affairs and beach stones

I - V

I'VE BEEN THINKING about the first time I heard the phrase unnatural practices. Believe it or not, it was in the staff room at St Luke's, on the lips of Mr R.A. Coppard MA (Oxon) – Richard to me, Dickie to his friends. He was sipping coffee from a brown flowered cup, and, taking off his spectacles and folding one hand over them, he leaned towards Mrs Brenda Whitelady, Class 12, and frowned. 'Was it?' I heard her say, and he nodded. 'Unnatural practices, the Argus said. Page seven. Poor old Henry.' Mrs Whitelady blinked and sucked in her breath excitedly. 'His poor wife. Poor Hilda.'

They went back to their exercise books, filling the margins with vigorous red ticks and crosses, and didn't say a word to me. This wasn't a surprise, as I was sitting in the corner of the room, and my position seemed to render me utterly invisible. By this time I'd been at the school several months, but still didn't have my own chair in the staff room. Harry said it was the same at the station: a selection of chairs appeared to have the names of their 'owners' stitched somewhere in invisible thread – that must have been why no one else ever sat on them. There were a few chairs over by the door, with threadbare cushions or uneven legs, which were anybody's; that is to say, the newest staff members sat there. I wondered if you had to wait until another member of staff retired or died before getting the chance to stake a claim to a 'usual' chair. Mrs Whitelady even had her own cushion, embroidered with purple orchids, on hers, so confident was she that no one else's backside would ever touch her seat.

I've been thinking about it because I had the dream again last night, as vivid as it was forty years ago. Harry and I were beneath a table; this time it was my desk in the classroom at St Luke's, but it was the same in all other respects: Harry's weight on me, holding me down; the huge ham of his thigh on mine; his shoulder bowed and stretched across me like the botHarry of a boat; and I'm part of him at last. There's no room for air between us.

And I'm coming to realise, writing this, that perhaps what worried me all along was what was inside me. My own unnatural practices. What would Mr Coppard and Mrs Whitelady have said if they knew how I felt about Harry? What would they have said if they knew I wanted to take him in my mouth and taste as much of him as I possibly could? Such desires, it seemed to me back then, must be unnatural in a young woman. Hadn't Sylvie warned me that she didn't feel much beyond fear when Roy touched her between her legs? My own parents were often stuck together in a long kiss in the scullery, but even my mother would slap my father's hand away when it went somewhere it shouldn't. 'Don't bother me now, Bill,' she'd say, shifting away from him on the sofa. 'Not now, love.'

In contrast, I wanted everything, and I wanted it now.

February 1958. All day at school I kept as close to the boiler as possible. In the playground I barked at the children to keep moving. Most of them did not have proper coats and their knees were bright with cold.

At home, Mum and Dad had begun to talk about Harry. I'd told them, you see, about our visit to the museum, the trip to London, and all our other outings, but I hadn't mentioned that Harry and I were not alone. 'Don't you go dancing together?' asked Mum. 'Hasn't he taken you to the Regent yet?'

But Harry hated dancing, he'd told me that early on, and I'd convinced myself that what we did was special, because it was different. We weren't like other couples. We were getting to know one another. Having proper conversations. And, having just turned twenty-one, I felt a bit old for all that teenage stuff, jukeboxes and jive.

One Friday evening, not wanting to go home and face the silent query that hung over the house about Harry's intentions towards me, I stayed late in the classroom, drawing up sheets for the children to fill in. Our project at the time was Kings and Queens of England, which I was beginning to think quite a dull topic, and I wished I'd done sheets on Sputnik or the