All the Way Home and All the Night Through by Ted Lewis Page B

be the rain to show it how much I respected it. I wanted everything and everyone to know how much I cared about being right and good. It was as though thinking about Janet was the catalyst for making me feel like this.
    â€œLet’s see what it’s like outside,” said Simon.
    He and his girl got out of the car. People from the other cars were already cackling and thrashing about in the undergrowth.
    â€œCome on, Harry,” said Jenny.
    â€œOh heck.”
    â€œCome on, let’s go and look at the river.”
    â€œHeckins.”
    â€œCome on .”
    â€œHeck though. Okaden.”
    Karen and I stayed in the car. We began necking. Heavily. She had on a dress which buttoned all the way down the front. I unfastened the buttons. She offered no resistance, but when I moved my hand away from her slip-encased breasts and began sliding it lower down, she began half-heartedly to fasten the buttons. I moved her hands away from the buttons and undid the few she had refastened.
    â€œOkay, Vic,” she breathed.
    My hand continued on its interrupted journey. With my free hand I slid her open dress from her shoulders and down her arms as far as the sleeves would allow it. She pressed closer to me. I heard screams and shrieks from outside the car, far away on the beach.
    â€œWhat if somebody comes?” she whispered, nervous and excited.
    â€œNobody’ll come.”
    I kissed her. My hand was almost there. She started writhing in excitement. Then she stopped my hand again. If I’d taken her hand away from mine and carried on, I don’t think she would have stopped me. But I didn’t and she didn’t know what to do. I took my hand away. She began to fasten the buttons again, a little bewildered, a little relieved. Harry’s voice cackled out noisily. He and Jenny were almost on top of the car. I hurriedly helped Karen with the rest of the buttons. Harry and Jenny got in.
    â€œAre my feet wet or are my feet wet?” said Harry.
    Jenny laughed. She sat on his knee.
    â€œNever mind then,” she said, and kissed him on his forehead.
    â€œAll right then.”
    Karen pulled me toward her and kissed me with even more fervor than before.
    â€œI think you’re very nice,” I breathed in her ear.
    â€œOh, Vic,” she said. We kissed again. Then Simon came back and we drove off to Harry’s pub. We stayed till about half-past three. Simon dropped me off at my place and then drove away to take the girls home. I watched the car move off. The rain had stopped and I could see the stars poking through the remnants of the rain clouds. Dynamos whirred in the power station a few streets away. I took out my key and opened the front door.
    A light sharp wind blew over the reeds, skimming the sandbagged banks of the river. The fishing pits rippled excitedly, cutting up the image of the full-blown scudding sky. The river sped noisily past the disused brickworks, its sound triumphantly nonchalant in my ears.
    I had crossed the river to home on Sunday morning after the dance. My parents had been glad to see me, and my mother had prepared an enormous Sunday lunch for me. Afterward I called Philip, a good friend of mine who was studying medicine in London. His term hadn’t begun yet and he was still on holiday at home. Now we walked down by the river, making the best of the riotous mixture of wind, water and sky that was a sun-whipped Sunday afternoon in autumn.
    We crouched in a brick-littered hollow near the speckled beach, temporarily out of the wind so that we could light up and smoke and talk without everything being snatched away by the elements.
    Philip and I had always been very close. I told him about Janet.
    â€œSo you see,” I said, “she’s not going to take two looks at me when there are guys like that smooth bastard at the dance zooming her all over town in their TR 2’s.”
    Philip reflected, practising his bedside manner.
    â€œIt seems to