Praxis (11 page)

‘Cock-tease,’ someone muttered in her ear, and did not mean it pleasantly. Irma had heard it often enough before; she took no notice.

Praxis danced the first dance; then her partner took her to the bar. She had learned dancing at school. This felt different. He gave her gin and lime. She was unused to drink.

‘That’s a funny dress,’ he said. ‘Is it very fashionable?’ She did not care for her partner, or his opinion. He was no taller than she: he wore no tie: his hair needed cutting: his chin needed shaving. His face was flat and shiny and seemed a matter of planes and angles, like a piece of cut glass. His eyes were small but bright behind thick spectacles: his arms were hairy: his cuffs were frayed: he wore ex-army boots. His hand upon her arm trembled with nervous energy. His name was Willy. He was, he told her, doing political science and economics.

‘So am I,’ said Praxis.

‘It’s a men’s option,’ he said, surprised.

‘They thought I was a man,’ said Praxis. ‘I have an odd name. But once they accepted me they could hardly throw me out. They tried, but I wrote a letter.’

He wasn’t listening. His eyes were on her breasts. Her dress was without straps: it kept up by virtue of whalebones, which had escaped their padding and now dug into her flesh.

It was, perhaps, too large for her. She became aware that anyone taller than she, looking down, could see more than he ought.

Fortunately, Willy was not tall: and besides, she reckoned, his opinion of her hardly counted. She accepted another drink and then another. It seemed preferable to dancing. She did not like the feel of his arm around her waist. It seemed very familiar. At school girls had danced with girls.

‘Why do you look so odd?’ he asked. ‘Is it policy, or accident? I look odd, but then I mean to. I don’t believe in washing, for one thing. It reduces the body’s natural defences against disease; soap is a needless expense. I’m very mean, I warn you. I got in here tonight through the back door. It’s very easy. All you have to do is just walk in: there’s no one to stop you.’

His eye had strayed further down, contemplatively. His trousers, she observed, were held up by string.

‘Why wear a belt when string will do?’ he remarked. ‘Belts are a waste of money, if you come to think of it.’

‘Don’t you care what people think?’ she asked.

‘Depends who,’ he said. ‘I saw a lot of people die. I was in D-day. I don’t like to waste my time, my money, or my life. Am I wasting my time with you? Or. my money?’

She was not quite sure what he meant. His breath was sweet: it smelt of slightly fermented honey.

She shook her head.

He bought her two more gin and limes, counting the change carefully.

He was joined by his friend, who was tall, clean-cut with a soft voice and wide, innocent eyes. His skin was as clear and soft as Baby Mary’s, and his hair the same fine silver yellow colour. He stared and stared, as speculatively as Willy did. His mouth was full, pink and curved. Praxis fell in love at once. His name was Phillip. He drank a good deal of beer but his shirt was crisp and white and his tie stayed straight.

‘Does she have a shape under that dress?’ he asked.

‘I believe so,’ said Willy. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘Never,’ said Phillip, staggering. ‘Is she willing?’

‘Of course she is,’ said Willy. ‘But how do you know?’

‘I have a fine instinct for these things. On the other hand she’s in our department. It might be complicated.’

‘Not science?’

‘No.’

‘I could have sworn she was in science,’ said Phillip. ‘They’re so easy to lose.’

He bought the next round of drinks. Presently they all went out on to the downs. Praxis left her mother’s handbag behind, and all her money, her comb and her orange lipstick, but didn’t care.

‘It’s going to be a good term,’ said Phillip. ‘I can feel it in my bones. A good year for available girls.’ He took off his shoes. Willy took off his boots. He wore no socks and his toes were dirty.

‘If you loved me,’ said Willy, sadly, ‘you’d wash my toes.’

Praxis wouldn’t. Phillip said she shouldn’t, in any case. If Willy was too mean to buy soap, he must put up with the consequences. Praxis was no substitute for soap.

‘What is she then?’ enquired Willy.

Phillip studied Praxis, contemplatively.

‘You can’t tell, in that dress,’ said Phillip.

Ceremoniously they removed the dress: one on each side they raised her arms to study the marks left by the whalebones.

‘I suppose,’ said Willy, ‘it’s an engineering problem.’

‘I was in the sappers,’ said Phillip. ‘It would be nothing to me.’ He ran his finger over the weals and round her breasts.

‘You take your hands off her,’ said Willy. ‘She’s an object lesson, not a body.’

‘She’s better without the dress,’ said Phillip. ‘Her face isn’t so green.’ He stood back and offered Praxis a swig from his beer bottle, which she accepted. She was beginning to feel sick. Phillip offered to sell Willy a swig for a shilling. Willy argued that friendship entitled him to two swigs for sixpence.

Phillip pointed at Praxis’ white bloomers: and asked her what they were. She told them: they listened with reverence.

‘Poor lady,’ said Phillip. ‘This is no place for a dead clergyman’s wife.’

‘A clergyman’s dead wife,’ said Willy. ‘Take them off.’ Praxis took them off.

‘It’s not respectful to the Church,’ said Phillip. ‘My father was a clergyman.’

Phillip kissed the elastic marks round Praxis’ thighs. Lower down he found the marks left by her suspenders, and helped her take those off too, and then her stockings. His lips were fresh and moist, as he helped heal her various wounds. She felt he was very kind, and simple. Willy, on the other hand, seemed unreasonably sober.

‘She’ll only catch cold,’ he said. ‘You’re drunk. I met her first. Do go away.’

‘But I love her,’ said Phillip. ‘If anyone’s to go, you should. Though it doesn’t seem necessary to me. It’s all quite friendly. See! Nothing hidden.’

‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing,’ said Willy.

‘Yes she does,’ said Phillip. ‘She loves me.’

‘Yes I do,’ said Praxis, as distinctly as she could.

Phillips’s mouth moved upwards and settled in what she felt to be a strange and woolly place. His arms were placed warmly and comfortably round her waist, and both steadied her—which she needed, being never quite sure whether it was she who was rocking, or the ground—and warmed her. The wind, she was remotely aware, was cold. Her arms were goose-pimpled; rough to her own touch: she kept them clasped round her bosom with some remnant of modesty.

Phillip bore her down upon the ground. The grass was damp and chilly, but his body was warm and welcome. His belt and buttons scratched her. As if in the interests of her comfort, he removed the belt and undid his trousers, scarcely rising from his prone position; unaware that his shirt buttons were making severe indentations on her right breast. As fast as he assuaged one wound, it seemed he created another. His knee came between hers, forcing them apart.

Never mind. Only Willy seemed to mind, and who cared about him?

Praxis had a clear vision of the Reverend Allbright, on the occasion when she had gone running to him with news of Judith’s pregnancy: and of his member, rising from the dark grave of his clerical trousers, to new life. This was that, brought eventually to fruition, via the first Mrs. Allbright’s stout knickers. Pregnancy! The thought alarmed her. Perhaps she should have kept them on? Perhaps they were the talisman, meant to preserve her? Weren’t men supposed to wear something? Why was Phillip not?

She struggled.

‘I think I’d better go,’ said Praxis as best she could. ‘I think I’d better get back.’

She had a strong vision of Colleen’s strong, disapproving face.

‘Let her go for God’s sake,’ said Willy. ‘She’s drunk and so are you. Supposing she gets pregnant? She’s in our department.’

‘Never met her before in my life,’ said Phillip, entering secret, undisclosed places. Praxis, her head turning from side to side, saw Willy leave, staggering over the turfy hillocks. The night was moonlit; Willy’s body was silhouetted for a moment against a starry sky. The souls of the damned burned; and Willy seemed to sink down into nothingness, and was gone. She was conscious of the sound of her own quickened breath, and Phillip’s harsh panting. Without Willy she was frightened: no element of choice remained. Phillip’s body was powered by a force she could not understand. It occupied, moreover, a space she had always considered her own; but which apparently total strangers could enter with impunity.

He cried out: he seemed to have finished whatever he was doing: he had lost interest. He lay on top of her and fell asleep. Presently his weight became unbearable; she rolled him off her.

Nothing of him now remained behind: he had slipped out of her easily: some moist foreign body, inadvertently inside her own, now back in its own place. He lay where she had pushed him. He snored. She tried to shake him awake; but still he slept. She wandered the hillocks, finding stocking here, dress there, Mrs. Allbright’s knickers yet beyond. She dressed unsteadily, and went back to the hostel, and there, to her relief, for it was long past curfew time, found a little group of locked-out girls, scaling the walls via each other’s shoulders, and joined them and got back to her room, and bed, and slept

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ said Colleen, suspiciously, in the morning, but Praxis could only groan. Gin and beer combined to make her ill as she could never remember having been ill before—staggering between wash-basin and lavatory bowl, wishing for death.

‘Serve you right,’ said Colleen, nevertheless folding away Praxis’ clothes, wiping Praxis’ brow, cleaning up Praxis’ vomit.

In the afternoon Praxis felt better: the bruises on breast and thigh pleased her. She was getting a cold in the nose.

‘Your brother wants to see you,’ said Colleen, presently. ‘He was here this morning but I didn’t let him in. He doesn’t look like your brother.’

Men visitors were only allowed in the hostel if they described themselves as close male relatives. Popular girls had many brothers. Praxis was gratified to find she had one. She had hoped for Phillip, but Willy came.

‘I came to apologise,’ said Willy. ‘Phillip can’t even remember leaving the dance. It’s very embarrassing. I should have looked after you better.’

‘You mean if I met him in the street,’ asked Praxis, ‘he’d think I was a perfect stranger?’

‘I suppose that’s so,’ said Willy. What yesterday had seemed unshaven stubble, today seemed rather more like a beard; it gave him an almost patriarchal air. Since she was lying down and he was standing, Willy no longer seemed so short. He was, in fact, altogether less negligible than she had originally supposed. Or was she just becoming accustomed to the scale of his existence?

‘Well, you know what drink is,’ he added.

‘I don’t,’ said Praxis. ‘Beyond a glass of sherry at Christmas.’

He seemed taken aback.

‘Or sex?’ he asked, more nervously still. ‘I suppose you were familiar with that.’

‘No,’ said Praxis, and cried, from sentiment more than distress, at the notion of how very unshared an experience the loss of her virginity had been.

Willy got into bed -beside her, to comfort her; cold, white skinned, hairy limbed. His body was bony, strong and wiry. His muscles vibrated, as if he were some kind of taut string which she plucked, alive with pent-up energy. Praxis was conscious of physical pleasure, as she had not been with Phillip; but also that Willy was in some way distasteful to her. She feared that he was laying claim to her, impaling her for further investigation, marking out some kind of territorial boundary inside her, which he would from now on feel entitled to occupy and defend. He did not take off his glasses: he watched her expression carefully, and with a dispassion which did not fit with the urgency of his body. His nails, none too clean, dug into her upper arms: she would have bruises there tomorrow. So long as the skin was not broken she supposed she would be safe from germs.

Germs. Lucy had feared germs, the contamination of sin.

Praxis, her body impaled, found her mind agreeably free to wander. She thought it perhaps ought not to be so. Moreover, was there not some danger of pregnancy? Remember what had happened to Miss Leonard. Last night had been bad enough: this was doubling the risk. But how could she give voice to her fears without insulting Willy, and indicating her failure to be carried away by desire, love, gratitude, or whatever it was he expected of her?

The impalation ceased. His struggles continued. He cried aloud, a haunted, eerie cry. She was amazed. It seemed to mean a great deal to him.

‘Coitus interruptus,’ he said, eventually: breathless. ‘It does terrible damage.’ His body was hot now, not cold.

‘I hope you didn’t worry,’ he said, kindly. ‘I’ll look after you.’

He liked to look after people. She settled for that. He lived out of college: he shared a room with Phillip: a dirty basement room. But it was Phillip she wanted to see, and be near, not Willy.

When she cooked Willy’s meal—mostly sausages and mash—she cooked for Phillip too. It was enough. She could not wash Willy’s socks, for he had none, but she could, and did, wash Phillip’s shirts, although he protested that he could do them himself. She smuggled soap out of the hostel for Willy’s use, and induced him to use it, and Phillip was amused. Phillip smiled at her in a vague and friendly and totally unlustful way, and talked around her, to Willy, about Beowulf and Kant. He was engaged to a doctor’s daughter in London, Willy said. He would marry her when he had his degree. Only occasionally did he drink too much beer: and then he always forgot what had happened.

‘He wants to be pure for his virgin bride,’ said Willy, marvelling more at the ambition than the self-deception.

Willy and Praxis went to bed together between lectures: that, at any rate, was how they described it. They seldom actually reached the bed. No sooner were they inside the door then he would bear down upon her, pressing her on to the floor, table, chair, anywhere, in his urgency. The sheets of the bed were filthy, in any case: the dusty, greasy floor, the littered table, the ripped chair, were really no worse. He liked the dirt: he took pleasure in it, and dissuaded her from too much cleaning.