He breathed out a sigh of relief as he glanced at his watch. It was three thirty-five in the morning.
He shivered. Covered in sweat, his body felt awful, aching in every joint. He put on his dressing gown and crossed to the window, opening the curtains to look down into the twilit street below. It was empty and quiet, peaceful as it never was during the day. But it was also undeniably lonely. Cold and lonely and lifeless. The sight of its bleak, grey lines could not make him forget the dream for long, nor keep him away from the wretched feeling of despair that remembering it brought along with it, a despair made all the more unbearable at the realisation that its cause, deep down, must lie rooted in his character. There was no way in which he could deny to himself the perverted aspects it presented to him. But was he perverted as well? Or had the old tramp been lying? After all, he reasoned, why should he be any more perceptive of that kind of thing than anyone else? It was the man’s horrible suggestion, and that was all — no more certainly! — that was making his mind work in that direction now. Almost, he thought, pensively staring about his room, like some kind of post hypnotic suggestion. And if this were so and it was the tramp’s vile insinuations that had caused this neurotic and evil obsession, then it was up to him to vent these desires in the most normal way that he could. Otherwise, he knew, they would only worsen, just as they were worsening already.
Decided on this course, he rested quietly for the rest of the night, reading through the next few chapters of Over the Bridge, and listening to the radio.
When the sky began to lighten at last he welcomed the new day with a fervor he had not felt for many weeks. At last it seemed to him as if there was a chance of ridding himself of this nightmare.
At last…
It was not till midday that he dressed and stepped outside.
In realising that he had to prove to himself that he was normal, and rid himself of the perverse obsession that was deranging him, he had decided that the easiest way open to him was to call on Clara Sadwick, a local prostitute who rented rooms on Park Road above a newsagent’s shop. As he walked towards it down the sodden street the place appeared to have a dingy and slightly obscene look to it, with unpainted window frames and faded curtains, pulled together tight behind their grimy, flyspecked windows.
As he stepped inside and began to climb the bare staircase to the first floor landing, he gazed bleakly at the mildewed paper on the walls. A naked light bulb swayed on the end of a cord at the head of the stairs. He wondered what he had let himself in for at a place like this. Fortifying himself, however, with the thought that in going through with what was to follow he might end the dreams that had been tormenting him for the past three weeks, he pressed on the buzzer by the door facing him at the top. One fifteen, she had said on the phone when he rang her an hour before. It was just a minute off that time now. He ran his fingers nervously through his uncombed hair.
After a short pause the door opened before him.
‘Believe in punctuality, don’t you?’ Clara said with an offhand familiarity which made him feel more relaxed as she stepped back and looked at the slim gold watch on her wrist. She was dressed in a denim skirt, fluffy red slippers and a purple, turtle-necked sweater, which clung, about her ample breasts.
She smiled as she showed him in.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she said breezily.
‘Thank you,’ Lamson said as he hung his coat on a hook by the door and looked about the room. In the far corner, partially hidden behind a faded Japanese screen, was a bed. In front of the old gas fire stood a coffee table crammed with dirty plates. He wondered if she had been having a party or whether, as seemed dismayingly more likely, she merely washed them up when there were no more clean ones left. He hoped, fleetingly, that she was a little more conscientious about cleaning herself.
Clara ground the cigarette she’d been smoking into a saucer, then said:
‘It’ll be forty quid. Cash first, if you don’t mind. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but 1 can hardly take you to court if you refuse to pay afterwards.’
Lamson smiled to cover his embarrassment, and said that he understood.
‘You can’t be too careful, can you?’ he added, sorting out the notes from his wallet. ‘Forty pounds, you said?’ he went on, as he placed the money in her waiting hand.
‘Many thanks,’ she replied, taking it to a drawer and locking it inside.
She looked back at him coyly.
‘Well, I suppose we had better begin,’ she said, folding back the screen from the bed. With no further words, she kicked off her slippers and began to unbutton her skirt. Within a few minutes she was dressed only in her tights and bra. She looked up then as if only just remembering his presence, and told him to hurry. ‘I haven’t all day to wait for you getting undressed. Unless, of course, you prefer having it with your clothes still on.’ She shook her head, laughing almost like a young girl, though she was in her late thirties, unfastening her bra and letting it fall forward from her breasts. Lamson swallowed as he stared at the limpid mounds of pale white flesh that were uncovered, their puckered orbs matching the goose flesh that was starting to rise on her cozily rounded arms.
She shivered, complaining to him again at his slowness.
‘Do you want me to help you?’ she asked sarcastically.
Lamson shook his head as he loosened his trousers and let them fall, unaided, to the floor. Stepping out of them onto the lukewarm oilcloth he looked at her again.
‘Come on, luv,’ she said as she rolled back on the rumpled bed. ‘Off with the rest of them and we can begin.’
Although Lamson felt embarrassed at his nakedness as he slipped out of the last of his clothes, and could feel the blood burning through his cheeks, he was surprised — and not just a little alarmed — that there was no other reaction, that he seemed, in fact, to be incapable of carrying out what he had paid for. Seemingly unaware of this — or, if she was, taking no apparent notice of it — she smiled as he approached her. Lightly, questingly, her hands felt about his body as he pushed his face into her breasts. He smelt the faint aroma of sweat and eau-de-cologne, his mind whirling with haphazard and conflicting sensations. She pressed his mouth against her hardening nipples as he moved further up her body. Yet, still, he could not find the desire to possess her.
‘Come on, come on, dearie,’ he heard her whisper between gasps. He raised himself onto his elbows and looked down into her face. In the same instant her hands grasped hold of him between his legs. He gasped as her fingers lengthened and tightened gently about his penis, guiding him towards her. It was as if his loins were being instilled with a surcharge of life.
He looked down at her eyes — Joan’s face seemed to merge with hers, hiding the cheapness and vulgarity that had been there a moment before. It was almost angelic. Never before had he looked upon a face such as this, upon which all his pent up emotions of warmth, affection and even love could be gladly poured. His eyes passed lingeringly about her warm, soft cheeks where the blood made a pleasant suffusion of pink. She smiled encouragingly, and yet with an apparent innocence which drove him into an almost unbearable desire to possess her. He felt her thighs rise on either side of his legs, pressing him to her. He could feel himself grow stiff, entering her slowly, cautiously passing into the warmth within her summoning body. He could have cried out at the exquisite pangs that were racing through him, obliterating conscious thought.
Even through the pleasure that was overwhelming his mind, though, Lamson became suddenly aware that the room was darkening. Something sharp and dry scraped painfully across his back. He cried out in alarm as it stuck, like a vicious hook, ruthlessly dragging him away from her.