Missing Joseph

again, farther this time so that her breasts jutted towards the ceiling. She still wore her school uniform — all three of them did — but she’d removed the jersey, unbuttoned the blouse to expose her cleavage, and rolled up the sleeves. Pam had the ability to make an inanimate white cotton blouse just scream to be stripped from her body.

“God, I’m horny as a she-goat,” she said. “If Todd doesn’t want to do it tonight, I’m getting it off with some other bloke.” She swivelled her head in the direction of the door where Maggie sat on the fl oor, cross-legged. “How’s our Nickie?” she asked, casual and cool.

Maggie rolled her cigarette in her fi ngers. She’d taken six obligatory puffs — in by the mouth, out through the nose, nothing in the lungs — and was waiting for the rest to burn itself down so that she could let it join Pam’s in the toilet. “Fine,” she said.

“And big?” Pam asked, swinging her head so that her hair moved like a single curtain of blonde. “Just like a salami, that’s what I’ve heard. Is it true?”

Maggie looked at Josie’s reflection in the mirror. She made a wordless plea for rescue.

“Well, is it?” Josie said in Pam’s direction.

“What?”

“The stain. Gin. Like I said.”

“Semen,” Pam said, looking largely bored.

“See-what?”

“Come.”

“Where?”

“Christ alive, you’re a twit. That’s what it is.”

“What?”

“The stain! It’s from him, okay? It drips out, all right? When you’re done, understand?”

Josie studied her reflection, making another heroic attempt with the eyeliner. “Oh that,” she said and dipped the brush into the bottle. “From the way you were talking, I thought it was s’posed to be something weird.”

Pam snagged up her shoulder bag that lay on the floor. She pulled out her cigarettes and lit up again. “Mum was frothing like a dog when she saw it. She even smelled it. Do you believe that? She started in with ‘You miserable little tart,’ went on to ‘You’re a real cheap piece for any one of these blokes,’ and fi nished with ‘I can’t hold my head up in the village any longer. Neither can your dad.’ I told her if I had my own bedroom, I wouldn’t have to use the sofa and she wouldn’t have to see the stains.” She smiled and stretched. “Todd goes on and on so long, he must come a bloody quart every time.” And with a sly look at Maggie, “What about Nick?”

“All I can say’s I hope you’re taking precautions,” Josie put in quickly, ever Maggie’s friend. “Because if he does it as many times as you said and if he makes you — well, you know — get fulfilled each time, then you’re heading for trouble, Pam Rice.”

Pam’s cigarette stopped midway to her lips. “What’re you talking about?”

“You know. Don’t act like you don’t.”

“I don’t, Jose. Explain it to me.” She took a deep drag, but Maggie could see that she did it mostly to hide her smile.

Josie took the bait. “If you have a—you know—”

“Orgasm?”

“Right.”

“What about it?”

“It helps the swimmy things get up inside you more easy. Which is why lots of women don’t — you know —”

“Have an orgasm?”

“Because they don’t want the swimmy things. Oh, and they can’t relax. That too. I read it in a book.”

Pam hooted. She swung off the bathtub and opened the window through which she shouted, “Josephine Eugene, the brains of a bean,” before dissolving into laughter and sliding down the wall to sit on the fl oor. She took another hit from her cigarette, pausing now and then to give in to the giggles.

Maggie was glad she’d opened the window. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Part of her knew it was just because of the amount of cigarette smoke in the little room. The other part knew it was because of Nick. She wanted to say something to rescue Josie from Pam’s fun-making. But she wasn’t sure what would serve to deflect the ridicule at the same time as it revealed nothing about herself.

“When was the last time you read anything about it?” Josie asked, recapping her bottle of eyeliner and examining in the mirror the fruits of her labour.

“I don’t need to read. I experience,” Pam replied.

“Research is as important as experience, Pam.”

“Really? And exactly what sort have you done?”

“I know things.” Josie was combing her hair. It made no difference. No matter what she did to it, it flopped right back into the same frightful style: fringe high on the forehead, bristles on the neck. She should never have tried to cut it herself.

“You know things from books.”

“And observation. Imperial evidence, that’s called.”

“Provided by?”

“Mum and Mr. Wragg.”

This piece of information seemed to strike Pam’s fancy. She kicked off her shoes and drew her legs beneath her. She fl icked her cigarette into the toilet and made no comment when Maggie took the opportunity of doing the same. “What?” she asked, eyes dancing happily at the potential for gossip. “How?”

“I listen at the door when they’re having relations. He keeps saying, ‘Come on, Dora, come on, come on, come on, baby, come on, love’ and she never makes a sound. Which is also, by the way, how I know for a fact that he isn’t my dad.” When Pam and Maggie greeted this news blankly, she went on with, “Well, he can’t be, can he? Look at the evidence. She’s never once been — you know, fulfilled by him. I’m her only kid. I was born six months after they got married. I found this old letter from a bloke called Paddy Lewis—”

“Where?”

“In the drawer where she keeps her knickers. And I could tell she’d done it with him. And been fulfilled. Lots. Before she married Mr. Wragg.”

“How long before?”

“Two years.”

“So what were you?” Pam asked. “The longest pregnancy on record?”

“I don’t mean they only did it once, Pam Rice. I mean they were doing it regular two years before she married Mr. Wragg. And she kept the letter, didn’t she? She must still love him.”

“But you look exactly like your dad,” Pam said.

“He isn’t—”

“All right, all right. You look like Mr. Wragg.”

“That’s just coincidence,” Josie said. “Paddy Lewis must look like Mr. Wragg as well. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? She’d be looking for someone to remind her of Paddy.”

“So then Maggie’s dad must look like Mr. Shepherd,” Pam announced. “All her mum’s lovers must have looked like him.”

Josie said, “Pam,” in a pained fashion. Fair was only fair. One could speculate indefi nitely about one’s own parents, but it wasn’t proper to do the same about anyone else’s. Not that Pam ever worried much about what was proper before she opened her mouth.

Maggie said softly, “Mummy never had a lover before Mr. Shepherd.”

“She had at least one,” Pam corrected.

“She didn’t.”

“She did. Where else did you come from?”

“From my dad. And Mummy.”

“Right. Her lover.”

“Her husband.”