The Summer of Aphrodite

by Viva Jones

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Ginnie and Demetrius arrived in the car park. His hand had been on her knee almost the entire journey, except for the occasional gear change, and Ginnie was dying for it to go further. When he pulled up and switched off the engine, they fell into each other’s arms, kissing and holding each other and wanting each other and longing for more.

  ‘We should join the others,’ Ginnie said breathlessly.

  ‘We have to?’

  Just the way he pronounced his aitches made Ginnie want him. They got out of the car and approached the scene. No one had noticed them, Ginnie realised, taking his hand. ‘Come with me.’

  They dashed to her house and were inside before anyone had spotted them. Ginnie closed the door behind her with a triumphant laugh. ‘Alone at last,’ she told him.

  Demetrius pulled her in for a deep, long kiss, before suddenly picking her up, throwing her over his shoulder and mounting the stairs. Ginnie was laughing hysterically - nothing like this had ever happened to her before - and suddenly he’d found her bedroom, startled the cats and thrown her onto the bed. There, their kissing grew more passionate and frenzied, and the knowledge that all her neighbours were right below around the pool increased Ginnie’s hunger. They tore at each other’s clothes, pulling and yanking, revealing the bits of flesh each would normally prefer concealed. Ginnie loved the imperfections of his body - the roundness of his stomach, the moles on his chest, the hairs that were turning grey, and she kissed every bit of him, adoring him for being exactly who he was.

  He pulled off her dress, but, she noted happily, he did so respectfully, not wanting to rip it. With her bra he was less careful, but it was as he was pulling down her knickers that Ginnie suddenly stopped, remembering. ‘Derek!’ she cried out.

  Demetrius stopped as suddenly and looked at her. ‘Your boyfriend?’

  She kicked herself for her idiocy. ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s nothing, really.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  There was that aitch again. Ginnie leant forward and kissed him, then she pulled one of his hands around to her buttocks and placed a finger on Derek. It was something she would never normally have dreamt of doing, but with Demetrius, she felt anything was acceptable.

  ‘I named it after an ex-boyfriend. It’s actually getting smaller.’

  Demetrius smiled broadly. ‘You are a real woman. You are all woman. My woman.’ He kissed her stomach, her pubic mound and then his tongue slipped down to her pussy, and he began to kiss her there. Ginnie opened her legs wide, loving the sound of laughter going on around outside while she enjoyed her special piece of heaven up there. If they could only see her now, she thought, her pussy being eaten by a real man.

  When he raised up her buttocks and caressed Derek with his tongue she thought she might die of happiness. She climbed up and sank down before him, taking his cock in her mouth. It was so much more impressive than Nigel’s, but then she decided to think no more about him, but to focus on the man in her bed, and expressing her desire for him. She licked and sucked, she played and nibbled, and when he couldn’t take any more he picked her up and pulled her onto him, and she straddled him there on the bed, easing her wet pussy onto him in full view of any party-goer who might happen to look up. They would have seen an ecstatic Ginnie, head thrown back, a pair of masculine hands clutching her breasts.

  Demetrius then took control again, flipping her over and drumming into her hard, each thrust of his cock accompanied by a wet kiss. As Ginnie’s orgasm mounted she ran her fingers down his buttocks, pulling them open, before slipping a finger inside his anus. This pushed him over and he came, bucking and thrusting on top of her, and Ginnie came too, and she cried out uncontrollably, unimpeded by the party going on, as if this might be the last orgasm she ever had, and her cries coincided with a break in the music around the pool, catching the attention of a couple of guests, who looked up, wondering what it was they’d just heard.

  As they collapsed in a loving bundle, legs entwined, Ginnie felt that, despite all the ups and many downs she’d experienced over the years, her life had reached a point in the here and the now that really was little short of perfect.

  ***

  By six o’clock they’d had the cake and Barry started lighting the barbecue. Better get more grub inside everyone, he was thinking. Those beers were going down fast and everyone was well and truly in the party spirit.

  ‘Don’t you have any vodka?’ Audrey asked Douglas, peering at the drinks table. ‘I can’t bear that Cypriot wine.’

  ‘I’ll get you some,’ Richard offered. He’d hardly left the bar all afternoon but now walked shakily towards his house.

  ‘Thank you.’ She turned to Douglas. ‘I need a proper drink. Two goals one of my defenders let in, and it’s still only half time. I shall have to look at the transfer market next week.’

  ‘Sounds like a full time job.’

  ‘It is,’ she said, brightening up. ‘It just fills my days. Not during the week necessarily, because then I’ve got Bridge and exhibitions and ladies’ lunches and what have you, but the weekends can feel so empty. Everyone else,’ her voice was getting louder now, more deliberate, ‘has got families to visit, you see, and grandchildren and even, in some cases, great grandchildren. But as my children saw fit to move abroad, and one of them hasn’t even bothered to give me any grandchildren yet, the weekends can get pretty - ‘

  ‘Lonely?’ Douglas interjected.

  ‘Tedious,’ she replied sharply. ‘Ah, there you are Richard, thank you.’ She sipped her vodka, before turning back to Douglas. ‘And what about you, do you have any grandchildren?’

  Richard turned away, hopelessly. Now more than ever he felt a failure. He couldn’t even succeed in enjoying his own party. He reached for another beer. He’d lost count of how many he’d drunk by now, but he was feeling nicely buzzed, and that buzz was taking the edge of the pain that kept rearing up inside him. He moved towards his old friends. How calm they all looked, he thought. How free of guilt. Or shame. Which one of them was it, he wondered, trying to identify some clue, a careless hint that might betray the perpetrator. Just a sign, Richard thought. All he needed was a sign, and then he’d march right up to him and knock his lights out.

  ‘Darling, are you all right?’ Anna was beside him, a concerned look on her face.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ he told her angrily. ‘All my friends are here, so that leaves me just fine. Fine and dandy. Oh yes, fine and dandy, that’s me.’

  ‘D’you think you’d better ease up on the beers for a bit?’ she suggested.

  He swung round to her. ‘Ease up? Ease up? My dear, I’ve hardly started.’

  With that, he picked up a new bottle and disappeared into the throng. Anna stood there, tears pricking her eyes.

  ‘You see, I told you he was an alcoholic,’ Audrey hissed at her. ‘You don’t even know your own husband, do you? There wasn’t a thing I didn’t know about my Charles; he used to tell me everything. That was the nature of our relationship.’

  ‘Mummy, that’s enough!’ Anna said, stepping away, tears blurring her eyes. Then suddenly, she couldn’t cope any more, couldn’t keep pretending that there was nothing wrong, and so she turned and fled, running as far away from the party as she could, past the car park and the bins and out of the complex, taking the road that past the village and climbed towards the hills.

  Her party was a disaster, Anna kept telling herself. It was the worst idea she’d ever had. Whatever had happened before, this party had sent Richard straight back to the days when he wanted to have nothing to do with her. Anna threw herself onto a clump on the hillside and wept. Her mother was a nightmare and she wanted her out of their lives. That was, as long as she still had a life with Richard after all this. Maybe she didn’t? Maybe she’d end up with her dreaded alternative future, the one of living in London and attending speed d
ating sessions and facing total humiliation alone? Maybe that was all she had to look forward to?

  And they had been doing so well! She was trying for a baby, after all. Even if she couldn’t get turned on with Richard in the conventional way, they were still doing all right. He wasn’t to know. Anna sat and wept bitter tears, willing the party to have folded up and disappeared by the time she returned.

  ***

  Tiring of Anna’s mother, Douglas looked around for something to do. They were running low on beers, but then, from the state of some of the guests, that was probably no bad thing. He could fetch some from the bath later. Damn fool idea having the party start so early, they’d all be legless by eight. But where had Anna dashed off to like that? She probably needed a comforting word or two. Having endured her mother on and off all afternoon, he was beginning to understand what she’d gone through. He grabbed an opened bottle of white and two glasses and went off in search of her. Past the car park and the bins, he left the complex and started walking where his daily bike ride usually took him. He didn’t have to go very far, because there, under an olive tree on the hill, sat Anna, head in hands, weeping.

  Quietly, Douglas joined her.

  ‘I hope you’re not letting an irritating old woman get to you?’ he said at last, pouring two glasses.

  Anna looked up. ‘That’s my mother you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes. And you’re welcome to her.’ He handed her a glass which Anna accepted. Then, raising his own, he said gently, ‘Don’t let her get to you.’

  ‘That’s easier said than done,’ Anna said, taking a gulp.

  ‘Don’t get riled by her. Don’t give her that power.’

  Anna sniffed. ‘She can just be so harsh. What gives her the right to be that unkind all the time? I mean, she never stops, she has little digs about everything, from the way I look to what I eat to something Richard says and goodness knows what else. What gives her the right?’

  ‘She wiped your arse, that’s what gives her the right. She wiped your arse, and now she can do or say anything she likes, as far as you’re concerned.’

  Anna frowned, repulsed, but realised he had a point. ‘She puts me off motherhood, quite frankly. I mean, I just don’t want to become that person. I don’t want to exercise that kind of hold on someone else, to expect so much from somebody. I don’t ever want to feel, that, that, complacent, towards anyone.’

  The second she’d said it, Anna realised that, in many respects, that was exactly how she’d been with Richard all along. The revelation chilled her. She was more like her mother than she cared to think, and she’d never before realised it. They drank in silence.

  ‘And what’s up with that husband of yours, anyway?’ Douglas asked eventually. ‘From the way he was acting you’d think this was his funeral.’

  ‘Something happened, years ago, and he’s never got over it,’ Anna sniffed. ‘It’s all my fault, I should never have invited those three. It was something to do with them, but he won’t tell me, or he can’t tell me, or something.’

  Had she been such a horror to him? Images of their marriage flashed through Anna’s mind. Her barbed comments, her bored yawns, her multiple distractions. Why had he even put up with her? After today, she doubted he would any longer.

  ‘They must have set him up,’ she continued, aware of the over-long pause. ‘During his stag weekend in Amsterdam. It was probably one of those girls who gives him a blowjob and then turns out to be a boy or something.’

  ‘That would certainly stick in the throat!’ Douglas snorted.

  ‘But why can’t he get over it?’ Anna went on. ‘Why can’t he just laugh it off? I mean, you hear of people all the time, don’t you, you know, waking up naked and finding themselves handcuffed to lamp posts. Do they go through life being traumatised by it?’

  ‘It’s a question of trust, I suppose,’ Douglas said, taking a sip of wine.

  Anna turned to him. ‘Nothing riles you, does it? You have a marvellously - objective - way of looking at things. The closest I’ve seen you to upset was throwing those people’s stereo into the pool, and that was magnificent.’ She remembered with a shiver the effect it had had on her those weeks ago. ‘So what gets to the great Douglas, then? What pushes the Magus’s buttons?’

  Douglas smiled knowingly. ‘Oh, you know, injustice in the world. Republicans. Traffic wardens.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Anna said with a sad laugh. She stared into her glass. ‘Can I ask, what happened to your marriage?’

  ‘I cheated,’ he told her coolly. ‘I’m easily bored.’

  ‘And now?’ Suddenly she felt she was getting close to him, and that if she could just penetrate that egotistical outer layer, she might find someone worth knowing underneath.

  ‘And now what?’ he repeated, looking into her eyes. Then, he took her glass, placed it with his own in front of them, and kissed her softly on the lips.

  Anna let herself melt into that kiss, feeling the strangeness of his tongue in her mouth. Where Richard was clumsy, Douglas was practised. Despite herself, Anna let him kiss her, encouraged him, even, by grasping his face in her hands, feeling the lines on his skin interrupted by the makings of new growth on his jaw. She pulled him even closer towards her, kissing him with an urgency she’d only felt with Nathalie. Here was a real man, after all. A man who took control of issues, rather than letting them rot and fester. Douglas was everything her husband wasn’t - strong, confident, unpredictable - not to mention well-toned. His arms were around her now, holding her protectively, sliding up and down her back, warming her in the fading evening sun. Then they found the clasp of her bikini, and in one swift movement had undone it. Anna was enjoying the kissing too much to notice, or care.

  All those fantasies she’d had, she remembered, where he’d been cold and dominating and callous, and yet here he was, being sensitive and kind and hungry. Her body tingled with excitement. He slipped his hand into her dress, caressing her bare breast under the flapping bikini top, and rubbed her nipple gently between his thumb and forefinger. Anna gasped. The sensation flashed between her legs like a rocket, and she yearned for him to touch her there, too. To kiss her there. To devour her, to consume her, to have her. She started unbuttoning his shirt, stroking his chest, noticing how lean it was compared to her husband’s, how firm the muscles and how taut his arms.

  She wanted him inside her, she realised. She wanted to feel a sharp jab of pain as he entered her, she wanted to feel his cock there, hard and strong, stabbing her and enjoying her, taking long, hard slides inside her, relishing the feel of her, but as she reached for his fly, as she fumbled with his zip, it suddenly felt all wrong. Where Richard was cuddly and soft and unthreatening, Douglas was hard and worked out and capable. Where Richard was tender and sensitive and gentle, Douglas was arrogant and mysterious and devoid of emotions. And deep inside, Anna knew that she couldn’t handle a man like him, and that she loved her husband, despite his faults and complexities. She loved him.

  Anna pulled away, horrified. ‘Douglas, I’m sorry, but no!’ she stammered, leaping to her feet and fastening her bikini top. ‘I can’t do this, I just can’t.’

  He just looked at her, gasping for breath.

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of, I’m sorry. I just don’t know what I was doing. You, you’ve caught me at a vulnerable moment. I love Richard, I really do. I must go back to him.’

  With that, Anna turned and fled, running back down the hillside towards her party and, she hoped, into the arms of her husband.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Anna tore through her party, trying to find her husband. She wanted to envelope herself in his arms, to feel the comfort of his slightly flabby tummy and to smell his smell, and not the smell of someone angular and cool and incapable of emotion.

  Where was he? She darted around people, nipped behind them
and forced her way between them until she found Nathalie, clearing some glasses up.

  ‘Any idea where Richard is?’

  ‘He might be in the bathroom, getting some more beer.’

  Of course that was where he was, Anna thought, racing back the way she’d come. She was going to find her husband, and she wasn’t going to let him go until they’d resolved whatever it was that had happened to him all those years before. From now on, there would be no secrets between them. Well, perhaps just the one. He didn’t need to know about what had just happened with Douglas.

  Anna loved her husband, she realised, with a force she’d never previously understood, and she was going to win him back. She was going to apologise for ever having sounded or behaved like her mother, and she was going to make him promise to tell her if ever she did or said anything, anything, that reminded him of that woman. She was going to tell him how much she needed and loved him, and how desperately she wanted his baby. By loving her sweet, hopeless husband, the man who’d never hurt anyone in his life, she might just purge herself of the terrible thing she’d just done.

  ***

  Inside number two, Richard stumbled up the stairs. Perhaps he had had too much to drink, but he didn’t care. It was his birthday, and if he wanted to get blind drunk, then that was his prerogative. Nobody understood him, he thought bitterly, least of all his wife and her dreadful mother. Nobody knew what he’d gone through, or of what he’d had to live through these last few years. And just as he was coming to terms with it all, just as he felt he’d finally turned a corner, there they were, mocking him, with their easy chat and ready laughter.

  He found the bathroom, and inside were his three friends, drinking and talking - Nick slouched on the rim of the bath, Chris leaning against the basin and Roger squatting on the bidet. To his eyes they looked so smug and complacent that Richard felt nothing but hatred for them all. Hatred and anger and revulsion.