Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

She was nineteen when she first experienced sexual intercourse and her encounter hardly left her satisfied. It came at the end of a couple of hours’ drinking and thirty minutes or so of clumsy fumbling on the part of the boy, and the fact that the grass was damp made more impression on her than his thrusting. She had thought that by giving herself to him she would hold his attention, because their affair had reached the point where she was aware of his keen interest in other girls. But he hardly ever took her out again, and she terminated their association when she realised he had just used her. They’d had intercourse a number of times by then, but she still hadn’t enjoyed it. It was always cold in the park, or cramped in the back of the car, and she was scared someone would see them. And the floor in the living-room wasn’t much better, especially when she thought of her parents in bed just a few feet above her.

     After some weeks without a boy friend she started going around with a fitter from the factory where she worked. They went to the cinema, to dances, or for drives in the country, and held hands, kissed, looked in shop-windows, and sat in pubs with other couples. When winter came they found the car and the park cold, but she had a friend who wanted a baby-sitter, and each Thursday they had a warm room to themselves.

     When the girl discovered she was pregnant she told her mother, and her boy friend, and between them they decided that marriage was the best solution to the problem. The mother was a practical woman, who’d been pregnant herself on her wedding-day, and the boy a steady sort with the idea, instilled into him by his parents, that he had to face up to what other people said were his responsibilities. If the Government had sent his call-up that day he would have married the girl and caught the train to camp.

     They were married, had a week in Blackpool, and settled down to prepare for the baby. Her parents had given them some of their savings, and they used the money as a deposit on a small, terraced house with an outside toilet. It was cheaply but neatly furnished by the girl, and she was a good housekeeper. The boy worked hard at his job and earned a reasonable wage, and his smoking and drinking habits were moderate. He had a night out with his friends each week, and came home slightly but happly intoxicated. The girl visited her mother occasionally.

     When the boy arrived home after his night out, he usually had intercourse with his wife. He wasn’t subtle in his approach, and when he’d rolled to one side, and was lying with his face buried in the pillow and his breath coming in short bursts, she’d pull down her nightdress and turn onto her side. Her husband’s thrusting, and his beer-laden grunts, reminded her of that night in the park with her first boy friend. The main difference was that, in bed, she didn’t have the damp grass to distract her attention from what was being done to her.