‘Certainly, madame. It’s on its way.’ He leapt out of bed, as fresh as after eight solid hours’ sleep, and switched on the bedside lamp.
She gazed, enchanted, at the weird shapes and looming shadows. This crazy cluttered room had become a sort of fairy palace where frogs turned into princes. ‘Can I help?’ she murmured.
‘No, you’re not to lift a finger.’
She watched him plug in the kettle, still fascinated by his naked body – the broad shoulders and muscly arms, the dark hair on his chest and stomach, even on his back. His penis looked so vulnerable compared with the way it had felt inside her: solid and substantial then, and every bit as dramatic as its owner. She smiled at the sight of their clothes entangled on the floor; his flamboyant red shirt straddled over her bra and pants, his trousers inside out, her dress sprawled languidly. They had thrown them off anyhow, not even bothering with a condom. She hadn’t cared about the risks. There were no risks, she felt now, as she lay basking in the afterglow.
‘I’m just going to wash the mugs,’ Will said. ‘Don’t move.’
‘I couldn’t if I tried. You’ve worn me out!’ As he picked his way towards the door, she could hardly bear to let him go, even for a minute. She wanted his body dovetailed back with hers: she pinioned underneath, or him kneeling behind, or standing at the foot of the bed with her spread-eagled on her stomach. There was no part of him she didn’t like – not his rough chin (his stubble grew at an alarming pace at night); nor the darling strand of hair which refused to lie flat but curled obstinately over his forehead; nor even his horny toenails.
When he reappeared at the door it was as if the sun had come out again, dispelling the chilly gloom. She hugged her chest, aware that she was reacting like the heroine of some Mills & Boon romance. Though of course the surroundings would be rather different – a luxurious double bed, not a three-foot-six divan with broken springs. And he would be handing her a crystal dish of out-of-season strawberries, not a paint-stained carton of swiss rolls.
‘Three each,’ he said, counting like a child. ‘But you can have all six if you want. I’d give you a diamond, Catherine, if I could – no, a diamond mine. With a bevy of slaves to work it for you.’
‘That’s politically incorrect,’ she laughed. ‘So someone would be bound to close it down.’
‘Oh, I am incorrect, no question. I remember going to some arty-farty do where a woman actually objected to “Three Blind Mice”. She insisted they were “visually impaired”. Which plays havoc with the scansion.’ He sang, to demonstrate, grimacing at the rhythm. ‘Three visually impaired mice, Three visually impaired mice …’
Grinning, she countered with, ‘Three blind mice, Three blind mice …’
They continued singing; breaking down in giggles, only to start again. Will mimed the actions exuberantly, wielding a chocolate swiss roll in lieu of a carving knife.
They raised their voices, each trying to outsing the other:
‘… blind mice …’
‘… visually impaired …’
‘… blind mice …’
‘… visually impaired …’
‘Oh lord!’ she said, clapping a hand over her mouth. Your neighbours, Will! We’ve been making a hell of a din for hours.’
‘Bugger the neighbours! They probably enjoyed it. Did you?’ he asked, a hint of his old anxiety returning.
‘Will, you know I did.’
‘You might have been pretending.’
She coaxed him down on the bed and put her arms around him. ‘Shall I tell you something, Will? I’ve never felt so … so real before as I did with you just now.’ She deliberately echoed his word – and Kate’s – though she was reluctant to explain it further, for fear of sounding disloyal to Gerry. But she realized now she had been inhibited for years, gradually slipping into a bourgeois role to fit her bourgeois setting. The tiger she’d been in her youth had dwindled into a domestic cat – a placid moggy who mustn’t go wild in bed, in case she woke the children, or disturbed he next-door neighbours, or exhausted an already pressured husband.
‘It’s as if you’ve let me out of my cage,’ she said simply.
‘You didn’t need much encouragement!’ Will handed her the carton of swiss rolls. ‘I’m starving, aren’t you? I’ll make the tea and then we can have a picnic.’
She helped herself, peeling back the silver foil. It might have been a diamond, so euphoric did she feel; every tiny sensation intensified as she bit into the glossy shell: the rich, dark smell of chocolate; the ooze of squishy cream; the caress of sponge soft against her tongue.
She finished two in succession, then lay back, sated, and not just from swiss rolls. How extraordinary that Vanessa should be so scathing about Will’s performance. In fact, many things he’d told her seemed to be misleading: the tyrant father a shy myopic family man; the useless lover a stud. No, that was far too crude a word for the imaginative and tender poet who had gently woken her in the night because she was screaming in her sleep, and swiftly turned the nightmare into bliss. It was so different from the fiasco with Simon. She felt adored and cherished: her body accepted – stretch marks, appendicitis scar and all – as she accepted his. And as for any age difference, she was now the younger, the impassioned seventeen-year-old again. How dare Jo call her a dreary nagging mother! Not that she was worrying about Jo – not now, not after Will.
‘Tea up.’ He was approaching with the mugs, which he put carefully on the bedside table. Just look at you,’ he said with mock severity. ‘There’s chocolate all down your front.’
‘Where?’ She squinted awkwardly at her chest, but he was already leaning down to scoop up the fragments with his tongue.
He licked his lips – just like his feline namesake, she thought, after a saucerful of milk. ‘What luck,’ he grinned, ‘to meet a woman with chocolate breasts.’
‘And a chocolate tummy,’ she added, as he retrieved a last crumb from her navel.
‘Oh, Catherine.’ He gazed down at her. ‘You look so exciting like that.’
‘You too.’ She reached out to touch his stiffening prick. Incredible that he could be hard again already. It had been years since Gerry could manage an encore. The comparison seemed terribly unfair, but this was more than just a sexual thing. Will was restoring her youth, stripping away the last dry husks of decorum and convention, and allowing the real Catherine to break free.
‘Let’s lie close,’ he murmured, stretching out beside her. ‘I want to just … just bask in you a moment’ His next words were swallowed up in a sudden gigantic yawn. ‘Hell, I’m sorry. That took me by surprise.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t wonder you’re tired, considering all that exercise! And did you get any sleep last night?’
He shook his head.
‘You’ll be like a zombie at the market tomorrow.’
Slowly he sat up and ran a hand through his wonderfully tousled hair. ‘Catherine …’
‘Mm?’
‘We’re not going to the market. I’ve just decided.’
‘But what about …?’
He kissed the rest of her sentence away. ‘We can’t get there – it’s impossible. We’re snowed up in the wilds of Scotland and there’s absolutely no chance of a thaw. The weathermen are predicting another ice age, and it’s on its way already, by the look of it. But we’re all right, curled up snug together. So’ – he kissed her right breast – ‘we can make love all day Sunday. And’ – he kissed her left breast –‘the whole of Sunday night.’ His fingers slipped between her legs. ‘And all next week. In fact,’ he whispered, positioning himself astride her and sliding gently in, ‘we can make love for ever and ever.’
Chapter Twenty One
‘Nicky, please be honest. It’s better that I know. Do you find me … well – a pain, to put it bluntly? And would you rather I moved out?’
‘Catherine, you’re an angel! And there’s no question of you moving out. Don’t even think about it. Things have improved no end since you�
��ve been around.’
‘Yes, but Jo …’
‘Look’ – Nicky pushed her cup away and folded her arms squarely on the table – Jo cocked up, okay? She admits she behaved appallingly badly. But what you need to understand is why.’
‘I do understand. Because I’m a fusspot, and too old, and expect to have the place to myself and …’
‘No – all wrong.’
‘What is it then?’
Nicky lowered her voice and gave a wary glance to left and right, although there was no one actually sitting within earshot. ‘Well, first of all, she’s a tad jealous – about Will. She’s the literary one, so she thinks she should be dating a poet. But that’s a detail. The main reason she was in such a state on Saturday was that her period was late and she thought she was pregnant, by that Italian shit.’
‘Pregnant? But she told us that was all over.’
‘Well, yes, it only lasted ten days. But apparently he was in London for the Forsythe Prize. And she was so over the moon to see him again, she promptly fell into bed with him and of course the silly idiot let him do it without a Durex.’
Catherine felt herself blushing, knowing she had done the same. If you were smitten with a man, it was all too gloriously easy to take risks.
‘Anyway, it was a false alarm, thank God.’ Nicky waved away the waiter, who was approaching with more coffee. ‘But she didn’t know that till last night. On Saturday she was still fearing the worst and I’m afraid you caught the brunt of it.’
‘Poor Jo! I’d no idea. And actually she did seem rather involved with another man on Saturday. Geoff, I think his name was. Ginger hair, funny little beard.’
‘Oh, Geoff’s just an old friend.’ Nicky shrugged dismissively. ‘She was probably only using him to drown her sorrows.’
‘But, Nicky, between you and me, she seemed to be all over him.’
‘Well, I don’t know. Jo’s a law unto herself when it comes to men – or to most things, for that matter. Anyway, as far as you’re concerned, she feels guilty as all hell. So I suggest you get in there quick and heal the rift.’
‘Oh I will, of course I will.’ Catherine drained her coffee. It had gone cold and scummy, but it tasted like nectar, so great was her relief that she wasn’t banished from Gosforth Road. She hadn’t dared go back there without talking to Nicky first, so she had arranged to meet her straight from work this evening. Admittedly the intervening two days spent camping out in Will’s flat had provided exquisite compensations.
Nicky was studying the menu. ‘Now we’ve sorted that out, will you change your mind and have something to eat?’
‘No, honestly, I’m fine.’ She didn’t like to admit that money was a problem. The Café Delancey wasn’t cheap, though Nicky was paying for the coffee, thank heavens.
‘We could just have something simple, like poached trout. My treat.’
‘Poached trout’s hardly simple. Anyway, you can’t keep treating me, Nicky. It’s not fair.’
‘Yes, but neither is it fair that I’m paid vastly more than you. Go on – as a favour, to ease my pangs of conscience!’
Catherine laughed. ‘Okay, it sounds delicious. But I insist on cooking you dinner in return.’
‘It beats me how you can talk about cooking dinner, after what you’ve just been through.’
‘Well, I’ll do some ironing for you then.’
‘We’ll see. Anyway, let’s choose the wine. And don’t start telling me you’d rather have water, like you did last time we went out. I hate drinking on my own and we don’t have to keep economizing. That’s one of the few advantages of my job.’
‘All right, I’d love some wine.’ Catherine smiled her thanks. She and Will had been existing mainly on bread and peanut butter. He had ventured out just once to get supplies, but the dire state of their joint finances meant they couldn’t run to luxuries like wine. The car alone had set them back a hundred pounds, and that on top of the tax and insurance. They were using it far more now, on buying trips for the stall, and it had needed two new tyres to get through its MOT. Still, peanut butter had never tasted so blissful, especially when eaten in bed, or licked off Will’s warm fingers …
Leaving Nicky to discuss wines with the waiter, she did a few quick calculations in her head. Her period was due this Thursday, so the risk she had run was minimal. Still she would have to take precautions in the future. She tried to imagine being pregnant at forty-four, breaking the news to Andrew and Antonia that she was going to be a single parent and live on social security.
‘What d’you think, Catherine – the Sancerre or the Saint Veran?’
‘Oh, er … either would be fine.’ She must stop mooning in an erotic dream and concentrate on Nicky. ‘How was your weekend?’ she asked.
‘Fairly tame compared with yours, it seems! And of course, I was miffed about missing my windsurfing. Still, only another month and I’ll be off to the Bitter End.’
‘Where?’
‘The Bitter End. Apparently the name’s rather tongue in cheek, but they say it’s the place to stay on Virgin Gorda.’
‘Oh, your holiday – I see. You haven’t mentioned it for so long, I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s conscience again. I feel like a bloated capitalist swanning off to the Caribbean while you slave all day at the market in the snow.’
‘It’d better not be snowing in mid-April.’
‘You never know, in England. It’ll be a perfect eighty degrees out there. I just wish you could come with me.’
‘But I’d never see you, Nicky. You’d be jumping the waves from dawn to dusk, or whatever it is you do.’
Nicky laughed. ‘Dead right. But perhaps you and Will can get away at Easter, if only for a couple of days?’
‘No chance. The market will be hectic then, so everyone tells me – hordes of foreign tourists pouring in. We’d be crazy to miss all those lovely gullible customers! Still, I may be going to Dorset a week or two before Easter. Keep your fingers crossed! Will’s doing a reading at a festival in Sherborne and he says he can probably sneak me into his hotel.’
‘There you are, you see. No wonder I feel guilty about having a whole luxurious lodge to myself – and right bang on the beach – when you’re sleeping in the wardrobe or something.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it’ll be as bad as that. Actually, Will says he’s lucky to get any accommodation. He’s had to sleep in the car before now, apparently. Some of these festivals are run on a shoestring.’
‘Well at least Dorset’s lovely country. I used to go windsurfing at Swanage.’
‘I doubt if we’ll see much of the country. Apart from his reading, he has to attend several other events. And then he insists on doing a tour of the local junk shops, not to mention the odd boot fair. The prices should be lower there than London.’
‘All work and no play,’ Nicky rutted, nibbling a grissini stick.
‘You can talk!’ Catherine laughed, knowing that if she and Will were sharing a bed there would be a great deal of play, even if they had to forfeit sleep. Last night they’d barely slept – again – too excited, too churned up. He had lain beside her in the dark, asking her every few minutes if she had managed to drop off yet, and after about her seventh ‘no’ he had suddenly got up, groped over to the bureau and returned with a slim notebook. He then proceeded to read her his ‘Catherine’ poem, clearing his throat nervously and stumbling over the lines, as if afraid it wasn’t up to scratch. She couldn’t judge it as a critic would – all she knew was that some passages were so sort of … raw they had sent shivers through her body. It was unlike any poem she’d heard: not conventionally romantic but wild, fierce, yearning, sad. She wanted to hear it a second time, but he had hardly finished reading when he began to write another poem, there and then, sitting on the bed stark naked and scribbling in the notebook. Hardly daring to breathe, she had watched his pencil flying over the page, sometimes stopping abruptly or crossing out so vehemently it all but ripp
ed the paper, then starting again, full speed. She felt a certain awe in witnessing the creative process – and an immense pride that she had inspired it.
‘Ah, here’s the food,’ said Nicky. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to eat and run. I’ve got to work tonight, worse luck. Wayne’s desperate for some ideas for a new shampoo commercial. And he wants them on his desk by ten o’clock tomorrow.’
‘I’ve got an idea.’ Catherine waited for the plates to be unloaded, then continued in an appropriately stagy voice, ‘there’s this guy, about thirty-eight – divorced, dark-haired, impulsive – decides to renovate his flat. He starts ripping off the wallpaper, but the plaster’s old and crumbles away with the paper. There’s dust all over the place, and all over him, especially his hair, which goes completely grey. But – wait for it! – one wash with your wonder shampoo and his girlfriend’s jumping into the plaster-spattered bed with him, running her hands through his thick black curly hair …’
Nicky looked at her in amazement. ‘That’s not bad, you know. It might just work.’
‘Glad to be of help. And I only charge a modest fee! Of course, I’d be happy to accept a post at HHA – Creative Director, say, on a hundred grand a year.’
‘I’ll have a word with the chairman,’ Nicky laughed. ‘Now come on, let’s tuck in. We haven’t got much time.’
Catherine attacked her fish as Will would, eagerly and sensuously, allowing each delicious mouthful to linger on her tongue. She took a piece of bread to mop up some of the sauce, imagining herself a soft slice of farmhouse loaf soaking up Will’s juices. Already he had made her more imaginative – she had a gift for poetic imagery, he said, which ought to be encouraged.
Nicky was eating fast, deftly removing the trout from its bone. ‘I am fond of this place, aren’t you?’
‘Mm,’ said Catherine, feeling her crust and crumb dissolve in Will’s hot mouth and slide into his bloodstream. Today she would have found even Fred’s Caff enticing. But yes, she was fond of the place, although she didn’t come here as often as the others – or only for a coffee. Even so, £1.60 was a bit steep for a cappuccino, compared with 30p for a mug of milky coffee on Rollo’s market stall. Of course, you were paying for the decor: the elegant green china and marble table-tops, the posies of fresh flowers on every table, the Gallic singer crooning in the background. And there was always a bevy of attentive waiters, in black bow ties and long, white, French-style aprons. She watched one gliding past – a younger version of Will – and pictured him without his clothes: the springy whorls of dark hair on his chest, running down to …
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