The Catalyst (6 page)

He had been surprised by how little she had changed. True, her hair was a little shorter, her figure a little more full and maybe there was a hint of tension about her mouth but she still drew him like a magnet. Why that should be was something he had never been able to explain.

For the briefest moment his mind filled with pictures of Amanda, his partner, soon to be his wife, waiting in his London flat, filling it with beautiful things and having drinks parties with all their friends. He could hear her explaining his current absence to them.

‘Oh yes, Jasper has just nipped down to tidy up the loose ends on his inheritance.’ He smiled wryly to himself knowing she would make it sound important even though the farm was in a ruinous state.

‘The property is in the middle of nowhere of course but it should be good as a weekend hideaway. It’s a farm but I really can’t see us keeping cows ... much too smelly.’

He could hear her girly laughter as she screwed up her lovely face in a comical expression of mock dismay for the amusement of her friends. No sooner had he had these thoughts than he wondered why he had felt the need to swap thoughts of one woman with another, somehow safer, woman and he closed the door of the silver Mercedes behind Jenny with a distinct feeling of unease at his own behaviour.

They travelled to the farm in silence, each of them busy with their thoughts. Jasper noticing anew the familiar lanes of his childhood wanderings and the usual tumble of luxurious undergrowth in the ravines running down to the sea. He had tried not to visit his native county too many times since he had left to try his luck in London over twenty years ago, there had been too many painful memories then.

So his new life had taken over and he had been too busy making money to realise his real roots still lay elsewhere. Now a feeling of satisfaction grew as he saw how little had changed here in that time and he looked forward to leaning into the strong, west wind again and feeling it kiss his face as the returned prodigal. The lost-in-time quality of the place was still here even though some of the derelict barns had now been made into discreet dwellings nestling amongst newly created gardens.

Even that felt satisfying to him and he was relieved that they had gained a new use and not been allowed to crumble back into the earth. It seemed nothing could mar his return and he began to feel he had truly come home, although why this trip should feel different from all the others he could not say, unless it was because Jenny was sitting silently by his side. Was she some sort of jigsaw piece that had been missing every other time he had visited?

Jenny’s thoughts were less coherent. Her mind churned with thoughts of Jimmy. What was he doing now? Had he missed her? Was he bothered? Then her thoughts returned to the safety of Jasper and she wondered what she was doing in this expensive car with him. How was she going to tell to him about her situation? Why was she telling him about it? Was she expecting him to come up with some sort of solution to her problem? Perhaps she was, but it would still be her problem to sort out in the end.

Gradually, in the renewed intimacy of their shared silence, she found some sort of ease from her confusion and, forgetting about herself, began to wonder instead how Jasper felt about returning to his childhood home. She glanced at his face but it was unreadable. She was not to know that to survive in his chosen world he had long since mastered the art of dissembling.

Intrigued, she tried to tune into him, to feel what he was feeling, just as she had done as a child. Here she was more successful. She closed her eyes and could almost feel his heart beat more rapidly as they came to another well-remembered view, another mental milestone in their shared youth.

The countryside around them was changing as they drove from the soft air of the south coast of the peninsula across the high and stony moorland to Jasper’s farm on the harsher north coast. The cliffs on this coastline were high and black and the many coves were armed with unforgiving splinters of rock that had menaced sailors throughout time.

The expansive undergrowth of the southern seaward valleys had gradually given way to stoic, crouching plants and grim, frowning trees that stood with heads defiantly down, their branches streaming like windswept hair behind them as the northern wind blew relentlessly from the sea.

The ruined engine houses of tin mines stood all around, their broken chimneys rearing stark and uncompromising against the sky, silent castles of a long-dead industrial age, reduced now to gaunt ghosts of the past amid the beauty, like beggars at a wedding.

In the folds of land between them tiny hamlets of granite farms and low cottages huddled together like old women gossiping, speaking of hard times and the precarious balance between existence and ruin. Their early sons were all gone now, eaten by the ground or the sea but it was still a land that grew hard sons, like Jasper’s father, like Jasper’s brother Jem … like Jasper.

The car rocked as it splashed through  puddled potholes, raising Jenny from her introspection, making her aware the car had turned onto a cart track. At the end of the track, just a hundred yards from the sea, lay the old farmhouse, coiled against the land like a watchful adder. All at once she was jolted back to their childhood and it was a far from pleasant experience. Immediately she could feel again the cold rain dripping onto her hair and running down her forehead as she waited for Jasper under the leaning hawthorns at the entrance to the track.

As a teenager she had long since stopped calling for him at the farm, embarrassed by his father’s sly and suggestive remarks about her presence there. Jasper had usually hurried her away, either to the cave at the foot of the cliff if it was fine weather or to one of the stone barns nearby where, with musty-smelling blankets about their shoulders, they had done their homework and swapped fantasies about their future by the light of an old storm lantern.

She had been his closest friend then, almost his only friend, and she had preferred his company to that of the girls she knew. Their peers had at first regarded this friendship as odd and there had been many jibes but this hadn’t been enough to keep them apart. Eventually their inseparability had just settled down into being just another strange but undisputed fact, no longer worthy of comment.

She smiled to herself now at the memory of the growing awareness of sex that had intruded on their lives when she was sixteen. Like so many times before she had held Jasper tightly, trying to comfort him as he tried not to cry over his father’s latest treatment of him when, with no words between them, the mood had suddenly changed.

Without raising his head from her breasts he had raised a tentative hand to touch them. This part of her anatomy was still almost as new to her as it was to him and she found herself nervously eager for the experience. There had never been any question of her stopping him, she had had no intention of saying no. She needed this attention just as much as he needed comfort. He had kissed her mouth then and pulled her down until she was beneath him in the hay.

This much she knew from films and books was how it went but what to expect next was still unknown. There had been whispered rumours between the girls in the school playground about what happened between men and women but such subjects had not been taught, even in biology class, so she could not be sure that what she heard was the truth. What she had picked up seemed improbable to her but she had no close girl friends to ask for confirmation and it had simply never occurred to her to talk to Jasper about such a subject.

Her mother too had been no help in this respect. Jenny had been too embarrassed to ask her for information after her mother had once bluntly declared, apropos of nothing, that she would not tolerate Jenny bringing any boyfriends home and, if she was stupid enough to get pregnant, she was on her own and she need not think she could continue to live at home with an illegitimate child.

Jenny had clearly recognised this as some sort of warning shot across her bows and since then she had never dreamed of sharing anything of an intimate nature with her mother. It was a small loss, confiding in either of her parents was something she had never done. Confidences had never been invited and, except for Jasper, her world had been solitary. Now he was about to help her find out what it was that happened between man and woman.

His hands, at first hesitant, had became more confident as he sensed her unspoken acquiescence and as he moved on to explore her body his movements became ever more urgent, ever more insistent. Even now she could remember the heat of her willingness, the frantic undoing of clothing, the feel of his weight on top of her.

She had been surprised to feel his hardness and even more surprised to hear him groan as he moved against her. His breathing seemed too loud and when he whispered her name his voice was strangely hoarse. He kissed her nipples and something primal had taken over and she had offered herself in obvious invitation.

He pushed himself into her with an urgency that had both startled and hurt her, and even though she had not known exactly what to expect, she had not anticipated pain. He had hurt her and she felt invaded by him, her closest friend had become a stranger to her and she began to be afraid of him. Her need to get away from him became urgent and in a panic she tried to push him away but for all his obvious care of her at any other time he now seemed oblivious of her struggles beneath him.

Then he had started to move gently and she had felt something stir within her making her gasp at its unexpectedness. Suddenly, instead of pushing him away she began to pull him closer, desperately holding him to her. Despite the passing of time she could still vividly remember her own responses, remembering she had wanted the sensations to go on forever. Suddenly he was shuddering on top of her and for a moment she had thought with terror he must have been having some sort of seizure.

She smiled to herself now as she remembered this, her first experience of the very special seizure of male orgasm. She had not known what to expect then, never having experienced the intensity of a climax of her own and so had no way of knowing what she missed but what she had experienced was enough for her.

Afterwards, his tenderness towards her, his whispered promises offered in the gratitude he felt then, his concern at the blood he had caused and his reassurances that this was normal, all created a warm feeling of being loved within her. It was a novel feeling and she remembered every detail of this, her first sexual experience, with a feeling of gratitude that it had been Jasper who had taken her virginity. Even so, there had been a price to pay.

The next day she had felt shy of him, remembering how he had seen her last, a mixture of wantonness and vulnerability. Jasper too seemed awkward, his usual self-mockery and joking taking on a preoccupied, disjointed quality. They were both very much aware this first encounter had disturbed something delicate between them and the balance of a shared trust and childhood innocence had now been weighted unevenly by the very adult act of sex.

What had been an expected rite of passage for him and a metamorphosis from girl to woman for her had threatened the special rapport between them and, now the physical experience was over, they became aware of an emotional discord. Both of them were aware they had jeopardised something far more valuable and were anxious to regain it.

A sort of tacitly understood agreement arose between them and they had never again attempted any further physical intimacy. They knew without words such a relationship endangered their much more important emotional link. Physical relationships could end and neither one of them could afford for that to happen.

It had taken time before their sense of total ease with one another was fully reestablished and in time their romantic lives had taken separate paths. Such love affairs never disturbed their deep need for one another although their closeness usually led to misunderstandings on the part of their new lovers. These romances lasted only a short time and seemed ultimately doomed as neither of them was willing to break their bond to ensure that another relationship might flourish. That was, until the day Jasper left.

He had been working as a diver for a salvage company since leaving school. Marking time he called it, until he really knew what he wanted to do with his life. Then one night he had stumbled into Jenny’s bedsit, battered and bloodied after one beating too many. He had stayed at the farm at his father’s insistence as the old man was in need of help to keep the place running.

Now Jasper was fully grown his father was no longer a threat to him, so he had stayed to help out on the farm before and after his diving work. But even though Jasper was strong and fit, his brother Jem had some sort of rage bottled up deep within him and after a few drinks he lost what little ability he had to control it. As with all bullies he needed a soft target and his fists usually fell on Jasper, who had never understood the concept of violence, especially towards a brother.

This last beating had been Jem’s handiwork and it was the deciding factor in Jasper's decision to leave. He knew now he was risking his life living at the farm and it was a life that could not remain on hold for other people, not for his Father, not even for Jenny. He had long had a need to do something for himself and now, thanks to Jem, it was time to do it.

Jenny had patched him up, wincing with him at his pain and vowing fiercely to do unspeakable things to Jeremy Carne for this latest cruelty and as his body eased Jasper had outlined his determination to leave for London. She had wanted to beg him not to leave but only half believing he could really leave her behind she had managed to stay silent.