'The Girl From IS' - a short story by Adam Carlton

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The Girl from IS

She remembers when she was ten. She'd written that essay for school. She had populated all the rooms of her home with little animals, each of them with their own personality suited to where they lived. The upstairs squirrels; the downstairs foxes. Each with their own separate characters. And they had had very serious adventures - without their parents’ oversight.

She'd had to be careful with the story because, after all, her house was very large, and she didn't want to boast about it, or even draw attention to it with the other children. Still, the teacher had liked it, and she had gotten a gold star. And now she was home, so proud and ready to show her parents.

Of course, her father would not be there. He was always busy: something in the city which seemed to occupy all his time. And not just during the week, but weekends too. No, she was used to going to places without her father.

Her mother was somewhere in the house. She ran to her mother’s study and waved at her, showing her little book with its bright gold star on the essay page, burbling with excitement. Her mother shushed her: eyes glazed, distracted, dragged away from her files.

And this also was no surprise because her mother was always very busy too. How else could such a nice house be afforded?

Ten years later. She’s twenty. She’s joined the International Socialists, a revolutionary left organization dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism. Dedicated to the overthrow of all the things that are making her mummy and her daddy quite rich.

She thought she would find a sense of belonging here. A sense of comradeship; a sense of caring and compassion.

But strangely, it was not to be.

The organization is certainly busy. There’s plenty of busywork: selling newspapers, going to meetings. There’s plenty of discussion if you like reading Lenin and Trotsky and Tony Cliff. And other kinds of political tract. Perhaps Gramsci?

But it’s curiously transactional. She never feels that anybody really cares much about her.

And now she’s been sent by her local party group, her party branch down to this midlands town, where there’s a conference on women’s rights. A medium-sized conference, not too important, and it’s being organized by another organization on the left: the International Marxist Group, the IMG.

She’ll be staying at the house where the IMG comrades live. It's down on Friday afternoon; conference on Saturday. She’s going with a friend, Audrey.

She’s quite jealous of Audrey. Audrey is five foot four, ginger hair, freckles. Very cute, everyone says. Whereas she is five foot ten. Curvaceous, for sure but perhaps a little on the large side for many of the male comrades in the International Socialists. And also, they seem to find her rather earnest. Perhaps there are some other problems there? Ones she doesn’t want to look too closely at?

They find the place. It’s just a walk away from the bus station. They’re welcomed in. There are three of them there: Paul and Will, and another guy.

They sit around and talk a little bit about this and that: the conference, what they’re doing, the university where they all play at studying. And then they show the two of them around the house.

It’s a decaying structure, scheduled for demolition. They got it cheap because it won’t be there much longer. In the back pantry, there are piles and piles of boxes of cheese that they bought for an earlier meeting that nobody ever consumed. They’ve been living on cheese for months now, apparently.

They go into the back garden. There’s a shed there. The guy points to it: that’s where he lives. He lives in a shed.

They look inside. It’s furnished. There’s a double bed, a light, a table, a chair, a heater. A cardboard box used for storing clothes.

They go back inside and the evening progresses.

It’s unspoken, but somehow they’re going to pair up. It’s hard to know where the boys’ fancies lie, because each of them is rather nervously eyeing the two girls, as if trying to decide. But in the end it won’t be their decision.

It’s clear to her that Audrey has her eyes set on Paul: the quiet, earnest Australian with his handsome curls and round glasses, who seems very bluff and honest and has a certain rough charm.

There’s Will, of course: slim, very long hair, rather round face, rather baby-faced really. Seems quite quiet and withdrawn; underpowered.

She’s rather more taken with the third guy. Also slim and long-haired; wears glasses. But he’s much more forthright. Quite calm, quite talkative, quite intellectual, quite wry, quite funny, really. She rather likes that; she finds it endearing.

It becomes later and darker even; the boys start looking around. It’s time to retire. Audrey goes off with Paul and sort of pushes him a little, as if to say: where’s your room?

And she goes off with the confident one. Says: show me your shed.

They walk out to the back garden. It’s quite chilly. There’s even a little frost beginning to settle on the vegetable stumps. A shed is perhaps not the ideal place to spend the night.

They go inside, close the door, the light goes on, the heater is warm - he’s already prepared, he put it on before. It’s not so bad inside the shed. The mattress is on the floor; there’s a duvet on top.

She does not see why any time must be wasted here.

She’s already feeling all the angst she normally has: the loneliness that is her long-term companion. A certain quiet desperation, a hunger for companionship, a hunger for human contact, a connection.

Directly, studiously, without any drama, she takes off her clothes. Takes off her top. Takes off her dress. Shrugs out of her underwear. Throws the duvet to one side. Lies down on the bed, her legs slightly spread. Looks at him.

Looks intently. And waits.

It does not take long in these situations - the very strangeness of it.

A few minutes later she holds him tightly. She needs him. Again. And then once again, before finally...

The light goes out. And they sleep.

And next morning? All that passion - all that excitement, all that closeness, all that completion - it has receded into history; that visceral need surges within her again: it always does.

He’s half asleep. She kneels over him. Straddles him. Her breasts hang heavy over his head. It doesn’t take much.

And they do it twice more.

And he doesn’t know what has happened except that probably he’s been taken over the edge of what he’s physically capable of doing.

About two weeks later, there’s an event in London.

The IMG people, along with many others, are invited to stay at her parents’ mansion.

Her parents are progressive, left-leaning. Not actually members of the International Socialists, but certainly adjacent. And they have no problem at all putting up ten, twenty, thirty comrades - with their sleeping bags - on a Friday night before the event on Saturday.

She has specifically arranged for him to have one of the spare rooms. And so she goes there after dark to invite him to her room. She’s wearing a flimsy nightie. Nothing else.

She takes him by the hand and directs him through the dark corridors of the first floor, stepping over sleeping comrades in their sleeping bags, carefully, quietly, in the gloom, until they get to her room.

And there they make love. Again. And again.

And she feels, for a moment, that connection. The sense of oneness. She’s with another human being in the most tactile way possible. She touches more than herself. She is momentarily comforted. Her inner pain is back in its box - but only during the actual moments of passion.

And now he’s shaking his head in disbelief.

She wants him to stay. But he won’t. He shakes his head again. He gets up. He leaves her. He walks back: back to his own bed.

He looked at her in the gloom, as if he could hardly believe that he’s doing this: rejecting such an opportunity. But he did.

And she? Hurt. Like someone’s taken away a banquet when she’s still hungry, starving. And she doesn’t know what that feeling is, or how it can be stopped, except by making love again.

And that isn’t going to happen.

So she lies there alone and lonely and disappointed in her bed. And he’s gone.

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There is a strange postscript.

A long time later, maybe six months, maybe a year, she’s in a demonstration, talking to a male friend, walking through London.

And a familiar face. A somewhat familiar face.

He comes across. And she recognizes that young man from the midlands.

And she has no idea what to do about that. She’s moved on. It was an episode. It assuaged her hunger for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days.

But it was another cul-de-sac.

What can he bring to her now?

She blanks. She doesn’t know the language to deal with this. She doesn’t know him, really. She doesn’t know him for the purposes of today.

She looks away.

He looks rueful.

She watches from the corner of her eye; he’s like: what’s that about?

And then he walks away.

And she never sees him again.

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