Characters who speak
Ray – Main character (born 1943).
Dad – Ray’s father (1923).
Margaret – Known since Sunday school (1943)
Liz – Known since starting work (1942).
Malc – Friend (1944)
Jamie – Best friend (1944).
Val – Club member (1944).
Joy – Wife (1938).
Susan –Ray’s Daughter (1966).
Others
Mary – Known since Sunday school.
Marie – Coffee Bar owner’s daughter.
Clive – Ray acquaintance.
Rocky – Val’s husband.
Audrey – Dad’s girlfriend.
Gary –Ray’s Son.
Tom –Son’s partner.
The teenage years
Somewhere in Africa virgins dance before unmarried men from their own and neighbouring villages, with the intention of attracting more than one suitor so they have a choice.
Sixteen
Here it’s the other way around. Ray knew this. His dad told him. ‘Chase all you want Lad, but you’re wasting your time. They’ll have it sorted’. At sixteen in the works canteen he could see what his Dad meant. The girls gathered at the same long table every lunchtime. They did the same in DeMarco’s coffee bar on Saturday, at Church on Sunday and Club on Wednesday.
Not all the same girls. Different ones at each. Only Mary in every one. Among the boys it was just him and Jamie, his best mate.
There was Val at the Club, Margaret at Church and Maria at Demarco’s. She was special. All spoke to him, and the girl at the Co-op. He didn’t know her name, but she always smiled when he entered the shop and he saw her looking at him. She blushed whilst serving him once or twice. Ray liked that. It made him feel special.
Seventeen
By seventeen he had been out with Mary who, away from the others, was quieter than he expected. She looked at him all doe-eyed and gave Ray the impression she would say ‘yes’ to anything. That made him too frightened to try just in case he had it all wrong.
Val, on the other hand, was wacky, into Ban the Bomb and animal rights and, to Ray, she spoke about herself in intimate terms. He went to her house when her parents were away and she disappeared. After ten minutes he called her name and got the reply ‘I’m having a dump. Come up and talk to me’. If it was a test, he failed.
Ray should have known. This was the girl who removed her bra at his seventeenth birthday party. His dad was away. Her bosoms at seventeen were full and round. The boys in his group invariably got around to talking about some aspect of the girls’ physical bits after a few beers and with Val it was always her tits. Were they for real?
If anyone knew, they weren’t saying. Malc said they were ‘squidgy’, but he hadn’t actually seen them. In the middle of the heated discussion at his party, accompanied by a good few suggestive hand movements, there was one of those moments when one voice speaks in a moment of unannounced quiet.
‘Val’s can’t be real. A fiver says they’re not’. Everyone heard Jamie and in the hush all turned and looked, first at Jamie, then at Val as she emerged from a corner, where she had been having a serious snog. ‘Get your money out little boy’ was all Val said, as she stood in the centre of the living room and a circle cleared around her. Placing both arms under her pale blue angora jumper, they moved to the back. She undid her bra, then took it off under her jumper and threw it at Jamie. Val just stood there whilst everyone else wondered what was going to happen next. ‘What’s different?’ she asked, then answered her own question without a pause. ‘Nothing. They’re all mine’.
It took a moment or two, but the party quickly recovered its momentum as if nothing had happened. At the end there was only Ray and Val left. She stayed to help Ray clear the mess and with the washing up. It was two o’clock in the morning. Ray’s reward was a glimpse down the top of her v-neck jumper as she bent over the sink. ‘Looking at my unleashed beasts you naughty boy’. She then went in search of her bra, but didn’t find it. It was years before Jamie owned up.
‘I deserved something for my money’.
‘Our money’ Ray reminded him.
Val decided to stay the night and got into his dad’s double bed, but sometime during what remained of the night she came and climbed into Ray’s single bed. ‘I’m cold’ was all Val said as she snuggled up to Ray’s back. It was then he learnt that she snored loudly. Until then Ray had thought only old people, like his Dad, did that.
Ray never saw Val without her nickers in the five or six months they spent in one another’s company. They never dated as such. Ray never asked Val out once. Her knickers were big, not sexy at all. Her bras were the same. She would not let Ray touch her naked down there, but he did fondle her and she made Ray feel very nice at the same time. It never lasted long and forever after Val called him ‘Big Boy’.
Val told Ray about her periods and that she used tampons instead of towels, thanks to her older, married, sister; that she was a virgin, but come the time it wouldn’t be a problem because she was ‘big down there’. Ray never found out if this was true. The toilet moment killed what passion he had and, somehow, their relationship changed after that. If he was to have been the chosen one, Ray had a narrow escape.
After thirty years they still kissed affectionally when they saw one another. She had five kids, four grown-up already and Val had been happily married to Rocky from Arkansas since she was twenty-one. He had been stationed at a nearby airbase and was a Military Policeman. Val was picketing outside at a CND demo, got involved in a slanging match, and taken into custody by Rocky. It was a whirlwind affair.
Rocky turned out to be quite a radical and decided to stay in the town when he was discharged a few years later, Val went on to become a Labour town councillor and the town’s second female Mayor when she was just forty. It was then Jamie chose to give Val her bra back. But all this had yet to happen.
Eighteen
At eighteen Maria had gone. Back to Italy pregnant. He knew the guy. Clive. He left town shortly afterwards. The last time Ray saw Clive his right arm was in plaster, he had a black eye, a badly bruised face, stitches in his top lip and two front teeth missing. Maria, who would have thought?A girl who could have been Gina Lollobrigida’s younger sister. She had been Ray’s unrequited love since his sexual awakening aged ten. He never forget their long chats over ice cream sodas, then Coca-Cola. Her dad always called him ‘Jimmy’. He never knew why. How he loved Maria.
Margaret from the Church and Ray became an item during the summer camp. They had shared a blanket beside a blazing log fire on an otherwise deserted beach, if you forget the other thirty or so who were there. A group of all ages led by the vicar. The grown-ups were too wrapped up in their own assignations to notice what the teenagers were up to.
They had shared a table at Sunday School when just out of nappies. Ray’s Mum was alive then and their class teacher. She would arrange them boy girl boy girl boy girl. Never more than six to a group. If Ray knew anyone it was Margaret. She was still at school when they began dating, expecting to go to university. ‘A good one’ she said.
They had thirteen months together. The longest Ray went out with any girl. Margaret’s parents didn’t approve of him, a factory worker in their eyes. The fact that he was in the Drawing Office with good prospects, doing a higher national diploma, meant nothing to them. They had someone more professional in mind, but they were too polite to say anything and Ray could be tolerated so long as he didn’t interfere with Margaret’s studies.
On reflection he was used by Margaret. She told him about three months into there relationship that when she was sixteen she had been shagged by the then curate (who was subsequently caught with another girl and quietly moved on). Only Ray knew this, because it was Margaret who took his virginity on the last evening of the summer camp. She knew what to do and came prepared. ‘I want you to shag me’.
He never asked where she got the Durex. He later found out that she took them from her Mother’s bedside drawer. ‘Just going to waste’ Margaret laughed, as she put it in place.
It didn’t help the first time. A knowing girl his own age laughing over his willy, standing there. Proud. She knew all the tricks and said that their shags helped her study. ‘You’re how I reward myself.’
They got on well and Ray was sure his own HNC work benefited from their relationship. She was right. It was not hard to arrange. His Dad spent a lot of time with his girlfriend Audrey and Margaret’s parents were forever going off to see their new born grandson in Northampton.
Margaret ended it the week before she went off to university. ‘This is our last fuck, so let’s make it one to remember’. It was.
Her parting words were ‘Ray, you’ve got to be more demonstrative. It may shock you, but I don’t want to spend my life with a polite man. always asking. You could have taken me anytime you know’.
No one looking at Margaret knew what a tiger she was.The moment she closed the door on him that day he was gone. At Church, they were polite to one another. Others in the congregation, knowing of their relationship, stood aside. It was then Ray stopped going to Church and life seemed to drift. He put all his energy into his HND studies. Margaret had raised his expectations and he had no time for courting.
Twenty going on twenty-one
At twenty Ray was getting to know Liz a little better. Mary and Jamie, their respective best friends, were consumed with one another. They were the only ones left who knew one and were unattached.
It was when Liz left the factory and got a better paid job at the Town Hall that they started dating. She was twenty-two, nearly two years older than Ray, who had a year of his apprenticeship to go. With his HND, Ray was going to look for a Town Hall job as well.
Liz got on well with Ray’s Dad and her parents treated him like a family member. There was an unspoken assumption and it didn’t upset Ray. He had a lot to thank Margaret for. Liz spoke the words first. An outburst, a few weeks after his twenty-first birthday. ‘I love you Ray. God I love you’ followed by a groan, as she collapsed full length on her bed. Rolling over, she looked at Ray with her big brown eyes and smile. She repeated the words ‘I love you Ray’, adding without a pause ‘you know that?’
What could Ray say? The words spoke themselves. ‘I love you too’, then he collapsed down beside her. Exhausted. He was happy. Liz was fast and furious in every respect. Determined to go places and to take Ray with her. That was his destiny.
Liz
‘I think we’re going to remember this holiday’ sighed Liz as she arched her back, pushing the car driving seat back as she did.
Ray’s Dad had patted him on the shoulder from the safety of their front door step. ‘You’re the chosen one Lad. She’s a good woman. Have a lovely time’.
The trouble was Ray still thought about Maria. Tall with thick raven hair and large brown eyes, breasts to die for and slender long legs, a waist and a pert bottom. If only he had asked her out he might have protected her from Clive. Her going had hit Ray hard. How he had wanted to touch her, feel her softness. He never did and he mourned never trying. She was still his fantasy woman.
Here Ray was, in Liz’s car, her left hand stroking his right thigh, looking at him, smiling. Reassuring. ‘Kielder here we come’ she said, as with a wave she pulled away from Ray’s house. Neither of them saw his dad wave back.
And there was Joy. He had had coffee with her the afternoon before after a chance meeting on a bus. They had recognised one another instantly. She was a Window Dresser for Pearmain Brothers, the town’s one and only department store. She was also older than she looked. Twenty-five.
Ray had taken the Friday afternoon off and finished at twelve. Some last minute food shopping for his Dad and a new pair of sandals in case he got to have a paddle. The bus into Town was full. Just two empty seats, so he chose the one nearest. Joy had filled out, but her smile and mouth were exactly the same. The recognition was instant. He politely said ‘May I’ to catch her attention. She beamed back and her eyes widened. ‘The Co-op. A long time ago’.
‘I remember. I wondered where you went’ and that was all it took.
They chatted about their jobs and where they lived and wondered why they had not seen one another before. The Town wasn’t that big, just sixty-five thousand. When the bus was pulling up in the Market Square, Ray heard himself asking Joy if she had time for coffee.
‘As long as you like. It’s my window shopping day when I look around to see what the competition is doing — which is why I’m on the bus. I spent the morning in Norton’.
They remembered one another from the Co-op. Six months at most six years ago. On working it out, Ray outwardly groaned ‘ Fourteen fifteen. I thought you so grown up. The way you looked at me. My age, but like all the girls I knew then, so much wiser and more interested in men with money in their pocket’.
‘At the till I would catch you looking at me, then away. I remember you blushing. Me! Making a boy blush! How could I forget’ came Joy’s reply.
Ray walked home with Joy, only a mile from his own home. All these years, yet he hadn’t seen her once. Joy answered the question for both of them ‘We weren’t looking for one another. It’s as simple as that’.
Joy had her ground-floor maisonette and Ray was curious. Even Liz was buying her own terraced house. Unbeknown to himself, Ray had taken Joy’s hand and, at her gate, they stopped. ‘Well, here I am. Would you like to come in?’
‘Thanks, but I’ve got to get some shopping for Dad, so I need to go the Co-op, then sort my things ready for tomorrow. He had told Joy that he was going on holiday and when she asked ‘On your own?’ Ray told her he was going with Liz.
‘Is it serious?’ Joy asked.
‘No, we’re friends from work, but Liz now works in the Town Hall Treasury and her friend cancelled at the last moment. There’s two bedrooms, so she asked me’. It was part-lie, part-truth.
With that,Joy looked at Ray and kissed him on his right cheek. ‘Thank you for a lovely afternoon Ray. It’s been really nice to meet you again’.
Ray couldn’t remember how the kiss which followed came about. It was mind blowing. Tasted of coffee and cinnamon.
‘Can I telephone when I get back?’
‘Of course’.
As Ray walked away, he turned several times and waved. She was still standing at her gate and waved back each time.
He didn’t eat again that day and went to bed without cleaning his teeth. He did not want to lose her taste.
Liz did not seem to mind Ray’s hesitancy. She liked to be in charge. They didn’t wander far and Maria as good as disappeared. Joy came in waves, usually in his sleep. He could feel her tugging. Liz noticed and rode to his rescue so to speak.
It was a good holiday, the longest time they had spent alone. Unspoken though it was, both knew they could live together. Liz was a no nonsense woman who liked to be in charge. She described her attitude to sex as ‘quick and dirty’ and she was confident that her style was more than enough to keep a domesticated man like Ray happy. Always grateful for what he was getting. Not demanding and Liz liked that.
Ray’s mother had died when he was twelve and he and his Dad had lived alone ever since. His grandparents were about and he went on holiday with them sometimes, but both sets lived a few hours away. His Dad taught him to fend for himself and they shared the chores. They rubbed along OK and at sixteen Ray got his apprenticeship thanks to his Dad knowing the Works Manager.
Liz was in the shower when Ray came into the bathroom on the penultimate day of the holiday. When she got out, Ray handed her a bath-sheet and a towel for her face and hair. He liked looking at her naked. She was beginning to fill out and he liked that.
‘If you move in with me, have you any idea what your Dad will do?’
‘He’s been seeing Audrey for two years now. I suspect they’ll get together. They spend a lot of time together. Perhaps he’s just waiting for me to go’.
Driving back the next day they seemed to have agreed what was going to happen. Questions were often followed by long silences. Liz squeezed Ray’s thigh continuously as she drove them home, touching his groin when they stopped at traffic lights. Ray helped by sliding down his seat and parting his legs.
‘Like?’
‘Nice’.
Ray telephoned his Dad from Liz’s. It was beginning. His Dad seemed happy enough. ‘A good holiday then’ . He was sure he could hear his Dad wink.
Joy
Whilst in many ways Joy was an unknown quantity, she was older and different. Ray had to know. He couldn’t settle with Liz when all he saw, when they made love was Joy. Two weeks ago it would have been Maria. Not any more. He almost felt guilty at betraying the memory of a girl he had wanted but never touched or kissed and with Joy there had been just two kisses and one of them by Joy alone. The closer they got to home the more turmoil had gripped him.
Liz was a good looking, physical, woman. Ray had seen her, at a distance, first at primary school before she had breasts or a waist and she used to fill a swimming costume like a steam pudding in a bag, but when she went to secondary school her wool cardigan began to develop lumps and she was just a girl he saw around. Then he saw her in the Lazard’s works canteen on his first day. Lots of people followed one another around. Not that Liz had ever noticed Ray.
Over three thousand people worked at Lazards engineering factory. They were the biggest employer in the town. Here because of the iron ore and coal, both long exhausted, but being twenty miles from a seaport was enough to keep them in the town. The factory had well-trained experienced workers who would be hard to replace if they moved. It was as simple as that, but automation and computers would change all that.
Ray and Liz had their first snog at Ray’s first factory Christmas party. Liz found him hiding away in a side room.
‘Hello Ray, lost are we?’
He remembered saying ‘It’s a bit crowded in there and all the smoke is getting to me’.
‘You don’t know what your missing’.
‘Why are you here then?’
‘I’m escaping from Mr Heron. Thinks he can feel me up and kiss me because it’s Christmas. Dirty old sod. I wonder if his wife knows?’
‘Mr Heron?’
‘My boss’.
‘Ah’.
‘Have you been kissed Ray?’ His look and the involuntary slouch gave him away.
‘I thought not. Here’ and with that Liz pulled Ray from his chair and kissed him full on the lips.
Ray’s immediate recollection was that they must have looked like kissing goldfish and, as if to follow through, Liz moved Ray’s left hand so that it rested on her right breast.
‘Now you know what to do, go and find someone to play with’. Liz stood there. Looking at Ray. ‘Go on then’.
Ray left. He later saw Liz with an older guy. They were leaving the Christmas Party together. She told Ray she lost her virginity when was seventeen.
Ray left Liz, having agreed to move in officially once they told her parents. They would accept his moving in as a sign of their eventual intention to get married. His Dad was very supportive. ‘You can’t go wrong with Liz Lad’.
‘You’ll be alright Dad?’ Ray asked.
‘Audrey and I have already had a chat. The clock’s ticking. I’m forty-four, Audrey’s forty and she’d like to have a baby and I wouldn’t do anything before you were settled. She understood’.
‘I’m happy for you Dad, I really am’.
The future was coming up on Ray fast. Liz had been around and chosen him. He guessed that the older men she had been in relationships with all saw her as arm jewellery. Liz wanted a career and to achieve something. She was well on the way to being a qualified accountant. Ray would protect her from marauding men. That was a big part of why they were getting together.
For Ray’s part he was with a woman he was very fond of. Even though he had uttered the ‘love’ word, he wasn’t sure about that, especially given his overwhelming desire to see Joy again.
Ray telephoned Joy from home. On hearing her voice he felt his mouth go very dry.
‘Hello Joy. It’s Ray. I promised I’d call. How are you?’
‘Hello Ray, did you enjoy your holiday?’
‘Yes. I thought about you’.
‘Really?’
‘Yes’.
‘I’m here all day. Pop round for a coffee when you’re ready’.
‘Is now OK?’
‘See you in a few minutes then’.
‘Twenty or so. I’m walking’.
Ray thought he was visibly shaking as he knocked on Joy’s front door. She stood there on the step and put out a hand, which he took and allowed himself to be pulled into her small hallway. Joy pushed the door closed. He was four or five inches taller. He hadn’t noticed the difference a couple of weeks before. Ray looked down and moved forward to kiss her. He saw the tip of her tongue moisten her lips. She tasted of orange juice and bacon. She burped and they pulled apart, both laughing.
‘Sorry, I was finishing a late breakfast when you called and about to get in the shower’.
‘I can wait if you want to finish getting ready’.
‘Come and talk to me then’ Joy said, as she took his hand. ‘This is my workroom’, then pointing to the next door ‘My bedroom and, through there, the kitchen diner and living room. It’s like the Tardis isn’t it’.
‘Yes. Do you like Dr Who?’
‘I’ve seen a few episodes. I rather like the idea of being a Time Lord, able to travel through time and space’.
‘Where would you go?’
‘Right now?’
‘Yes’
‘Right here’.
‘I’m glad you’re staying’ said Ray with a big smile.
They had stopped by the bedroom door. She looked at him and he knew what to do. For a second time he leaned forward to kiss her, as she moved towards him. They just stood there lost in the kiss.
His hands were on her shoulders and he pushed her top off and down her arms and kissed each shoulder in turn, then her neck. Ray could hear himself breathing hard. She was soft, with closely cropped auburn hair. He was noticing so much. He had to see all of her.
Joy understood and pulled away, then lifted her top, pulling it over her head, revealing two small breasts. She saw Ray looking. ‘I call them my poached eggs’ , then she pulled down her flannel trousers. She was all woman. ‘I don’t shave’ was all she said. Ray could see that and began to unbuckle his trousers, saying to Joy as he did ‘You are beautiful. There is something about you. I think I’m going to explode. I’ve never felt this way before’.
Ray began kissing her body there and then. ‘You are to die for. I love poached eggs. You look like peaches and cream and taste of orange juice and bacon and your bottom so full and round’. Ray paused to draw breath.
‘Don’t stop now, you’re on a roll. As the song says “Tell me”’.
‘You like Doris Day too’.
‘The Pyjama Game’.
They spoke of one another in intimate detail. ‘Tell me what you see and feel. I want you to tell me’. Ray had never described a woman’s body in such detail before and after Joy’s descriptions he saw toes as he had never seen them before.
Afterwards, as Ray lay with Joy in his arms in her bed, he was trying to remember what had happened. Three hours of it. She was stroking his chest and he responded by kissing her forehead.
‘What am I going to tell Dad and Liz?’ It was the first time he had thought of either since knocking on Joy’s front door. He raised his neck and head so that he looked at Joy straight in the face, now twirling what chest hairs he had between fingers and thumb. ‘I left Liz yesterday promising to move in today and here I am. I don’t want to leave’.
‘Who says you have to?’
‘Joy, you are something else. I feel as if I have been here forever. Crazy or what?’
‘When we met on the bus, all this was a million miles away, but you walked me home, I didn’t want you to go. I wanted you to stay and make love to me’.
‘I wanted to stay’.
‘Well, you’re here now’.
‘I love you Joy’.
‘I’ve been waiting for you since the Co-op. A teenage boy coming in who shopped several times a week. Good looking and, I’m ashamed to say it, I fancied you, but I knew I was a lot older than you’.
‘Just five years’ interrupted Ray.
‘At fifteen and twenty, it was purely physical, but there was something about you then. When you left me the other day I came in here and lay on the bed and lifted my skirt, parted my legs and pulled back my gusset and pulled myself off and thought of you back then. It was one of my best climaxes ever. Have I shocked you?’
‘When I made love to Liz I was doing it to you, but it didn’t seem right and now I know why. I have never made love like this before. How do you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Make it last forever. Go so slow, make it feel as if you are taking me. I have been with just two other girls, Liz and before that Margaret and both wanted it fast. Margaret used to clamp her legs around my back and shout “Harder harder”. She was like a bucking bronco’.
Joy looked at Ray, then without a word turned her attention to his chest, gently teasing his hairs with her teeth.
‘Well?’
‘We will do that too I promise, but first I wanted to feel you all over and to give myself to you nice and slow. I’ve been with a few guys, not that many...’ Joy paused ‘...only four and I’m older than you, but you know what, I’ve never been inspected so closely before’.
‘I love what I see and touch, taste and smell. I admit I’ve seen Liz all over, but she’s so different to you. I love how big you are and then you telling me what to do’.
‘Didn’t Liz?’
‘Yes, but to use her own words, she likes to make love “quick and dirty”. Hard and fast just like Margaret did, whereas you are totally different. I’ve just had the best three comes in my life and I want to stay with you forever’.
‘Do you want to go and see Liz now?’
‘Tomorrow, after I’ve told Dad’.
‘Isn’t she expecting you’.
‘I’ll go and see her after work tomorrow. I’ll have to go home tomorrow morning, before I go to work, so I’ll tell Dad then’.
Liz
The next morning Ray somehow pulled himself away from Joy. Who was going to believe him? It all seemed so unreal and yet he was already living it.
Sitting in bed with Joy after his own revelations she had told him there was someone she was going to have to tell as well. Not her parents. She would take him to see her Nanna Doris first, then get them all round for tea and that is when she would tell them. ‘Next Sunday’ she said.
‘I have a close friend and we kind of have an arrangement. He’s married and an artist. I posed for him a couple of years ago and still do. It’s been a kind of release until now. It’s suited me, work wise, not to have a steady partner, but that’s all changed. I suspect there’ll be one last time. You understand. He’s lovely, but he’s not you and has never given himself in the same way as you’.
Ray was in no position to argue even if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He would share Joy if he had to. She was everything to him. He still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but it had. Sharing a bed with Joy seemed like a dream. It was sitting on the bus that did it. Not wanting to get off the bus without her and the excitement that ran through his body when Joy agreed to go for a coffee. That was the moment when his world changed.
Ray’s head was a mass of thoughts and his body felt as if it was in torment. Walking back to his Dad, Ray realised it wasn’t home any more. When Ray walked in his Dad looked at him and said something. Ray didn’t hear a word.
He was already garbling, with his Dad looking at him. Ray only heard the last words he said ‘You’ll love Joy Dad. I promise’. There, he’d done it. There was no going back.
‘I’m glad your mother isn’t here that’s all I can say. Let’s have a cup of tea, then you can tell me again. Slowly’.
‘I’ve got to go to work Dad’.
‘I’ll phone and tell them you’re sick’.
‘I’ve just been away for a fortnight’.
‘No better time to be sick, I should know’.
Ray felt himself relaxing, the tension in his body easing. Work, one less thing to worry about and, as his Dad said, he should know. He was a manager. His dad repeated himself. ‘Now, tell me again. Slowly’.
‘I met this girl, a woman, on the bus just before I went on holiday. Here name is Joy. Years ago she worked in the Co-op and I used to see her when I did the shopping, and on the bus we recognised one another instantly and got talking, then we had coffee and I walked her home. Yesterday I telephoned her and when I saw her again it all happened and I’m going to live with her, not Liz. I love her Dad and so will you I promise’.
Ray saw his Dad’s eyes. They were welling. ‘I’m sure I will, but right now I can’t get Liz out of my head. She’s a lovely lovely girl and I’ve come to think of her as one of us. Be gentle Lad, please’
‘I’ll do my best, but whatever I say will seem brutal. I don’t want to do it, but Joy is already part of me in a way Liz never has been’. He couldn’t tell his dad that he had gone from ‘quick and dirty’ to love in slow motion in a matter of hours.
It took Ray an hour to walk to Liz’s. She was waiting for him and opened the front door as he walked down the path. ‘There you are. I was wondering where you’d got to’. Not having second thoughts are we?’ she teased as she pulled Ray into the hall and began kissing him long and hard, unbuckling his trouser belt as she did. She was already holding him as Ray pulled away.
Liz looked at Ray and his hanging appendage with a bemused look on her face. ‘I thought he would be hungry after twenty-four hours’ was all she said.
At the moment, Ray wished it was all over. Liz had understood and told him it was all OK and they had parted friends. He knew it wasn’t going to happen. Liz would go ape and he felt his stomach go into a painful uncontrolled spasm and he felt his bottom pop. In his head two voices spoke in unison. The first ‘God, please don’t let me shit myself’ and the second spoke even faster than it had to his Dad.
‘Liz, we have to talk. It’s all over. I’m sorry’.
Ray saw the look of shock come across her face and watched her jaw drop, followed by a deathly gurgle. What words she wanted didn’t come. It was a first. He had never seen Liz speechless before. She dropped like a stone onto the stairs, where she sat. Ray stepped back and at looked at the slouched figure. He was detaching himself from Liz there and then. They said nothing for an age. The air around them seem to thickened to a point where movement was impossible. Ray, now with arms hanging down his sides looked impassively on, fists clenched, a sharp pain spreading across his temple and a stomach more knotted and painful than he imagined possible.
Ray would never forget Liz’s choking voice, words thrown from the back of her throat. ‘You really mean it don’t you?’ There was another long silence before she asked the question ‘Is there anyone else?’
Ray knew the answer she wanted. ‘No’. That might just be bearable, but he couldn’t lie.
‘Yes’.
He didn’t notice how quickly Liz recovered until he caught the venom in her voice ‘And you went on holiday with me, doing all the things we did knowing this. You of all people. You are not the person I was, am…’, correcting herself before continuing ‘…in love with. Where is Ray? Tell me? I want to know?’
It was some outpouring. Liz was too tough to cry. She was back in charge. This was her.
‘It happened yesterday. That was when I met her’.
‘Who is this woman? I want to see her, look at her. To see what she’s got that I haven’t. I’ve got a good cunt haven’t I? You love a tight pussy and fucking my arse and my tits, in your words, are “to die for”’.
Liz was shouting now, her voice having got louder with every word. If the next door neighbours were in, they must have heard half of what she said.
‘I met her on the bus. She used to work in the Co-op years ago. Just happened. She’s very different, that’s all I can say and I wanted her the moment she smiled at me. We had coffee, I walked her home and I went back yesterday morning, when it all happened and here I am’.
Ray didn’t mention his Dad.
‘What about me Ray? Don’t I mean anything to you?’
‘Yesterday morning I thought I loved you. I did. Now I still love you enough not to lie to you. I have never, ever, lied to you Liz’.
The thick air around them was turning to fog, or so it seemed to Ray. Neither moved for an age. Ray could see what was happening like it was a scene in a film. The tension heightened by the constricted surroundings of hall and stairs, barely five foot in any direction, what light there might have been from the front door excluded by his back. The patterned wallpaper didn’t help. It had never mattered before, but right now it was all so dark, so different to Joy’s cathedral of white.
Liz was looking at him, daring him to go on, then she would speak, or would she attack him?
‘I loved you Liz. “Quick and dirty” like you always say. All the fury, it was exciting and fantastic, but with Joy it’s very different’.
Liz interrupted Ray. ‘Joy? Who is this Joy? Is she the girl?’
‘Woman’ corrected Ray.
‘I don’t care a fuck what she is, is she the one?’
‘Yes’.
‘Joy you say’.
‘Yes’.
‘Tell me again what she has that I don’t have. I didn’t hear it the first time’.
‘I didn’t’.
‘Her voice was rising again. ‘Stop playing games Ray. Just tell me’.
It was like a trigger. Ray was about to give Liz two barrels of Joy right in her chest. He didn’t want to, he fought like crazy to keep control.
‘She’s love in slow motion, warm and deep, talks all the time about little things, about today, not tomorrow, how things are, not how they will be, what she does and wants to do, not what others expect. She not as attractive as you by more than a mile. It’s about more than my cock or a cunt. God, how I’m going to miss fucking you. When I try to slow down, your legs always climb up my back and you say ‘harder harder’ and that isn’t what I want to do. Margaret was the same. Until yesterday I thought all women liked it that way. I was wrong. You’ll find someone else and you’ll be great together, You’re a fantastic lover, but after Joy…’ and there Ray’s words trailed off and he stopped. Emotionally exhausted.
Liz still sat there on the stairs. ‘Just fucking go Ray before I do something stupid. I never want to see you again. Just go’.
That was the last time they ever spoke. What clothes he had at Liz’s he never collected.
A few months later Jamie told Ray that Liz had got ‘a better council job in Hull’. Mary had told Jamie, but she was still cross with Ray for what had happened and had not spoken to him since.
Ray would never forgot Liz. How could he? She had taken him and, on reflection, given little in return, but every moment had been memorable and he still loved Liz warts and all, but he loved Joy a whole lot more. After all these years he would like to see her. To say ‘sorry’ again, but it wasn’t going to happen. There would be no redemption. In that moment he had done the worst thing in his life, yet at the very same moment he was happier than he ever imagined.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
It was Susan who pulled Ray back. Their daughter. Her hand on his. He had been asleep. Dreaming. ‘Nurse says it won’t be long now. Mum’s asleep. It’s going to be very peaceful’.
Ray felt his forehead tighten and his cheeks tingle, filling with blood. He was going to cry. He knew Joy would reassure him if she could. He felt her hand squeeze his and knew it was deliberate. He counted. Three, then a pause, then three again. ‘I love you’. Ray squeezed back, one two three, than a pause then again.
‘Aunty Val’s downstairs, Uncle Rocky too and Grandad’s coming with Nanna’.
‘Go and get them love. Where are Gary and Tom?’
‘Phoned from the airport an hour ago’.
Val came in and looked at Ray, then Joy, before leaning over and hugging him tight, kissing his now damp cheek. ‘I’m so sorry Ray’.
‘Don’t be. We’re glad you’re here aren’t we?’ he gestured to Joy, still holding her hand. He was never going to let go.
Joy’s last words were ‘Tell me’.
Ray looked at the nurse. She nodded. He continued talking to Joy, for how long he never knew. For some reason he had gone around the house stopping all the clocks.
It was nearly a year before the letter came.
Withernsea
17 December 1999
Dear Ray
Mary has told me about Joy passing away. I have been thinking of you. My husband Harry died six months ago quite unexpectedly and it was only then that Mary told me.
I miss him terribly even though we spent little time together.
Work without Harry there in the background is not the same, so I have decided to take early retirement from my job as Chief Finance Office with Holderness Council. I did OK.
I have no idea what I will do. Our daughter is in America with her husband, but I like Withernsea too much to leave. I’m into ceramics and a have workshop overlooking the sea.
After all these years I am not expecting a reply. I just wanted you to know that I am deeply sorry for your loss.
I suspect no one knows more than me how much Joy has meant to you, even though I never met her.
Take care.
Forever in my thoughts.
Liz.
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