The Stain

Ireland, 1987

When Suzanne handed over her references, Pauline made a face and tore them up.

'We won't be needing them. Can you start this Saturday?'

Don stared at his wife before starting to laugh.

'I reckon you're hired,' he said.

His handshake was firm, traces of wetness beneath talcum. Suzanne had no idea what age he was. Late thirties, maybe. At seventeen, anyone above twenty is old. He had fair, greying hair, soft hands. An accountant, according to Norma, her predecessor. Both of them were. Norma had sat for them for two years but was going away to college that autumn. They're cool, so long as you don't mess around. Slip you the odd fag or can. And Matty's no trouble. A bit of a Mammy's boy...

Pauline took her to the kitchen to meet the boy. Her hair was set in a tight plum-tinted perm and she was wearing a blue trouser suit, the jacket lined with two rows of gold buttons. The get-up made her look middle-aged, however much she went on about her youthfulness of heart.

'I love your house,' said Suzanne.

'It needs a lick of paint.' Pauline guided her to the left, towards a door of frosted glass. 'When he decides to get off his arse...And now, here's the man of the house...'

Matty was a doughy and sullen 6-year-old. When Suzanne held out her hand, he didn't look up from his colouring.

'Hello, Suzanne,' he sighed, prompted by his mother.

Back in the hall, Pauline made excuses for him.

'He was very fond of Norma. We all were...But he'll be fine.' She smiled. 'So we'll see you on Saturday, then. There'll be a probation period, blah, blah...'

As she opened the front door, she became serious.

'As long as we all trust each other...' Her voice was like caramel, '...we won't have any problems.'

Suzanne shook her hand, a serpent uncoiling in her guts.

The paused video sputtered upon a frame of Nicolas Cage singing to Kathleen Turner. Suzanne's face in the mirror above the fireplace was as wary and haunted as a burglar's. She looked at the ceiling...Nothing. Matty had gone down before she had finished reading to him. He had been no trouble, almost worryingly pliable. Now she was alone in a strange house. The anticipation made her want to pee...

She sat into a black leather armchair and examined the contents of a magazine rack at its side. Old copies of The Sunday Independent, U, Image, Reader's Digest and Time. A novel – Madeleina – book-marked with a Queen of spades. On opening the page, she felt her neck blush explosively. Tolomeo's phallus...her swollen breasts...Suzanne snapped it shut, then opened it and read on. The heroine was making love with a shaman by a fountain of youth. His powerful arms...his silver hair...Hungry for more, she searched through the pages. Now a crazed patriarch, who had tried to fashion Madeleina into a version of his dead wife, lashed her across the breasts, raising a strip of blood upon the whiteness of her blouse. This was Pauline's book...Suzanne didn't know why she found the thought so exciting. She imagined her sitting in the same chair, the room mid-week banal, no movement apart from the TV screen and the back and forth of her eyes over the page, the deepening pits of pleasure at the corners of her mouth.

Had Don read it too? Sneaking a look when she was out of the room, touching himself hard...?

She crossed to the TV cabinet and took out the uppermost of a collection of photo albums stacked upon its bottom shelf. The pictures within were recent. Don and Pauline at functions, mostly christenings and weddings, and on holiday with Matty in the Isle of Man. Suzanne recognized the Laxey wheel...Towards the back, a loose picture fell out. Pauline and Don, posing in tennis whites by a chicken-wire fence. It was older than the others in the album – Don's hair was still blonde, Pauline's straight and boyish. She was half-turned towards him, her bare leg cocked insolently. He held his cased racket like a weapon. They both looked pleased with themselves, their vanity somehow corrupt. Proud of their physical bodies, relishing their recent victory. Suzanne ran her fingers along Don's image, picturing his ruthlessness at the net, the violent finality of a smash. His legs were thick with golden hair, though smooth upon the upper thighs. Was he hard, oh God, he was...Her breath condensed upon the photo's surface as she touched her fingertips to the creases at the front of his shorts. She saw him naked in the dressing room, unashamed as he watched her approach.

Do you want to touch it?Look how hard it is, how hard you make it...Is it like you imagined it would be? No...It's going to hurt you. It's going to hurt but you won't want it to stop...

Her hand was beneath her skirt, kneading the softness in the facing of her panties. She had touched Colm Kane through his jeans when they had shifted after the Institute disco that Sunday, but nothing had ever been inside her except for the leg of one of her old Sindy dolls. Foot-first, the toes piercing her hymen, blood upon pink bakelite...Later, she had discovered that the girth of the upper end was far more pleasing, even though she had to be careful. The ragged plastic had torn her more than once. She learned how to coat it in saliva, both for ease of insertion and to create the illusion, if only for an instant, that it was a living thing. Hard with blood...how was that possible? She wanted to feel it for herself, watch it swell and unsheath beneath her touch, feel the tenderness and violence of the stretch, his impulsive mass bearing down on her...

...Had the VCR not gone into standby, she would have got there. It ejected the tape and the TV came back on, Pat Kenny interviewing a tearful folk-singer. The purity, the innocence of Irish melody...Suzanne turned it off and smoothed down the front of her skirt. Her tea had gone cold but she swallowed it avidly. The photo lay face-up where she had dropped it, Don and Pauline's smiles now full of derision. Shame loosened her bladder...

In the bathroom, she threw water on her face and resisted the temptation to look through the cabinet above the sink. Enough snooping for one night...Yet she paused on the point of re-entering the front room, looking back and up at the cool darkness of the staircase. Check on Matty...It was a plausible excuse.

The banister's smoothness was reassuring to touch. She attempted stealth but activated the trip-wire of every loose board. Matty's room, behind the first door of an identical pair to the left on the landing, was spectral with night-light, loud with his adenoidal breathing. She left the door ajar as she had found it and opened its neighbour. A box room turned dumping ground. There was light enough from Matty's room to allow her to examine some bin-liners just over the threshold. Old toys, children's clothes, Mills and Boon novels, a stringless Spanish guitar, forgotten Easter eggs gone white. The folds of the drawn curtains reminded her of the tennis photo...Which was their room? She had seen an alcove just beyond the head of the stairs...

The door was locked but the key was still in it. This time she said, Fuck it, and turned on the light. A double bed, dressed in blue, its askew headboard flanked by a pair of chipboard bedside lockers. A window to the right and built-in wardrobes to the left. She could smell aftershave, the expensive and mouth-watering perfume that Pauline had told her she saved for special occasions. There was the bottle, upon the dressing table...Chanel N^o5...Suzanne smiled, feeling vindicated. I knew that...She smeared a dribble upon an index finger and pushed down the neck of her t-shirt before dabbing at the cups of her bra.

Have they grown bigger? No, it's the light...

She opened a drawer at the foot of the wardrobe to her right and smoothed her hand over its planned community of socks and boxers. Some of the latter had buttons on the front...She bit her lip, seeing herself on her knees in front of him, gauging the bulk that threatened to push them free of their holes.

Undo the buttons...Look at me. You've never seen it, have you? How it loves to burst free, to breathe...It's alive...

I need to know what he smells like...Suzanne bumped the drawer shut and crossed to the bed. He sleeps on the left, I know he does...

His pillow smelled like meat. It stifled her, filling her mouth, snagging at the back of her throat. She lay down, squirming into the groove left by his body, wanting more than just his cock. His bones, his nipples, the hole of his mouth...She kissed a stain of drool on the pillowcase, frustrated at its lack of taste. Does his breath smell like meat? Are his kisses stink with it...? Oh God, these pants will be destroyed...She turned on her side and pushed up her skirt, kneading the length of her vulva with the ball of her hand. He would know how to do it. She had watched him smoke earlier, his wet lips pursed as they drew on the tip with a measured yet deep sensuality. A mouth that craved sensation, stimulation...He would adore her wetness, her swollen lips. She nipped the pillow as she found her cleft through her knickers, feeling his strength as he raised her body towards his face.

I'm nothing to him, no effort...He could hurt me if he wanted. But he won't. He wants me too much. He wants me...

Her mouth was half-open on the pillow, breathing deeply as her other hand pinched her clitoris, each stroke racheting up the tension in her flesh. Fuck me...She saw herself astride him, his throat, her torso, gleaming with sweat. Their hands were clasped on either side of them on the bed, both of his raised like a captive's. They squeezed her fingers violently but she took the pain, just as she took and revelled in the exquisite ache in the virgin muscle and bone of her pelvis.

I can take you, all of you...Don't be afraid, you won't hurt me...

She saw herself lean forward to kiss him, tasted the final loss of control in his mouth as she succumbed to her own. In the psychosis of climax, she channelled Pauline, sensing the ghosts of the intimacies she and Don had shared down the years. This is where he got her pregnant...The thought made her come a second time, set off a ferocious longing in her womb. She saw his sperm clustered about her ova, the binding of membranes, the bedding down in the bloody swaddling of her uterus. You'll have such beautiful children. It was the same tone of voice Pauline had used at the door that first time. Won't she make a beautiful mother-to-be...?

...Fuck it, the bed...

There was a black circle of moisture upon the duvet cover's pale blue. She sat up, her bottom lip curled down and to the left as she looked behind her. The house remained quiet even as she had the sense of having been observed all the while. What do I do now...?

She did her best to soak up the dampness with strips of Pauline's cotton wool. As long as we all trust one another...There was a threat in there somewhere. In the end, all she could do was try to conceal the stain in a fold and hope they wouldn't notice.

They wanted her again the following Wednesday.

'The Yacht Club.' Pauline sounded unenthusiastic when she rang her on Monday evening. 'A surprise Fiftieth..I know it's short notice love, but you'd be doing us a huge favour....'

If she sounded weird at all, Suzanne didn't pick up on it. She thought of the drive home on Saturday night, the smell of upholstery and drink mingled with the stink of vulva she hallucinated upon her fingers. Pauline had asked her a string of questions, oblivious to her discomfort. What would you like to study? What kind of points do you need for Arts nowadays? A very versatile degree...it gives you a lot of options...They had been at a Race Night in The Bay Inn. She was wearing black jeans, a white blouse, one of Don's old waistcoats, its buckles rattling in the darkness... A silver crucifix drew attention to her cleavage. Suzanne thought she looked old, her outfit somehow pathetic. She had been hoping that Don would drive her home but it had been his turn to get drunk that night. Next time, it'll be me on the tear...

Parked outside Suzanne's, her engine running for a quick getaway, Pauline had taken out her purse.

'It's a fiver more than what we agreed...We won a few bob.'

Suzanne took the moist notes, unable to meet her eye.

'I...thanks, Mrs...'

'Please, Suzanne.'

'I mean, thanks Pauline.'

'Thank you, love. It's such a weight off our minds...'

She recalled the moment on Wednesday evening as she walked up the driveway of their house. You took their money...The transaction had been strangely indecent. The first thing she had bought on Sunday was ten Silk Cut Purple. Pauline's brand...

Don answered the door.

'She's getting ready.' He threw his eyes up, both to heaven and the first floor. 'I don't know what she does be doing...Come in.'

He brought her into the front room where Matty was watching a He-Man video.

'Grand evening,' said Don after an awkward pause. He held up an Extravision box. 'We got you out Ruthless People. Have you seen it?'

She had, but she shook her head.

'Sure you might as well stick on the kettle,' he said.

She did as he told her, relieved to be out of the room.

'Two sugars.'

The voice made her jump. Don had materialized in the kitchen doorway.

'Sorry.'

'Its okay.' She laughed, watched with pleasure as he did too. He was wearing a blue suit, a maroon yacht-club tie.

'I like that colour,' she said. 'Your tie...'

'What would you call that colour?' he said, holding it up to the light. 'It's all purple to me...'

'Burgundy.' Her voice cracked.

'I'd rather be drinking it. Oh. Before I forget...' He opened the fridge and winked. 'Have a can of cider later on. I won't say anything if you don't... '

Matty started to act like a brat as soon as his they were gone. Moody, smart-mouthed, bragging about his parents. My Mammy has more money than yours...Suzanne ignored him but wondered at his resemblance to his mother. He even had that tone of voice although in his case, it was deployed solely in nastiness. She let him watch videos till half-nine then put him to bed over his whingeing. They were outside his room when he kicked her. She smacked the back of his hand, purely a reflex action.

'You don't kick...' she said.

Outrage left him catatonic for a moment before he began to cry

'I'm telling,' he said. 'I'm telling...'

'I'm going to tell them what a bold boy you were....'

'I'm not a bold boy!'

The speed and totality of his lurch into hysteria shocked her. She let him run to the bed and fall face down upon it, waiting until the worst of the tantrum had passed before attempting an approach. When she held out her arms, he flung himself into them.

'I won't say anything if you don't,' she said.

He nodded, his tears warm against her breasts, his contrition as absolute as his recent fury.

'Come on,' she said, 'and we'll get your PJ's on...'

Back downstairs, she took a can of Special Vat from the fridge and returned to the front room. I said the same thing to him as Don did to me...She remembered the slyness of his mouth as he had said it. Had he meant something else? She had only seen Pauline for a minute or two as Don hurried her out the door. It's nearly a quarter to, for fuck's sake...Not enough time to suss her out. But if they knew what I'd done, they wouldn't have wanted me back. The logic was unconvincing. I won't tell anyone...his eyes widening slightly, taking in her newly washed hair, her biker chick leather waistcoat...if you don't...She touched the can to her throat and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. 10.10. It was a work day tomorrow. They said they wouldn't be late. She didn't have much time...

Their bedroom door was unlocked, still ripe with the scent of Pauline's toilet. Cheap perfume, Impulse...The bed was strewn with hangers and unselected garments. An empty half-pint glass, stained red at the rim, monitored the chaos from Pauline's bedside locker. Suzanne picked up a mauve blouse and held it to her face. What would you call that colour...? They called it the glans. She'd looked it up in Webster's...Conical vascular body forming the head of the penis...Cock: The adult male of the domestic fowl...The hammer in the lock of a firearm...The correct terms were somehow more evocative. Penis, testes, seminal vesicle...Still holding the blouse, she walked to Don's side of the bed and opened the drawer of his locker. A strip of Rennies, small change, elastic bands, a slim hard-cover diary for 1987...Nothing personal. Terse, work-related entries, reminders of upcoming bills and social events. But there, on August 15th, the day they had interviewed her, was her name and phone number in his long, expansive script. Suzanne Shoer...She touched the characters, felt her nipples become tender.

The cabinet at the base of the locker contained novels and old Magills. Pauline's, likewise, proved equally bland. She didn't know why but she was convinced that the room contained secrets. Dirty books, contraceptives, something...They fucked a lot, all the time, maybe every night...She had sensed it while she had masturbated on Saturday night and felt it even more keenly at that moment. Her curiosity was so intense that it had become indistinguishable from her arousal. Where, though? She was running out of time...

There was a padlocked suitcase in the back of Pauline's wardrobe. Hadn't she seen keys somewhere...? Don's locker drawer. Even before she tried them though, she knew none of them would fit. She lifted the suitcase, trying to get an idea of its contents from its weight, her frustration bordering on self-pity. She returned to Pauline's locker and searched the drawer where she found a small key, attached to a strand of purple wool, in a spectacle case turned junk repository. It's all purple to me...

The Joy of Sex. KY jelly, condoms, a black suspender belt...The poverty of the haul was something of an anti-climax. What did you expect? Isn't it what you were looking for...? She turned the pages of the book, the illustrations of love-making hippies making her think of VD clinics and nits. One picture grabbed her though...the woman on top, her face transported as she took her lover's erect penis between her breasts. Semen contains many nutrients, she read. Was it really good for your skin? Pauline's was super-fine, she remembered, especially about the neck...She unscrewed the tube of KY, sniffed it. Odourless, tasteless...He rubs it on before he puts it in. Or does she put it on? She unzipped her jeans and pushed them off her hips before carefully squeezing out a tiny amount of the jelly on to her finger.

But I'm so wet already...Why would she even need this?

My Mammy has more money than yours...

Your Mammy has a dried-up pussy...

She laughed and picked up the suspender belt. It was old-fashioned, dyed, like something a Sixties air hostess might have worn. Like a harness...they want to bind us like animals...She looked at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. Her reflection scared her. Teeth, eyes, bones...A young animal, an inviolate, vigorous cunt. She pushed her jeans down to her ankles and put on the belt before turning sideways and pushing up her hair. I could wear just the suspender belt and the waistcoat...Red lipstick and nail varnish...I could make him want me more than he wants her.