Taming the Beast (22 page)

Sarah looked through him and saw his manipulative black heart. The heart that loved her and that she loved back. She lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke directly into his eyes. He flinched, but did not move away.

‘Is that why you left home, Sarah? Because your parents were too strict? Because they were cold towards you?’

‘No. Strict I could’ve lived with. At least until I’d finished school.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ she said, ‘but don’t get too excited, I’m not going to cry again.’

‘You think I like it when you cry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, maybe a bit,’ he said, without a hint of shame. ‘But mostly, I want to know what was so terrible that it’s stopped you seeing your family for six years.’

‘I got raped. My parents didn’t approve.’ Sarah shrugged, as though her body could convince her brain that there was nothing to get upset about

‘Oh, Christ. Darling, I…’ Daniel put his hands on her knees, and then, before her brain had registered the pleasure of his touch, he removed them. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Sarah ran her tongue along her teeth, like sharpening the blade of a knife. Amazing how satisfying it was to be able to hurt him back. She licked her lips, tasting blood that was not there, but had been and would be again. ‘That’s the whole story,’ she said, ‘You can make up the details yourself if you need something to jerk off to.’

‘That’s harsh, Sarah. Even for you.’ He stood up and walked to the edge of the river, his hands deep in his pockets. Sarah was instantly remorseful. He couldn’t help hurting her; he wanted to
know her so much that he couldn’t hold back, couldn’t be polite and dishonest with her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah called out. ‘Please come back and sit with me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’

Daniel walked back slowly and sat beside her. ‘How can we be together if you won’t tell me your secrets?’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you.’

‘Everything, okay?’

‘Yes.’ Sarah looked around and was disappointed that the park was deserted. Sometimes the absence of others made you feel more suffocated than anything else. A public park on a sunny Saturday should be filled with kids and mums and dogs and frisbees. It shouldn’t be funeral home quiet, it shouldn’t make you feel as though you could scream and scream and nobody but the ducks would hear.

She took a deep breath. ‘I was sixteen. There was a party at Jamie’s house –’

‘Jamie who you’re sleeping with now? You knew him back then?’

‘Yeah, you did too. Jamie Wilkes. He was in our class. It was actually his brother Brett’s party, which was why I wanted to go.’

‘You liked Brett?’

‘Oh, yeah, Brett’s great. I slept with him a couple of times, but mostly we were just really good buddies. The reason I wanted to go to the party was because all his uni mates would be there, so it would be like, a smorgasbord of older men.’

Daniel’s face scrunched. ‘Were you sleeping with Jamie and his brother at the same time?’

‘No! Stop interrupting.’

Daniel nodded and Sarah continued. ‘So anyway, all these men are throwing themselves at me, they’re handing me drinks and
smokes and joints, they’re asking me to dance and trying all these lines. I was taking my time, just hanging with Jamie while I decided who to go for, and then Jamie starts cracking on to me. Like, pressing against me and telling me how good I looked and stuff. It was weird at first because he was sweet and everything but he was just little Jamie. Then it stopped being weird and started being exciting, because I had been in his bedroom about a thousand times and the idea of having sex in there was so deviant and dirty. I started fantasising about watching him come all over his Spiderman sheets and of screwing him on the floor, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling.

‘So I went for it. And it was nothing like I’d thought. It wasn’t at all weird; it was amazing. I mean, he was practically a virgin and so it was just a fast, straightforward hump, but it was
Jamie
. My best friend, you know? And the way he looked at me… God, no one has ever looked at me like that. With such adoration.’

‘Hang on,’ Daniel interrupted, ‘
I
look at you like that.
I
adore you.’

Sarah felt all choked up inside. ‘Can you just let me tell it?’

He was frowning, the lines across his forehead heavier than usual. ‘Fine. We’ll get back to that later though. I promise you.’

Sarah nodded, knowing that there was so much in this story that he would want to get back to later. She would die before she had ever managed to satisfy Daniel.

‘Jamie went to get us some beer and smokes. He’d only be gone a minute when the door opened. I was facing away from the door, fixing up my hair and I said “Oh that was fast” or something and this voice, not Jamie, goes “Hear that mate, she’s waiting for us.” I turned around and there’s these two blokes standing in the doorway. I told them that Jamie had just gone down for beer and I thought they’d get the hint and piss off, but they shut the door and
turned off the light and…’ Sarah closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. She was fine. Fine, fine, fine. She was absolutely fucking fine.

‘Sarah? Are you okay?’

She opened her eyes and smiled. ‘Fine. So I’m now in the dark, with these two blokes who I vaguely recognise from the party. One of them was really big, steroid big. The other one was just footy player big and okay looking. Under different circumstances I would’ve done him for sure. But I was worried that if Jamie came back and they were in the room, he would think I had invited them and would be upset. Jamie’s insecure about things like that.

‘I told them they had to leave. They laughed, and Steroid guy said something about how he felt bad that him and his mate were the only ones out of their crowd that I hadn’t fucked. I told him that there was a very good reason for that, and that he was an ugly rude pig and he better stay away from me. He pushed me on to the bed, and I was so surprised that for a second I did nothing. Then I started lashing out, with my fists and feet and I kept telling him to fuck off. He called his mate over and then my arms were pinned over my head, and my legs were being pushed apart. I started to feel a little scared. I kept screaming at them to fuck off and hoping that Jamie would come back before they did anything.’

Sarah stopped and looked at Daniel. His forehead was glistening, and his cheeks were bright pink. He nodded at her to go on.

‘Anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘Jamie didn’t get back until after they’d done it. And when he did, he had to fight them, and so Jamie and me both ended up hurt and the next morning–’

‘You promised to tell me everything.’

‘Was that not clear? Two men raped me and beat Jamie up.’

‘That’s telling me the result. I want to know what happened.’

Sarah couldn’t look at him. ‘I need a smoke.’

‘Go ahead,’ he said, and Sarah couldn’t help looking up, because his voice was devoid of the annoyance he always had when she wanted to smoke.

‘Right.’ Sarah lit up. ‘So the bigger guy, Barry, pushed my skirt up and ripped off my underpants. Like, really ripped them off so they were wrecked. Then he… he pushed into me, really hard and it hurt so much that I yelled and then that was bad, because the guy who had my arms punched me in the mouth, which hurt even more than what Barry was doing. I kept yelling even though my mouth was filling up with blood. And then, the bloke who’d hit me put… put it in my mouth and I–’

‘Put what in your mouth?’

‘You know what! His
thing
.’

‘
Thing
, Sarah? Are we in primary school?’

‘Fucking hell! Fine!’ She could hardly breathe. ‘He put his penis in my mouth. He put it in and I bit down,
really
hard. He punched me again and I thought I might choke to death on my blood and teeth, but I didn’t care, I was so happy that I had hurt him.

‘Barry had finished and I thought, that’s it, the worst is over and I am still alive. And then the one I bit told Barry that he wanted to have a proper go at me. I screamed out again, I think I screamed for Jamie but my mouth was all smashed up so I don’t know what it sounded like, and then I was being rolled over and there was a hand at the back of my head, pushing my face into the mattress and I knew what they were going to do to me. I stopped trying to breathe and just hoped that I would pass out and not have to feel anything.

‘Of course, it’s no fun for them if I’m unconscious, so they pulled my hair and punched me some more and poured beer over my head. I was raped again, anally this time, and it was much worse
than the other way. Like being ripped open. Despite their best efforts, I did black out a couple of times. I thought I was dying. I hallucinated, I thought my mother was standing over the bed and I called to her, and then I looked again and it was Jamie, except he wasn’t just standing there, he was yelling and then I heard glass breaking, and I realised that it wasn’t a hallucination and that Jamie had just smashed a bottle over Barry’s head.’

Sarah stopped to stub out her cigarette and light another one. She didn’t look at Daniel but she could hear him breathing.

‘Jamie managed to get them out of the room. He got smashed up though… Poor bloke. He was bawling his eyes out, but once it was over I was completely calm. He kept saying that I was in shock, but I wasn’t; I don’t think so anyway. I was just amazed that I was still alive, that I felt thirsty, that I wanted a cigarette. Jamie cleaned me up and I felt embarrassed at him seeing me like that and at him touching me, doing everything with one arm while the other one was, like, limp at his side. He was holding a towel between my legs, and he was crying and carrying on and I just felt like, why did they have to go and do that? Why did these arseholes have to come along and ruin a perfectly good night? I was going to give Jamie his first ever blowjob and now my mouth was so smashed up it would be useless. I said that to Jamie and he just
howled
. It was the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life and it made me feel like crying, but I couldn’t and so I vomited instead, and that gave him something else practical to do so he stopped making all that noise.’

Daniel cleared his throat. ‘Did you call the police?’

‘Didn’t occur to us. I spent the night in Jamie’s room, with the door locked, and the next day Jamie and Brett got a bunch together and went and belted the shit out of the guys who did it. They smashed them up really bad, broke bones and all. I was happy. It felt like justice.

‘Anyway, Jamie walked me home in the morning. It wasn’t far. He wanted to come in with me but I felt bad enough about what I’d put him through. I didn’t want to subject him to what I knew would be another ugly scene where he would feel obliged to defend me. Plus, I could see he was hurt badly; I told him to go to the doctor and I’d call him later.

‘I walked into the kitchen and the three of them were sitting around the breakfast table, each with a section of the Sunday paper and a bowl of cereal. And I thought, what a perfect little scene. What a perfect little happy family this is and I am this
mess
. I was wearing Jamie’s jacket and that covered all the damage to my arms, but my legs and my face were fucked up. I knew, before anyone even looked at me or spoke, I knew that I was no longer part of that scene. Or really, I knew that I had never been part of it, I had always been too messy for them, even without my busted nose and knocked out teeth.

‘They all freaked out, but I was cool. I told them what had happened and asked Mum if she would please drive me to the hospital. She said no.’

Daniel whistled. ‘She said
no
?’

‘She said no. She said that she was so ashamed that she couldn’t even look at me. Dad said that I would be going to boarding school. I asked him if going to boarding school made you rape proof and he told me to stop being so melodramatic. Kelly said that it was impossible I had been raped because everybody knew that I didn’t say no to anyone. Mum asked me if that was true and I…’ Sarah snorted. ‘I said it was true that I had a lot of sex, but that I thought an old school feminist like her would know the difference between being sexually permissive and being forced to take it up the arse while you got your face smashed in.’

Daniel laughed in a shocked sort of way. ‘I worship you, Sarah. I really do. You are the classiest woman in the world. A Goddess.’
Sarah and Daniel talked all afternoon, sitting on the bench, walking along the water and then lying on their backs and looking at the clouds. She told him how Jamie’s mum took her to the hospital and wrote herself in as next of kin and paid all the medical bills, and how Brett and Jamie helped her find a flat and a job and some second hand furniture. She liked it that Daniel called Jamie a hero, and that he said it was noble of her to leave home rather than stay and be degraded by small minded people.

It had been dark for hours by the time he drove her home. She was dizzy from the entirely new experience of speaking what was in her heart and not being met by dismay or disgust. If she had needed reassurance that her attraction to Daniel was more than just sexual, then today had been it. It was more than sexual, but it was still fundamentally physical. Even connecting with him on an emotional level made her skin prickle. Whenever he laughed at something she said, or nodded in a way that denoted complete understanding, her muscles twitched in recognition. She needed him physically, but it wasn’t the base lust she felt around other men. It wasn’t about getting off; it was about making one beast with two backs.

Before she got out of his car, she asked the question that had been nagging at her for the last few hours. ‘Daniel, when I was telling you what happened… when I described what they did to me, how did you feel?’

He furrowed his brow. ‘I felt sorry for you.’

Sarah nodded. ‘But… what about…’

‘What?’

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘It seemed like you maybe enjoyed it a bit. The way you enjoy it a bit when I cry?’

‘Look at me, Sarah.’ She did. His eyes were huge and wet. ‘I think what they did was despicable. I am heartbroken at the pain
you suffered and at the callous treatment you received from your family. However,’ he said, touching the back of her hand with his fingertips. ‘There is nothing about you that doesn’t turn me on. If becoming aroused while you describe your bloodied thighs makes me sick and depraved, then God help me, I’m sick and depraved.’