He clenched his fist against the glass, tempted to smash through it, filch a pair of earrings or a bracelet. But then he’d spend the day behind bars. It would be imprisonment in any case. He couldn’t lunch with Juliet on his wedding anniversary. Thank God for his laryngitis, the perfect foolproof excuse. Though how the hell was he going to let her know, or cancel the reservation at La Barca?
‘BUY HER AN ETERNITY RING’, a cardboard placard urged. ‘DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER’, proclaimed another. Important to stress eternity when four in ten marriages broke down, and (according to the statistics) in another twenty years almost every married couple would end up in the divorce courts. Of course, if the jewellers were shrewd businessmen, they could cash in on the trend and design a special range of trinkets for the divorce market – pendants inscribed with slogans such as. ‘It was great while it lasted’, or ‘Thanks for the memory – goodbye’. But the pendants in the window seemed unashamedly old-fashioned. They either bore a simple name – Sharon, Michelle, Mum – or gushed with schmaltzy sentiment. ‘I love you more each day’, a chunky locket confided to him in elaborate Gothic script, and there were several variations on the theme. ‘I’ll never stop loving you’, ‘I’ll love you more tomorrow than today’. That last one sounded strange: ambiguous, to say the least. Did people really wear such things, take them seriously? Perhaps he ought to buy one for himself, string it round his neck to make its magic work.
He knew which one he’d choose: that eighteen-carat love-heart divided into two; the interlocking edges exactly matching up when you slotted them together. Both halves were engraved: ‘Tony’ on the left, ‘Diana’ on the right, ‘ENGRAVING FREE’ enticed a small card underneath it. Bargains even here. Cut-price love, 10p off fidelity. The only problem was, he needed three halves – Daniel, Penny, Juliet.
He shrugged and turned away, heading back for home. He doubted any jeweller could divide one heart three ways.
Chapter Two
‘Happy anniversary!’ croaked Daniel. He had regained a shred of voice now, coaxed back by tea and gargling.
‘You’re worse,’ said Penny. ‘Much.’
‘No,’ he struggled. ‘Better.’
She reached up to take the tray from him, her right breast still floating free. ‘You’re the one who needs breakfast in bed.’
‘I’ve had mine, in the kitchen.’ The wretched voice kept cracking, but at least it was holding out.
‘What did you have?’
‘A quart of tea, with honey, and two fags.’
‘Oh, no! You’ve given up. I mean, you promised, darling, faithfully.’
He winced to hear that word again. ‘I know.’
‘Oh, Daniel …’
‘Oh, Penn …’
She patted the space beside her; rumpled floral sheets which needed washing. ‘Well, get in anyway. I don’t fancy breakfast on my own, not on our anniversary. I bought you a new lighter, by the way.’
‘Great.’
‘It’s not great. It’s crazy. I bought it a whole month ago, before your Big Decision.’ She made the phrase half-jokey, half-sarcastic.
‘Well, you can probably take it back, tell the shop you …’
‘Wouldn’t you like to see it first?’
‘Yes, ’course.’ He should have warned her after the first occasion not to buy him lighters, but instead he had feigned such gratitude, she kept repeating the performance. It would be unkind to tell her now that the best lighters were the cheapest: matches, Bics, the gas flame on the cooker.
‘I’ll fetch it in a sec. I wrapped it up and everything, but then you really threw me, giving up like that.’
He unlaced his shoes and got into bed beside her, still in his shirt and jeans. ‘So aren’t you glad I’ve weakened, then?’
‘No.’ She kissed him, seriously. His wife never skimped on kisses, always gave full measure, always took her time.
‘You’ll catch my germs,’ he growled, at last.
‘I like your germs. Though I’m afraid they won’t at the office. You’d better not go in today, or you’ll spread that bug around.’
‘I must. I’ve got a meeting. It’ll cause too much aggravation if I miss it.’
‘You said that last time you were ill, and look what happened – in the end you had to take a whole fortnight off. It’s much more sensible to stay at home for a day or two. If you insist on battling on like a martyr, you’ll only go down with something worse.’
He leaned over to the tray and passed her the glass of grapefruit juice. ‘Aren’t you going to eat your breakfast? Your boiled egg’s getting cold.’
‘I like them cold. And don’t change the subject. You look feverish to me.’
‘I’m not. I’m fine. I haven’t even …’
‘It’s selfish, Daniel, honestly, making everyone else ill, just because you’re a workaholic and too stubborn to see sense.’
He lay back against the pillows in a posture of defeat. It was bad enough being deceitful and weak-willed, without adding selfish martyred stubbornness to his catalogue of vices. ‘Okay, you win,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll languish on my sick-bed all day, and won’t even think of work.’ Except he’d have to think of Juliet: how on earth he could get in touch with her if he didn’t leave his bed?
‘Good boy!’ said Penny, stroking his hair from his forehead.
She had left her hand against his brow, as if rewarding him for compliance. It felt soothing and arousing both at once. He slid his own hand down towards her breast, savouring its warmth, its weight. ‘Penny …’
‘Mm?’
‘I love you.’ He prayed God it was true still.
‘Love you too.’
‘I’ll love you more tomorrow than today.’
‘What?’ She pushed him off, took a sip of juice. ‘Why more tomorrow? What’s happening tomorrow?’
‘Nothing. I’ll just love you more each day.’
‘You’re taking the mick.’
‘I’m not. And here’s your present. D’you want it now, or after your cold egg?’
‘Now!’ Her full attention was already on the package, squeezing it and shaking it, sniffing at the paper like an eager dog at a fox-hole. He had found some gift-wrap in a drawer (the sheet she’d bought for him, most likely: his lighter and her earrings decked out alike in purple stripes).
She ripped the paper off. Penny never untied knots or unpeeled sticky-tape. It was one of the crazy reasons why he loved her – if he only knew what love was.
She was opening the padded box, exclaiming at its contents, stroking the plush velvet of the lining; her voice high-pitched with excitement. ‘Oh, Daniel, they’re gorgeous!’
Her whole plump and freckled face expressed unabashed delight; the flax-blue eyes crinkling at the corners, the fair brows lifted and alert, the wide mouth open, displaying gappy teeth. Her skin was fragile-pale beneath the freckles, in contrast to the shock of hair above – shock in every sense: carrot-coloured wire-wool hair, which made people turn their heads. In the early days, he had been embarrassed by the attention it aroused – the way total strangers would stare at him as well, as if examining his credentials as chaperone to such a mop. It would never lie flat, he knew that, and it was impossible to imagine it ever going grey. His wife would reach her hundredth birthday with brittle bones and dicky heart, but hair still that outrageous red.
‘In fact, they’re almost too good to wear. I’d be scared to death of losing them. They must have cost a bomb.’
They had. More than he had ever spent in any jeweller’s shop before; more than he could reasonably afford.
‘Are they real stones?’
‘Yes. Pearls and amethysts. They’re late Victorian.’
She unhooked them from their velvet throne, handling them with reverence, almost awe. ‘Wherever did you find them?’
He laughed, a forced and false laugh. ‘My secret. Aren’t you going to try them on?’
She fumbled at her ear-lobe to locate the tiny hole. He turned away, co
uldn’t bear to watch. It seemed barbaric, piercing ears, like those tribesmen in the bush with bones bored through their noses, sticking out two inches either side.
She leapt from bed to dressing-table, all but toppling the tray; stood close up to the mirror, her full attention first on one ear, then the other.
‘Well?’ he asked, voice hoarse.
‘They’re fabulous! The best present you’ve ever bought me in my life.’ She started strutting around the room, tossing her head to make the earrings swing, touching them, admiring them. The transparent nightdress revealed her pubic hair – a tamer red than her head-hair, but still flaming through the washy flesh-pink nylon. He grabbed her almost roughly, steered her back towards the bed, pushing aside the breakfast tray, the torn and crumpled gift-wrap. Guilt twinged again as he noticed the red blotch on her arm, five-fingered from his grip. Her skin bruised terribly easily. The merest touch could mark it. He unbuttoned his shirt, began tugging at his belt.
‘Daniel, no, you mustn’t! You can’t possibly feel well enough to …’
He kissed her silent, peeled offher nightie, then pressed his bare chest against her warm and naked flesh. ‘You can help out with some first aid,’ he whispered. ‘Loving ministrations and the laying on of hands.’
She let him overrule her; used her hands obediently: slipping off his shirt and jeans and drawing him towards her on the bed. Her sleep-lapped body smelt of sweat and talc, a smell of rancid honeysuckle he found peculiarly exciting. His mouth moved slowly down towards her thighs. He kissed their flabby plumpness, though pain was lasering through his throat in vicious spiky jabs. He was angry with his throat, angry with a lot of things, not least his own damned guilt. How could he desire her yet deceive her? It was perverse to crave two women at once, even love them both – though love was such a baffling word, he could only use it now with a sense of dislocation. Penny was right: he shouldn’t be making love at all, not with his sore throat and tangled life. Yet, despite the pain and guilt and sheer confusion (or maybe even because of them), he seemed to have spurred himself into a state of wild excitement. And Penny was responding, already whimpering underneath him; her head thrown back, her face screwed up in a provocative grimace. Watching that transformation never failed to fascinate him – the way his bouncy, scatty wife could turn into a vamp: her eyes closing languorously while her mouth drooled slowly open; tongue thrust out, begging to be kissed.
He kissed it, grazed her lips, tasting the sweet sharpness of the grapefruit juice. He was too impatient to continue the caress; burned to be inside her, working off his anger in an act of passionate love. He was aware at some deep level of the paradox involved, but he justified himself because his fury so aroused her. She had started moving with him, picking up his rhythm; her mouth and eyes clamped shut in concentration. She kept crying out, ‘I love it, I adore it!’ over and over and over, in a sort of breathless snorting gasp; her nails hurting where they dug into his back. The rhythm was so urgent now, the earrings had joined in – shaking, dangling, sparkling in the sunlight – Juliet’s earrings, chosen with such scrupulous care for her birthday this weekend.
In an instant he deflated, faltered to a stop. He willed himself to stiffen; did his frantic best to keep his mind off Juliet. He conjured up a different girl – the nymphet in the newsagent’s who wore her skirt up round her crotch, and had sultry bee-stung lips. She was no help whatsoever, so he started flicking desperately through the newspapers she sold: page-three bimbos with pneumatic tits but tightly virgin cunts. Even they were useless. He had lost all contact and was actually sliding out; Penny’s panting cries dwindling away to nothing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, as much to Juliet as to Penny. Pearls were her birthstone, and he had scoured a dozen high-class jewellers’ to find something which would suit her perfect taste.
Penny didn’t seem to hear. She looked restless and frustrated, as she struggled vainly to coax him back to life. ‘Listen,’ she whispered, using her fingers as a splint. ‘Let’s try it with me kneeling and you standing behind me at the foot of the bed. That worked last time, didn’t it?’
Yes, the last time I was limp, he thought, shuddering at a memory he had no wish to recall. It had happened a couple of weeks ago, and was also due to Juliet. He had spent the evening in her flat; returned exhausted to a voracious wife.
‘I … I don’t think it’s going to work again.’
‘Just relax, darling. It will! You’ll recover in a moment, if you don’t get in such a state.’
‘I’m not in a state.’
‘You are!’
He was becoming tenser still. Penny’s efforts to revive him only made things worse. Her eagerness was mortifying; underlined his sense of abject failure. Shamefacedly, he did as she suggested, standing at the end of the bed while she knelt on all fours. He tried to ignore the inner voice warning him it wouldn’t work, and braced himself against her, shutting his eyes against the sun.
‘That’s it, darling, that’s great!’
Her words misfired, as intrusive as the sun, producing not the desired effect, but its ignominious opposite. The miraculous moment’s contact vanished with her praises, and he was reduced again to nothing.
‘Look, it’s no good, Penny. The longer we go on, the worse it’s going to get.’ His voice was giving out as well – impotent twice over.
She slipped down from the bed, put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, darling. It’s only because you’re ill. We’re crazy to be doing it at all.’
He was grateful that she didn’t say ‘I told you so’. Indeed, she sounded so forgiving and affectionate, he felt even more ashamed. He reached out for his dressing-gown, wrapped it tightly round himself to hide his dangling nakedness, then sagged down on the stool. The sudden silence in the room seemed like a rebuke, but he was terrified of breaking it. In his present flustered state, he might forget his usual caution and blurt out Juliet’s name, in an effort to explain the situation. Juliet was definitely to blame. The failures had only happened in the seven weeks since he’d met her – seven weeks of ecstasy and guilt. If only there weren’t the parallels: seven weeks, seven years; Pippa’s thirteenth birthday the same day as Juliet’s forty-first. Weird to have a mistress a decade older than one’s wife.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Penny. Her nipples were erect still – another silent reproof.
‘Mm.’
‘I only hope it hasn’t made you worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got a temperature now.’
He shook his head, but she was already moving towards the door. ‘I’ll go and get the thermometer.’
‘Okay.’ He dragged himself to his feet, made a half-hearted attempt to straighten out the dishevelled bed, then slumped against the pillows. He was fairly sure his temperature was normal, but he welcomed the chance of a few moments on his own. His skull was splitting from the cacophony inside it – booming condemnations of his betrayal and deceit; cavils from the office about his absence from the meeting today; quieter but still niggling voices, reminding him that he had no present now for Juliet. He couldn’t palm her off with the sort of cheap and cheerful jewellery Penny might accept. His mistress was a thoroughbred. ‘The type you should have married,’ his mother’s voice cut in, adding to the babel in his head. His mother had never known his wife. After retiring from her lifetime’s work in Africa, she had gone to live in Paris (where he had joined her four years later, still a confirmed bachelor, accepting a job in an educational research unit only a mile or so from her flat). But he knew instinctively that she wouldn’t have approved. Penny was too scatterbrained, and not serious enough; more concerned with painting murals on the local shopping-centre walls, or rescuing injured hedgehogs from the bypass, than with improving the lot of suffering humanity.
But would he have married Juliet, he wondered, if he weren’t already committed? True, they had a lot in common – worked in the same field, attended the same lectures, enjoyed the same books and plays and music. The
first time they’d been out together, she’d had tickets for the Wigmore Hall – Schubert Lieder, sung by Wolfgang Holzmair. Penny had never heard of him; preferred Stephen Sondheim to Schubert. And Juliet was something of a wine-buff, even nosed out certain vintages at auctions, whereas Penny had no preferences beyond dryish white and not-too-heavy red.
His eye fell on the wedding photo which shared the dressing-table with Penny’s creams and clobber – jars, tubes, bottles, potions, clustering like wedding guests around the bride and groom. If he had his way, he’d consign it to the attic. Most wedding photos seemed a shade absurd, especially seven years on, and theirs was no exception. He looked stiff and snooty, while Penny had her hat askew and was turning slightly away from him, as if she’d just spotted someone better and was about to dash off in pursuit. He was appalled to think he had ever dressed so stuffily, bought such boring ties. His flamboyant wife had changed him – but then he had changed her too. If the process carried on, he’d be wearing beads and caftan, and she’d be neat and organized, with a Filofax and filing system.
‘Sorry I was so long.’ Penny barged in again, still without her clothes. It always disconcerted him the way she wandered around stark naked, apparently blithely unconcerned that people could see her from the street.
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