‘I don’t have much to say.’ He closed his eyes briefly at the sensation of her long fingers reaching into the back of his hair, the soft scratch of her nails making his scalp tingle. ‘I’m afraid the illuminations were the highlight of my repertoire. Ill-um-inations, ah, see, must be sobering up.’ She had his head in her hands now and had begun to caress his scalp with such tenderness he wanted to rest his head on her shoulder and say nothing more except Don’t stop. ‘I mean,’ he continued, struggling now to concentrate on anything other than her, her hand in his hair, ‘you were right, I’ve never even been to a pub before. Before tonight. Don’t tell anyone, will you?’
‘Won’t tell a soul.’ She leant in close, her breath warm as freshly baked bread against his ear, her teeth no more than a gentle, blissful bite on his earlobe. He felt himself stir, stiffen; the thought of her discovering him this way filled him with terror. But she did, had discovered him, her other hand now on his crotch, her mouth closing over his. ‘Open your mouth a little,’ she whispered. ‘It’s OK. I’ve looked after you this far, haven’t I?’
‘I haven’t…’
‘I know. It’s OK.’
He opened his mouth, matching hers as best he could. He wished he knew the things that others knew, that Adam certainly knew. He wished he could show her instead of her showing him, but she was too far ahead. Her tongue touched his, their lips pressed together; he felt himself harden further against her touch. She ran her hand down the length of him, up again, as if trying to build a picture by touch alone. Up and down, her mouth never leaving his. He wanted to tell her to stop but could not, did not want to. And then—
‘Oh God,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh God, no.’ His head fell into her shoulder just as her hand sprang back. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, and stroked the back of his head. ‘That’s normal for a first time.’
He could not raise his forehead from her shoulder. He did not want her to see his face, knew she would see even in the low light that he was burning.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ he whispered.
‘There’s no shame in it, Christopher.’ She hugged him, though their bodies only made a clumsy A-frame in the darkness. He wanted so much for her to leave him, but could not stand the thought of her seeing the dark patch he knew must be there on the front of his trousers. ‘You look after yourself, all right?’
Thankfully, she turned as he released her. She waved, though without a backwards glance. He wrapped his coat around himself and watched her walk away, through the door of her halls, into safety. She did not turn back or wave again, and he wondered if this was out of discretion or disgust. He should have initiated their kiss. He should have slowed her hand. He should have known things like she did, like others did. She had said it was normal. But it was not. He was not.
Chapter Six
You have the devil in you, Ben’s mother used to say when he was naughty. And growing up, he was inclined to agree. The insinuation was that the devil came from his real family, though she never said this out loud. He had always understood he was adopted, at first in the amorphous form of feeling, a form to which words gave shape much later on. But his parents had always been honest with him about that, at least, explaining to him in simple terms that he was a gift to them from another mommy and daddy but that he was theirs now and always would be and they loved him. They loved him all right. And you can’t choose how you’re loved – he knows that because they told him that too. You just have to give thanks to the Lord that someone somewhere is looking after you, and suck up the rest. And whatever devil there was inside him had got him this far.
To ward off the devil, there was church. Ben remembers how, on Sundays, his mother would lead him to Mass through the streets of Virginia, walking too quickly so that he had to half-run to keep up with her. He never asked why she couldn’t walk more slowly, why his father got to stay home. Come to that, he never asked why she was one way in church – holy, smiling and soft-voiced as an angel; another way at home – hard-voiced and not smiling, never smiling, and not like any angel he ever saw. Passing the Negroes coming out of Little River Southern Baptist Church, he often wondered why they looked so much happier with their God than his congregation did with theirs. Those joyous hymns, they sang them so hard he could hear them coming through the swinging double doors as his mother dragged him on by.
Once, long ago, he had fantasised that his real parents were those very Negroes who sang so gaily in the church down the road. He used to wonder whether one day his skin would darken to the colour of coffee beans and he would discover, finally, that he did not belong with white folks at all. It would all make sense then. He would walk into Little River and take his place on the pew and sing those joyous hymns at the top of his lungs. But as he got older, he realised with a feeling of intense sadness that he would never be darker skinned than a glass of cream, would never sing with the people who smiled even outside the church. He would instead stay the same: Benjamin Bradbury, white, straight-haired, origin unknown. No one else was like him. At school, none of his friends had been adopted. The only other adopted children he had heard about were something to do with the war. Although they were called orphans, which was a different thing. As far as he knew, his birth parents were still alive. How could that be? Who would give away a child? And why?
Of course, he is an adult now; life has already taught him that such questions are not math – they cannot be answered like that. And yet the questions persist, in a more sophisticated form, even as his world, once black and white, fuses into a spectrum of greys. Doubt. Even now, so young, his certainties are dropping like leaves in fall. Martha wants children. He wanted children, but now… Somewhere in his own childhood, though he cannot recall exactly when, his parents stopped being Mom and Pop and became Dorothy and George. Not overnight – it was a much slower thing, as if the words Mom and Pop had been written on his mind with magic ink, designed to fade over time. And as the years passed, he became aware that Mom and Pop, as well as being the people who’d taken him in or however the hell you said it, were what they called well-to-do. That his father’s Harvard education and career as an attorney in DC were big bugaboo, at least in their neighbourhood.
They had met at Harvard, though Dorothy had never worked so far as Ben could remember. Enough to do with you scooting around my feet all day. What came between his parents’ meeting and the cocktail parties they hosted in their large suburban house was a mystery, like an episode of The Rockford Files he never got to see. That Dorothy was not happy he had concluded by the time he reached his teens from a series of clues: her thirst for vodka tonics from around three in the afternoon, her clumsiness when she fixed dinner and the way her knuckles paled when she held onto the kitchen counter.
He wondered if this had to do with him.
As a teenager, like many teenagers, Ben spent most of his time in his room. He drew, in secret, constantly. His parents could not see the point.