Playing Away

by Adele Parks

  I think he liked it.

  I check his face, it's hard to read.

  My hair is wet with sweat and is sticking to my neck, my tits are damp with his kisses and my stomach and thighs with his love. We don't know what to say to each other so we hold one another, very tightly, until our breathing calms and slows. We inhale and exhale in unison. His hands smell of sperm and mud and grass; I do too. I'm sure I'll never be so clean and clear again. Instinctively I cup his face in my hands; it is an ecstatic, assured glow, so devastatingly positive. So now there is no fudging, no avoiding the issue. No spin doctor can hand out a prescription on this one because I am an adulterer.

  "What lovemaking," he sighs contentedly.

  I roll away from him and lie on the cold grass. To test his sincerity I say sharply, "What a euphemism, it's a fuck." He looks at me and there is a mountain of confusion, the size of the Rockies, Alps and Everest combined.

  "If you are more comfortable with that description." Then he visibly brightens. "I guess you're right." He's just bought the Emperor's latest couture. I'm not certain if this is what I intended. I'm not a femme fatale. We don't say much to each other as we get dressed. We make jokes about the time he took to iron his shirt that morning and the state it is in now. I rather hope that we can go back to the hotel I've booked and do it all over again but he says that he has to get back home. We smoke a cigarette and buy a plastic cup of tea from a vendor near the edge of the park, then head back to the station. Although the temperature has dropped severely and it's starting to get dark, neither of us complain. We keep warm by hanging on to each other. Beer is surprisingly potent, normally a hostage to doing the "right thing." I don't worry for a second that we'll get spotted playing hooky from work and marriage.

  play ing away

  We part at the Tube station. I'm going south, he's going east. Squeezed between an enormous black woman and her shopping and a nervous, young executive and his laptop, I allow myself to think about his parting shot, "I'll call you." I wish he hadn't said that. Or, since he had said it, I wish I'd asked when or said no, I'd call him. I get off the Tube and check the messages on my mobile, You have. One. New message. "Hey Sex, told you I'd call."

  I arrive home. Still grinning. The house, as I expected, is empty. Luke is never home until after eight. Which gives me plenty of time to shower off the mud and other evidence before he gets in. My relief turns to irritation by the time I push my sperm-stained jumper into the washing machine. No wonder I'm playing away. I've been forced into this by his neglect. I'm always on my own. I cheer myself up by playing John's message. Eight times. I pour myself a conciliatory gin and bitterly think, even if he had been home he probably wouldn't have noticed my unkempt state. I sigh and crawl into my wrought-iron bed. I'm exhausted. A vivid picture of John, tying me to it, performing all sorts of base acts, pushes its way into my head. Where did that come from? I shove the image to the side.

  What exactly is he tying me up with?

  On Thursday, Luke goes to his Spanish class. I do try not to think of sex on a Spanish beach with John.

  It's Friday, Luke comments that we haven't seen much of each other and that we should go out. We go to the cinema to see some arty French film. Subtitles and I've forgotten my glasses. Even if I had been able to see, I doubt whether the plot would have held me. I try not to think of John's funny, French/Liverpudlian accent. Luke and I are in bed by 10:30, he is asleep by 10:40.1 lie awake staring at the ceiling. It is a good thing that I have such a full life that I don't waste time thinking

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  about John. Saturday, I go to the King's Road with Daisy while Luke tinkers with his motorbike. I don't need new clothes but I plan to treat myself to countless slutty dresses, the type I imagine John likes his women to wear.

  Daisy is in love with Simon so my presence is superfluous. I could have been walking next to her wearing a billboard claiming "the end of the world is nigh" and she wouldn't have noticed, therefore shopping with Daisy isn't as much fun as it used to be. The trips are irregular (fitted in between Simon's golf matches) and frustrating (they never culminate in a purchase, only in a decision to "give it some thought" or to "come back later and see which Simon prefers"). Today has every sign of following this irritating, more recent pattern. I sit outside the changing room while Daisy tries on sixteen pairs of identical gray bootleg trousers. After trying on the first and third pair, for the fourth time each, she suggests we get a coffee to give her time to "think it over." I smile conspiratorially at the shop girl but she is very disenchanted and sweeps past me disdainfully. I marvel that she can manage to be disdainful while carrying sixteen pairs of trousers.

  "John Lewis as usual?" asks Daisy.

  "I fancy a change."

  I huddle Daisy into a smoky cafe, one we pass every Saturday but have never entered. The cafe is full of deeply intimidating people, all of whom are devastatingly beautiful, or up-to-the-second voguish, or a combination of both things. Daisy hesitates at the door. I think she might bolt. I know what she is thinking. I shrug, I'm feeling experimental, brave and appropriate.

  "We've as much right to be in this cafe as anyone else," I hiss as we nudge into the two seats nearest the door. Eventually, well after we have had the "do you think we should go to the counter or is it waitress service?" debate, when I'm beginning to think that it isn't a cafe at all, but in fact some-

  playing away

  one's front room, a tall French waitress approaches our table. Like the clientele, she is impossibly attractive. She has large, gray, almond-shaped eyes, a waist about the width of my wrist and straight glossy hair that moves with her head. She silently takes our order. I really hope black coffee, filtered and caf-feinated, is an acceptable choice. She sashays back to the counter, nods silently to the bar boy and hands him her illegibly scribbled chit. I consider that there is a possibility that the note reads "move quickly, tight pecs, we want them out of here." I watch suspiciously but the bar boy doesn't so much as glance our way; instead he slops filter coffee into two glass beakers. Languidly the waitress puts them on our table and then leaves us to it. Daisy and I watch her hair swing gracefully, hovering between shoulder and chin.

  "She probably doesn't have a personality," whispers Daisy, tugging at her curly fringe. We both know she doesn't need one. I pick up a sachet of sugarcane and then change my mind, opting for Canderel. "It does make you think though, doesn't it, Daisy?"

  "What?"

  "Well, with so many really good-looking women in the world, how do ordinary women get their men to stay faithful? Or even how do really beautiful women get their men to stay faithful. There are no guarantees."

  "Con, Luke's mad about you. He'd never look at another woman!"

  Daisy might be right, Luke wouldn't look at another woman, he hardly looks at me, but John will look. More than look. I shudder and try to fork-lift the thought out of my head. What does it matter to me if John is a womanizer? It doesn't matter. I won't be seeing him again anyway. I said it would just be the once. I mean where can it go? I'm a married woman. Luckily, with Luke, I don't have to give infidelity a thought. Well, at least not his.

  "What's up, Con? You seem distracted."

  "I'm just tired. I've something big going on at work, a project I started a couple of weeks ago. I'm not getting much sleep because of it."

  Daisy nods, relieved. "I thought for one awful moment that there was some problem between you and Luke."

  "Don't be mad."

  "Yes, you are right. One certainty, in this crazy life, is that you and Luke have a great marriage."

  I don't like the way this conversation is going. "How's your coffee?"

  "Fine. I mean, I really envy you, Connie. You really do have such a great marriage. Luke is so nice, especially in this world full of bastards."

  "Hmmm. Err, which trousers do you think you'll get?"

  "I mean, he is so patient, clever, understanding—"

  "I liked the ones in Whistles—"

&nbs
p; "He really listens to you."

  "God, it's smoky in here, isn't it?"

  "I think that Simon is really similar to Luke."

  Better, better territory, Simon rather than Luke. I try to encourage her in this direction.

  "How are things going with you and Simon?"

  "Really well. He's so good. He's intelligent, thoughtful, creative. Just like Luke."

  Infuriated, I sigh. She is right of course, Luke is good. Good in the clear and honest sense. I know little about John but I know enough to have established that John is not good. He is bad. Bad in the clear and honest sense. He is not good enough for me, yet I've never come across anything as good, in the vital and wicked sense. Luke is good enough but not enough. Suddenly, I notice that he's dull. I'm doomed to a life of sex once-a-week. Luke fiddling with my nipple as though it is a light switch, fifteen minutes from start to finish. The only sex

  * playing away

  toys in our lives are pajama bottoms and the only novelty is if we do it before or after we've brushed our teeth. John, my lover (I tentatively try out the word), is not as kind, not as selfless, not as known. Damn it. Not as known. That's why he is in my bed and head, oh, and the fact that he is unimaginably sexy. I sip my black, strong coffee. I've married a man who can offer me a constant, and very respectable, nine out of ten. I love him. He is kind, tender, intelligent, compassionate. How could I not love him? Our friends are known to burst forth in spontaneous cries of "You guys" and clap their hands with glee, thinking about what a wonderful couple we are. Fuck John for showing me that ten out of ten is still out there. Even eleven. But I can't kid myself—by sleeping with John I'm not succumbing to my heart, but a far louder organ. I only have to hear his name and I come. I think of his eyes and my tits sit up pert and expectant, begging him to cup and suck. I wish I'd never met him. He's disturbed everything, ruined everything.

  I have these thoughts as I talk to Daisy about what time she should come to dinner tonight. I notice that her hair curls attractively around her neck and the guy at the table next to me is staring at me. The couple opposite are obsessed by each other. Suddenly I'm aware of sex. Mine, John's, Mr. Six-Pack behind the bar. It's weird.

  It is our turn to have everyone round for dinner. It is frequently our turn or Rose's. It is rarely Lucy's turn and almost never the turn of Daisy or Sam. There are very good reasons for this: comfort—Rose and Peter, and Luke and I, live in very spacious homes that- are designed for entertaining; cuisine—Rose and Luke are both excellent cooks and Peter and I both do an admirable job of setting the table and cooling the wine. Lucy is also a chef par excellence and has an elegant and spacious home. She used to do a lot of entertaining but invariably only when she was trying to impress some man. She'd invite us

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  round to show him that not only is she a hugely successful career woman but that she can balance her exhausting schedule with leisure time and close friends. Lucy wrote the blueprint for having it all. Inevitably the man in question was not just impressed but affected and moved. With immutable predictability, before the chocolate souffle made an appearance, Lucy and her victim would have moved on to a whole different type of dessert. And we guests would be left to the struggle with the percolator.

  Daisy is a teacher in North London, so there are two obvious reasons that we don't often dine at her place: the Northern Line, enough said, and the fact that she lives in a matchbox. A very studenty matchbox at that. All damp patches on the bathroom ceiling, a shortage of loo roll and a veritable plethora of brothel beads/various bits of hangy material, that divide up already minuscule rooms. Besides which Daisy doesn't have enough chairs for us all to sit on, well, not all at once. So dinner either degenerates into a rather haphazard game of musical chairs; whereby someone always has to be jumping up to get salt or pepper, or matches, or more wine, so that someone else can sit down. Often a row breaks out because Lucy sits on someone's knee. Not mine or Sam's, but Luke's or Peter's, or most dangerously, the date of Sam or Daisy.

  Sam's flat is perfectly lovely for dining but she shares it with the flatmates from hell. She used to share it with Mike. Mike was really dishy and for a while we had hopes that Daisy and he would become an item. The signs were all there. He slept with her on an infrequent basis, failed to call her for weeks on end, and whenever she met someone else he begged her to come back to him. Which she always did. However our hopes were crushed when he announced that he was moving out of Sam's flat to get married. A very awkward situation, especially when Sam asked Daisy if she could borrow a hat of hers for the wedding.

  playing away

  Now Liz has moved in. Liz hasn't attempted to seduce any of Sam's friends but it turns out that it is simply because we're not her type. We're all apparently too frivolous and she's looking for a woman with a bit more moral meat. Liz is an ardent feminist, even though she knows it isn't fashionable anymore. To be fair, she's a really interesting woman, full of thoughts, ideas, facts and viewpoints. She can be very pleasant and informative company.

  As long as you are not a man.

  And you don't like men.

  Men are the enemy and women who like men are traitors. They should be tarred and feathered. Liz holds (and frequently expresses) the opinion that men are selfish, lazy, two-dimensional relics and since the invention of sperm banks and the Black & Decker they are now without any real purpose. Possibly their demise as a sex would be of no real economic, moral or practical loss, but to most of us it just seems such a shame. I mean Luke is a man and I'm grateful, Sebastian and Henry will grow up into men and they are adorable (of course there is the argument that Sebastian and Henry won't grow up, that no man does, and that their little baby selves are as good as it gets), our fathers are men and a number of them are tolerable. And there is John.

  Liz labors under the impression that the whole reason for a dozen adults to sit round a table is to discuss religion and politics. Drrrrrr no, Liz, it's to get pissed. With missionary zeal she attempts to advance our awareness. No amount of polite diversionary tactics work, the atmosphere is always strained.

  "What a lovely dress, Daisy, is it new?" Rose tries.

  "Do you know what you are reinforcing by wearing a dress with a neckline that virtually meets the hemline? You are reinforcing all chauvinistic views that a woman's role is to decorate rather than create or debate," Liz spits angrily.

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  Daisy stammers that she saw it in a Karen Millen window and isn't trying to reinforce any particular view, she just liked it. Peter usually jumps in with some well-thought-out counterargument that makes us laugh.

  "Dyke."

  And then Rose has to start all over again. "What lovely sauce, Sam, you must give me the recipe."

  So tonight it is our turn. Dinner parties are taken seriously in the Baker household. Luke, quite unlike any other man I've ever met, actually does do the cooking. He doesn't just say he does the cooking and then leave it to me. He doesn't put on a huge display—a theater—when he cooks. He doesn't only do the cooking when people are around to praise him either. He genuinely cooks, and does it in a quiet, methodical, sensible way and the results are always delicious. I do the inviting and the table-laying. I put the nibbly bits into bowls and I place said bowls tastefully around the sitting room for our guests. I also do the cleaning up. Luke is a man not a saint.

  Luke is poring over the various cookbooks that we own. I say "we" because Luke's parents, with tedious regularity, insist on buying me cookbooks for my birthday and Christmas presents. I think I created a rod for my own back when I actually asked for Marco Pierre White's White Heat. Obviously I had no intention of actually cooking anything from it. I just wanted to salivate over the moody shots of bad boy Marco. He is a bad boy, very like John. Serves me right because I am now the proud owner of Delia Smith's Winter Collection, Delia Smith's Summer Collection, The Sunday Times Complete Cookbook, Master Chef 1995, Master Chef 1996, Master Chef 1997, The Ultimate Barbecue Cook Book, Sai
nsbury's Low Fat Gourmet (a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one), Sainsbury's Astrological Cookbook (honestly!), Sainsbury's Fish Cookbook, Sainsbury's 1000 Recipe

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  Cookery Book, Michel Roux Sources, River Cafe Cook Book One and River Cafe Cook Book Two. Each year I thank them enthusiastically and then the following Christmas, when they buy me another one, I always wish that I hadn't been quite so enthusiastic. Still, I doubt that Mrs. Baker Senior is over-thrilled with the M&S toiletries that I buy her every year or Mr. Baker Senior is all aflutter over the slippers that I buy him; yet they are always polite enough when they receive them. The raison d'etre of Christmas is to fill each other's homes with gifts neither find useful nor beautiful. It keeps us and our purses occupied and come November we have to fight our way through tack and crowds to buy the gifts. Then in January we have to fight through reduced-price tack and even more ferocious crowds, as we return the gifts we are given. That's civilization.

  "I think I've been overcooking the tuna for our guests. According to this book, it barely needs searing," says Luke. He's having this conversation with his wife because he doesn't know I have sucked another man's dick. I do know this however. And I hate that we know different things for the first time in over five years.

  "Do you think it is enough to love, even if you are not in love?" I blurt dangerously.

  "We could pepper them, that would be nice."

  "Does lust have anything to do with real love?"

  "Or basil. What do you think of basil?" Basil, who's Basil? His name is John not Basil. We stare at each other from our different constellations. I try a more conventional approach.

  "What are we eating tonight?" My interest is feigned, feigned to a record-breaking level. It is the least I can do if he is prepared to cook.