It couldn’t. It didn’t. ‘Well, here I am,’ he said finally.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘And here I am. Tea?’
He laughed at this. A nervous laugh that caused Merlin to stir in his basket and lope across the kitchen for a sniff of this unexpected guest.
‘Tea I have,’ he said, stooping to ruffle Merlin’s neck. ‘It was a cup of sugar I was after.’ He looked so ill at ease all of a sudden.
I shook my head. ‘Sugar I don’t have. I’m sweet enough already.’
‘OK, milk, then.’ The words were mumbled. Then he took himself off across the kitchen and peered out into the back garden. ‘Or flour. I don’t know. Whatever you’ve got.’
I went over and looked out into the garden with him. There was nothing to see but our own reflections. Two ghostly faces peering in through the window at us. His image looked suddenly grim.
‘What?’ I said, turning to study his real face.
‘I should go, shouldn’t I?’ he said.
I swallowed. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course you should.’ Should should should. Such an un compromising word. I gripped the draining board, anxious now. ‘But you won’t, will you?’
He nodded. ‘I will,’ he said, reaching into his pocket once again. ‘I will if you say. It’s not too late.’
I reached out and halted his hand with my own.
‘It is,’ I said. ‘It’s way too late.’
He glanced down at my hand and looked intently at me. ‘It’s not,’ he said quietly, taking it and holding it. ‘Not at all. Look Sally, you have a lot at stake here. My fight’s done. My future’s already mapped. You’ve… ‘he cast his eyes around him. ‘Look, I don’t want you to do anything you’re going to spend the rest of your life regretting. I didn’t come here to seduce you. Tell the truth, I feel really uncomfortable right now. I didn’t think – hell, it was a crazy idea. I just wanted to see you. But now I’m here…’
He stopped talking and stared out of the window again.
As his hand was still linked in mine I jiggled it. ‘Now you’re here?’ I prompted.
He turned back to look at me again. His eyes seemed more glittering and translucent than ever. Almost as though, if I looked hard and long enough, I’d be able to see into his soul. Such ridiculous tosh, but I couldn’t seem to help it. Still I waited. He sighed. A big, heavy sigh. ‘Now I’m here, Sally,’ he said, dispelling my fanciful notions in an instant. ‘Now I’m here, I just feel like a prize shit.’
‘You’re not that!’ I said, becoming fearful now of the anguished look in his eyes.
‘No? Standing in some other guy’s house and wanting to make love to his wife? What was I thinking? Jeez, Sally, this was not a good idea.’
I let go of his hand and wrapped my arms tightly around him instead, but he was rigid and unyielding. Hopelessness trickled through me. He was wearing the same suede jacket he’d had on the first time I met him. Velvety against my cheek. The colour of toffee. Scented with him.
‘You’re not that,’ I said again. ‘Any more than I am. It’s just, well, circumstance. You’re right.’ I looked around me. At Kate’s show poster on the wall. Jonathan’s beer tankard glinting down at us from the dresser. The card with the date of Merlin’s next injection, pinned lopsidedly to the cork notice board that hung by the door. And the ever present guilt. Which was rolling thickly in around us like hill fog. ‘This is not a good place to be. Let’s get in your car and drive somewhere instead, shall we? You know. Talk for a bit. I don’t know. Anything. Only don’t look at me like that. Please.’
He put his own arms around me now and drew me close against him.
‘Back seat of the car, is it?’ he said softly, stroking my hair now. ‘I’m not cut out for this Sally. I can’t do this to you.’
I pulled myself away from him and felt my unhappiness harden into a tight knot of anger. ‘Nick, you already have! All right, so you go now. What then? What do I do then? Go to bed? Sleep? Get up? Go to work? Come home again and repeat the process the next day and the next day, and just carry on as if none of this ever happened?’
‘Sally – ‘
I spread my hands, exasperated. ‘Well I can’t, Nick. I’ve spent almost every waking moment since I met you trying to do exactly that, and I can’t! I don’t want to! There, you see? So you’re wrong. It is too late. I’ve already crossed that threshold, don’t you see? And much as I hate myself – much as I wish I was a better person – a person who can do all those things, a person who can subjugate their own desires for those of everyone around them, I’ve discovered I’m not up to the job. So if you think I’m going to let you walk away from here now, then…..’ I dropped my hands now and let them hang at my sides. ‘Nick, you can’t do that to me.’
The words out now, I stood there before him mute and horrified.
But however much of a taste they had left in my mouth , I had needed to say them. To make this all real. So much time spent agonising over what to do and all of it had been pointless. I was a human animal and I wanted this man. I shouldn’t, but I did. It was half past one in the morning and my thought processes were pin-prick sharp. There was no point in trying to ferret out my other self any more. She was long gone, and now I had a stark choice. Goodness and unhappiness or happiness and guilt. Both states new territory, unfamiliar pairings. I should opt for the former but I wanted the latter. It was as simple as that.
‘I won’t,’ I said again, pulling my new self to attention and hooking my hair behind my ears with shaking fingers. ‘So you are going nowhere. I’m going to make us both a cup of tea and we are going to sit right down here and talk about it. In fact, no. We are going to go and sit in the garden and talk. It’s stopped raining. It’s not cold. And besides, we can go and sit under the umbrella on the patio anyway. Yes. Yes, that’ll do. We’ll sit there. OK?’
He blinked at me, nodded contritely. Exhaled.
‘OK,’ he said at last, with a trace of a smile. ‘OK, Sally. So. Where are the mugs?’
But we didn’t get as far as the garden. We certainly didn’t get as far as the talk. We didn’t even get as far as the mugs.
‘Ah, mugs,’ I’d said, as he stood before me, brows raised, achingly beautiful. Incredibly, here. Unbelievably, mine. ‘Right. Mugs.’ But as soon as I had begun the small action of directing this man in my kitchen to the dishwasher I realised with a breathtaking sense of inevitability that something organic was happening between us – moreover, that it had been quietly happening all the time we’d been talking – and that tea was the very last thing on my mind. I put my hands on my hips.
‘Do you really want a cup of tea?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘Nope.’
‘Coffee?’
He shook it again. ‘Nope.’
‘Anything?’
He shook it a third time. ‘Er…nope.’
‘Me neither.’ And in less time than it takes for a biblical cock-crow, we had covered the four strides of quarry tile between us and were now back where we’d been not half an hour before, except this time the mechanics of sexual chemistry would not be diverted by our tedious machinations.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I panted as I slid my hands under the lapels of his jacket and prised them up and back over his shoulders. ‘Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry I shouted at you. It wasn’t your fault. It was me. I made you come here.’ I squirmed against him, pulling his head towards me to crush his mouth against my own.
‘No!’ he breathed, still kissing me while he shrugged his arms from the sleeves of his jacket and I began grappling with the buttons on his shirt. ‘It was my fault. I shouldn’t have come. I should have stayed away.’ His hands were in my hair again and his breathing was becoming shallow. ‘I was going to, really, but –’
The jacket fell to the floor with a flump. ‘I would have killed you!’ I gasped, as his hands rippled down my backbone then slid up inside the back of my T-shirt instead. ‘Oh, God, Nick, you have no ide
a how much I’ve –’
The buttons undone now – one, two, three, four – I yanked the shirt from inside his jeans and freed the fifth with a flick. ‘How much –’
‘I think I do,’ he murmured from somewhere near my clavicle. His lips were hot against my neck now, and his hands were back around the sides of my T-shirt. He peeled it up and over my head in one fluid movement. He gaped at me. ‘Oh, God, Sally, I think I do,’ he said again.
I could feel my chest pumping under my breasts as he stared at them. Then his hands were there too and his mouth back on mine. I could hear something tap tap tapping against the table leg.
‘Yikes!’ I said, realising. ‘I forgot about the dog!’
I pulled reluctantly away from him and shunted Merlin out into the utility room.
‘Oh, God – jeans,’ gasped Nick again. He’d already ripped his shirt from his shoulders, and now crushed me against his bare chest as I fell back into his arms. I could hear the dog whining outside. Hear the sea in my ears. Feel the strength in his arms as he caressed me.
‘Jeans?’ I asked distractedly, as I grappled with his belt.
He growled. ‘Yes, jeans. You, in jeans. No top on. Just jeans. Oh, God. That really does it for me.’ He pulled me towards him and got his hand on the rivet.
‘That does it for you?’ I said, freeing his buckle and hooking my trembling hands under his waistband. I could feel the baby soft hair against the backs of my fingers, the taut bulk of his stomach muscles tensed underneath.
‘God, Sally,’ he murmured. ‘You. You do it for me,’ his lips nuzzling my ear now, his hand on my zip.
‘There’s nothing underneath them,’ I whispered back feverishly, fumbling with his fly buttons , leaning back to see. ‘God, Nick! Why d’you wear these things? Are they impossible or not?’
He nibbled at my earlobe. ‘501’s,’ he explained.
I could hear the smooth zzzziiiippppp of my fly being undone now. The smooth feel of his hand sliding over my hip. The smooth sound of his moan as the other slid down my stomach.
‘Oh, Nick –’My own hands were still struggling with his buttons. ‘Is that the brand name?’ I panted, as his fingers inched lower. ‘Or – oh! Oh, Nick! – Oh, God! – Oh, drat! Or the minutes it takes to get the bloody things off?’
‘Hang on,’ he said, sliding mine deftly down over my buttocks, breathing hard and fast against the side of my head and beginning to grind his hips against me. ‘Let me do that, OK?’ He swung his head back now and grinned at me wolfishly.
‘Remember the motto, Sally. More haste, less speed.’
I wriggled my jeans down and stamped my legs from inside them. Haste didn’t do it justice. I was a desperate woman.
‘Oh, Sally –’he moaned again, as we struggled with his.
Our eyes locked. ‘Come on, Nick!’ I breathed. ‘Get those off, will you!’
And there we were, suddenly, naked and panting, clothes puddled around us, eyes dark with desire.
‘Sally – you’re sure?’ he gasped.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Now’, I said.
‘Here?’ he said.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Now.’
I gripped his head, kissed his lips, mouthed the words through it.
‘Make love to me, now, Nick.’
So that’s what he did.
A quarter to four and it is just getting light. And I have re-discovered sex.
We’re somewhere else now. I open my eyes and look around me. I see the coffee table, a mound of magazines, a stump of candle on the mantelpiece. Things look so different from here.
And a delicious warmth. I’m lying on the sofa, his sleepy bulk curled close and solid beside me, stirring a little as I move, one hand cupped round my breast. We’re covered by the throw from the other sofa and the fringing round the edges is tickling my nose.
I twist around to face him and slide a hand slowly along the curve of his hip bone. His eyes blink and then open. Sleepy eyes. So blue. He blinks again, looks at me, smiles slightly, says nothing. Plays a finger over my stomach. I feel the muscles of his legs contract as he eases one of them gently between my thighs, grunting slightly as he heaves his body above me once again. There is a pounding in my ears. I feel my lips part and the sweet heat of his tongue against the inside of my mouth. The fire in my groin as his hand slips soundlessly up the inside of my thigh. My arms snake over his buttocks, crushing them to me as he begins nudging now against me, the low hiss of his breath against my face growing faster, as his thrusts become stronger, more urgent, more deep.
Still we say nothing. Just look. Just keep gazing at each other. He plants one careful hand by my head and rears upwards, the throw shrugging off and slipping noiselessly from his back. He mouths my name now, and his movements start to quicken, my pelvis arching to meet him, my body tensing to enfold him, while his hand moves in darting circles over my breasts. His head dips to meet mine as I reach up to kiss him, grasping his neck, pulling myself up against the arm of the sofa, our eyes still wide open as the first waves of orgasm begin to pulse through us, racing through our bodies, shining bright in our eyes. His neck muscles tense, and the spasm as he climaxes floods me with a new rush of impossible heat. Then he sinks down against me, lips soft against my cheek now, and I hold him in my arms while the shudders fade away.
A quarter to five and the day is fully dawned. I have re-discovered sex. I feel sated and adored. But I’ve discovered something else. Something horrible.
Remorse.
Chapter 20
Tuesday. Tuesday proper. Tuesday real life. Tuesday woe. No. Woe is Wednesday’s child, isn’t it? Whatever. Ten to ten and my mother has arrived.
And I am exuding sex. I can feel it. I can feel it inside me, outside me, wrapping its fragrant fingers around me, squeezing from my pores and riding bare-back on my breath. I am sex. Sex on legs, sex on-a-stick, sex personified. I am languorous and silky-limbed, voluptuous and wanton. I have the remains of a rosy bloom still soft on my cheeks.
‘Hullo,’ says my mother, raincoated on the doorstep and carrying an umbrella. ‘You wouldn’t think it was June, would you? I had to have my blow heater going last night.’
She shakes out her umbrella and steps past me into the hallway. She has only walked the twenty yards from her car to my door, but she has her perm to think of. She cannot risk any frizz, bless her. She has to look her best for Tony.
I watch her trot along to the kitchen but linger in the hall long enough for my heartbeat to slow a little. Goodness, is it going to be like this all day? This feeling of imminent exposure? It’s all right, I reassure myself, she cannot tell. She cannot see. But how could anyone possibly not see what has happened to me? Every time I think of the enormity of what I have done, adrenalin whooshes up inside me and zips about all over my body, making my fingers and toes tingle and hijacking my physiology so comprehensively I think I might, at any moment, keel over and faint. And I have been thinking about what I have done almost constantly since Nick left at five.
Remorse. So this is what it feels like, then. I study myself in the hall mirror. My hair, freshly washed, hangs in bouncing coppery scythes on my shoulders and my eyes, though they have absolutely no business to be doing so, stare confidently back at me, glittering and defiant. So whatever it feels like, it looks something else entirely. For the me in the hall mirror is not me at all. She’s a hussy, a slut and an unfaithful wife. The real me turns away, shrinking from her gaze.
‘Well!’ I hear my mother exclaim to the dog. ‘What have we here then? What have we here?’
I scuttle anxiously along the hall. Oh, God. Something of Nick’s? Boxer shorts? No. He wasn’t wearing any. His mug! But I washed up his mug, didn’t I? And anyway, it’s my mug, isn’t it? And how on earth could anyone extrapolate sex on the kitchen floor from the sight of a mug on the draining board? Ridiculous. Insane! Yet this is my mother. This is my mother and I
fear the awesome acuity of her maternal nose. And not for the first time in my life, I find myself dismayed at the fact that my Mother has always had carte blanche with my drawers. That there is no cupboard in my house she would feel it inappropriate to rummage in. How did this happen? Did she, or anyone else, for that matter, never consider that my storage was my business?
It is a metaphor for the rest of my life. I see that now. People around me simply making assumptions about what’ll be good for me and my own pathetic after-the-event inability to point out that, no, this is not what I want. From unsolicited cakes to weekend-long visitations by relatives to Christmas presents of fridge jugs and recipe book rests. This, then, is what really frightens me. The absolute transparency of my life to date. How everyone else always knows where I am, what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, what’ll be good for me. And how at odds that state of affairs is with the pre-requisites for becoming an unfaithful wife. Which are many and varied and involve, above everything, the careful preparation of a seedbed of privacy for the easy propagation of secrets and lies.
‘What?’ I say, arriving in the kitchen and plucking Merlin’s lead from its hook.
But she is not rootling among my utensils. She is not on the floor scouring my crevices for evidence. She is too busy giving my dog an erection. What is it with my mother and dogs? One look at her bearing down and threatening to tickle their tummies and they all – sex and breed entirely regardless – seem to prostrate themselves and splay their legs for her. She waggles a little bag.
‘Oh, just some choc drops for Merlie. But only if you’re a werry werrry werry good boy, though.’
Straight on Till Morning Page 21