by Sarah Dunant
“Where the hell have you been?” And her voice was huge, fear turning to aggression like winter breath into smoke. “I’ve been starving in here.”
He appeared to be taken aback, as if this was not what he expected from the woman wearing the dress. “I brought food to you this morning. I couldn’t get in.” He gestured to the chair. Bullshit, she thought, if you had tried to move the door I would have heard you.
“Bullshit,” she said, standing her ground.
He took a step toward her.
“Stay where you are.”
He stopped immediately.
She caught a whiff of a smell about him, strong, chemical almost, familiar and weird at the same time. What was it?
“I already told you,” he said quietly. “You don’t need to be frightened of me.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Why—”
“What do you want?” And this time she sounded almost out of control.
He frowned, as if her outburst were somehow irrational as well as unhelpful to their unfolding relationship. “I told you already. I want you to be my guest.”
“Your guest! What does that mean?”
He hesitated. “It means . . . it means you stay here with me for a few days.”
“A few days?”
“Yes.”
“How many days?”
“Three.”
“Three days. Till Tuesday?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“Then you can go home.”
“On Tuesday you let me go?”
“Yes, I let you go.”
“Just like that?”
He nodded.
“And what happens here?”
He frowned again, as if he didn’t entirely understand the question. “What happens? You spend time with me.”
There was a pause. “Spend time with you. That’s it? Nothing more?”
“Nothing more.”
“I won’t sleep with you, you know that,” she said, making it into a flat, almost surly statement. “And if you so much as touch me I’ll kill you. You understand?”
He shrugged, as if the idea bored him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said patiently. “If I wanted to hurt you, I will have done this already.”
There was a silence. “And if I don’t agree to stay. If I say no?”
He said nothing. He didn’t need to. No passport, no money, no ticket. A house in the middle of nowhere, with the doors and windows locked. He was right. It wasn’t worth discussing.
Three days. Three days . . . until when? Some painful anniversary was over, maybe? Could it be true? He had lied so much before there was no reason to believe him now. It didn’t matter. It was what came next that was important.
“Okay,” she said coldly. “That’s what you want. Now I’ll tell you what I want. I want to call my daughter. I want to speak to her over the phone to tell her I’m safe. Understand? I won’t say anything else, I promise, but if you don’t let me do this now then I shall stay in this room and refuse to come out, whatever you do to me, and however long you keep me here. And then I will be no company at all. Do you understand me?”
He stared at her for a moment, then looked away, and there was, she thought, almost a smile about him. “If you do this, then you will stay?”
She took a breath. “Yes, I will stay,” she said, because one good lie deserves another and no one would ever condemn her for it later.
He stepped aside to let her walk in front of him out of the room.
Away—Saturday P.M.
FROM SEX THEY had moved further into lovers’ games, the verbal kind, exploring each other’s past as if it were their bodies, each revelation slipping off another layer of clothes, every question the trigger for another confession or surrender. All in all, a pastime more dangerous than fucking, because it is harder to know at which point you should stop to make sure you are protected.
“And so you never told him?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think it was his right to know?”
“I told you, he was going away. He and I had finished. He would have wanted me to have an abortion.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“How would you feel if he found out now?”
“How could he?”
“I don’t know—a hundred different ways. You and she are walking across a park one Sunday afternoon and he comes toward you on the path, him and his family. As you pass, pretending not to recognize each other, he glances at you, then at her, and there she is—the daughter he didn’t know he had.”
“Unh-unh. She doesn’t look anything like him. And he was never that observant.”
She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. The shutters were still drawn, though the sun had dropped beneath the axis of worst damage. The bed was a ghostly raft in the middle of a sea of charcoal air. She felt an extraordinary sense of physical comfort, lying there, as if she were being held suspended in the palm of a huge hand in midair.
“Was it sex? Was that the pull between you?”
“I suppose so. It was very sexual.”
“Like this?”
“No. Not like this. Different.”
“How?”
“I think it was something to do with anticipation. The fact that we never knew when we were going to see each other. When we actually made love it wasn’t always that great. But I’d been waiting for so long it didn’t matter.”
“Do you think you were obsessed by him?”
She imagined the fingers of the hand unfolding slowly, one by one. It was like flying. Everything would be fine as long as she didn’t look down. She could do or say anything here. Even the most painful memories would hold no terrors.
“Obsessed? I don’t know what the word means. I know there were times when I couldn’t think of anything else. I used to stay in every weeknight in the hope that he might get free and call me. It felt like I had a disease I didn’t want to get rid of. I suppose that’s a definition of obsession, yes.”
“Did it scare you, when it was happening?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I didn’t even like him very much. Or myself. But I also enjoyed it. I liked the feeling of being—I don’t know—out of control. It hadn’t happened to me before. It made me feel very alive.”
Of course, for all her feeling of security she knew she could still fall. Anyone can always fall. But then that, too, was part of the excitement. For so many years now she’d been more worried about Lily than about herself. Now, suspended here in time and space, she had become a lover rather than a mother. She had crossed over, and the pleasure was partly in the risk. This was absolutely why she had come. She knew it now. Welcome back, Anna, she thought. Welcome back.
“So what happened between you? In the end.”
“Ah, that’s a good question. I used to think that he finished it and I got mangled. But now I’m not sure anymore. In a way I think we both ran out of energy. Or rather the energy that we had went sour. I felt very . . . I don’t know the word—soiled for a while afterward. As if I’d bought counterfeit goods, squandered a part of myself on something that wasn’t worthwhile. It made me kind of crazy. But I got over it. Eventually.”
“What about him, what did he feel?”
“I don’t have a clue. When I saw him again nine months later he said he’d been gutted. He told me that he’d missed me every day of every week. But he had a talent for telling people what they wanted to hear. It comes with the business. I think he was probably too busy to care. Two kids, wife, big job, public life, and so many people wanting him. I can’t believe he noticed one less.”
“Yet you still slept with him again.”
“Only because it was over and I knew I wouldn’t feel anything.”
“And did you?”
“No, not a thing. It was rather weird. I remember that after he left I sat up in bed and read a book. I got quite in
to it.”
“And then there was Lily.”
“Yes. Then there was Lily.”
“Was that deliberate?”
She paused. “I didn’t think I’d get pregnant,” she said carefully, knowing that this was not an answer, but also knowing it was the only one she could or would give, to herself as well as to other people.
“And you didn’t mind that she’d been conceived that way? With you not feeling anything?”
“No. Not at all. On the contrary, it felt quite proper. As if it had been about her and me, rather than me and him.”
“So you don’t think of him now?”
“Hardly ever. It’s funny, I’m not sure I can remember him very well. It’s so long ago, as if I were another person.”
“Sounds like you came out the victor in the end.”
“You think so? I don’t see it as a battle anymore.”
“That’s how you know you’ve won.”
“Aaah. Well, I’ll remember that for the future.”
She shifted her body on the bed and her hand came into contact with his upper arm. She let it lie there for a moment, registering the damp warmth of his skin, half-anticipating the move he would make toward her. When it didn’t come, she let her fingers travel along the underside of his arm, up into the armpit and the tangled growth of hair. She tugged at it gently. She imagined him turning over toward her in playful revenge, pulling himself on top of her, his weight pinning her to the bed. It was almost cool enough now to make love again. They would lie there, their bodies sticking together, then sucking apart. Still he didn’t react.
She moved her face close into the hair, breathing in the tangy scent of his sweat. The strands were long and surprisingly silky, like a child’s, not at all the same as the wiry tight curls of his crotch. She ran her tongue through them, licking and probing, imagining in turn the pleasures of his mouth as it made its way down through her hair. The thought aroused her further. She continued her journey, marking out a pencil trail of saliva down along the inside of his chest. His skin felt softer here—younger, almost. She thought of Lily’s tender flawless surface, so delicate underneath the arms that you felt it was not properly formed yet. She thought of the way they would lie together when Lily was falling asleep; she using her finger like a feather, playing across her daughter’s back, tracing the chicken wing outline of her shoulder blade and on into the armpit underneath. She heard her giggle sleepily, then demand a replay.
For six years Anna had been perfecting the skills of how to touch skin. And all the time the line between the sensual and the sexual had been thin as a thought and as thick as desire. She couldn’t understand how anyone could ever confuse the two.
Yet crossing back into adult flesh now she was amazed to realize how much she had learned. How much more she could feel and the particular pleasure that comes from being the one doing the feeling. There was, she had discovered, a powerful eroticism in generosity that she couldn’t remember from affairs before Lily.
His continued refusal to respond made her more excited. She slid her hand down over his stomach toward his prick. It stiffened slightly at the anticipation of her touch. She thought about pursuing it. It was one of his attractions as a lover, allowing himself to be seduced, not afraid or nervous of her lust. Maybe that was a change in him too, a product of age and marriage. Probably if they’d met twenty years ago they wouldn’t have found each other nearly so intoxicating. But the pull was more than sex. It was also about the power of secrecy; things that were hidden, truths only half told, the potent intimacy of strangers. In the quiet light of the encroaching evening what they said to each other continued to be as erotic as what they did.
“So, let’s move on to you,” she said, shifting herself onto one elbow to look down at his face while her fingers continued walking. “What grubby little secrets have you got that you need redemption from?” She poked him gently in the ribs. “Come on, let’s hear it.”
The eyelids flicked open. “Hey.” Then: “Don’t stop. I like it.”
“Well then, answer my question.”
“Why should I?”
“Because it’s your turn in the witness box. I want to see you under cross-examination.”
He shook his head, smiling. “I warn you, I’m devious. Under pressure I’ll plead the Fifth Amendment.”
“If you don’t answer I’ll stop touching you.”
“Okay, okay. I give in.” He opened his eyes and looked directly up at her. “You already know all there is to know about me, Anna. I’m a married man who shouldn’t be here, but who can’t keep away.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s your fault. First—what was his name?—Chris; now me. Maybe you’re the kind of woman who lures married men onto the rocks with your siren song?”
She laughed. But they both knew it wasn’t true. To be a genuine siren you have to be deaf to all other songs but your own. And Anna already had too many voices playing in her head. “Bullshit. You’re just trying to shift the conversation back to me again.”
“Okay. So you start. Tell me what you see.”
She thought about it. “I see a man who is easily bored, someone who is used to getting what he wants, and who therefore wants what he can’t have.”
He made a face. “Hmm. Do you want to go on to the criticism now, or shall we stay with the flattery?”
She smiled, but kept going. “I suppose what interests me most is what you do with the guilt.”
He shook his head. “I’m no good at guilt. I told you that the first night we met. I never have been, even when I was a kid. There’s no point in guilt unless you believe in contrition, and I never did.”
“And it’s that simple?”
“Probably not, but at least it’s honest.”
“Honest. You know you use that word a lot.”
“Yeah? Well, I think I am.”
“Honest? With whom? Yourself? Me? Her?”
He gave a small shrug, as if there was an answer to her question but she wouldn’t believe it, so what was the point in giving it.
She tried again. “Tell me one thing. When you go back to her from being with me—you’re what? Not guilty? Just the same as ever?”
He thought about it. “No. Not the same. I think I’m more attentive to her.”
“Sounds like guilt to me.”
“That’s because you haven’t done it. It’s more complex than guilt. Being with you makes her more foreign to me. She feels different, and I like that.”
“So making love to other women makes her more sexually interesting. You get turned on by it?”
“It’s not necessarily about sex,” he said quietly. She was silent for a moment, watching, waiting for more. But it didn’t come. It was hard to know if that was because it wasn’t there or because he didn’t want to give it. “What happened to your hand?” he said lightly. “You stopped seducing me.”
She laughed and her fingers fluttered on his chest but stayed where they were. Somewhere in the last minutes they had crossed a kind of line. In their own separate ways both of them knew that.
“What about her? She knows that you fuck around.”
“Is that a statement or a question?”
“Take it whichever way you want.”
A dangerous game, honesty. “You know, Anna, I don’t think talking about things always makes them clearer.”
It wasn’t so much what he said as the matter-of-fact way he said it, as if at the center of him there was some neat little vacuum of emotion. To her surprise, rather than making her mad it made her feel almost tender toward him. She lifted her hand off him, but he reached out and pulled it back, lacing her fingers tightly into his. “Look, I’m not saying any of this to hurt you.”
“I’m not hurt,” she said firmly. “But you don’t start something and then stop.”
He sighed. “Okay. What was the question?”
“Does she know that you fuck around?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “She knows that I have, in the pa
st.” In her mind she saw the luggage carousel again, the Busby Berkeley dance of a dozen identical well-dressed cases, each with its own set of initials lovingly engraved. Samuel’s girls. She had been right. He paused. “But she doesn’t know about this.”
The carousel stopped her case under the spotlight, a Ruby Keeler smile for the camera. “And what if she did?”
He held her gaze. “I think she’d be scared.”
Something in her stomach tightened and released. “Why?” He frowned. She tugged at his hand. “No, why?”
“Oh, come on, Anna. You’re not a fool. You know as well as I do what’s happening here. We’re taking a risk. And the longer we play around the more dangerous it gets.”
“But I thought you told me that didn’t happen to you.”
“I told you it hadn’t happened. In the past.”
“But yesterday—”
“Yesterday I said what I thought it would take to make you change your mind. Because we were a long way from home and because I wanted you to stay.” He paused. “And since we’re being honest here, maybe you should admit that I said what you wanted to hear as well.
“Face it, Anna. You’re as messed up as I am on this one. Would you have stayed yesterday if I told you I might consider leaving my wife? If I’d started talking joint mortgages and trips with Lily to the cinema to get to know her better? I think not. I think if that had been the case you’d have been on the first plane home. Because you don’t want a partner any more than I want another wife. Or at least that’s what you thought. That was what we both thought. That’s why you were into this as much as I was, guilt or no guilt. That’s what made it so equal and so sweet.”
“So why are we using the past tense?” she said, the air grown still between them.
He didn’t answer her immediately, simply laced his fingers more firmly through hers and pulled her toward him. She resisted, waiting. “Because the real risk is that I don’t know what I want anymore,” he said quietly. “And I’m not entirely sure you do either.”