8. With a little slit in the tail

When I awoke, Kate was still there, asleep on the sofa. Grimesy had gone. She looked up and said, “you look like shit. Get into the shower and have a shave for God’s sake.” She turned over and buried her face in the sofa. I did what I was told.

Shaved and showered, I emerged from the bathroom, naked, standing before Kate stretched out on the couch. She rolled over and reached out her hand, running her fingers in circles around what was now a throbbing piece of meat. Down I went, and when it was done, she sat up and sat astride me. It reminded me of Iris and I was embarrassed, but it brought me to my senses.

“We have to have a talk,” she said, leaning forward, her nose touching mine, her eyes seeing through me.

“A professional talk?’ I said, joking, but scared she was going to tell me we were through.

“More or less. I don’t want to act like your mother, but…”

“I have no mother,” I interjected.

“So you’ve told me. I’m going to have to play that role, then, and you know what that means, don’t you?”

“What exactly?” I asked.

“Mothers aren’t supposed to sleep with their sons,” she said with a superior smile.

“You’re not my mother, thank goodness.”

“But for the moment I am,” she said as she got off me and started to dress, “and you need to get some clothes on too. We can’t have a mother and son talk while we’re naked.”

I don’t often burst out laughing, unless I’m drunk, but I did then. The whole idea of me sitting naked with my mother just seemed hilarious. But I did what I was told.

“If we’re going to keep seeing each other, there’s got to be one rule,” she said.

“Oh hell! A fuckn rule.”

“Yes. And there’s only one.”

“Which is?”

“You go to all your lectures and tutes and keep up with your work.”

“And if I don’t?”

“We’re through.”

I went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “You want one?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“No thanks, and neither do you. It’s too early. Put it back.”

I did what I was told, yet again. “Shit, you really mean it,” I said.

“I do. And what’s more, Grimesy agrees. You probably haven’t noticed, but Paul does really well in his subjects. He’s going to be a top lawyer one day. You could do the same if you put your mind to it.”

“What’s Grimesy got to fuckn do with it? The fuckn stuck-up grammar school boy.”

“I don’t think you mean that. He’s a good mate to you, he’s shown you the ropes right from the first day we met on the train. And he didn’t mind me taking you on.”

My cheeks and ears were bright red, I was sure. She was right. I didn’t mean it. I looked at her, a silly grin on my face, stuck for words. “We’ve got a good thing going,” I said.

“We do. We’re a great threesome. I’d hate for you to mess it up.”

She held out her arms and I walked into them and she embraced me. I felt wanted and realized that it was what I had been looking for all this time. It was what I had gotten, raw and unsullied, from Iris.

*

The other students in my Latin tutorial were much better than me. It was a real struggle for me to translate the sentence when it came to my turn. I had to memorize the translations before the tute, and the trouble was that Lepidus would sometimes make a student do an extra sentence, so I had to count forward again to the sentence that would be mine. I found the work, though, satisfying, in a way quite like the satisfaction I had when poring through all the archives for those manic three days. I had thought it was because I was doing the work to find Iris, but now I wondered if it was the work itself that gave such satisfaction.

I slaved away and attended my lectures and tutes, and won¬derful Kate continued the regular trysts with Grimesy and me. I had only one problem and that was professor Pulcher. Every now and then, unannounced, he would show up at the flat, and I would have to accommodate him. I even asked Kate for her advice, half scared that she would say that there was no way she’d share me with a poofda like Pulcher. But she didn’t. She just looked at me and said, “sometimes we have to do nasty things to preserve our good life,” then added with a mischievous smile, “and even those nasty things can have a pleasant benefit.” When I asked her what she meant, she replied with a knowing smile, “there are no bad orgasms, are there?”

*

There were six of us, including Dr. Pulcher and even Lepidus my tutor, sitting in a circle on the floor of my flat. I felt really stupid, dressed in a sheet that was supposed to be a toga, nothing on underneath. I even shaved off some of the hair from my forehead to depict Caesar’s baldness. Caesar, of course, was my character, I worshipped him for his lasciviousness. Dr. Pulcher was himself, more or less, dressed as Nicomedes, which made me his bum boy. Lepidus had put together a gladiator’s outfit complete with a helmet that covered his entire head, and tight leather pants and a kind of leather brassiere around his well-tanned very hairy chest. The rest were girls, none of them especially pretty, all wearing wispy dresses tied loosely under their breasts, flowers in their hair, a couple combed long and hanging, the others coiffed up, trying to mimic the pictures we’d all seen in our Latin for Today books in high school. They did say who they were, one of them Livia, but to be honest, I didn’t pay much attention. I never found the Roman women of much interest. And then there was Grimesy who had pleaded with me to let him come, and I was surprised when Dr. Pulcher agreed without any argument whatsoever. Grimesy had, of course, taken Latin 1 a couple of years ago, so he knew Lepidus, though had not actually met Dr. Pulcher. He came as the lawyer Cicero, of course, who else? And he too had one of my sheets wrapped loosely around him. His role, though, was to remain in the kitchen supplying us with booze whenever it was needed.

We were playing spin the bottle. Dr. Pulcher would spin it, then whoever it pointed to, had to write a vulgar Latin expression on a flash card. The bottle was spun again, and whoever it pointed to had to translate the expression. If either got it wrong, misspelling or miss-translation, they had to remove a piece of clothing. The very first spin, the bottle came to rest aimed at me, who else? This is what I wrote:

edicaba ego vos et irrumaba

“I knew you’d pick that one,” laughed Lepidus. “Who knows where it is from?” he asked. Dr. Pulcher put up his hand, grinning. “You don’t count,” laughed Lepidus.

Dr. Pulcher spun the bottle, and it stopped in front of a wispy girl, who was very quiet in our tute, but she always got her translations exactly right. She was Lepidus’s favourite, without a doubt.

“It’s the first line in Catullus 16,” she said, embarrassed, looking down. “It says, ‘I will sodomize you and you can suck me off’.”

“Brava!” cried Dr. Pulcher, “perfect!”

“But,” she said, looking up and staring at me, “he didn’t write it properly. It’s edicabo, not edicaba. The same for irrumaba.”

Everyone yelled “Oooooo!” or something like that and they pointed at me, chanting, “Toga off! Toga off!”

Grimesy came out of the kitchen and primed everyone’s drink and then he joined in, “Toga off! Toga off!”

I was about to drop my toga when there was a huge crash. In that instant, a large body clad in a copper’s uniform hurtled through the door, landing in the middle of our circle, bits of the door flying as far as the kitchen. The girls screamed and ran into the kitchen. They could not run out the door because framed in the doorway was the tall silhouette of none other than The Preacher, holding his bible in one hand, and a large envelope in the other. Peeping around the silhouette was a small hairy fellow with a rough beard, holding up a camera which flashed several times. I looked down at the floor and saw Dopey rolling around, trying to stand up, looking very pleased with himself.

The Preacher held up his bible and pronounced, “you have sinned against the Lord who is my shepherd at this moment in history, a moment of consequence.”

Dr. Pulcher, stripped down to his now familiar tight footy shorts, stepped into the kitchen, which by now was getting pretty crowded. “What is the meaning of this, officer? You have interrupted a Latin seminar of the University of Melbourne, and I am Professor Pulcher, chair of Classics and Antiquity.”

Dopey, trying to extricate himself from the tattered remains of the door, managed to stand upright and his huge rotund body now filled half the flat. The photographer sneaked past The Preacher and peeped around Dopey’s huge frame. More flashes lit up the room.

“It is that I have here, as her Majesty’s messenger and the voice of the Lord our God, a warrant for the arrest of one, James Henderson. As senior constable of the Victorian Police Force, I request that such person step forward.”

I was rooted to the spot, standing there starkers, having dropped the toga when Dopey came flying through the door.

“I repeat, on behalf of the Queen, would the so-named person please step forward?”

Dopey, always trying to be helpful, pointed at me and said, “there he is constable, sir!”

The Preacher ignored him. “For the last time, I request one James Henderson to step forward.”

The photographer had sneaked further into the flat, leaving a small opening beside The Preacher’s long legs where I could slip through if I were quick enough. I lunged for the gap, but at that moment, Dopey raised his fat arm to indicate who I was to the Preacher, thinking that the Preacher had not heard him the first time. “That’s him, there, that’s Chooka,” he said. And before I knew it, he had his big beefy hand on my neck and I was done for.

“What is the warrant for?” asked Dr. Pulcher.

“It is that it is no business of yours, sir, and who may you be, in consequence?”

“I already told you, officer. You are interrupting an important Melbourne University seminar.”

The Preacher pointedly looked around the flat. “So I see,” he said, holding up his bible, “and so does the Lord.”

I finally found my voice. “So what’s the charge, Preacher?” I asked.

“You know what it is,” said Dopey.

“It is my official duty as Her Majesty’s servant, to arrest you for the murder of one Millicent Flattery on Sunday, February 10, 1957.

“Fuckn shit!” I cried, “That fuckn Tank, the bastard!”

“Watch your language, young man, in front of these girls,” admonished the Preacher.

“Fuck you!” I yelled, trying to pull Dopey’s hand from my neck.

“And get some clothes on. I can’t arrest you dressed like that, in front of the Almighty! And you!” he pointed to Dopey, “get the names and addresses of the people in this den of iniquity!”

Dopey’s grip on my neck slackened. I was able to twist around just in time to see Grimesy pulling his toga tight around his whole body, stretch his neck like a swan’s, and announce:

“Hold on there. No one here is under arrest or suspicion that I have heard, that is except James, here. The police have no right to collect the names and addresses of any of the rest of us.”

Dopey did not quite hear Grimesy. He was too preoccupied rummaging around in his many pockets looking for his notebook and pencil.

“And who, in the Lord’s name, might you be, sir?” demanded The Preacher.

“Paul Grimes, third year law student, and doing my articles with Laub, Sampson and Grimshaw.”

“I demand your name and address Mr. Grimes.”

“I just told you, pretty much.”

The other students started to mutter to each other, the girls to giggle. The photographer’s camera flashed again.

“Are you a police photographer?” asks Grimesy.

“I am John Ferret, the official photographer for the Geelong Advertiser.”

“Hand over the film. You have no permission to publish any of our photos in the Addy or anywhere else.”

“Not a chance,” says Ferret.

“Then I’ll have to take it off you,” says Grimesy.

“Are you threatening me?”

“With a law suit if you don’t give it up.”

“Now, in the name of the Queen, I demand that you cease and desist from this threatening behaviour,” interjects The Preacher, directing his remarks to no one in particular. At this moment, though, Lepidus, of all people, the bloke I’d thought was com¬pletely spineless, jumps forward and snatches the camera out of Ferret’s hands and quickly retreats to the kitchen behind our combined naked bodies. He pulls the film out of the camera and throws it across the room. Ferret, a bloke with a bushy beard and a massive crop of prematurely grey, unkempt hair, pleads for his camera and Grimesy gives it to him. Dr. Pulcher has disappeared underneath the kitchen counter. The girls are still giggling and Dopey gives up looking for his notebook and instead produces a pair of handcuffs.

The Preacher gives me a bang on the backside with his bible. “Get dressed,” he says, “do not embarrass the Lord our God any longer.”