A Ton of Malice by Barry McKinley

Author:Barry McKinley [Barry McKinley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910400548
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

17

THEREMIN

Before Kim Sutton, I had a brief relationship with a German girl. Her name was Sofia. She had long legs and a short green dress and she made young men disappear in a puff of sexual uncertainty. I met her at an “Up with People” gathering, which was ironic because I didn’t give a fuck about people and whether they were up or down.

“You have beautiful eyes,” she said.

She was seventeen years old. Her father was the manager of a local factory that made hair dryers from bright orange plastic. She told me about the art of non-contact stimulation. Apparently it was possible to play the clitoris like a theremin. Not coming from a musical family, I found this disturbing.

“I have a key to a room in the River House,” she said.

The River House was an old Georgian building in the middle of town, next to the bridge. It was home to a group of longhairs who played tambourines and penny whistles late at night. On the outside, it looked like a den seething with narcotics and perversity, but it was just a sad place with unwashed dishes in the sink and piles of hopelessness stacked against the walls.

It was after two o’clock in the morning when we got to the River House. She led me into a room with an Easy Rider poster and three ragged jumpers hooked on a door. There was a single bed, pushed tight into an alcove as if it were hiding, afraid of the weight that would test its tired springs. We got undressed. The moonlight bounced off the river and reflected waves rippled across the ceiling. Our skin was cool and blue.

I slid under the bedclothes and got to work on the theremin, but my mind was somewhere else. Irish teenagers are always dreaming of London. We imagine a city made up of connected record sleeves, from that Soho cul-de-sac of Ziggy Stardust, to the Vauxhall shop where Ian Dury stands like an outdoor mannequin. From the Camden steps of The Clash, to the Primrose Hill of the Rolling Stones. The riotous Lewisham of Sham ’69; the Small Faces on Hampstead Heath; The Kinks in Waterloo Station, and The Jam on the platform at Liverpool Street.

Irish boys and girls head for London the same way that salmon head upstream. There’s something that pulls us across the waves and into the swirling pool of promiscuity, a giant magnet buried under Westminster Bridge that tugs relentlessly at the iron in our souls.

Sofia’s thighs were muffling my ears, so it was a while before I realised she was speaking. I surfaced into the chilly room like a U-boat rising. Her voice was low, the tone intense. At first, it seemed to be the pornographic chitchat that women think men want, and men want women to want, but then I listened closely.

She was telling me about a particular incident, about torn clothing and bruised skin.

“He ripped my skirt. He tore my underwear.” A hand had covered her mouth.

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