Chemistry and Other Stories Page 16

  ‘That was back in the old days. By the time I quit it’d got serious.’ He took a gulp of wine. ‘I don’t miss it.’

  ‘The throwing-up?’

  ‘The seriousness. I don’t have your dedication, love. I never did.’

  ‘So you’re saying a comeback’s out of the question?’

  Mark smiled. They drank the wine. The waiters were tardy bringing the bill. Mark reckoned they kept the tables as fully occupied as possible to attract further customers. The emptier the restaurant, and less busy the staff, the longer it took for the bill to arrive. But Jemma and Mark were in no hurry. They watched the full moon rise over the sea. Jemma reached across and took Mark’s hand, and when he looked at her, she smiled. He nodded. He understood her, and she him.

  ‘You know that phrase, Jem,’ Mark said, ‘“the prime of life”? That’s what I’m thinking. You’re in the prime of life, love.’

  He was a little drunk now, she thought; though she hoped it was not just the wine talking.

  ‘You’re fucking gorgeous, Jem,’ Mark continued. ‘I don’t even mind men looking at you.’

  ‘What men?’ Jemma said.

  ‘Every other man we pass. You turn people’s heads.’ He lifted Jemma’s hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. ‘I don’t blame them.’

  They walked up away from the restaurants, the one or two bars. Night had fallen, but the air was so warm still. When they reached their hotel Mark stepped off the pavement to the trellised walkway, but felt himself tugged back. Jemma had paused.

  ‘Do you want to walk a little longer?’ she asked.

  Mark yawned. ‘I’m asleep on my feet, love.’

  ‘I think I’ll walk a little.’

  ‘On your own? You sure?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Of course, Mark.’

  ‘I can come with you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I won’t be long.’

  He let go of her hand. ‘If you see that blood moon they’re on about, I want a full description in the morning.’

  ‘Leave the key in one of my beach shoes, yeh? Outside the door.’

  ‘Sure.’ Mark reached out and took her hand again and leaned towards her and kissed her. ‘Don’t get lost.’

  Jemma kissed him and turned and walked on. She could hear the slap of his flip-flops recede along the covered walkway; caught glimpses of his white T-shirt, almost parallel to her, between the foliage. Other tourists, in front of and behind her, made their way towards their own villas or apartments, further inland. A young couple passed in the other direction.

  The higher up of the two little supermarkets was still open. She turned right and walked past the big hotel and a small complex of apartments, then a couple of locals’ houses, and on out of the light of street lamps and windows. The moon seemed to have disappeared, presumably behind clouds. In the darkness, sounds magnified, became uncanny. The digital repetition of cicadas. She caught the scent of jasmine.

  The body came out of the blackness behind her. Before she could react, to turn or run, his hands were on her shoulders. Then he was pulling her. He had both his arms around her neck and was scurrying backwards. Jemma tried to stay on her feet, not to lose her footing and have him drag her, so she skipped in reverse, her hands on his arms, not trying to wrest them free from her neck but rather using them like a bar, lifting her weight a little to make it easier to back-pedal.

  The man hauled her off the tarmac, over gravel and off it on to grass. He pulled her with his arms around her neck, she grasping his arms and hopping backwards, like some macabre parody of a ballroom dance. They were under trees in the darkness and the man slowed down. He fell backwards on to the grass, taking Jemma with him, and twisting to his left, or trying to, but she put her right foot towards the ground and then pushed off it to stop him putting her face down, him on top of her.

  Jemma hit the earth on her left side with a thump. The man had only accomplished half his aim and now attempted to complete it. Jemma bent her knees and pushed both feet. She had lost one of her sandals, the left foot. She would not let him get her prostrate upon the ground. He used his whole body, pushing against her; she could feel his stomach, hips, knees, like separate weapons he deployed but he could not turn her over so long as she kept her feet where they were. If her feet were locked against the ground, then as he turned her body with the parts of his body, so her legs acted as a lever and he could only lift her, and himself be lifted in the air on the pivot of her bent muscular legs.

  But he would not give up. He grunted as he persevered. She could not tell if he muttered words. She did not know whether he was Greek or foreigner. She was grunting too and sweating. She could smell him. A smell of meat. She tried to prise his arms from around her neck but she did not believe that she could do so. Still, she could lessen the pressure of his stranglehold squeezing her neck, weakening her resistance.

  Then all of a sudden he gave up and relinquished his grip around her neck. She threw her head back at him, a battering ram, but made no contact. The man had relaxed too the press of his body against her. Still pushing hard against the ground with her legs, Jemma propelled herself backwards, and in that moment of unintentional momentum she was falling against him, only he wasn’t there any more, he was heaving himself around her, from behind to her side, and then as she came to rest upon her back on the hard soil he was clambering on top of her.

  A fiendish manoeuvre. But Jemma kept her knees bent, up in the air now, so that he could not reach his right leg over them and across her lower body. His upper body was on top of hers, though, weighting her down. She reached up and spread the fingers of her right hand across his face and pushed him up away from her. He grasped her wrist with his left hand but he could not break her grip on his face.

  With his right hand the man did something to Jemma’s left cheek. Had he slapped or punched her? With no swing and so little impact. It did not hurt but still, she grabbed his right wrist with her left hand and held it away from her head. He tried to free his hand, twisting and jerking it; she held his wrist in her grasp. Again, it was like a kind of choreography, a frantic pas de deux of their two conjoined limbs.

  Still the man tried to clamber over Jemma, but he could not surmount her raised right leg. An idea burst in her head. It was not original. In fact it was a copy of what her assailant had done. But it was brilliant. She pushed against him with all her strength, so that he had to use his full weight and power to keep her where she was, then suddenly she stopped pushing and fell back and as she fell she rolled him all the way over her until he was on his back and it was she who lay on top of him. Her hand was no longer on his face.

  Jemma gripped the man’s right wrist with her left hand, he had her right wrist in his left hand. He spat a sound, a syllable, for sure, a one-syllable word, a curse, but she did not know it.

  Jemma was on top of the man, she had the advantage, surely, but she could not see what to do with it. She wanted to raise herself up, away from him, but that would allow him release, so she lay on his chest, her face too close to his, and in the darkness she less saw than felt his head jerk up towards her and his forehead thump against hers.

  Stunned, Jemma lost her grip on the man’s wrist and, her body floppy, she was on her back again and this time he had his legs between hers. She heard another curse then understood it had issued from her own mouth. She had not noticed until now but in the struggle her short white dress had ridden up her thighs, was crimped around her groin and buttocks, conspiring to make things easier for him. His right hand was yanking her knickers loose. Trying to tear them off her.

  He held her right arm against the ground with his left hand, but her left hand was free. She raised her hand to his head and felt around for something to grab – hair, beard – she found his right ear and gripped the lobe tight in her fingers and pulled his head towards her and sank her teeth into his right cheek.

  The man yelled in pain. His right hand was o
n her left hand, trying to prise her fingers from his earlobe, but that would not help him, he could not get to her teeth. He pulled her fingers off his ear and now he held both her arms – her left hand and her right wrist – but she had a lump of his fleshy cheek clamped between her jaws. He was groaning, moaning in pain and rage, pinning her down yet trapped himself. If she opened her mouth she was done for. There was a taste on her tongue. It was him, her attacker, her rapist, she could begin to consume him. He lowed like a beast of burden.

  She felt his grip on her arms loosen and then he brought both his hands bunched into fists against her head, one on either side at the same time, like cymbals clashing, like a skull-shaped, double-sided drum. The shock, the boom, made her mouth go slack and he pulled himself loose from her jaws. He raised his head and upper body out of range away from her but she went after him. She put both her arms around his neck and though he held himself up for a moment, and tried to prise her arms loose with his fingers, her weight pulled him down until she lay back on the dry grass and he lay upon her, in her close embrace. Now he could not easily punch her, nor pin her wrists.

  Jemma tried to bite the man again but perhaps he foresaw this and took one hand off her arm and pressed his palm against her forehead, pinning her head to the ground, his vulnerable flesh just out of reach of her teeth.

  Jemma could feel the man’s chest on hers, rising and falling, his lungs heaving. His breath was hot and odorous. The stink of meat, and beer, and tobacco. He was breathing hard, so close to her, and she understood that though he was considerably heavier than her, and somewhat stronger, he was much less fit. She had more stamina. He was tiring. The longer it went on, the more he would weaken.

  His other hand was no longer on her arms. She hugged him unopposed. Then she realised that he was once more tugging at her knickers. She felt their seams bite into the flesh of her waist, her thigh, then she heard the sound or sensed somehow the cotton fabric ripping. And then his fingers upon her, groping, finding her. She felt something else, metal, his belt buckle being undone, and she knew he was unzipping or unbuttoning his flies.

  ‘No,’ she said, and she heard it as a snarl, a protest, a promise. ‘No, you fucker.’

  Jemma raised her legs and wrapped them around the man’s torso and locked them at the ankles and squeezed as hard as she could. It made no difference, the man continued fumbling where his groin met hers. She felt something in her vagina, was it a finger or fingers or his thing? She groaned with the effort to squeeze his sides, to bend his ribs until they snapped, to press the precious rotten air out of his lungs. It did not affect him.

  But then it did.

  The man’s hand was gone from her crotch and was on her leg, and the other hand had left her forehead and was on her other leg, trying to lever her legs apart. They were locked at the ankles. He tugged at her knees but he was not strong enough to prise them loose.

  Now her head was no longer pressed against the ground. She unwrapped her arms from around his neck and held his head between her hands in what might have been an affectionate gesture but was merely to measure in the darkness exactly where his face was. Flexing the muscles of her neck she thrust her face towards his, bowing her head as she did so, smashing into him.

  The man yelled. His hands went slack on her legs. Just as she felt them at her wrists she butted him again, and again he cried out. He grasped her wrists and freed his head and raised it away from her, but he could only escape so far because her legs wrapped around his torso kept him there.

  Jemma felt moisture on her face. For a moment she wondered whether it was raining but this was not wet like rain. It was blood dripping. His hands let go of her wrists and she saw them go to his face, both to protect himself from further assault and to trace the damage there.

  Jemma unlocked her ankles and unwrapped her legs from around the man’s torso and levered her knees between her body and his. She drew her knees up against her chest and walked her feet up over his stomach then got a purchase against him and, grabbing his collar, she pushed him up away into the air and rolled over to her right side. The man toppled on to his back. He felt his face and howled.

  These things Jemma could see. There was more light than there had been, though there were many hours until dawn. The clouds must have cleared away again but the moon was the wrong colour; it cast not a silvery light but orange or red or rusty. She rolled back the other way and used the rolling motion to raise herself to her feet. She made out the man lying on his back and stepped towards him and jumped into the air. She wanted to burst all the oxygen out of his lungs, his gasping unfit smoker’s lungs, and landed on his stomach. Maybe she had missed his lungs entirely but he moaned and his torso and legs scissored towards each other. As she stumbled off him he rolled on to his side curled up with one hand on his belly. Jemma stamped on the side of his waist then on his ribs, then his shoulder, then his head. With the heel of her right foot. She was right-footed, after all.

  The man groaned. At first she thought that he was merely making a sound of suffering but then she understood that his lamentation consisted of words. Was he begging for mercy? Forgiveness? She did not know.

  She wanted to shut him up. With her right foot she pushed him on to his back and knelt with one knee on his chest, the other with her shin across his neck. He tried to push her off but his efforts were feeble, and when he left his face uncovered she punched it until he returned his hand to its protection. As he weakened she shifted her weight from the knee upon his chest to her shin across his windpipe. When she was sure he was barely conscious she pressed a little longer then leaned back on to her feet and stood up.

  The silence was profound save for her own exhausted gasping for breath. Then the incessant sound of cicadas re-entered her hearing. The blood moon was up above the olive grove. Jemma staggered away. She saw the rock and did not think but bent towards it, and pushed and pulled it loose and lifted it.

  Holding the rock heavy before her, like some grossly pregnant woman, Jemma lurched back to where she’d been. The man still lay, moaning softly. She could see where his hand was, covering his face. She stood in contemplation, holding the rock, like one of those nuns who burden themselves the better to rid their minds of distraction.

  Jemma stood, trembling. She thought that it was anger that had propelled her but it was not. It was aggression, a warrior instinct sprung forth from deep in her DNA. No, this was anger, now, coming after the fight, an energy flowing not through her muscles but through her blood, coursing through her veins and up into her brain. How dare he?

  How dare he?

  In their strength and conditioning tests at the end of last season she’d bench-pressed a hundred and ten pounds. Jemma bent her knees then pushed up from the ground to help her lift the weight in her hands. She raised the rock above her head.

  Cinema

  The mother took her children into the sweet shop. The boy chose a bag of pear drops and the girl chose a chocolate bar. Their mother paid and they left.

  At the cinema the mother asked her friend, the usherette, if she would look after her son while she took the girl to the doctor.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on him for you,’ the friend said.

  ‘Be a good boy,’ the mother said. He watched her depart with his sister.

  The usherette led the boy into the auditorium and sat him down in a seat at the back, at the end of the row, close to the door. ‘Stay there,’ she said, and disappeared.

  The lights went down. One Hundred and One Dalmatians began. The boy sat spellbound. His mother had twisted the top of the paper bag of pear drops and the boy gripped the twist of paper, forgetting the sweets inside, so enthralled was he by the movie.

  At the end of the film the lights came up. People rose from their seats and left. For a while the boy was alone in the auditorium. In time other people came in, in ones and twos, sitting here and there. They took off their coats and draped them over the seats or folded them over their knees. A large man sat in front of the bo
y. The boy remembered his pear drops and opened the bag and put one in his mouth. He thought of his mother and his sister in the waiting room of the doctor’s surgery. Perhaps it was very busy today, with lots of sick people going in and out.

  A woman sat beside the boy. The next film began. After the animation of Walt Disney, this was live action. A Western. It was not at first as alluring as One Hundred and One Dalmatians but the boy gave his attention to it, and was drawn in. He remembered his bag of sweets and sucked on another pear drop. The film continued. There were horses, and cattle.

  The large man blocked the boy’s view; he had to move his own head from side to side to see what was happening on the screen.

  The cowboys in the film had arguments, the boy was not sure why. His grip on the twist of paper loosened and he dropped his bag of sweets. The bag broke and the sticky pear drops rolled across the dusty carpet.

  The woman beside the boy leaned over and whispered to him, telling him it was all right, she had sweets too, he could have one of hers.

  The boy took one of the woman’s mints and tried to watch the film, but the big man sat in front of him, his wide shoulders and head blocking the screen.

  The woman beside the boy leaned over and whispered to him, telling him he could sit on her lap to watch the film. She lifted him with seeming ease.

  In the film two cowboys had a fight. As they struggled on the ground one of them kicked aside something covering a gaping hole. In the hole were snakes, many of them, all squirming around. The boy watched sitting on the woman’s lap and the woman stroked his bare legs. The men wrestled each other, drawing closer to the snakepit.

  The boy watched the men fighting, transfixed, as the snakes writhed in the pit. The woman stroked his calves, over his knees, his thighs. One of the cowboys fell into the snakepit. He screamed but it was no good. The other cowboy crawled to the edge of the pit and watched as his rival surely died in agony.

  The cowboy rode out on to the open plain. The boy felt himself being lifted up and placed back in his seat. Then the woman rose and sidled off along the row of seats away from him and disappeared.