Paradise News

by David Lodge

  She laughed and said he was incorrigible. “Tomorrow we’ll have more light,” she said. “Tomorrow will be raunchier. But now it’s my turn to find out what your body feels like.”

  “It’s nothing to write home about, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s OK. Some loss of muscle tone around here,” she said, pinching his abdomen. “Do you work out?”

  “I walk a lot at home.”

  “Walking’s good exercise, but you should do something a little more strenuous.”

  “What do you do? You don’t seem to have an ounce of surplus flesh.”

  “I play a lot of tennis. Lewis and I used to be Faculty Mixed Doubles champions. Now I play with Roxy.”

  He wished she hadn’t mentioned Lewis and Roxy. These names reminded him that she had a real life, complex and particular, beyond the confines of this room and bed. But her hands gradually massaged his anxieties away. Slowly, methodically, Yolande worked over every inch of his body except his private parts. It was as if she were sculpting his body in the darkness, making him aware of its contours and limits for the first time. For so long he had treated it like a suit of shabby but serviceable clothes, which he put on in the morning and took off at night, living entirely in his mind. Now he realized that he also lived in this strange forked flawed amalgam of flesh and bone, blood and sinew, liver and lungs. For the first time since childhood, he felt alive from his fingertips to his toes. Once she brushed his erect penis with her hand, and murmured an apology. “Shall we make love?” he said.

  “No,” she said, “not yet.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “No, not tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow there was more light in the room, and they split a half-bottle of white wine from the minibar before they began. Yolande was bolder and more loquacious. “Today is still touching only, but nowhere is off-limits, we can touch where we like, how we like, OK? And it needn’t be just hands, you can also use your mouth and your tongue. Would you like to suck my breasts? Go ahead. Is that nice? Good, it’s nice for me. Can I suck you? Don’t worry, I’ll squeeze it hard like this and that’ll stop you coming. OK. Relax. Was that nice? Good. Sure I like to do it. Sucking and licking are very primal pleasures. Of course, it’s easy to see what pleases a man, but with women it’s different, it’s all hidden inside and you’ve got to know your way around, so lick your finger, and I’ll give you the tour.”

  He was shocked, bemused, almost physically winded by this sudden acceleration into a tabooless candour of word and gesture. But he was elated too. He hung on for dear life. “Are we going to make love today?” he pleaded.

  “This is making love, Bernard,” she said. “I’m having a wonderful time, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but you know what I mean.”

  “Are we going to make love today?” he asked, as he unbuttoned her red dress. “I mean really make love.”

  “No, not today. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” he wailed. “What in the name of God is there left to do between yesterday and tomorrow?”

  “Well this, for one thing,” she said, stepping out of her dress. She was wearing a one-piece undergarment of white lace-trimmed satin.

  He shut his eyes and shook his head. “Yolande, Yolande …”

  “What’s the matter? Doesn’t this turn you on?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “Then help me take it off.”

  He plucked clumsily at the shoulder straps and she freed her arms. The garment fell to her hips and exposed her breasts. He kissed them tenderly and groaned, “Yolande, Yolande, what are you doing to me?”

  “You could call it sex education. It’s the American way, Bernard. Everything can be taught. How to be successful. How to write a novel. How to have sex.”

  “Have you taught anyone else before?”

  “No. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  “Ethical!” He giggled a little hysterically. “Why is it ethical with me?”

  “Because you’re not a client. You’re a friend.”

  “You seem so expert at it.”

  “If you must know, Lewis had a potency problem about eight years ago. We went to a therapist together. It worked.”

  The undergarment slithered to the floor, and she stood before him, compact, shapely, tawny as a Gauguin nude except for the pale outline of a two-piece swimming-costume across her bosom and loins. He fell to his knees and pressed his face against her belly, stroking her flanks. “You’re so beautiful,” he said.

  “Mmm, that’s nice,” she said, gently massaging his scalp with her fingers. “It’s wonderful to have someone hold you in their arms again.”

  “Has there been anyone else since Lewis left?”

  “No, there hasn’t. When I get horny, I make do with a vibrator. Does that shock you?”

  “Nothing shocks me any more,” said Bernard. “Sometimes I think you must be a witch, a beautiful dark-eyed witch. How else could I do these things without dying of shame and embarrassment? And with the woman who nearly killed my father, too.”

  “If I was a Freudian,” said Yolande, drawing him to his feet, “I might say that was part of the attraction. You were attracted to me from the very beginning, weren’t you, Bernard?”

  “Yes, I was. I remembered you so vividly after the accident, in your red dress. I never dreamed that one day I would be helping you take it off.”

  “There you are. Life is full of surprises. Lie face down.”

  “Quite against the run of play.”

  “What?” She began her methodical sensuous massage of his neck and shoulders.

  “Oh, nothing. It was a phrase that came up in conversation with Ursula today.”

  “What do you two talk about?”

  “Today we were talking about heaven.”

  “But you don’t believe in heaven!”

  “No, but I know a lot about it.”

  Yolande laughed. “There speaks the true academic.”

  “What about you?”

  “I think we have to make our own heaven on this earth,” said Yolande. “And answer our own prayers. Like you did when you found your key on the beach. Turn over, will you?”

  “Can’t we make love now?” he pleaded.

  “What we’re going to do today,” said Yolande, “is you’re going to practice coming inside me without coming, if you follow. If you feel yourself coming, you’ve got to tell me, OK? Now we know you can’t possibly have any nasty sexual diseases – in fact, come to think of it, Bernard, you must be the safest lay in Honolulu. You could sell your body to the rich widows at the Royal Hawaiian for a fortune. And in case you’ve been wondering, I had an HIV test the day after I discovered Lewis had been cheating on me, and it was negative –”

  “It never crossed my mind,” said Bernard.

  “Well, it should have, and just to be absolutely safe I’m going to put a condom on you … OK? I’m going to kneel astride you like this, and very gently take you inside me, like this, and we’re just going to stay like this for a minute or two, quite still, OK? How does it feel?”

  “Heavenly,” he said.

  “How about that? Feel that?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Pretty good muscle tone, huh? I read somewhere Hawaiian grandmothers used to teach their granddaughters how to do that. They called it amo amo. It means ‘wink, wink,’ literally. I’m talking my head off like this to stop you coming.”

  “I love, I love.”

  “What?”

  “Amo is Latin for ‘I love’.”

  “Oh, it is? Now I’m just going to move gently up and down a few times, like that, OK? Then I’m going to raise myself off you.”

  “No,” said Bernard, holding her down by her hips.

  “Then in a few minutes we’ll do it again.”

  “No,” said Bernard. “Don’t go away.”

  “The idea is that you get a sense of control over your erection.”

  “I’ve been controlling my erections for the last three days
,” he said. “What I want to do now is lose control.”

  “You can bring yourself to climax afterwards,” said Yolande. “I’ll help you, if you like.”

  “No thankyou,” he said. “I haven’t lost all sense of shame, you know. I still draw the line somewhere. Let’s stop the lessons, Yolande. Let’s make love, I love you, Yolande.”

  “I think we should talk about this,” she said, trying to lift herself off him. But he arched his back and held her. “Don’t go away,” he sobbed, losing control. “Don’t go away, don’t go away, don’t go away!”

  “OK! OK! OK! Oh!” she gasped.

  Afterwards they pulled a sheet over themselves and slept, curled up close together like spoons. Yolande woke him by switching on the bedside lamp. It appeared to be dark outside. “My God!” Yolande exclaimed, screwing up her eyes at her watch. “Roxy will be wondering where the hell I am.”

  She made a quick phone call to her daughter, sitting naked on the edge of the bed. When Bernard began to stroke her shoulder, she grasped his hand and held it still. She put down the phone and began rapidly to dress.

  “Same time tomorrow?” he said.

  She gave him a strange, shy smile. “The course is over, Bernard. Congratulations. You graduated.”

  “I thought I failed,” he said. “I thought I jumped the gun.”

  “You flunked the sex education,” she said, “but you passed in Assertiveness Training.”

  “I love you, Yolande.”

  “Are you sure you’re not confusing gratitude with love?”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” he said. “Except that I want to see you again.”

  “OK. Tomorrow afternoon, then.”

  She darted her head forward to give him her usual friendly kiss of goodbye, but he put his arms round her and kissed her long and passionately. “I never knew till today what ‘to sleep with’ someone really meant,” he said.

  “That’s nice, Bernard, but I have to run.”

  As was their usual practice, Bernard allowed a few minutes to elapse after Yolande’s departure before he followed her down to the lobby. It was thronged with guests returning from their day’s excursions, or preparing to go out for the evening. He looked benevolently upon their garish casual clothes, their sunburned faces and empty chatter. He dropped his key in the slot provided and sidled unnoticed through the crowd, out into the balmy evening. A few drops of warm rain sprinkled his face agreeably. Pineapple juice, the locals called these evanescent wind-borne showers, according to Sophie Knoepflmacher. He let himself be carried along by the stream of humanity on the sidewalk, floating rather than walking. He felt rested, refreshed, renewed. He felt serenely happy. He felt hungry.

  Finding himself near Paradise Pasta, he went inside and asked for a table. Darlette brought him iced water and asked him how he was this evening. “I’m fine,” he said. Feeling that this epithet scarcely did justice to his state of mind, he added, “Over the moon.” It had been a favourite phrase of Thomas’s.

  “That’s great,” said Darlette, with a wide unfocused smile. “Tonight we have a special? Seafood Tagliatelli? Shrimp, clams and flaked swordfish in a cream sauce?”

  “I’ll have it,” said Bernard. And he did, and it was delicious. He had two glasses of white wine with the meal, and hummed the tune of “I Love Hawaii,” which was being belted out again by the pomaded singer in the open-air floorshow, as he walked back to the apartment. He was still humming to himself as he came out of the elevator. Mrs Knoepflmacher seemed to have been lying in wait for him, for she sprang out of her apartment as he passed the door.

  “Western Union delivered a cable for you this afternoon,” she said. “I told the man he could leave it with me, but he put it under your door.”

  “Oh, right, thankyou,” said Bernard.

  “I hope it isn’t bad news,” said Mrs Knoepflmacher.

  “So do I,” said Bernard.

  The envelope was lying just inside the door of the apartment. Bernard stooped to pick it up.

  “Is it there?” said Mrs Knoepflmacher, over his shoulder, making him start. She had followed him silently up the corridor.

  “Yes, thankyou, Mrs Knoepflmacher,” he said. “Quite safe. Goodnight.” And he closed the door.

  The cable said: “ARRIVING HONOLULU MONDAY 21ST FLIGHT DL 157 AT 8.20 P.M. PLEASE MEET ME AT AIRPORT TESS.”

  Bernard flopped into an armchair and stared at the piece of paper. He felt his euphoria rapidly draining away. The free, independent, secret life he had led for the last ten days would come to an end. Tess would take over – take over his father, take over Ursula, take over the management of the apartment. She would hustle and scold and issue orders. She would requisition Ursula’s bedroom and make him sleep on the couch and fold it away first thing in the morning, and wash up directly after every meal. She would send him out with shopping lists. She would be suspicious if he continued his assignations with Yolande, and scandalized if she discovered their relationship.

  He telephoned Yolande, and read out the cable to her.

  “Is this is a surprise?” she said.

  “A complete surprise. Tess always claims she can’t do this sort of thing because of her family responsibilities.” He explained to her about Patrick.

  “Perhaps she’s bringing Patrick with her.”

  “No, they never fly with him. He’s subject to fits.”

  “Why did she cable? Why didn’t she just call?”

  “So I couldn’t put her off. It’s a fait accompli. It’s Monday morning already in England. She’ll have left home by now.”

  “And you have no idea why she’s coming?”

  “I suppose she’s worried about Daddy … though she spoke to him on the phone just the other day.” An idea struck him. “He would have told her about Ursula’s windfall, that’s probably it.”

  “She wants to get hold of Ursula’s money?”

  “She wants to stop me getting hold of it,” said Bernard. “She thinks I’m intriguing to inherit Ursula’s fortune. She’s thought that all along.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if you two get along too well,” Yolande said.

  “No, we don’t, I’m afraid.”

  “You should stop saying that, Bernard.”

  “Saying what?”

  “‘I’m afraid.’”

  Mr Walsh was delighted to hear, the next morning, that Tess was coming out to Honolulu. “That’s grand,” he said. “Now we’ll see some action around here. She’ll get a grip on these doctors and nurses, I’m telling you.” He persisted in thinking that the medical staff of St Joseph’s were detaining him in hospital unnecessarily in order to extract maximum profit from his medical insurance. “Tess will tell them what’s what. She’ll have me out of here in no time. She’ll take me home.”

  “Did you ask her to come and fetch you?” Bernard said accusingly.

  “No, I did not,” Mr Walsh replied emphatically. “It never crossed my mind that she could get away from home, not to mention the cost. But Ursula will see her right, won’t she? She can afford to, now.”

  “If Tess needs any help with the fare, I’m sure Ursula will gladly give it,” said Bernard. “But nobody asked her to come. I don’t see the point of it.”

  “At a time like this,” Mr Walsh said piously, “families should rally round. It will be a comfort to Ursula to see Tess.”

  “I’ll be very glad to see Tess, of course,” said Ursula. “But right now I’m more excited at the prospect of seeing Jack next Wednesday. Nervous, too, now it’s actually going to happen.”

  “Nervous?”

  “It’s been such a long time. And when he speaks to me on the phone, which isn’t all that often, he seems so cold, so defensive.”

  “You know Daddy. He doesn’t express emotion very easily. Neither do I, come to that. It’s a family trait.”

  “I know.” Ursula relapsed into a somewhat gloomy silence. When she broke it, it seemed a reversion to their conversation of the previous day
. “That man who said heaven was like a dream in which everybody gets what they desire … Did he include sex?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bernard, startled. “I can’t recall whether he mentioned it. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be included.”

  “Our Lord said there was no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven, didn’t He?”

  “Many Christians have found that a hard saying, and tried to find ways around it,” said Bernard. “Swedenborg, for instance.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A Swedish mystic of the eighteenth century. There’s a lot of stuff in his books about heavenly nuptials. He thought you would marry your true soul-mate in heaven and have a rather ethereal kind of sexual intercourse. He wasn’t married himself, but he had his eye on a certain Countess, whose husband was conveniently going to be a cat in the next world.”

  “A cat?”

  “Yes, Swedenborg thought that spiritually undeveloped souls would be cats in the afterlife.”

  “He wasn’t a Catholic, then.”

  “No, a Lutheran. There’s a sect that based itself on his writings, called the Church of the New Jerusalem. Come to think of it, Protestants have always been keener on sex in heaven than Catholics. Milton, for instance. Charles Kingsley. There was a Catholic theologian in the sixteenth century, I can’t remember his name now, who thought that a lot of kissing went on in heaven. He said the saints could exchange kisses at a distance, even if they were separated by thousands of miles.”

  “Kissing wasn’t my problem,” said Ursula. “I always liked kissing and cuddling. It was the other business I couldn’t get on with.”

  Bernard’s flight of donnish wit faltered and stalled. He was silent, uncertain how to respond.

  “I never satisfied Rick that way. I could never let myself go. That’s what he said when we broke up.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bernard mumbled.

  “I could never bring myself to touch his … his thing, you see. Just couldn’t do it.” She was talking in a kind of weary drawl, her eyes closed, like someone making their confession. “He used to make me hold it and then stuff like catarrh would squirt out of the little hole in the top, over my hand.”

  “Rick made you do that?” Bernard whispered.