Teach Me Dirty (8 page)

“But you’re worried about mine…” she whispered. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because I said I was lonely. Because you heard me…” Tap, tap, tap went her heels. “Maybe I heard you, too…” I looked away, far into the distance, and she took it to mean I was displeased, I could hear the tension in her breath. “I’m sorry, I was wrong… stupid me… it’s nothing… just an overactive imagination. My dad says I have to keep my feet on the ground, he says I’m away with the fairies, making up loads of stupid crap that doesn’t mean anything… he says…”

“You’re right,” I said, cutting off her flow. “Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I’m lonely, too. I know sadness, Helen, I know how it feels to be alone, and unseen. I know how it feels to be misunderstood, and outside the circle, I know how it feels when those around you want you to be anyone but yourself.”

“It’s just my dad really,” she said. “He’s so… practical. Everything has to be solid, black or white.”

“My father wanted me to be an accountant,” I shared. “Roberts and sons of Bristol, quite a prestigious firm. Only it’s Roberts and sons minus one son, the youngest. The boy who understood colours a lot better than he understood numbers. I never saw the magic in numbers, I never found satisfaction in regimented order.”

“Me, neither. My dad drives buses. He gets from A to B, on time. That’s his job, keeping order, keeping to the route. He enjoys the routine of it, says an orderly mind makes for an orderly life.” She smirked. “
Time waits for no man, a good sense of timekeeping is an asset, Helen, nobody likes to be kept waiting.
”

“That’s true enough.”

She nodded. “It’s true enough, but what fun is there in order? In keeping the status quo?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.”

“What’s life without risk, right? I think life is about experience… about the extremes… that’s where I think the soul thrives. What do you think?”

“I think you have a very gifted and colourful life ahead of you, Helen.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do.”

Her eyes twinkled. “What about your mum? Did she like numbers, too?”

“Not so much. She was more for people than money, she was a nurse. For the love of it, not the salary. My father earned plenty enough for all of us. He’d go to church every Sunday, for the public face more than anything else, but he found his God in the stock market. My brothers, too.”

“My mum is in care work. She looks after the old folk down at Hawthorn House.”

“And does she also think you need to keep your feet on the ground?”

Helen shrugged. “I dunno, she thinks whatever Dad thinks, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes she changes his mind though, when he’s being mean.”

“My mother saved my backside from the belt a few times. I’d have taken a lot worse without her intervention.”

“My dad has never hit me, he just moans.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” I checked my watch. “You need to be home for six? If so, we’ll have to leave soon.”

“No…” Her tone was so eager. Cute and eager. “It’s no problem. They’ll put mine in the oven… and I can heat it up later, no big deal… unless, unless you need to be somewhere…”

I should’ve said yes. Should’ve made my excuses and driven her straight back to real life, where I was her teacher and this was nothing. “No,” I said. “I don’t.” I lit another cigarette to keep my hands busy. “So, what else? What else do you see?”

She turned to face me, hitching her leg up on the rock and gracing me with a view of her thigh, almost up to her crotch. She didn’t notice, and I tried not to look, but her skin was so pale and so beautiful. It would have been so easy to touch her, so very easy. I made myself focus on her words. “I see the way you love art, the way you love the masters, the beauty you see in everything. You see things that I see. Sometimes I see something beautiful, something that inspires me, even something simple and ordinary that other people overlook. A play of shadow in the art room, the texture of spilled paint, the gleam of light in a water glass… and then I see you’ve seen it, too.”

“We share an artistic eye.”

“Earlier you said it was more than that,” she whispered, and she was nervous again, her eyes darting to her lap and she hitched her skirt down. “What did you mean?”

“I meant we’re cut from similar cloth,” I said. “It’s not just the artistic eye, it’s the way of viewing the world. You could cut through the differences, the personality traits, the life history, even the age gap, and what you’d have left is the same creative current running through us both. That’s what I meant. That’s how I see it.”

“So, we
are
friends, right, Mr Roberts? That’s what it means?”

The hopefulness in her eyes gave me shivers, and my cock thumped afresh. She shifted her legs, and her goose-pimpled shin pressed against my thigh. I swallowed before succumbing to the inevitable, crossing another line that should never be crossed.

“It’s Mark,” I said. “You should call me Mark.”

***

Helen

Mark. Mark Roberts. Mark, Mark, Mark.

Kiss me,
Mark
. Touch me,
Mark
. That feels so good,
Mark
.

I love you,
Mark
.

I’m in love with you,
Mark
.

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” I said, and I was smiling. I couldn’t stop smiling.

“Don’t get too used to it. I’ll still have to be Mr Roberts in school time.”

My heart fluttered at the implication.
In school time
. I daren’t even dream, daren’t hope, but my spirit was soaring, here in this special place, this
secret
place, with Mark.
Mark
. My smile must have spoken volumes.

“What?” he said. “It’s just a name, Helen.” But he was smiling, too. “I’m glad it pleases you.”

“It does. I like it,
Mark
.”

He laughed. “That actually sounds quite strange. Fewer and fewer people call me Mark these days, it seems.”

“Why?” The question tumbled out.

He shrugged. “I guess it means I see more and more people in school, and less outside of it. That, or I’m becoming an increasingly grumpy old bastard and nobody wants to speak with me anymore.”

“I don’t believe that.” The breeze picked up again and I pulled my shins towards me, rubbed them with my palms.

“Give it time.”

I’d give it all the time in the world, and it wouldn’t matter. His eyes caught the last of the sun, reflected it back to me, and his irises were so blue. Like the summer sky on still water. His features were so strong… so dark… so… beautiful. My skin still burned from his touch, from the strength of his grip as he’d helped me over the fence. I wish I’d have fallen, tripped on the railing and toppled into his arms, and he’d have caught me and held me tight. I wished he was still touching me. I wished the world was full of fences and he’d have to help me over every single one for the rest of time.

And more, I wished for so much more than that.

I was still rubbing my knees and I hadn’t even noticed. He pulled a face, and I stopped, but it was too late.

“Are you cold? We should leave, I didn’t realise you were getting a chill.”

“I’m not…” I lied. “I’m good. It’s not even cold.” A gust of wind caught my hair before the words had even left my lips.

“You need to watch it with the lying,” he chided, but his eyes were smiling. “You’ll grow a nose like Pinocchio.”

“I just… like it here… I don’t want to go yet…” I admitted. “Please…”

“Then take this.” He made to shrug his jacket off, but I put a hand on his arm.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Here. Let me.” His hands reached for my ankles and pulled them across his lap, and my tummy wriggled and tickled and my breath felt heavy in my throat. His thighs were warm through his trousers, but not as warm as his fingers as they rubbed my skin. I stared transfixed, watching him touching me, Mr Roberts
actually
touching me. And then my legs weren’t cold anymore. None of me was cold. And there were more tickles inside. Hot tickles that made me ache to slip my hand between my legs, where it feels so nice.
Or his hand.
The thought made my breath stop, made the world spin.
Mr Roberts touching me
. “Better?”

“Much… thanks.” In my head I saw Lizzie, open-mouthed, hands frantic as she urged me to seize the moment and be
seductive
. I wished I was her, wished I had her confidence, and her sexiness. But I was only me. I rested my weight on my hands, and tipped my shoulders back, displaying breasts I didn’t really have until I felt too shy and sat up again, but he didn’t seem to notice anyway. His gaze was on his hands and my skinny little goose-pimply legs. “I love it here. It’s nice… and it’s nice to talk… it’s nice to have someone… someone who understands…”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you talk? I mean, do you… have someone? Sorry, I shouldn’t… I just never asked before…” My heart thumped, as though the wrong answer would toss me into the wind, and I’d break into tiny slivers of glass.

He paused for a long time. A long, long time, but his hands didn’t stop moving. “No. Not anymore.”

Oh, the relief. It flooded me and fuelled me, and I wanted to pry, dig my way under his skin, until I found the soul of Mr Roberts. Of
Mark.
His fingers felt so good, and I felt so bad, daring to part my knees just a little, wishing wishing wishing he’d move his hand up my thigh. Wishing he’d put his fingers between my legs, where I was fluttery and wet and needy and it was all for him.
Please touch me.

“And what about you, Helen? Do you have someone?”

I laughed. “No…” And then I checked myself. “I mean, I
have
had. A few times. But it’s over. Didn’t work out. Mutual decision, you know how it goes…”

I could tell he wanted to smile, I could see the little dips in his cheeks, but he didn’t. “I see. Yes, I know how it goes.”

“My boyfriends have always been vanilla, though.” I felt my face burn at my own stupid dorkiness.

“Vanilla?”

“Yeah… they were just… boys…”

“Boys?”

“Well, lads… idiots really… they didn’t, um, know. I didn’t tell them… about the things in my sketches…” I looked away from him, far away. Took a breath and a lungful of bravery. “I didn’t tell them about the things I want… the real things… the, um… the things I think about… with you…”

He swallowed, and his hands stopped moving, and I thought I felt something in his lap, something solid, against my calves, something hard and… and… I felt my pulse in my tummy, and I got a shiver, the kind of shiver that makes me draw the pictures in the first place. He shifted on the rock, pushed my legs towards his knees.

“We need to go,” he said. “I’d better get you home.”

My heart pounded, but I made myself keep talking. “Most of the time I’m sure I’m a freak, sure that you’d never understand… sure that it’s just me, and my crazy imagination, and that you’d never want the same things I want…” Now or never, and I was praying to the gods of this place, wherever we were, praying that the little flutter of knowing, deep inside me, was right, and that my soul did know Mr Roberts, even if my brain didn’t. “But then sometimes… we see with the same eyes… and I wonder…”

He gripped my ankles tight, and he stared at me, and his skin was paler than usual. “I can’t do this, Helen.” He lifted my feet and placed them back on the floor. “I’m your teacher, I need to stop.” And he sounded sad. No, not sad. Guilty. He sounded guilty.

“But you haven’t done anything… just been my friend…”

“I’ll always be your friend, Helen, but we have to go now.”

He got to his feet and held out his hand. I took it mutely, confused and scared and dizzy on the inside as he pulled me up after him. And then he took off, walking quickly back the way we came, and I followed, struggling to think of words to stop him, to make it ok again. He leapt the fence, and again he helped me over, but this time he didn’t touch me, not like he had before. His hand was awkward and rigid, gripping my elbow like I was both dangerous and in danger. In the car he wound down the window and lit up a cigarette, and he didn’t offer me any this time.

I nearly asked for a whole one. Nearly asked for the whole packet.

The fluttery brightness inside me turned dark, as though I’d lost something I hadn’t known I’d had. He was Mr Roberts again now, beyond all doubt, and I was little Helen Palmer, just a girl. Just a kid.

“I’m sorry…” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you angry…”

“You didn’t. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

But I did, and it felt horrible. I felt like an idiot, and I hated inner Lizzie for making me so brave.

“I shouldn’t have said anything… I’ve ruined it, haven’t I?” A horrible tightness in my throat, and I didn’t need him to speak, I already knew the answer.