A Twist in Time: Ch. 3
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A TWIST IN
TIME
CHAPTER THREE Aberystwyth, January 1966
Michael
Grant had a restless night. He dreamt that his bedroom in the hotel was on
top of a great abyss. Between him and the abyss was a flimsy floor. It had
served him as a secure resting place for years, yet all the time he never
knew he was so close to annihilation. He awoke with alarm and 
uncurled
himself from his foetal sleeping position and crawled outside. He saw that
he was no longer in the hotel but in the garden, and that he had been
asleep in a lean-to shelter. He gained some higher ground and saw with
horror that just below the floor on which he had been asleep was an
opening to the abyss. A dark hole gaped, revealing an opening to a
bottomless pit. The hotel was in a shambles around him, as if collapsed by
a shuddering earthquake. He watched, transfixed with horror, as a giant
boulder dislodged itself and rolled into the dark opening. He heard the
sound of falling earth as it struck the sides of the pit, yet there was no
resounding thud or echo from its fall, so deep was the abyss. He turned
his attention to his hotel which was in disarray, floors and walls at
crazy angles and in danger of slipping down the cliff on which the
building was perched. Some of the rooms had already given way, having
plunged into the waves that crashed and foamed on the rocks below.
‘Wake up, bach!’
Michael opened his eyes and stared stupidly at the matronly woman who bent over him. Then memory dawned on him, seeing her generous bosom that quivered beneath her tunic. Her frowzy red hair cascaded down the side of her neck and gave her the look of a blowsy barmaid.
‘It’s time you were perpendicular, look you, bach!’ She shook him again. Perpendicular was her favourite word and her Welsh accent always seemed to stress the third syllable. ‘It’s been an hour your breakfast’s been waiting, see you. I haven’t got all day now! Get you perpendicular and dress sharply, if you don’t want rubbery eggs!’ The white traces of condensation puffed in front of her upper lip which was fuzzed with a downy moustache. She waited, hands on her broad hips, while Michael lifted himself unsteadily onto his elbows. He smiled weakly and nodded. Then she swung round and he heard the stairs creek as she descended back to the kitchen.
He felt confused. He sat up gingerly, careful not to touch the hot metal surface of the Belling bedwarmer that still nestled next to him. He had fallen asleep, as was his custom, wrapped round it, touching it only through his pyjamas. The instructions warned him to remove the bedwarmer from the bed before he got in, but he didn’t care. It was just too cold to even contemplate sleeping without its comfort. He had smuggled it in without Mrs Williams’s knowledge. She would be certain to object, since she was careful to count every penny and watched her student lodgers like a hawk to ensure they didn’t add to her financial burden. But he was quite content that she wouldn’t notice the extra electricity on her bill. The advertisement had said, after all, that it cost less than a penny a night to run. Good thing she didn’t notice the bedwarmer, he thought as he got out of bed unsteadily, still befuddled from his dream. He carefully unplugged the bedwarmer and packed it away in a suitcase he kept under his bed. The morning air in the room was freezing and his breath condensed in white puffs as he dressed. He removed the newspaper that was wrapped round his feet, kept in place by the socks he wore. Then he took out his trousers from under the mattress, pressed neatly, though slightly creased, by his own weight. It was a tip he had picked up from a Graham Greene novel.
At length he crept into the cramped kitchenette where the small plastic radio was, as usual, pounding out one of the latest hit tunes. ‘These boots are made for walking!’ came the muffled but strident voice of Nancy Sinatra. ‘And they’re gonna walk right over you!’ Tra la la went the tune, sliding down into flat beats as Michael poured himself a cup of tea. Breakfast was his favourite time of the day since it was provided by Mrs Williams as part of the accommodation costs his parents were paying on his behalf. He had to find his own lunch and supper, and Mrs Williams didn’t allow the importation of take-aways into the bedroom lest the crumbs attracted mice. (‘I’ve never had mice, bach, and I won’t be having them now!’) Most of the time he felt hungry and at night got into bed looking forward to breakfast. His 22-year-old frame was lean and gaunt, and when he took his shirt off at nights his ribs showed.
Mrs Williams bent over him, her scolding voice softened by the obvious enjoyment with which Michael attacked his eggs and toast. (Bacon was not part of the fare.) ‘You’ll need an alarm, look you, bach!’ Her strident voice knew no modulation, but she meant her advice kindly as she leant over him, pouring more tea which steamed as it filled his cup. He glanced up with an acknowledging smile, seeing the flabby flesh of her upper arms and once again the swing of her breasts as they filled her tunic. It produced in him a strange sense of pain and deja vu, as though stirring a painful memory. Mrs Williams’s name was Mary, he recalled, and that seemed to cause a constriction of his throat, too. She was bossy, but in a motherly sort of way, and he wouldn’t have dreamt of causing her pain - though he harboured the guilty secret of the bedwarmer now safely concealed in his suitcase.
Paul rushed in, the corners of his wide thin mouth twitching into a quick smile. A forelock of fair hair swung forward, nearly concealing one of his sharp blue eyes.
‘Hi!’ he said, picking up the teapot and pouring himself a cup. ‘They say South Africa’s developed the atomic bomb. Atomic bomb my foot! But with any luck they’ll blow themselves sky high.’
Michael smiled weakly. He liked Paul who was doing postdoctoral research in geology, but hated his constant badgering. Michael had grown up in South Africa and it was clear to him that Paul distrusted him because of this background. It was as though Paul were constantly placing him in a position of defence, as though he were expected to defend that country with its hateful system of Apartheid.
‘Are you being allowed a postal vote in the South African election?’ sneered Paul, flicking back his forelock.
‘I’ve never voted,’ replied Michael defensively. ‘What’s the point? The National Party will win anyway.’
‘But surely it’s your moral responsibility - if only as a sign of protest?’ insisted Paul.
Michael shook his head. ‘If there was a party I felt I could support, then I’d vote, sure.’
Paul frowned. ‘It beats me. It beats me how you can live in a country that represses so many people. And which executes them for petty crimes.’
‘I wouldn’t believe everything the press says, you know. A bomb went off in a Wimpy and killed women and children. That wasn’t petty, was it?’
‘How can you support a country like that!’ protested Paul, his pale face momentarily flushing.
‘I don't support it. I was just born there.’
‘Still.’ Paul clicked his tongue.
Michael inwardly cringed. The truth was, he felt intimidated by Paul, as well as by his swarve, easygoing manner. Paul was a postdoctoral student in geology, and Michael was still getting to grips with his M.A. dissertation on the novels of Graham Greene. Paul had everything. He rented the flat on the first floor which had its own kitchenette. His fiancé Samantha, a voluptuous redhead who worked in the foreign exchange section of Lloyds bank in London, visited him on most weekends. Mrs Williams didn’t mind him popping in for a cup of tea when he was alone. When Samantha was in, of course, they breakfasted in the flat, or even slept late. Samantha was quick and bright with her London accent and together they made an enviable pair. Michael, on the other hand, was struggling with his dissertation, was acutely lonely, and, most of the time, ravenously hungry. Apart from the poached or boiled eggs and toast provided by Mrs Williams, he lived on fish and chips. Fish and chip restaurants (some provided mushy peas, too) were the only eating places Aberystwyth sported in 1966 - apart from one Chinese restaurant. For Michael the Chinese restaurant was his piece de resistance. Every time he completed a chapter of his dissertation, he would reward himself with a visit to the Chinese restaurant - where a smartly dressed waiter would jump forward and light his thin Embassy cigarette the minute Michael produced it from the tiny packet of tens he had nurtured for the occasion.
After breakfast Michael trudged up the steep Penglais Hill, past untidy students slouching down the hill from their hostels, to the National Library of Wales where he was searching for reviews on Greene’s novels. One female student with a shock of uncombed, unbrushed hair, dressed in jeans and leather jacket, looked as though she had just rolled out of bed. The wind swept the half-hearted snowflakes horizontally, thankfully from behind Michael, helping his weary progress up the hill. He started when a heavy truck rolled past him, its large wheels spewing slush across his feet. His heart palpitated unreasonably with fright, but he trudged on, clutching his flimsy briefcase and wondering if Prince Charles would have to climb the same dreary hill daily when he enrolled the following year as a student of the University College of Wales. Already, he felt, he disliked the place, with its interminable wind and biting cold, and with its searing loneliness. As he surmounted the long steps towards the Grecian edifice of the library, the wind sliced through him. It was a lazy wind, an old man had said. It was too lazy to blow round you - instead it simply went straight through.
He passed the entrance with its sign: ‘Dim cw’ - which meant, as far as he could tell, that the library took a dim view of dogs, banishing them from entering the building. He made his way down to the basement where the library staff had kindly allowed him a table to work through the large tomes of bound newspapers. They had felt exasperated by Michael’s repeated requests for the heavy tomes so in the end decided to trust him to help himself from the shelves. This certainly meant a speeding up of his search for reviews, some of which he meticulously copied out into his notebook.
It’s the loneliness that really got to him. For a time his mind was pleasantly occupied with the reviews, seeing how consistently critics were applying the term ‘Greeneland’ to Greene’s books - a term supposed to describe the writer’s unique vision of a depressing, grey world of unbearable ennui. Frequently reviewers would recall Greene’s early habit of dispelling boredom by playing Russian roulette with his brother’s service revolver: when he pulled the trigger of the gun placed to his temple and it clicked harmlessly (there was always just one bullet in the magazine), a refreshing renewal would uplift him to new heights of consciousness. Somehow, it was a world Michael could relate to. His life in Aberystwyth, as the only research student in the English Department, was unbearably lonely and boring. The lashing, horizontal rain off the Atlantic, the freezing wind that cut through him, the dark winter sky that pressed down upon the visible world, created a sense of unbearable depression that was difficult to dispel. At length his mind relapsed into memory, recalling moments of heightened consciousness from his life in South Africa, now seven thousand miles away in what felt like a different dimension. For a time he had thought himself in love with Muriel, whom he had met while still in his last year at school
She first attracted his attention when he saw her with her friend from the gallery of the local library of his hometown. It was her broad smooth thighs under the short school uniform she wore that drew his eyes. But she had a face that wore a permanent smile - a broad mouth with generous lips. And she was covered with freckles! His eyes strayed back to her legs and he saw that her muscular calves were freckled too. But the freckles thinned and dispersed up her thighs, replaced by the virginal whiteness of lush flesh under the short green tunic.
Then he went to university and found she shared the same first-year English course for which he had enrolled. He was delighted by her free and easygoing chatter, and soon they became close friends. They met regularly in the lecture theatre, in tutorials, and in the canteen. They talked about their prescribed books. She was ecstatic about them. She couldn’t wait to get her teeth into Jane Austin and Emily Bronte, let alone Dickens and D.H.Lawrence. Michael, on the other hand, was intimidated and depressed by the workload. She seemed to breeze through the books, laughing and throwing in shrewd comments in the tutorials. Her reading speed was thrice or four times as fast as his. His own mind was sluggish and he chewed through each page with anguished attention. He simply couldn’t get to grips with the esoteric text of T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, whereas Muriel imbibed it with her broad-grinned bonhomie, never failing to throw the rest of the tutorial group into hysterics wit her glib interpretations. Michael envied her spontaneous insights, and admired her, pleased to call her his friend. She saw his depression and heard his sighs, walking up the common path that linked their hostels: ‘Oh, come on, Michael! You’re so damn conscientious all the time! You’ll breeze through the exams, you’ll see!’ But he was inhibited by a school system where literature was learnt by heart. Now, at university, he had to apply new techniques - literary and textual criticism, analysing and appreciating words and images. It was no longer an exercise of memory, but of insight.
The exams came and Michael scraped through with a lower second-class pass. Muriel failed and had to repeat the year. In his second year Michael scraped through again with another lower-second. Muriel failed her first year for the second time. When her mother died during her third attempt, she left university. Michael missed her bubbly personality, and missed seeing those lovely rounded thighs. In all that time he had never made a pass at her. He’d not even attempted to lay a hand on those thighs. But then, he was very shy and she had seemed to spend most of her free time in the company of girls rather than boys.
When he graduated Michael enrolled for the postgraduate Honours course in English. The professor in charge of the course advised him to enrol for first-year French. That’s when he found himself sitting next to Muriel once again. They sat together in the back row of the French class, together with Pam, a slender, pimply-faced girlfriend of Muriel’s. Muriel was once again trying for her degree, this time in different subjects.
One day Muriel turned up at Michael’s home with a bottle of Lion Lager. ‘I thought you’d like to share this with me,’ she said with a broad grin.
Intrigued, Michael fetched two glasses from the kitchen and they drank the lager in the sitting room. Both his parents were out at work at the time, and the conversation flowed as easily as did the lager.
‘Let’s face
it, Michael,’ Muriel said, slumping back on the settee. ‘Whenever you
meet someone, your first thought is how good he or she is in bed! Don’t
you agree?’
Her words catapulted his heart into action. ‘Do you really think so?’ He smiled sheepishly.
‘Oh, of course!’ She took another swig. ‘It all comes down to the same thing, in the end. What’s it like to fuck her - or him?’ She winked at him.
He’d never heard her use that word before. It wasn’t an open invitation to make a pass, but the next thing Michael remembered was that he was kissing her passionately. He was struck by the soft yielding texture of her wide lips, which were wet with lager and lust. She eased closer, then slipped off him, sliding down to the floor on her back, giggling. He felt quite frustrated. He wanted to lift her up again but she was quite heavy. A length she hefted herself back beside him. She had increased in weight since he first knew her.
‘You know Muriel, I wish ...’ He began, trying to draw her close again.
‘What is it, Michael? Why don’t you just say it?’
He wanted to say, please Muriel, I want you, or please can we just have a little fuck, or something outrageous like that. But he didn’t dare to. He was a virgin, an only child and had attended a boys’ school. He wasn’t used to girls and could never sum up the courage to make a pass.
‘Look,’ she said, sitting up and placing her strong arms on his shoulders. ‘Why don’t you take me to the Drive-In tonight?’ She winked at him. ‘We could have another bottle of lager!’
It was like a promise of heaven. He watched her put-putter off on her Vespa scooter, her delicious thighs disappearing in a swirl of dust. He hoped that the lager wouldn’t impair her driving. That evening he pulled up in good time in front of the suburban house she shared with her father. He had borrowed his father’s old Chevrolet and was armed with another bottle of Lion Lager. Muriel got in and smiled languidly.
‘Look,’ she said, with an air of frankness. ‘I don’t want to seem hedonistic, but can we please go up Navel Hill first?’
God, he thought, she was certainly taking the initiative! Navel Hill was the local viewing spot over the town, where couples went for midnight necking. They no sooner parked the car with a view of the flat dry plain that stretched monotonously into the grey distance, than Muriel slid closer on the undivided seat. Her lips met his and opened generously under the slightest pressure of his, their tongues mutually exploring and lashing each others’ desire. God, he thought, her sexuality had been on tap all these years, and only now had it come to the surface. He slid his hand up her blouse and soon found, to his amazement, that she had no breasts. But her nipples were huge and engorged, and the pressure of his thumb and forefinger tightening on each extracted a soft, distant moan from Muriel that made him think of the plaintive lowing of a cow. Soon headlights flashed on them from nearby cars, laughter and whistles coming from the audience they had attracted.
‘For heaven’s thake,’ Muriel languidly lisped. ‘Leth’s go to the Drive-In, Michael.’
They sat for some time in the queue of cars waiting to enter the open-air Drive-In cinema. It was an opportunity to open the bottle of lager, and conversation once again flowed.
‘You know what really turns me on?’ Muriel smiled languorously.
‘I can't imagine!’ Michael laughed.
‘Well, it’s when I know a man really wants me, and can’t have me.’
‘What do you mean?’
She smiled, slitting her eyes at him. ‘I can imagine a situation where I’m married to a man I know is desperate to fuck me. But instead of complying, I’ll yawn and say Oh dear, I have such a headache! And of course he’ll be terribly understanding. So I’ll go to bed, just knowing he’s sitting there, frustrated like hell! I’d just love to do that!’
‘But then you’d be frustrated, too,’ Michael smiled uneasily.
‘I know,’ she said, smiling self-contentedly like a cat. ‘But that’s what turns me on. Aren't people funny!’
The queue began to move forward and soon they were parked and the film began. But their attention wasn’t on the film. Michael had the courage this time to move up to Muriel and slide his hand under her skirt and up those generous fleshy thighs. They felt huge and sumptuous, and readily parted when he came into contact with the thatch between them. So she hadn’t even put on any knickers! His fingers slid easily into the damp, yielding, generous slit below the thatch, her moans again putting him in mind of the distant lowing of a cow. He massaged her yielding dampness for some time, when suddenly her body buckled unexpectedly, as though responding to an electric shock. Then she pushed away his hand firmly. She turned and looked him full in the face with serious eyes.
'Michael, please take me home.’
He started the car and drove her home, uncertain what to expect. But when he pulled up outside her house she turned to him again.
‘I’m sorry, Michael.’
She took in his startled eyes and polite smile with those wide, sincere eyes of hers. Then she got out and closed the door, and walked to the house alone. Michael watched the door close behind her, frustrated like hell.
The memory of his frustration brought his mind back to the present. There was a temptation, slightly illegitimate and risqué, which he had given way to, and which to some extent relieved his frustration and boredom. In the library shelves to which he had been entrusted, he had discovered the back issues of the Men’s Only magazines. These were fascinating, revealing the changing styles of models down the ages, with their increasing tendency to disrobe and expose more of their charms as the years went by, from coy black and white models in full bathing suits, to wartime beauties in cloth bras, and finally to the Jane Russell types with long tapering legs and generous, exposed boobs with proud, fully uncovered nipples that stood out in glorious Technicolour.
It was almost lunch time, anyway, so he went to the place in the shelves where the Men’s Only magazines were and thumbed furtively through two or three, until he found a particularly appealing pinup with buxom, liquid breasts and liquid, appealing eyes. It melted him to see her. He snuggled the magazine under his jumper and in this way secreted it out of the building. He would replace it in its proper place on his return, of course. It was a better alternative than the measly beans on toast he might have bought from the Spartan basement canteen which the library, in its munificence, provided for readers. At least with the pinup he found he could lie on his bed and forget, for a moment, the tedium of his life, the grey ennui and amorphous, cold world of Aberystwyth with its chilling wind that rattled his bedroom window. When his toes tingled and eyes blurred and the model’s loving eyes and sumptuous breasts went, for a moment, out of focus, he felt he had more comfort than was possible from the beans on toast, or from any one of the fish and chip restaurants where his eyes were blurred only by the steam on his glasses.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
(Copyright © Charles Muller 1998)
