Warlight(16)

When a few weeks later I had my clothes off in the company of that girl on a worn carpet of an empty house, I found the pathway towards her invisible. What I knew of passion was still an abstract thing, layered with hurdles and rules I did not yet know. What was just and what was unjustified? She lay beside me and there was no submission. Was she as nervous as I was? Besides, the real drama of the episode was not about us but the situation, which had involved illegally entering a house on Agnes Street with keys she had borrowed from her brother, who worked for an estate agency. There was a “For Sale” sign outside; inside there was no furniture, just carpeting. It was nightfall and I could interpret her responses only with the help of a streetlight or from a series of single matches held above a section of carpet that we checked later for bloodstains, as if there might have been a murder there. It did not feel like romance. Romance was the energy and sparkle of Olive Lawrence, it was the incandescent sexual fury of The Darter’s spurned Russian whose beauty was increased by her heightened suspicion of him.

—

Another evening in midsummer. We have a cold bath in the house on Agnes Street. There’s no towel to dry ourselves, not even a curtain we can rub ourselves against. She pulls back her dark blond hair, then shakes her head, and her hair loosens into an aura.

“Everyone else, they’re probably having cocktails now,” she says.

We dry ourselves by walking through the empty rooms. This is the most intimate we have been since entering the house around six o’clock. There’s no longer the plot of sex or focused desire, just ourselves naked as well as invisible to each other in the dark. I catch, because of the swerve of a car light, a smile from her in recognition of this. A small awareness between us.

“Watch,” she says, and does a handstand into the dark.

“Didn’t see it. Do it again.” And this once seemingly unfriendly girl somersaults towards me, saying, “Catch my feet this time.” Then, “Thank you,” as I slowly lower her down.

She sits on the floor. “I wish we could open a window. Run in the street.”

“I don’t even know what street we’re on anymore.”

“It’s Agnes Street. The garden! Come—”

In the hall downstairs she pushes me to move faster, and I turn, grab her hand. We are wrestling against the staircase, each unable to see the other. She leans forward, bites my neck, and pulls away from an embrace. “Come on!” she says. “Here!” Banging into a wall. It’s as if neither of us thinks of anything except to escape this closeness, and it is only closeness that will help us escape. We are on the floor kissing whatever we reach. Her hands beating my shoulders as we fuck. It isn’t lovemaking.

“Don’t. Don’t let go.”

“No!”

Escaping her tightening arm I hit my head on something, a wall, bannister, then come down hard onto her chest, suddenly aware of her smallness. Somewhere here we lose consciousness of each other, simply discovering the joy in the sport of it. Some people never find it, or don’t find it again. Then we are asleep in the dark.

“Hello. Where are we?” she says.

I roll onto my back, taking her with me, so she’s on top. She opens my lips with her tiny hands.

“Og Hagness Steef,” I say.

“What’s your name again?” She laughs.

“Nathaniel.”

“Oh, posh! Love you, Nathaniel.”

We can barely dress ourselves. We hold hands as if we might lose each other as we go slowly through the darkness to the front door.

—

The Moth was often away, but his absence, like his presence, rarely mattered. My sister and I were by now foraging for ourselves, becoming self-sufficient, Rachel disappearing into the evenings. She said nothing about where she went, just as I was silent about my life on Agnes Street. For both of us school now felt like an irrelevancy. In my conversations with other boys, who should have been the friends I’d have normally attached myself to, I never admitted to what was occurring at home. That existed in one pocket while my school life remained in the other. In youth we are not so much embarrassed by the reality of our situation as fearful others might discover and judge it.

One evening Rachel and I took off to a seven o’clock screening of a film, and sat in the front row of the Gaumont. At some point the hero’s plane plunged towards the earth, with his foot caught among the controls so he couldn’t get free. Tense music filled the theatre, along with the scream of the plane’s engine. Caught up in the moment, I was unaware of what was happening around me.

“What’s wrong?”

I looked over to my right. Between the voice that had said “What’s wrong?” and me sat Rachel, shuddering, a moan, a cow-like noise coming out of her that I knew was going to get louder. She was shaking from side to side. I opened her shoulder bag, got out the wooden ruler to put between her teeth, but it was too late. I needed to use my fingers to pry her mouth open, and she was biting down with her thin little teeth. I slapped her and in the midst of her gasp jammed in the wooden ruler and pulled her down to the floor. Above us the plane crashed into the earth.

Rachel’s unmoored eyes were looking at me to gain security, for the safe way out of where she was. The man was bending over her too.

“Who is she?”

“My sister. It’s a seizure. She needs food.”