Daggers Drawn

Martha Grace Stella Duffy

Martha Grace is what in the old days would have been termed a ‘fine figure of a woman’. Martha Grace is big-boned and strong. Martha Grace could cross a city, climb a mountain range, swim an ocean — and still not break into a sweat. She has wide thighs and heavy breasts and child-bearing hips, though in her fifty-eight years there has been no call for labour-easing width. Martha Grace has a low-slung belly, gently downed, soft as clean brushed cotton. Martha Grace lives alone and grows herbs and flowers and strange foreign vegetables in her marked-out garden. She plants by the light of the full moon. When she walks down the street people move out of her way, children giggle behind nervous hands, adults cast sidelong glances and wonder. When she leaves a room, people whisper ‘dyke’ and ‘witch’, though Martha Grace is neither. Martha Grace loves alone, pleasuring her own sweetly rolling flesh, clean oiled skin soft beneath her wide mouth. Martha Grace could do with getting out more.

Tim Culver is sixteen. He is big for his age and loved. Football star, athlete, and clever too. Tim Culver could have his pick of any girl in the class. And several of their mothers. One or two of their older brothers. If he was that way inclined. Which he isn’t. Certainly not. Tim Culver isn’t that kind of boy. Tim Culver is just too clean. And good. And right. And ripe. Good enough for girls, too clean for boys. Tim Culver, for a bet, turns up at Martha Grace’s house on a quiet Saturday afternoon, friends giggling round the corner, wide smirk on his handsome not-yet-grown face. He offers himself as an odd-job man. And then comes back to her house almost every weekend for the next three years. He says it is to help her out. She’s a single woman, she’s not that bad, a bit strange maybe, but no worse than his Grandma in the years before she died. And she’s not that old really. Or that fat. Just big. Different to the women he’s used to. She talks to him differently. And anyway, Martha Grace pays well. In two hours at her house he can earn twice what he’d make mowing the lawn for his father, painting houses with his big brother. She doesn’t know he’s using her, thinks she’s paying him the going rate. God knows she never talks to anyone to compare it. It’s fine, he knows what he’s doing, Tim Culver is in charge, takes no jokes at his own expense. And after a few false starts, failed attempts at schoolboy mockery, the laughing stops, the other kids wish they’d thought to try the mad old bitch for some cash. Tim Culver earns more than any of them, in half the time. But then, he always has been the golden boy.

For Tim, this was meant to be just a one-off. Visit the crazy fat lady, prove his courage to his friends, and then leave, laughing in her face. He does leave laughing. And comes back hungry the next day, wanting more. It takes no time at all to become routine. The knock at the door, the boy standing there, insolent smile and ready cock, hands held out to offer, “Got any jobs that need doing?”

And Martha did find him work. That first day. No matter how greedy his grin, how firm his young flesh, what else she could see waiting on her doorstep that young Tim Culver couldn’t even guess at. Mow the lawn. Clean out the pond. Mend the broken fence. Then maybe she thought he should come inside, clean up, rest a while, as she fixed him a drink, found her purse, offered a fresh clean note. And herself.

At first, Tim Culver wasn’t sure he understood her correctly.

“So Tim, have you had sex yet?”

Why would the fat woman be asking him that? What did she know about sex? And did she mean ever as in today, or ever as in ever? Tim Culver blustered, he didn’t know how to answer her, of course he’d had sex. The first in his class, and — so the girls said — the best. Tim Culver was not just a shag-merchant like the rest of them. He might fuck a different girl from one Saturday to the next, but he prides himself on knowing a bit about what he’s doing. Every girl remembered Tim Culver. Martha Grace remembered Tim Culver. She’d been watching him. That was the thing about being the mad lady, fat lady, crazy old woman. They watched her all the time, laughed at her. They didn’t notice that she was also watching them.

Tim Culver says yes, he has had sex. Of course he’s had sex. What does she think he is? Does she think he’s a poof? Mad old dyke, what the fuck does she think he is?

Martha Grace explains that she doesn’t yet know what he is. That’s why he’s here. That’s why she asked him into her house. So she could find out. Tim Culver knows a challenge when it’s thrown his way.

When Tim Culver and Martha Grace fuck, it is like no other time with any other woman. Tim Culver has fucked other women, other girls, plenty of them. He is a local hero after all. Not for him all talk and no action. When Tim Culver says he has been there, done that, you know he really means it. But with Martha Grace it is different. For a start there is not fucker and fuckee. And she does talk to him, encourages him, welcomes him, incites him. Martha Grace makes Tim Culver more of the man he would have himself be. Laid out against her undulating flesh, Tim Culver’s young toned body is hero-strong, he is capable of any feat of daring, the gentlest acts of kindness. Tim Culver and Martha Grace are making love. Tim Culver drops deep into her soft skin and wide body and is more than happy to lose himself there, give himself away.

Before he leaves, she feeds him. Fresh bread she baked that morning, kneading the dough beneath her fat hands as she kneaded his flesh just minutes ago. She spreads thick yellow butter on the soft bread and layers creamy honey on top, sweet from her hands to his mouth. Then back to her mouth as they kiss and she wipes the crumbs from his shirt front. She is tidier than he is, does not like to see him make a mess. Would not normally bear the thought of breadcrumbs on her pristine floor. But that Tim Culver is delicious, and the moisture in her mouth at the sight of him drives away thoughts of sweeping and scrubbing and cleaning. At least until he is gone, at least until she is alone again. For now, Martha Grace is all abandon. Fresh and warm in a sluttish kitchen. After another half hour in the heat by the stove, Tim Culver has to go. His friends will wonder what has happened to him. His mother will be expecting him in for dinner. He has to shower, get dressed again, go out. He has young people to meet and a pretty redhead to pick up at eight thirty. Tim Culver leaves with a crisp twenty in his pocket and fingers the note, volunteering to come back next Saturday. Martha Grace thinks, stares at the boy, half smiles with a slow incline of her head, she imagines there will be some task for him to do. Two p.m. Sharp. Don’t be late. Tim Culver nods, he doesn’t usually take orders. But then, this feels more like an offer. One his aching body won’t let him refuse.

She watches him walk away, turns back to look at the mess of her kitchen. Martha Grace spends the next three hours cleaning up. Scrubbing down the floor, the table. Changing the sheets, wiping surfaces, picking up after herself. When she sits down to her own supper she thinks about the boy out for the night, spending her money on the little blonde. She sighs, he could buy the girl a perfectly adequate meal with that money. If such a girl would ever eat a whole meal anyway. Poor little painfully thin babies that they are. Living shiny magazine half lives of self-denial and want. Martha Grace chooses neither. Before she goes to sleep, Martha notes down the visit and the payment in her accounts book. She has not paid the boy for sex. That would have been wrong. She paid him for the work he’d done. The lawn, the fence, the pond. The sex was simply an extra.

Extra-regular. On Saturday afternoons, after winter football practice, after summer runs, late from long holiday mornings sleeping off the after-effects of teenage Friday night, Tim Culver walks to the crazy lady’s house. Pushes open the gate he oiled last weekend, walks past the rosemary and comfrey and yarrow he pruned in early spring, takes out the fresh-cut key she has given him, lets himself into the dark hallway he will paint next holiday, and walks upstairs. Martha Grace is waiting for him. She has work for Tim Culver to do.

Martha Grace waits in her high, soft bed. She is naked. Her long grey hair falls around her shoulders, usually it is pulled back tight so that even Martha’s cheekbones protrude from the flesh of her round cheeks, now the hair covers the upper half of her voluminous breasts, deep red and wide, the nipples raised beneath the scratch of her grey hair. Tim Culver nods at Martha Grace, almost smiles, walks past the end of her bed to the bathroom. The door is left open so Martha Grace can watch him from her bed. He takes off his sweaty clothes, peels them from skin still hot and damp, then lowers himself into the bath she has ready for him. Dried rose petals float on the surface of the water, rosemary, camomile and other herbs he doesn’t recognise. Tim Culver sinks beneath the water and rises up again, all clean and ready for bed.

In bed. Tim Culver sinks into her body. Sighs in relief and pleasure. He has been a regular visitor to her home and her flesh for almost three years now. The place where he lays with Martha Grace’s soft, fat body is as much home to him as his mother’s table or the room he shares with an old friend now that he has moved away. Tim Culver has graduated from high school fucks to almost-romance with college girls. Pretty, thin, clever, bright and shiny college girls. Lots of them. Tim Culver is a good-looking boy and clearly well worth the bodies these girls are offering. This is the time of post-feminism. They want to fuck him because he is good looking and charming and will make a great story tomorrow in the lunch-time canteen. And Tim is perfectly happy for this to be the case. The girls may revel in the glories of their fiercely free sexuality, Tim just wants to get laid every night. Everyone’s happy. And the girls are definitely happy. It’s not just that Tim Culver is good looking and clever and fit. He also, really really, knows what he’s doing. Which is more than can be said for most of the football team. Tim Culver is a young man of depth and experience. And of course it is good for Tim too, to be seen to be fucking at this rate. To be this much the all-round popular guy. But as he lies awake next to another fine, thin, lithe, little body he recognises a yearning in his skin. He is tired of fucking girls who ache in every bone of their arched-back body to be told they are the best. Tired of screwing young women who constantly demand that he praise their emaciated ribs, their skeletal cheekbones, their tight and wiry arms. Weary of the nearly-relationships with would-be poet girls who want to torment him with their deep insights into pain and suffering and sex and music. Tim Culver is exhausted by the college girls he fucks.

They are not soft, these young women at college, and they need so much attention. Even when they don’t say so out loud, they need so much attention. Tim learnt this in his first week away from home. Half asleep and his back turned to the blonde of the evening, her soft sobs drew him from the rest he so needed. No there was nothing wrong, yes it had been fine, he’d been great, she’d come, of course it was all ok. She wasn’t crying, not really, it was just... and this in a small voice, not the voice she’d come with, or the voice she’d picked him up with, or the voice she’d use to re-tell the best parts of the story tomorrow, but... was she all right? Did he like her? Was she pretty enough? Thin enough? Good enough? Only this one had dared to speak aloud, but he felt it seeping out of all the others. Every single one of them, eighteen, nineteen-year-old girls, each one oozing please-praise-me from their emaciated, emancipated pores. But not Martha Grace.

With Martha Grace Tim can rest. Maybe Martha Grace needs him, Tim cannot tell for certain. She likes him, he knows that. Certainly she wants him, hungers for him. As he now knows he hungers for her. But if she needs him, it is only Tim that she needs. His body, his presence, his cock. She does not need his approval, his blessing, his constant, unending hymn of there-there. And maybe that is because he has none to give. She is fat. And old. And weird. What could he approve of? What is there to approve of? Nothing at all. They both know that. And so it is, that when Tim comes home to Martha, there is rest along with exertion. There is ease in the fucking. Martha Grace knows who she is, what she is. She demands nothing extra of him, what sanctions of beauty or thin-ness, or perfection could he give her anyway? She has none of those and so, as Tim acknowledges to himself in surprise and pleasure, she is easier to be with than the bone-stabbing stick figure girls at school. And softer. And wider. And more comfortable. It is better in that house, that bed, against that heavy body. Martha Grace is not eighteen, and a part of Tim Culver sits up shocked and amused — he realises he loves her for it. The rest of Tim Culver falls asleep, his heavy head on her fat breast. Martha Grace smells the other women in his hair.

One day Tim Culver brings Martha Grace a new treat. He knows of her appetite for food and drink and him, he understands her cravings and her ever-hungry mouth. He loves her ever-hungry mouth. He brings gifts from the big city, delicatessen offerings, imported chocolates and preserves. Wines and liquors. He has the money. He is not a poor student. Martha Grace sees to that. This time the home-from-college boy brings her a new gift. Martha Grace had tried marijuana years ago, it didn’t suit her, she liked to feel in control, didn’t understand the desire to take a drug that made one lose control, the opposite of her wanting. She has told Tim this, explained about her past experiences, how she came to be the woman she is today. Has shared with Tim each and every little step that took her from the wide open world to wide woman in a closed house. And he has nodded and understood. Or appeared to do so. At the very least he has listened, and that is new and precious to Martha. So she is willing to trust him. Scared but willing. And this time, Tim brings home cocaine. Martha is shocked and secretly delighted. But she is the older woman, he still just a student, she must maintain some degree of adult composure. She tells him to put it away, take it back to school, throw it out. Tells him off, delivers a sharp rebuke, a reprimand and then sends him to bed. Her bed. Tim walks upstairs smiling. He leaves the thin wrap on the hall table. Martha Grace watches him walk away, feels the smirk from the back of his head, threatens a slap which she knows he wants anyway. Her hand reaches out for the wrap. Such a small thing and so much fuss. She pictures the naked boy upstairs. Man. Young man. In her bed. Hears again the fuss she knows it would cause. Hears again as he calls her, taunting from the room above. She is hungry and wanting. Her soft hand closes around the narrow strip of folded paper and she follows his trail of clothes upstairs, clucking like a disparaging mother hen at the lack of tidiness, folding, putting away. Getting into bed, putting to rights.

Tim Culver lays out a long thin line on Martha Grace’s heavy stomach. It wobbles as she breathes in, breathes out, the small ridge of cocaine mountain sited on her skin, creamy white avalanche grains tumbling with her sigh. He inhales cocaine and the clean, fleshy smell of Martha. And both are inspirations for him. Now her turn. She rolls the boy over on to his stomach, lays out an uncertain line from his low waist to the soft hairs at the curve of his arse. She is slow and deliberate, new to this, does not want to get it wrong. Tim is finding it hard to stay face down, wants to burrow himself into the flesh of Martha Grace, not the unyielding mattress. She lays her considerable weight out along his legs, hers dangling off the end of the bed, breasts to buttocks and inhales coke and boy and, not for the first time in her life, the thick iron smell of bloody desire. Then she reaches up to stretch herself out against him full length, all of her pressing down into all of him. The weight of her flesh against his back and legs has Tim Culver reaching for breath. He wonders if this is what it is like for the little girls he fucks at college. He a tall, strong young man and they small, brittle beneath him. At some point in the sex he always likes to lie on top. To feel himself above the young women, all of him stretched out against the twisted paper and bones of the young girl skin, narrow baby-woman hips jutting sharp into his abdomen, reminding him of what he has back at home, Martha waiting for the weekend return. He likes it when, breath forced from the thin lungs beneath him, they whisper the fuck in half-caught breaths. Tim has always been told it feels good, the heaviness, the warmth, the strong body laid out and crushing down, lip to lip, cock to cunt, tip to toe. He hopes it is like this for the narrow young women he lays on top of. Tim Culver likes this. He is surprised by the feeling, wonders if it is just the coke or the addition of physical pressure, Martha’s wide weight gravity-heavy against his back, pushing his body down, spreading him out. Is wondering still when she slides her hand in between his legs and up to his cock. Is wondering no longer when he comes five minutes later, Martha still on his back, mouth to his neck, teeth to his tanned skin. Her strength, her weight, like no other female body he has felt. He thinks then for a brief moment about the gay boys he knows (barely, acquaintances), wonders if this is what it is like for them too. But wonders only briefly; momentary sex-sense identification with the thin young women is a far enough stretch for a nineteen-year-old small town boy.

They did not take cocaine together again. Martha liked it, but Martha would rather be truly in control than amphetamine-convinced by the semblance of control. Besides that, she had, as usual, prepared a post-sex snack for that afternoon. Glass of sweet dessert wine and rich cherry cake, the cherries individually pitted by her own fair, fat hands the evening before, left to soak in sloe gin all night, waiting for Tim’s mouth to taste them, just as she was. But after the drugs and the sex and then some more of the bitter powder, neither had an appetite for food. They had each other and cocaine and then Tim left. Martha didn’t eat until the evening, and alone, and cold. Coke headache dulling the tip of her left temple. She could cope with abandon. She could certainly enjoy a longer fuck, a seemingly more insatiable desire from the young man of her fantasies come true. She could, on certain and specified occasions, even put up with a ceding of power. But she would not again willingly submit to self-inflicted loss of appetite. That was just foolish.

It went on. Three months more, then six, another three. Seasons back to where they started. Tim Culver and Martha Grace. The mask of garden chores and DIY tasks, then the fucking and the feeding and the financial recompense. Then even, one late afternoon in winter, dark enough outside for both to kid themselves they had finally spent a night together, an admission of love. It comes first from Tim. Surprising himself. He’s held it in all this time, found it hard to believe it was true, but knows the miracle fact as it falls from his gratified mouth:

“Martha, I love you.”

Martha Grace smiles and nods.

“Tim, I love you.”

Not ‘back’. Or ‘too’. Just love.

A month more. Tim Culver and Martha Grace loving. In love. Weekend adoration and perfect.

And then Martha thinks she will maybe pay him a visit. Tim always comes to her. She will go to his college. Surprise him. Take a picnic, all his favourite foods and her. Martha Grace’s love in a basket. She packs a pie — tender beef and slow-cooked sweet onion, the chunky beef slightly bloody in the middle, just the way Tim likes it. New bread pitted with dark green olives, Tim’s favourite. Fresh shortbread and strawberry tarts with imported out-of-season berries. A thermos of mulled wine, the herbs and spices her own blend from the dark cupboard beneath her stairs. She dresses carefully and wears lipstick, culled from the back of a drawer and an intentionally forgotten time of made-up past. Walks into town, camomile-washed hair flowing about her shoulders, head held high, best coat, pretty shoes — party shoes. Travels on the curious bus, catches a cab to the college.

And all the time Martha Grace knows better. Feels at the lowest slung centre of her belly the terror of what is to come. Doesn’t know how she can do this even as she does it. Wants to turn back with every step, every mile. Knows in her head it can not be, in her stomach it will not work. But her stupid fat heart sends her stumbling forwards anyway. She climbs down from the bus and walks to the coffee shop he has mentioned. Where he sits with his friends, passing long slow afternoons of caffeine and chocolate and drawled confidences. He is not there and Martha Grace sits alone at a corner table for an hour. Another. And then Tim Culver arrives. With a gaggle of laughing others. He is brash and young. Sits backwards across the saddle of his chair. Makes loud noises, jokes, creates a rippling guffaw of youthful enjoyment all around him. He does not notice Martha Grace sat alone in the corner, a pale crumble of dried cappuccino froth at the corner of her mouth. But eventually, one of his friends does. Points her out quietly to another. There are sniggers, sideways glances. Martha Grace could not be more aware of her prominence. But still she sits, knowing better and hoping for more. Then Tim sees her, his attention finally drawn from the wonder of himself to the absurdity of the fat woman in the corner. And Tim looks up, directly at Martha Grace, right into her pale grey eyes and he stands and he walks towards her and his friends are staring after him, whooping and hollering, catcalls and cheers, and then he has stopped by her table and he sits beside Martha Grace and reaches towards her and touches the line of her lips, moves in, licks away the dried milk crust. He stands again, bows a serious little bow, and walks back to his table of friends. Who stand and cheer and push forward the young girls to kiss, pretty girls, thin girls. Tim Culver has kissed Martha Grace in public and it has made him a hero. And made the fool of Martha Grace. She tries to leave the café, tries to walk out unnoticed but her bulk is stuck in the corner arrangement of too-small chairs and shin-splitting low table, her feet clatter against a leaning tray, her heavy arms and shaking hands cannot hold the hamper properly, it falls to her feet and the food rolls out. Pie breaks open, chunks of bloody meat spill across the floor, strawberries that were cool and fresh are now hot and sweating, squashed beneath her painfully pretty shoes as she runs from the room, every action a humiliation, every second another pain. Eventually Martha Grace turns her great bulk at the coffee shop door and walks away down the street, biting the absurd lipstick from her stupid, stupid lips as she goes, desperate to break into a lumbering run, forcing her idiotic self to move slowly and deliberately through the pain. And all the way down the long street, surrounded by strangers and tourists and scrabbling children underfoot, she feels Tim’s eyes boring into the searing blush on the back of her neck.

Neither mention the visit. The next weekend comes and goes. Martha is a little cool, somewhat distant. Tim hesitant, uncertain. Wondering whether to feel shame or guilt and then determining on neither when he sees Martha’s fear that he might mention what has occurred. Both skirt around their usual routine, there are no jobs to be done, no passion to linger over, the sex is quick and not easy. Tim dresses in a hurry, Martha stays cat-curled in bed, face half-hidden beneath her pillow, she points to the notes on her dresser, Tim takes only half the cash. Pride hurt, vanity exposed, Martha promises herself she will get over it. Pick herself up, get on. Tim need never know how hurt she felt. How stupid she knows herself to have been. The weekend after will be better, she’ll prepare a surprise for him, make a real treat, an offering to get things back to where they had been before. Then Martha Grace will be herself again.

Saturday morning and Martha Grace is preparing a special dish for Tim. She knows his taste. He likes berry fruits, loves chocolate like any young boy, though unlike most, Martha Grace has taught him the joy of real chocolate, dark and shocking. She will make him a deep tart of black berries and melted chunks of bitter chocolate, imported from France, ninety percent cocoa solids. She starts early in the day. Purest white flour mixed in the air as she sifts it with organic cocoa. Rich butter, light sugar, cool hands, extra egg to bind the mix. She leaves it in the fridge to chill, the ratio of flour to cocoa so perfect that her pastry is almost black. Then the fruit — blackberries, boysenberries, loganberries, blackcurrants — just simmered with fruit sugar and pure water over the lowest of heat for almost two hours until they are thick syrup and pulp. She skims the scum from the surface, at the very end throws in another handful. This fruit she does not name. These are the other berries she was taught to pick by her mother, in the fresh morning before sunlight has bruised the delicate skin. She leaves the thick fruit mix to cool. Melts the chocolate. Glistening rich black in the shallow pan. When it is viscous and runs slow from the back of her walnut spoon, she drops in warmed essences — almond, vanilla, and a third distilled flavour, stored still, a leftover from her grandmother’s days, just in case, for a time of who-knows-and-maybe, hidden at the back of the dark cupboard beneath her stairs. She leaves the pan over hot water, bubbling softly in the cool of her morning kitchen. Lays the pastry out on the marble slab. Rolls it to paper fine. Folds it in on itself and starts again. Seven times more. Then she fits it to the baking dish, fluted edges, heavy base. She bakes the pastry blind and removes from the oven a crisp, dark shell. Pours in warm thick-liquid chocolate, sprinkles over a handful of flaked and toasted almonds, watches them sink into the quicksand black. Her mouth is watering with the heady rich aroma. She knows better than to lick her fingers. Tim Culver likes to lick her fingers. When the chocolate is almost cool, she beats three egg yolks and more sugar into the fruit mixture, pours it slowly over the chocolate, lifts the tart dish and ever so gently places it in the heated oven. She sits for ten minutes, twenty, thirty. She does not wash the dishes while she waits, or wipe flour from her hands, chocolate from her apron. She sits and waits and watches the clock. She cries, one slow fat tear every fifteen seconds. When there are one hundred and sixty tears the tart is done. She takes it from the oven and leaves it to cool. She goes to bed, folds into her own flesh and rocks herself to sleep.

When she wakes Martha checks the tart. It is cool and dark, lifts easily from the case, she sets it on a wide white plate and places it in the refrigerator beside a jug of thick cream. Then she begins to clean. The kitchen, the utensils, the shelves, the oven, the workbench, the floor. Takes herself to the bathroom, strips and places the clothes in a rubbish bag. Scrubs her body under a cold running shower, sand soap and nail brush. Every inch, every fold of flesh and skin. Martha Grace is red-raw clean. The clothes are burnt early that afternoon along with a pile of liquid maple leaves at the bottom of her garden, black skirt, red shirt and the garden matter in seasonal orange rush. Later she rakes over the hot embers, places her hand close to the centre, draws it back just too late, a blister already forming in the centre of her palm. It will do for a reminder. Martha Grace always draws back just too late.

Tim Culver knocks on her door at precisely three forty-five. She has spent a further hour preparing her body for his arrival, oiling and brushing and stroking. She is dressed in a soft black silk that flows over her curves and bulges, hiding some, accentuating others. She has let down her coarse grey hair, reddened her full lips, and has the faintest line of shadow around her pale grey eyes. Tim Culver smiles. Martha Grace is beautiful. He walks into the hall, hands her the thirty red roses he carried behind his back all the way down the street in case she was looking. She was looking. She laughs in delight at the gift, he kisses her and apologies and explanations spill from his mouth. They stumble up the stairs, carrying each other quickly to bed, words unimportant, truth and embarrassment and shame and guilt all gone, just the skin and the fucking and the wide fat flesh. They are so in love and Tim cries out, whimpering with delight at the touch of her yielding skin on his mouth, his chest, his cock. And Martha Grace shuts out all thoughts of past and present, crying only for the now.

When they are done, she takes Tim downstairs. Martha Grace in a light red robe, Tim Culver wrapped in a blanket against the seasonal chill. The curtains are drawn, blinds pulled, lights lowered. She sits the boy at her kitchen table and pours him a glass of wine. And another. She ask him about drugs and Tim is shocked and delighted, yes he does happen to have a wrap in the back pocket of his jeans. Don’t worry, stay there, drink another glass. Martha will fetch the wrap. She brings it back to him, lays out the lines, takes in just one half to his every two. He does not question this, is simply pleased she wants to join him in this excess. There is more wine and wanting, cocaine and kissing, fucking on the kitchen table, falling to the just-scrubbed floor. Even with cocaine, the wine and the sex have made him hungry. Martha has a treat. A special tart she baked herself this morning. Pastry and everything. She reaches into the cool refrigerator and brings out her offering. His eyes grow wider at the sight of the plate, pupils dilate still further with spreading saliva in his hungry mouth. She cuts Tim a generous slice, spoons thick cream over it and reaches for a fork. The boy holds out his hand but she pushes it away. She wants to feed him. He wants to be fed.

Tim Culver takes it in. The richness, the darkness, the bitter chocolate and the tart fruit and the sweet syrup and the crisp pastry shell and the cool cream. Tim Culver takes it in and opens his mouth for more. Eyes closed to better savour the texture, the flavours, the glory of this woman spending all morning cooking for him, after what has happened, after how he has behaved. She must love him so much. She must love him as much as he loves her. He opens his eyes to kiss Martha Grace and sees her smiling across at him, another forkful offered, tears spilling down her fat cheeks. He pushes aside the fork and kisses the cheeks, sucks up her tears, promises adoration and apology and forever. Tim Culver is right about forever.

She feeds him half the black tart. He drinks another glass. Leaves a slurred message on a friend’s telephone to say he is out with a girl, a babe, a doll. He is having too good a time. He probably won’t make it tonight. He expects to stay over tonight. He says this looking at Martha, waiting to see her happiness at the thought that he will stay in her bed, will sleep beside her tonight. Martha Grace smiles an appropriate gratitude and Tim turns his phone off. Martha Grace did not want him to use hers. She said it would not do for his friend to call back on her number. Tim is touched she is thinking of his reputation even now.

She pours more wine. Tim does not see that he is drinking the whole bottle, Martha not at all. He inhales more coke. They fuck again. This time it is less simple. He cannot come. He cuts himself another slice of the tart, eats half, puts it down, gulps a mouthful of wine, licks his finger to wipe sticky crumbs of white powder from the wooden table. Tim Culver is confused. He is tired but wide awake. He is hungry but full. He is slowing-down drunk but wired too. He is in love with Martha Grace but despises both of them for it. He is alive, but only just.

Tim Culver dies of a heart attack. His young healthy heart cannot stand the strain of wine and drugs and fucking — and the special treat Martha had prepared. She pulls his jeans and shirt back on him, moves his body while it is still warm and pliable, lays him on a sheet of spread-out rubbish bags by her back door. She carries him out down the path by her back garden. He is big, but she is bigger, and necessity has made her strong. It is dark. There is no-one to see her stumble through the gate, down the alleyway. No one to see her leave the half-dressed body in the dark street. No one to see her gloved hands place the emptied wine bottles by his feet. By the time Martha Grace kisses his lips they are already cold. He smells of chocolate and wine and sex.

She goes home and for the second time that day, scrubs her kitchen clean. Then she sleeps alone, she will wash in the morning. For now the scent of Tim Culver in her sheets, her hair, her heavy flesh will be enough to keep her warm through the night.

Tim Culver was found the next morning. Cocaine and so much alcohol in his blood. His heart run to a standstill by the excess of youth. There was no point looking for anyone else to blame. No-one saw him stumble into the street. No-one noticed Martha Grace lumber away. His friends confirmed he’d been with a girl that night. The state of his semen-stained clothes confirmed he’d been with a girl that night. At least the police said girl to his parents, whispered whore among themselves. Just another small town boy turned bad by the lights and the nights of the bright city. Maybe further education isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

No-one would ever think that Tim Culver’s healthy, spent, virile young body could ever have had anything to do with an old witch like Martha Grace. As the whole town knows, the fat bitch is a dyke anyway.

A season or two later and Martha Grace is herself again. Back to where she was before Tim Culver. Back to who she was before Tim Culver. Lives alone, speaks rarely to strangers, pleases only herself. Pleasures only herself. And lives happily enough most of the time. Remembering to cry only when she recalls a time that once reached beyond enough.