As his mouth pulled away from hers she felt the moisture on her lips almost seem to freeze, as if the next time he touched her she would shatter into tiny crystals. She didn�t think that she�d ever do this. They�d said that she couldn�t go out dressed like that, but she�d gone anyway, shutting the door quietly and sneaking out into the darkness. She didn�t know what would happen if they found out that she�d gone. His body felt so warm and heavy and solid against her that she didn�t care about anything, protecting her like armour against the cold wind that brushed pin pricks over her bare legs and made the tips of her fingers shake around her cigarette.
Everything had been brash and loud, the lights slick and liquid around them, the streets outside the club filled with people walking hunched, faces flushed with alcohol and rubbed brittle by the cold. Shouts and laughs and the swish of taxis had mixed with the ringing in her ears as people spilled out of gaudily lit clubs and takeaways, congregating in shirt sleeves and short skirts around the glow from inside as if for warmth. Gaggles of women stood shivering all over, as close to naked as clothes would allow, breasts shown to the best effect, shouting and laughing while men fooled and fought in front of them, each one of them still hopeful.
All around them, men and women hugged each other, hit each other, shouted and laughed at each other, stumbling, walking, weaving, breath hanging in the air around them as they talked. She�d looked and laughed at a woman running down the street, one shoe missing, her tits almost flopping out of her strapless top. He�d laughed too, pulling her into him as they walked, her hand on his arse, his hand just below the fastener of her bra.
In front of a charity shop he�d pulled her onto him, ignoring the man pissing in the doorway next to them. Kissing, she could feel his fingers tunnelling into her as he held her, as if he were going to pull off a handful of her flesh and stick it into his mouth like over-ripe fruit. The tendons in his arm stood out inside his elbow like wires cutting through cheese, slicing into her bare shoulders. When they stopped for a second, she was too aware of the fleshiness of her face, the fat of her body, of her long eyelashes closing slowly over her eyes as she blinked. Her tongue, back in her own mouth, felt long and thick and ill at ease, itching to start moving again. She could almost feel her body drawing him in, ready to enfold him in its softness, as if it only existed for that purpose alone.
They�d turned up a side street, the cold, hard smell of the night mixed with the slippery smell of his aftershave. His face cracked into a thousand lines as he shouted over to a gang of men who were gesturing at their friend cavorting naked, bottle in hand, belly chalky white under the streetlamps like a root dug up. She�d wished that she could go home with him, waking up in his bed, lying watching the drops of condensation run down the windows, waiting for him to open his eyes. Her house was even nearer, but she couldn�t risk waking them up, and she didn�t know how they�d react if they did wake up. She�d never come home with anyone before.
She couldn�t even remember how they�d got together; all she remembered was the hot feel of his tongue on hers and the way his hand had rested high up on her thigh under the flashing lights.
As they walked past Leazes Park, she�d noticed for the first time the tiny walls around the perimeter that measured out their length by the polished nubs of metal set at intervals like dull inset jewels in a wedding ring. There must have been railings once, she thought. Looking at the park she felt suddenly like she was a ghost of a past time, like somehow what she was planning to do was so out of the ordinary that suddenly she could see more clearly than she ever had before. The genteel tennis courts, the lake, the remains of stone boulevards that still stand in pieces, as if they were just being built not falling apart, all made her feel ageless. The Georgian houses that clustered at one corner, their sandstone frontages testament to horse drawn carriages and gas lamps, seemed to be singing a song of respectability. For the first time she saw that the grey trees walked in stately columns like school children holding hands on an outing, their shadows criss-crossing the grass.
She wanted to share these insights with him, but she could tell by his face that he would have just laughed. The thought crossed her mind that maybe the park was the place for what she hoped for, but then she stopped herself. She went with �them� on picnics in the park during the summer, resentfully eating scotch eggs and drinking fizzy pop that made her stomach feel like it would burst. It would have to be somewhere else.
Past the end of the park she had taken his hand and led him through the kissing gate onto one of the patches of moorland that dot the town. Three tall blocks of student accommodation overlooked them as they crushed down the long wild grass that was frosted silver and brittle in the cold moonlight. He had looked so solid, his hand warm and dry like wood in hers. It didn�t take him long to get the idea, moving off in front, dragging her behind, holding her up where the uneven ground and high grass threatened to trip her. All around her the moor looked like a sea under the moonlight, troughs and indentations filled with black shadow. Ahead of her she could see and hear his breath as it puffed out of him and marvelled at the muscle knotted in his back under his flimsy shirt. She�d given the signal and now he was leading her.
The texture of the white concrete wall that surrounded the student accommodation had scratched at her shoulder blades as he�d pushed her against it, and she�d felt the heat of him as he pushed himself against her. Cigarette still in hand, she�d glimpsed a few pale shapes in the distance, moving under a copse of dark trees, but she�d closed her eyes and clung onto him. She�d waited so long for this.
Opening her eyes as he pulled away to look down as he fumbled, she saw a crowd of pale fleshy faces, mouths working, tongues moving in and out as their big eyes blinked slowly, big bodies shuffling quietly from side to side, breasts swinging and engorged.
She stifled a gasp of recognition that brought her back to herself.
Cows. Cows in the town.
As he inched her knickers down, they turned and ambled off as quietly as they�d come, cows waiting sadly for a bull to come and take them, their calves nowhere to be seen.
The hard body trapping her pressed itself into her and she thought about what they would say if they could see her. They�d said that someone her size shouldn�t go out like that, that someone her age shouldn�t go out, that someone her age shouldn�t being doing anything like this, but she�d done it anyway, regardless.
In the pale moonlight, big dark eyes blinking slowly as he grunted and shuddered inside her, her tongue still, she thought of them. They�d stopped her doing so much, stopped her finding this, forced her like an animal out into the cold.
She smiled inside, stroking the back of his thick, strong neck, as tiny clouds of steam came from his nose in time with his grunts.
�You�ll do anything for your kids,� she thought.
NOTE: The moorland in Newcastle upon Tyne is common land and all have the right to graze their animals upon it. Some do, all year round
� Mark Brown
Reproduced with permission
