Impact/Pinter

The room, every fortnight, was musty and dank. Eloise, like the creature of habit she observed most men to be, sat in the same seat and before the class had started found herself mesmerised by the grey concrete that showed through the peeling, once upon a time-white wallpaper. It was high up; too high for anyone to idly scratch at the edges, but still the grey expanded week by week. She cocked her head to one side, like a cloud-watcher trying to make shapes, and imagined she could see an ugly face leering into the fluorescently-lit room.

Either way, scratched or not scratched, faced or faceless, all her attention moved when Grant entered the room. By the thinning hair, and the particular confidence he exuded through his bent and paunched body, she guessed him at forty-five. His physical appearance, his rough voice and never clean shaven chin, grated with her idea of what she was supposed to like. She rationalised him out of her mind after every session, and was dragged back by, well, his hands. Rough. Sometimes dirty. Coarse. His broad palms. She lusted for his hands. An academic with weather-worn hands, she considered, was a rare thing. He seemed the type to have lived a different life before this one. At night, with her own barely-touched hand between her soft thighs, she let his imagined lives flash before her eyes, and gasped his name in her throat.

Eloise understood her attraction as inexplicable. It wasn’t that she bore an extremely high opinion of herself, but she at least understood the social structures which put her in a ‘league’ well above his.

“The instructions. Between Ben and Gus,” Grant muttered to their knowledge-hungry ears. His countenance did not recommend him. He was brash and morbid. His eyes ever lowered, the class cast glances of boredom at one another throughout his lessons. Eloise too, at the beginning.

She was overenthusiastic. She found the page first, even as Grant flicked through his own copy. Perhaps some Gods of fate were easing her into the place of teacher’s pet.

“Page 142,” She chirped. Heads nodded gratefully and she earned herself a look from Grant.

Bending his book right open to sit in A5 in his hand, Grant spoke again. “Someone needs to read with me.”

Eloise held back, expecting no one to offer, and for the task to fall to her false reluctance. Even she did not wish to appear overly adoring of teacher, nor subject.

Grant deigned to look up once more and caught the eye of another girl. Tabitha. Dancer. Pretty in over-sized jumpers, with her hair messy. Where Eloise put in great effort, Tabitha never had to go. She smiled politely. Grant gestured to her. “Tabitha, will you read Gus please.”

She nodded. She nodded where Eloise should have nodded.

A small thing. A reading. Between two male characters. And Grant barely looked up. But Eloise seethed at this one to one attention. Pinter’s words forcing Tabitha to read to him, for him, with him. It was insane, this jealousy. It had no foundation, only insensible emotion. It should have been her. She clenched her fist.

Grant noticed. And unnoticed. “Time’s getting on.”

“I know. I don’t like doing a job on an empty stomach.”

“Be quiet a minute. Let me give you your instructions.”

“What for? We always do it the same way, don’t we?”

“Let me give you your instructions.”

Grant could hear her jaw clench. He read and from the corner of his eyes saw the muscle twitch and tighten. He wasn’t an idiot. His disregard didn’t make him unseeing. Eloise sat close. Closer than necessary. She feigned habit, but she hadn’t always sat there. She hadn’t always been studious. She hadn’t always been well-read.

His hand shot out and covered her white fist. “Trouble Ellie?”

Scared eyes – he wanted her scared – looked up at him, tinged with confusion.

“Your jaw. You’re tense. Don’t you like Tabitha’s voice?”

Eloise shifted uncomfortably.

“When we get the call, you go over and stand behind the door.”

“Stand behind the door.”

“If there’s a knock on the door you don’t answer it. Jealousy doesn’t become you. Do you always get jealous hearing pretty girls read?”

He rendered her speechless though his words were economical. She supposed that was one of the advantages her own study might afford her. Economy with words. What about economy of emotion?

“If there’s a knock on the door I don’t answer it.”

“Come here,” He held her hand firmly and pulled her. Her chair clattered behind her, and she caught her hip on the corner of the table. “But there won’t be a knock on the door.”

“So I won’t answer it.”

The pain was bone deep in her hip, and she moaned coarsely in the back of her throat, bent over the desk. Not until she attempted to stand did Eloise realise she was not lying down for comfort, but for his entertainment. His hand was firm between her shoulder blades, holding her just so.

“When the bloke comes in -”

“When the bloke comes in -”

“Your emotions are tangible. Senseless, over-feeling child. I don’t stand for jealousy.” His hand moved from her back, and she remained there, understanding that it wasn’t her choice. “She’s reading. There’s no romance in these words. No cause for such a rise in your pulse. Shut the door behind him.”

“Shut the door behind him.”

Hands moved down her back and over the curve of her bottom, pushed out as she was bent. “Without divulging your presence.” His coarse fingers summoned a delicacy she hadn’t thought possible in him as he took the hem of her skirt and raised it far up, around her waist. Eloise thought, or imagined she thought, she heard a smile in his approving silence. “White panties? With your thoughts and sins, don’t you think those are a little virginal for you?”

“Without divulging your presence.” Tabitha, and the others, their noses in their books, following the dialogue carefully, didn’t notice the scene. Not one eyebrow raised. No one saw Grant smooth the cotton over her convex flesh.

“He’ll see me and come towards me.”

“He’ll see you and come towards you.”

“He won’t see you.”

“Eh?”

Grant snatched at the waistband of her knickers and tugged them below her buttocks and an inch further. Eloise felt the room’s musty air on her cunt.

“He won’t see you.”

“He won’t see me.”

Eloise felt her breathing grow ragged. The inevitability of her situation was perfectly clear to her. She waited. And waited. Felt the knot in her stomach grow. Was she jealous for this? For this, his rough, unloving attention. This wasn’t academic discussion. This wasn’t the sexual tension of debate. She squirmed.

“But he’ll see me.”

“He’ll see you.”

“He won’t know you’re there.” Grants unsmooth palm came down hard, with a cracking of flesh on flesh, on her arse. She grunted. “Count them off, slut.”

“One…” She gasped.

“He won’t know you’re there.”

Another, stinging this time, marking his hand crimson on her skin.

“Two!”

“He won’t know you’re there.”

Pain blossomed over her backside as she moaned under his command. “Three!”

“He won’t know I’m there.”

The heat surprised her. Such heat within so few strikes. “Four!”

“I take out my gun.”

Eloise winced. And nothing.

“You take out your gun.”

“He stops in his tracks.”

“He stops in his tracks.”

“If he turns round -”

Another. Stinging. The surprise sent her voice high into the room. Still no one looked up; no one saw her humiliation. “Five!”

“If he turns round -”

“Six!”

“If he turns round -”

“Seven!”

“You’re there.”

“Eight!”

“I’m here.” Tabitha hummed a pause. “You’ve missed something out.”

“Nine!”

“I know. What?”

“Ten!”

“I haven’t taken my gun out, according to you.”

Nothing. Still Eloise felt her body shudder and wince at the missing impact. She moaned. He was thorough, allowing his broad hands to travel across the full space of flesh offered to him. “You take your gun out -”

“After I’ve closed the door.”

“After you’ve closed the door.”

Five dry fingers cupped up between her thighs.

“You’ve never missed that out before, you know that?”

Five dry fingers found heat.

“When he sees you behind him -” No change in his voice, she noted.

“Me behind him -”

Five dry fingers dipped into the slickness of her cunt.

“And me in front of him -”

“And you in front of him -”

Five dry fingers grew wet and his voice smiled with the knowledge of yet more sin. “He’ll feel uncertain -”

“Uneasy.”

Eloise whimpered at his indelicate invasion. He pushed one finger inside her, settling the book on her back, freeing his hands as he smoothed her wetness over the lips of her cunt. “He won’t know what to do. Do little girls dream of this?”

“So what will he do?”

Still holding one digit inside her, his other hand came down faster. “He’ll look at me and he’ll look at you.”

“Eleven!”

“We won’t say a word.”

“We’ll look at him.”

Stinging, heat hit over heat. “Twelve!”

“He won’t say a word.”

“He’ll look at us.” Grant smoothed his hand over the beaten marks.

“And we’ll look at him.”

“Nobody says a word.” His palm came down again, and with the impact, he pushed his probing finger an inch deeper.

“Thirteen!”

“What do we do if it’s a girl?”

Grant smirked and used two fingers. “We do the same.”

And his hand, again. “Fourteen!”

“Exactly the same?”

“Exactly.” And the impact came down again, shaking her body. He watched the soft flesh of her bottom and thighs shake under his palm.

“Fifteen!”

“We don’t do anything different?”

His palm followed faster; once, twice, three times, four times, and Eloise forgot her moment to whimper and breathe, caught in his beating. “We do exactly the same.”

“Sixteen! Seventeen! Eighteen! Nineteen!”

“Oh.”

A bell rang, somewhere in the building. Grant grunted. “Just in time.”

Books disappeared into bags and still his hand was forced tight between her thighs. She felt his hand rise, could tell this would mark and he groaned, and it came down. Strong, red, bruising. Eloise screamed and it became a groan, the pain still in her voice.

“Twenty.”

He closed the book. “I’ll see you all in a fortnight.”

(Dialogue from Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter.)