The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted

by William Coles

  ‘It’s the geriatrophile,’ he said, not really speaking to anyone in particular, but loud enough for me to hear.

  ‘Geriatrophile?’ I paused, the plates still in my hand. ‘That’s a very big word for you, Giley. I didn’t know the Ladybird books stretched to words of five syllables.’

  ‘She must be desperate,’ he said.

  ‘About as desperate as you are, dear Giley,’ I replied. ‘From what I hear, you’re taking the term self-abuse to a whole new level.’

  I was now at the exit door. I tossed him one last insult as I went out. ‘I hope you’re washing your grubby little fingers before you start cooking.’

  I thought no more of it. To me, it was all just a part of the cut and thrust of the dining room: a dollop of charm here, a witticism there and occasionally, for the likes of Giles, the most withering and acidic invective that my simmering brain could conjure.

  ‘It is good that this has come out, my friend,’ Oliver said. ‘You can now hold hands with Cally in the pub.’

  ‘And we can go on double dates, too,’ I said.

  ‘That would be nice,’ Oliver said. ‘Annette and I, we would like that.’

  I had just left the dining room and was returning to my room before going out riding with Cally. I was looking forward to telling her that our secret was out and that now we were free to declare our love to the world. For the first time, public displays of affection were officially permissible.

  I was watching an elderly woman make her way out of the hotel. She had a walking stick and seemed to be in some pain. A man who I took to be her son was helping her towards his car. He had his hand at her elbow and he had all the time in the world for his mother. When she dropped her stick, he swooped and picked it up and with a laugh he returned it to her. It was a charming little scene.

  I heard a cackle from behind me. It was Giles. He was still in his chef’s whites and was having a cigarette with Darren. They were both perched on the playground fence.

  ‘You going to have a try with her?’ he said, nodding at the old lady. ‘Or is she too young for you?’

  I walked over to Giles. Without a word I grabbed both of his feet and in one fell movement I heaved his legs up over his head and pitched him backwards into the playground. There was a delicious thud as he hit the ground. It is not often that I get physical with another man. I wished I’d done it long ago.

  I went on my way and did not look back.

  But Giles wanted more.

  I heard a bellow of anger from behind me. Giles was charging, his face puce, quite delirious with rage. I slid to the side and tripped him, watching quite dispassionately as he ploughed into the sun-baked earth. He’d hurt his wrist, massaging it as he hauled himself to his feet.

  ‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘You bloody bastard.’

  ‘Still want to play, do you, Giley?’

  ‘I’ll get you.’

  ‘Try me,’ I said.

  I walked off and I left him standing there, a writhing heap of madness that thirsted for revenge.

  Cally found me out in the pub that night. One moment I was talking to Oliver and Annette, the next Cally was bending over me and kissing me – not on the cheek, but full on the lips.

  I stood up, took her in my arms. In full view of all the locals and the Knoll House staff, erasing any shadow of doubt, we kissed each other long and hard. We kissed until gradually I noticed that the conversations around us were beginning to flag, and when finally we were done Oliver started to clap, and then Roland, and the next thing the whole pub had broken into spontaneous applause. The first and only time in my life that I have ever been applauded for a kiss.

  We walked back from the pub. ‘We’re officially a couple,’ Cally said. ‘Both in private and in public.’

  ‘About time, too,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, all this secrecy and hiding was getting to be a bit of a drag,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I never knew what you were so ashamed of.’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘I thought it was you who wanted me to stay in shadows.’

  ‘Darling Kim.’ She kissed me. ‘I would sing my love from the rooftops.’

  ‘We’ll do a duet then.’

  ‘Let’s lie down here.’

  ‘Right here?’

  ‘Where do you think I mean? In the ditch? Lying here will help you concentrate on your next lesson.’

  So we laid down right in the middle of the road. We were not far from the Knoll House, and although the road didn’t tend to be that busy after the ferry had closed, there were still the few odd cars weaving their way back home at the dead of night.

  The tarmac was warm. We straddled the white lines and held hands. There was not a light to be seen, just the moon and the firmament, and us lying there in the middle of the road waiting to be embraced by death as he swept us on to oblivion.

  ‘Is there any particular reason why we’re lying in the middle of the road?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never done it before.’

  ‘Haven’t we already been down this route?’ I said. ‘So this lesson,

  I take it, is to further my development as a lover and as a human being. Why are you so sure we’re going to split up?’

  ‘I’ve split up with everyone else I’ve ever loved.’

  ‘And why should I be any different?’

  ‘Women like letters,’ she said. ‘Write to them and write to them often. Phone calls are fine. But a handwritten letter, just a trace of scent, can be treasured and it can be pored over.’

  ‘I haven’t written to you enough, have I?’

  ‘You have not.’ She pressed my hand to her lips and kissed my fingers.

  ‘Point taken.’

  ‘Self-deprecation, we like that.’

  ‘Never really been my strong suit.’

  ‘Good. You want to watch your humour, Kim. You’re sharp, but you must use it more carefully; women, despite all their bluff and their bravado, can bruise very easily.’

  ‘Noted,’ I said. ‘Curb all jokes which come at my lover’s expense.’

  ‘I wish my husband had had this sort of coaching,’ Cally said. With her finger, she was drawing fresh patterns in the stars. ‘Instead it was me who wasted years training him up, and it’s his next wife who’s reaping all the benefits.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on that. Once a tosser, always a tosser.’

  ‘Are you comfy?’ she said.

  ‘Very. Shall we spend the night here? Tell me about the love making. What do women want?’

  ‘Now that is difficult.’ Cally rolled on top of me, kissing me as she stroked my cheek. ‘Guys, as we know, can have sex anywhere, any time, and with pretty much anyone. They were born dirty. But women, at least the ones worth dating, first have to have an emotional connection. There’s got to be the talk and lots of it and if you don’t do that, then there will be no sex in the afternoon.’

  ‘Painfully obvious,’ I said. ‘Are you going to tell me something I didn’t know?’

  ‘As regards your knowledge of women, Kim darling, I do not presume one single thing.’ She kissed me. ‘Try this. We adore compliments, but they must be tailor-made for the occasion. It is also impossible to tell us too often that we are the love of your life.’

  ‘You are the love of my life.’

  ‘Say it like you mean it.’

  I looked soulfully, earnestly, into her eyes. ‘You, Cally, are truly the love of my life.’

  ‘Better. Now pay me a very personal compliment.’

  ‘Give me a second.’ I stared up at the stars. ‘Here, now, I’d risk my life to make love with you.’

  ‘In the middle of the road?’ She kissed me with stunning ardour. ‘Oh, Kim, that is a very pretty compliment and I like it very much!’

  Hands tugged at clothes, legs entwined, skin raked over with nails and with fingers. Cally’s hair fell about my face, cocooning me within its fringe. I closed my eyes and succumbed to her kisses. The texture of her lips and her warm skin was intoxicating. I was so caught up
with Cally’s kisses and with her warmth that I was not even aware that we were laying in the middle of an A-road at midnight.

  Usually, I like to kiss with my eyes shut. I am not looking at cheeks or lips; I am in the moment, focused on the kiss and nothing else.

  Something happened. Some primeval sense twitched, it was as if a pin had been thrust into my forehead. I opened my eyes and through the fringe of Cally’s thick hair, I caught a faint flicker of light in the sky.

  I broke off from Cally lips and heaved at her, pushing her away from me.

  ‘No,’ she said. She strained to kiss me.

  ‘Car!’ I shrieked.

  What happened next happened so fast that it was all over in two seconds. I still see it in my nightmares. The car hits us full and square. The one moment we’re kissing, and the next trapped by the headlights as the car roars into view. We try to move, but we can’t, deer trapped in the headlights; and the car is going so fast, there’s no time for it to swerve. There’s a terrific blast of the horn, deafening, blending with the engine’s thunder and the squeal of the brakes, and the car is so close now that I can see the flies speckled about the bumper and smell the hot engine oil and the turtle wax. I try to get up, pushing and pushing, but nothing happens. I’m stuck to the tarmac, Cally glued on top of me, my eyes locked onto the headlights and nothing else. My mouth formed into a perfect ‘O’ as I scream my last scream. Then the wheels, black and broad, are on top of me, mashing my pelvis to dust and, in that same moment, Cally is whisked from me, her head snatched clean off by the bumper, as her body is thrown like a ragdoll, and as she goes over the top, shattering the windscreen, I go under the wheels, pulped front and back, though not that it makes any difference, because by the time the car has screeched to a halt, our life-blood is already oozing out onto the road.

  These nightmares are still capable of waking me up in a shivering sweat. My eyes flash open and I can still see that image of Cally and me, bloodied and broken, lying dead as doornails on the tarmac.

  And in reality: the moment stretched into an infinity of horrific instants.

  With animal strength, I forced Cally off me, pistoling my arms until she had pitched backwards. The sweep of the car’s headlights reared up, huge in the darkness as the car tore round the bend. The sound of the brakes squealed as the horn klaxoned into the night and I pitched forward in a flat dive. As I crashed to the ground, my elbow jarred into the kerb. The wind of the car whipped at my feet. One wheel clipped, slightly scrunched, one of my boots. I was limping for weeks.

  The car stopped; the driver got out. He was livid and as he howled out his rage, we went into the woods and the darkness. ‘You maniacs!’ he screamed blindly. ‘I could have killed you!’

  We laughed and the thrill of the adrenalin passed. My elbow hurt and I knew that my foot was also injured. We started to kiss.

  ‘Where were we?’ Cally said, and we knelt on the dark grass as she unbuttoned my shirt, and it was electrifying, erotic. We’d come within an ace of killing ourselves as we made out in the middle of the road.

  But along with all my other thoughts, there was one thing that just wouldn’t go away. In that first moment when I saw the car’s headlights winking into the sky, for a second, it had felt as if Cally was forcing me hard down onto the tarmac, as if willing for it all to be over; for the both of us to be mown down as we conjoined in the ecstasy of the moment.

  CHAPTER 15

  There are many plus points when it comes to dating a much older woman. But there are also several downsides and if you would see our relationship in all its rough-hewn beauty, with its warts, its wrinkles and its libido that raged into the night, then I must acknowledge them.

  If your lover is from another generation, there is no common ground with popular culture. Cally had been born in such a different era. She was a war baby, with rationing and austerity, and with not a television to be seen. She’d been there in the sixties with the pill and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. I’d had Watch with Mother and Top of the Pops and Blondie and all the bands at which my father would roll his eyes and pluck out another cigarette. Now this lack of common ground is not in any way a big deal, but it does mean that you have to work slightly harder. Little generational jokes have to be explained before they can be laughed at.

  Another niggle was that Cally always had much more money than me. I had money for beer and small baubles, but Cally had a house, a flat in London, a swish car, and always plenty of money for meals, for presents, for a never-ending supply of alcohol. She always said that she loved to buy me dinner, or whatever meal it was that we were eating, but I’m not so sure it’s good for a man’s soul to be kept and to be paid for. Of course, I would pay occasionally for little gifts. But I was all too aware of the size of her jewellery box and how pitiful these trinkets seemed in comparison to the diamonds and the rubies and the dazzling hunks of gold with which she would adorn herself.

  But my biggest gripe was her friends. They generally treated me like this toy boy joke: doubtless pleasuring Cally senseless in the bedroom, but with nothing of interest to say and who soon enough would be sent on his merry little way. The worst by far was Greta, whose flirting would alternate with zinging slingshots as she openly mocked any chance of my ever staying faithful to Cally.

  It was August, a couple of days after our interlude in the road. After what seemed like endless months of preparation, Cally’s exhibition was opening. She had been spending more and more time in London, and every time she returned, she seemed more tired; it was the first time that I had ever really noticed the wrinkles about her eyes and her mouth. For the first time in her life, she was even beginning to look her age. When she did get back from London, she would always need at least a day to recover; meanwhile, I would be champing at the bit and generally behave like a lusty hooligan.

  On the day of the exhibition, I’d been given the night off, so I could go up to London in the afternoon and then spend the next day – luxury of luxuries – tooling around London with Cally. I was very excited. I had only been back to London a couple of times since I’d started at the Knoll House, and with every mile in the train I could scent the city and knew that I was returning home.

  I was already dressed for the party and the rest of what I needed was in a small knapsack. I always used to love travelling light. It needs discipline and grit to whittle your luggage down to a toothbrush and a pair of briefs.

  I’d never been to the opening of a proper art exhibition before and I tried to imagine what it would be like – would I be ignored, or welcomed with open arms? Would Cally’s daughter be there? Would her ex-husband be there? Perhaps there would be a whole fleet of exes; Cally was so lovely that I could easily imagine her staying on kind kissing terms with every one of her lovers. I wondered how Cally would be with me. Would there be that confident kiss to the lips that declared to the world that I was her lover; or would it be the peck on the cheek and the skulk in the shadows until we were alone and the last guest had departed?

  We’d decided that I would see Cally at the exhibition itself. She said that she got unbearably tense before a big show and that she needed time to prepare herself.

  I planned to arrive some forty-five minutes after it had started.

  I had no clue as to what to expect. I’d never seen Cally in full artist mode before. Up until then I’d only known her as a painter – and an artist is quite different. An artist is the show-stopping butterfly that emerges after years and years of painstaking work in the pupa. Painters do the grunt work. They slog it out in the studios, scribing away with brush and pencil. The artist, on the other hand, is full of life and verve and confidence. The artist is charming to everyone she meets; the artist drinks champagne and kisses cheeks, for she is in the business of selling pictures; and for one night, and one night only, the artist is the oracle, and her guests pay obeisance as they hold fast onto every word that she utters.

  I was a little tense, aware that for the first time I was going to be o
n public display, and that my forty-four-year-old lover would shortly be showing off her young beau to the world. Already, I could almost picture the sneers that were being directed at this irrelevant toy boy. I arrived at Cork Street a full hour before Cally’s exhibition was due to start. I’d never been to Cork Street. It is the very capital of Britain’s art world; if your pictures are on display there, you’re made. I was still limping slightly from our canoodle on the road.

  I walked up the street then down on the other side and I marvelled at the pictures and the prices. It was beginning to dawn on me that if this was the company Cally kept, she was right out of the top drawer. I briefly looked in through the window to Cally’s gallery. It looked opulent and expensive, white walls and a light wooden floor. Two willowy women were pouring out champagne.

  I went to a nearby pub and started to drink. I drank because I was nervous and because I thought it might loosen me up. I drank doubles of gin and gazed at the Evening Standard, but didn’t take in a word of the paper as I mulled over just a few of the scenarios that might occur that night. I had a sense of foreboding and also a sense of inevitability. For I already knew myself and I knew my weaknesses. One of my very particular weaknesses is that when I am on the back foot and feeling vulnerable, I will come out swinging with barbed tongue and sneering lip, and I don’t much care how it all turns out. The only thing of consequence is whether I’ve managed to land a few telling blows of my own.

  When I arrived back at the gallery, the place was humming. I felt under-dressed. I was wearing black jeans, Chelsea boots and a floral shirt that Cally had given me; compared to this crowd, I looked like a hick. The men, even the young men, wore suits and ties that reeked of money and City jobs; the women, even the younger women, looked stylish and expensive. I felt out of my depth and I was paddling hard just to stay afloat.

  Breathe in; breathe out; relax. I reminded myself that I was the king of the waiters, the master of repartee, the sprite who could charm the birds from the trees. I squared my shoulders; I may not have been wearing a suit, but I was looking good. I eased through the crowd, gliding effortlessly through the suits – and immediately knocked a woman’s drink out of her hand. My wrist had caught her hand and she’d dropped her glass.