by Freya North
‘Everything OK?’ Matt enquired with a tone of voice he hoped was friendly and not nosy.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Fen, reaching the door of the Archive, ‘but I should really crack on.’
‘Sure,’ said Matt, a little baffled. ‘How about a sandwich later?’
‘Um,’ Fen was reluctant, ‘I’ll see how the morning’s work goes.’
‘You have to eat,’ Matt said.
‘I know, I know,’ Fen replied. She looked agitated. ‘I’ll see.’ She entered the Archive and let the door close behind her.
What the bloody hell is wrong with her? Matt wondered as he walked back to Publications, wondering why he was slightly irritated.
With Cat occupying so much of Fen’s time and thoughts, it was a relief not to talk about it. If I let them know here that there are family problems, Fen had reasoned, because she had at one point thought of mentioning it to Rodney, then every time they see me they’ll ask how things are. And sometimes it’s good, it’s nice, just to have respite.
Fen refused Matt and Otter’s invitation to join them for sandwiches, but they managed to persuade her that they would be her take-away boys. She wasn’t that hungry, but she knew it was because she hadn’t yet eaten. So she was sensible and ordered brie and tomato on baguette, mayonnaise no butter, a cappuccino, and an orange juice. It was Otter’s idea to add the slice of icing-sugar-coated chocolate finger cake. Fen was touched. She presumed that, because Matt had delivered it, it had been his gesture. When Matt knocked and entered with a cup of coffee a little later, he found her talking quietly into the phone. She just slightly turned her back on him. It seemed furtive.
‘I know,’ he heard her say, ‘I know you do. I just don’t know what to do either.’
Then he heard her tell whomever it was she was speaking to that it was breaking her heart too. So he left. He still felt irritated; now he felt disappointed too. He knew eavesdropping was daft and destructive, that picking up fag-ends was unsavoury and pointless. But still, he felt disconcerted all afternoon. And when Judith came into Publications and suggested he accompany her to a private view at the Whitechapel gallery the following Tuesday, he accepted. Slightly absent-mindedly. Forgetting, just then, that he’d even been to a private view with Judith. Temporarily not remembering what had happened afterwards. And then his ex-girlfriend called, in tears, proclaiming love and death. Suddenly, Matt had a huge headache and actually said, somewhat histrionically, to Otter, ‘Why can’t I be gay! Bugger women!’
‘Because,’ Otter quipped, ‘it would mean bugger men! Literally, dearest. And men, in my vast and lurid experience, are ultimately far more demanding than women.’
Matt laughed. He rang his ex-girlfriend back and attempted to soothe her by showing concern for her feelings and sympathy for her plight. It served, though, to delude her that he cared because he’d changed his mind. She rang her best friend to inform her that Matt had just rung! ‘He was so sweet! Caring! I’m sure he feels it too. Shall I call again? Text message him? E-mail?’ Matt received a text message some minutes later, about broken hearts now, wonderful times then, and beauty in the future. Nine kisses. Far more than their combined total in the last months of the relationship. Matt’s headache returned, nagging the front of his skull and coursing down to his shoulders.
‘Do you think Fen fancies me?’ he asked Otter, rolling his head slowly, eyes closed.
‘Who wouldn’t,’ Otter said sweetly, reaching over and giving Matt’s shoulder a one-handed massage.
‘I fancy her. And I have definitely, definitely felt a reciprocal vibe,’ Matt said, eyes open, happy for Otter to continue tweaking his neck. ‘I rather think that was more then than now, though.’ Matt looked a little glum. ‘I think she’s gone off me.’
‘Oh shut up, boy. Go to her. Now. And kiss her,’ Otter said distractedly. Matt, though, took him at his word and left Publications directly. Otter expected Matt had gone to the loo. He had no idea, until Matt’s triumphant return ten minutes later, that he had gone to the Archive and done exactly as Otter had told him.
I never liked him. There was always something – some niggle. He’s too charming. Too keen to ingratiate himself.
Fen is staring blankly at a clutch of correspondence from 1967 between the Trust and a wealthy collector called Sutcliffe Marton. It is probably riveting, concerning as it does a Roger Hilton and a Victor Pasmore. But Fen’s mind is on Cat. And her ex.
He was a con man, really. Mature and affable on the surface, abusive and screwed-up beneath.
‘Wanker!’ she hisses. ‘I’ll kill him.’ There’s a knock at her door. ‘Yes?’ she all but barks, slamming the papers down on the desk and rising, hands on hips, eyes dark, as if it is Wanker himself knocking.
It isn’t. It’s Matt. Though Fen is relieved, she’s really not in the mood. She wants to be left in peace to indulge in murderous thoughts. Luckily, Matt attributes Fen’s mien to 1967 being in a mess – if the scatter and hurl of papers and documents all around her is anything to go by.
‘Hi, Matt,’ she says in a tone of voice that is cursory and flat and suggests that her greeting is conditioned etiquette.
‘Hi,’ says Matt terribly seriously whilst taking three steps towards her, slipping his right arm through the loop made by her hand being on her hip. His hand rests lightly at the small of her back. Or is it the top of her bottom? His other hand cups the back of her head.
God, her hair is soft. She has a biro mark on her cheek.
This is Matt’s last thought before he kisses her. He locks gazes with her, not caring that she looks slightly puzzled. Then he presses closed lips against hers. Just presses. No puckering. No tongues. Just a gentle but steady push. He sees that she doesn’t look so puzzled now, her pupils have dilated, her frown has softened. He lightens the pressure from his lips and feels hers move instinctively forward to find him. She breathes through her nose. She smells chocolatey. Slightly dusty. Quite nice perfume. She makes a small involuntary sound, as if her breath has accidentally caught her vocal cords. It turns Matt on as much as if she’d been gasping in orgasm. He closes his eyes and slips his tongue lightly along the crack of her lips until they submit and he explores her mouth avidly. He holds her tightly. Her hands are no longer on her hips; one is up behind his back grasping his shoulder-blade, the other is grabbing on to the belt loop of his jeans. And she is kissing him back, indeed she is. Energetically. Emphatically.
He takes his tongue away and hers flits along his lips imploringly. He kisses her many times on the lips, quickly. Then he stands back a little and smiles broadly. Neither of them has a clue what to say, really. Kissing, though a long time coming and longed for some time, was not really part of the day’s agenda. Matt takes a step back, raises his hand and lets it fall.
He is aware that Fen has looked instinctively at his groin and has blushed. He glances down. Tent pole. Eiffel Tower. You bet! He doesn’t blush. He feels rather proud. He also feels unbelievably horny.
‘God I want to fuck you,’ he murmurs.
And he goes! He’s gone! And Fen stands there, utterly seduced, buzzing between her legs, breasts heaving Brontë style. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ one of her boyfriends had said to her. ‘I want to make love to you,’ another had serenaded. ‘Do you feel ready to take this relationship to a fully sexual level?’ another had asked.
God I want to fuck you.
God I want to fuck you.
God I want to fuck you.
Matt’s words. They linger in her mind just as the sensation of his kiss is lingering in her mouth. It is the sexiest thing anyone has said. And what turns her on most is the dark-horse element. The intensity of his desire was so unexpected. The phrase employed so un-Matt. Lovely, handsome Matthew Holden, whom Fen has grown used to being charming, polite, well mannered.
She sits down, not knowing what to think. His words are in her head, in her heart, in her sex; repeated and repeated in a deliciously rhythmic way. She glances from hand to hand. I can’t believe I�
�m about to do this. She slips her left hand between her legs, closes her thighs around it, closes her eyes, and imagines Matt.
Fen comes. Gorgeous. Like a prelude to what’s imminent in reality. She opens her eyes and sees Fetherstone’s Adam, just the Polaroid she took when in Derbyshire. She doesn’t think of James. She retrieves the clutch of papers which had been annoying her so, and now finds their contents utterly scintillating.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: oscillation
Dear Miss McCabe
That was really very interesting. I’d like to delve deeper and take it further.
Sincerely
M.Holden
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: re: oscillation
Dear Mr Holden
Yes, fascinating. I agree – let’s.
Kind regards
F McCabe (Ms)
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: re: re: oscillation
Dear Ms
Tonight?
Best wishes
M Holden
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE:
Dear Mr Holden
Tonight no good.
Apologies.
Ms McC
Nothing came back from the office three doors down. It perplexed Fen; more worryingly, it prevented much progress with the job she was being paid to do. She thought she’d wait half an hour. But what if Matt left early? Ten minutes seemed like an elegant time lapse.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE:
Matt
Can’t do tonight – but could do tomorrow.
Here’s my mobile phone number.
Fen
She had added an upper-case X after her name, which she then changed to lower case, and then removed altogether just before sending.
It’s been so long for me. I don’t actually know what the etiquette is, unlike Abi and Gemma who know all the Rules and the merits of Playing Hard To Get. So, I’ll leave off the ‘x’.
But why can’t you do tonight, Fen? While the iron is hot? And love is in the air? And while he has a tent pole in his trousers? And you’re sticking to your knickers? And you’re both feeling just a little triumphant, aroused and ebullient?
I can’t do tonight – Cat duty. But I just might be able to do tomorrow night because Pip generally tries not to work on Saturday nights on account of the proliferation of unsavoury requests from stag nights. She doesn’t mind doing acrobatics in a leotard. But she does object to drunken prats calling for her tits. Someone gave her a ping-pong ball once, and a twenty-pound note. Pip didn’t understand. So she improvised and managed to balance the ball on her nose for a few seconds before performing a trick to make the money disappear. She was quite proud. The bloke was livid.
So, you can do Saturday night?
I can. If Pip is free. If he calls. Oh please do! It’s bizarre – I’ve really never felt single, on account of Julius and his works, but being kissed by Matt has … well … I hope he calls.
EIGHTEEN
Fen’s extension just rang and rang.
James presumed that on Fridays the staff sloped off as early as they could.
He rang again.
They’ve probably gone to the pub.
He tried the main switchboard.
‘I just seen her,’ Bobbie squawked, ‘she’s off home for the weekend. Can I take a message?’
‘No,’ said James, ‘I’ll call on Monday.’
‘Ta-ra,’ said Bobbie.
James took the dogs for a walk. Though they’d been bounding around Mrs Litchfield’s all afternoon, they were eternally eager to please, thus wagged their tails and lolloped along getting good and muddy in the process.
‘I don’t really know,’ said James to Beryl who’d brought him a wet and gnarled stick to throw, ‘what I’d’ve said had she answered.’ Beryl dived off in the opposite direction to that in which James had hurled the stick. ‘I didn’t really have anything to say,’ he said to his dog who’d come back to him with an imploring look. Barry emerged from the thicket with the stick and Beryl chased him. ‘I just felt like phoning her.’ It was a nice evening. ‘I’d like to see Fen again. And soon.’
Maybe James would go to the Rag and Thistle. Flirt with Melanie. Friday nights were always lively there. ‘I’ll call Trust Art on Monday, on some pretext or other.’
Or maybe he’d just bath the dogs. Look at the state of them!
‘Barry! Leave! Beryl! Come!’
NINETEEN
Alas! The love of women! It is known to be a lovely and a fearful thing.
Byron
Abi felt forsaken. Gemma felt overburdened. Fen felt guilty.
Abi felt a little forsaken. It wasn’t enough to divulge with anatomical precision the intimacies of her carnal adventures with Jake to Gemma alone. Abi wanted to observe Fen’s eyes pop with amazement, perhaps envy, at her debauchery. She really did like Cat, and sympathized with her plight, but she resented her for monopolizing Fen. Fen was such a good listener. Abi felt bereft. Gemma had good ears, but as her sexual past was just as depraved as Abi’s present, her reaction wasn’t as satisfying as Fen’s would be. Gemma could also be a little judgemental. Fen would just be overawed.
Gemma felt a little overburdened. Where was Fen to gossip with over Abi’s sexploits? Gemma was finding Abi a little repetitive and dull; too many outrageous positions and far too many multiple orgasms. Gemma was also finding Jake increasingly attractive and tempting.
Fen felt a little guilty. Though she went directly from work to Cat’s flat, and though she stayed up with her sister until the early hours, watching TV and listening to Cat, though she slept in the same bed as her sister and woke any time she woke, Fen was not giving Cat her undivided attention. And she felt bad about this. She was there for her suffering sister more in body than in spirit. Moreover, in her mind, she was in fact giving her entire body, inside and out, to Matt. Fen did feel guilty, but then Cat seemed so caught up within the vortex of her angst that Fen wondered how much constructive use she was at any rate. Nothing she could say seemed to soothe her sister, or make much sense to her, nor really have any effect at all. If Fen could be there in body – a shoulder to cry on, arms to envelope, a body to snuggle against – did it matter all that much that her mind was running rampant, ripping off Matt’s clothes and imagining the feel of his lips on her body?
For once, Fen wasn’t confusing fact with fiction, reality with fantasy, life with art. It was, at long last and for the first time, unequivocally Matt in her day-dreams. At no point did he metamorphose into the male component in Abandon. Or melt into Adam. Or assume any characteristic of any other of Julius’s male muses. More to the point, as she hadn’t looked from hand to hand at all, Matt did not become James either. In fact, Fen hadn’t thought about James. She hadn’t envisaged anyone other than Matt touching her like that. Or penetrating her. Her envisaging was so vivid it made her gasp. Cat presumed her sister was reacting to her recently imparted details on just how ghastly the last holiday had been with her ex.
‘No!’ Cat implored, suddenly panicking that she was being too negative. ‘I mean, we were both going through shit. I was behaving badly myself – stroppy, sulky, unaffectionate. I probably set him off. That’s what I mean! That’s what I’m saying.’ Fen passed her the tissues. Fen knew how destructive and pointless Cat’s train of thought was. But still she couldn’t stop herself from wondering what Matt’s body was like.
I think a smooth chest, with just a masculine smattering of hair coursing down from stomach to groin. I doubt whether he’s downright hairy. Or completely smooth. And I wouldn’t mind either, anyway.
‘Shall I phone him?’ Cat asked Fen, who was herself wondering whether she should phone Matt.
‘Don’t!’ Fen pleaded to them both. ‘Sleep on it.’
Phone me, Matthew Holden. Sleep with me.
Matt couldn’t phone Fen just then. And he certainly couldn’t sleep with her. His ex-girlfriend was sobbing into his shoulder, her hand alternately grasping his arm feebly, or rubbing the crotch of his jeans weakly. Both in a futile bid to appeal to, to rouse, his caring side or his sexual side; either side which he had once devoted to her. But it was like calling and calling a telephone number that has been changed. Ringing and ringing. No answer. Nobody’s home. Nobody’s there – they’ve gone, left. When? Where? How do I get back in touch?
‘I know we can make it work,’ Julia wept, ‘we’ve been through so much. How can you just walk away?’
Matt did truly feel for her, love her still. But though he willingly held her, his mind and therefore his heart were not in it.
‘Is there someone else?’ she asked, her eyes wild. ‘Is there someone else?’
‘No,’ Matt told her.
Not yet.
He felt lousy. His relationship with this woman was categorically over. There would be nothing wrong, furtive, untoward, about taking things further with Fen. And yet, he felt guilty. Phoning Fen tomorrow had now changed from being an event loaded with pleasurable anticipation, to one that suddenly just seemed wrong and now probably wouldn’t happen at all.
‘I’m going to call you a cab,’ he told Julia, who was clinging on to him as if she was clinging on to a glimmer of hope, to a strand remaining of their threadbare relationship.
‘Don’t throw me out,’ she sobbed, ‘please let me stay.’
Matt suddenly wanted to yell at her. But he bit his tongue.
He’d yelled at her before. Like she’d screamed at him. It had been pointless.
‘I’m going to call you a cab,’ he repeated quietly.
He tries zapping through TV channels with a bottle of Bud to hand after she’s gone. But nothing catches his attention. Or tickles his fancy. So he goes to bed and tries to have a wank but nothing tickles his fancy and his cock won’t rise to the occasion. He tries, fleetingly, to think of Fen, to recall the Archive that afternoon. But he can’t bring her face into his mind. He can’t even lie in bed looking forward to phoning her the next day because he isn’t going to phone her.