It was breakfast time, the family ate at table, the girl watching what went on, as little girls do, the infant babbling attractively in her high chair. A delightful scene. Part of Tom ached for it, for his future, for himself. His father had wanted ordinary family life and here it was.
‘Then, what gives?’ asked Harold. ‘Is there a girl back home, is that it:’
‘You could say that,’ said Tom, calmly helping himself to this and that.
‘Then you should let Mary go,’ said Harold.
‘Yes,’ said Molly, on behalf of her sex. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘I wasn’t aware I had her tied.’
‘Tom,’ said his father.
‘That’s not on’ said his father’s wife.
Tom said nothing. Then he was in bed with Mary. He had slept only with Lil, no one else. This fresh young bouncy body was delightful, he liked it all, and took quiet satisfaction in Mary’s, ‘I thought you were gay, I really did.’ Clearly, she was agreeably surprised.
So there it was. Mary came often to spend the night with Tim in Harold’s and Molly’s house, all very en famille and cosy. If weddings were not actually mentioned, that was because tact had been decided on. And because of something else, still ill-defined. In bed, Mary had exclaimed over the bite mark on ‘loin’s calf. ‘God,’ said she. ‘What was this? A dog?’ ‘That was a love bite,’ he said, after thought. ‘Who on earth …’And Mary, in play, tried to fit her mouth over the bite, but found Tom’s leg, and then Tom, pulling away from her. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said, which was fair enough. But then, in a voice she had certainly never heard from him, nor anything like it: ‘Don’t you dare ever do that again.’
She stared, and began to cry. He simply got off the bed and went off into the bathroom. He came back clothed, and did not look at her.
There was something here … something bad … some place where she must not go. Mary understood that. She felt so shocked by the incident that she nearly broke off from Tom, then and there.
Tom thought he might as well go back home. What he loved about being ‘up here’ was being free, and that delightful condition had evaporated.
This town was imprisoning him. It was not a large one, but that wasn’t the point. He liked it, as a place, spreading suburbs of bungalows around a centre of university and business, and all around the scrubby shrubby desert. He could walk from the university theatre after rehearsal and find himself in ten minutes with strong- smelling thorny bushes all around, and under his feet coarse yellow sand where the fallen thorns made pale warning gleams: careful, don’t tread on us, we can pierce through the thickest soles. At night, after a performance or a rehearsal, he walked straight out into the dark and stood listening to the crickets, and above him the unpolluted sky glittered and sparked off coloured fire. When he got back to his father’s, Mary might he waiting for him.
‘Where did you get to?’
‘I went for a walk.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I like to walk too.’
‘I’m a bit of a lone wolf,’ said Tom. ‘I’m the cat who walks by himself. So, if that’s not your style, I’m sorry.’
‘Hey,’ said Mary. ‘Don’t bite my head off.’
‘Well, you’d better know what you’re letting yourself in for.’
At this, Harold and Molly exchanged glances: that was a commitment, surely? And Mary, hearing a promise, said ‘I like cats. Luckily.’
But she was secretly tearful and fearful.
Tom was restless, he was moody. He was very unhappy but did not know it. He had not been unhappy in his life. He did nut recognise the pain for what it was. There are people who are never ill, are unthinkingly healthy, then they get an illness and are so affronted and ashamed and afraid that they may even die of it. Tom was the emotional equivalent of such a person.
‘What is it? What’s wrong with me?’ he groaned, waking with a heavy weight across his chest. ‘I’d like to stay right here in bed and pull the covers over my head.’
But what for? There was nothing wrong with him.
Then, one evening, standing out under the stars, feeling sad enough to howl up at them, he said to himself, ‘Good Lord, I’m so unhappy. Yes, that’s it.’
He told Mary he wasn’t well. When she was solicitous he said, ‘Leave me alone.’
From the periphery of the little town, roads which soon became tracks ran out into the desert, to places used by students for their picnics and excursions. In between the used ways almost invisible paths made their way between the odoriferous bushes that had butterflies clinging to them in the day, and at night sent out waves of scent to attract bats. Tom walked out on the tarmaced road, turned on to the dusty track, turned off that and found a faint path to a little hill that had rocks on it, one a big flat one, which held the sun’s heat well into the night. Tom lay on this hot rock and let unhappiness fill him.
‘Lil,’ he was whispering. ‘Lib’
He knew at last that he was missing Lil, that was the trouble. Why was he surprised? Vaguely, he had all this time thought that one day he’d get a girl his own age and then … but it had been so vague. Lil had always been in his life. He lay face down on the rock and sniffed at it, the faint metallic tang, the hot dust, and vegetable aromas from little plants in the cracks. He was thinking of Lil’s body that always smelled of salt, of the sea. She was like a sea creature, in and out, the sea water often drying on her and then she was in again. He bit into his forearm, remembering that his earliest memory was of licking salt off Lil’s shoulders. It was a game they played, the little boy and his mothers oldest friend. Every inch of his body had been available to Lil’s strong hands since he had been born, and Lil’s body was as familiar to him as his own. He saw again Lil’s breasts, only just covered by the bikini top, and the faint wash of glistening sand in the cleft between her breasts, and the glitter of tiny sand grains on her shoulders.
