Sentence the Onehundredandtwentieth
Teri stared at the screen, as the ship above creaked and strained in the surging seas – she had been told it was aouth-southwesterly, but she had no idea of the direction The Lady was taking; down below decks, the boat seemed to lurch one way and then another and all the lurching made her stomach lurch too, but always a couple of beats behind, so she felt not one whit in harmony, but rather as though her body was rebelling against the unnatural motions it was being asked to suffer;
earlier, at about the same time as the wearer of the Beat Boot with it's distinctive imprint was listening to Martin Elginbrod's hysterical commands, and the meeting between Lionel and Miss MacGillivray was reaching it's climax, Teri had been above deck and rather enjoying the trip, thinking of herself and the others as Argonauts, in search of The Golden Fleece, while The Lady seemed to fairly skip across the billows with the wind in her sails and a perfect sky above – Phemie had told them that they should make good time and be able to enjoy four or five hours on the rock, exploring the craggy outcrop, the ruined Castle Jail, the remains of the Hermit's Cell, enjoy teas or coffees and home baking in the little Tearoom run by her cousin Effie and take as many photos as they liked of the wild-life or each other (I think we are the Wild Life, said one of the Famous Five to another, who nodded sagely) but then the wind had seemingly changed direction quite without warning, and Phemie and her crew became frantically engaged in something called Tacking, which seemed to require heaving on ropes and a lot of swearing – it was soon obvious that the passengers were quite a hindrance and not long before Phemie suggested they go below decks, where they would be safely out of the way and could enjoy the benefits of Sooky, the Cook who ran the Galley with the
aid of a tiny Portuguese girl called Maria; that had seemed a good idea at the time and most of them had gladly climbed down the stairs – although the diehard smokers, mainly Jubbly, Lulu and her girls,
and two or three of the Famous Five, had elected to stay above, but out of the way of the crew by sitting in one of the lifeboats, with the tarpaulin cover rolled back; and now Teri rather wished she had joined them, and regretted accepting a bacon and black pudding bap with her coffee, would she ever learn the lessons of those years when, a child being taken doon the watter tae Arran or Rothesay,
she had wolfed down scotch pies, fish and chips, ice cream and Irn Bru, only to empty it all over her Holiday Clothes and new shoes before reaching the other side – but she reflected on what she had written; not your finest hour, she said to herself as she read it again: she had to admit that heterosexual lovemaking was not quite her forte, never having engaged in osculation with a man, and rejecting even the teenage advances of acned youths requesting her to give them a hand; no it was an infrangible rule that she and men were incompatible and ne'er the twain shall meet, and so writing about Lionel and Traci made her feel a little like a voyeur and somehow lacking objectivity, if that isn't a contradiction, for is not a voyeur outside of the action? – she had always found Traci attractive, with her wild curly hair that bushed around her head, and the realisation that they seemed to have found some kind of completeness in their Joint Enterprise had baffled Teri at first, and as it began to sink in that Traci seemed much more alive and intense now that she had Lionel and that should have made Teri happy for them both, instead she was what? jealous, surely not – but writing about their sex life did not come easy: rationally, that was always going to be obvious because of her own strong feelings for Traci, but it wasn't the emotional stuff that made it difficult, it was writing about their physical intimacy, the precise nature of which she might be able to work out intellectually, but just how it felt for a woman to have a man inside her body was something she could never grasp, and she heard with her eyes as she saw the words appear on her screen and she saw with her ears when she read them out and it sounded like a form of pornography and she couldn't shake that off, these were things she would never want or miss for herself, but Teri had always believed that the best writing came from self-knowledge; she shook her head, the whole point about her writing was to try to let the people she wrote about be themselves and represent them and their actions with honesty and respect; and then the last remark of Traci's about Lionel shitting in Elginbrod's bed for the heinous Advocate to discover as he slid beneath the sheets had really taken her by surprise: she would never in a million years have thought Traci could be so wicked, or so vulgar, or indeed so uncouth; she checked the text she had received from Traci – yes, that had been exactly what she had said; oh Wicked, Wicked Woman, you never fail to surprise and amaze me and you have really shown me another side of you (well, goodness, several other sides in fact) – and she wondered if Lionel could ever be cajoled to do just that, oh it really would be something to see; and she suddenly wondered if Lionel would be able to place a bug in Elginbrod's bedroom so that the event could be heard, and recorded, or, better still, filmed – she must ask Traci if that would be possible, to place one of those tiny cameras so that it could send images of Elginbrod wondering, in puzzlement, and then realising what his feet had encountered: now that would be absolutely priceless!
Teri stared at the screen, as the ship above creaked and strained in the surging seas – she had been told it was aouth-southwesterly, but she had no idea of the direction The Lady was taking; down below decks, the boat seemed to lurch one way and then another and all the lurching made her stomach lurch too, but always a couple of beats behind, so she felt not one whit in harmony, but rather as though her body was rebelling against the unnatural motions it was being asked to suffer;
earlier, at about the same time as the wearer of the Beat Boot with it's distinctive imprint was listening to Martin Elginbrod's hysterical commands, and the meeting between Lionel and Miss MacGillivray was reaching it's climax, Teri had been above deck and rather enjoying the trip, thinking of herself and the others as Argonauts, in search of The Golden Fleece, while The Lady seemed to fairly skip across the billows with the wind in her sails and a perfect sky above – Phemie had told them that they should make good time and be able to enjoy four or five hours on the rock, exploring the craggy outcrop, the ruined Castle Jail, the remains of the Hermit's Cell, enjoy teas or coffees and home baking in the little Tearoom run by her cousin Effie and take as many photos as they liked of the wild-life or each other (I think we are the Wild Life, said one of the Famous Five to another, who nodded sagely) but then the wind had seemingly changed direction quite without warning, and Phemie and her crew became frantically engaged in something called Tacking, which seemed to require heaving on ropes and a lot of swearing – it was soon obvious that the passengers were quite a hindrance and not long before Phemie suggested they go below decks, where they would be safely out of the way and could enjoy the benefits of Sooky, the Cook who ran the Galley with the
aid of a tiny Portuguese girl called Maria; that had seemed a good idea at the time and most of them had gladly climbed down the stairs – although the diehard smokers, mainly Jubbly, Lulu and her girls,
and two or three of the Famous Five, had elected to stay above, but out of the way of the crew by sitting in one of the lifeboats, with the tarpaulin cover rolled back; and now Teri rather wished she had joined them, and regretted accepting a bacon and black pudding bap with her coffee, would she ever learn the lessons of those years when, a child being taken doon the watter tae Arran or Rothesay,
she had wolfed down scotch pies, fish and chips, ice cream and Irn Bru, only to empty it all over her Holiday Clothes and new shoes before reaching the other side – but she reflected on what she had written; not your finest hour, she said to herself as she read it again: she had to admit that heterosexual lovemaking was not quite her forte, never having engaged in osculation with a man, and rejecting even the teenage advances of acned youths requesting her to give them a hand; no it was an infrangible rule that she and men were incompatible and ne'er the twain shall meet, and so writing about Lionel and Traci made her feel a little like a voyeur and somehow lacking objectivity, if that isn't a contradiction, for is not a voyeur outside of the action? – she had always found Traci attractive, with her wild curly hair that bushed around her head, and the realisation that they seemed to have found some kind of completeness in their Joint Enterprise had baffled Teri at first, and as it began to sink in that Traci seemed much more alive and intense now that she had Lionel and that should have made Teri happy for them both, instead she was what? jealous, surely not – but writing about their sex life did not come easy: rationally, that was always going to be obvious because of her own strong feelings for Traci, but it wasn't the emotional stuff that made it difficult, it was writing about their physical intimacy, the precise nature of which she might be able to work out intellectually, but just how it felt for a woman to have a man inside her body was something she could never grasp, and she heard with her eyes as she saw the words appear on her screen and she saw with her ears when she read them out and it sounded like a form of pornography and she couldn't shake that off, these were things she would never want or miss for herself, but Teri had always believed that the best writing came from self-knowledge; she shook her head, the whole point about her writing was to try to let the people she wrote about be themselves and represent them and their actions with honesty and respect; and then the last remark of Traci's about Lionel shitting in Elginbrod's bed for the heinous Advocate to discover as he slid beneath the sheets had really taken her by surprise: she would never in a million years have thought Traci could be so wicked, or so vulgar, or indeed so uncouth; she checked the text she had received from Traci – yes, that had been exactly what she had said; oh Wicked, Wicked Woman, you never fail to surprise and amaze me and you have really shown me another side of you (well, goodness, several other sides in fact) – and she wondered if Lionel could ever be cajoled to do just that, oh it really would be something to see; and she suddenly wondered if Lionel would be able to place a bug in Elginbrod's bedroom so that the event could be heard, and recorded, or, better still, filmed – she must ask Traci if that would be possible, to place one of those tiny cameras so that it could send images of Elginbrod wondering, in puzzlement, and then realising what his feet had encountered: now that would be absolutely priceless!
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