Blackstone's pursuits

In which the Earth moves

Primavera, Primavera …’ I moaned her name in the moonlight which flooded down upon us from the belvedere. She leaned over me, kissing my chest, gently biting my nipples, responding to my touch and moving her self against my hands.

‘Where have you come from?’ I asked, drawing her down upon me, and throwing the quilt to one side so that I could wallow again in the perfection of her body, in her firm, full, big-nippled breasts, in the amazing narrowness of her waist, in the round curve of her hips, in the flatness of her belly, in the thick nest of wiry blonde hair at her centre, shining and sparkling as she moved in the moonbeam.

‘I’ve always been here,’ she said, and she kissed me with her lips of velvet, as I had never been kissed before. ‘I think we’ve both been moving towards each other, all our lives. I believe in destiny. You’re part of mine, I’m part of yours. We were set on a course towards each other.’

‘And will we go on together, Springtime and Oz?’

‘Who knows? That’s the thing about destiny; you believe in it and let it take you where it will. Right now we’re together, and it’s always the now that counts.’

I rolled over with Springtime in my arms, burying my face in her. As I flicked my tongue in and out of her navel, she gasped and arched her back. ‘I want you now. I need you now. Come into me now.’

I placed a finger across her lips. ‘Time enough,’ I said, although she could see that I was more than ready. I bent and kissed the inside of her thighs as she spread them wide, licking my way towards her. She moaned again. ‘Now, Oz, now.’

‘Yes, Primavera, yes!’ I covered her and she took me into herself with a supple movement, the sweetest embrace I had ever known. We lay entwined, barely moving. Her tongue was in my mouth again, her fingers wound through my crinkly hair. She pulled my head back and looked at me with smouldering eyes. ‘This is right!’ she hissed. Then her eyelids flickered and she began to shudder, gripping me tight, inside, tighter than I had ever imagined. Her fingers dug into my back, and she cried out, once, twice, again, again. And then I realised that two voices were calling out and that one of them was mine. I was lost. As I thrust into her and held myself there, we were washed by wave upon wave of sensation, by a feeling that every nerve-ending in our bodies was being bathed in soothing oil. It went on and on until I thought it would never stop, but finally the crest was reached and we started back down the slope towards the world, a world which I knew now, for certain, would never be the same again.

She lay there, eyes closed, with a sheen of sweat on her face. I licked it off; she tasted salty and sublime on my tongue. I felt myself start to subside, but she held me inside her. ‘No, don’t go,’ she sighed. ‘I want to keep you there for ever.’

‘That’s all right with me,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of a better place to be. Primavera … stop me if you think I’m being daft, but … Primavera Phillips, you are the most beautiful, wonderful woman I have ever met, and I love you. You’re the dream I’ve had all my life, and now you’re here.

‘I know we’ve still to see our first sun come up together, but say you’ll stay with me.’

She touched my cheek with her soft, strong hand. ‘I’ll stay with you for now, Osbert Blackstone. But you’re crazy; you don’t know me. You never really know another person. Some people, many people, maybe most people don’t even know themselves.’

I smiled, filled up to the brim with more happiness than I had ever imagined I could hold. ‘I know myself, lover. And whatever you say I know you too. I want you now, and for all the tomorrows I’ve got coming.’

We lay there, in each other’s arms, together. I closed my eyes, as she began to move over my body, sliding, animalistic. Suddenly I felt her nails dig deep into my chest. I don’t mind being submissive on the odd occasion, but I’ve never been too good at masochism.

‘Oww!’ I yelled with the pain …

… and suddenly I was wide awake, staring into Wallace’s accusatory reptilian eye. His claws were digging sharply into my pecs as he balanced himself upon me.

‘Get off me, you green bastard,’ I hissed, picking him up, carefully to avoid ripping more flesh, and placing him gently on the floor. I had forgotten that the settee was one of Wallace’s favourite night-spots. I lay there, under my lonely blanket, in my bulging boxers, and tried to go back to my dream. But it was no use. Instead, I lay there, listening to the sleep sounds of Primavera Phillips, comparing them with those of Jan, my other night visitor. I decided that they were much the same, except that I hadn’t noticed Prim farting yet.

‘Two people are truly together,’my Dad told me once, when he was giving me my degree course in the meaning of life, ‘only when they can fart freely and as loud as they please in each other’s company.’ I remember looking at him, appalled, quite certain that my Mother had never farted in her life.

I chuckled in the dark, quietly, lest I disturb Prim’s melodious sleep.

‘… at this moment in time, absolutely out of the question.’ She had said, but with a delicious smile that told me she was in no way offended that I had put the proposition to her. And so we had retired, she to the bed, and me to the instrument called my sofa-bed. I can never decide whether it is an instrument of torture or of music. Some nights it’s both as your toes and knuckles hit the sharp-cornered metal frame or as the springs dig into you, singing out tunelessly as you twist and turn, trying to negotiate the pathway to sleep’s dark gate.

I rolled over on to my side and the full spring orchestra played. The twang even startled Wallace. I heard Prim start from her sleep, and saw her silhouette as she sat up.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘This thing can be bloody noisy.’ I bounced on the machine to show what had wakened her. ‘I’ll try to lie still.’

‘No, it’s okay. I had a good kip during the day, remember. What time is it?’

‘Around five, I think.’

‘Ow. D’you want to swop over? You take the bed and I’ll have the sofa?’

‘Thanks, but it’s okay,’ I said to her. I paused. ‘Hey, now we’re awake how about you telling me your life story. Let me into all your secrets. After that, how would it be if we get up and go for a walk up Arthur’s Seat, to watch the sun come up behind Berwick Law?’

There was silence as she weighed my latest proposition. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘You know, Oz, my love …’ Her tone may have been bantering, but my heart jumped as she said the word. ‘… I reckon that if I stripped everything away from you, right at your core I’d find a hopeless romantic … just like me. Yes, let’s go for that walk.

‘But first, the unexpurgated adventures of Primavera Phillips. If you think you’re ready.’

Twenty minutes later, there was nothing I didn’t know about her. She had been born in Auchterarder to her oddball parents thirty years before. Her mother — when she wasn’t reading Barbara Taylor Bradford — had been a social worker, but was now a moderately successful writer of children’s books. Her father’s modelmaking had evolved from a cabinetmaking and furniture design business. She and her sister Dawn, who was five years younger, had been educated solidly at local authority schools, until they had been old enough to escape from their home village.

Prim had trained as a nurse in Glasgow, and had worked in Edinburgh Royal, before joining the dedicated staff of St Columba’s Hospice. ‘If you’d been there a few years earlier, you’d have nursed my Mum,’ I said, when she told me. ‘That’s a vocation, and no mistake.’

‘Yes, I thought it was, but it wore off after four years. I found that was I drinking too much; worse than that, I was drinking too much on my own, at home. I was narky, too, all the time. I wasn’t me, any more.’ I sensed her looking at me in the dark, suddenly, strangely intense. ‘Never forget that, Oz. I always have to be me!’

In the gloom, I could see her scratching her nose. ‘I don’t know why, but while I was working there, gradually I gave up men. Not that I was promiscuous, mind you. Up until now, I’ve had six lovers, but hospice work turned me into a celibate.’

I propped myself upon an elbow. ‘What are the chances of a miracle cure?’

‘Let’s just put it this way,’ she said, with a laugh in her husky voice. ‘A vacancy may arise in the future. Your application for the post has been noted, and is under consideration. You will be advised of the outcome in due course. For now, that’s all I’m saying.’

I tried to look solemn. ‘Thank you for that information. You may keep my application and my CV on your files until further notice.’ I’ve never been much good at solemnity. I grinned in the dark. ‘So when did you notice the first signs of a thaw?’

‘This afternoon. When I woke up in your bed with that weird bloody iguana alongside me! I looked across at you, and saw you at work, and I thought “Look at that daft bugger there! What’s he like?” And all of a sudden I felt that, yes, it might be possible to get some fun out of life again.’

I almost said, ‘Oh it is! Let me show you!’ Instead, trying to convince her that I really am responsible and self disciplined, I steered the conversation back on course.

‘Why did you leave the hospice? Had you just had enough?’

‘Yeah; as much as I could take. One thing more than any other finished me, though; I had this pal on the staff. She hit the compassion wall, and left. A year later, she was back as a patient We couldn’t tell her anything about what was happening, of course. She knew it all. The day she died, I resigned, to give myself a chance to forget. I never will though. I’ll never go far enough to forget that.’

‘Is that why you went to Africa? To forget?’

‘No. I had reasons, two of them. First, I was overcome by a sudden inability to sit still. It didn’t matter where I was, I felt shut in. Second, I wanted to help people live, not die. I got very grand, and decided to go on a personal crusade. So I answered an ad, and went to work for a UN-sponsored agency in Central Africa. I thought I’d be teaching nutrition, working with babies, that sort of thing. So I was, for two months. Then a Civil War started, and the casualties started to arrive.

‘I had no idea what modem armaments can do to the human body. Now I have. I’ve patched them up, and helped cut bits off. But there’s worse; you have no idea what people can do to other people. That wee man yesterday, he had a quick finish, believe me. The story I told Dylan was true, but …’ Even in the night, I could see her shudder, suddenly,‘… what they did to the women!’

‘Was it like that for a whole year?’

‘No, I couldn’t have taken that. We were rotated. Most of the time we were in a hospital in a safe zone, but every so often we were asked to go up front with the troops.’

Now it was my turn to shudder. ‘Weren’t you in danger?’

‘I don’t think so. We had UN soldiers as our escort. They taught us to shoot, too, and gave us handguns.’

‘Christ, I must remember that!’

‘You do that! I’m a crack shot.’

‘Me too,’ I murmured, too quietly for her to hear.