CHAPTER NINETEEN - MIDNIGHT STRIFE

It had to happen ... David with so much testosterone and an angel crawling into bed with him and Paula, young in years but adult in her heart.

The inside of a cloud, maybe, the swirling chaos of either creation or destruction... even anti-creation in a fire or ice … and from it he drove his multi-coloured train, chugging from a crumbling tunnel like the toy train he'd had as a kid, smoke billowing from its stack; and suddenly, like magic, the whole world turning bright with green in fields and blue in the sky and a rainbow in the flowers... and the train chugged, smoky, steamy, on...

“Don't make a sound!” it said, its steam forming the words with a beautiful, startling clarity, “don't make a sound, don't make a sound, don't make a sound...”

He stirred and the flowers popped out in one silent explosion, the train wibbled and wobbled and became darkness … and he opened his eyes.

“Sshh!” mouthed Paula, “shift along...”

He was in his bed on the holiday caravan, a single bed, barely big enough for one, and Paula, the forbidden jewel in the crown of his young life, wanted to squeeze in next to him.

And he was in two halves.

One half wanted her to with a desperation amplified by the megaphone in his pyjama bottoms. It desired her, the physical her, the beautiful almost naked her … he could see how small her night-dress was, how it advertised rather than covered, and the megaphone got close to exploding, unbidden.

The other half was terrified. Never before had he been this close to his princess, his angel, the wonder his eyes beheld each day, and now that he could feel her breath all over him and smell the sweetness of that breath … and it was sweet, the last sourness of her glass of white wine sipped earlier was gone...

So he did the only thing he could do.

He groaned.

And only then did he move as far across as he could and try and make room for her to squeeze in next to him. And it wasn't easy. He got the insane notion that he might push the caravan wall out, exposing the two of them to public scrutiny should any public eyes drift past.

“I couldn't help it,” she breathed.

Couldn't help what? Had she somehow managed to do something wrong, something she needed to apologise for, something she had come to him in order to beg forgiveness? No �" that couldn't be the case.

Paula never did anything wrong.

Paula was perfect. She was incapable of error.

“I needed to see you,” she whispered, continuing the theme.

Why would she need to see him now, in the middle of the night, with darkness all around and her dad snoring mere feet away? Was she going somewhere? Had their holiday been drawn to a sudden unwanted ending, and was she off on a trip of her own, in the night, without him?

Mr Potts, so close, snorted in his sleep, and then resumed snoring.

Paula squeezed into David's bed, her warm flesh so close to his that it seemed to set his heart racing. With the fragrance of her all around him and over him he eased his pressure on the caravan wall until the two of them seemed to be occupying the same smallest possible sliver of space. David wanted to to say things like this is so nice, Paula, and I was asleep and suddenly I'm in Heaven … did I die … is that what this is all about? But his mouth was unaccountably dry and all words failed him.

“What do you think of this then?” asked Paula in a breathy whisper. “Isn't this what you want?”

He nodded in the absence of finding any words.

Then she did the impossible.

In a wild moment of splendid magic her face approached his face, then her whole mouth, those wonderful moist lips, and suddenly she occupied all of his personal space, every morsel of it as her tongue reached out and somehow managed to touch his.

Time stopped still. It had to, or he wouldn't have been able to stand it.

Then her lips moved round until they were touching his right ear.

“You've got a hard-on,” she breathed, her syllables, cheeky, knowing, understanding. “Haven't you?” she added.

The sound of snoring from the Mr Potts' bed snorted again, and then became silent.

He nodded.

You don't lie to Paulas, he told himself, you never lie to Paulas, and it's true, I have...

“Just keep it under control,” she whispered, “and we can stay like this awhile. Dad's asleep. David, I think I love you...”

Does she know how I feel about her, how her proximity to me is driving me to distraction, that any moment now I'm going to burst and I'm not capable of doing anything to stop it...

But “I know that I love you too...” came tumbling from him in a cascade of syllabic chaos.

Then in a fragmented moment Heaven became Hell.

“What the f... What's going on here!” demanded Paula's father's voice, suddenly in the night, in the dark, like the intrusion of a serpent into the mythical Eden.

And his shadow was standing there, black of flesh against the black of night, and though neither youngster could see his face they both knew that it was just as black.

It was like thunder on a summer's idyll.

It was what happens when a perfect dream is ended and the real world creeps in.

“It's me, dad,” explained Paula.

“Tomorrow!” thundered Mr Potts,

“He was asleep, and I woke him, dad,” continued Paula.

“Tomorrow, young man, you can get out of this caravan and take yourself home! I trusted you, I really did. I thought you were good and decent and just what my daughter needs, but look at you! Sharing the same bed! At night, when decent souls are asleep... Tomorrow you can bugger off, and I never want to see you again!”

“But, Mr Potts...”

“It wasn't David, dad, it was me!” insisted Paula.

“I don't care who it was I only know who's got the blame!” thundered Mr Potts. “Now you, Paula, get to your bed! I've never been so … so … so...”

“Irrational,” said Paula, quietly, finishing his sentence. “No, dad, you haven't.”

“You're not too old to get a good hiding, girl,” he growled. “Now get to your bed before … before … before...”

She had to obey. She had to crawl like a whipped cur back to her own bed, and David, being the lad he was, wept as she crawled away.