Tim Connor Hits Trouble Read online

  Sat together on the sofa, she lit the joint and took an exploratory pull before passing it over. Tim rolled it tentatively between his fingers before taking a shallow drag. He coughed sharply as the dry smoke hit the back of his throat. This was strong stuff. He drank some wine before taking another pull, deeper this time. He felt a surge of pleasure in his lungs and brain. As the joint passed between them they became increasingly tactile, their hands brushing together. An aura of easy intimacy enveloped them as they began to revel in a sense of mutual discovery.

  ‘Hello, then, Tim.’ Erica reached across and gently caressed the back of his head and neck.

  ‘Hello, Erica.’ Now well in the zone, he added, ‘I guess you know you’re very beautiful.’

  He had almost broken the spell.

  ‘Tim, please.’ She took her hand away from his neck. ‘Nobody knows they’re very beautiful. Not really. Nobody’s that secure.’

  Tim leaned back, surprised. Surely she must be kidding him. Haloed in a soft psychedelic haze she was beautiful whether she knew it or not.

  ‘Believe me, you are beautiful,’ Tim insisted.

  Drifting pleasantly, a spate of philosophical ponderings suddenly hijacked his brain. But what is beauty? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Am I beautiful? What is the purpose of…

  Sensing she had lost him and keen to change the subject Erica brought him back to earth:

  ‘Tim, haven’t we forgotten something?’

  ‘Have we? What?’

  ‘The trifle. Why don’t you get it from the fridge while I roll another joint?’

  Tim did as he was told. He took the trifle from the fridge and, never one for fancy presentation, stuck a couple of spoons in it.

  Back in the lounge he was startled in a half-stoned kind of way to find Erica had stripped off her skirt and top. Her sheer black stockings, attached to a lace girdle by suspender straps, accentuated the bare flesh of her thighs. Below the girdle around her waist was a heavily corrugated, leather belt, decoratively suggestive but serving no obvious purpose. She had removed her panties and bra or perhaps was not wearing any in the first place. She still had on her platform shoes, her long legs as firm and defined as an athlete’s through the tight silk fit of her stockings. Tim swiftly put the trifle on a coffee table. But it was Erica who made the next move.

  ‘Let’s dance’ she said.

  As they did so Tim’s hands roamed freely, his sense of touch heightened by marihuana and alcohol. He ran his fingers through her thick, soft hair pulling gently against her scalp. She gave a low sensuous murmur. His hands brushed across her shoulders moving down to her breasts. Her nipples stiffened, hard as bullets as he rolled them between his fingers. Pausing to fondle her smooth, flat belly he gently tugged her pubic hair. Bending slightly he searched out her clitoris. It was moist and engorged, quivering at his touch. She held his hand guiding his rhythm as he began to massage it. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with pleasure, her mouth an open invitation. For the first time they kissed, ravenous with desire. Tim groped to unzip his trousers releasing his aching cock. He pushed hard towards her.

  Erica pulled away.

  ‘Mmm,’ she fingered his cock, ‘but take your time, Timothy, you’re not even undressed yet.’ She made the full complement of his name sound throatily sexy. ‘Why don’t you let me do that for you?’ she said, not waiting for an answer.

  ‘Lie on the couch.’

  Sexual passivity had never been Tim’s thing but this was going too well to interrupt with rigid position taking. He decided to go with the music, Erica style.

  Slowly, she undressed him. Straining with lust he attempted to pull her towards him. She gently pushed him back.

  Her next remark seemed to mock his urgency.

  ‘By the way, if you want any of that trifle you’d better have it now.’

  Not waiting for his reply she reached over for the bowl.

  ‘Here let me feed you. Open your mouth.’

  Too far gone in this burgeoning ritual to protest, he did as he was bidden.

  ‘There’s a good boy. Open wide.’ She slowly fed him half a dozen spoonfuls of creamy trifle pausing only to slip a condom on his cock.

  ‘What a beautiful perpendicular. Now stand up.’ She led him by the cock into the centre of the room.

  ‘Stay here for a minute while I go and get something.’

  Suspended somewhere between lust and apprehension, images of whips, handcuffs and shackles raced through Tim’s mind. Erica returned with a woollen scarf.

  ‘Crouch down a bit.’ She deftly tied the scarf round his eyes.

  ‘Hey,’ Tim offered nominal resistance.

  ‘Quiet.’ She gripped his cock and kissed him full on the mouth.

  ‘Now get down on your knees, find my feet and kiss them.’

  ‘Alright, but…’

  ‘Do it.’

  He bent down and slowly began to kiss her feet and ankles, awkwardly conscious of his exposed buttocks.

  ‘Erica I’m not…’

  ‘Now tongue my clitoris.’ As he raised his head she grasped a fistful of his hair and pulled his face between her legs, controlling their rhythmic rise and fall. His servicing was punctuated by the swish of leather across his arse as his resistance disappeared in a surge of pure sensation.

  ‘Ahh… Ahh, stop,’ she wrenched herself away from him.

  Both were now agonising for release but she continued to hold back.

  ‘Tim, you look strong, how strong are you? Can you lift me onto your cock and fuck me in mid-air?’

  Tim could.

  They came together in a roaring cursing frenzy. When they had finished they sank entangled to the floor.

  A poet of the ancient world once wrote that after making love all creatures experience a feeling akin to sadness. These two felt emptied out, exhausted but joyful and happy with each other. Emerging from his semi-conscious drift, Tim pulled the scarf from his eyes. He found himself looking straight into Erica’s baby blues, a quizzical half-crescent smile playing around her lips.

  ‘I’d like to do that again,’ he said, ‘but without the props.’

  ‘I know but not tonight. That was terrific but I’m going to go soon.’ She gave him a warm, teasing smile. ‘Thanks for letting me have my wicked pleasure with you. I’ve had fantasies about you ever you since you turned up for interview.’ She smiled again in her candid, unembarrassed way before asking, ‘Do you mind if I use your shower before I go?’

  Erica was as good as her word. After she had showered and dressed, she kissed him and was gone, pausing only to say, ‘I’ll call soon.’

  I sure hope you do.

  Chapter 9

  Home Again

  Whitetown, Blackburn, Burnley, Nelson, and Colne. The names of this crescent of old North West industrial towns signalled home territory to Tim. From the warmth of the car he could see that a late autumn frost had hardened across the landscape. The fields and low-slung hills gleamed dully in the faltering sunlight.

  He was born in Whitetown and his affection for it was refreshed by regular visits to his long widowed mother. But the demands of his life in transition had prevented him from making the journey north for several weeks. Now he was on his way, he found himself looking forward to returning to familiar territory. From the moment he thudded into his armchair, always vacated for his arrival, he felt at home in a way that he never quite felt anywhere else. This was the timeless place before which he remembered nothing. Here nothing should change, forever the beloved son. Yet in the twenty years since he had left Whitetown, imperceptibly but relentlessly, the mother/son relationship had transformed. At almost eighty Teresa was ageing fast and was now on the threshold of senility. Her dependency on him had begun to take on an air of desperation. The child had become the parent, his mother the child.

  Home is where they have to let you in, he mused as he shifted the car into the fast lane, overtaking a big, bullying lorry that had been blocking him for several minutes. The ho
use he and Gina had bought in Peyton was no longer his other, different home. She was reluctant to invite him inside even for a few minutes when he visited Maria. Too painful, she said, although he guessed she was also falling in with Rupert’s wishes. When he stayed overnight it was at the local B&B, where he had briefly lived after their separation. Yet Gina had chosen to come with him now, insisting that her relationship with his mother would not end ‘just because of their break-up’. The ‘just because’ hurt him, but he was grateful that Gina wanted to keep this remaining shared ritual going. And maybe it was also an oblique signal that she still cared for him. The two women had grown close and he and Gina agreed that they would not trouble his mother with their own problems. Not that he had intended to. He had long shielded her from anything in his life that might cause her anxiety.

  Glancing in the driver’s mirror he saw Gina was asleep, squeezed across the rear seats of the car. She claimed exhaustion at the double burden of work and childcare. Fair enough, he thought, but he sensed she was also pricking at his feelings of guilt.

  As always he was glad to spot the signpost indicating twenty-one miles to Whitetown. The ‘white’ in ‘Whitetown’ was something of a misnomer. Some of its buildings were still marked by industrial smoke and grime although like many northern towns, Whitetown had been largely cleaned up and gentrified. After years of lying semi-derelict, the docks had been converted into a marina and leisure-park and one of the big cotton mills had become a mail order depot. Many of the old council estates had changed in character. The right to buy policy had edged some households and estates towards lower middle class respectability while others became the last rough refuge of those who could not or would not make out in the new winner-takes-all Britain, a fragmented underclass, some of them not having seen employment through two or three generations.

  Tim’s own childhood in the late nineteen seventies and early eighties coincided with the dying spasms of Britain’s industrial age. His local primary school mainly drew children from a couple of large, run-down public housing estates but also some, including Tim, from lower middle class neighbourhoods for whom St. Patrick’s was the only option if their parents wanted them to have ‘a good, Catholic education.’ This was certainly what Teresa intended for Tim. Ironically, what this meant was an education that owed as much to ‘the mean streets’ as to the classroom. Even before he had reached double figures Tim occasionally ran foul of would-be hard-nuts who baited him for being ‘posh’ or otherwise riled him in a childhood play of status and power.

  ‘Posh’ was a sure-fire insult used by the kids from the council estates on the West side of the Royal Longchester Road, to ruffle those from the mainly private housing on the East side. Tim contemptuously rejected ‘posh’. He knew how hard his mother struggled to keep their house going after the early death of his father. There was no way they were well off or snobbish, no way ‘posh’. But he sensed that he wasn’t one of the rough kids either. Usually he didn’t get on with them. They were often restless and disruptive. A few were threatening. For some reason, maybe because he was tall, the mass of non-fighting kids would put him forward as a kind of protector or perhaps it was just that they needed a decoy target for the bullies. He was a reluctant champion but he wasn’t going to bottle out if things edged past the verbals.

  He remembered one fight (he was about nine or ten) when he came up against a big bruiser of a lad whose early maturity was well captured in his nickname of ‘Ding-Dong’. Ding-Dong had baleful, pale-grey, almost colourless eyes, one menacingly half-covered by a drooping, thickened eyelid. His calves looked almost distorted they were so huge.

  The fight sprawled all over the schoolyard. In the bicycle shed at the bottom of the yard Tim got caught in a neck-lock and was wrenched to the ground. The lock held and Ding Dong pushed his free fist into Tim’s face.

  ‘Give up or I’ll punch yer face in.’

  Tim winced as a thick wart-encrusted fist ground against his mouth. He played for time.

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ he gasped, ‘gerroff mi neck.’

  Ding-Dong increased the pressure. Tim’s neck cracked painfully.

  ‘Ye’ve one last chance to give up or I’ll mash ye.’

  Whether Tim would have given up, risking permanent dishonour was never put to the test. He could not quite recall how salvation came. Maybe Ding-Dong was turned over by some of the crowd causing him to loosen his hold. But Tim preferred to think that he had shaken him off in a moment of Herculean exertion. That was possible. It was too long ago for him to remember exactly. Either way as Ding-Dong’s grip slipped Tim wrenched free and reversed the neck-hold.

  Now it was his turn to ask the question:

  ‘Are ye gonna give up now, or do ye want me to bash yer face in?’ He let go a half-punch to assist Ding-Dong with the decision.

  To his relief, Ding-Dong quickly spluttered surrender, offering no more than a threat to ‘do in’ Tim next time.

  Chaired around the schoolyard and acclaimed ‘cock of the school’ Tim was giddy with triumph. The sound of the bell to end break swiftly returned him to planet earth. The noisy hubbub dropped to an excited murmur as the kids lined up to file into school. Tim tried to look inconspicuous. No chance, the teacher on duty pulled him out as he attempted to shuffle un-noticed into school.

  ‘What on earth have you been doing to look like that, Connor? You’re filthy from head to toe.’

  ‘Playing football, Sir.’

  ‘Very likely. Go and see Mother Superior just as you are.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Can I go to the toilet first Sir?’

  ‘No, you’ve had plenty of time to do that. Go and see Mother Superior and tell her exactly how you got into that shameful state. Tell her Mr. McKie sent you.’

  Tim found Mother Superior outside her office in conversation with a pupil’s parent. He decided brevity might work to his advantage.

  ‘Please Mother Superior, Mr McKie wants to know if I can have a wash?’

  The nun turned to him, irritated at the interruption. Immediately deciding that he was no sight for parental eyes she quickly dispatched him on his way. A wash she agreed would be a good thing and the sooner the better.

  Tim didn’t hang about. He skipped the wash and the rest of the school day. On the way back home he bought himself a celebratory stick of liquorice and a giant gob-stopper. Thinking about it he decided he didn’t really like fighting, but it was ok when you won.

  Tim jerked back to full consciousness as the traffic suddenly slowed. He braked heavily coming to a stop no more than a couple of feet behind a glossy Mercedes.

  ‘What’s up?’ Gina cried in alarm from the back of the car.

  ‘Nothing. It’s only a build up of traffic. Don’t worry. You can go back to sleep. It’s still a good twenty minutes to home.’

  ‘I might just do that but it would help if you stayed awake. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve banged somebody from behind.’

  ‘Elegantly put! But stop worrying, it distracts me from driving.’

  A groan from Gina signalled an end to the conversation.

  Tim appreciated the need to stay fully focused as the rush hour traffic thickened in the last few miles to Whitetown. But a mood of reminiscence had taken hold of him. ‘Posh!’ He knew he had never been posh. The only reason his mum could afford a semi on the bright side of the road was because his dad had left just enough money to cover the cost. Had he not been an only child things would have been stretched even further. Even so Teresa had needed to work as a seamstress and a shop assistant to make ends meet. ‘Brave old girl’ he thought. He appreciated that now and regretted how much he had taken her for granted as a kid. At least he was starting to make up for it. No chance to do that for his father. Despite his psychological studies, he could never figure out how his father’s death might have affected him. His father, Dominic had been a professional footballer and hadn’t lived long enough to do much else. He remembered the headline in the local paper as if it were an inscriptio
n on a gravestone: ‘Dominic Connor: Dead of a brain tumour at forty-one’. Dominic had played at the highest level but despite trying to stay in the game as long as possible had just missed the big money times. Still, he had left enough to set his family up.

  Tim idolised his father or at least the image of him that he had conjured up in his mind. At the age of seven he had no previous experience of loss. Until then tragedy was always something out there, remotely dreadful but part of the big wide grown-up non-world of ‘the news.’ In his own world nothing more terrible had happened than losing the front door key, or booting a football through the front window, or getting bloodied up in a fight, or riding his bike into the local canal. These events could be nerve-racking for a young kid but were no preparation for the death of a parent. He went through the rituals of loss and separation in a trance. His sense of detachment was sealed by the whispered words of his uncle as his father’s coffin was lowered into its grave: ‘Try not to cry, it will upset your mother.’

  He didn’t cry. He hadn’t cried since. Big boys don’t cry. On the outside no tears, inside the hurt seeped like a wound.

  ‘Tim!’ His mood was suddenly broken.

  ‘Tim, we’ve just gone past the first exit to Whitetown. If you miss the next one we’re on our way to Longchester.’

  Gina frequently took on the role of organising Tim. He had found it helpful but was now beginning to resent it. In the post break-up phase of their relationship she was less patient with him, less amused and more often annoyed by his vagaries and zany humour. He had to work hard to avoid triggering outbreaks of mutual irritation. It didn’t help that in practical matters she was usually right, as she was this time. He had day-dreamed his way past the first exit to Whitetown. He dropped a gear and shifted the car into the inside lane as the sign for the second exit came up. He mustered the best defence he could.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gina, it may be a bit further, but this way we get better views and we can stop at that fish and chip shop we went to once before. You know, the one at the top of the hill arched by trees.’ He had almost convinced himself that he had intended to by-pass the first exit.