Is this what it feels like to be happy?
I had forgotten.
I lean forward, propped up on my elbows to watch the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. Rose went to sleep nestled in my arms. After a while, cramping, I had to lay her down. I slept for an hour or so myself but awoke suddenly and now I am too acutely aware of the fact that she is still naked under the cover of my sleeping bag. Just there, just inches away from me, her breasts and her stomach and all the other places I have touched tonight, they are still unbearably, intoxicatingly, close. And it has been so long since I have been with a woman.
I would have her again but I would not for all the world wake her. She looks so peaceful right now. As I cannot touch her, all I want to do is watch her. The soft glow from the brazier is flickering pinks and marmalade orange hues all over her skin, burnishing the darker strands of her hair to a tawny gold. She does not seem cold. She looks, if possible, only more beautiful than she looked to me before.
Surprising then, that she was at first so coy when we came in here, when we first undressed. She seemed embarrassed to even let me see her, I think. Not like other girls I have known, who’ve made the most of their assets, who knew all the tricks, how to make a man beg. Not Rose. She made a joke that she was glad of the dark, even if I did not like it. She said she felt more comfortable that way. I was so fired up, so hungry that I hardly noticed that she came to me blindly, unsure, not knowing where to put her hands at first, a little surprised at where I put mine. She didn’t know some things that I had assumed all girls must know. I guessed, because of her circumstances, that she’d be a little inexperienced but I never knew - never even suspected the truth. Not till the moment she cried out when I entered her.
I saw her eyes close for a moment in pain. I’d been careful not to touch the wound on her leg, it couldn’t have been that. Her cry made me stop what I was doing, shocked, when I realised what it was.
Why hadn’t she said
? If I’d known it was her first time I’d have gone easier on her, been more careful ... but when she opened her eyes a second later, Rose was smiling. She looked ... triumphant. Like she’d just passed some milestone in her life; one which was well overdue for passing. She pulled me down towards her, her mouth locking on mine and it was clear that she wanted me to continue. I hadn’t needed much encouragement. Afterwards, quiet, sated, in the glow of the firelight, she’d turned her head, smiling, mouthed something at me. I couldn’t quite make out what. I leaned my ear in a little closer to her mouth, unable to resist tracing the line of her neck, her beautiful, perfect shoulders, along the way.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed, and the scent of her skin so close up reminded me of honey on fresh bread, reminded me of the mornings in springtime when I was a lad, the time before I came to be who I am now.
‘No, my Rose,’ I said to her. I held her fingers in my hand and kissed them, unable to say any more because she couldn’t know what she had restored to me, after so long in exile; my dignity, my manhood. The hope that I might ever be truly loved by someone;
‘Thank
you
.’
I watch Rose now as she shakes the snow off the leafy ends of one of the branches I’ve brought in, uses it as a broom to sweep away the ashes that have accumulated around the fire. She’s shy this morning, smiling, but she feels an ease around me that was not there before. She wants to keep busy. She’s keeping the place tidy at least and, stark and cold as it is, homely. I had to go out digging in the log pile again this morning. Each time I have to dig deeper to get out enough small pieces, but now we’ve got a row of logs lined up in front of the fire. There is also an assortment of wet clothing hanging off the back of the wooden pew and a collection of small animals Rose constructed out of the silver foil from the chocolate liqueurs which we ate for breakfast. This is beginning to look like some sort of domestic arrangement, I think. It reminds me of the tent I shared with Joaquin back in Jaffna. I have never shared a living space with a woman before but I see now that it’s better.
I see that one day I might want to.
When I woke this morning I felt in a different place and I knew that must be because of her; because I was not alone. Not scared. Not hunted or cold. I remembered that my life hasn’t always been bleak. In the few hours when I slept last night, I had peaceful dreams. I can recall snippets and glimpses of them; me and Kahn, taking the woodland route to school in the morning when the air was warm and full of birdsong, the green moss springy and damp beneath our feet. He was a young dog again, brown-coated, bright-eyed, maybe a year old, sniffing at every rabbit-hole, padding past clumps of lilac harebells, obedient, alert, happy to be at my side. He made me feel like a king.
Like she does.
‘So;’ Rose settles at last, flops down onto the canvas sacking. She looks pensive, her fingers picking hesitantly at the edges of the sacking. She’s got something on her mind, hasn’t she?
‘When you ran up here,’ she asks at last
.
‘That time you got trapped.’
S
he takes in a breath and then she plunges straight on. ‘What were you really running from, Lawrence?’
Ah.
I feel my shoulders involuntarily tense up even though I have known that we must return to this. After what she shared with me
earlier
, it was inevitable she would want to know more about me. And Rose and I - we’ve moved a step closer to each other now. We’ve shared each other’s bodies - would it be such a bad thing to share some of my truth with her, too?
‘I was running from my father,’ I tell her eventually. She tilts her head to one side, inviting more. She knows, I can see it in her eyes, that I do not want to speak of this, that it will be painful for me. I think maybe she wants me to share some of that pain with her but honestly,
I
don’t. I want something else. I lean in to her. I kiss her, hard, on the lips and I hear her gasp in surprise at my renewed hunger. My hands go up to cup around her breasts, testing out the waters, seeing if she will lie with me again and I think for a moment that she will, but she only smiles softly, grasps hold of my hand, wriggles away.
‘Tell me,’ she breathes. ‘Why you had to run away from your father?’ I sigh. In her world I imagine, a father is a person you run
to
, not from.
‘Getting trapped under that rubble - that wasn’t the first time I’d ever experienced anything like that. Being closed in, I mean, in the dark. Entombed.’ I feel her shudder as I say the word but it is too late to go back now. I grasp her hand tighter, not letting her go. She asked. She wanted to know and now she
will
know.
‘We used to have an old World War Two shelter out back. If my father ever felt me or my brother were out of order in any way he’d take his belt to whichever one of us it was - usually me - and then fling us down there for a night and a day. Solitary confinement, he called it.’ I pause, aware of her breath catching, acutely aware of her inching closer to me. She cannot know how I have longed for the comfort of human companionship. She cannot know how the endless silence, the darkness, engulfs you after a time. The mind starts playing tricks. You come to think that maybe you aren’t really there anymore; that maybe you’re dead and already buried.
The water drops down from the ceiling into the brazier and the hiss makes us both jump. ‘Down there, there was nothing; no food, not the slightest ray of light. I’d hear him draw the bolt
across
on the outside and I’d know that I wouldn’t see daylight again till several eternities had passed. There was nothing to drink. Sometimes I’d lick the cold stone walls in the hope that some moisture would have condensed on them …’
She lets out a strange noise but now I have started.
‘There wasn’t much room to move about, Rose. And once I was in there - it was like the whole world forgot about me.’ I feel a strange hurting in my chest, recalling it. ‘My dog Kahn ... he knew though. He knew I was in there. I used to hear him, scuffing at the door outside, whimpering. He’d wait for
hours
...’
‘Stop.’ She puts her hand on my arm. ‘That’s so cruel. You didn’t have to open up and tell me any of this. I’m so sorry, Lawrence. I’m sorry I insisted.’ She bows her head. ‘I see now why you ran. Of
course
you had to run from that.’
‘It’s not something I feel proud of. Where I’ve come from; what it was like. It’s not the sort of thing you want to tell people about yourself.’ It feels strange, this. Sitting here with this ... this beautiful, kind, sensitive girl who let me love her last night; allowing myself to accept her sympathy and understanding. She hasn’t - as I feared - jumped up in horror when she’s learned the shame of it. She hasn’t moved away from me.
‘Now you know why I left that day,’ I say gruffly after a bit. ‘I had to leave. I was only young and I had to make some tough choices but I had to keep believing I could make things better, that things
would
get better.’ I look away from her, aware that I’ve left out a whole chunk of what happened. The day I got trapped up here under the rubble was only one of the days I ran off from home. It wasn’t the day I left home for good. But I can’t tell her about
that
.
She nods, taking all this in, intensely interested. She’s drinking in all the details about my life as if she could never get enough.
‘So - you left. But you went on to study for a career
-
things must have got better for you?’
‘Yes. When I left home I went up to Bradford,’ I tell her. We’re on safer ground now. She lifts her eyebrows questioningly and I confess with a little smile;
‘Bradford was as far away as I could hitch a lift. I thought it’d be far away enough. No one would know me. I struck it lucky, to be honest. After a few weeks of sleeping rough, I begged work from an elderly Asian couple. They had a corner shop but the long hours were getting to them. They were also getting a bit of flak from some local yobbos. I promised them I could help them out.’
‘They agreed?’ Rose smiles. She likes this part of the story, I can tell. It’s the bit where hope comes in, help arrives.
‘They took me in. Took pity on me, I think,’ I tell her as she seems to be waiting for more. ‘Their only son lived abroad and they still missed him, never saw the grandkids either. I became a surrogate one of theirs. They even put me into a local school. I worked the evenings for them. I finished school. Eventually, I went on to do the paramedic training.’ She nods, her eyes shining. I know I’ve made it all sound simple. At the time it was anything but.
‘They sound like a
wonderful
couple.’
‘The first time I went in and asked for work off Mr Patel he chased me out with a broomstick …’ I tell her ruefully and she gives a short laugh.
‘But why train in that particular area, though? You especially attracted to blood and guts?’
S
he gives a small smile.
‘Not really. I’d just spent sixteen years in the presence of a man who was very fond of hurting people.’
She winces.
‘I wanted to make sure I only ever did the opposite.’ I look away from her, because it’s the truth, but it’s not the whole story as I know.
‘I’m sorry, Lawrence.’ Rose hangs her head.