SARI AND THE WORST OF SUMMERS

BY LOR OLDMAN

Sari called it the most horrible summer of her life. I suppose it all started with the death of my grandfather Jaksen. She had met the old man no more than a dozen times, but to her childish imagination he had become the epitome of stability and reliability, especially after her father had begun to make himself scarce at home. Grandpa would take the little girl up on his knee and tell her stories of life long ago in faraway places. He had Viking blood in him, he told her, and he would show her how his ancestors bound their captives tightly to the masts of their ships. Sari, as you may have guessed, had a thing about being tied up, and being bound with ropes by grandpa Jaksen seemed to have reinforced the history lessons, for she used the tales with great effect at her schools and achieved enviable results. He also told her romantic stories about how he met grandma when they were still young children, and how they had vowed to love each other for ever and a day. "Just like you and Lor!" he said. He told her how they were married when he was seventeen and she fifteen. They had been together ever since and never regretted a single day of their relationship. It was at the funeral, that Sari, dressed in appropriate mini-dress, sheer black tights and veiled hat, clutched my arm and demanded, "He is really dead? We won't ever see him again?" The impressive presence of death really affected her. I had the notion, not to mention the hope, that it would put an end to her tying fetish - a false hope if ever there was one. Tying up had become a longing to be possessed, thankfully by me, and an expression of real affection. Then there followed the Simon Pratt affair, and again I supposed she would have had her fill of bondage with its touch of light masochism. Again I was wrong. Inwardly though, I did not object - not really. Sari was turned on by the Simon Pratt experience, and Sari turned on has to be seen (and felt) to be believed. She is still the most delicately delicious rose petal in my treasure house of memories.

In rapid succession, before she had time to recover her breath, so to speak, Julie Pierce died while trying to abort her pregnancy. The news stunned the village. Sari had nightmares about it; she was extremely fond of Julie, who often partnered her at tennis in local competitions. Julie had been so full of life and showed an enthusiasm for everything she did; and now, like grandpa Jaksen, she was dead! The clouds gathered. And Sari retreated. A few days after Julie's death, the body of a local schoolteacher was found hanging from a tree in Burke's Wood. Again the county constabulary invaded our property - our place is adjacent to the local woods - as a matter of fact, the local woodland is part of our policies. And again the nose-picking detective insisted on knowing where everyone had been for the previous two or three days, and again seemed sceptical to the point of insolent disbelief at the answers he received. Locally, although it was tacitly admitted that it was proper to wait for the coroner's report, everyone agreed that it was suicide, that it was remorse for the death of Julie Pierce, and that there was no doubt about it - he was the father of Julie's dead child, no doubt about it at all! The teacher, Hector Lansbright, was also the coach for the local tennis club and had helped Sari improve her game. It was also a well-known fact that he habitually touched up the girls he coached, but, except for the case of Julie Pierce, his advances were generally harmless enough and mostly taken as good fun by the victims. I know that he felt up Sari on a couple of occasions; she told me so, but said that all the time he was doing it she kept thinking of me. Julie had boasted that Lansbright was her fiancée and that they were to be married as soon as she was sixteen. Cheri Kinnis went off to her drying up session. She was expected to be away for at least eight weeks. Sari moved in with us, into the bedroom she so seldom used - she had got into the habit of sleeping with me. I knew things were amiss when she occupied the bedroom on her own. We still went long walks, splashed about in the swimming pool, played tennis and squash, went riding a couple of times, all the usual things we did together. But it was obvious, her heart was not in any of these activities. Even my parents could see that something was not quite right.

"What's wrong with Sari?" my mother asked. "She doesn't seem to be her usual ebullient self!" My mother had been a primary school teacher and used words like that, for real! And my father eyed me suspiciously and, in a tone that suggested I had better not have, demanded, "Have you been misbehaving with the child? Interfering with her?"

The problem was not long in surfacing. It came during the first week of the long vacation from her school. A naked Sari woke me. It was more of an instinctive gesture than anything else: I glanced at the clock on my bedside table. The green digits glowed 03.17. Sari was in tears. There was a frightening urgency in her sobbing. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating. "Lor! I feel terrible," she said tremulously. She was shivering violently even though the summer heat in the room was stifling.

I threw back the bedclothes. She climbed in beside me. I cuddled her as usual, then pulled away. Sari was burning! I felt her forehead and her chest. It was as though she was on fire. I felt her pulse; it was racing. "Stay where you are, sweetheart!" I climbed from the bed, telephoned our local medical practitioner, and woke my parents. My mother, who had been a voluntary trainee nurse at one time in her youth, took Sari's temperature and examined her closely. We both knew that this was more than a slight summer fever. Sari had fallen into a troubled sleep and was jerking phrenetically in short spasms.

Dr. Simpson called for an ambulance as soon as he touched her. "I'm not going to make any spot diagnoses," he declared. "We'll wait till they look at her in hospital." He shook his head. "But I can tell you: this is going to be serious. Indeed, I would say that the next seventy two hours will be critical."

The three of us took turns at sitting by Sari's bed in hospital. She had been more than seven hours under close scrutiny by men and machines. She had tubes and pipes all over the place and she was wrapped up in a canvas restraining garment with her arms crossed tightly against her chest when she returned.

"Why the straitjacket?" The note of aggression was irrepressible, but I was worried to the point of dementia.

The consultant, white coated, stethoscope dangling from a torn pocket, was sympathetic. "It's not nearly as bad as it looks." He stroked Sari's hair, and I felt inclined to punch his face. "It's for her own protection!"

Instantly, my mind flashed back to the time I first saw Sari bound up in sheets after the Halloween party. "She has a mild form of rheumatic chorea." I yelled. "St. Vitus' Dance?" My stomach took a dip. I felt sick.

"Well, yes and no!" The man continued to caress my girl. "We feared the worst; we really believed it was a rheumatic fever brought on by a form of advanced Huntington's disease." He went on to describe the precise nature of her illness and the treatment she would require; she needed hospitalisation for at least a week, and close attention at home for several weeks after that. "She should be fully recovered, back to normal by the time school starts again in the autumn." He pulled at the eyelid and pointed a torch at the pupil. "She has been heavily sedated and should be asleep for the next couple of hours. It would be advisable to have a face she recognises by her side when she wakes."

"I'll be here," I assured him. "I won't be going anywhere!"

He made to leave the room. He hesitated. "It may sound a strange thing to say." He retreated into silence for fully a minute. "But it has to be said," he decided. "She may require some kind of restraint when she gets home." He returned to the bed and jabbed at the straps of the straitjacket. "And this thing is so gross." He seemed reluctant to go on, but finally he said, "She will still have some of the indications of rheumatic chorea, involuntary jerking, for a week or so, especially when she gets tired, which may be slightly oftener than usual. It is nothing serious, I promise you. But I recommend that you play some bondage games with her. Tie her up! A piece of light rope around her arms and chest, or a leather belt, that sort of thing should be sufficient." He elaborated for several minutes. He explained why he thought it necessary, and how it would help her recovery by making her feel secure and 'tied' to someone who really cared for her. He started caressing Sari again, brushing a few stray hairs away from her face. He faced me and exclaimed, "She is truly a beautiful child. You're a lucky fellow!" He eyed Sari again with obvious affection. Turning again to me, he said, "Appreciate her!" He made for the door and added, "While you can!" And that parting remark had me worried.

In the days that followed, sitting by her bedside, there were three occasions when I really believed she was slipping from my grasp. Twice, emergency resuscitation had to be applied, and once she jerked and twisted so violently that I had imagined the death throes as I had seen them performed by Donald Wolfit in a film based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. I also saw the need for the physical restraint. I also started to devise games to make tying up more interesting both to Sari and myself, if and when I got her home. And, I confess, for the first time in many years, I cried like a baby. I did not want to lose my child sweetheart.

It was at that point that Cheri Kinnis, who had cut short her drying out session, entered the private ward. She held my head close to her mound of Venus and caressed. "Sari is a lucky girl to have someone like you, Lor," she said soothingly. "Someone who cares for her as much as you do!" She crouched in front of me and kissed me full on the lips.

"I want to take her away," I replied through the tears. "I want to take her to some tropical island!"

"That may not be as unlikely as you think, Lor!" There was an odd note of mystery in the way she said it.

Sari's convalescence went precisely as the white-coated medical consultant had predicted. Initially, during her first week home, she was uncharacteristically sullen. The first night home she slept with her mother, in their own house, but after that she insisted on sleeping with me. I had bought her a pair of Chinese silk pyjamas. A couple of times in the night she went into spasms of shaking and trembling. I held her tightly in my arms and she soon relaxed and went back to sleep. By the end of the second week in my bed, these spasms had all but disappeared. During the third week, as we prepared for bed, Sari discarded the pyjamas. "I think we have no further need of these," she said, and laughed, and climbed naked into bed. The relief was indescribable; it swept over me like an ocean breaker, washing away all the debris of doubt and depression. There was an air of certainty about it: Sari was going to be fine. It seemed months and years since I touched her last. Lady Cynthia was sweeter than she had ever been and for the first time ever in our long courtship, Sari's love juices poured down on my tongue. I cried again, from sheer joy!

A couple of days after this return to apparent normality, Sari had a setback. The first post had brought an official government envelope. It had my examination results: seven straight A's, two upper B's and a C for art (which was neither my favourite nor strongest subject at my prestigious boarding school). I was overjoyed; the results were better than I had anticipated. Cum lauda in maths and physics and distinction in chemistry. There was little to complain about in that! But Sari was less than impressed. She sulked all that day and during the night there were several spasms. A couple of days after that I received a letter of congratulations from the headmaster enclosing a little certificate, admitting me as a fellow former pupil of my prestigious alma mater, and stating that I 'had worthily upheld the traditions and the reputation of the school'. Tiny pools of tears remained in Sari's eyes all that day. The following day I received confirmation of a place in the Faculty of Science at Cambridge University, and Sari burst into an inconsolable sobbing. It continued unabated for another two days.

"You will be away for years and years," she said through the tears, "and I won't see you, and you will fall in love with someone else, and get married and forget all about me."

"Now that is nonsense," I said as sternly as I could with Sari. "You know perfectly well that I could never love anyone else. You are the whole world to me. And I shall still be coming home nearly every weekend, and you will be coming to visit me as soon as I get settled in."

Sari turned away from me in a frenzy of sobs and shivers, then swung back at me and held me tightly. "Kiss me," she pleaded. And when we broke away after a long, slobbering kiss, she sighed. "This has been the worst ever summer of my whole life!"