Submarine Read online

  ‘No, just you.’

  ‘You do love me.’

  She takes my hand.

  ‘I do,’ I tell her.

  ‘Ha! So what did you say to your mother?’

  ‘She thinks I am worried about the ice caps.’

  ‘Ol, it’s okay. Don’t look so bad.’

  I stare up at the ceiling rose. I think about my parents.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she says. ‘He didn’t even finish the job he started.’ She puts her hand behind my neck and kisses me lightly on the chin.

  I echo her. ‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Now you know my only secret.’

  ‘That’s a rubbish secret,’ she says.

  She grabs both my hands and falls back on to the Turkish rug, pulling me on top of her. I lie in between her legs. She snogs me aggressively. Her hair is laid out on the carpet in rays from her head. She spreads her legs so that I can rub my fly zip against her knickers.

  My hard-on is back, it strains against my jeans. The guilt is lifting.

  She pushes me up into a kneeling position and puts my hand against the crotch of her knickers.

  I want to say: hotter.

  ‘Hotter,’ she says.

  She pulls aside the crotch of her knickers like a curtain. It is the first time I have seen one in the flesh. It is not so pretty. I remind myself that I like the taste of shellfish.

  With her other hand, she grabs my right index finger and traces it around the lips like someone applying Vaseline. She makes some noises. I close my eyes.

  She guides my finger inside her where it is wet and warm. As I break the surface tension, she breathes jerkingly. She helps me at first, her hand on mine until I get the hang of it – as though teaching me ‘the knack’ for unlocking a difficult front door.

  She lets go of her knickers and lets her arms lie, wrists up, on the rug; the knicker elastic rubs against the side of my hand. I put up with the discomfort.

  She is squirming a little, arching her back, rubbing the crown of her head against the carpet. Her mouth is agape; I can see the back of her top teeth.

  The games cupboard is open. I see Risk, Cluedo, Rummikub, Monopoly.

  I close my eyes. My wrist is getting tired. I slow down.

  ‘Fuck,’ she says.

  I speed up.

  ‘Fuck,’ she says.

  I am reminded, again, of Chips’s advice. One is an insult, two is a courtesy, three’s a pleasure and four is a challenge. I upgrade to two fingers.

  ‘Futch,’ she says.

  I have moved her beyond language.

  ‘Ung,’ she says.

  Evolution means nothing.

  ‘Uh, stop, stopstopstop,’ she says, grabbing me by the wrist.

  I open my eyes. She looks scared, standing on the edge, peering into the dark. We will take this step together. Not right now. But soon: next week is half term.

  I want her first sexual experience to be perfect. I want her first sexual experience to be before I turn sixteen.

  Shadoof

  I have heard my parents having sex. I’ve even heard my mother laugh during sex; I hope I’ve not inherited my father’s problem.

  Dad cooks grilled prawns in yoghurt and lime as an aphrodisiac, on nights when my parents have been apart for a few days. My parents travelled to Goa before I was born, where they ate this dish.

  ‘Do you remember them pulling the limes straight from the tree?’ my father asks, knowing that my mother remembers. ‘And the smell of the sea and the decomposing limes?’

  I imagine it smelling like the Body Shop.

  ‘All the prawns were fresh, caught that morning,’ my father tells me.

  ‘We couldn’t understand why the prawns were grey.’ She turns to me. ‘Uncooked prawns are grey,’ she says.

  A philtre is a drink that stimulates sexual desire. My father pours my mother red wine and, instead of saying ‘when’, she just smiles. On these occasions they give me a small glass of wine. Alcohol can also act as a sedative.

  I hear them through the thin floorboards.

  My parents begin by laughing and chatting. Seven minutes pass, mostly in silence but occasionally broken by my father’s low voice, like a radiator grumbling. This is foreplay.

  Jordana’s father owns an extensive video collection. She has never heard her parents having sex. He stores the videos in a bin bag on the top shelf of the wardrobe in their bedroom. My parents’ copy of The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana is not even illustrated; it lives on the bookcase in the sitting room. You may also find a book called The Rough Guide to Prague and Am I Too Loud?: Memoirs of an Accompanist on the same shelf.

  There is a short transition period between foreplay and penetration. At this point, I can hear weight being transferred as the bed frame groans, mattress sighs.

  The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana was translated by a man called Richard Burton. Under a sub-section entitled ‘Men Who Obtain Success with Women’, the book claims that ‘men who know their weak points’ will get all the ladies. My two main weaknesses: rounders and encouraging Jordana to set things on fire. She has burnt my leg hair, the Evening Post and an old, dried-out Christmas tree that went up like a jet engine.

  Some other groups of men who will be successful with women: ‘Men Who Like Picnics and Pleasure Parties’. I despise picnics. Also ‘Men Well Versed in the Science of Love’. And love is a science.

  Coitus. It lasts for ten minutes. During sex, my mother sounds as if she’s being given a deep-tissue massage. Is she having an orgasm? I’m certain my father cannot tell.

  When it’s over, my father, understandably, sounds relieved. He has out-performed the national average by two minutes. He will sleep well.

  I have done some research on tantra.com. It turns out that tantra transports your sexuality from the plane of doing to the plane of being. It can last for up to fifteen hours.

  Tonight, Jordana is coming round. I shall cook her a meal. I even told my parents about my plans. At this early stage in proceedings, I am doing my best to minimize any contact between my parents and Jordana. Mum said it was ‘terribly sweet’ and promised to take Dad out for the evening.

  So far, they have only glimpsed Jordana at the door a few times and, on one other occasion, when Jordana accepted the offer of a cup of tea. I am always careful not to let them start a conversation. It would not take more than three of my father’s jokes for an icy wind to blow through our relationship.

  My parents are going to see a performance of Richard III at the Grand Theatre. My dad told me the play contains a scene where Richard, an evil, unattractive man, seduces the recently bereaved wife of his brother, who Richard murdered, while the corpse is still in the room.

  ‘Now there’s seduction,’ he said.

  I want the evening upon which we lose our collective virginities to be special. I’m no parthenologist but I suspect that Jordana’s virginity is still intact. Her biological knowledge is minimal. She thinks that a perineum is to do with glacial moraine.

  One of the factors here is that, in school, there have been rumours that Janet Smuts and Mark Pritchard have consummated or, at the least, are very close to it. There are also three other couples who are moving quickly from base to base, looking to make a name for themselves. I figure we might as well get involved before it seems like we’re just jumping on the bandwagon.

  The meal will set the tone. Jordana will be put at ease, confident in my sexual prowess, because cooking and love-making (as it will be known for this evening) are, after all, interchangeable skills.

  For weeks now, with this evening in mind, I have been making a list of foods that she does not like. I sometimes go to school early to meet her for the breakfasts which they serve between seven thirty and a quarter to nine. Her parents don’t eat breakfast.

  I open my diary and write myself a reminder about Jordana’s culinary habits:

  J’s culinary dos and don’ts

  • Egg white. (I have told her that chocolate cake and pancakes contain egg white b
ut she doesn’t care.) She only likes the yolk.

  • Sausages must be well cooked. She ruthlessly checks the skin for any tell-tale transparency.

  • She does not like posh food. She has confirmed that the following foods are posh: pâté, frankfurters, porridge, mushrooms, mussels, scallops, cockles, octopus, black pudding, hake, haddock, ratatouille.

  • She only likes very soft cheese: over-ripe Brie/Camembert is acceptable if the rind has been removed. I asked her if a melted hard cheese is okay. It’s not. I asked her if she could say which cheese lies on the cusp between hard and soft, just so I can get an idea of the boundaries. She said nothing.

  I tear out the page and use the power of magnets to stick the list to the fridge door.

  Jordana doesn’t like the most traditional aphrodisiac, seafood, so I have decided to go for a safe, contraceptive option: homemade burgers. A burger with no bun and a perfectly round nose of egg yolk, no white – just to show I listen.

  But there has to be a sense of ambition to the meal too. We have bundles of fresh asparagus in the fridge which I will grill. I will also make creamy mash, partly because Jordana makes Smash for herself at home and partly because it is easier to overcook potatoes than boil them well.

  ‘Anything you need from the shop before we go?’ my mum asks.

  ‘I’ve got it under control thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Anything you need from the chemist?’ my dad says.

  ‘Lloyd, please.’ My mum opens the front door and pulls him outside by his elbow.

  I bought a packet of Trojan® Ultra Pleasure Extra Sensitive condoms: ‘No. 1 in AMERICA’. They smell nothing like a positive first sexual experience. I tried one on to check the fit. There are eleven left.

  As with many things, good food relies on preparation. Firstly, I wash eight small potatoes that are speckled with warts of dirt. My mother says that these potatoes taste better; she buys them from a farm where a woman wears wellington boots at all times. I quarter them.

  Finely chopping half an onion, I hope to cry but it does not happen – similar to Uncle Mark’s funeral. I add the onion in with the worms of mince in a bowl. I practise kneading mince into breast-sized patties, which, I’m almost certain, will benefit Jordana in the long run.

  I crack an egg and use the shell halves to disrobe the yolk. The transparent white slops down into the sink. It does not run easily through the plughole so I stir at it with my finger until it disperses. Jordana will benefit from this, also.

  I roll the elastic band down the bundle of asparagus – again, good practice – and lay the stalks out on the chopping board. Finally, I turn the electric grill to full, knowing that it takes a long time to heat up. If Chips were here, he would tell me why a woman and an oven are similar.

  Now I wait for Jordana. When she comes, I will simply need to pop the potatoes on the heat, wait eight minutes, slide the burgers under the grill, wait four minutes, lay out the asparagus beneath the grill and turn the burgers, wait two minutes, manoeuvre the yolk on to the red spot in the centre of the frying pan, break in my egg as well, drain and mash the potatoes, take out the burgers and asparagus: serve it all, et voilà

  My parents’ room, situated on the first floor at the front of the house, contains the only double bed. Their bedroom has two large wooden-framed windows looking out to sea. You can see the curve of Swansea Bay, marked out by the seafront lights, tapering off to the glowing pier and the lighthouse. Out in the bay, the Cork ferry may look like civilization but it probably contains at least one person vomiting. In between the two windows stands a dressing table made of smoky wood. It looks older than both Jordana and I put together. Jordana and I put together.

  The queen-size bed has a wooden frame and a dark-orange duvet cover and pillows. The bedside tables on both sides are identically stocked: three books, a lamp and a glasses case. I wonder if this allows my parents to swap sides during the night. I turn on one of the lamps, lighting the room like a sexy library.

  A fireplace in one wall holds pine cones, not logs, in the hearth. A picture of me, six years old, wearing a beret and a stripy top like a sailor, stands on the mantelpiece. I turn the photo face down. The scene is set.

  *

  I have one other, major concern: sex words. Mrs Profit, our sex-education teacher has not tackled the difficult issue of knowing which words to use when describing the sexual act. Some words have the mark of an amateur: knob, todger, willy.

  Penis and vagina are fine nouns but when overused they tend to make me think of the coffee tide-marks on Mrs Profit’s teeth.

  We asked our Welsh teacher, Mr Llewellyn – who is young, to tell us the Welsh sex words. The Welsh word for sex is ‘rhyw’. It sounds like coughing. He said that, in general, Welsh-speakers use English words. When pressed, he gave us a couple of examples to show us why this might be. ‘Llawes goch’ means ‘red sleeve’. ‘Coes fach’ means ‘small leg’. The phrase would be: ‘Put your small leg in my red sleeve.’

  Some euphemisms make you sound like Martin Clove, a boy who, for psychological reasons, doesn’t have to use the communal showers after rugby. When we ask Martin what is wrong with his wang, he gets defensive and refers to it as his little man. This implies a kind of distant, seemingly friendly relationship between him and his penis.

  In the Kama Sutra, the penis becomes the lingam and the vagina becomes the yoni. These words will add a certain mystical resonance, like very poor lighting, to the congress. Congress is an ancient word for sex.

  Chips says that ‘anal sex is for the connoisseur’. He heard me use the word connoisseur once and said that he liked it. Now he uses it most days.

  There are some much-underrated words used in Chips’s porn magazines. Razzle contains a very candid letters section where readers describe their sexual enterprises. Often, as the sex becomes more passionate, the words become more evocative. ‘Lick my shaft’ gives a sense of strength and an implication of coal-mining. ‘My rock-hard cock.’ ‘My throbbing rod.’ You couldn’t fail to be good in bed if you were the proud owner of a ‘raging love-pole’. One more word that may be useful in the heat of passion: dong. Dong sounds like someone very important has just arrived.

  Describing the vagina throws up just as many, if not more problems. I have been trying to think of my own words. I came up with undermouth. I came up with undermouth. I came up with undermouth. I’m not sure what this sentence means.

  The doorbell rings. She is early, eager.

  I open the door.

  ‘Hey,’ she says.

  She’s not wearing make-up. We must have a modern relationship. She wears a black skirt, slightly crumpled and, like all her clothes, starred with dead skin. Her red zip-up top has got the hammer and sickle in yellow on the left breast.

  In the seventies, there was a female Russian weightlifter named Yvana Sfetlova who was fed so many male hormones and steroids that she grew internal testicles. Jordana uses hydrocortisone – a steroid cream – for her eczema.

  ‘You’re crying again,’ she says.

  ‘Onions,’ I say, blinking.

  Sometimes the process of mourning a loved one can take years.

  ‘You’re still crying,’ she says, and she points at my nose. She wears a square green bracelet.

  The dining room looks like the sort of room in which healthy, stable relationships form. On the mantelpiece sits a vase of fresh chrysanthemums that I bought from a house on Tavistock Terrace.

  In their porch they also had roses and rhododendrons in buckets, with an honesty box hung from the door knocker. I bought chrysan-themums because they smelt least like an apology.

  A blue tablecloth drapes over the large dining table. I have laid out our heaviest cutlery and two cork place mats next to each other, not at opposites like my parents’. For Jordana’s enjoyment, and because her skin looks smoother in the half-dark, I have lit five small candles.

  ‘Posh,’ she says.

  ‘I’ve made you dinner.’

  ‘It better not
be scaloops.’

  She pronounces scallops wrong. I do not correct her.

  Jordana circles the table, examining it. She’s humming a song badly.

  This reminds me that I forgot the romantic music.

  ‘You can put some music on,’ I tell her. ‘The stereo’s in the music room.’

  ‘Nah, I’m going to read your diary,’ she says and stomps upstairs to my bedroom.

  I fill a pan with the recently boiled water from the kettle and carefully drop in the potatoes. The recipe says ‘toss them in’ but I think that irresponsible. I place the pan on a hob.

  The food is ready and on the plates; still she has not come down-stairs. The asparagi look perfect: crispy, brown at the edges. The burgers, although a little dry, have held together. The mash is hair-gel thick.

  I put the plates out in the dining room and sit down. Jordana is a slow reader so I decide to start eating.

  I hear her coming down the stairs; her clammy hands squeak as she slides them down the banister.

  She stops and stands cowboy-style, framed in the doorway.

  ‘Why didn’t you write about fingering me on the carpet?’ she says.

  ‘Um. Because I have so much respect for you.’

  I would be good at faking an orgasm.

  ‘No. You’re supposed to write about the important moments in your life.’

  ‘Once our relationship’s over, I’ll be sure to write the whole thing up.’

  She cocks her hip, squints at me as if I don’t make sense and looks huffy. She wants romance.

  I cut off my fried egg’s coat tails, spear them with my fork, cut off a hunk of burger, stab that with my fork, cut the head off an asparagus, balance it on the bits of egg and burger and finally dip the lot into the mash. I look into Jordana’s eyes as I direct the fork into my mouth.

  ‘Christ,’ she says, sitting down. She stares at her plate of food.

  ‘Toyourtaste?’ I ask, between chews.

  She picks up her fork with her left hand and passes it to her right. She doesn’t touch the knife.

  ‘Oliver,’ she says, piercing the egg yolk – it bleeds over the edges of the burger and drips on to the plate, ‘why have you done all this?’