In any affair, certain rituals must be observed.
At a hotel, for instance, you should dispose of your condom
in one of those miniature serrated milk cartons they provide.
Better that than try to flush it down the toilet
or leave it lying – a baby jellyfish – on the floor.
You paid for the room. There’s no law against having sex in it.
And you’ll never see the cleaner. But to brandish the evidence
feels immodest – Look what we’ve been doing! –
and your lover won’t be happy, either. It’ll stare up at her
when she goes for a pee and what felt fine inside ten minutes since
will now fill her with doubts. Why a condom? she’ll think.
Are you fucking someone else? Do you think she’s fucking someone else?
Does the idea of having a baby with her appal you that much?
She’ll get back into bed a different woman – cold, sullen, accusing –
and you can forget the idea of fucking her again till you’ve spent hours
telling her you love her, and maybe not even then.
The miniature serrated milk carton will spare you this grief.
Frank
Guarding your girl won’t help you (3.4)
Frank, mate, you don’t know me, and if you did you wouldn’t like me,
and if you knew what I get up to with your missus you’d like me even less.
But honest, I’m doing you a favour. Haven’t you noticed how sweet
and attentive she’s become, how she sings when cooking supper
and never complains when you spend Sundays at the golf course?
She’s lost weight, too, and looks younger. Why be jealous? It’s me who endures
her rage and remorse, whereas with you she’s eager to please.
The key to a good marriage is adultery, you see: every husband needs a louse
to warm the bed for him, every union a bastard like me. So when you find out
and come looking for me, don’t bring a knife, bring a thank-you present.
The day she stops betraying you is the day your problems begin.
Gorse
There stood the goddess’s grove, dark-shadowed (3.13)
The starlings tossing their nets
are a signal to head home
and though it’s dark among the bracken
gas-flames of gorse show the way.
There’s no excuse for wandering off
but I want us to be lost or to find
a quiet spot and lose the others.
Here, look, behind this bush.
Shush, or people will hear.
Hair
It grew luxuriantly, down to below her hips (1.14)
How would I feel if she lost her hair?
she asks. We’re in bed, the lights off,
the garden silent, a hot summer night.
Five minutes back, not for the first time,
a hank of it got trapped as we made love
and she cried out in frustration and pain.
I get sick of it, she says. It’s a pain.
I’m forever brushing knots from my hair.
But it veils my ears and shoulders, and I love
how it flows over my skin. Chop it off
and I’d feel so ordinary. Last time
it was short I looked terrible … The night
sticks to our bodies and a night
train in the cutting stirs a windowpane.
We’ve had these talks before, the last time
only a week ago. I stroke her face, knowing hair
isn’t the point. She’s asking will I go off
her when she ages, as she must; will my love
withstand her getting sick; is it a love
she can rely on? She has these night-
mares now and then, where I run off
with a younger woman, or she’s in pain
from cancer, or stress makes her hair
fall out. I push a strand away. That time
in Venice, I say (it must have been winter-time,
the duckboards were out) – remember, love?
We’d just the weekend and had to hare
round the churches and galleries. At night
we took a water taxi and drank champagne,
no Bellinis, in Harry’s Bar, then slipped off
early to the hotel and took our clothes off,
and lay there like this, in a kind of no time,
our bodies glowing, immune to all pain.
I can see it now: the sheets, our love-
making, the shimmer of green night-
lights on the water – but I can’t picture your hair.
Cutting your hair off won’t lessen my love.
It’s tenacious and timeless, like the night.
Hush, now – no more pain. You are not your hair.
Illicit
What’s allowed is a bore, it’s what isn’t/That turns me on (2.19)
Ah the thrill of the illicit … how I miss it. Miss missing you.
Miss the time when you played hard to get.
It’s indecent to admit, but when your body was an archive,
open for visits only rarely, then the pleasure of admission
was a triumph, not a dull repeat. Now we fuck whenever we want
I’m bored – it’s like eating oysters seven days a week.
Jealousy
Am I always to be on trial against new accusations? (2.7)
The issue was a blonde soprano. Lisa, was it?
Among the songs she performed was a sonnet
I’d written and at a party afterwards she got your goat
for being pushy, flirty, inappropriate.
We argued all the way home to the flat.
‘She’s not my type,’ I said, ‘I was only being polite.
We were discussing Mahler.’ ‘Yeah, right.
I bet you didn’t tell her you were married.
It’s something you seem to forget.’
‘She knows. I’m wearing a ring. And I pointed you out.’
‘It didn’t stop her trying to get you into bed.’
‘I doubt she’s interested. Certainly I’m not.’
‘Come on – your need to be loved is so desperate
you’d spend the night with any old tart
just to have her brown-nosing your art.’
‘She’s a singer. All we’ve done is collaborate.
I’ve not even kissed her.’ ‘Maybe not yet.
But you will. And when you do, that’ll be that,
me gone and you on your own, without my support.
Is that what you want?’ ‘Of course not, sweet.’
‘Sure?’ ‘Promise. Word of honour. Cross my heart.’
So we made up, and slipped beneath the sheet,
and buried ourselves in joint regret,
you for venting your suspicions, me for not
admitting they were more than half right.
Knave
Every lover’s on active service, my friend (1.9)
‘What a rogue, I said, towelling myself
dry while he shot off early, who is it this time?
Laughing, I headed off with the team
for a pint, never thinking it was my wife.’
Lies
The gods in heaven/Forgive a girl’s lies …/We men aren’t so lucky (3.3)
You never did lie, as far as I know.
That’s what attracted me. Your clear grey eyes.
The way you said things straight out.
We divided things up. I cooked, you ironed.
You made curtains, I put the rubbish out.
You pruned the window box, I told lies.
I lied about things I’d done.
I lied about things I’d not done.
I lied about things I promised I’d do, but didn’t.
I lied elaborately, for the pleasure of maki
ng things up.
Some of my lies were full-length novels.
I even believed in them myself.
Occasionally you’d catch me lying,
and you’d feel the thing I’d tried to save you from –
hurt, disappointment, anger, mistrust –
and I’d promise never to lie to you again.
Which was a lie, of course.
I soon went back to my lying ways.
In the end, you discovered the facts.
An anonymous letter came, giving chapter and verse.
We were walking by the river when you confronted me,
boring in with those clear grey eyes of yours.
‘I’ve had enough of your lies,’ you said.
‘I want to be with someone I can trust.’
A barge went by, then a police boat.
The river was turning mauve in the dusk.
I talked about the lies that writers told
but you were having none of it.
‘Art’s one thing, life’s another,’ you said.
‘Besides, the best writers do tell the truth.’
And so you ended it, by the river,
straight out, as only you could.
And it wasn’t just you I lost, but the premise of my art.
Away you floated, you and the premise,
under the bridge and into the darkness,
like two wooden crates on the tide.
Mirror
She knows herself too well, / Gets her haughty ways (I suspect) from her mirror-image (2.17)
She kept looking over my shoulder into the mirror,
straightening her hair, adjusting her smile,
searching her face to see what I was seeing.
This is good, I thought, a sign she wants me back:
once I’ve settled the bill we’ll take a cab back
to hers, and make love, and start seeing
each other again. I searched her face for a smile.
She was looking over my shoulder into the mirror.
Nostalgia
There’s no one type of beauty (2.4)
When she trembled it wasn’t one string,
but the whole instrument.
Though she deserved my adoration
I lacked the will to see it through.
For her part, she approved of me,
but approval isn’t love.
We were like water boatmen
on a pond, cool and adrift.
Eternity was the god
who allowed us little moments.
Over time I forgot her face
and yet these things come back:
a low white moon, a silent bar,
the cry of seals along the shore.
Outsider
O elegy, unbind your hair and weep tears of loss (3.9)
The day of your funeral I was in bed
with someone. The sun was a blade
through the shutters and the heat
made my head explode. I felt like Meursault.
You’d have expected no less of me. Even so.
Paying
When sex gives equal enjoyment to both partners,/Why should she sell it, he pay? (1.10)
We’re old-fashioned about it: it’s me who pays,
while your contribution is you. It’s enough. You’re enough.
But I worry what it says about us. You’ve a house,
a salary, a husband, yet I’m the one footing the bill.
It’s not just fear of him seeing your credit card statement
or embarrassment at leaving a tip. You’re too romantic
to admit there’s money involved. So if we go to a hotel,
I get there first (as I try not to later, in bed) and the business
is taken care of, and the rest is pleasure with no strings.
Ovid’s Corinne keeps asking for presents. You never do.
It’s me who comes away with gifts – not just memories
but the books you bring, the kind I’d write if I could,
in which the lovers never go to cheap hotels, all we see
is the love they make and the light pouring from their bodies.
Questions
Most adultery (flagrant or not) remains unproven (2.2)
How many security cameras have watched us arrive?
How many receptionists have checked us in?
How many DO NOT DISTURB signs have we hung out outside?
How many sheets have you pulled back to climb in bed?
How many people in the next room have heard our noise?
How many times have you thought ‘This should be the last time’?
How many times has it still not been the last time?
How many times have we started to dress, then made love again?
How many room keys have we handed back?
How many security cameras have watched us leave?
How many times did you think of counting? Me neither.
Rules
Impropriety has its special off-limits/Enclave, where every kind of fun is the rule (3.14)
Meetings take place on a regular basis and generally last 3 to 4 hours
Membership is free, but there is a charge for room hire
Activities are intended to provide pleasure; to enhance skills; and to build mutual esteem
Tea, coffee and biscuits are provided, but members needing further refreshments must provide their own
There are suitable toilet and bathroom facilities. A telephone, television and Bible are also supplied
Numbers are limited to two at a time. Guests are not allowed
Discussion of the club with non-members – spouses, parents, children and friends – is strictly forbidden
Membership of other clubs is discouraged and may lead to expulsion
Failure to attend without good reason will lead to members being reprimanded or even suspended
On departure, members are asked to leave quietly and not draw attention to themselves
Shower
Rivers should help young lovers./Rivers know all about love themselves … (3.6)
You used a pencil to pin up your hair,
so when I stood behind you under the rose
your nape was left exposed for me to kiss,
my hands stretching round to hold your breasts,
then going with the flow, down and inside to where
you were streaming, as though water could pour
upwards, not that the wetness was all yours.
It was one of those showers that runs cold
when someone next door turns on a tap, then scalds
as the heat comes back. But we treasured its force:
if I pecked at your ear, tiny pearls would trip
off my tongue, like beads from a broken necklace.
The power took my breath away, or you did,
reaching behind you to soap me hard, both of us
in a lather, your body tipping forward
till your palms lay flat against the tiles, me
holding you steady at the hip, so that our slippery
to-and-froing didn’t fling us headfirst or sideways
through the plastic curtain, and we remained within
the beam, like books under a reading lamp, flood-
lit by the brilliance boring down.
And even when limescale blocked the showerhead
and the pillar became a weeping willow,
we hid like fugitives under its spread,
fused and lubricious and in flood, the water
falling in spokes, the shower like an umbrella
in reverse, blessing us with its downpour,
saving our skins from the desert of the world.
Thanatos
What’s wrong with me nowadays, how explain why my mattress/Feels so hard? (1.2)
Tick-tack went the noise in the darkness,
which I thought was my heart on the mattress
or the clock down below in the
kitchen
not the carpenter knocking nails in my coffin.
Unwanted
Why cheat the laden vine when grapes are ripening …? (2.14)
She called one day, asking to meet
outside her appointed time.
‘I’ve some news,’ she said. ‘Nothing terrible,
just something you should know.’
We met near a park –
her car and mine in adjoining spaces –
and sat on the grassy slope
as the sun fell in on London.
Nothing terrible? It was the worst.
I’d been so careful
to keep a clean sheet. Now this.
What could have gone wrong?
I’d sometimes felt her coil scratching,
like a paperclip or loose wire.
But perhaps she’d hoiked it out.
We were growing fruit
and she wanted me to rejoice,
to tell her I loved her
and would be with her always,
not to look (as I must have) scared.
I took her hand and squeezed it.
She had a pink gingham dress
and a rash on her legs
from the spiky summer grass.
‘You don’t want it, do you?’ she said.
‘It’s a shock, that’s all.’
‘How would you feel if I went ahead?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
A mosquito was circling her ankle
and I slapped it dead.
‘Ouch.’ ‘I was trying to help.’
‘You’re no help at all,’ she said.
It was dark by the time we parted,
agreeing to think things over,
our cars turning away from each other
at the bottom of a hill.
She phoned two days later.
‘I’ve made a date at the clinic.
I don’t want you with me.
I just need a cheque.’
Blood money, she called it
the night of the weepy call
and the threatened leap
from Vauxhall Bridge.
Later she moved away
but I still get Christmas cards,
with baby Jesus haloed on the front
and her name in red pen inside.
The Executor Page 28