The Man Who Travelled on Motorways Page 16

  ‘And all this time,’ Gorsey Dene interjected, ‘she was hanging onto you, wet, naked, getting heavier and heavier?’ His voice became nasal with disbelief. The wretched figure seemed incapable of holding her for seconds, much less a prolonged period of time. He glanced about: several people in the bar were regarding them curiously – rather, were regarding the youth thus. What an odd specimen he was; a real jackanapes. His hair stuck out at tangents, stiff and spiky, and the malformed planes of his face were sharply divided into areas of light and shade.

  The young man said, ‘The girl on the moor was altogether a different kettle of fish.’

  ‘The girl on the moor,’ Gorsey Dene said, almost knocking his drink over. ‘What girl on the moor is that?’

  ‘Someone I’d known when I was a youngster. She went away for several years, returning with her boyfriend, and the three of us went up on the moor. He tramped off, intrigued by the “round hills” as he called them, and when he was out of sight she looked at me and said, “You haven’t given me a welcoming kiss yet,” and as she said it started unbuttoning her blouse and moving towards me. The next thing I knew she had pulled her skirt up to her waist and was straddling me, her blouse fully open, and before I was aware of what was happening we were doing it and she was groaning and whispering, saying how long she had waited for this to happen.’

  ‘And the boyfriend –’

  ‘Out of sight over the moor. By the time he got back we had finished and were sitting talking quite naturally. He never suspected a thing.’

  This was becoming preposterous. There were gaping holes in the story, yards wide. For example, there were no moors in Islington. And who would be foolish enough to leave his girlfriend and another man (youth!) alone together on a deserted moor? And again, what on earth could possibly motivate a young lovely girl to brazenly expose herself to an emaciated runt of a fellow like this, a hollow-chested, narrow-faced, spineless individual without a single saving grace?

  ‘Soon afterwards, of course, I moved down here,’ the young man said.

  ‘Away from –?’

  ‘Yes, away from the North.’

  ‘What happened to the girl?’

  ‘How do you mean, what happened to her?’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Probably still in Oldham, where she comes from, waiting-on behind a bar I shouldn’t wonder.’

  At the bar itself, freshly-washed plastic, Gorsey Dene fiddled with change, squaring his shoulders manfully so that Jay should not tire of him within the first few hours following disembarkation. He had again experienced the difficulty of knowing who he was: when he behaved artificially people tended to see through the sham, yet when he acted naturally (or what he assumed to be so) they disliked him intensely. It was a dilemma. Thus with Jay it was a constant struggle to strike the norm of acceptable behaviour. Either she would regard him as a fake, her beautiful face hardening grotesquely with scorn, or else she would read his true character and find it wanting. What could he do? he wondered miserably, setting the drinks down on the table and falling nonchalantly into place beside her, the sick parody of masculine insouciance.

  ‘I had to burn all your letters,’ she told him. ‘They really were too naughty. I blushed when I read them.’

  Life at arm’s length, Gorsey Dene reflected grimly. A resounding success one stage removed. It would be better were he to live his life in a book.

  ‘But you didn’t write about the cornfield! Instead you rambled on and on about white beaches and warm blue seas, which in a cold country have no real relevance. Why was that?’

  ‘I was trying to imagine the kinds of things we could do in the future rather than set down merely a drab remembrance of the past.’

  ‘Did you imagine too all those things you did to me on the beach with the tide coming in – the water washing over us?’

  ‘Of course. And next year, after the winter, we could go abroad together and actually carry out all those things to the letter. Italy, Greece or Cyprus; one of those places.’

  ‘I’m not sure I would fancy it.’

  ‘Yes you would.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Just then a dark-skinned foreign-looking man with a bad complexion – Indian or Pakistani perhaps – came into the bar and asked for a lift to the nearest large town.

  III

  His name was Rhet Karachi, and they managed somehow to squeeze him in amongst the suitcases, carrier-bags and clothing on the back seat. He was a dancer by profession, or so he told them, saying he was on his way to an overnight party in Blackpool. Gorsey Dene said that he could only take him a certain distance, and from the corner of his eye saw Jay glance towards him (Gorsey Dene), a conspiratorial smile lurking around her full dark lips. Evidently she considered him (Rhet Karachi) something of a joke – at any rate someone not to be taken seriously. Gorsey Dene smiled above the dashboard glow, acknowledging the covert intimacy between them, pleased beyond words to be taken so exclusively into her confidence.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Gorsey Dene, ‘how is it you come to be in this part of the country?’

  ‘I disembarked an hour or so ago,’ replied Rhet Karachi. ‘I have been travelling on the Continent for several months.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Yes. I am a dancer, as I told you, returning to this country in the hope that I can get work.’ There was an arrogance about him, subdued as yet, but nevertheless there, lying like strands of sinuous metal just beneath the surface of his personality.

  ‘So you have been to this country before?’ Gorsey Dene said.

  There was a pause. ‘I am from this country; did you think I was foreign?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Gorsey Dene quickly, ignoring Jay’s smothered snort of amusement. ‘No, with you saying you were returning it somehow seemed … you gave the impression … well, it intimated that…’ He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and fiddled with the headlight switch.

  ‘What sort of dancing do you do?’ Jay asked.

  ‘Modern. Improvisation mostly. The kind popularised by Robert Cohan.’

  Jay had half-turned to hear him say this, noting that one of his eyes twitched involuntarily, the muscular membrane surrounding it galvanised by some spasmodic nervous irritant. She reached across in the darkness of the car and clutched Gorsey Dene’s hand.

  ‘I have appeared on television. You may have seen me perhaps, unknowingly.’

  ‘We may indeed,’ Gorsey Dene said. ‘You’ve travelled a good deal on the Continent have you?’

  ‘On the Continent and in this country. Of course the girls abroad are much better at love-making. Their attitude is much more free. I’ve lived off a number of them during my travels. I have one now, in London, who keeps me and buys me expensive presents. Women seem to like doing that for me.’

  ‘But yet not a car.’

  ‘No, not a car,’ Rhet Karachi said. Could there have been a smile in his voice, or a sneer? Gorsey Dene chose to ignore it. He had made his point and was well-satisfied. He pressed Jay’s hand and she responded; they were as one on many things.

  ‘This girl in Blackpool is expecting me to stay for a few days; I don’t know if I shall.’

  ‘Another one?’ Jay said, squeezing his hand. Gorsey Dene caught a glimpse of the curvature of her lips.

  ‘I told you there were several,’ Rhet Karachi said. There was the almost undetectable smell of something musky in the car whenever he spoke – an odour of foreign food and cigarettes. ‘One woman of near middle-age practically begged me to live with her. I thought about it for quite some time but then decided that I wouldn’t. She bought me lots of things: shirts, suits, clothing in general, a gold watch, rings.’ He had leaned forward between their two heads. Gorsey Dene controlled his breathing.

  ‘Why did you reject her offer?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t waste myself on that old slag. What, with all the girls there are in the world? It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘On the woman?’ Jay said.r />
  ‘On the girls,’ Rhet Karachi said, smiling. ‘I could never stay with one girl for any length of time. They become too possessive, they want to own you. I stay with them just long enough, then I go away.’

  ‘Where?’ Jay said, a slight catch in her voice.

  ‘From this country abroad; from abroad back here. There is always somewhere new to go. And wherever I go there are girls.’

  The car swerved violently round a dark bend, slipping on the shiny road. Jay’s grip slackened in Gorsey Dene’s grasp; her hand hesitated, then withdrew. But it was all right: she was lighting a cigarette, or powdering her nose, or applying fresh lipstick, or something. The car proceeded through the encroaching night, the spheres of Immingham now far behind.

  ‘I’ve done many diverse jobs too, and not only as a dancer,’ Rhet Karachi went on. ‘I’ve worked in offices, bars, exhibitions, and in hotels. It isn’t an easy life doing what I do. In one place I had to cook all the meals, breakfasts as well, but I must say it had its compensations. For instance, there were always plenty of girls: the guests were very careless with their wives and sweethearts. At all hours of the night and day I used to creep up and down, keeping an eye open for the likely ones. (There are always likely ones, even in an hotel of intermediate size.) On a night such as this I remember a young couple coming into the hotel, exhausted after a long day’s drive, and almost right away she tipped me the wink behind the back of her friend who was signing their names in the register. Well, I carried their bags up to their room, knowing full well that sooner or later I would get the chance even though they were staying only overnight. He was absolutely dumb, this guy, and she was a real looker, a gorgeous black chick. Once or twice we just glanced at each other, not saying anything, and I couldn’t help grinning … so not to give the game away I kept my head bowed and he must have thought I was good at my job – crawling and so on – because he gave me a shilling, poor jerk. Next morning the old slag who kept the hotel was on my back as usual, chasing after me to get this done, get that done, make the breakfast, etcetera. She had this cutting voice that carried everywhere, screaming out my name: “Rhet! Rhet! Rhet!!!” Would you believe I had to make the jerk’s breakfast? But as it turned out this was to my advantage because the girl, for some reason or other, stayed in the bedroom while he came down to the dining-room. So I dished up the bacon and eggs and whatnot, and scooted out of the way, avoiding the old slag who was charging about, her bosom heaving. Up the stairs two at a time to the room I went, quiet as a black cat, and knocked on the door. She opened it and just stood there staring at me with her big brown eyes; then she smiled, a big, warm, real friendly-looking smile, an open invitation if ever I saw one.

  ‘“Is your husband here?” I asked.

  ‘“My husband is not here,” she replied as she opened the door even wider.

  ‘“I guessed as much.”

  ‘Suddenly she moved away from the door and I saw the state the bed was in. It was a gift, in a sense, because I started tidying it, smoothing the ruckled sheets and plumping up the pillows. She watched me through the dressing-table mirror, applying scent to her neck and wrists, a half-smile playing across her generous features. She was a looker, all right, and different from anything else I’d ever had.

  ‘“Are you travelling on business or pleasure?” I said to her.

  ‘“Partly both. We set off late yesterday afternoon, intending to break our journey and stay somewhere overnight. He’s on business; I’m on pleasure.”

  ‘It was a bright morning, I remember it distinctly. All night long I had thought about her, getting worked up and jerking off. (You know what it’s like when you can’t get a chick out of your mind; drives you crazy.) So anyway, I carried on with the bed, shaking the mattress and straightening the covers. She kept grinning at me through the mirror and I thought, “Any minute now, baby. Just let me put this where it’ll do us both some good.” She knew what I wanted all right, and she was the kind of broad who keeps teasing and tantalising a guy. Jeez!’

  At this point Rhet Karachi drew back from between their two heads and fixed his body in a semi-crouch while he lit a cigarette. The glow illuminated the sallow pock-marked cheeks tapering hollowly to the strong prominent jaw. He inhaled sharply and the smoke gushed from his finely-delineated nostrils. Then he resumed his position and continued with the story.

  ‘She began to talk about her family, her mother and cousins – about whom, it seemed, she was pretty concerned. None of this affected me except in the sense that the longer she talked the better chance I had. Of course there was the sap downstairs eating his breakfast, but I figured there was time enough. The old slag would keep him plenty occupied. When I’d finished the bed I sat down on the end of it listening to her. By now she was doing things to her hair, brushing it up off the nape of her neck, and smiling into the mirror as she talked. I got the whole bit: about her job and why she had decided to move south, and her relatives, and the creep she was with, and the places she’s stayed in, etcetera. Well, anyway, this wasn’t getting me very far and I really fancied her – you know? She had these long slim legs right up to her arse and I was going nuts (you can imagine) just thinking what this creep must have been experiencing during the preceding night, having that piece of tail tucked between his sheets; and her hot for it, that was obvious. I mean, can you see me – or anybody come to that – passing up an opportunity like this one? She was practically begging me to jump her, yet all the while playing it oh so cool and calm and dignified, like some genteel lady, just now and then throwing me this cheeky grin through the mirror as if to say, “We both know what you want, don’t we, but I’m going to keep you dangling just a bit longer till you’re sagging at the knees, weak at the thought of lusting after me – unless, of course, you’re man enough to come and grab a piece right now, this minute, and lay me good, strong and hard while the blood’s hot in your veins.” Yeah that’s what her look implied all right.’

  To this rather incoherent narrative Gorsey Dene listened absorbedly. Gradually Rhet Karachi’s voice had increased in excitement, and at the same time diminished in tempo, so that his tone had become thick and low, charged with emotional intensity. Jay sat rock-still, a disapproving look on her face which, from the swift glances Gorsey Dene had cast towards her from the corner of his eye, made her appear almost ugly. Her throat seemed to be constricted with – not loathing, exactly – but distaste. Or no, it might not even have been distaste; too dark to tell.

  ‘Her hair finished at last she turned round and gave me both those big laughing eyes and that dazzling smile. It was time to make a move: now or never as they say.

  ‘“Where are you going from here?” I asked her.

  ‘“Home, and then on into town.”

  ‘“If I followed you would you object?”

  ‘“I couldn’t do anything about it, could I? This is a free country, so they told me.”

  ‘“If you happened to leave the name of your destination written down lying around somewhere …”

  ‘“Or written on the mirror in lipstick.”

  ‘“Why not?”

  ‘“Only he might see it.”

  ‘“What the hell?”’

  ‘Just a minute, do you mean she actually wrote it in lipstick on the mirror so that everyone could see?’ Gorsey Dene said. ‘I would call that the height of stupidity.’

  ‘I’m getting to that; as a matter of fact she didn’t, but you’re jumping ahead of the story.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘“It matters to me,” she replied, “because like it or not he’s got all my stuff in his car. I’ve got to play up to him, otherwise – ” and she drew her hand across her throat.

  ‘A typical woman’s thinking,’ Gorsey Dene interjected. He was morbidly afraid of women and it pleased him when his suspicions were justified. At the same time he was somewhat uneasy: the story, though far-fetched, had the ring of truth about it.

  ‘“I can deal with him” I said. “Just tell me where y
ou’re going to be and we’ll meet up. I was leaving this place anyway.”

  ‘She came towards me, treading lightly on her feet like a gazelle, and stood a few inches away. I’d learnt a couple of tricks with dames, one of them being to press your forehead onto their pube, clench your teeth, and moan.’

  ‘Did you do it?’ Jay asked.

  ‘I did it all right. Jeez, it flipped her. She went berserk, writhing up against me, thrusting her pelvis forward. I could have taken her immediately, no sweat, but just then the fucking old slag yelled, “Rhet, Rhet, Rhet!” at the top of her gingy voice.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Like I told you, a real yelling, screaming, cutting tone of a gingy voice.’

  ‘I meant pressing your forehead …’

  ‘Oh that.’ Rhet Karachi grinned, the cigarette smoke curling across his heavy, amused eyes. ‘It’s freaky. No, I mean really.’

  ‘Which town did you want?’ Gorsey Dene said.

  ‘Just keep driving. No sweat.’

  ‘I’d like to know, because we cross the motorway soon. If you want to go north or south, better to get out.’

  ‘Which direction are you heading?’

  ‘West. We’re travelling from east to west, crossing the motorway, which if you want to go north or south will be the best place for you to get out.’