Cupidity Read online

  ‘I didn’t know he was coming back today. He never tells me. Not out of covertness but when he joined up all those years ago we made a pact that when he went away, he wouldn’t say when he was coming back just in case. You know. It worked for us anyway and we have done it ever since, even though he rarely goes away now.’

  ‘Yes, I know. We all hoped it would never come to that, but for some of us it did, there was no effective way or helpful way of coping when they were gone.’

  ‘No there wasn’t and there isn’t for those still dealing with it, but that’s why you are here and we are keeping each other company. Everything will be ok. I can feel it.’

  ‘I feel it too Mae and I am glad to be here although I feel like you and Peter should be allowed time together without me in the way. Why don’t you go out for the evening? I can take care of the boys.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t need special time together. He is always away and then back and away and then back. This is normal for us. We might take you up on it and go out one evening but not tonight. Although while we are on the subject I will apologise in advance should you hear anything tonight, he’s on a promise and you know what they get like if they don’t get to sow their wild oats regularly.’

  She winked at Martha and with that Mae lifted Charlie out of the bath tub with his towel and wrapped it around him. Martha didn’t know where to look and what was it with the two of them winking all the time?

  Earlier she had thought Peter was flirting with her but it must be their thing, she thought. Mae had always been so open with that kind of thing and Martha never had. She wished Mae hadn’t told her the plans for the evening because what if they knew she was awake? She didn’t want them thinking she was listening. Furthermore, she hadn’t been loved like that for over two years and now she was going to hear her friend doing it? Once again, she felt extremely awkward and laughed nervously.

  ‘You two do what you’ve got to do. I’ll be asleep anyway.’

  ‘Got to do, just about sums it up.’ said Mae and she finished drying Charlie off and left the room.

  Martha told Willy to stand up and hoisted him out of the bath as well.

  ‘You are getting too big, my boy. Soon you will be telling me you don’t want me in here no doubt and one day I really will be alone.’

  ‘You won’t be alone Mummy, you have me. I’ll look after you.’

  Martha wrapped the towel around her boy and rested her head on his belly and he patted her hair with his wet hand. She didn’t mind, in fact she liked it a lot. She was so blessed to have a little boy like Willy.

  The women put the boys to bed and went back downstairs. Martha was going to clear up all the dinner plates, but Peter had already done it while they had been bathing the boys.

  ‘Where’s all the washing up, I was going to do it.’ ‘It’s all done, I did it,’ Peter said with a smile.

  Martha was blown away. It was unheard of for men like Peter to help around the house. She noticed how Mae didn’t even acknowledge his help.

  ‘I was going to do it’ she repeated. ‘I want to make myself as useful as I can while I am here…’

  ‘And I’m sure you will,’ Peter interrupted, ‘but it’s only your second night with us and I was able to help while you girls played Mummy. Now sit down and have a drink.’

  Martha noticed how Mae still hadn’t shown any gratitude and didn’t want to step on her toes by showing hers, so she picked up her drink and said thank you. They sat around the table for around an hour or so and Martha began to feel woozy. She very much enjoyed the way the alcohol was making her feel numb yet warm.

  Mae was telling Peter about something that had happened in the village that week and Martha found herself staring at them. She looked at Mae, all glamorous and beautiful with silky hair and expensive clothes and Peter, slicked back hair, chiseled looks and big strong arms.

  ‘I hear you met David today’ said Peter interrupting her thoughts at probably just the right time.

  ‘Yes, I did. Mae and I took the boys out for a walk and she introduced me. He seemed nice but then as the old saying goes, the taken ones always are.’ She examined her drink swirling around in her glass.

  ‘Taken? David is not taken and hasn’t been for a while, so I believe…’ Peter stopped talking because he noticed Martha glaring at Mae.

  ‘Oh, look, alright, I know what I said, but you were so serious and since our chat this afternoon you have lightened up. So, what if David is or isn’t taken. You are a big enough girl to do what you want whether I influence it or not,’ said Mae defiantly.

  Martha knocked back her drink and said she was going to bed. ‘Oh, don’t be like that.’

  ‘I’m not, I’m not being like that, I’m fine. Honestly. I’m tired, it’s been a busy couple of days and anyway, maybe I am off to go and dream about David.’

  She gave them a cheeky smile and bid them both good night. She wasn’t angry. She had had a nice day and Mae might have had a point. She did need to lighten up. Plus, she wanted to get to bed before they did so she could have a head start on getting to sleep and not hear their love making.

  ‘Come here you bad girl, let me look at you.’

  Martha had managed to get to sleep, but now it seemed she had been woken up and was about to hear everything. The walls weren’t that thick and she could hear muffled laughing and squeals of pleasure.

  ‘You know what happens to bad girls don’t you? They get a good spanking…’

  Martha cringed, she hoped they wouldn’t take that long because she could hardly bear to listen. Then she heard the slap, groan, pause, slap, groan, pause. Yes, someone was being spanked. It was hard to tell which one but Martha guessed Peter was spanking Mae. Then there was quiet. Why have they stopped? Thought Martha. Again, she wondered if it was because of her.

  Then she heard a deep gasp from Mae. They hadn’t stopped. The foreplay had, but the intercourse was just beginning by the sound of it.

  ‘Ahhh, yes, ah, yes. Oh. Peter. Oh. Yes’

  Mae was not being quiet in the slightest, she wasn’t even trying to be quiet. Martha could hear the sound of skin slapping, Peter groaning, Mae begging for more and she found herself extremely aroused. Mae was telling Peter how big and hard he was and Martha found that her breathing pattern was copying Mae’s.

  She lifted her night dress and pulled her knickers to the side. She felt slightly surprised by her own actions but knew she was drunk. She began to pleasure herself whilst listening to Peter and Mae having sex. With every slap of skin, she would thrust, with every yelp of pleasure she would bite her lip, with every groan from Peter she would gasp and grab the pillows. All three of them were having sex but in two different rooms.

  As Martha could feel herself getting wetter and wetter, the slaps from the adjoining room became quicker and quicker. Martha was picturing Johnny. She was imagining it was his fingers, not hers. She was imagining that she could feel his hot breath on her neck and that he was kissing her erect nipples. She was getting closer. She imagined rubbing her hands over his body and then grabbing hold of his lovely, pert bottom and pulling him in harder each time. She was there.

  She was coming.

  So were Mae and Peter.

  The release was intense and explosive. Martha bit on her pillow and squeezed her blankets as hard as she could, careful not to let out even so much as a whimper although she wanted to scream in pleasure.From what had seemed like ferocious noise in Martha’s head, the house was now quiet. Almost silent apart from the odd creak. They had all stopped and Martha calmed down with only her heavy breathing for company. She relaxed and closed her eyes and said, ‘I love you’ to an image in her head.

  The image was not Johnny.

  It was Peter.

  She sat bolt upright.

  Chapter 4

  Evelyn was in the area because of Simon, her psychopathic son. He had escaped from the psychiatric hospital where he had been for the last decade and was on the loose and as the officer had put it, ‘a d
anger to society.' The staff at the hospital and the police thought it might help find him if she were nearby. She was familiar with the area and knew her way around the town very well now due to visiting him for many years.

  She used to hate making the journey up to see him. It always filled her with cold dread. She would feel like everyone would know who she was as she walked the streets. She would think that the staff in charge of him thought she was responsible for him and his ways. Evelyn couldn’t understand what had become of her youngest son Simon.

  From the minute he had been born he was different to his siblings. He had a nasty way about him. His eyes were big and dark and she felt like he would slice through you with his stare. His eyes lacked emotion. He was aggressive, cold and distant. She hadn’t treated him differently to his brother and sister yet he was the opposite to them. She hated the expression ‘blame the parents’, which locals had whispered behind her in Church, behind her in the post office queue, or as they passed her on the street. She always pretended not to hear but she would make a point of smiling and saying hello if the opportunity was there. She had no idea what she could have done to prevent his actions.

  He was brought up in a firm but fair household. The eldest son, Michael, had gone on to become a doctor. The middle child, Grace, was a wife and mother to two darling little boys. Simon, however, the youngest born was to grow up to become a very dark, tormented soul who would be found guilty of murder.

  Evelyn noticed very early on that he was different from his siblings. He was headstrong and stubborn from the moment he could think for himself. He didn’t get along with any of the family even to the point where the children’s late father accused Evelyn of having bedded someone else during a heated argument one evening saying, ‘that boy is the spawn of Satan, he is no child of mine.

  Where did you get him from?’

  Simon’s ways took its toll on the whole family. The older he got, the worse he became. He was nasty to other children, abusive towards animals and just didn’t seem to have an ounce of compassion in his soul. Once he started school things became worse. Evelyn was forever being called in and often told to take him home. No one could handle him. She loved him, of course she did. He was her son and for years she just wished she could crack his code. She was convinced that there must be a small part of him somewhere that cared. She never found it.

  The real dark side of him came out at secondary school. The first major incident was concerning James Hardy. He was the son of a very good friend of hers. Perhaps Simon didn’t like him because James never put a foot wrong. When the two women would catch up, they would sing James’ praises. They couldn’t sing Simon’s because there were none to be sung. James’ mother, Violet, was as proud as punch of her boy.

  ‘James is excelling in all of his subjects at school, I don’t know where he gets it from,’ she would tell Evelyn. ‘He’s so caring and happy to help, all off his own back too. He doesn’t need any prompting from me. How are your children getting on?’

  Evelyn wished she could say she didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to her lot, she could speak highly of the older two but not of Simon and everyone knew it. He was the elephant in the room. ‘Mine are doing just fine, they are performing as expected of their age group so I can’t ask for more than that,’ she would say while busying herself with whatever was to hand at the time, usually a place mat or a cup of tea.

  One afternoon, Evelyn got a call from the school. The lady on the phone sounded somewhat distraught while telling Evelyn that she must

  come to the school at once. Evelyn’s heart sank as she put on her coat and checked her bag to make sure she had everything before leaving the house. She procrastinated, double checking she had her purse and her keys, delaying the inevitable bad news that she was about to receive.

  She arrived at the school and was shown through to the Headmaster’s Office where she saw Simon looking very pleased with himself.

  He saw his mother, and said, ‘Hi mother, and don’t you look just pretty as a picture today,’ while grinning positively.

  Evelyn started to feel hot and flustered. She knew by the look on her son’s face that this was not going to be good. He was so pleased with himself, more happy than she had seen him in quite some time that she knew it must be very bad this time. The headmaster went on to tell Evelyn that Simon had been into the store cupboard in his science lesson. They believed he had stolen a type of acid and had poured it down the back of James’ shirt, immediately burning him and that James had been taken to the local hospital. Evelyn wished she could jump into defence mode.

  ‘There is no smoke without fire.’ she could say. ‘Maybe it happened in defence. Maybe James was going to attack Simon. They must have been fighting. He probably…’

  And with that, her thoughts slowly drew to a halt. She knew deep down the headmaster wasn’t lying to her, she was just so ashamed to be told it. She felt sick that her son could be capable of such cold violence, but she knew that he was telling her the truth.

  The headmaster asked Simon to give his mother his account of what happened and he did.He spoke openly and confidently and took her through a step by step account of how he approached James from behind, grabbed him by the scruff of his clothing and pulled at his shirt collar and then poured the acid he had stolen down James’ back, totally unprovoked. Evelyn felt sick.

  Her mouth flooded quickly with warm saliva; her palms became clammy. She felt desperate and alone. She had been called to the school before, but most of the time it was because of good reports of her other two children and the frequent and general bad behaviour of Simon. The headmaster told Evelyn that the school would no longer tolerate Simon’s behaviour. He went on to tell her that he ‘did not think the school was equipped to deal with a child of Simon’s nature and that perhaps she could get him into a school for children with behavioural problems.’

  Simon laughed and laughed out loud, swinging on his chair. Evelyn was mortified. She couldn’t believe she was sitting in a room being told her child was too violent for the school he was at. Not only that but there were no schools local to them, not of the sort he was implying and even so, they cost a lot of money. Money that Joseph and Evelyn didn’t have.

  Evelyn wept silently. Small tears rolling down her cheeks, one after the other. She took out her handkerchief from her purse, wiped her face quietly and then she folded it back up and put it neatly away.

  ‘Very well Headmaster, I understand what you have told me, come on Simon…’ She beckoned Simon up from his chair, nodded at the Head and his assistant and left the room.

  That evening Simon stayed in his room quite content with what he had achieved that day. Nothing scared him. He was fearless. His behaviour got him the results he didn’t deserve to have such as a bedroom of his own forcing his brother and sister to share the other room. He couldn’t share a room with another person due to his temperament, persona, and unpredictable behaviour. No one would see his temper coming, but they soon knew about it. He would flip in a second, going from quiet and subdued to an almost possessed like state. When he was mad he had the strength of an ox; even his father couldn’t hold him back.

  His brother became frightened while sharing a room with him so the family decided that Simon could have a room of his own and the other two children would share despite Evelyn feeling that her only daughter should have her room, but they all had to make sacrifices for Simon and his ways. The only saving grace that came out of Simon being given his own room was that due to his apparent hatred for humanity he would happily lock himself away and not integrate with the rest of the family.

  Evelyn’s husband Joseph returned from a hard day’s graft to find Evelyn with a broken smile. He put his sack of tools down on the table and sighed. He knew that look on her face. She was trying to act normal, but her exhausted eyes told him that she was also begging to be asked. He couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t want to hear it. There was nothing they could do. The boy was a lost cause.
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  He slowly took his worn and old looking coat off, sighing louder as he pulled it over his tired, weary and fed up shoulders. He then left the kitchen and walked out to the hallway to hang up his coat, the whole time feeling Evelyn’s exasperation. He made the short walk back into the kitchen in no hurry, eyes down to the ground and pulled out a chair, still not looking at Evelyn. He then put all his weight on the back of the chair, almost using the chair to crack his back in a few places and then bringing his hands up to rub his face and finally running them through his wiry grey hair before putting Evelyn out of her misery.

  ‘What is it, now?’

  As he met her tear-filled eyes with his, he didn’t want to know. If anything, he wanted to know about anything else in the world apart from Simon’s behaviour. Evelyn could tell him about what time she took the bins out, she could tell him what groceries she bought... anything would appeal to him more right now than hearing about what horrific thing his son had done. It broke Evelyn’s heart and she knew it would leave him feeling utterly useless in defending his family and controlling his son.

  Joseph listened to Evelyn; he listened to her pour her heart out and go through the cycle of confusion. The confusion that leads to blaming, that leads to hurt, that leads to desperation, which leads to the inevitable hopelessness and then back to confusion. He listened to all of it while feeling numb the whole time. He didn’t love his son. Evelyn did. He guessed that she did because she carried him, she was more emotionally connected to him than he was.

  He had loved Simon at first but the years of trauma that child had caused and watching the effect it had on his wife and other children had caused his love for his youngest to cease. The boy didn’t seem like a child to him and he couldn’t make excuses for him, not when his two other children were worlds apart from Simon.

  Joe knew that nothing he and Evelyn had done had contributed to Simon’s despondent persona. He could no longer give love to the boy that broke his wife’s heart daily, the boy that made him look weak and the boy that frightened his siblings. Joe didn’t know when the love stopped. It hadn’t happened overnight; it wasn’t a switch. He just knew now that he didn’t love him but that he had to be responsible for him.