Yearning (4 page)

But the real pleasure was late at night in her bed where she was free to imagine being alone with him. She pictured him showering, the rush of water tracing the shape of his earthy body. The suds slipping over his muscles like tiny wet tongues, his broad shoulders and strong arms. She wanted to get close and watch his hands lathering soap over his thighs, through the tangle of his pubic hair and down to his thighs. She imagined taking a face washer and stroking him all over with it, washing the silky bubbles away from his skin, blowing him dry with the heat of her breath.

While her fingers lightly stroked her own feathery pubic hair, she kissed the air, trying to capture the touch of his lips to her own. She caressed her own thighs, trying to manifest the feeling of his hands on her skin, sinking her fingers deep into the folds of her vaginal lips and gasping with the sweetness of it. In her fantasy his soft words coaxed her into making love with him. She dreamed of giving in to him, of yielding and allowing him to slide his cock inside her, the imagined sensation bringing her to a sudden orgasm.

Poetry burst from her like spring pollen. Hidden beneath her blankets with a torch, a torrent of passionate words flowed into her diary in an outpouring of longing. With shaking hands she wrote him anonymous letters and hid them among the diary’s pages. Letters filled with ardent hopes, written as she watched him from her bedroom window, and kept buried deeply with the binoculars in the private clutter of her desk drawer.

*

One Saturday morning several months later, she stood in her room in a shaft of late winter sunlight watching Solomon wandering around his garden. He sipped coffee as he poked at plants with his toe, picking off dead bits and dropping them into a pile in one corner. As he walked across the yard he lifted his head and looked up towards her. With her heart pounding she quickly drew back behind her curtains. Had he seen her? Or was he just looking at the sky? Checking the weather, squinting in the sun? She peeked around the edge of the window frame and found him preoccupied with a
disorderly geranium. She pinched herself and reminded herself to be careful.

Later that day, as she gazed idly into his study, she was caught off guard by the sight of him striding naked past his study window. She gasped. Through the binoculars she studied his lean muscled torso, peppered with curling black hair. The cheeks of his buttocks hollowed as he moved and she caught a brief glimpse of his cock swinging against his thigh as he walked. Her breath halted. She held the binoculars still as stone and felt the tinder within her ignite, flushing her with heat.

She contemplated calling Amanda, but didn’t, couldn’t. What would she say? What words could she use that didn’t sound stupid and pervy? Amanda would never understand the smooth confidence of his movements, the poetry of his relaxed grace. And if Amanda knew, soon everyone would know, including Tracey, and she’d already told her she’d seen nothing – yet. Amanda was hopeless with secrets. In spite of her dull reports, Tracey had insisted she keep reporting back. She wasn’t sure if it was even about Solomon anymore. She got the impression Tracey just enjoyed threatening her. But if Tracey found out she’d been lying, she wouldn’t hesitate to humiliate her by letting everyone know she’d been watching him, had always watched him, and had never said so. What then? What would they make of her then?

Instead she quietly pulled his nakedness close and wondered what it would be like to be with him, to feel his hands on her skin, to feel his tongue inside her mouth and his body pressing down on hers. The idea of a man pushing his penis inside her seemed both strange and
exciting. She wondered if it hurt. How could it not? The space between her legs was so small and, from the way the girls at school described them, stiff dicks were big.

But if it was anything like French kissing she knew she’d like it. Steve Buckingham had French-kissed her once at school camp. It was warm and juicy and made her nipples tingle. But when Steve had crawled his fingers up between her thighs she’d snapped her knees shut, crushing his hand and making him yelp. He’d gone too far. He stopped kissing her then, pushed her away, but she was already lit up like a light-bulb. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for weeks.

But kissing Solomon? Doing it with Solomon? Something told her that being that close to him would be magical. Of course it would never happen, not to her. He was out of her reach, she knew that, he was her teacher and so much older and everything, but oh – the thought of it. It made her blood run fast and gave her goosebumps. The thought of it. The thought of it.

*

Tracey was going for tutoring. With Solomon. Why, she couldn’t bear to guess. That dirty scrag didn’t care about study. She didn’t care about English or love or justice. All Tracey cared about was drinking and screwing. She was as dumb as dog shit and everyone knew it, so why was Solomon bothering with her? She was a waste of his time. But the useless slut had been seeing him weekly for the past two weeks. Every Tuesday night at seven, there was Tracey with her tits hanging out of her halter-neck top, leaning all over his desk, her miniskirt hoicked up to heaven.

She watched them laughing together, working from the novel to his lecture pad. The pressure of the binoculars around her eyes hurt. Tracey was flirting with him. She did last week, too. How could he not see through it? He was patting Tracey’s shoulder, and he had that soft look he got when he was trying to change someone’s mind about something. A bitter taste rose in her mouth as she watched Tracey touch his forearm and draw her chair closer to his. It wasn’t fair that Tracey should be so close to him.

As Tracey and Solomon gazed at the pages before them she noticed Solomon’s hand wander under the desk to Tracey’s thigh. The movement was so subtle she wasn’t sure she’d really seen it. But Tracey was turning to him. She was leaning towards him, leering.

Solomon pulled away from her, but he was smiling. He stood and pushed Tracey’s chair back from the desk. She could no longer see their faces. Her breathing faltered as she watched him kiss the girl, his hands moving up her legs under her skirt. Horrified, she watched him touch her, his body moving, all fluid and sensual, like a hunting cat.

She knew she should look away, pull the curtains, but she couldn’t. She watched aghast as buttons were undone, breasts exposed, hands clasped at belts, knickers slipped off. Tracey’s hands were moving between his legs, tugging his jeans over his hips as she lowered her head. Shocked and compelled, she watched Solomon’s buttocks tensing rhythmically.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. Not with Tracey. Solomon pulled away and moved slowly down
her body. He pushed her legs apart, draping one over each arm of the chair, and settled his head between them. Tracey threw her head back, her eyes shut and her mouth open, her fingers knotting their way into Solomon’s thick ponytail.

The binoculars dropped to her desk. She stood, indignant, holding her breath with one forearm lifted across her eyes, shielding them from what was unfolding below. She began to gulp and cough and cry. Why should Tracey be the one? Tracey was a user, not devoted to him like she was. What did this mean? Was Tracey his girlfriend now? God, no! Not her. Not with him. This man, her teacher, he was the one. He was meant for her, she was sure of it. She must tell him,
must
stop him from making this terrible mistake.

Wrenching open her desk drawer she rifled through her diary and found the first letter she’d written for him. She pulled some pink notepaper from her desktop and transcribed the words in large capitals, trying to disguise her handwriting. Her hand hovered uncertainly over the end of the page. Sign it? No. How would she face him if he knew she’d sent it? He just needed to know that there was someone waiting for him. Someone who truly wanted him and cared for him in ways Tracey couldn’t.

She sprayed it with the rose perfume her aunt had given her for Christmas and pushed it into a matching envelope. She slipped quietly down the stairs, past her parents watching television in the lounge room, out through the back door and quickly to his letterbox. The envelope disappeared into its grimacing mouth. Without looking back, she tore back to her room.

By the time she returned to her window her heart was racing. She could barely believe she’d had the courage to do it. What would he think when he read it? Who would he think it was from? She looked down to Solomon’s window. There was no sign of Tracey. Only empty chairs bathed in the half light of a desk lamp. The back of her throat ached. She watched and waited.

It seemed like an eternity before he returned. In his hand was the envelope she’d just dropped in his letterbox. Her breath came sharp. She hadn’t expected him to find it so soon. She grabbed the binoculars and trained them on his face as he sat down at the desk to open it. Her hands shook so much she couldn’t steady the lenses.

She watched Solomon pull the letter out. He made his familiar reach for the cigarette papers and tobacco. His brow furrowed as he read and his eyes widened. A smile? He lifted the letter to his face and sniffed. He was reading it over. He laid the page on his desk and stared out of his window. All she could hear was her own breath, fast and short. Desperate, she searched for something in his face that she could read.

Reaching forward he flicked off his desk light. His figure disappeared into the hollow eye of the house. She knew he was still there, sitting inside the darkness. She could see the amber glow of his cigarette rising and falling, a lazy firefly in the shadows.

There was an ache in her chest. She needed to wee. Her bottom lip hurt and she realised she’d been chewing it furiously. What was he thinking, sitting there in the dark with her letter in his hand? Would he guess it was from her? God, what if he worked out she’d written it?
Damn it, she’d just watched him have sex with Tracey. Even if he knew it was from her, what would he care? Stupid, stupid idiot! She pressed the heels of her palms hard into her eyes until she saw coloured spots in an effort to push back the threatening tears. A sob squeezed its way out from her throat. That was it. She was acting crazy. No more. Tomorrow she would take the binoculars to school and chuck them at that bitch. She was done with spying. She was done with him. If he wanted to waste himself on that slut then he could. After tonight it was over for her.

*

She woke late. She’d hardly slept. It had been a restless night with dreams twisting her all out of shape and voices yelling in her head. She had to rush, packing her bag in a daze. It wasn’t until she was walking to the bus that she realised she’d forgotten them. The binoculars. They were still sitting in her desk drawer, an evil reminder of the night before. Even so, in the newness of the day, she knew she was too gutless to say anything to Tracey. She was safer to leave them where they were. Just forget about them. And him, too.

As she trudged towards a scattering of despondent kids at the bus stop, the memory of Tracey and Solomon together made her numb. Now the whole thing seemed surreal, unbelievable, like a bad dream. Shame buried her desperate need to tell someone. Who could she tell anyway? How would she explain herself? She turned the possible conversations over and over in her mind until she felt sick. She tried to imagine Amanda’s face as she
explained it – ‘I was just watching Solomon through binoculars from my bedroom window when I saw . . . ’ She sighed. It was impossible.

The bus was full that morning. She wandered down the aisle looking for a seat. There was only one and it was next to Tracey. The older girl sneered at her from behind heavy eye make-up. She averted her eyes and turned her back, pushing her school bag between her feet. She’d rather stand than sit next to the girl she’d last seen astride a chair with her eyes shut tight, her mouth wide open and her fingers entangled in the hair of the man she loved.

In class she kept her eyes on the blackboard or on the frail lines of her notebook. She stayed away from his office and hung out at the other end of the schoolyard while he was on duty. Where her eyes had once drawn him close, they now created wide spaces between them, looking only at the shimmering air around him and never directly at him.

At home that night she stood staring over the top of her desk and out of the window. Across Solomon’s roof, towards the horizon lay the bleak, dry paddocks of farms that skirted the town. Clouds of dust rose from a tractor turning over lifeless clods of dirt. What an idiot she’d been to think that Solomon might notice her. He hardly paid any attention to her, never looked at her, always picked other kids to answer his questions. He was barely aware she existed.

She wouldn’t be a teacher. She’d never go to university. She’d wind up married to some dopey farmer’s son, just like her parents wanted, raising a pack of toothless, snotty kids, packing shelves in the supermarket for extra cash and
living in hand-me-downs like her mother did. She wasn’t cool or sexy like Tracey. She didn’t wear make-up, or ride in cars with older boys, or smoke, or hang out in town on Friday nights. All the maybes she imagined because of Solomon seemed like a joke now. She was a stupid, boring, ugly kid with a stupid, boring, ugly future and she wished like hell she’d never dropped that silly note in Solomon’s letterbox. He was probably laughing at her. Maybe he’d shown it to the other teachers. She imagined them all smirking, thinking what dope she was. Shit, maybe he’d even show it to Tracey?

She felt sick and started to cry. She realised she loved Solomon. He was the one. And seeing him with Tracey, well, it hurt so much it was like someone ripping her heart out. Why would Solomon want Tracey as a girlfriend? He was too smart for her. Too cool, too clever, too gorgeous. Tracey didn’t deserve him. And he deserved better. Loneliness was the only reason she could think of. He must be really lonely to sink to the likes of Tracey. If only she’d sent him the letter sooner, it might have been her in that chair. She shuddered with a shameful pleasure at the thought.

But none of that mattered now. He was with Tracey and her chance with him had drifted away like the smoke that curled up from his rollies. She’d have to listen to the locker-room gossip and Tracey’s school-gate bragging and pretend to be shocked and excited, just like everyone else.