Taming the Beast (3 page)

‘Are you sick?’ he asked her when she got to school on the Tuesday of the sixth week of her affair with Mr Carr.

‘Never better.’ It was true. Yesterday afternoon Mr Carr had read to her from Donne’s
Songs and Sonnets
. He told her that Donne’s love poems were inspired by his teenaged student whom he later eloped with. ‘Imagine,’ he said to Sarah, unbuttoning her shirt, ‘if Donne had not loved his young student.’ He removed her shirt and bra and covered both her breasts with his hands. ‘What a
loss to Western culture. What a tragic, tragic loss that would have been.’

‘You’re all flushed,’ Jamie said. ‘Like when you had that fever at camp last year. Your eyes are all bloodshot too. I really think you should go–’

‘I’m fine!’ Sarah laughed. ‘You’re such a nana.’

‘Jess said you haven’t been walking home with her lately. She thinks you’re pissed off at her.’

‘She’s such a drama queen. I’ve been staying back a bit. Studying in the library.’

‘Why don’t you just go home and study?’

Sarah ignored him. She mentally rehearsed the Thomas Carew poem she had memorised last night. She was going to recite it to Mr Carr this afternoon. It was called
The Rapture
, and she hoped it would send him into one. There was a bit in it she was sure was talking about a clitoris, and a whole lot of stuff about fluids and elixirs which made her think about the mess her underwear was in when she got home each day.

‘I think you’re hiding something, Miss Clark.’ Jamie used the fake-confident voice that he used to tell his older brother to get out of his room or he’d kick his head in. ‘I think maybe you’re staying back after school to meet up with someone.’

Her heart beat faster. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe because you spend the last hour of every day playing with your hair. And you check your watch every twenty seconds and then bolt for the door as soon as the bell rings.’

‘I do not.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You retied your plait four times in half an hour yesterday afternoon.’

Mr Carr liked to play with her hair. He sometimes used her ponytail as a sort of lead, pulling her head where he wanted it to go,
or if she had plaits either side he used them like reins. Yesterday he had wrapped her single plait around his cock, then released her hair and had her drag its length over his body.

‘Ha! You’re blushing. Why won’t you tell me? I thought we were friends?’

‘Jamie, we are, it’s just…’ She checked to make sure no one was in earshot. ‘No one can know, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m serious. There will be major, major trouble if anyone finds out. Going to gaol kind of trouble.’

Jamie laughed. ‘You call Jess a drama queen! Why would anyone go to gaol for–’ He blinked. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Because I’m underage and he’s a teacher.’ Her smile was unstoppable, even though she knew this moment should be a serious one.

‘What? You’re kidding?’ He blinked fast. ‘You are kidding?’

‘No. I’ve been meeting Mr Carr every day after school. I’m having an affair with him.’

Jamie blinked at her for a few more seconds. Then he shook his head and punched her shoulder. ‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘You had me going there for a second.’

While Mr Carr continued to warn Sarah against revealing their secret, he flirted – thrillingly! – with self-exposure. One time, he had the office messenger deliver an envelope to her during second period Maths. On the outside it said:
Public Speaking Competition Entry Form
. Inside, the note said:
Your face, contorted in agonising pleasure, just appeared in my mind unbidden. I am trapped behind my desk, burning
. Another note, dropped onto her desk during English class, while she was deep in thought, her pen hanging from between her lips, said
O, how I wish I was that ballpoint pen
. Sometimes, passing her in the hallways, he brushed her arse or breasts or mouthed words obscene or romantic or both.

When their affair was two months old, Sarah gave a presentation to the class about Emily Dickinson: a poet whom she knew Mr Carr believed should be expunged from the canon. Sarah took this as a personal insult and was determined to change his mind. While her classmates dozed up the back of the room, passed notes or covertly listened to the Walkmans hidden in their pencil cases, Sarah passionately argued Emily Dickinson’s significance. Mr Carr listened intently, interrupting now and then to clarify a point or ask a question. ‘I’m not sure about your claim that Dickinson was comical. Can we have an example?’

‘Of course.’ Sarah looked him in the eye and recited Poem XI:

‘Much madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense the starkest madness

’T is the majority

In this, as all, prevails

Assent and you are sane;

Demur, – you’re straightway dangerous

And handled with a chain.’

He slow-clapped her, smiling. ‘Very impressive, but perhaps
wry
would be a better word than comical?’ He leant forward in his chair. ‘And I hope you understand how provocative you’re being. Chains as a penalty for dissent? My, my, Sarah.’

Sarah felt her face growing hot. She looked away from him, out at the class, but no one – except Jamie, who was staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at an unseeing Mr Carr – seemed to have noticed his comment. They were not listening to nerdy Sarah Clark and boring Mr Carr debating some dead chick’s poetry; they didn’t realise they were witnessing foreplay.

Sarah finished her presentation with an anecdote: ‘Emily Dickinson once had her work rejected by an editor who criticised her unconventional use of punctuation, specifically her overuse of dashes. Her reply was to the point: “I am in danger, Sir.” Reading her poems today we can feel her racing heart, her quick breath, the hot blood rushing through her veins. We feel her urgency and it becomes ours.’

Mr Carr thanked her for her work and called on the next student to come forward, but after class he whispered for her to meet him at the petrol station
now
, and though they both had half a day of classes remaining, they fled to their old parking spot by the creek and Mr Carr told her that her speech had filled him with unbearable longing.

‘I never realised Emily Dickinson could be erotic,’ he said and Sarah told him that nothing had ever seemed erotic until he showed her that everything was.

The next afternoon in the canteen, Mr Carr was in a foul temper. He accused Sarah of purposely provoking him into the sort of risky behaviour which would get him fired. He called her manipulative and vicious, which made her cry. He told her she was ugly when she cried, and so she held her breath until she had control of herself. Feeling dizzy and ashamed, she pressed her ugly face into his chest and was weak with relief when he stroked her hair and told her he was sorry and that she was so beautiful he could hardly stand it.

‘It’s my wife,’ he said. ‘She called the office yesterday afternoon, and they told her I’d gone home sick. She cried half the night. I didn’t know what to say to her.’

Sarah lifted her head, stood on her toes and kissed his lips. She rubbed his back and kissed him behind his ears. ‘Yeah, I nearly got busted too. My stupid sister’s stupid friend saw me walking across the car park. I said I was going to get something out of Miss Wright’s car for her. Don’t think she believed me…’ Sarah kissed his Adam’s apple. ‘We better not leave like that again.’

‘Sooner or later, we will be found out.’

‘Maybe by then it won’t matter.’

He stepped back and looked down into her face. ‘How could it ever not matter? I love my wife, Sarah. I love my kids. Do you have any idea what knowing about us would do to them?’

Sarah froze. It had never occurred to her that he didn’t want what she did. She had thought of his family as an obstacle, like her parents and her age. She had assumed all obstacles would be overcome, that love was
an ever fixed mark, that looks on tempests and is not shaken
. But if love was what he had for his wife, then Sarah was the tempest. She was the impediment which would not be admitted.

‘Are you dumping me?’

‘Am I
dumping you
?’ Mr Carr laughed. ‘God, what an expression.’

Sarah couldn’t help it; she began to cry again. ‘Why are you being so mean?’

‘Oh, precious.’ He folded her up in his arms. ‘It’s ridiculous to think of this, us, as the kind of adolescent romance that could be ended by
dumping
. As if we could stop this just by speaking a few little words. I wish it was that easy, truly. I wish I could say “it’s over” and it would be. You and I won’t stop needing each other until we’re both dead and buried.’

‘Until
my quaint honour turns to dust
?’

‘My God, you are remarkable.’ Mr Carr lifted her easily and sat her on the preparation bench. He parted her legs and stood between them, his hands and hers working together to undo his zipper, remove her underpants, push his trousers and jocks to his knees. ‘How is it possible that you always know exactly what to say? I’ve been such a grumpy, mean man and you, oh!’ He pushed inside her. ‘Oh, Sarah, I fear I’m going to wear your
quaint honour
into dust before your fifteenth birthday. Your poor little, oh, God, am I hurting you?’

‘No,’ she said, although he was.

‘I am, aren’t I?’ He moved faster. ‘Tell me, Sarah, please. I’m hurting you, yes?’

‘Yes, it hurts. But I like it, Mr Carr, really.’

He groaned. He was finished. ‘Oh, my little Sarah. You always know what to say.’

‘Sarah?’ Jamie asked. It was Friday night and they were sprawled on Jamie’s living room couch. MTV was on, but neither of them was watching it. Sarah was reading
Madame Bovary
and Jamie was flicking through
Rolling Stone
.

‘Mmm?’ She did not look up. Jamie hadn’t said more than two words to her since the Emily Dickinson presentation yesterday. She wondered if he was finally going to ask her about it.

‘Wanna drink?’

She sighed. ‘Nah.’

Jamie left the room and came back with a can of coke and a bag of Doritos. He sat on the floor, opened his drink and took a swig, then opened his chips and crunched through a handful. ‘So,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You and Mr Carr are really…’

Sarah’s heart skipped. She closed her book and sat up. ‘Yeah. I told you.’

He nodded. ‘I thought… Um, so you… you kiss and stuff?’

‘Yeah.’

Jamie took another drink. ‘Have you done it with him?’

She nodded.

‘Fuck.’ Jamie stood up and kicked a bean bag. ‘Fuck, Sarah, this is… he must be forty!’

‘No. He’s only thirty-eight.’

‘He’s a teacher!’

‘We’re in love.’

Jamie sat down and picked up his magazine. After a while, Sarah returned to her novel. She felt let down by him, but wasn’t sure why. What did she expect? Congratulations? She tried to imagine how she would have felt if the situation was reversed, but the thought of Jamie doing to a woman the things that Mr Carr did to Sarah was just too bizarre. She would be surprised if Jamie had even heard of some of the stuff she did with Mr Carr. But then, she had never known about any of it before Mr Carr had taught her. A couple of months ago she was as innocent as Jamie; now she doubted that anything about sex could shock her.

‘Are you angry?’ she asked Jamie when she was leaving.

He shrugged. ‘Who else knows?’

‘Just you. You won’t tell anyone will you?’

He shook his head. Sarah thought she saw a tear forming in his left eye but he turned away before she could be sure. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and closed the door, not offering to walk her home for the first time ever.

Sometimes he was so much the English teacher that it drove her crazy. While he was locking the change room door, she let slip that she had finished
Madame Bovary
last night, and now he wanted to waste precious alone time talking about it.

‘We can talk after.’

He smiled. ‘Anxious, aren’t you?’

Sarah shrugged her school bag off her shoulders. ‘The weekends are so long. By Monday afternoon I’m just so–’

‘Horny?’

She felt herself blush. It was the sort of word the girls who shared smokes in the toilet block used to describe the boys they drove around with on Saturday nights. Sarah did not think it was the proper word for what she felt.

‘It’s not that. I just miss you.’

‘So hurry up and sit down.’ He pointed to the stainless steel bench that ran through the centre of the room. ‘Talk to me.’ He sat himself at her feet, looking up at her. ‘I want to know what you thought of Emma Bovary.’

Sarah sighed. ‘I don’t know. I sort of hated her, especially how she treated her kid, but I felt sorry for her, too.’

‘Tell me why.’

‘Well, because she was searching for something amazing, for ecstasy. But her husband’s such a plodder, so she falls for the first guy who offers her a bit of excitement and he turns out to be a pig and then the next guy is this awful coward and it just seems the more she searches, the worse things get for her.’

‘And this makes her deserving of our sympathy?’

‘I just think it’s sad she never found what she was looking for.’

‘Do you think what she was looking for even exists?’

Sarah nudged him with her shoe. ‘Yes.’

He took hold of her foot. ‘And what makes you think you’re not as deluded as poor Emma?’

‘You do.’

Mr Carr frowned up at her. ‘Ah, Sarah,’ he said, and started to untie her shoelace.

‘You didn’t say if you missed me on the weekend.’

‘Didn’t I?’ He continued untying her shoelaces.

‘No.’

‘Do you want me to say it?’ Mr Carr slipped off her shoes and placed them on the floor beside him.

‘Only if it’s true.’

He removed her socks slowly, using both hands for each foot, then laid the socks on top of her shoes. ‘Of course I missed you, you silly little thing.’ He raised her left foot to his mouth and kissed each toe in turn. ‘It’s intolerable to be away from you for so long.’ He kissed the top of her foot and her ankle. ‘Excruciating.’