The iron gates opened to let out the flood. A sea of royal blue, the colour of prize ribbons, surged forwards. Justin stepped up onto the nature strip. The girls wore their hair in high ponytails and short, shaggy bobs. They flowed through the school gates and down the footpath in a huge, seething, cackling mass. Justin watched them with wonder, amazed at the volume of their taunts, shrieks and laughter and stunned at the happy confidence on their faces, in their straight-backed postures and in the quick flicks of their heads. He didn’t remember childhood like this.
Justin’s childhood had been one of shy slinking away from things: first from his father’s hand and then from his mother’s sweet, fermenting alcoholic breath. At school he had hidden from the bullies with his head down and shoulders scrunched together. He’d walked along walls and slid around corners, spent lunchtimes in graffitied library carrels and free periods locked in toilet cubicles. There, in the light, quiet space of the toilet, with only the drip of the urinal and the occasional hiss of a student taking a piss to disturb him, he’d taught himself to release.
Justin had known that most boys learned to masturbate in their beds. But for Justin, his bed had seemed inappropriate. His bed had been his sanctuary, the place where he felt warm and safe and hidden. He retreated there when the fighting between his parents started to suffocate him. He lay on his bed with his pillow over his head and almost succeeded in drowning out the screaming and the crashing and the sobs. Warm and safe, Justin would be comforted by the knowledge that no one would come for him here, that soon he would be sleeping and so would they. In the morning, the night before would be forgotten and everything would be all right. So although the thought of masturbating in his bed did occur to him, he never acted on the impulse until he’d moved away. He hadn’t wanted a soundtrack of screaming to interrupt his pleasure. For the teenage Justin, bed was a place for sleep or for comfort and it was only in the toilet cubicle where, bored and lonely, Justin would take his cock in his hands and rub it.
To Justin’s horror and surprise, later, when he’d moved away from his parents and their shouting, he realised that, perversely, he missed the fear and the screams. And later still, when the joy of sex had faded and the act had become perfunctory, Justin realised he found the sounds, sights and imaginings of violent goings-on helped arouse him and helped him to climax. Justin didn’t understand it but he accepted it and, in time, came to embrace the fact that this was who he was.
Once the flood had thinned down to a trickle, Justin’s attention snapped back to the gate. His daughter would dawdle her way out soon enough, and he would take her bag or her instrument and they would walk to the car and catch up. Today there was an audition to attend, and with her mother held up at the office, Justin had offered to help out. It was the least he could do, he felt, his conscience eating away at him as it always did when he thought of his wife and child and the shame they would feel if they knew what he watched to turn himself on. Not that he was causing any harm, another part of him reasoned. There couldn’t be a man on the planet who didn’t watch some kind of porn. It was fantasy, not reality. Justin hadn’t followed in the footsteps of his father; he had never lifted a finger to his wife and the very thought of her in pain made his stomach turn. Justin knew the girls in the movies were real, that their screams emanated from a dark place within them, that the blood and the bruises and the welts were real marks on real skin. But these girls were foreign, from a place far away, doomed perhaps, but not because of him, not because of anything he had done. With or without his patronage, these films would still be made, these girls still injured, their screams still released. There was nothing he could do. And he deserved some pleasure.
‘Dad!’
Justin snapped his head up and saw Isobel emerge from a side gate further along the street. Justin smiled at her. Her cello case scraped against the pavement as she dragged it behind her.
‘Hi, sweetie,’ he said, taking the cello strap from her hand. ‘Ready to play your best?’
Isobel nodded, and looked behind her. ‘Joy Lin,’ she said, a puzzled expression on her face. ‘She was just behind me.’
Justin followed Isobel’s gaze up the street. ‘Who’s Joy Lin?’
‘She’s coming with us to the audition,’ said Isobel. ‘I’m guessing Mum didn’t say.’
No, thought Justin, Mum didn’t say. He supposed this meant he would have to take Joy Lin home as well.
‘There she is.’
Justin’s heart skipped several beats. A slender girl walking tall on long legs approached them. She wore a short skirt and high socks and a slip of thigh, between hem and cuff, shone creamy and inviting. Long black hair hung in a loose ponytail slung carelessly over one shoulder. The girl’s face, blooming with good health, hosted large brown eyes, broad cheeks, wide apricot lips, a shy smile. Beneath the dark tresses, Justin glimpsed a flash of red. She wore tiny earrings, like rosebuds, in her ears. Justin’s emotions converged in a heap. At the same time that his heart fluttered, his cock stirred. A wave of revulsion washed through him, making him want to claw out his eyes.
The young girl walking towards him looked just like one of them. One of the screamers.
‘Sweetie,’ Justin whispered, nudging Isobel’s shoulder. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a Chinese friend.’
Isobel rolled her eyes and groaned. ‘Don’t be so old-school, Dad, she’s Australian.’
Joy Lin’s shy smile extended into confidence. She unfurled an arm and offered a hand. ‘Hi, Isobel’s dad, it’s good to meet you,’ she said in a voice so light and youthful that again Justin felt he was about to be sick. ‘My parents are from Malaysia, but our ethnicity is Chinese.’
‘You okay, Dad?’ Isobel put a hand on his arm and looked up at him, her bright eyes narrow with concern.
Justin forced himself to push away the thoughts of screams and pain and the sudden realisation of the youth of these girls and their innocence – just like my daughter. It was like he’d experienced an amphetamine shot to the heart. The girls in the films he watched were real and not much older than children. They were flesh and blood and shy smiles and brown eyes. Some of those girls might even have once played the violin. How could they have ever envisaged what would become of them?
‘Nice to meet you, Joy Lin.’ He heard the strain in his voice. ‘Here, let me take your bag.’
‘That’s okay, Mr Holmes, it balances me out,’ the girl said, indicating the violin case in her other hand. Hoisting her bag higher on her shoulder and slipping into step with Isobel, she flashed him a grin. ‘Thanks very much for the lift.’
The two girls walked ahead, giggling, as the three of them made their way to the car. Justin trailed behind, lugging Isobel’s cello and fighting a sudden desire to cry. He found himself slinking into the shadow of the high school’s wall, allowing the sleeve and shoulder of his jacket to scrape gently against the concrete. For the first time in years, he found himself craving the comfort of his childhood bed, where he could hide his head until morning when everything would be all right again.