is a gift from Miss Hale to one of her girls. An affirmation that Catherine is one of those girls who announce themselves, and that Miss Hale is watching over.
It is only when she is back home in her room that she dares to open the package, that she dares to pull the purple wrapping from the gift. And when she holds the gift aloft, a faint, quizzical smile lights her face. Stockings. Expensive. French. By English standards, adventurous. Certainly not the stockings that a middle-aged drama teacher from Boston would normally be seen wearing. In fact, Catherine is not exactly sure that she can be seen wearing them. Of course, she will be. Given the right time, and the right place.
But what a thing? The thought of Miss Hale evenbuying them, let alone contemplating wearing them, is intriguing, for it opens up the possibility that there may be another side, many other sides, to Miss Hale altogether. Catherine falls back on the bed, running the material through her fingers, that faint, quizzical smile still lighting her face. Who would have expected that? What a thing. What a thing, indeed.
A deserted laneway isn’t quite a sheep paddock, nor does it possess the privacy of a room of their own, but it is, nonetheless, where they stop. Catherine is backed up against a wall. Her arms are around Daniel’s neck and her fingers are digging into his hair, which he swears needs cutting but which she’d rather left long. Her mouth is glued to his, her tongue, like a life-form unto itself, has been let loose inside his mouth, its tip darting here and there. She seems to be taking in mouthfuls of him, and he of her. She never knew until this summer that kissing could be this delirious, have such power, to make you forget or just not care that there’s a world of people and houses and streets out there; everything(their lips, tongues, fingers and limbs) has given itself over to these ardent ways of theirs.
And just as their lips are glued to each other, so are their bodies. His knee is in between her legs, pressing deep into her. In the language of the street and the schoolyard, this, she knows, is what’s called a knee-trembler. The girls at the various schools she’s attended (and she’s been to five) have talked of such things in a way that was both alarming and fascinating, but she had never experienced the thing until this summer. Her knowledge of boys and girls and what happens between them has been picked up in the schoolyard and through the books for and about young women and what happens in bedrooms, books that are circulated around the class, having been pilfered or ferreted out of a parent’s drawer or off a bedside bookshelf by some enterprising girl for both her benefit and everybody else’s as well — by one of those girls who do it, or say that they’ve done it. They’re odd things, these pages from manuals, with odd words and phrases that she and most of the girls at the school can’t help but laugh at because they’re funny, and also because they’re just a bit scary too — and laughing together makes them feel just a little bit less scared. But she’s not laughingnow, because along with his knee she can feel something else pressed against her as she leans back, eyes closed, against a wall, in a laneway, in a town, in a world, solar system … et cetera, et cetera. And if she thinks of the thing pressing against her, words such as ‘penis’ and ‘member’ and all the rest of those silly, bloody terms don’t occur to her. She simply thinks of the thing as ‘it’. If she thinks of it at all. For the one thing she has observed about moments such as these, when she looks back on them, is that she’s usually not thinking. She’s free of thinking. And it’s puzzling that she should feel such joy at being free of thought because she loves thought. But she’s also beginning to appreciate the sheer exhilaration of having all thought wiped away by touch. Certainly, at the moment, words don’t matter. Like
It is only when she is back home in her room that she dares to open the package, that she dares to pull the purple wrapping from the gift. And when she holds the gift aloft, a faint, quizzical smile lights her face. Stockings. Expensive. French. By English standards, adventurous. Certainly not the stockings that a middle-aged drama teacher from Boston would normally be seen wearing. In fact, Catherine is not exactly sure that she can be seen wearing them. Of course, she will be. Given the right time, and the right place.
But what a thing? The thought of Miss Hale evenbuying them, let alone contemplating wearing them, is intriguing, for it opens up the possibility that there may be another side, many other sides, to Miss Hale altogether. Catherine falls back on the bed, running the material through her fingers, that faint, quizzical smile still lighting her face. Who would have expected that? What a thing. What a thing, indeed.
A deserted laneway isn’t quite a sheep paddock, nor does it possess the privacy of a room of their own, but it is, nonetheless, where they stop. Catherine is backed up against a wall. Her arms are around Daniel’s neck and her fingers are digging into his hair, which he swears needs cutting but which she’d rather left long. Her mouth is glued to his, her tongue, like a life-form unto itself, has been let loose inside his mouth, its tip darting here and there. She seems to be taking in mouthfuls of him, and he of her. She never knew until this summer that kissing could be this delirious, have such power, to make you forget or just not care that there’s a world of people and houses and streets out there; everything(their lips, tongues, fingers and limbs) has given itself over to these ardent ways of theirs.
And just as their lips are glued to each other, so are their bodies. His knee is in between her legs, pressing deep into her. In the language of the street and the schoolyard, this, she knows, is what’s called a knee-trembler. The girls at the various schools she’s attended (and she’s been to five) have talked of such things in a way that was both alarming and fascinating, but she had never experienced the thing until this summer. Her knowledge of boys and girls and what happens between them has been picked up in the schoolyard and through the books for and about young women and what happens in bedrooms, books that are circulated around the class, having been pilfered or ferreted out of a parent’s drawer or off a bedside bookshelf by some enterprising girl for both her benefit and everybody else’s as well — by one of those girls who do it, or say that they’ve done it. They’re odd things, these pages from manuals, with odd words and phrases that she and most of the girls at the school can’t help but laugh at because they’re funny, and also because they’re just a bit scary too — and laughing together makes them feel just a little bit less scared. But she’s not laughingnow, because along with his knee she can feel something else pressed against her as she leans back, eyes closed, against a wall, in a laneway, in a town, in a world, solar system … et cetera, et cetera. And if she thinks of the thing pressing against her, words such as ‘penis’ and ‘member’ and all the rest of those silly, bloody terms don’t occur to her. She simply thinks of the thing as ‘it’. If she thinks of it at all. For the one thing she has observed about moments such as these, when she looks back on them, is that she’s usually not thinking. She’s free of thinking. And it’s puzzling that she should feel such joy at being free of thought because she loves thought. But she’s also beginning to appreciate the sheer exhilaration of having all thought wiped away by touch. Certainly, at the moment, words don’t matter. Like
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