Three Button Trick and Other Stories (12 page)

‘I don't know what you mean. Did you go swimming after all? Why all this talk about swimming all of a sudden?'

Stephanie looked crestfallen. She knew that she was already losing Jane's sympathy. ‘That was a simile. Remember? Like Gerard Manley Hopkins or someone. I was trying to explain a feeling.'

Jane rolled her eyes. ‘Just tell me what you
mean.
What about that skinhead, the shoplifter. Did you catch him?'

Stephanie nodded. ‘Yes, I caught him.'

‘And then?' Jane drained her glass of lager and placed it decisively down on a beermat. Stephanie studied her own glass, watched the condensation on the exterior of its bowl and around its base. The glass left a ring of moisture on the surface of the table when she picked it up. She took a sip and replaced it, but in a different place so that she could study the damp ring on the table's surface, moisten her finger in the dampness and then draw on the polished wood. She drew another circle. ‘I walked over to him and told him that I knew he had placed some socks inside his jacket. I asked whether he intended to pay for them.'

‘What did he say? Didn't you try and call the store detective? I would have.'

Stephanie drew two dots inside the circle and then a straight line. The circle was now a face, a round, rather simple but glum-looking face. ‘No, I didn't call the store detective. It was almost twenty-to-six. I didn't want the hassle.'

‘Weren't you frightened?'

She nodded. ‘I suppose so. He was tall. At first he just stared at me. Then he turned, as if he was going to walk away'

‘And then?'

‘I put out my hand and grabbed his arm. He had one of those weird jackets on, a puffy green jacket. He must've been almost six feet tall. Mean-looking.'

Jane stopped tapping her foot as the Doris Day song finished on the juke box. She looked over to see if the two young men at the bar were going to put another song on but they had recently been joined by a third man and were deep in conversation. Stephanie smiled at her. ‘Can I get you another drink yet?'

Jane shook her head. ‘Not yet. Wait a while. So what happened then?'

Stephanie looked down at the table again, at the face she had drawn, which was already evaporating. She picked up some more moistness from the ring left by the glass and cut across the face with several rapid strokes. ‘I took hold of his arm and said, “You can't leave here until you put those socks back.” He grinned at me and said, “Which socks? I haven't got any.” '

‘Did he pull his arm away?'

Stephanie looked disconcerted. ‘Um. No. I don't think he pulled his arm away. It was all very quick. The aisle was empty. The whole shop seemed empty.'

‘What did you say then?'

Stephanie took another sip of her drink. ‘I said, “You have got socks there, I saw you pick them up. I'm not stupid. Please just put them back and I'll leave you alone.” '

‘And did he?'

She shook her head. ‘No. He looked down at my hand on his arm and started to smile. He said, “I haven't got any socks, only on my feet.” I said, “I know you've got them,” and indicated with my other hand towards a bulge in his jacket where I'd seen him put the socks.'

‘Why didn't you call one of the store detectives? I'm surprised they didn't notice him come in. Probably on a tea break.'

Jane created her own scenarios; scrupulous and disapproving. Stephanie shrugged. ‘I don't know where they were. Anyway, I could handle it. He didn't turn nasty. I think he was surprised. I wouldn't let him go.'

Jane smiled. ‘You're small but ferocious, like a terrier. Did he give you the socks?'

Stephanie tried to smile back. ‘After a while, yes. He put his hand inside his jacket and produced the socks. He threw them on to the nearest shelf. The shop seemed so quiet. He was still smiling at me.'

Jane wrinkled up her nose. ‘Yuk. Creepy.'

Stephanie continued, ‘And then he started to apologize. I don't know why. I hadn't expected him to. He started to apologize like he'd offended me somehow. It was strange.'

Jane nodded. ‘At least he had some manners. Did you let him go? I would've called the store detectives. I suppose it was too late by then though, but he shouldn't have got away with it. Did he just leave?'

Stephanie took a deep breath. ‘Well, while he was apologizing I realized that I still had my hand on his arm. We sort of realized at the same time. And then, and then …'

Jane raised her eyebrows, ‘And then?'

Stephanie bit her lip. ‘Then we, sort of, kissed.'

Jane looked so shocked that Stephanie wanted to laugh, but couldn't quite bring herself to.

‘What? A proper kiss? A kiss?'

Stephanie nodded. ‘It just happened.'

Jane fought down two competing impulses in her gut, the first of total disapproval, the second of total fascination. Stephanie watched this conflict translate itself on to Jane's face and said, ‘It didn't mean anything.'

Finally Jane asked, ‘What sort of a kiss? A French kiss? What did you say after?'

Stephanie blushed. ‘A French kiss. His mouth tasted of cough sweets and smoke. We didn't really say anything. If he did say something, it was only to apologize about the socks again.'

Jane frowned. ‘So what did you do? After?'

Stephanie shrugged. ‘I … I suppose I put my hand under his shirt. He was wearing a T-shirt.'

‘You were looking for more socks? You were, weren't you?'

Stephanie burst out laughing. She had recovered from her earlier embarrassment. ‘No. By then I had forgotten about the socks. I was feeling his stomach and his chest. His chest was hairless, but surprisingly firm.'

Jane was silent for a moment, trying to understand what this situation meant. Stephanie had never been a promiscuous person. She stared at her face across the table and looked for any perceptible signs of distress. There were none. After a while she said, ‘Why did it happen? You've never done this sort of thing before. I thought you were faithful to Chris. I don't understand you.'

Stephanie sighed. ‘I was trying to explain earlier. Of course I've never done anything like this before. It was strange, as though … like a compulsion. Inevitable. Dangerous but compulsive. I don't know. I can't understand it myself. It's not as though we were immediately physically attracted. It was more the situation itself, the differences between us …'

Jane interrupted. ‘I suppose it was only a kiss. Maybe it was just mutual attraction.'

Stephanie looked momentarily indecisive and then said, ‘No, that's the whole point. It wasn't just a kiss. We had sex.'

To fill the following silence she added, ‘The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it was just a power thing. There was something explosive about the situation, the confrontation, something strangely … well, strange. Erotic.'

Stephanie looked down at her hands. She had never used the word ‘erotic' before. Especially in front of someone like Jane. Using the word was almost as much fun as the sex had been. She felt like D. H. Lawrence.

Jane was devastated. She looked at Stephanie and couldn't understand her, she couldn't contain what she had done in the relevant compartments of her brain. She wondered whether Stephanie was now a slag. A slut. Finally she said, ‘You behaved like a slut, with some big, ugly skinhead.'

Stephanie shrugged. ‘If you mean “slut” in a good way, then yes, I did. The shop was so quiet. We made love behind some racks of mohair jumpers. Nobody came.'

She smiled at her unintentional pun. Jane missed the joke. Her ideas of Stephanie had now been so radically altered that any coherent discussion about motivation and intent seemed entirely fruitless. But she was like a small, common bird, like a sparrow, a pack creature, something that acts on impulse. She wanted to know the details, but this desire compromised her and she knew it. Eventually she said, ‘How was he?' She had never been able to ask this question about the sexual relations between Stephanie and Chris, but this was different. Stephanie looked for a moment like she wasn't going to reply, then she said, ‘Good. Strange. Condensed …'

‘Did he have …?'

Stephanie frowned. ‘Don't ask. It wasn't like that.'

Jane felt coarse and embarrassed. She snapped defensively, ‘I'm not particularly interested in what it was like. Don't flatter yourself.' She was silent for a second and then added, ‘How can we even discuss it? How can we talk about it? There's nothing to say.'

Stephanie frowned, trying to understand what Jane meant. She said, ‘I thought I should tell you.'

Jane raised her eyebrows and tried to look ironic. ‘Tell me? Tell me what? I think you should consider telling Chris. I don't think he'll be too sympathetic, though.'

Stephanie cupped the bowl of her glass in both hands. She was temporarily confused. She had known that Jane would be disapproving, surprised, maybe even shocked, but the coherence and simplicity of what she had experienced … She repeated the word silently to herself and felt it to be totally appropriate. Simplicity. That expresses it best. It was so simple, unadulterated, natural and yet unnatural.

She tried to articulate her thoughts. ‘It wasn't sordid, just natural and kind of obvious, that's why it's so hard to describe …'

Jane shrugged. ‘Just sex. Are you seeing each other again?'

Stephanie sighed and shook her head. ‘I shouldn't think so. I hadn't thought about it like that. It wasn't like that.'

Jane seemed unimpressed. ‘So you won't be seeing him again. But will you have sex with other people at work? When it's quiet, just before closing?'

She was smirking. Stephanie felt at once angry and misunderstood. She spoke instead of thinking, before thinking. ‘Maybe this has changed me. I didn't feel immediately different, but I think that I might actually be. I knew you wouldn't approve, but I thought you'd be …' She tried to collect her thoughts.

Jane turned away from Stephanie and looked over her shoulder and towards the juke box. It was silent. She wondered whether she could be bothered to go over and put some money into it. It then struck her that this might in fact be a good idea, a means to walk away from the conversation, to bring about a hiatus, a gap, a space, so that when she returned they could discuss other things. She took her purse from her bag and stood up. She said, ‘I'm going to put some music on the juke box.'

Stephanie didn't reply. She nodded. She watched Jane walk over to the juke box and thought, ‘Suddenly we have no common ground. When she comes back to the table she won't discuss this with me again. It's as though nothing can be expressed between us which will make sense, which we can both understand. When she comes back to the table she will be assured in her own mind that she is now better than me, that she has something over me, and yet …'

She sighed and pushed a piece of hair that had fallen across her face behind her ear. ‘And yet something so incredible has happened.' She felt sad, almost bitter, but in her heart she knew that the space that had sprung up between them, the vacuum, had now opened up inside her, and it was a positive space that could be filled with so many things; ideas, possibilities. She thought, ‘Words are like gifts, some people are generous and some frugal.' She decided to make herself a present by keeping quiet.

T
HE FIRST THING THEY
did after saying hello was to move straight into Shelly's bedroom and have sex. They had been voluntarily apart for five months. During this entire period Sean had seen Shelly on only one single occasion, and that had been at Sainsbury's where he had been trying to get hold of some Turkish Delight for his mother. He had seen her by the bread counter buying a French stick. She was chatting to the young girl who was serving her. He couldn't imagine what about. His first impulse was to think, ‘She's lost so much weight, she seems so cheerful', as an afterthought, ‘without me.' His second impulse was to duck behind a stack of soup tins as she turned in his direction and then to scurry away when he was sure that she would not notice him. He didn't want to see her, to speak to her, but equally he didn't want her to see him making a quick getaway. That would hardly seem dignified for either party.

He was twenty-seven and she was twenty-five. They had been ‘seeing' each other for four years and for the last two of those four years they had been living together. She rented a flat in Wood Green close to the tube station. He had opted to move in with her and initially things had been fine.

She had never been thin. She was what most dietitians would call pear-shaped, but she was five feet and eight inches tall, which is a good size for a woman, and that height somehow undermined the size of her hips and made her shape seem less obvious. Unfortunately, within a year of their practical union she had begun to gain weight.

Sean knew that he was hardly the perfect partner, that his idea of faithful was to try and think of her when he was screwing other women. But he firmly believed that in other respects he was an excellent mate. He helped with the housework, he bought her flowers, he told her that she was beautiful.

It would be a lie to say that when she gained weight he didn't find her any less attractive. Her eating was perpetual and compulsive. Invariably she had something in her mouth; if not part of a jam tart or a sausage roll then some chewing gum or a boiled sweet. Sometimes he felt that her eating was a way of distancing herself from him; as though the layers of fat were an attempt to keep him away. Even so, she was always saying that she loved him, always saying that she needed him.

Her doctor had recommended a trial separation, a cooling-off period so that they could both analyse their feelings at a sensible distance. By this time she was well over fourteen stone and what the medical profession might describe as clinically depressed. He had been more than willing to accept this new development in their relationship. His mother had clucked her tongue at him when he had arrived home again with a suitcase and several carrier bags, and had told him that he just wasn't willing to stick things out, to sort things out.