Spider Light (9 page)

Maria Robards promised not to do so, and switched temporarily back to her scavenging expeditions for historic buildings. She went off most afternoons armed with camera and loose-leaved notebook, dressed in co-ordinating trousers and tweed jackets because she refused to be seen in public, or even in private, wearing denim (shudder) or trainers (God forbid).

These well-dressed expeditions, inevitably, took her to Twygrist.

Twygrist. Even years afterwards, the name conjured up a smothering darkness for Donna.

Twygrist was the old watermill just outside Amberwood’s little market town. It was no longer working, but it was a bit of a landmark; local people said, ‘Turn left just past Twygrist,’ or, ‘He lives about a mile along from Twygrist.’

Twygrist might have been any age at all, but it had an air of extreme antiquity as if it had crouched there malevolently all through the Dark Ages. Even the clock set into one wall in memory of somebody or other, looked a bit like a face, so that from some angles you could imagine it was watching you as you went along the road.

Donna’s mother was fascinated by Twygrist. She scoured the local library and the offices of the local newspaper to find out about its history, which she related to her family. (‘Ad nauseam,’ said Don, who thought watermills nearly as gross as spending summer holidays with parents.)

Twygrist, said Maria undaunted by Don, had once stood on the edge of a vast estate owned by the local baronial lords, but a fire had destroyed almost the entire estate in the middle 1800s. After this, somewhere around 1860, the mill had been bought
and put into working order by a certain Josiah Forrester, who had clearly been one of those canny Victorian gentlemen with an eye to a profit. ‘Your father would have had a lot in common with him, dears.’

Maria was trying to find a photograph of Josiah, although that was proving difficult, with photography having been in its infancy at the time. Still, there might be a painting somewhere–one of those municipal portraits in a library or something. Dundreary whiskers and a large stomach, like Edward VII, most likely.

She was also on the track of a man called George Lincoln, whom Josiah had employed as his miller towards the end of the nineteenth century. George, it seemed, had been a man of some substance. One had not known that millers were so highly regarded, but there were records of him having owned quite a big house with servants, so there you were, you could never tell who might be prosperous from one century to the next. She was going to spend the day at the nearby archive office, to see what she could find out about George and his family.

‘Your father’s going to drive me straight there after breakfast, aren’t you, Jim? It’ll be quite a long day, so we’ll have lunch out somewhere and get home around mid-afternoon. Are you two sure you won’t come with us?’

‘Quite sure,’ said Don, who had bought several new CDs in Chester the previous day, and was planning to lie on his bed and listen to them.

Maria thought this very antisocial of him, and would have started an argument, but their father interrupted, saying, ‘Oh leave the boy alone, my dear, he’s probably got girl problems, I know I had them at his age.’ Maria retorted that she did not see how having girl problems gave Don an excuse for sulks and moods. This, as Donna could have told them, had the effect of sending Don flouncing from the breakfast table, stumping crossly up the stairs to his bedroom and slamming the door so hard that the crockery on the dresser jiggled.

‘Typical teenager,’ said Donna’s father resignedly, and her
mother suggested they leave Don to his romantic sulks, and that Donna came with them.

But Donna did not feel like chasing millers across half of Cheshire, and her mother would expect her to act as assistant and make masses of tedious notes. So she said she would stay at the cottage, and perhaps walk down to Amberwood later. She could look round the little art gallery–they’d some quite good jewellery last summer. She was into chunky modern jewellery at the moment, said Donna. Don might come with her if he could be torn away from his CDs, but she did not care if he did not. Whatever they did they would be perfectly all right. Yes, they would prepare a meal for tonight.

After her parents left, Donna wandered around the cottage, trying to summon up the energy to walk down to Amberwood. Girl problems, their father had said.
Girl
problems…Donna had not known about any girl in Don’s life. Who was she, this unknown girl, who might be the cause of his flouncing tantrums? Probably she did not exist. But if she did, how old was she? Don’s age? Younger–fourteen or so? That was not too young for sexual adventures these days–Donna knew that perfectly well. Had Don been to bed with this girl?

The thumping of a CD was filling the little house, and it seemed to insinuate itself inside Donna’s head. It was a hard, rhythmic pounding, and the longer it went on, the more it drummed up all kinds of images…

One of those images was of Don lying on his bed upstairs, his hair tousled against the pillows so that it looked like polished tow…He wore his hair a bit longer than was currently fashionable, but Donna rather liked that. It gave him a romantic soulful look. Like a poet. You could not imagine Byron or Keats having a convict-type haircut.

Had he stripped off his shirt to listen to his music? It was high summer and it got quite hot under the roof. Was he lying on the bed wearing only cotton jeans or shorts? His hair and his skin glowed from the sun, and his body was lean and supple from
playing games at school. He was good at games, although at the moment he was pretending to find them too exhausting for words.

Girl
problems. It was inevitable there would be girls in Don’s life: he was so charming, so good-looking. There would be the sisters of schoolfriends, and girls he would meet in the holidays…

The pounding music was no longer inside Donna’s mind, it was scudding and throbbing through her whole body. Like the scudding and throbbing you felt with a boy when you were in bed with him. There had not been many boys with whom Donna had been to bed but there had been a couple; you could not reach eighteen these days without having explored your sexual prowess. It was necessary to conform, to go with the crowd, to take part in slightly hysterical giggling sessions with girlfriends, relating how far you had gone and whether it had been any good, and whether he had been any good. Sometimes shrieking and saying things like, ‘Oh God, you didn’t do it with
him
, did you, how utterly
gross
…’

The trouble was that none of the boys Donna had met matched up to Don. She had sometimes thought she might be a bit cold. But this was not something that could be admitted so she had dutifully yielded her virginity, since not to do so meant being regarded by your contemporaries as a freak, a sad old vestal. Imagine being eighteen and still a virgin, said Donna’s friends pityingly, and Donna had agreed and laughed at the very idea.

But imagine being eighteen, and standing in the kitchen of a battered old cottage, trying to beat down a pulsating lust for your own brother.

Of course Donna was not going to do anything–well–anything wrong with Don. This was the last quarter of the twentieth century, and they were living in a civilized society. It was only in the Dark Ages, in tiny rural backwaters with no means of travelling anywhere or seeing people beyond your own family, that brothers and sisters ended up in bed together. There was a sick old joke, wasn’t there, that incest almost died out when the railways came?

Incest. It was an ugly, sly word. Donna thrust it away, and
went to the foot of the stairs to shout up to Don that she would walk down to the village to pick up some food for tonight. She pulled on her trainers, slammed the cottage door, and went out into the warm sunshine before anything could make her change her mind.

But as she walked into Amberwood, and as she looked at the hand-crafted jewellery in the gallery, her mind was full of images of Don. She bought a pair of jade earrings, and picked up some cooked ham and chicken from the nearby delicatessen, together with ingredients for a salad. By midday she was walking back to the cottage. The sun was high overhead; if you looked straight at it, you got sunspots in front of your eyes.

When she reached the cottage she put the food in the fridge, and unlaced her trainers. The sunspots were still dancing across her vision, but the cottage was cool and dim, and the old oak floors were smooth and friendly under her bare feet. She went up the narrow creaking stairs, intending to go into her bedroom to put the earrings away.

Don’s bedroom was on the half-landing, where the stairs turned sharply to the right. Donna hesitated, and put out a hand to touch the door. Was he in there now? Had he heard her come in? She tapped, and called out his name, and heard a movement from within. The sunspots whirled across her eyes again, like showers of gold flecks. She was aware of the scent of the deodorant she had put on that morning diluting the sweat forming under her arms.

After a moment, she pushed open the door and went in.

It was like stepping into the image she had had earlier. Don had stripped off his shirt, and was lying on his back on the bed staring up at the ceiling. The CDs had apparently come to an end or he had not bothered to replay them, and the room was very quiet. What had he been thinking?

There was a scent of old timbers, as there was in most of the rooms of Charity Cottage, but there was the faint scent of masculine sweat as well, which was exciting, because it was Don’s sweat. Donna
found the silence exciting as well. The feeling that she was entering her own fantasy deepened. If either of them spoke, or if any sound at all disturbed the utter quiet, the fantasy would shatter, and she would simply go back downstairs and wash the lettuce and radishes for tonight’s supper, and the moment would pass into ordinariness.

But Don did not speak, there were no sounds from outside and the moment did not pass into ordinariness. The silence went on and on, and the sunspots, the heat of the day and the room’s scents began to blur in Donna’s mind. Don had not moved; he was watching her from the bed, and his eyes had a slanting, beckoning look. Was this how he looked at those girls–those unknown, possibly nonexistent girls? Donna suddenly hated all the girls Don might know or who he would come to know in the future. She could not bear the thought of those girls eyeing him with giggling teenage lust, wanting to touch him, perhaps being touched by him…Telling one another about it afterwards–‘I did it with Don Robards last night, and he was terrific…’

She was not aware of having crossed the room, or of having sat down on the edge of the bed, but she discovered she had done so. She was close enough to see the faint sheen of perspiration on his skin, and the slight flush across his cheekbones. Beautiful. Oh God, he’s so beautiful. And just as she had not meant to walk across to the bed, nor had she meant to actually touch him. But they were inside the fantasy together, of course, so it was all right. Her hands reached out to him, tracing the line of his chest, feeling the warm firmness of his skin against her palms. Like a cushion of satin.

His reaction to her touch was instant; it sizzled between them, Donna could feel it–it was like an arcing light, like watching fireworks ignite on a dark river. Donna and Don, moving together towards the deepest, most intense intimacy there could ever be…

He was nervous–Donna could sense that, but she could also sense that he was trembling with fear and passion. When she pulled off her shirt he seemed to flinch. Donna laughed, understanding that he was fearful of what they were about to do, pulling him against her for a moment to reassure him, and then reaching down
to unfasten his jeans, pulling them open and sliding her hand inside. There was no mistaking his response now. As her fingers closed around him, he hardened instantly, and made an involuntary thrusting movement. Donna unfastened her own jeans with her other hand and kicked them off.

The feel of Don’s beloved body against her bare thighs was so fiercely exciting she thought for a moment she might actually faint. When she pulled his hand down between her legs the throbbing excitement was almost more than she could bear.

She thought he flinched again when she began to guide him into her, but then there was the helpless thrusting once more. There was nothing in the world except this hot bedroom and the two of them, nothing except the feel of Don’s body, the brush of his hair where his head was buried in her bare shoulder and his frenzied excitement. Utter perfection. Body and mind blending and fusing. Was he feeling the same? Oh, but of course he was.

Too soon–far, far too soon–he gave a gasping shudder, and fell heavily onto her. Donna lay still, not caring that he was crushing her ribs, only caring that after this he was hers, utterly and irrevocably. It no longer mattered if the entire female population of the world set out to screw him, because this afternoon she had printed Don with her own stamp and no other girl would ever be able to measure up to this.

The sun poured in through the half curtained windows and the bed, although a bit old, was soft and comfortable. There was no need to get up yet; the bedside clock was only pointing to half past one, and their parents would not be home for ages. Don was still lying half across her, but he was no longer squashing her and he had fallen into a half sleep. The room was warm and drowsy; Donna’s own eyelids grew heavy and she, too, slept.

She was woken by the sound of footsteps–two sets of footsteps–on the stairs, and by her mother’s voice laughing and calling to know where the children were. Were they in bed asleep at this hour, the pair of lazybones they were! They had had such
a good day, there was masses to tell, and lots of research to discuss…

The bedroom door opened.

Donna would never forget the sight of her mother’s face as she took in the sight of her children lying in bed, their bodies still tangled together, the sheets pushed aside. She would never forget the sight of her father standing behind her mother, his face white with shock and anger, his eyes suddenly hard and cold. Donna was suddenly aware that there was a patch of wet stickiness under her thighs, and that the stain was probably visible. She was conscious of her own uncovered body, and of Don’s. She sat up and pulled the sheet over her.

There would be a dreadful row, but they would talk their way out of it, just as they always did. Don would be with her–he would help her through it. He would not let her down.