The Admirer

“You know, I am sorry.” He spoke softly and stroked the back of her hand gently. “I hate it when we fight, you know I do. I can just get very emotional sometimes. I’m a very emotional guy.” He gave her a quick shy smile and looked down at the floor. He looked at her feet, at her toes. Beautiful toes. He thought that they were the most beautiful toes in the world, pure and perfect in shape and form.

She sat perfectly still as he knelt beside the armchair, tucked beneath the tall window in the alcove. The early summer sun beamed in illuminating tiny dancing fragments of dust and swirling flakes of her discarded skin. She didn’t answer him, she just sat still, staring despondently at the television screen as a second rate imported soap opera rattled on. Its plotline weaker than a political apology but these things transfixed her. Sometimes he didn’t like her watching them but at the moment, anything which made her happy made him happy even if it did make his own, imperfect, toes curl.

“I’m going to make some food, do you want anything?” He rubbed her hand as he asked but she didn’t reply. It was omnibus day. “I’ll make you some so it’s there if you want it, okay?”

He turned back briefly as he reached the door and looked at her across the room. She was beautiful to him, even staring blankly at that screen eyes glazed over he loved her. He looked at the sunlight falling through the window onto her pale skin. How it gleamed like pure woven silk, virgin, white. He could see every tiny soft hair on her slight form. She glowed. The sun shone through her shoulder length, dirty blonde hair and formed a halo behind her barely parted lips which made his whole being tremble.

He could not imagine a creature as beautiful, no man on earth had ever discovered one. She was perfection, his perfection, the perfect perfection. He felt emotion grow and swell around him ready to engulf him. When moments like this came he had learned to appreciate them, not to fear them anymore. They would rush up and surge over him, overwhelming him so much that sometimes he feared he may drown in them and lose the real world for ever. Sometimes he wondered if he should let himself, but he never dared. Elation, excitement, joy, guilt, fear, anticipation and all the other ambiguities of the human condition that he knew. As he said himself, he was a very emotional guy.

“I wish I knew you were coming, I would have cleaned the place up a bit.” He shouted back as he shuffled down the cramped hallway into the kitchen. “I suppose I could have done it while you’ve been here, but with all the fun we’ve been having, eh?”

He began sorting through some packets on the worktop, separating the empty ones and tossing them to one side. He filled a couple of pans with water and put them on the old gas hobs to boil. Most of the cupboards in the kitchen were bare and the refrigerator was warm and smelt of must and sour milk.

He quickly threw some rice and frozen vegetables into the pans and turned to head back to the living room. He paused as he went and opened the back door, he figured he probably should let a little air in, having guests and all. Besides, it was getting quite hot those last few days and the flies were getting pretty bad.

He walked back into the lounge and saw her turn her head away from the door and back toward the television as he stepped in. He felt timid for a moment, embarrassed by her anger, embarrassed that he had offended her to such an extent. He had never realised.

He settled back to his vigil beside her armchair, there on the floor holding her small hand in his. Watching the sun dropping on her face illuminating and casting shadows simultaneously across every tiny facet of her. Just for him. Only ever for him. So pure.

He sighed deeply, stroking his hand up and down her forearm now and shaking his head. “I really am sorry, you must believe me. This silence is upsetting me, it really is. You just sit there, just sit there and stare at that TV. What about our talks, eh? You always told me you liked our talks. You even said you loved them once.”

He gave her hand a tight squeeze as he let out another deep sigh. The silent treatment had been funny at first, a joke, he hadn’t taken her seriously. If she was trying to prove a point, she had won, he kept half expecting her to suddenly snap out of it at any moment and wrap him up in her arms, giggling.

He slid his hand higher up, now stroking from shoulder to wrist, riding the smooth contours of her small muscles. “You need to get some food in you, that’ll brighten you right up. Fuel, that’s what you need and that’s just what’s for dinner. Good fuel for good girls.”

“Good girls, good girls just like you. You’re my good girl aren’t you?” The question was rhetorical, she didn’t answer him anyway. “That’s right isn’t it? My good girl, you’re my good girl.”

He slid his hand slower and slower up and down her arm. Pausing for longer and longer at her shoulder and bicep, gathering courage. His breath was quickening and he was still muttering: “Good girl, you’re my good girl aren’t you?”

He let his hand perch on her shoulder for a few seconds then he slipped it quickly across her collarbone and down into her shirt. His breath getting faster. He let his hand slide down to the small nub of her breast, nipple swollen on her flat chest. “Good girl, you’re my good girl aren’t you.” He panted. “My pure little love.”

She didn’t like her body, even though he told her she was beautiful all the time, she didn’t like her body. She knew it would change, many of the other girls she knew had already started experiencing the changes, and exploring the possibilities that they brought. Not all of them but most.

Blossoming, that was what her mother always called it. Blossoming. “Don’t you worry yourself dear,” she would say when she saw her standing before the mirror staring at her flat chest and straight hips. “Soon enough you’ll blossom dear. I sometimes think too soon. But you’ll be beautiful, you’ll be so beautiful and I’ll be so proud. You’ll be so beautiful that the whole world will gather around you and crave to be a part of your life.” Then they would hug and sometimes her mother would allow a tiny tear to creep down her cheek, though she would always deny it.

He always said she was beautiful too. Said she was an angel. He would say things to her and blush and become nervous. And in those small moments she knew that she was in complete control of him. She didn’t even really like him but he wasn’t bad, there was nothing in particular wrong with him and these little exchanges always made her feel more like a woman, or at least a bit closer to ‘blossoming’ into one.

At first she wouldn’t see him very often, maybe once or twice every few weeks, often just walking along the same street. They would pause and chat, he would ask about her life and her feelings, she would seldom ask him anything but he didn’t seem to like talking about himself much, and besides, she was her favourite subject anyway.

At first she thought it was a little creepy, wanting to talk to somebody who you didn’t know, but she figured it was just one of the ways boys met girls they liked. Just saying hello. She used to get a little scared sometimes at first because of all the awful things that you would see on TV but he told they would use the TV to scare people. She didn’t know who they were but she liked the idea. He made her laugh, he was interested in hearing about her life and her world. He made her feel grown up, real.

They often said not to talk to strangers but he wasn’t a stranger, he was her friend. And besides, if they used the TV to scare people then why wouldn’t they just talk to them to scare them too? She liked thinking that she had a little piece of special knowledge like that. That she was a little bit more ‘in touch’ than her friends and that she had this friend who would show her and explain to her these things. She felt special.

One afternoon, as summer was starting to take a firmer hold on the weather and the humidity was high she had almost got caught in an awful thunderstorm. She didn’t think they were awful, secretly she enjoyed them, the weight of the giant raindrops, the scent of the storm gathering in the calm, the sudden twilight the clouds would cause and of course the great crashes and flashes of natures fireworks.

She had ducked into a bus stop where she sat listening to the rain on the roof and watching the drops bounce back up from the pavement when he pulled up in his car by the curb. He called out to her, offered her a lift home. Told her he would take her to the shops, she could wait out the storm there and spend her bus fare on sweets. She didn’t have any bus fare and didn’t really want to leave the bus stop but she accepted reminding herself that sitting on the pavement was no way for a lady to behave anyway. Not a lady, a woman.

She sort of knew she shouldn’t really have got into the car but he wasn’t a stranger, he was her friend. She could trust him, he told her that every time they had met. But he didn’t take her to the shops or to her home. He took her to his home. She wondered if she was in trouble, if she had done something wrong. He didn’t speak throughout the whole journey.

Kneeling, stroking, he thought back to her arrival.

It had been so long since he had last had guests, he kept the house in a way he had grown used to. He didn’t really like it or dislike it but he was comfortable and housekeeping had never been one of his greatest talents.

She had been acting a little strange throughout the journey, not really speaking. He didn’t really know why he brought her back to his home. He didn’t really know if he had actually meant to, it had just happen. It was so good to have her there though. The way he felt. As soon as she walked through the door he knew she was perfect, he knew he was in love, he knew he would never be lonely again. Not now she was here.

But she hadn’t liked the house. She had explored a little as he had rushed and fussed about the place trying to make cups of tea or quickly tidy away some of the clutter of his life. She had got scared by the house, by its sounds and smells. He had told her not to be afraid, to trust him, he was her friend after all. But she hadn’t listened, he tried to hold her to calm her but she had struggled and wriggled against him. He got hard.

He had let himself get swept up in the emotion of the moment, the beauty of it. Thinking back he probably should have taken it a little slower, a new relationship and all but they were just so good together, so right. He couldn’t completely control himself, didn’t completely want to. Wasn’t passion just another facet of love, of emotion? And he was a very emotional guy.

He had held her tighter to him and tried to kiss her. To hold and embrace the precious form that danced for him in his dreams and watched over him as he slept. But she began to scream. Loud and long, he couldn’t understand what she was doing. Why was she doing this? He became scared, frightened by the sound and the way it twisted up her face. She almost looked like someone else, someone older and more familiar. As the recollection came closer he started to feel sickened, sick to the depth of every cell. He clasped his hands over his ears to block out the sound and shut his eyes to block out the sight.

It didn’t work. He began screaming too. It didn’t work. He hadn’t meant it. He couldn’t even see. He hadn’t aimed or anything. He had just started flailing with his arms. He didn’t know why, just standing, rooted to the spot, roaring at the top of his lungs with his eyes clamped shut and his arms waving wildly around him.

She must have moved. Come closer or backed off. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t meant it. His fist slapped dully and hollowly against her windpipe. She slipped to the floor holding her throat. She made a strange noise, which he never heard over his own screams. When he opened his eyes she was lying there, hand on her throat. Staring.

He apologised. He begged and he fretted. He grovelled and he sweated but she wouldn’t forgive him, she wouldn’t even speak to him. He took her to the nice chair in the lounge and let her watch her favourite shows on TV even though he loathed them. He even went to the shops and bought some ice cream, he had read somewhere that it was good for sore throats, but she hadn’t touched it. Maybe she didn’t like the flavour.

It had been three days now and his love still wouldn’t speak to him, wouldn’t even acknowledge him with a glance or a scowl. She just sat there in that chair, him knelt at her side, staring at the TV set. He tried to feed her but she wouldn’t eat. He tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t answer. He brought things for her but she wouldn’t accept them.

He held her hand but she never held his. He kissed her but she never kissed him back. He came but she never did. She didn’t even get excited when her own face appeared on the screen.

But they were together and in love. And he knew that the love was strong and pure. After all, he was a very emotional guy. With this thought he stood up, gave her a quick smile so she would know he wasn’t angry with her and went to check on the food.

© 2003