‘I’ve finished with them now.’
She yawned. ‘I intend to slide into decadence without a fight.’
‘Perhaps I’ll slide with you,’ he said, taking the newspaper and running away into it.
She didn’t seem to remember. He’d told her when they were first married that he did it for her. He kept fit for her. Not that the giving up now meant anything about his feelings for her. He valued their marriage. He had very deep affection for her. Giving up the exercises only meant something about him. Not the marriage. He wanted to be released from the obligation. She didn’t seem to remember. But he couldn’t raise it with her. Not yet anyhow. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge. It was all too troublesome now.
The incident of the second meeting with Louise
His meeting with Louise was accidental although he accepted the responsibility for what followed. His wife had flown to New Zealand to see her parents and this was a contributing circumstance.
‘Have a drink with me,’ she had said when they met in the street.
‘Sure,’ he replied. He had intended to dine alone and expensively – in the pleasure of his own company. The newly discovered pleasure of being alone.
Once the compulsion had been to dine with someone, or to have drinks with someone, and, before marriage, to spend the night with some woman.
However he abandoned the idea of eating alone and they went to a quiet bar. But he was determined to have no sex.
She was as charming as before – with a touch of vivacity which he had not noticed before – perhaps she was making an effort to please as some sort of compensation for what she must have accepted as rather a dismal sexual encounter on the earlier occasion and which had not been followed up by him or by her. Not that he really felt she was to blame for the dismal nature of it.
‘I’m still selling the British,’ she told him, ‘still publicly relating. Now it’s Swinging Britain, of course.’
She sipped her drink. ‘Actually I think the BIS could find a more suitable person – I’m not really the sort to sell Swinging Britain – I am, after all, of another generation.’
‘Nonsense, Louise, you’re a with-it woman.’
‘And you’re a darling for saying it,’ she said touching his hand.
‘But,’ she said, ‘I was happier selling Conservative Grey Britain, What I’m terrified of is …’
‘Not disintegration again – please,’ he laughed.
She laughed with him lightly.
‘No, I’m not in that mood,’ she said. ‘What scares me today is those ridiculous old ladies in boots and mini skirts and coloured stockings.’
‘… and Twiggy haircuts,’ he laughed.
‘Yes, it’s a delicate problem for a Lady. The young fashions are so terribly tempting.’
‘You’re safe for a while yet, Louise.’
‘As long as I know when the Swinging Divorcee has become the Ridiculous Old Lady.’
Soon the alcohol and the fact they obviously both had no commitment for the evening brought about a casual, light, intimacy.
‘It’s not as though I don’t love her,’ he said, ‘but her absence made me realise that one loses the pleasure of being alone.’
‘I’ll go immediately,’ she laughed.
‘You know that when she returns I think I’ll even scheme to have time to myself – alone.’
She nodded.
‘After marriage one never considers dining alone.’
‘I know, darling, I know.’
Their eyes caught and satellited desire. His thinking stopped but he looked away and broke the glance. He wanted to get back to the safety of words.
‘It’s not as though I’m becoming a recluse,’ he said.
She took up the conversation again, acknowledging his unwillingness to go with desire.
They talked. They lightly held hands. Her hands did not feel dead. Her hands gave off a warmth. The holding of hands was, though, simply a gesture of the moment. It was not an early stage on the progression to physical intimacy. He was determined. He wanted only to talk for a while.
‘Come home and I’ll make you something to eat – a snack,’ she said.
He hesitated but realised, anyhow, he would have to drive her home. He was hungry as well.
‘That would be perfect.’
They drove.
‘New car?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I love the smell of new cars.’
‘I do too!’ he said with some surprise. ‘I like my newly painted rooms. I like the smell of all new things.’
‘What is it? I can’t tell cars.’
‘A Rover.’
They drove in silence. He said after a while, ‘I don’t like women to have blemishes in their dress either – holed stockings, peeling finger-nail paint. I like things to be in good shape and repair.’
He wondered if he’d embarrassed her. No, she was one of those women who had everything in good shape. Except their psyche.
They reached the flat. He poured the drinks while she hurriedly picked up a few things from the floor of the bedroom and living room. Then .she made open sandwiches on black bread.
‘Why do you go with other women?’ she asked as they ate.
‘Well, in fact, I seldom do.’
She grinned with gentle disbelief.
‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘you were the first for years.’
‘I suppose I should be flattered.’
He shrugged. He wouldn’t have called it an affair.
‘Why the rare occasions?’
He thought and then said, ‘On two occasions I did it for pure sexual satisfaction. Another city. And once it was a gesture to an old affair.’
They were silent for a while. He thought she was probably wondering what her category was – sexual satisfaction or something else.
He worried that she might be heading for depression.
But she came back to the conversation brightly.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ he was alert, cautious.
‘It’s one of those things which is difficult to tell friends – I mean everyday friends. It involves loss of face – even though it is a good thing to have happened. Do you know the sort of thing I mean?’
He said, ‘I don’t think I do.’
‘Well, I feel I can tell you because we don’t really expect that much of each other – we don’t see each other frequently and so on.’
He agreed, wondering.
‘But even then what I have to tell you is embarrassing.’
She was enjoying creating the suspense.
He couldn’t imagine. Was she pregnant?
‘You’re intriguing me.’
‘I just don’t know how to say it.’
She filled her glass.
‘Surely, Louise, at our age …’ he gave her his legal smile, to encourage confidence.
She buttered herself a biscuit.
‘I had my first orgasm recently,’ she said.
She blushed. He smiled, unsteadily. He felt very wary of unwanted intimacy.
‘Great,’ he said.
‘And I’m not actually at the beginning of my sexual experience,’ she said.
‘That’s really great.’
She continued, more freely, ‘It’s not as though I have not had – well, had a sex life – but orgasm, no.’
‘It must have been some experience,’ he said, uncomfortably, finding it difficult to say anything appropriate. A feeling he had on rare occasions with an over-frank client. ‘Are you in love?’ he asked, feeling somehow that the question was naive.
‘No, not really – not really at all,’ she thought aloud. ‘The man was … only instrumental.’ She giggled, ‘If that’s the word.’
He smiled.
‘I didn’t mean to sound cold about it,’ she rushed to say. ‘It wasn’t cold at all.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ he assured her.
He was having great di
fficulty in expressing himself. At university when he had drunk with the Push it had been a bit easier. But that was talk about sex in a tough undergraduate vocabulary. He didn’t seem to talk about sex much now.
‘Telling you how it happened is more difficult,’ she said, ‘but I feel pretty amazed about it. And there’s nothing worse than being terribly amazed and not being able to share it.’
‘I know,’ he said; he guessed he knew.
‘What happened was – that he went up my … anus,’ she said, with a tone of mature coyness. ‘Of course, he went in my … as well.’
Her sentence broke down with the same shyness. She blushed again.
‘Was it the first time … that way?’ he asked.
‘Yes, why? Is it … usual?’
‘I guess it isn’t,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘You don’t always think to do it.’
‘It was the pain of it and the thrill of it and his way of talking and the sort of man he was. All those things.’
‘That sounds rather beautiful,’ he managed to say.
‘I hadn’t thought of myself as frigid,’ she said, ‘I’ve always liked sex. But it was probably more a way someone showed interest or affection rather than for itself.’
‘Probably means you’ve resolved something in your mind.’
‘Perhaps. I find a few hard truths aren’t hard anymore.’
He took her in his arms. Mainly as a gesture of affection, somehow appropriate to the experience just shared with him. He hadn’t meant to kiss, but they did. Her kiss was still restrained in the way it had been the first time, but not tense.
They stood in each other’s arms, rocking, not saying anything.
Then she said softly, ‘Do you want to go to bed with me?’
He looked at her, kissed her lightly, with the memory of the lifeless skin fading in his mind screened off by alcohol and creeping desire. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, not knowing, as he answered whether he did or not.
They moved to the bed, undressing themselves and each other in interplay.
She quickly wiped off her make-up while he held her from behind. They rolled then together on to the bed, lying outside the bed clothes. The temperature seemed right for that.
Her skin was not dead. She was not clammy from tension. She was responsive in a tentative way.
‘I don’t subscribe to the mumbo jumbo of the orgasm,’ he whispered to her, ‘but you seem happier in bed.’
‘Perhaps we just know each other better,’ she said.
‘Perhaps.’
It was freer, still a little restrained, but freer and more responsive. He did what she had found she liked.
Afterwards he lay close to her, tired and released.
He wondered about it. Whether it was the last flare of her body before it died away. The last bright burning before the disintegration she had felt so strongly.
‘Are you still disintegrating?’ he asked, quietly.
‘It’s slowed down,’ she said, smiling. ‘Perhaps it’s stopped for a while.’
‘Do you see much of the man?’
She didn’t answer, as though thinking of who he meant. ‘You mean the man,’ she said. ‘Yes, fairly often.’
‘Is it still good?’
‘Yes, still good.’
‘That’s good.’
They lay in silence. He smoked.
Then as if she felt she should, she said, ‘You’re a good lover.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You are, I mean it,’ she emphasised.
He had no reason to go home but he felt he owed it to his absent wife – as a ritual – a gesture.
‘I’m going now,’ he said, kissing her.
‘Phone me,’ she said, sleepily.
He dressed and left. Driving home, he wanted to also tell his wife about this, the revitalisation of Louise. But he could not, because (a) that was not the way they worked their marriage, and (b) she was in New Zealand.
The incident of the birthday dinner
The dinner had reached cheese. Roger and Cindy were smoking. His wife had asked about coffee but everyone seemed content to stay on wine.
The conversation had fragmented into three smaller groupings.
He and Julien were talking across the table.
‘Tell me, Julien – what do you think about death?’
‘My God,’ she said, ‘why so morbid?’
‘Well, birthdays are like that – at my age – no, seriously, I’m curious.’
‘What can one say?’ she said, cutting some cheese, ‘it’s unthinkable in – the logical sense.’
‘You can speculate – and some things might seem more probable than others.’
‘Which do you consider the most probable?’ she asked.
‘I used to favour the Disintegration Theory – you know, that’s it – dead – the end. But now I’m more inclined to Transmutation.’
‘What?!’ Cindy broke across the table into the conversation, cutting across Sally and Roger.
‘What do you think of death?’ he said, turning to her.
‘Are you becoming all mystical?’ There was a touch of derision in her voice.
‘Just interested,’ he said, smiling. ‘You’re probably too young, Cindy.’
‘What’s transmutation?’ Julien asked.
He turned back to her. ‘Reincarnation was probably the primitive form of the theory,’ he said, ‘the idea that we change into complete whole new forms. Transmutation would have it that we change into another living form – ashes become part of the living soil and through the soil we become part of living plants, and in turn part of a living creature. We go on changing form.’
‘Oh really,’ Cindy said, sarcastically.
‘Well, what do you think happens, Cindy?’
‘Nothing. We just die – turn to dust. Nothing,’ she said impatiently.
‘Well, I suppose no one at this table would support the Christian view.’
‘That’s the next thing – you’re obviously on the way,’ Cindy said aggressively.
‘Take it easy, baby,’ Roger said to her.
‘I will not,’ she said back to him, in a private-public tone.
‘I’m intrigued with how people view death as it approaches them,’ he said, mainly to Julien. ‘It’s the big inevitable event about which we know nothing.’ He caught his wife looking at him with interest. He had never discussed it with her.
‘We know it’s just the end,’ Cindy said loudly, ‘and it’s not worth discussing.’
‘I’m terrified,’ Sally said, ‘simply terrified.’
They laughed, except Cindy.
‘What makes you so sure there is no felt experience after death, Cindy?’ he asked, perhaps a little irritably.
‘I think you’re becoming a neurotic old man,’ Cindy said toughly. ‘Now you’re a success you’ll start worrying about immortality – youth drugs – and next you’ll be screaming for a priest.’
‘It is a rather normal interest, I would have thought,’ Frederick said.
The conversation was reclustering.
‘It’s morbid,’ Cindy said, ‘and sick.’
‘It’s nothing to get angry about,’ Roger said to her quietly.
‘You shut up,’ Cindy said, without looking at him.
‘It’s the finality,’ he said, ‘the separation from everything we know and understand. Plunged into an unknown situation.’
‘It’s the inevitability which I find hard,’ Frederick said. ‘As Cindy said – I’ll be looking for youth drugs.’
‘We can’t accept the loss of our essence or spirit, or whatever it’s called.’
‘Spirit!’ Cindy cried, ‘you are becoming religious.’
‘There’s more to feeling than just nerves, isn’t there? Don’t we believe we’re more than flesh and brain?’
‘How incredible, how bloody incredible,’ Cindy said with disgust. The others were listening and watching with some interest.
‘Just electricity, Dad, ju
st electricity,’ Roger said. ‘When we go, the electricity is discharged – we’re just flat batteries.’
‘I’m leaving,’ Cindy said, standing up. He grinned at her. He thought she was joking.
‘I’m leaving,’ she repeated at Roger. She moved away from the table.
Roger realised that she was serious and said, ‘Now don’t be silly, Cindy.’
‘You’re scared, Cindy,’ Sally said humorously.
‘I’m furious,’ Cindy said.
‘I’m terrified,’ Sally said, ‘simply terrified.’
‘Oh shut up, Sally, you’re as big a bore as he is,’ she said, gesturing at him.
‘My, my,’ Sally said.
Cindy went to the bedroom to get her coat.
Roger followed her and he followed Roger.
He heard Sally say in a loud voice intended for Cindy, ‘Cindy’s the youngest and obviously the most upset. We should discuss it with her,’ and then called out to Cindy, sarcastically, ‘Cindy, darling, come back – we’re going to have Group.’
In the bedroom Roger said, ‘Come on now, we’ll go soon, but don’t run off like this.’
‘It’s my fault really,’ he said, coming closer to her.
Cindy stood pouting.
He went over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I apologise for upsetting you.’ He took her hand. ‘I shouldn’t have pursued it when you found it distasteful. It was dreadfully insensitive. I’m sorry.’
She half smiled. ‘I hate talking about ageing,’ she said sadly.
Roger and he led her back.
They didn’t raise the subject again.
They talked in a strained way about Dos Passos and then the party broke up.
After everyone had gone and they were clearing the table his wife said, ‘D-e-a-t-h was a lead balloon.’
‘Yes. I thought Cindy over-reacted.’
‘I hadn’t realised you were worried about death.’
‘I’m not as worried as Cindy seems to be,’ he said, kissing his wife on the back of her head. ‘Mine’s purely academic – or nearly.’
‘I suspect you’re going through the trauma of the mid-thirties,’ she said, carrying wine bottles to the kitchen.
He paused. ‘I guess there is something of that in it,’ he called to her, emptying the ashtrays into a sheet of newspaper.
She came back and put her arm around him. ‘We’ve got a few years more sex in us yet.’
‘But one day we’ll have to say – “that’s it.”’
The Americans, Baby Page 9