The Revelations (10 page)

Later in bed she tried to talk to him. She knew he had drunk enough to make him irritable, but she needed to connect with him. She needed to let him know how proud she was of his preaching – because that was what it was, he had preached and it sounded just like David. She pressed herself against him, felt the familiar boniness of his body, the muscles under his armpits and along his neck, the hard curve of his arse.

‘You were amazing tonight, darling. I know you must be exhausted, but I want you to know how proud I am of you.’

Marcus stopped himself speaking for a moment. He knew he was irrationally angry. He hadn’t eaten dinner and had drunk just enough to pull a black veil over his mind. He always regretted these rages in the morning, even though in the moment he felt such enormous clarity, felt as though the world was transparent and he could finally see the workings of the machine. But he loved Abby, and he struggled to keep his thoughts inside.

‘I’m so tired. Please, let’s just go to sleep.’

‘But I can’t. I want to talk about it with you. Did you feel my energy? I mean, the way I danced in that song it was like I was full of something burning. I think we’re going to do an amazing job this year. It’s sad that we’ve lost a couple already, but I really think the rest of them will stick it out. Wouldn’t that be marvellous?’

‘Yes, that’d be great. ’Night.’

She was quiet for a moment. Then, slipping her hand slowly inside the tracksuit bottoms he wore to bed, she took hold of his cock.

‘Let’s have sex, darling. I really want you. And I think what happened tonight might have been a message. I think it’s maybe a sign that if we do it tonight it’ll all work out.’

She felt Marcus growing hard, wrestled her nightie over her head and switched on the bedside light. When she turned back to him she saw Marcus lying staring up at the ceiling. He was cracking his knuckles.

‘What is it?’ She placed her hand on his stomach.

‘I don’t want to have sex. Not after tonight.’

‘Come on, darling. You were just like David in that discussion group, magnetic.’ She took his cock in her hand again and found it small and limp.

‘I’m sorry. I just don’t find things as easy as you do.’

She began to tug gently at his penis, taking his hand and placing it over her pussy.

‘I don’t find it easy, darling. But it gets easier the more you do it.’ She began to move herself back and forward, pressing herself against his fingers.

‘But I get the impression that with you it’s instinctual, something that comes naturally. It’s a real struggle for me.’

Abby was panting slightly. Marcus’s cock was still small and shrewlike in her hand.

‘Why do you always have to make everything so difficult, darling? Just relax and go with the flow. Good things will happen, I promise.’

Marcus pulled his hand away from her and sat up in bed.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Jesus, I don’t know if I can handle this.’ He wouldn’t look at her as he spoke.

‘What do you mean, this?’

‘I mean us, a baby, the life you have chosen for us. I’m beginning to wonder how we got old so quickly.’

She stood up, clasping her nightie in a ball at her chest. Her voice came out very clear and controlled.

‘It’s not my fault. Your life is not my fault.’

‘What does that mean?’

Her voice when it came was still soft, but cold and spiked.

‘It means I think sometimes that I’m making the same mistake my sisters made. Marrying weak men. My mother always said that we would never be happy together. I think she might have been right.’

She was breathing heavily, twisting the soft cotton nightie into a ball. Marcus still wouldn’t look at her. She tried to take his hand, but he drew it away.

‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean it. I love you. That’s my problem, I just love you so much. And I need for us to be together, for us to have a child. I’ll try very hard to make things better for you.’

But Marcus was already gone. Whenever they argued like this he would retreat into himself, draw up his defences and become as still and silent as a monk, lost to Abby.

‘Don’t do this, please don’t do this. Speak to me. What are you thinking?’ He sat immobile as she stroked his hair. Abby began to cry, large hot tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, his voice very cold.

She looked down at him as she stood, her nightie clutched to her chest. ‘Because you’re not,’ she said, and ran from the room. She slammed the door as she left.

Marcus sat on the bed and watched the windows of the high Edwardian houses opposite. Scattered yellow squares of light glowed against the dim white walls like the doors of an advent calendar. A train rattled somewhere. When he went to look for Abby he found her sitting very still on the sofa, her nightie on, the main lights in the room casting her shadow on the wall behind her. Marcus sat down next to her and placed a kiss on her wrinkled brow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ She turned to him and draped her arms around his shoulders. He felt her hot breath on the skin of his neck.

‘All I want is for you to be happy. I know I haven’t always been there for you, but this time I am. We’re going to make a baby, and you’ll be an amazing mother. And I’ll love the baby all the more because half of it is you.’

‘Oh, darling,’ she said, and pressed her wet face into the hollow of his neck.

They made their way back to the bed in the spare room. A bird was singing somewhere in the darkness outside the window. They slept tightly curled together that night as they had done when they shared his single bed at university, and he fell asleep with the beating of her heart thumping against his cheek, the words of a prayer circling his mind.
Don’t let me die just yet, Lord. I don’t want to die.

This girl was very good. Mouse liked her expressionless face, the clinical air she had about her. Once he had walked out without speaking to the masseuse. There had been a lasciviousness in the way she greeted him, something sluttish in her clothing and smile, something that suggested she was open to going further than a massage. But this one clearly understood what he was looking for. When her fingers rested on his perineum, he allowed himself a brief sigh of contentment, encouraging her to stay there. She was naked. There was a long mirror down one wall of the room and he watched her breasts move as she ran her hands up the inside of his thighs. Dark nipples. She sucked her lip in concentration. She looked a little like Lee. Brown hair but the same sense of seriousness. He thought she was Swedish, but didn’t want to ask.

Mouse had slipped out of work early and made his way to the large Georgian house on Gloucester Place. He was always staggered by the economics of it, that a place of such grandeur could be maintained by six or seven masseuses and their balding, unthreatening male receptionist. He paid one hundred pounds for his forty-five-minute session. Something soothing and Eastern played on a hidden stereo. A gamelan, a sitar. She sat astride one of his thighs as she massaged his arse and he could feel the soft slick hair of her pussy on his skin. It amused him that these girls – some of whom were English and well-spoken, a step above the sex-trafficked
skag
addicts in the brothel next door – fooled themselves into thinking that what they did was somehow better than prostitution. Eastern mysticism was in high vogue, and they must have felt that it lent dignity to their compromised lives. He had found the place through a website that promised ‘enhanced consciousness’ and ‘a way to rebalance the chakras’. Of course it was nothing more than a posh handjob. But the pretence suited Mouse, who didn’t want to have sex with these girls, just needed an hour of being touched, an hour when he could lose himself in physical pleasure without feeling that he was breaking the rules of the Course.

He had argued with Lee earlier that day. It was not a serious disagreement, just one of the small moments of friction that invigorated their relationship. He knew he had been staring at her too much in the library earlier. Perched behind his desk, he had been conjuring a daydream of exquisite beauty
starring
Lee against a deserted rocky beach and pine trees growing down to the sea. He stared at her and imagined her naked back pressed to the rough bark of the pine, her feet in the water and her arms stretched above her, her breasts falling forward as she dived in. She smiled at him the first few times she caught his eye, but then her expression grew increasingly irritated. A tall and aristocratic-looking student sitting next to Lee kept glancing at Mouse, whispering in her ear and then looking back at him with a frown. By this time Mouse was imagining Lee in the empty hall high above them in the tower of Senate House, her clothes scattered on the parquet floor, her hair falling down over her shoulders like Dulac’s Little Mermaid.

Lee had refused to have lunch with him and had disappeared towards the Brunswick Centre on the arm of her newly appointed protector. She didn’t come back that afternoon. After a sad sandwich in the staff cafeteria, Mouse went back to the library, found where the tall boy had been working and removed three pages of notes from his desk, folding them and placing them at the bottom of the bin as he made his way to the lift. He called ahead and booked his massage and then set out along the Euston Road.

As he lay on the bed with its sheet that was bobbled from too many washes, too many attempts to rinse out the oil and come and sweat, he felt the heaviness that had dogged his day lifting. He had been to a dinner party at the house of an older girl from the Course the night before. A girl who had once seemed to offer an escape from his obsession with Lee. Three years ago, he had taken her to the theatre, and then on to a bar, spending money he didn’t have getting her drunk. He had tried to kiss her in the taxi back west, and she laughed at him, told him that he was a dear pal, but she had a boyfriend, didn’t he know? Now the boyfriend had become a husband, the girl’s stomach strained against the material of her maternity dress, and her cheeks glowed every time she looked at her wealthy, successful mate. Mouse had played his part during dinner – the doting, unthreatening friend, laughing at her jokes and reaching out to touch the taut skin of her stomach to feel – there! – a kick. But he raged as he walked home, shouted prayers into the night sky, screamed at the desperate unfairness of it all.

The masseuse asked him to turn onto his back and he did so. He could see her looking at him, at the large belly that sat above his short, skinny legs, giving his body the appearance of a toffee apple abandoned on the bed. His cock stood straining, pulsing against the bulge of his stomach. She began to massage his feet, rubbing warm oil onto the hard pads of his soles.

He was worried about his friends. Lee was a constant concern, but now Marcus and Abby seemed argumentative, strung out. They rarely came to the pub after the Course. Dark pouches hung beneath Marcus’s eyes. The Retreat was like a beacon ahead. Only three more days and then they’d be together for the weekend, and all things would be well again. David had told him that the Retreat would be held at the Earl’s country house on the edge of the Cotswolds, Lancing Manor. Each year it was somewhere different, the exact location never revealed to the new members until the night before. Mouse thought back to the Retreats he had been on so far: some of the best days of his life. He didn’t know what he’d do without the Course.

The girl began to move her way up his body. First his calves; resting her arse on his foot, she ran her oiled fingers up one leg and then the next, kneading the muscle, moving her thumbs in circles around his knees. Then his thighs, which she pulled and stretched, making her way slowly up to the join of leg and groin, the fold of skin where his pubic hair started. She brushed his cock by accident and he felt it thrill.

Lee had discovered him. Three weeks into term and he had only left his room in college for lectures and meals. Sitting on his own in the wood-panelled dining hall under badly painted pictures of morally upright fellows, he would shovel the food into his mouth as quickly as he could, reading a novel to discourage any of the other outcasts from claiming him as one of their own. He watched the surrounding tables with bored scorn. Marcus’s voice was always the loudest, his laugh audible from the quadrangle below. Everyone knew Marcus. And Abby at his side, striking and statuesque, but Mouse could see her in fifteen years’ time when she’d be hulking and matronly. Daffy and all of the other laddish types who followed Marcus around were not the sort of people Mouse had come to
university
to meet. So he sat reading the novels of André Gide, with his blond hair flopping in front of his eyes, and left when his plate was clean.

One evening, scurrying across the quad after dinner, he saw a girl watching him from a window high in the wide blank wall of the college’s main building. He recognised her vaguely. She was friends with Marcus and his crowd. Her face looked young and lost as she peered out into the misty air. The face disappeared into darkness and Mouse climbed the spiral staircase to his own room, the smallest room in college. His clothes were still in his suitcase, perched at the foot of his bed. Books were everywhere, reaching in perilous piles towards the ceiling, three deep on the windowsill, filling the drawers of his dresser. He opened the window and stared out across the college lawn towards the parks. Only a small desk lamp lit the room behind him and he felt somehow powerful up there in his cupboard of a room, looking down over the world.

He watched people walking back to their rooms after
dinner
, heard brief snatches of conversation. Then there was a knock on his door. Mouse panicked for a moment, stared around his room and thrust handfuls of dirty socks and boxer shorts into drawers, stuffing them between tightly packed books. When he opened the door he saw the girl who had been watching him from the high window earlier. He stepped forward and tried to pull the door closed behind him to block her view inside. She placed one hand on the door frame. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms, scuffed trainers on her feet.

‘Can I come in? You’re Alastair, right?’ Her voice was deep and cool.

Mouse looked behind him and sucked his stomach in as she squeezed past him.

‘Wow, this room is tiny. Bad luck. My name is Lee, by the way.’

She took off her shoes and sat down on his bed, lifting his suitcase onto the floor. He saw her eyes scanning the piles of books. She reached over and picked up a tattered copy of
The Wind in the Willows
.

‘Oh, I love this. I had forgotten how much I did, but then I read it over the summer. It’s magic.’

Mouse’s eyes bulged even more. He sat down in his desk chair, knocking a pile of books over as he swung round to face her. They were only a foot apart and Mouse could smell her shampoo.

‘Do you really like it? I think it’s a serious work. I mean really very spiritual. It’s my favourite. I read it when I can’t sleep.’

Lee looked around the room.
Treasure Island
lay open on top of a copy of
Eugénie Grandet
,
The Famous Five
rubbed shoulders with
La Vie mode d’emploi
,
Struwwelpeter
with
Les Fleurs du mal
.

‘What are you studying?’ she asked.

‘French.’

‘So why all the kids’ books?’

Mouse blew his fringe upwards and spun a pencil on his desk.

‘I’ve always taken them with me. My dad is in the army and we travelled around a lot when I was young. I just got used to having my books around me. All I have to do is read the beginning of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
and I feel
. . .
I don’t know, safe. It’s a wee bit sad, I suppose, but no worse than television.’

She set down
The Wind in the Willows
on top of the Bible that lay beside his bed. She took off her jumper; her singlet rode up as she lifted it, revealing a flat white stomach. Mouse tried not to look at the softness of her breasts under the vest, the black bra straps on her shoulders. She leaned over
suddenly
and, very close, breathed a question at him. He felt a flutter of panic, felt time slowing, making the air around them heavy.

‘What’s your accent? Where are you from?’

She stroked his flushed, fleshy cheek with cold fingers. He spoke quickly, stumbling on his words.

‘I’m from Scotland. Well, I grew up in Germany and then came back over here when I was thirteen. We were in Shropshire for a wee while and then my dad was posted to Barry, outside of Dundee. It’s where his family are from. I don’t really know what my accent is. I try to make it as ordinary as possible. It’s just how I speak, you know?’

With the light cutting along her cheek, he thought she was very beautiful. He could see fading summer freckles across her forehead, lying like stars along her arms. He noticed that she wore different-coloured earrings in her ears. He wondered if she knew that they didn’t match. Her tracksuit bottoms were frayed around the heel. He felt suddenly ashamed of his body, the way his stomach pushed out beneath his T-shirt, his goggling eyes.

‘What are you doing here? I mean, I’m glad you came over, but I didn’t think people like you mixed with people like me. Why aren’t you out with Abby and Marcus?’

She drew back a little and smiled at him.

‘I saw you at dinner the other night and I thought you looked nice. I don’t want to hang out with just those people. I want to meet people like you. I think we could be friends.’

‘Well I don’t. I didn’t ask you to come over. I just want to get on with my work. All of the other students in my tutorials have spent every holiday since they were kids in France. They worked in Paris on their gap years, have pretentious parents who insist on French at the dinner table once a week, you know? I’m at a disadvantage from the start and so I am going to need to work really hard to keep up. I think you’re grand, Lee, and I’m pleased to have met you, but maybe you should go. I can’t really deal with this now.’

She looked at him with a frown, knitting her eyebrows together, then pulled back the duvet and slipped into his bed. He watched her wriggle like a fish for a moment and then saw the tracksuit trousers slither slowly to the floor.

‘Will you read me a story, Alastair?’

‘Um . . . OK. Call me Mouse. People call me Mouse.’

So he opened
The Wind in the Willows
, took a deep breath, and began to read.

‘The Willow-Wren was twittering his thin little song,
hidden
himself in the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o’clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light . . .’

Lee slept in his bed that night. She wore one of his T-shirts and they lay in the close darkness hugging, talking in whispered voices. He massaged her thin back with his thumbs, feeling the closeness of the bones under her skin. She let him kiss her lips, but kept them tightly closed when he tried to move his tongue inside. He was also allowed to feel her breasts and her arse through her clothes, but she pushed him away when he tried to slip his hands under the waistband of her pants. Neither of them slept, and when the sun rose he sat on the windowsill reading aloud from
The Wind in the Willows
again. She lay back with her eyes closed, smiling.

It was the closest he had come to something sexual with Lee. And it was why he went for these massages. He had enough self-knowledge to realise that it was in pursuit of those early nights with Lee that he went to the tall Georgian house in Marylebone. He slid back to the present, away from memory, as the girl massaging him started to apply oil to her naked body. Her breasts shimmered, her stomach glistened. She began to chant.

‘Om, shanti, om . . .’