‘It’s OK, Christopher. I’ll hold it, that’s all. I won’t move my hand until you’re ready. Nice and slow.’
They were half-naked, the two of them, in the dark gardens. They were hidden from view, but still… The air chilled his buttocks but her hand was warm and tight. More than anything, he felt alive. He clamped his lips shut, fearing that if he opened them he would shout so loud it would be heard all the way over in Headingley. She was stroking him towards her now, moving herself towards him. He could feel the tickle of the hair between her legs, now the warm wetness of her most private place. Oh God, oh God. He pressed himself onto her, felt her part as he pushed gently, so gently, unable to believe it was happening but knowing it was – it was. It was happening at last.
‘Oh, Angie,’ he said.
Her hand had fallen away. It was her body that guided him now, her insides that held him tight.
‘It’s OK, Christopher,’ she whispered. ‘I’m on the pill.’ She was all around him, her skin cloud-soft against his, her arms around his back. ‘Open your eyes.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
He made himself look at her. Through the sparse light, the blur of his own short sight, the glint of her eyes, staring into his, the pale cream of her teeth. She was smiling in that mocking way she had. He wished she would not smile like that. He pushed hard into her and she threw back her head. Again he pushed, and again, enough to stop her smiling.
‘Slower.’ She was still looking at him – arch, knowing – her eyes boring into his. That smile – that smirk. She was laughing at him, under her breath. She thought him ridiculous, a story to tell later to her girlfriends. She, she had reduced him to this half-clothed beast, bare buttocks pumping white and naked as a gibbon. To this monster.
The inexorable rush threatened to overtake him. He searched for a focal point and found the top of her head, the pale track of her parting. He pushed hard and fast.
She cried out, as if in pain.
He glanced at her face. Her expression had changed. Her brow furrowed and something else flashed in her eyes. She looked away, towards the halls. Was someone coming? Had she heard someone? Please God, no. She cried out again. She was not smiling. She was not laughing. She looked, if anything, afraid.
‘Stop,’ she shouted. ‘Christopher, stop.’
He pushed again, and again, his teeth gritted. Adam said women liked to resist, to play, that sometimes they told you to stop but really they wanted you to carry on.
‘Christopher, you’re… Stop.’
He could not. Not now. She was the one who had reduced him to this. Perhaps she thought he could not or would not go through with it well he would make her see he would show her he could he would he was close too close to stop too close too close…
With a cry that seemed not to belong to him, he felt himself empty, felt the flood of tension released in roaring, urgent silence. He fell onto her, his nose against the hollow at the base of her throat. ‘Angie.’
She was thumping his shoulders with her fists. ‘Get off me.’ Her voice was ragged, tearful.
He rolled off her, bewildered. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I said stop.’ She was pulling down her blouse, pulling up her jeans. She sniffed.
‘Angie, what’s the matter? Are you crying? I thought you wanted me to. I couldn’t stop. I thought you were just saying that. I couldn’t stop.’
She was zipping up her jeans. She sniffed again and gave a sob. She was crying, she really was.
‘Angie,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry. I didn’t realise. Did I hurt you? I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
She stood, grabbing up her coat.
‘You’re not him, are you?’ She was backing away. ‘You’re not him?’
She turned and ran towards the halls. He stared after her, burning with humiliation, his jeans and underwear around his knees, his penis limp on his milk-white lap.
Chapter Seventeen
Adam was still out when he got back. Even tonight, when Christopher had finally managed to, as Adam put it, get laid, Adam was still out of reach, going one better. Perhaps he had turned up late to the pub, picked up Alison or Sophie or both, why not, just like that. Perhaps he was with someone else, having skilful sexual intercourse with a woman who had not changed her mind halfway through, who had not left him exposed and alone in the dark. What was it that he, Christopher, had not understood? Angie had wanted him in that way, she had done everything to encourage him, but then – then she had not. Did normal men understand something he didn’t? Was that what separated them from that monster on the streets, from him, Christopher? What was he then? A monster?
The following day, Adam was still asleep when Christopher left for breakfast and the library, and that evening, he did not see Adam until much later. He had expected as much, he told me, since Adam had said he was meeting Sophie in the Skyrack at eight. Christopher supposed that meant another casually successful interaction with the opposite sex, another conquest. It was a surprise his room-mate didn’t have a tally carved into the wood at the foot of his bed.
When Adam came home around midnight, Christopher was in bed but still awake. He was having difficulty getting to sleep, he said, his mind too full of troublesome thoughts. Adam crept into the room. Christopher heard the creak of his bed and then first one boot drop to the floor followed by the other.
‘Hello,’ he said into the darkness. ‘Everything all right?’
‘I suppose,’ said Adam. ‘Got bloody stood up, didn’t I?’
The great lothario had finally met his match. Despite himself, Christopher cheered inwardly. ‘Oh dear,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t even that late.’
‘You mean no later than usual?’ By this time, Christopher said, he had got the hang of pulling Adam’s leg.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘Twenty tops. I should have known. Sophie’s not the type to wait.’
‘She might have got there later than you. If she’s wise to you, she might have known you’d be late.’
Adam pulled his shirt over his head and threw it to the end of his bed. Jumped up, dropped his trousers, which presently sailed through the air to join his shirt. He shivered, swore and got into bed. Christopher’s eyelids felt heavy. He let them close.
‘You could be right,’ Adam said. ‘I didn’t think of that. Fuck. I didn’t think to wait. I went into town instead. A few of the elec-eng boys were supposed to be meeting, but I couldn’t find them either. Ended up drinking on my own like a Billy-no-mates. What about you, anyway? Got laid yet?’
‘As a matter of fact…’
Adam sat bolt upright in his bed. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Who? When? How?’
‘A gentleman never tells.’
A moment later something landed on Christopher’s leg, causing him to startle. A book.
‘Secretive bastard,’ said Adam, and laughed.
* * *