I Take You

by Gemmell, Nikki

  ‘I will not. You have no idea, Em, of any of this.’

  ‘Why on earth do you want to do it? Keep this Mel person as your fuck buddy, by all means, Cliff would probably be happy with that. But don’t take it any further, for all our sakes, please, don’t.’

  ‘But I feel alive, Em, like I’m in the middle of something so exciting and fresh and energizing and glorious – creation, a new world – like everything is so wondrous and clean. Yes, clean. Spare, ready. For the first time in my adult life.’

  ‘Oh, stop your babbling. You’re in love. It will pass. Then reality will sink in and you’ll both be stuffed. You’ll get over him quickly enough. You both will.’

  At that point Mel walks in. Transformed in his new attire. Lean, innately graceful, as if he has been wearing these kinds of clothes all his life. Connie realizes with a little smile that he could go anywhere, like this, that women would always look. He’s inherently arresting and doesn’t know it. A bonus. And far more naturally elegant than Cliff ever was.

  But he’s nervous. Brusque with her sister, in his greetings and small talk, not allowing any of his beguiling looseness, softness. Inherently wary of what she will make of him, his motivations, his greed for whatever she’s got. He speaks rougher in Emma’s presence, more street, almost as a challenge to her to see how she’ll take it.

  He pours the tea then sits back and watches the two women. So physically alike yet so different. The older one like a hessian sack with bits of straw hanging out; she’s been unhappily married for several decades, Mel knows that and can see it in her face; it’s all settling into sourness, especially the downward curve of her lips. He cannot imagine his sunny Connie ever, ever becoming that. No wonder she’s irritated by her sister; Connie has a lightness she never has, it’s obvious. He watches the two of them with the power of silence and containment and distance, as he always does in company, that Connie felt so attracted to from the first sight. To be so unneedy of anyone else; Emma senses it too.

  ‘Is this all worth the risk?’ she suddenly asks, abrupt. The headmistress who’s had enough.

  ‘What risk?’ Mel responds calmly, nonchalantly. Ready for the gladiatorial combat and knowing where he’s placed.

  ‘My sister stands to lose a lot here.’

  ‘Perhaps she stands to gain a lot, too. She comes to me for a bit of warmth and I give it to her.’ A dirty smile, a shrug. ‘I think she needs it. So what’s it to you? She’s a grown woman, what say do you have in her life? She’s strong. Tough. She can make up her own mind.’

  Emma sighs, infuriated, and turns to her sister. ‘You can’t go making a mess for us all to clean up, Connie.’

  ‘Haven’t you perhaps made a bit of a mess of your own life?’ Mel challenges. ‘I hear you’re staying together for the sake of the kids, that it’s a poisoned house. So why deny your sister the right to happiness and freedom here? If you can’t have it yourself. Is that fair? What’s the subtext of this?’

  ‘It is fair, because the so-called “happiness and freedom’’ ’ – Emma puts up her fingers, signalling inverted commas – ‘you talk about so lovingly is with you. And what can you offer her, I wonder? Really? After all that she’s got. She’s had. Almost her entire adult life.’

  ‘What can I offer her?’ Mel’s got his cheeky face on, Connie can guess something of what’s coming next and Emma will not like it. ‘Great sex’ – Mel grins at the thought – ‘yep. But hey, don’t ask me. Ask her yourself what I can offer her. Look at her. She’s changed. Her whole body, her face, her entire demeanour. It’s all there.’ Mel is throwing down the gauntlet to Emma with a kind of grimy sensuality Connie’s never seen before; it’s thrilling and mortifying all at once. She throws up her arms as if she gives up entirely at this point. Mel winks at her; the two naughty schoolkids at the back of the class.

  Emma stands brusquely. ‘I can find my own way out.’

  Turns to them both, livid.

  ‘All I want to say is, I doubt whether either of you will find that it’s been worth it in the long run. In the cold hard light of day, when everything else is gone from your lives. You, Mr Jones, your job – in a climate where it’s extremely difficult to find work. And you, Connie, well, everything. Every single thing that you’ve got. Husband, house, clothes, respectability, friends, social life, shops. You have a very comfortable life. Very, very comfortable. Everyone thinks so. And you’ve grown extremely used to it. Plus your husband is a cripple who needs you. Have you thought of how this looks? You just need to wake up.’

  Emma brisks out.

  ‘Nine a.m., on the dot. We have a long drive ahead of us.’

  Without looking back.

  56

  But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world – a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors

  A tiny room, all bed. A night of rough sex; sharper, more urgent, more terrible than ever before. Walloping, grubby, exhilarating, oh yes; Mel is demanding with her, reckless, more than he’s ever been but it’s all the more exciting because of it; Connie is passive, consenting, his supine slave. He’s flipping her over, licking her arse, her cunt, coming into them both; she’s grabbing his penis and sucking him off, voluptuously, deep, and she usually hates that. It’s as if they’re both trying to brand each other with the memory of their touch; to wipe the vast soiling of the afternoon off, to prove to Emma that yes, this is what binds them, yes, this is what they’ve got – gloriously – and so what? Connie learns so much about herself that night, opening herself wide, wider, begging for it, everywhere, in every orifice, coming to the very heart of the beast of herself.

  And for the first time in her life it is the man with her, in her, in front of her, behind her during sex who is at the forefront of her mind. She’s not thinking of anyone else, she’s not lost in a different scenario entirely. She’s utterly present with him, bared, her base, sensual self, flaring herself wide, supremely naked and unashamed, with no toys or games or props. What a triumph this feels like. To be so present. An arrival into a new life. The one ridiculous taboo left, Connie thinks: sex as an utterly natural, animal, vital, spiritual, instinctive act. Sex of the earth. So removed from what it has become everywhere else; in every other instance of her adult life.

  Deep in the night, the first night they’ve ever shared, Connie wakes to the wing of Mel’s arm cupping her sleep, his torso curled around her and his hand balled in the softness of her groin. The sanctity of it, the sanctity of shared sleep, and a vast smile filling her up.

  Morning, she is awoken by lips on her eyelids. A silk slip is almost ripped in two, panties are lost; no matter. The day’s finding its feet; behind a first scrim of cloud there’s a higher heaven and she smiles at the optimism in the sky. Time is marching on swift, too swift, towards nine o’clock; when they both must find the world, burrow out …

  ‘You will keep the tenderness for me, won’t you?’ she whispers, forehead to forehead, as a tear slips down her cheek.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s what I love about you the most.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’re not afraid of tenderness. That it’s deep in you, through you. You’re not afraid of the feminine. It’s what distinguishes you from all the other men. Any man I’ve ever had.’

  She holds her breathing quietly to him, collecting his smell, and then he is vanished, just like that, back, back to his work.

  And Connie must go on.

  57

  For pleasure has no relish unless we share it

  Hills nudging the belly of the sky, mountains pushing up into cloud, slopes whooshing down into road. Connie is ensconced within the sturdy stone walls of the family’s West Highland house that envelops with reassurance against the bash of the wind and the wet. The clouds move over a distant mountain like the drawing of a stately c
urtain and the weather is all symphonied as it thunders and spits and clears and repeats. Connie loves it here, gulps it up, always feels strong in it.

  A symphony of people, too. Varied visitors from down south, a tumble of laughter and drinking and dogs and kids and talk and as Connie sits among it all she knows this time here will set her on a path. One way or another. Emma does too. They’re wary around each other, not wanting to pick at the scab of the man who insulted the elder sibling so fruitily and Connie doesn’t have an answer for it except that Emma insulted him just as much. So Connie sits back as Mel does, and watches all the males around her, all the family friends, and imagines sleeping with every one of them. Gauges their tenderness, wonders if she’d be surprised by any of them; none would rival Mel she knows that and she misses him, searingly, so much. Wishes he was there, amid this happy raucousness, this roguish air and yelling light.

  Yet Connie doesn’t want to go back to London now she is here, under this piebald sky in this humble, salt-scoured place. Its people seem so unhinged, jittery, suspicious, brusque; there’s no kernel of stillness, no quiet to any of them. Except Mel. The city presses down on her, she knows that when she’s apart from it; the sheer hardness of living in it, of just getting by in its great press of people. What must it be like to have no money in it, she can’t imagine. The corrosiveness of envy, yes, that’s Mel’s expression and she gets it now, as she worries at the knot of ahead, how it could possibly work.

  Connie walks the audacious, ancient landscape around her, often, rain spitting at the loch, and every time she looks the water’s colour has changed in the shifting, wind-blown light. But here, here, she is alive. Flushed. Clear. Here, deep in her bones, she knows what she wants. One simple thing.

  Happiness.

  Has a blind craving for it now, needs to be assured of it. Connie knows through experience that this means not letting anyone else shape her life. She creates it, she alone, she must. This is what it means to be a woman today. A vivid, dynamic, present, modern, truly happy woman.

  It’s taken her a long time to realize that.

  58

  I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful

  Two blue lines on the white stick and of course, of course, Connie knew it. In the toilet of the cottage, among paperbacks and rosettes and prints of grouse, she holds her palm in wonder to the little thrummer inside her brewing in its sac. Collector of her food, her air, her energy, her happiness, and she glows with it.

  Her father summons her for a walk, it’s their daily ritual. ‘Coming, Papa!’ As she calls him sometimes, which he loves.

  It’s cold, the backs of Connie’s ears trap the chill and thud with hurt even in this, high summer. The wind fans the close loch and she balances her feet on a wide, wobbly stone as the breeze whips her and butts her and tries to push her off. She giggles with delight, won’t be budged, and her father chuckles. How like a child she still is, always, with her ready laughter. She’ll always have that in her and thank God for that, the high joy of it.

  ‘A little dull for you, eh, going back to your big gloomy house after all this?’ he remarks cheekily.

  ‘Actually’ – a pause – ‘I’m not sure I want to go back, Daddy.’

  ‘Oh. Is there something you want to tell me?’

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  Connie’s face shines with the telling, it’s the first time she’s told this to anyone. It feels good, galvanizing, strong; so good she has to repeat it in astonishment. ‘A baby!’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘You don’t know him.’ Her smile is vast.

  ‘Well then, that will work out nicely. You can present Cliff with an heir, liven up the house. No one will ask any pesky questions, I presume – things being so delicate in that department. Good all around, I guess?’

  ‘I don’t think I want to do that.’ Connie frowns, stepping carefully off her rock.

  ‘What?’ Her father sighs. ‘Fallen for this other bloke, have we?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Rather ridiculously, in fact.’

  ‘Well, you’ll get very little out of making a break. Cliff won’t let you, you know that. You’ll be quite savagely cut off.’

  They’re silent.

  Her father puts his arm around his daughter, as he always does after a contretemps. ‘I just hope for your sake you had a real man at last.’

  Connie winces a laugh; she’d told her father while tipsy, early on in the relationship, that Cliff wasn’t great in the sack and what do you know, he’s remembered it. He’s a sensual man and has always been open about the vivifying capacity of sex; wants it for his children as much as himself.

  ‘I did, Daddy, I did, yes. And that’s the trouble. I’ve never had one like him before. There aren’t many of them about.’

  ‘Good. Excellent. And he was a lucky man, my girl. He won’t make any trouble for you, will he?’

  ‘No, oh no. He … frees me. He lets me do what I want. I’ve never felt more capable … empowered … in my life!’ The smile skips back.

  ‘Do you want to be with this man, Neesie?’

  A pause. Thinking of Cliff’s fury, Emma’s scorn.

  ‘Yes.’

  Firmer.

  ‘Yes.’

  Rain spits at the loch, Connie raises her face to a wild sky. She must get back, yes, resume her life, inform Mel of so much. She must hurry. The train, not the car this time. Trouble’s brewing, there’s news of riots, in the grim parts; a man shot dead by police in Tottenham; thank goodness she’s not part of it. But she must rush back. Expectation blazing under her skin. Firm with it now. To begin a fresh way, at last.

  As she waits, poised, in the wings of her life. To burst forth.

  59

  Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end

  Catching sight of Mel from a distance at King’s Cross Station and getting a tremor in her bowels deep inside her, like the beginning signal of an orgasm, because she’s aching with want at the sight of him. Connie walks straight up to him and drinks him long on his lips.

  ‘I’m taking you with me,’ she says.

  He drops his head, forehead to forehead, quiet.

  ‘If it’s what you want, ma’am. I’ve got nothing, you know that. Know what it means. I’ll have to work, wherever we are. For you. For us. But it’ll be a very different life.’

  ‘I’m ready. I’ll work, too. I want to. I don’t know quite what yet, but I will. I need it. And hey, mister, you’ve got more than most men. You’ve got tenderness. That’s all I need now. For the rest of my life.’

  Connie looks at Mel, holds his hand to her belly, enfolds it with both of hers, three palms firm.

  ‘There’s a baby in here.’

  Mel laughs, shakes his head. Looks at her: ‘No’; she nods yes. Singing with it, singing inside; he bends and kisses the womb, with reverence.

  ‘Where shall we go, little one?’ he whispers. ‘Where on earth?’

  Connie shrugs, Mel laughs. Somewhere wild, fresh, that’s all she knows. A new start. Far, far away from all this. From the people who are like frail little boats tossing unanchored in their restless seas, all of them. To give this little one a fresh start. Spring cleaning her own life, Mel’s life, leaving everything behind, she doesn’t need much, just a backpack and a few books. Walk-in wardrobes for every season? Excuse me? There’ll be no need of six-inch heels and Tibetan lamb gilets any more, in a new existence, wherever it may be. Connie has begun with boldness: informed Cliff that no, she won’t be making it to America and the yacht, that he must enjoy this time with his family by himself. She needs the break. They both do. Free! Free! No longer having to withstand the onslaught of his mother and his sisters who can never quite relinquish the notion that she’s in it for the money, even now, post accident; Connie can always
sense it. Free of the lot of it.

  But how terrifying it seems: to contemplate an evacuation from one’s entire life, its routines and exhaustions and cemented paths. How terrifying and simple and exhilarating all at once.

  60

  Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart

  Emma has told her father about Mel, predictably, as soon as Connie left. He is coming down to London at once; through a rioting country, yes, pronto, because this needs sorting out. He had assumed his Neesie was talking about a man of means, but he is just a simple gardener. He has to meet the chap, talk with both of them. How could this man take care of his princess? His daughter’s life so reduced and a baby coming, no, no, this will not do at all; he needs to fix it, fast.

  Connie makes the booking. The Ledbury. A short walk. Two Michelin stars, rosy parquet, tall windows, thick curtains, smooth quiet. Neither man is keen, Mel less so.

  Both greet each other warily and dive into stiff drinks. Small talk about life and work as the tasting menu is brought out, neither man knowing what such a thing is and Connie serving to them both, explaining, then sitting back with the withdrawn, sated stillness of the pregnant. But … an unfurling, from both of them. The wonder of that. Despite everything, she is witnessing the two most important men in her life bonding over their shared discombobulation, and laughing inwardly at it – what’s a boudin, what’s a velouté, teal, can’t these things be in English for once? I say, give me a nice little Sunday roast any day. Pie and chips, thanks. Pickled eggs! Oooh, ploughman’s lunch! Steak and ale! Mash! What does this all mean, Connie, come on, help us out. Ceviche. Kohlrabi. Kaffir lime. Explain, Neesie, drag us into this brave new world. Neesie, why do you call her that? Her nickname from when she was a baby, God knows why, Conneeee, Neesie, something like that. Waiter! And more drinks are ordered for them both.