Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

We kiss some more. Her kisses are salty. And wet.

She undoes my fly (and, but of course , she’s wearing no underwear).

We fuck.

It’s fantastic. Like the Queen has just smashed the most inconceivably huge and expensive bottle of Bollinger against the hard, smooth prow of this naughty, great hooker. The window shudders (God, glass manufacture from that epoch has been so needlessly derided in our times). My cap tips forward. She yanks it off (almost hitting me with a shoe). Throws her arm out. Bangs her elbow. Drops the cap. Brings her arm straight back.

Why do I open my eyes at this point?

Huh ?

Was it all the cap stuff?

Was it the sound her elbow made hitting the glass?

Was it the fantastic way her legs twitched around me?

Who cares why?

I open my damn eyes.

They’re blank at first; gazing, unfocusedly, through that plate-glass window. All those— wow —wires. All that— ouch —Bakelite — and even the— Oooh, yes — waxwork .

The— keep going, please keep going —wireless operator.

I mean the detail . The fucking detail ! The hair. The suit. The hand. The finger.

Another hard, slippy kiss. Uh …I peek out, sideways.

Yes. The finger .

Just bib-bib-bobbing on that Morse code machine.

So he’s not a model.

But you probably already realised that (Been on this ship before , have we?).

Okay.

So he probably feels more embarrassed about this than I do (This is the one helpful thing any sensible person might say under the circumstances in a desperate bid to try and keep his pecker up. And they may well be right. And all credit to them for that).

But Jesus, John, Paul and Ringo this is hideous. It’s excruciating .

I mean the way he just keeps on tapping, even though he probably knows this might ultimately give him away, because (a) (Let’s get inside his head for a moment) if he stops , then so will the beeping, and this may well alert us. (b) If he keeps on tapping, and we do notice his non-waxwork status, then at least it still looks like he’s been keeping himself busy.

I am still thrusting.

Aphra is still grinding.

The wireless operator is still tippy-tip-tip-tapping .

Then Aphra comes. Then I come (How’d I do that?). Then she collapses over my shoulder and says, ‘You smell of death …’ pause, ‘And lavender .’

Yeah. So how was it for you , Love?

No. Of course I don’t tell her.

Now this is a good bit: once Aphra’s got her breath back (pushed me off, jumped down and rearranged her skirt), she grabs the sailor’s cap, bends over, sticks out first one leg, then the other, and delicately wipes the soft part of its old blue fabric from her inner ankle to her inner thigh.

‘Young, numb and full of cum,’ she sighs (I think — at this point — that the wireless guy might be in danger of suffering a coronary). Then she tosses the smeared historical artefact back at me.

‘Take it down to the tuck shop, will you?’ she asks sweetly. ‘ There’s a good boy.’

And off she trots.

I glance up at the ceiling (cap held firmly behind me). I wince. I check my fly. I whisper, ‘ Terribly sorry’, then glide out, inconspicuously.

Yes, I know she’s fucking married.

But viva life, huh?

I finally catch up with Bly in the canteen (where else?). She’s ordered me a cheese baguette, a blueberry muffin and a cup of tea. She tells me all about the ammunition store (‘Those missiles. So huge . So well made. So amazingly tactile …’). I tell her that the top two decks are closed down for renovation.

‘It is a shame. Yes. We must come back.’

We eat.

Bly takes a second to fill out the tax-concession thingummy (she’s good like that). Then we leave.

I walk slightly stiffly. My dick’s all crunchy.

Of course I put the cap back. Yes, it was slightly mottled and gooey.

But what amazingly able semen, huh ?

Home. Bath. Bed.

Sleep like a damn log .

Am rudely awoken— wah? eh? where the clock ? — at ten past eleven by an almighty commotion in the kitchen as Solomon manfully struggles to apply eye-drops to an unenthusiastic Jax (who has — he knows not how —recently contracted conjunctivitis), whilst simultaneously conducting a noisy argument with a strident, American female who sounds suspiciously like…

Who else ?!

Jalisa !

I stagger upstairs and stand swaying in the doorway clutching my Blaine book (like I’m gonna ask her to autograph it for me) but no one looks over. No one even says ‘Hi’.

‘Your position is just so riddled with inconsistencies,’ Jalisa’s expostulating angrily, while a grim-faced Solomon locks Jax’s head between his manly thighs, twizzles around frantically to try and reach the drops bottle, and then fails — signally — to do so.

‘Pass me the stupid drops ,’ he demands.

But Jalisa’s still talking.

‘The allegations of illegal gun possession I can just about get my head around,’ she says (Ah. So it’s the tragic decline of South-West London UK Garage supremos So Solid Crew that they’re discussing. Oh ho . Jalisa had better tread very carefully here. This ground is decidedly marshy). ‘Although to threaten an innocent, African parking warden…How pathetic is that?’

‘He never even took the gun out,’ Solomon snarls. ‘Now will you just pass me the medication?’

‘He threatened him vocally. The gun was in his girlfriend’s handbag. And the guy was being reasonable. He asked him to put some money in the meter or to move on. That was all.’

‘The drops! ’ Solomon yells.

‘I mean any normal warden would’ve ticketed him on the spot. And let’s not forget,’ she staunchly continues, ‘that Asher D was actually a child actor before he graduated on to the dizzy heights of South-East London gangsta-dom. He was perfectly well raised. His mother runs the Personnel Department at Hackney Council. I mean give me a break . He starred in Grange Hill —or The Bill , I forget which — so it was hardly like the pressures of celebrity were an entirely new phenomenon to him…’

Solomon lunges for the drops. He manages to grab them, but the grip of his legs is temporarily weakened, and Jax — ever vigilant — snatches his chance to make a quick break for it and seeks brief refuge under the table (did ever a grown dog make so much fuss about a measly drop before?).

‘ Damn you!’ Solomon bellows.

Jalisa’s eyes fly wide open. ‘Was that directed at me or at the dog?’ she enquires icily.

Solomon falls to his knees (Yeah, that’s definitely a question best ignored) and tries to grab Jax’s collar. Jax’s collar promptly slips off.

‘So I can accept all the gun stuff,’ Jalisa rants ever onward. ‘All the trouble at the gigs. That poor kid getting stabbed and killed in Luton. The gun-fire in the Astoria. All the shit in Ayia Napa, all the hype and posturing even…’

‘Come here ,’ Solomon instructs the dog, pointlessly shaking the collar at him.

‘But it’s the events in that hotel lobby in Cardiff that I struggle with…’