Stone Lions

It was summertime when I met her first. I was eighteen and just beginning to feel my way with women. It happened this way. I go down to the beach to bathe; it’s a fine sunny day with enough wind for a good surf, but hardlypage 39 anyone on the beach; and as I come out again I notice a dark sheila leaning over the fence of one of the cribs and looking at me. So I brush back my hair and draw in my stomach and go over to talk to her. She’s not so young, about twenty-five, with that madonna look some women have, and the rings under the eyes that I used to think made a woman look interesting. And she has a full mouth with no lipstick on.

It’s a lovely day, I say.

She smiles back and asks me if I like the surf. We’re just breaking the ice when another girl comes up behind her. I know this one, but she always gets on my nerves because she never knows when to keep her mouth shut. With her yapping away I soon find out they’ve rented the crib together for a couple of weeks. The one I know wants me to read their hands, because that’s a line I do at parties, but I say I’d better be getting along.

The next day is Friday, a bit cloudy, but I come down just the same and have a swim. There’s no one in sight at the crib, so I get dressed and hang around smoking. Before long the madonna turns up alone, and we go for a yarn and a walk on the sand. I ask her to come up to our place on Saturday evening. My people would be in town, and I could pick her up at the local dance without her girl-friend noticing anything. It takes a lot of nerve for me to say it; I can feel myself getting hot under the collar, but she agrees right away. We go on walking for a bit, and I notice the small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles, and also how trim her figure is. But I don’t put my arm round her, I just go on talking about books and films.

On Saturday I tidy my room and put half a dozen of beer in the wall cupboard. Then I bring the radio upstairs and plug it in beside the bed. When my people go away early in the evening, I pretend that I’ve settled in to do some reading.

I think, maybe I’ll have to pay for a ticket when I don’t want to dance, but I find her waiting outside the hall. She says she’s told them inside that she wanted some fresh air. So we walk up the road and this time I put my arm round her. It seemed strange to bring her in to the empty lighted house. I take her up to my room and we yarn for a bit with the radio giving off some soft music. By the time we’ve cracked a few bottles things are going fine. She sits on the bed and I bend her head back and kiss her. Even now I can almost smell the scent she used. Then I switch off the light and we do a bit of wooing with the music still playing, and some dim moonlight coming in the windows. At first she’d pull her head away and laugh, but later on she just lies there with her face like a mask, more like a symbol of some kind than a human face. It seemed wonderful to me, her arms and the scent and the slim body and the face like a mask. Pretty soon I was putting the hard question, but she wasn’t having any.

Please, I’d say.

What would happen if I gave in to every boy I met? she’d ask.

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I’m not everyone, I’d say, and so it went on, one of those arguments that get you nowhere. Nowadays I’d just get up and have a beer, but then I was apt to take things seriously.

Well, I had a pretty good time notwithstanding, because of the novelty of being there with a woman in the dark when I’d hardly had the nerve to kiss one before. Everything seemed so natural and kind of rich; even the beer had a special taste to it. When she left I walked down the road with her and kissed her goodbye. Then I went back and shifted the radio and stowed away the empties. When my people came back I was safe in bed.

The next morning I wake up with a heavy head, so I go out for a walk early. And about dinnertime I go down to see her. She’s sitting on the grass reading, with some older people that are paying a visit. Her girl-friend stays behind to have a nag, so she and I go across the bay to a possie I had picked out in the lupins. There we have another woo. She looks fine under the green light filtered through the lupins. And the sea thundering alongside. Pretty soon I have my hand on it, though she pushes it away again. Her muscles are very hard; she said she played basketball. She has white well-shaped legs and small breasts. She likes being kissed, though she told me she had been a Sunday school teacher. With the lupin flowers in her hair she hardly looks the part, and I tell her so. She nearly gives in at last. If I’d known my stuff I could have had her, but I was too much talk and not enough friction. As we go up the road again she laughs and holds on to me. I tell her how the stone lions in Trafalgar Square roar every time a virgin passes, and she says they’d roar if she passed them.

Later on I see her in town; but somehow the glamour goes out of things there. It seems she had a boy killed in the war who was going to marry her when he came back. I suddenly saw she was a good bit older than I was. And she saw me mainly when I was full of beer. So we said goodbye. Now and then I pass her in the street and say Hullo.

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