James Herbert - ‘48

Muriel’s chest was rising and falling with her own breathlessness and her hair framed her sweet face on the pillow. Her hands suddenly busied themselves with the waistband of my pants, and then I was free, her fingers closing around me and drawing me towards her so that I cried out with the wonderful shock of it. Her thighs opened wider as she guided me down between them and her cry was louder than mine when I entered her body, the resistance only slight, the hesitation only minimal. Again her cry turned to a moan of pleasure as I travelled further, the journey now smooth and easy, like gliding through warm butter, and her narrow hips rose up to meet me, her hands, her arms, pulling at me fiercely, urging me on, never, it seemed, wanting that journey to end. But quickly I reached the furthest point, and we clung to each other, her tears dampening my chest and shoulders once again.

Only then did we pause, and my own tears fell into her hair. She felt the wetness and held me tightly, but now with a tenderness that had nothing to do with passion. It couldn’t last though, that moment of caring and compassion – our physical demands were too great, our sexual needs too critical. We began to move against each other again, each thrust becoming wilder, our senses rushing towards that point in our bodies where our juices could fuse and our energies meld. When my flow finally streamed from me I buried my face against her shoulder and groaned, and I stayed that way until the fluttering spasms grew less in intensity, ebbed away, left me exhausted.

Slowly my body and my mind relaxed. And for the first time in three years I found a temporary peace.

I lit another cigarette with the one I’d just finished and settled back against the bed’s cushioned headboard. The shadows in the room had altered as the moon beyond the high windows had drifted upriver, and it was hard to make out Muriel’s form as she lay beside me beneath the single sheet, her hand resting lightly on my thigh. The scent of spent passion lingered between us, a sweet-sour musk that was both calming and sensual at the same time, and I remembered how Sally had called it ‘love-fragrance’, believing it was some kind of invisible shroud that enveloped lovers after the act, bonding them for a little longer. Yeah, I’d laughed at the time, laughed like a hyena, making her mad at first, until she’d joined in the laughter, but punched my arm all the same. I’d liked the idea though, despite my teasing. At least, I’d liked it with Sally in the picture. Now the thought only stoked up my guilt.

‘Hoke?’ There was a quiet huskiness to her voice. ‘Are you all right?’

I could just see the outline of her hair and her arm in the darkness, the vague glint of her eyes. As I drew on the cigarette she was briefly bathed in its warm glow.

‘Sure, I’m okay,’ I replied.

‘You were telling me about your parents.’

Lighting the fresh cigarette had interrupted the flow; the aroma of our lovemaking had rekindled a memory.

‘Like I said,’ I went on, ‘Ma was English, with a touch of Irish thrown in. Peggy. “Peg o’ my Heart” Dad liked to call her, naturally enough. They first met when he was over from Wisconsin for an agricultural fair – he dealt in farm equipment, bought ‘n’ sold anything from machinery to fertilizers. Had a fair little business going just after the Great War and he was kind of anxious to get a head start with all the new technology for farming.’

‘That’s where you’re from – Wisconsin?’

I nodded in the dark, and added a ‘yes’ for Muriel’s benefit.

‘Peg was a maid in one of your small, country hotels Dad was staying in, and when I was growed up enough to be interested he told me it was her “sparklin eyes” he first fell in love with, the rest of her ‘bout two days later.’

‘And your mother – did she fall for him so quickly?’

‘Guess she must have, because when he left eight days later she went with him. Just took off, the pair of ‘em, bill paid, notice given, but no explanation to anyone. Back to Winona, Wisconsin, USA. They got hitched right away and a year later I arrived.’

‘Wasn’t she afraid? A new country thousands of miles away from her own family?’

‘Ma had none to speak of. Her old man had been an Irish immigrant, who hadn’t treated Grandma too well. Peggy was his only daughter. When his wife died, he returned to Ireland where he probably killed himself with booze, according to Ma. Oh, he’d found his kid a job in a wash-house before he’d left, so I guess he figured he’d done his duty. And that was fine by Ma – at fourteen years of age she figured she was better off without him. When she married Dad, she didn’t know if her old man was dead or alive, and she told me years later she hadn’t cared.’

Muriel’s fingers moved to my arm and she stroked it, elbow to wrist.

‘She was never bitter about it though. Hell no, she was too thankful for her new life with Joseph, my dad. But y’know, although she never had a family to miss, she had something else to hanker after. Ma never got tired of telling me about her home country and I never got tired of listening.’

Muriel couldn’t see me, but I was smiling at the memory. It felt good to talk about my folks after all this time and, for a while at least, it was holding down thoughts of Sally.

‘She regretted leaving England?’

‘No, I didn’t say that. She’d found her happiness in Wisconsin, but that didn’t mean she didn’t get homesick now and again. She read me books by English authors all the time, and when I was old enough, got me to read ‘ em myself. Got me interested in the country’s history, too. Maybe the only regret she had was that I wasn’t getting an English education and I wasn’t being brought up the British way. She took a lot of pride in the traditions and manners of this country of yours, even though she was only from working stock, and sometimes I wondered if those funny wire-framed spectacles she wore later on in life weren’t just a little rosetinted. Her dream was to bring me over here for a short while, show me all those things she’d told me about, but the cancer put a hold on that.’

My smile was gone and I took time to inhale smoke. Muriel’s hand was still on my arm.

‘She passed away in ‘38, and Dad followed her eight months later. His ticker, the doc said, disease had worn it out. I always believed it was heartbreak that did it, though; or at least, hurried it along. I think he just didn’t want to go on without his Peg any more.’

My smile had come back. It gave me some comfort, the thought of Dad going after his Peg, darned if he was gonna let her explore the great unknown on her own. ‘Your ma’s got no sense of direction,’ he’d always joked with me. ‘Lose herself in the parlour if she didn’t have me around to call her.’ Well, wherever she’d gone, I hoped he’d caught up with her. And I was kind of glad they’d both missed the horror that was to come.

‘You were left alone?’ Muriel’s hand tightened around my arm.

‘Alone ain’t so bad,’ I lied. Alone was hell on wheels. Alone was a slow trip to insanity. Alone was the worst thing any man, woman or child could live with. My smile was gone again, wilted away in the shadows.

‘By that time I was living away from home anyway,’ I went on before self-pity set me blubbing again. ‘I was in Madison, attending the University of Wisconsin, studying engineering. Dad’s company was in bad shape by the time he died, and his brother, a wiseacre even Dad didn’t like, offered to take it off my hands, lock, stock and barrel, for no money at all. Well, that suited me just fine – what did I want with a pile of debts and a head full of problems when I was barely scraping eighteen? My uncle was welcome to ‘em. Besides, I was supporting myself well enough by bike racing and some barnstorming at weekends.’