Skinner's Mission

71

He was waiting for her, watching from behind the curtains of his darkened bedroom, as she drove up the Green, and as her headlights swung off the road and turned towards the cottage. She was five minutes early.

He had opened the front door, beneath its welcoming light, before she had even switched off the engine. He looked on as she pulled her long coat tight around her, and climbed out of the car, more awkwardly than usual. He watched from the doorway, as she took a holdall from the boot. He stood back in surprise as she walked up the path towards him, but without looking at him, then swept past him, into the hall.

He had no time to register details, only his own surprise. He followed her into the living room.

Alex dropped the bag in the centre of the floor, threw off her coat in a single sweeping motion and turned towards him. He gasped in surprise and stood frozen in the doorway.

‘Hello, Bob,’ she said, in an accent that was not her own. She was wearing the black dress, the tight thrusting bra, the high heels. Her hair was teased, and her make-up was applied perfectly. She stood and faced him, the dress riding up her right thigh as she bent her knee, slowly, rubbing her foot against the back of her left calf.

And then she was Alex again.

‘You wanted me to get to know my mother, Pops. I did. Both sides of her.

‘I read the diaries. In there I found my mum, and your wife. But I found someone else too: a woman you didn’t know existed. The woman who wore this dress, these shoes . . .’ She pulled up the dress quickly, revealing the catch of the suspenders and the top of the stocking, ‘. . . this underwear.

‘You put all these things in the trunk, Pops, but you didn’t know what they were for. I guess you remember her wearing them, but you never for a second understood why she did.’

She walked across to the doorway and hugged him, briefly, as he stood there, bewildered. ‘My mum loved you, Pops. And she loved me, and she loved her job. All that was very clear, all the way through. But there was another side to her that only her diaries knew about. Only the diaries and the men.

‘There was another person inside her: a bad, wanton person, one that she kept hidden from you all your life together. She suppressed her for as long as she could, but gradually her urges took a stronger and stronger hold of her. If she were here today, I think she’d say that she was compelled to do these things, and that she couldn’t stop herself. But there was more than that to it; there was the danger too. She seemed to love that.’

She led him into the living room, and tugged his arm until he sat on the couch beside her. His face was dark, disturbed.

‘Myra . . . I can’t call that part of her Mum . . .’ said Alex, ‘realised from the start that she had a power over men. She even thought she could use it to snare you, when you were both sixteen, only she fell in love with you. You were strong; without knowing it you kept her devilment in check for years. But Myra’s wanton side was strong too, and it couldn’t be suppressed for ever.’ She paused.

‘She had affairs, Pops.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Not long-term, not serious - until the end - but quick, dangerous liaisons. Gradually, the more dangerous they were the better they became. The other Myra spent her life searching for the ultimate sexual excitement, and risk had to be associated. She was addicted to it. It’s all there, Pops, in the diaries. I’m sure that simply keeping them, under your nose, with the possibility that you might get curious and pick one up, was the biggest risk of all. Yet she did it. She knew you too, obviously, and was confident that you would respect the only privacy she asked of you.’

Alex looked down at her clothes. ‘This dress I’m wearing, these clothes, were a weapon. Pops, some nights while you were working late and someone was babysit-ting for me, she’d get dressed up in them and go to a hotel in town, one of the good ones in the city centre, looking for a man on his own. For her, it was easy.

‘My University friends and I, we laugh about it. We call it sharking. Pops, in terms of sharking, Myra was a Great White.’ She paused. ‘After a while, just to add to the thrill, and the risk, she got round to taking money. Fifty pounds, sixty, a hundred pounds once.’

Bob sprang to his feet. ‘No!’ he exploded. ‘Fantasies, girl, that’s all these diaries are. The fantasies of a woman with . . . with . . . an imaginary friend, to act out her bad thoughts.’

Alex stood up too. She dropped her head slightly and looked at him from beneath hooded eyebrows. ‘Oh no,’ she said quietly, a smoky edge to her voice. ‘I wore these clothes, Pops. I went out in them. I became Myra.

‘And I was overwhelmed by what I could do, by the power I had, by the danger I could put myself in, and by the sheer depth of the thrill it made me feel.

‘I went out to a hotel in Glasgow, Pops. I met a man, an American. I pulled him, just like that. He’d have given me three hundred quid, for me to take this outfit off. I took myself, almost literally, to the bedroom door. I said okay, sent him up ahead of me in the lift, then I jumped into a taxi and I got the hell out of there.

‘I was terrified, Pops.’ Tears welled up in her big blue eyes and ran down her cheeks, through her make-up, destroying her mascara. ‘Not by the man or anything about him, but by me, and what I could do.’

She pointed to the bag on the floor. ‘The adventures in those diaries are not fantasies, believe me. They may have begun that way, but Myra acted them out, every one of them.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘Now I have to get out of these clothes. Because they scare the life out of me.’ She strode from him, quickly, through to her bedroom. When she reappeared in five minutes, she was Alex again, in sweatshirt, jeans, and flat shoes, her eyes clear, her face scrubbed clean, her hair bouncing in its usual shape.

‘I’ve left them through there, Pops. I don’t want them. When you’ve read what’s in those diaries, I think you’ll want to burn them.’

She stepped up to him and hugged him, as she had when she was small.

‘When I had finished,’ she said, quietly, ‘I didn’t know what to do. Should I keep them to myself, should I leave you with your memories of your Myra? Or should I show you what was in them, and risk breaking your heart?

‘I called Sarah this morning, to ask her advice. She chopped me off. She said she was the last person I should talk to, and hung up the phone, more or less. I couldn’t talk to Andy; that wouldn’t have been right, telling him and not you, and anyway, I’m not ready to come clean with him about all of my weekend. Maybe I never will be.

‘So at last, Pops, I decided you had to know. Especially because of the end, and what’s there.’

She picked up the bag and put it into his hands, heavy with the weight of the fourteen volumes, heavy with what they contained. ‘Don’t read them all,’ she said. ‘That’d be too much, even for you. No; especially for you. I’ve marked the pages that I think you have to see. They’re all in here, in order.

‘I’m going to leave you to it. You’ve got the strength to read them alone. If you want to speak to me when you’re finished, I’ll be at Fairyhouse Avenue for a while. I feel, at least part of me feels, defiled. I need to encounter purity. So I’m going to visit my brother. And to talk to Sarah while I’m at it, whether she or you like it or not.

‘After that, I’ll be at Andy’s. Even although he doesn’t know it, he deserves some reassurance. And I need to be reminded of who I really am.’

She picked up her coat, then turned and walked out of the cottage, leaving him standing in the silent room, staring at where she had been, with the heavy bag in his hands.

At last he sat down on the sofa, and took out the diaries. They were still bound together, in order. Two pieces of blue marker paper protruded from the second volume, others from the eighth, from the twelfth, from the thirteenth and several from the last.

He took out the second diary and opened it at the first page which his daughter had marked. It was Myra’s account of the day of her sixteenth birthday, April 21. The first cold shaft of desolation shot through him as he read of her seventeen-second coupling with Campbell Weston on the living-room carpet. Then he came into the narrative himself; suddenly he felt like a time-traveller, spectating at the events which the diary described. He saw his own face twist in pleasure at the flattening of Campbell, and his overt disappointment when Big Zed backed off. He saw the exultation in Myra’s eyes.

He turned to the next marked page, and read, pictures coming clear into his head.

April 28. At Home.

Afternoon with Alice, getting ready for the big date. She’s taken it really well, all things considered.

Met Bob outside the Rex at seven o’clock. He paid. It’s dark in there, especially in the back corner of the circle. It was a British film, with some guy named Roger Moore. I didn’t see much of it, though. I spent most of the time with my tongue down Robert’s throat and with his hand up my jumper. He caught on quick.

We went straight back to his house afterwards. He said his mum and dad were away at some place called Chirnside, visiting friends, and wouldn’t be back till Sunday night. I asked if we could have a drink, gin or something, but he said no, we didn’t need it. It was the first time he’s ever refused me anything. Instead we went straight up to his bedroom.

I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I felt a wee bit frightened. He left the curtains open and the light out, and he took my clothes off in the dark. He undid the bra-clip first time, too. I was shivering, lying there, watching him undress, until he lay down naked beside me, and touched me, between my legs. That’s when I knew that Alice had been wrong. It was like being with a man, not a boy like Campbell. His muscles were hard . . . but not as hard as . . . ! He just lay there for a while, kissing me and touching me, until I couldn’t wait any longer and I pulled him over and into me. Right away I found out what an orgasm means. It went on and on, then I could feel him starting too. He was going to pull out, but I held him there, with my legs wrapped around him, until he shot it all, hot and sticky, way up inside me.

As he lay there on top of me, with the pair of us sweating, I told him that I loved him, and he said that he loved me. Guess what, diary? We both really mean it.

We did it again, with a Durex this time, (he had them in his bedside cabinet) then we got dressed and he walked me home. He doesn’t know it, but I’m going back round there tomorrow morning!

He smiled as he closed the book. In fact, Alice had been right, but from his and Myra’s first kiss at her party, he had been thinking about the moment. When it had come, he had simply known, instinctively, what to do.

He picked up the next diary in Alex’s sequence and opened it at the next marked page.

July 17. Estartit.

I don’t know what made me do it. It must have been the heat, that’s all I can think of. It’s not that I’m not getting enough; Bob and I have been at it two or three times every day since we got here.

But it happened, nonetheless. I had gone up from the pool to the apartment for a pee, since I don’t like the toilets down there. I did it, and I was coming out, when there he was, Dougie Fiddes, in his swimming trunks, going into his studio across the corridor. He gave me a smile, friendly, just like he does at the pool. I gave him a grin back, only something in me took over and it became a bit more than friendly.

The urge just swept over me after that, and I couldn’t stop myself. I kept grinning at him as I walked across the hall. I pushed him back, into his apartment. The bed wasn’t made or anything but I didn’t care, I just shoved him down on it. I tore his trunks off, then my bikini bottom, and I jumped on him. I did all the work. It didn’t take long, but I came like a train and so did he. I’ll never forget his face beneath me, tongue out and bewildered, all at the same time. I’ll never forget the thrill, the scariness, the excitement.

When I went back down to the pool and saw Bob, looking so fit and tanned, and happy and sexy, a funny thing happened. All of a sudden I wanted him, really wanted him, more than I think I ever have. I grabbed his hand and yanked him away from the pool, up to our apartment, up to bed.

Dougie’s terrified now in case Bob finds out. I must admit I’m a bit scared myself, because I’m never sure what he might be like if he really got mad. But then I’m not going to tell him, am I. And Dougie certainly isn’t, that’s for sure. Still, it’s as well we’re off home tomorrow.

Bob closed the diary and stared at the wall, gasping, his heart pounding. Dougie Fiddes: his best friend at the time. And his fiancée, for he and Myra had been engaged then. By her account, she had raped him, virtually. A week later, Dougie, his wife, and their baby daughter had died in the wreckage of their plunging plane.

Fighting away images of Dougie Fiddes’ last thoughts, he picked up the next marked entry, and he read on. And on.

An hour later, he closed the last diary and sat on the sofa, his face suffused with rage. Then with a roar like a bull he leapt to his feet and threw the volume against the wall, smashing it and sending pages flying everywhere.

Something unstoppable drove him through to Alex’s room. The black dress and underwear lay on the bed, the shoes and stockings on the floor. He gathered them all up and strode out to the back garden, grabbing a newspaper and a box of matches on the way.

He tore the funnelled lid from the garden incinerator and threw the clothes inside, mingled the sheets of newspaper among them and lit a match. Replacing the lid, he stood back as the fire took hold, watching like an onlooker at a witch-burning as the relics of a woman he had never known were consumed and rose in a column of smoke and sparkling ashes, up and away into the darkness of the night.

Gradually his rage began to abate, until he was able to walk back into the house; he was quiet, calm, and infinitely sad.

He thought of phoning Alex, but realised what she had suffered over the weekend, and that she deserved to be left alone with Andy. He thought of phoning Sarah, but could think of nothing to say to her. He thought of phoning Pam, even of going to see her, but knew at once that it would not be fair of him to visit her in such a mood. Indeed, some instinct within him warned him that it could be dangerous for both of them.

Instead, he turned off the light. In the darkness he sat, as a coldness swept over him. Staring at nothing, he thought of all of the day’s revelations, and he planned.