The Beach House

'Perhaps he was one.' Lucy said drily, 'or had one.' She could see that the girl was more comfortable now, talking about herself. 'What about girlfriends, then?' she asked casually.

'Oh, the usual gang -- you know, girls that I've been through my whole school life with. I have two best friends, though -- Sharon and Judith. We've been together since we were little.'

'And where are they now?'

'Sharon's doing her final year with me. You'd like her, Lucy -- she has this amazing ability to get on with anybody. She wants to be a flight test engineer.'

'What about Judith?'

'She dropped out last year,' Sarah said, 'but she lives down the road so I still get to see her.'

'So why did she drop out?'

The girl sighed. 'There was gossip about her having it off with another chick. These days you'd think that was all right, but she started being bullied and her Mum took her out of school.'

Lucy smiled sympathetically. 'How sad. Did it bother you?'

'What? Her being a lesbian?' She shook her head. 'Not really. I don't even know if it was true -- she never tried it on with me.'

'Would it have upset you if she had?'

Sarah regarded the older woman. 'I don't know,' she answered at length. 'Jude is very pretty -- she could have anyone she wanted, so I guess I'd have been flattered if she'd hit on me. I just never thought about it, to be honest.' She glanced around the room. 'Do you know where the loo is? I need to go.'

Lucy nodded towards the far corner of the room. 'Just over there.' She waited until the girl disappeared and after a furtive glance around the room she opened her purse and extracted a small bottle of clear liquid that she deftly poured into Sarah's glass. So far the evening was going well, she thought, but a little insurance wouldn't hurt.

Sarah reappeared and they chatted lightly, sipping their drinks. Lucy recharged their glasses.

'So are you happy living where you do?' she asked.

'I guess.' We've never really lived anywhere else, at least not since I was old enough to remember, so it's OK.'

'But not very exciting, I think.'

The girl smiled. 'No, not really, but I don't mind...I'm not really a party girl.'

The waiter appeared with their main course and Lucy waited until he had finished serving and moved away. They chatted throughout the meal and she watched as Sarah grew even more relaxed, her grey eyes dilated by the drug and her laughter a little louder and more frequent.

'Talking about lesbians,' Lucy said, 'I remember when I first started modeling. I was pretty naïve...first job out of school, never lived away from home. There was one of the girls who was a bit older than the rest of us and she befriended me -- you know, took me under her wing and showed me the ropes, made sure I was being looked after -- that sort of thing.' She laughed. 'I thought she was just being nice, but one day she invited me to her place for a few drinks after work. She said that a few of the girls would be there, but when I turned up there was just her and me. She'd set up the works: candlelit dinner, soft lighting, mood music.' She paused to eat a forkful of food and sip at her wine. 'Even then it took me a while before the penny dropped.'

Sarah giggled. 'So how did you figure it out?'

'When she came up behind me at the end of the meal and started kissing my neck.'

'Wow! I guess that would give it away. What did you do?'

'I figured I'd give it a go.'

'You didn't!'

Lucy shrugged. 'I was a bit younger then, and more adventurous. I saw it as an opportunity rather than a threat.'

'But surely...I mean, well, didn't you have to do things that, um - that you're not wired for? You know, well -'

'I didn't have to do anything, as it turned out. She did it all, and I have to say it was lovely.'

Sarah regarded her with some confusion. 'So does that mean -'

Lucy smiled. 'It doesn't mean anything, Sarah, other than I had an open mind about having a new experience. It made her happy and it gave me pleasure, and afterwards I understood a whole lot better why some girls prefer it.' She gripped the girl's hand, holding her fingers tightly. 'Some people think you have to be gay or straight and there's nothing in between, but life isn't like that. You don't have to be one or the other.'

'I don't know if I'd have the courage to do that,' the girl said. 'Suppose you found out half way through you hated it?'

'It's no different to making out with a guy -- if he does something that you don't like then you ask him to stop.' She squeezed Sarah's fingers, and looked directly into her eyes. 'My advice would be to try it some time, if you have the opportunity...and very soon.'

Sarah knew she had drunk more than she usually did but it seemed to have heightened her senses rather than dulled them. Her brain felt like a great diamond set in her skull, brightening the colours and images around her and bringing a sense of perception she'd never experienced before. She glanced down at the woman's hand in hers -- the frequent touching had seemed so innocent but she realised that Lucy was gripping her in a different way, somehow, as if they were...together. She glanced at the woman's face and saw the glittering brightness of her eyes, like those of a predator, and her words and the way she had said them rang in her ears: '...try it sometime, if you have the opportunity...and very soon'.

And suddenly it all made sense: the meeting in the café with Lucy dressed to kill and her conversation as smooth as buttered silk. The expensive restaurant, the wine and the flattery and the skillful way the conversation had been turned towards sex. Lucy's eyes were still on hers, drilling into her with a strange intensity and in a moment of absolute clarity Sarah understood that her instincts were right, and that she was being asked to do something that she had never, in all her years, contemplated before.

For a moment the audacity of the suggestion robbed her of speech. She could feel her pulse rising, the blood coursing through her body faster than before. The lights of the restaurant seemed to recede, somehow, and the noise and bustle of the people around them to leach away until there was only the two of them sitting together in a sudden awareness of intimacy like the crackle of static electricity flowing between them. Sarah's eyes focused on the woman's mouth: the delicious curve of her lips and the soft shade of her lipstick and she imagined pressing her own lips to it, tasting the sweetness of the wine she had drunk, probing with her tongue to draw the woman's essence into her own body. A sudden seep of moisture bloomed between her legs and she drew in her breath sharply at the unexpected surge of lust and longing that it brought.

'So you...um, you -' she stuttered.

Lucy smiled. 'Want you? Of course I do. You're delectable.'

'But I'm not -- I mean, I don't know how -'

'Then I'll teach you,' Lucy said softly, 'there is so much I can teach you.'

Lucy's room was close to the restaurant and they walked quickly, the older woman gripping Sarah's arm to steady her as she staggered slightly in the cool evening air. Sarah's mouth was dry and her heart was racing and her mind was in turmoil. She could feel her nipples pressing like hard pebbles against her bra and the soft wet warmth of her vulva in the wet constraint of her pants; she knew she should stop and take a deep breath and ask to go home but somehow her mind and her limbs were disconnected and she was powerless to resist. The clarity of her thought had gone like a wraith of mist in the morning sun, but she knew that every step took her closer to this extraordinary woman's bed and that nothing, nothing would ever be the same again.

The sheets on the bed were crisp and she lay naked upon them, her clothes scattered like confetti around the room. She stared up at Lucy as she undressed. The woman's breasts were larger than her own but they rested firm upon her ribcage and the nipples were erect with desire. Her eyes roamed over the tight curve of Lucy's waist and the flat white plain of her belly; and as the woman bent to strip away her panties she saw the perfect symmetry of her buttocks and the dark shadow of promise between them. Sarah's heart was beating fast -- not with fear but with nervousness and anticipation, and she could feel the seep of moisture trickling between her legs.

Lucy knelt between her open thighs and touched her gently, her fingertips brushing against her skin as lightly as a shadow. There was a small tattoo of a Chinese character below the girl's bikini line, and a stubble of pale golden hair over her mound where she had once shaved. The lips of her sex were swollen, the pale pink flesh puffy and moist, and Lucy could see the gleam of juice between them like the delicious wet flesh of an oyster. She brought her hands between the girl's legs and held them either side of her opening, drawing the lips apart to reveal the inner core of her sex, and she marveled at the tight symmetry of what she was about to take.

'You're beautiful, Sarah,' she whispered, as she bent her head forward, 'so beautiful.'

The touch of Lucy's tongue was like an electric shock, sizzling in its impact. Sarah felt her body jolt and tiny goosebumps of pleasure sprout on her arms. She arched her back and groaned, her fingers grasping the sheets either side of her body. 'Ah, ah...' she whispered. 'Ah, God -- just there...yes!'

Lucy penetrated the girl with the very tip of her tongue. Every girl she had eaten seemed to taste a little different and Lucy was delicious. She lapped at her briefly, curling her tongue to transfer more of Sarah's juices into her mouth where she could savor it as it oozed over her taste buds. Across the plain of the girl's belly and the jutting mounds of her breasts she watched her expression, each stroke drawing a grimace of pleasure and a low groan from her throat, and her heart was singing in her chest.

Another one, she thought. But she is so young and pretty. I can play with this one for years before I ever let her go.

With growing excitement she pressed her fingers into Sarah's body, watching with hooded eyes as the girl's sex juice oozed between her fingers and she smiled at the thought of what the coming hours would bring.

*

To begin with the entries in Sarah's diary were frequent, each entry filled with words about how beautiful Lucy was and how clever and how their time together was so wonderful. I sat at her desk and I read the words and I felt their emotion as keenly as if I had written them: words of hope and longing and expectation; words of sadness and despair when a meeting was cancelled. But within the scribbled entries there was a dark undertone that I would never have picked if I had not come to know her so well. It was as if her joy was brittle: driven not by love or even friendship, but by an obsession. It was as if Lucy held a fatal attraction that had drawn her into a web from which she could not escape, and within the scrawled lines was a sense almost of desperation. And as the months went by the meetings grew less frequent and her anxiety seemed more palpable, the entries scribbled in greater haste as she poured out her fear of rejection and her need to see Lucy again -- and then, when she did, a desperate calm returned for a few days until the cycle started again.

There were other entries too -- mostly about the Beach House and what we were doing to it. For the first time I was featured too: how I was helping her, and how much she enjoyed my company. Those entries had changed over the weeks we had worked together too, painting a picture of increasing comfort in my company and how she was coming to rely on my friendship. And so I read through the diary page by page, engrossed by the drama within it, hoping to discover the secret of her obsession but finding none; until at last I reached the final entry. It had been written the night before we argued, and it said a little about how we had finished the roof and the picnic we were to have the next day; and beneath it were three words scrawled like a scream: 'Lucy called. Tomorrow.'

I turned the page to see if she had said anything more -- perhaps about us and the angry words we had shared, but there was no entry for that day -- only an empty page that seemed to me to be as eloquent as a thousand words: a blank page, like the cold empty eyes of a lover who has forsaken you and moved on with nothing to say that could ease your aching heart.

And so I closed the book softly and placed it back in her desk and I went to my room in that dark, empty house and lay on my bed to think. Part of me yearned for her, understanding now that she was lost to a much greater force than I; but there was anger at her duplicity, too. How well she had hidden all of this from me as we worked together! In my mind I remembered how she smiled, her face turned toward me and her eyes crinkled in humour; and how she would sometimes reach out to touch me to say thank you or to share a moment of intimacy without words. I recalled the musical notes of her laughter and the way she screwed up her nose to express distaste, and the way the little pink tip of her tongue peeped from between her lips when she was concentrating. Nothing in any of those things had every given any hint to the dark turmoil in her life: it was as if she was two separate beings.

It was past eight o'clock when I heard my parents arrive home and by then there was nothing more to think about. Sarah was coming home tomorrow, and life would go on. I knew then that I could never have her in the way I wanted, and I knew that the best thing would be to put our project on hold and give us both some space; but the thought of not having her beside me was more than I could bear, and so in the end I resolved to do nothing. Perhaps one day she would be free of Lucy and her life might return to a balance -- but until then I would be there for her.

*

The next morning my mother was still at breakfast when I went downstairs, which was unusual. When Dad is away she likes to be at out and about early. I kissed her proffered cheek and she set aside her newspaper and smiled at me as I sat down.

'How are you, Michael?' she asked. 'We haven't seen much of you these last few weeks.'

'I'm good, Mum. Busy, though.'

'But not with work, I suppose.'

'There isn't much around.' I leaned over and helped myself to some fruit. 'But old man Murphy seems to think the Beresford Vale development might go ahead in the summer.'

'Would you be offered work then?'

'Sure. Murphy knows me and likes my work.'

My mother nodded. 'And what about Sarah?' she said carefully. 'We don't see much of her either.'

'She's good too. Been away for a week but I think she's back today.'

'That's right. The three o'clock train, I heard. Would you be able to collect her?'

I shook my head. 'Not really -- I'll be out at Brinsley's Head. The window frames have arrived and I wanted to see if I could fit them before Sarah came home. I guess I could leave my car at the station for her, if that helps.'

'I'm sure it would. Can you tell her?' She regarded me for a moment. 'Do you know where she's been, Michael?' she asked.

'Not really. With some friend, I heard.' I smiled at her. 'A woman, in case you're worried.'

'Yes, but it's all been a bit mysterious.'

'Really? Why?'

She sighed. 'Oh, I don't know -- it's just that, well, she must be a good friend to spend a week with, but she never says anything about her. She's very secretive.'

'Perhaps she's a really boring friend.'

'Well, even so -- I'd like to know more about where she is and who this person is.'

I thought about the diary upstairs and wondered how she would feel if she read it too. For a fleeting instant I was tempted to tell her the truth. To blurt it out in brutal little words that would damage the mother-daughter relationship for ever. Your beautiful daughter is a little slit-licker, Mum, and she's been with her lover for a week. What do you think about that? But I knew I wouldn't. That was for Sarah to tell her, if she ever could.

'Do you think she's happy, Michael?' my mother asked.

'Who?'

'Sarah. I worry that she's not happy. You've been with her on the island for a while now -- what do you think?'

'She looks happy to me.'

'I hope so...but there's something -'. She gazed at me for a moment, the words unsaid. A mother's intuition was seeing more than the rest of us had. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Sarah really was unhappy, which would leave me --

'God!' she said suddenly. 'Is that the time? I'm meeting Judy at nine, so I'd better go.' She set her napkin on the table and stood up.

'Drive carefully, Mum,' I said. 'And don't worry about supper...I'll get a take-away.'

'Right. There's money on the sideboard...and be careful out on the bay today - there's some weather coming. Check the forecast before you go.' She pushed the paper towards me. 'Page 15.'

I laughed. Only Mum would remember what page a weather forecast was on. 'Go,' I said, 'or you'll be late. I'll check it.'

'Promise?'

'I promise.'

'All right. And keep an eye on Sarah. Be a big brother to her.' She bent to kiss me lightly on the cheek and a moment later I was alone.

*

It was lunchtime before I had loaded the window assemblies into the boat and another two before the last of them were safely inside the Beach House. The sky to the east was dark and I thought we might get rain later, but the sea was choppy rather than rough and the wind really carried no strength. I'd tried to call Sarah a few times but she didn't answer and so I sent her a message telling her about the car and that I'd be out at the Beach House and looked forward to seeing her later.

Once I'd carried the casements up the hill I couldn't resist fitting the two front ones. I wanted the cottage to look a little better than when Sarah had last seen it, I guess, and I knew that windows would give an immediate impression of progress. The stone around the apertures was as hard as granite and it took a while to drill anchor points with the diamond tipped bits, but at length it was done and I lifted the first frame into place and secured it. The fitting was perfect and I stood back to admire the work for a moment before turning to the second one.

I guess I lost track of time as I worked. I'd drilled the holes into the second window and secured the frame and I was busy sealing the gaps with caulking before I became aware of the noise. It was a sort of growling rumble, half like thunder and half like a train, and it grew louder as I worked until it drowned out even the noise of the little electric generator beside me. I looked to the south but there was nothing but the empty expanse of the bay, the water darker than it had been earlier and with little whitecaps sprinkled here and there - but nothing to betray the source of that roaring, grumbling sound. And so I set down my tools and walked down the path a little way to where there was an unobstructed view to see what it was.

The sky to the west was a bruised indigo, a sullen colour that somehow brought it closer to the earth as if God had squashed the two together, and the spit of water between the island and Brinsley's head was a seething mass of confused and broken waves as the tidal rip roared though the narrow gap. There was no direct sunlight but instead a strange luminosity pervaded the landscape accentuating the greens and yellows of the fields and hedgerows and painting them in stark relief against that dark, malicious sky. Apart from the water the scene was quite still, as it if was holding its breath before an onslaught: and then, as I watched, the trees on the far headland suddenly bent in unison as if seized by an invisible hand -- bent far over, almost at ninety degrees, their upper branches thrashing under the burden of a howling gale that seemed to have roared in from nowhere. And almost immediately the trees on the island reacted too, their upper branches suddenly flung over and the air around them filled with dust and branches and flying debris.