He agreed, but felt sick with fear. To have organized something, to have planned a liaison, rather than just grabbing the moment when it occurred, introduced an element of unbearable tension. He felt weighed down with the burden of his desire.
The next day, Tuesday, it was Polly’s turn to deliver Evelyn, so he didn’t see Vera. He was glad. He realized that it would be a good idea to stop doing the school run altogether, but that in itself would have seemed odd, although he could have probably come up with some sort of excuse – as it was, on Wednesday he went through the same routine again, of standing apart while Vera retained her position with the locals, and then in the afternoon, at the appointed time, he parked his car near some shops and walked for ten minutes to Vera’s road. He found his way into the wide, high-walled alleyway at the end of her street which separated the back gardens of two parallel roads. The alleyway was surprisingly scruffy. At the end a little huddle of overstuffed wheelie bins stood, two had fallen over and spilt their contents, as though they had been felled by the others and were lying bleeding. Arnold had to step over maggoty waste, a half-open and well-filled nappy, food debris. The gardens themselves were hidden behind the high brick walls, though in some gardens these had fallen down and were replaced by splintery wooden fences, or sheets of corrugated iron. The backs of the houses seemed to occupy a much poorer part of the city than the fronts. It seemed incredible that this space could be so neglected. He later learnt from Vera that it was a constant bane of the residents’ lives. It took only a day or two to acquire its rubbish and dirt, and no one was prepared for the upkeep.
He was disconcerted that there were no numbers on the garden gates. Vera had told him to count along, but he couldn’t remember how far, or what colour she’d said the gate was. He scrolled through his phone looking for the message that had this information, but couldn’t find it. He texted her again, but no answer came. In the end he spent some time counting the backs of the houses and tried a green gate that he wasn’t fully sure was the gate to Vera’s back garden, but when it opened, it seemed there was a good chance, as any other gate was likely to be bolted. But once through there was no way of telling if he was correct, because he had not seen Vera’s garden before, and though it wasn’t a long garden, it was overgrown enough to make the house itself half-hidden. There was a sprawling holly, and a sycamore that formed a canyon of foliage that led to a small lawn where there was a shed, a plastic swing, a football goal and a scattering of different sized footballs. There was also a rotary washing line strung with a family’s clothes, like offerings at a shrine. He thought he recognized the blue T-shirt that Vera had been wearing when they’d made love, hanging there amid the children’s clothes and the masculine shirts. Stepping out from the cover of the trees and onto the lawn itself, he saw the house towering. It was rougher brickwork at the back, which made it look slightly less welcoming than the front. With its clinging drains and boiler flue it looked industrial, a little rough, like a Victorian factory. The lingering possibility that he could be in the wrong garden made him approach cautiously, looking desperately for any sign that this was Vera’s house – the blue T-shirt itself wasn’t quite enough. Every family probably has a blue T-shirt among its washing. He walked onto a mossy patio, past an extension and up to a door through which he could glimpse a narrow, shadowy kitchen. There was nothing about this part of the house that he recognized. It could have been anyone’s kitchen. He felt a sudden panic in the certainty that he had come to the wrong house, that he was a trespasser, a burglar, that he might at any moment be discovered, have the police called on him. The notion made him more aware than he had been before, of the wrongness of what he was doing, even if he was at the right address. There was still a chance to abandon this mad project, to turn back to the street and forget the whole thing, and he was on the point of doing that (so he told himself afterwards) when he saw through the window, Vera appear in the kitchen and open the back door for him, and in that moment all those doubts fled from his mind. It was as though his sensible, caring, intelligent self had been completely wiped by the silk cloth of Vera’s beauty.
There were many locks and bolts to undo before Vera could open the door for him, but when she did it was clear from her face that she had no doubts or regrets about what they were doing. She had a look of intent, purposeful longing on her face, and a seriousness, the seriousness that was always there, but a seriousness of desire, nothing else.
He stepped into the kitchen and they embraced immediately. There were no overlooking windows, they were safely invisible. The sudden closeness of her, the length of her body against his, aproned to each other, was breathtaking. The pull of her mouth, the sweetness of it, the sourness of it, the metallic bump of her glasses frame against his eyebrow, though she somehow managed to extract herself from the embrace, remembering to relock the back door, and Arnold stood in the kitchen watching her bolt and latch and chain the entrance shut again. They hadn’t spoken.
He followed her upstairs. He was feeling less nervous, the sense that he was doing something wrong was now completely swept away in the company of Vera, they together had formed a coalition that was impervious to outside opinions, the only pressure was to maintain secrecy and privacy. They went about their business like children entering a playground, hungry for the delights on offer. And he regarded the prospect of their lovemaking rather like a child might regard the contraptions of a playground, as things that needed careful handling, he felt that he would need support and cooperation.
They had not planned very far. As they went upstairs he could see that she was debating with herself which room to use. They had promised themselves full sex, rather than the intimate touching of their previous encounter, and this meant a far greater commitment to whichever space they chose. They could choose her and her husband’s bedroom, but might that not leave a trace that could be discerned by the nine-to-five man? If not, then one of the children’s bedrooms, but could they really bear to do it while watched by the stuffed sentinels of their play-cupboards, and all their promising, wonky artwork? She had no spare room. They could perhaps do it in the downstairs living room, but that gave them no chance at all if there was an interruption. In the end, they opted for the adult bedroom, and unspokenly promised to be as careful as possible not to leave any trace. They had both brought along condoms, and there was a little debate about whose to use. She had wanted him to use his, and he hers. For him to see her proffer the prophylactic seemed such an assertion of intent that it affected him like a gift from the heart.
Then there was the nakedness. She had only desired him, so far, as a fully clothed person. Would she feel the same when she saw what those clothes covered? And what did they cover? Arnold’s awareness of his own body had dwindled to the point where he couldn’t have identified it if it had washed up headless on a beach somewhere. He was just aware of something that wasn’t as strong as it was, that wasn’t as compact and as hard as it had been. It had become soft, podgy, pouchy. He was dismayed to find that, once they had closed the door of the bedroom, they were to undress individually, either side of the bed. He had imagined that they would slowly tear the clothes off each other as they made love, but no, there was an orderliness that had been brought to the process, a clinical aspect. Undressing separately was awful, like preparing for a medical. Vera turned away from him and pulled her T-shirt up over her head, revealing a curved length of back that continued the line of her long neck. The central flute of her spine, barely notched, cut a precise thread all the way down to her lightly downed saddle. But she had become remote and impossible. Arnold could only stand and watch, blind to his own unbuttoning. She lowered her jeans, still with her back to him, as the belt line descended it was as though her body was rising out of a pool of denim. Then she bent forward to finish the manoeuvre, her buttocks tensed in their thin black fabric, her spine suddenly became notched with the tension, for a moment he was looking at something purely physical.
As he undressed he was suddenly ove
rtaken by a desire not to be seen by her, and turned his body and angled it so that she would not get a full view. As she began removing her underwear he felt a longing to slow down the process. The reveal was imminent, in a moment he would have the truth before him and nothing left to his longing imagination, it would all be there, complete and disclosed. She was folding her clothes away carefully. He wondered if this was a deliberate delaying tactic to provide one last extended moment where things could be halted. The line had not yet been crossed. There was still an opportunity to move backwards through time, to retrace their steps, to reclothe themselves and return to the world of separateness.
He had not experienced feelings like this before, how waves of intensest pleasure and joy alternated with crashing waves of sadness and deepest sorrow, it was like being led to the gallows through a ribboned and festooned gallery, by happy children. He felt his own sense of self begin to move and sway within him, as if trying to escape its confines. Then she turned to him in her complete nakedness and it was as though the fabric of all his anxieties and constraints, all his mean little fears and thoughts of self-loathing, had been torn, and through the aperture this incontestable proposition had appeared. The delicate and perfect slightness of her body seemed at the same time capable of crushing everything around it, or of supporting a colossal mass. It seemed to transcend its surrounding, sucking the ordinary darkness of their curtained boudoir and transforming it into light. Her nakedness was also a surprise, and he chided himself for assuming that she, even at thirty-six (a decade younger than Polly), would have the body of a teenager. Her abdomen had the looseness and puckeredness of a childbearer, her body was layered with time, but they were pleasing, silky, delicate layers, beautiful things, inviting touch like a sheet of beautiful paper. But she was quickly hidden as she lifted the covers and slid beneath them, allowing him to achieve full nakedness in a brief moment of privacy, for which he was grateful, before he joined her there.
She allowed him to do everything to her, apart from put his face to her genitals. As soon as his mouth went towards that part of her he felt the gentle yet firm yank of her hands on his head, pulling him away. In fact she seemed little interested in foreplay, and was determined to go as quickly into full intercourse as possible, almost as if she knew nothing else could possibly satisfy her. Arnold didn’t want things to happen so quickly, but nevertheless felt pulled along by the stream of her desire. But Arnold was surprised by how difficult he found the situation, not least because he was in her and her husband’s bedroom, and in the blend of things, the masculine presence in the room seemed the stronger – the whiff of aftershave on the pillow, the ties draped over the back of the chair, the big black polished shoes standing empty on the floor, the stack of effective management books by the side of the bed whose titles he’d noted – How to Succeed in Business, The Power of Positive Thinking and Richard Branson’s Screw It Let’s Do It. He wanted to make a pile of these things and set light to them. What, did her husband have ambitions to set himself up in business?
There were traces of religious devotion spread out as well – he had noticed a little Bible, pocket-sized, on the dressing table, a religious pamphlet protruding from under a pile of household documents. On the wall there was a framed sampler that said The Lord is My Shepherd. It looked like an old family heirloom.
He was constantly reminded of his teenage fumblings with girls, the unbearable pressure of being required to get everything right first time. Here the tension was of a different kind of expectation. Both with long-term partners, they had each grown to believe their own lovemaking routines were universal, and so were constantly wrongly anticipating each other’s next moves – heads went to the wrong place, cues were misread, elbows clashed, but nevertheless a kind of mutual somatic understanding was reached. He quickly began to understand her preferences, how she liked to be held, where she liked to be touched. He came too quickly, losing a short battle to withhold himself, but gave what he had with a loud gasp and saw beneath him the slight puzzlement on Vera’s face when she realized what had happened. Immediately Arnold felt himself compared to the man with the big polished shoes and to be found wanting, in one way at least. A man with that array of ties could probably keep going for hours on end, the nine-to-fiver, the regular timekeeper. But would he have brought such passion to the task? A diamond of redness had appeared between Vera’s splayed breasts. The nearness he had just experienced with Vera had transformed how he looked at her, changing her in his eyes into something beautifully familiar.
They said almost nothing to each other. Arnold lay back, breathless, sweaty, gasping for air in the clammy, dark bedroom. It looked suddenly shabby, like a room in a squat, and what they had just done seemed as seedy, yet he couldn’t resist when Vera showed signs that she wanted to continue. She was not simply wanting to get him out of bed and back to normal life, but she began working him again, taking the dominant position this time, pushing the bedclothes back and sitting astride him, and Arnold surprised to find himself tumescent again so soon, they managed a second, longer, slower session, Vera’s body wonderfully displayed this time.
Then suddenly it was over. A moment after his second, weaker coming, and after a brief rest as they lay embracing each other, she sat up and began dressing. There was no time left, she said. The longer he stayed, the more chance there was that somehow his presence would imprint itself onto the room. Before he left he felt he needed a commitment from her, as they stood in the kitchen, kissing again, by the back door.
He looked her in the face, took in the beauty of it, and said:
‘Do you want to do this again?’
She seemed surprised that he had to ask.
‘Of course I do,’ she said, kissing him smartly and politely.
Nothing was arranged, but he assumed that they would do it again the same time next week, the only mutually convenient time. As he left, Vera was already getting the pushchair ready, to pick up Geoffrey from the nursery.
A sense of well-being stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon. He felt softened-up, blissed-out, born again. He felt lit from within and full of energy. Walking seemed slow and pointless when running was just as easy. He felt supple and invincible. Things around him had an eloquence. Bad architecture seemed beautiful. He could trust nothing to be as ugly as he’d thought it was. Everything sang.
He had one tutorial that afternoon, with a shy and sickening student who was writing a dystopian novel in which humans had become enslaved to a race of giant birds. Though in fact, Arnold was never sure if the birds were giant, or if the human race had been reduced to the size of ants. When he asked the student, he said it hardly mattered. And now Arnold had to agree. For weeks he had struggled to understand this novel, to try and see what the student was getting at. But now it all seemed to make wonderful, writerly sense. Giant goldfinches. The entire human race made to live on a patch of land the size of an average back garden. The bird table towering above them like the watchtower of a concentration camp. Arnold made the student nervous with his lavish praise.
When he arrived home the house was empty but for the kitten, still unnamed, who whined at him with a sort of frenzy in her little voice, after being alone for so long. He had forgotten that it was one of the days for Evelyn to be at Irina’s. Vera would have collected her from school, in loco parentis, and taken her to the house he had left only a few hours ago. Polly would be collecting her from there later. The thought chilled him. In less than an hour Polly would be where he had been, in Vera’s house, chatting merrily away with the woman he’d made love to that afternoon. He felt he had left a crime scene with evidence all over it. That there were fingerprints of blood all over the walls, his fingerprints. He wanted to go back there and wipe them all off. He hadn’t done enough while he was there to ensure he’d covered his tracks. He tried to imagine Vera meeting his daughter after school, tried to picture them walking home together. What would she be feeling? Surely the sense of guilt would overpower her, some waywa
rd emotion would take hold of her, if not then, when Polly called round. It would be like torture for her. And if she didn’t crack up, would Polly sense something, or Evelyn, even?
He went upstairs to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked as he’d done that evening when he’d first noticed Vera – sweaty, dishevelled, drunken, or as though he had a bad hangover. He looked closely at his face, checking that it didn’t bear some mark. To his astonishment his eyes were wet and his lashes clogged. He had been crying. He had a shower and changed his clothes, realizing that this in itself might give something away, since he never normally showered at this time of day. Polly would wonder why. So he spent some time trying to restore the bathroom to its pre-shower state – hiding away the damp towel in the washing basket, wiping the floor, clearing all the steam from the steamed-up mirror and drying it. Then he’d wondered if he’d just made things worse – he couldn’t remove every last trace of his shower, and Polly would only wonder why he had tried to do so.
When Polly and his daughter returned home, he had settled down to some reading in his study and had begun to relax a little. He could tell immediately from the sounds downstairs that things were normal. Evelyn scampered up to her room to get changed, and the water pipes hummed as Polly went straight to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner.
The Paper Lovers Page 7