Sinners (27 page)

She went to bed feeling sick, and looked forward to the brightness of the morning.

It was Herbert’s third shower of the day. The water trickled lukewarm down his thin hairless body.

His eyes were clenched shut, as he thought about what he had caught his fat whore of a wife doing. Legs spread, she had been next door taking on all comers. Of course from the window where he had crouched watching, he didn’t have the best vantage point, but he certainly knew what was going on, oh yes, he certainly knew.

It was good he had not told Marge about getting fired from the Supreme Chauffeur Company. Now he was free to spy on her. In fact he was free to do what he wanted all day and all night.

As he had been working night shifts, he left the house at the usual time. Then he would either spend the evening at the movie theatre where the Jack Milan film with Sunday Simmons was playing, or he would go to a topless bar and watch the scenery with his cold hard eyes.

He knew when Marge was planning to go out. She became jumpy and nervous, fussing around him, trying to hurry him out of the house. He obliged by leaving quickly, but then he would return and watch her disgusting behaviour through his neighbour’s window.

Money was running short. He would have to get another job soon. He wasn’t worried, because long before being fired he had been prudent enough to steal some Supreme Chauffeur notepaper, and had written himself several glowing references.

When he found a job he would leave Marge – just walk out and leave her. Why should he work hard to put food in the mouth of such a filthy woman?

First he decided he would draw out her savings and buy himself a car. He would trick her into signing something, giving him access to her money, or he would forge her signature. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

‘Are you gonna be in there all day, Herbie?’ Marge whined outside the door.

She was always whining about something, asking him stupid questions about bank raids and women getting raped. Only that very morning she had said to him, ‘Herbie, isn’t it kinda difficult to rape a woman unless she wants it?’

‘You think of nothing but sex,’ he had replied in disgust.

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I can remember when your tongue used to hang out when I worked in that place with my titties all bare. You loved it.’

‘I don’t love it now, you’re a fat cow. Aren’t you ashamed of your body?’

Marge banged loudly on the bathroom door. ‘I’m gonna pee in my pants if you don’t let me in.’

Reluctantly he climbed out of the shower and, covering himself with a towel, opened the door.

She bounced in, and with a flash of fat thighs plonked herself on the toilet.

‘Hey, Herbie, remember that murder up on er – Miller Drive – just off the Strip? Remember it? Some young girl.’ She paused. ‘What’s the matter?’

He had turned white. The towel had fallen from his hands and he stared at her in horror. She
knew.
The bitch knew!

With a sense of triumph Marge realized that she had hit on something at last. Louella had been right! Her plan had worked! All the studying of newspapers and remembering names of streets, banks and victims had paid off.

‘What do you know?’ he demanded harshly.

‘Enough,’ she replied, remembering Louella’s advice to stay quiet. ‘Enough to put you behind bars for life.’ She added the last line on impulse; it sounded good. Lana Turner had said it on the late movie two nights before, and the guy she said it to had crumbled, buried his head in his hands and begged for mercy.

Herbert did neither of those things. He just stood there in his hairless nakedness, chewing on his bottom lip and narrowing his small mean eyes.

Marge felt good. In all their years of marriage Herbert had treated her like a piece of furniture, bossed her around, and even beaten her up. No wonder she had let herself get fat. For years before meeting Louella, she had hardly been out of the house except to go to the market. And there had been no sex at all after she lost the baby. Not that Herbert had been any great shakes at it – in and out like a rabbit and straight into the shower – but it had been better than nothing. Later Marge had harboured a grumbling resentment against him, especially when she found the filthy letters he was writing to all those fancy movie stars. The letters had helped, though; instead of Herbert, she took the letters to bed and imagined he was talking to her.

Herbert’s mind was racing. How had the bitch found out? Did he talk in his sleep? How did she know? And more important, what did she want from him?

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, picking up the towel and wrapping it around himself, trying to stay calm and cool and not beat the fat bitch in case perhaps she had told someone else. Maybe she had told that crabby neighbour, or one of the men she had been with at those disgusting sex orgies.

‘Don’t worry.’ Marge shifted herself off the toilet. ‘Why should I do anything? You’re my husband, aren’t you? And husband and wife should stick together.’ On impulse she put her arms around him and did a little wriggle against his body.

With horror he knew what she wanted.

‘Yeah, you’re my husband and I’m your wife, so even if I
wanted
to go to the cops it wouldn’t seem right, would it?’

She suddenly pulled off her cheap cotton dress, dragging it impatiently over her head. Then she released her mammoth bosom from a pink bra and shook it at him. ‘I guess we should do some of those things married people like to do together, huh? I guess that would be a lot of fun.’

She tugged at the towel round his waist. He stood quite still. If he did
that
with her he could catch something. He had seen her with all those other men; she must be
crawling
with germs.

But she didn’t want him to do that. She wanted him to do something to her much more intimate, something she had tried to get him to do when they were first married but he had refused.

He couldn’t refuse now. Bile rose in his throat and he went to work.

Later when Marge had gone out, smiling, triumphant and unwashed, Herbert wrote to Sunday Simmons, pouring out all his desires and needs, and charged his frustration into a clean plastic bag. She was all he had in life, the only beautiful thing.

He went out, posted the letter, and then went to see her in the Jack Milan movie, where he spent the rest of the day, watching it four times. He left after slipping his hand up the leg of an unsuspecting woman. Before she could complain he was gone.

He bought a newspaper and sat in a coffee shop studying the jobs vacant. He circled several possibilities. Tomorrow he had to get a job. There was no money, and with Marge knowing what he had done he could hardly walk out and leave her; she’d have the cops after him in no time.

The only answer, he realized, was to get rid of Marge – get rid of her once and for all.

It needed planning, but it could be done.

‘I wouldn’t have thought this would be your scene at all,’ Lady Phillipa said. She was sitting next to Charlie on the bus, her long hair wispy around her unmade-up face. She was wearing a purple patterned flowing dress and no shoes.

‘Why ever not?’ Charlie asked, feeling very much part of the group in his new outfit.

‘Well, you’re part of the whole film star bit, aren’t you? Big cars and houses. Surrounded by possessions. Possessions are your hang-up, aren’t they? You probably use women as possessions too. Tell me this, a woman is a sexual object to you, is she not?’

‘No, she’s not,’ he replied sharply. This ratty girl had a great knack of making him angry. ‘And possessions are not my hangup, as you put it. I don’t even have a house of my own.’

‘Tough shit.’ She started to laugh. ‘Don’t even have one little house of your own, that’s really bad.’

‘Is there something you don’t like about me?’ he asked tightly.

‘Nothing about you personally. Just you generally. I mean you’re part of the so-called establishment, you’re one of them, not one of us. Why are you hanging around with us?’

‘I’m not hanging around with you – I’m taking a trip with friends, Laurel and Floss and the others. Why does that upset you?’

‘Because you belong to a different generation. You’re my mother’s whole scene. You don’t belong here.’

The different-generation crack hurt Charlie. He stared out of the window and wished he hadn’t come.

After a while Phillipa said, ‘I could do with getting high. Got anything?’

‘Oh, I’m all right for supplying you with pot, am I?’

‘Yes. If you like I’ll pay you by sleeping with you.’

‘That’s the second time you’ve offered me sex. Haven’t you got any money?’

She flushed. ‘I told you I don’t like sex much, money’s more important to me, so I offered you the least important.’

‘Bully for you!’ Maybe one was better off with a big-breasted dumb girl. ‘By the way, I don’t even know your mother.’

‘You don’t
have
to know her. You’re part of the great showbiz world, aren’t you?’

‘So are Laurel and Floss,’ he pointed out mildly.

‘They’re different.’

He produced a joint and wondered if it was all right to smoke it on the bus. He didn’t feel like it, but he wanted to keep Phillipa company, so he lit up and in two minutes Floss was by his side, hissing, ‘Are you crazy? If the cops should stop us there’d be no trip of any kind.’

‘Sorry,’ said Charlie, quickly stubbing out the cigarette.

Phillipa laughed. ‘Everyone’s so uptight. Get pleasantly happy on a little hash and that’s bad.’

‘I’m with you,’ he agreed.

‘Yes, but the rest of your neurotic age group aren’t.’

There she went again, another dig about his age.

‘They don’t want to see the young enjoying all the things they never had. They hate to think of us doing what we want, wearing what we want, turning on and having sex without feeling guilty about it.’

‘You feel guilty about sex.’

‘I do not.’

‘Yes, you do – otherwise you’d enjoy it.’

Patiently she explained. ‘I do not enjoy sex because I cannot achieve any type of orgasm. I’m built that way.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know. Now go on and tell me that you’re the one and only man who can bring me to a full and beautiful climax.’

‘Maybe I could.’ He started to feel a bit horny. Maybe he could.

She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Do you know how many old men have told me that?’

‘How many
old
men have you
had?

‘Four – well, five, if you want to count my stepfather, and he was lousy. It’s an interesting fact that he told me my mother doesn’t achieve orgasm either. How about that? And she’s been married twice and had countless boyfriends.’

‘And I thought you were a modern girl! But you’re really charmingly old-fashioned, even down to knocking off your stepfather. Couldn’t you have at least made it your father?’

She shrugged. ‘I really don’t care whether you believe me or not. I’m way past the stage of bothering about what people think of me.’

He wondered how long it would take George to drive up and collect him. Lady Phillipa Longmead was a screwed-up adolescent, and that was not what he needed in his life.

Laurel came down the aisle. ‘Isn’t this fun,’ she enthused, her face alert and flushed. ‘Only three more hours to go, and then a beautiful night under the stars. Charlie, I’m so glad you came with us. Did you remember your sleeping bag?’

‘You didn’t tell me to bring a sleeping bag.’

‘Didn’t I? Sometimes I’m so forgetful. Philly, can Charlie squeeze in with you?’

‘I think that’s what he had in mind anyway.’

Laurel smiled. ‘I love you both. You know that, I truly love you.’ She touched them both on the shoulder as if she were a faith-healer, and carried on up the aisle.

‘We were at school together in Switzerland,’ Phillipa remarked. ‘We learnt French, cooking and masturbation.’

‘What do you do now?’ Charlie asked.

‘I bum around. I’m supposed to be studying modern design, but right now I’m taking a holiday to get over my abortion. I don’t have to do anything really; I’ve got plenty of money – trust funds and things. When I get back to London I’m buying a house somewhere in Hampstead or maybe the country, and turning it into a commune. People will be free to come and go and do their own thing. No rules, just a lovely uncomplicated life.’

‘And you footing all the bills?’

‘Why not? I’ve got the money. Why shouldn’t I use it on other people. What do you do with all your money?’

‘I pay taxes, look after my children, and pay bills. Sometimes I buy myself a car or a camera or anything I fancy.’

‘Including a woman, a sexual object.’

‘For someone who’s not interested in sex it does seem to be your only subject.’

‘My mother doesn’t know where it’s at. She’s like you, always trying to be smart. She’s sending me to an analyst here. You go in to see this man and he makes you take off all your clothes and lie on a couch. Everything has to come off. He says he can see the tension points on the body that way. How about
that
? He got a bit of a shock when he first saw me; he’s used to all those Beverly Hills rich ladies with big boobs and flat stomachs and sexy thighs. I think he was choked when he got me. Nothing to feast his greedy little eyes on.’

Charlie laughed. He could imagine the scene. ‘Why do you go?’

‘My mother’s a trustee. I don’t get my money until I’m twenty-one, so meanwhile she doles out what she thinks I should get. Actually she can’t stand me; it’s mutual. Would you care to meet her? She’d
love
to meet you.’

‘Are you inviting me?’

She yawned. ‘Aren’t you bored with me yet? I usually bore people quite early on in a relationship.’

Well, she
was
different.

*    *    *

The festival was being held in the grounds of a large old farmhouse. Acres and acres of green land, swarming with the thousands of young visitors who were steadily appearing by the hour.

It was quite a sight. They were arriving on foot, by car, motorcycle, bus, and train. A colourful procession; some of the girls carried babies, and a few toddlers moved along with the crowd. Nearly everyone had long hair and flowing clothes. Ordinarily dressed people were regarded as suspect.