The Occupation by Chloe Adams

Author:Chloe Adams [Adams, Chloe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761351433
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

It took only minutes. That alone came as a surprise to Mary, who was of course discovering many new things on this night. But really, she thought, it was all over so extraordinarily quickly. What she was left with was the fact of the body; how adaptable it was, making astonishingly hasty adjustments in such a brief window of time. One moment you could think of nothing else and in the next you could hear some creature rustling on the roof. You could be amazed by how much the eye sees in the dark. And you could feel rather exposed lying naked next to a real-life man, wondering where your clothes had landed and how you might shimmy off the bed to retrieve them without being watched. Could one ask the gentleman to close his eyes? Then the thought came that she should have asked about a prophylactic, but not really having a precise idea how it all worked, and not knowing if it was the sort of thing a man had on him or could easily acquire in Japan, the thought was soon banished.

In fact, there were so many thoughts to file through, it came as almost an imposition to have Sully speaking.

‘Are you all right?’

He traced a finger down her shoulder. Around them the warm timber frame of the room gave out a creak.

Was she all right? She could hardly say. The obvious answer was yes, because there had not been one second when she’d wanted him to stop. There was barely thought, only action, hers as well as his.

She rolled towards him and smiled. ‘Yes, I . . . I think maybe I’ve never been better in my whole blessed life.’

He let out a deep belly laugh and squeezed her. ‘Heaven help us, woman.’

She broke into laughter too, and they carried on like that, their bodies shaking against one another. Eventually, they softened and stilled.

‘Seriously, is it always that wonderful?’

He thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps not.’

They lay like that for quite some time. Every so often, she felt a smile break across her face, then fall away. The word changeling came into her mind and wouldn’t leave, although she knew it was hardly apt. It was just that she did feel categorically changed. There was a sense that she could not turn back, that this substitute self was hers for life.

Then there was the sound of men out the window; a group of them, travelling up the path to the men’s block. They were laughing and breaking into a crude chant about a girl. Jimmy could have been among them, she thought, but their voices – so uncouth and yet so evidently not of the lowest class – bled into each other and could not be picked apart.

When they’d gone, she said: ‘The way those men are with each other. It’s so, so . . .’

‘Intimate?’

‘Yes!’ she exclaimed.

‘Well, they love each other.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Perhaps not romantic love, but yes, I think it’s a kind of love.

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