no, Robbie wasn’t the
quite nice guy I’d taken him to be and yes, I’d managed to look
after myself well enough, and Dad said good on you Andrea for doing
the sensible thing, you’ve got your whole life ahead, don’t hurry
it, etc, before falling silent.

Dad was preoccupied, that was obvious. He
often was but tonight more so than usual. So was I. I thought about
what would be going down at the dance, what Robbie would be saying
about me next week but during and after the events that followed
I

forgot all about Robbie, and the dance
became

something of absolutely no importance at
all, a black hole in a collapsing universe.

STRANGE MEETING

At the same time as Chris throws out the
compliment, loaded with all the possessive memories of the time

and place when everything changed and
changed

again, his head bobs about like a great,
big, uncouth sunflower.

His hair is still rough and yellowy, the
colour of the sandstone sculpture in the reserve in which I

paused more than three years ago. It’s
unfashionably long, like a lion’s mane, his head too big for his
thin, tapering, wiry body.

I know - knew - that body well. It was quite
the opposite from mine. ‘Pinhead’ they called me at high

school, when at thirteen I grew tall and my
hips expanded at the expense of my head so that even my long hair
couldn’t equalise the imbalance. The people who called me that
thought they would hurt and embarrass me but they didn’t really
understand the strength of the rebel Irish blood that ran beneath
my skin.

Following the Year Ten dance it didn’t take
me long to have my fine tresses cut short. And these days I don’t
give a shit about my shape.

Hold fast

I knew something was badly wrong when I
heard voices in the kitchen, even though I tried hard to convince
myself otherwise.

It was a dream wasn’t it? A nightmare
following the nightmare dance.

I opened my eyes, the darkness pressing
against them as I strained to see. It was no nightmare. It was