Broken Places

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Right. All set.’

  As she joined him on the sofa, he dared to put his arm around her, although prepared for her to edge away. Instead, she snuggled close; her milk-white mohair sweater soft against his chest; her fiery hair tickling on his neck; her musky scent inflaming him, so that he had physically to restrain himself. His hand yearned to trace the V-neck of her sweater; stray further down that enticing, teasing cleavage, until it cupped her luscious breasts. But all that would have to wait until the firework display was over. If she wanted to watch the box, who was he to stop her, when she’d cooked him an exquisite meal and waited on him hand and foot – treated him like a VIP, in fact? He’d had to keep pinching himself, to ensure he wasn’t dreaming and about to wake up in his lonely bed, cold and disillusioned.

  As the chimes of midnight began booming out on-screen, he contented himself with clasping her hand; his fingers pressing just a fraction tighter with each majestic b-o-n-g. The dizzy crowd in Trafalgar Square were joining in the countdown; Mandy, too, calling out each number, like an excited child, up way past its bedtime.

  ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven …’

  He, too, was soon engulfed in all the on-screen drama. Staid, square-shouldered Big Ben stood unshaken, like a stern school prefect, as the tempestuous sky behind it went into madcap mode; rent apart with electric jolts of colour: emerald-blue, pink-purple, scarlet-gold. A whole brouhaha of rockets was whooshing up, up, up; exploding into bursts of shooting stars, and the entire river seemed alight, as another squall of fireworks erupted from a flotilla of boats; the inky water metamorphosing into a tidal wave of shimmering shot-silk. All the distinctions between up and down, liquid/solid, dark and light were blurring and dissolving as once-substantial buildings appeared to disintegrate into skittish showers of sparks, only to rebuild themselves in wild colour-combinations. Fire-trails blazed and faded in an eerie purple sky, whilst effervescent searchlights swooped in soaring arcs, and yet more pyrotechnics flung their whooping wizardry across the frenzied scene.

  ‘Five, four, three …’ Mandy carolled, then, all at once, she sat up straighter, raised her glass, touched it to his and gazed deep into his eyes. He had never understood the genuine thrill of eye-contact until this actual moment, when the rapturous blue of her eyes seemed to laser into his. It was so magical, so mesmerizing, he barely heard the cries of ‘Happy New Year!’ shrilling from the screen; hardly saw her put her glass down and gently wrest his from his hand. The only thing in his consciousness was her sensuous, eager, parted lips, moving towards his own.

  He held her close, surrendering to the most ardent kiss in the history of the world. And, as their tongues communicated, the whole of London began applauding, cheering, whooping; hosannas and hallelujahs rising on all sides, as a sensational New Year burst, brilliant, into life.

  He opened his eyes, fazed by the deep-blue walls and by the fierce morning light streaming through the curtains. His gloomy flat was far less generous in its light-effects. Then, suddenly, he remembered where he was, and the utter shame of the previous night replayed itself in humiliating detail. He lay back again, with a groan of horror, pulling the sheet right across his head. Mandy was no longer there in bed with him. He had no idea when she’d got up, but he understood entirely her wish to remove herself from a bloke who couldn’t perform – a damp squib, a faulty rocket, a burnt-out Catherine-wheel. He could blame it on the booze, of course, or on his stupid nerves, but what use were excuses? He’d better get the hell out, so as not to have to face her – tricky, when his clothes were in the sitting-room. His only option was to climb out of the window and shin down the front of the building, all five floors – stark naked.

  Instead, he sat up on his elbow and listened through the wall. Not a sound. Maybe she’d gone out; arranged to see her celebrity chef, or her surgeon, or the pilot; each a handsome hunk, no doubt, who could remain stiff all day, all night.

  Well, if she’d left the flat, at least the coast was clear. Hastily, he crept out of bed and cocked an ear at the door. Still total silence – thank God! Darting into the sitting-room, he grabbed his clothes, which were still lying in a pathetic heap where he had ripped them off last night in his haste to make endless love.

  Endless – how ironical was that? Yesterday, he’d been scared he might come in five seconds flat, but worse by far not to come at all, and when Mandy was all but begging for it. He skulked back to the bedroom and began dragging on the tight, expensive trousers, which mocked him openly. ‘So you planned to be a sexpot. What a hoot!’

  Just as he was buckling his belt, he heard footsteps right outside and froze in guilty embarrassment. Perhaps she had brought her lover back with her: some great hulking stud, with equipment to match. He tried to conceal his own puny naked chest as the door burst open and in walked Mandy – alone, and in her coat.

  ‘Eric, my love, why are you getting dressed? I thought we’d have breakfast in bed. I’ve just been out to buy some croissants. Nearly all the shops were shut, but – look – success!’

  As she held out the package, he fought a sense of dizzy disbelief. She had called him ‘my love’ – or had he misheard? And she wanted breakfast in bed with him – a loser, a non-starter, a complete and utter dud!

  ‘Would you like coffee or hot chocolate? My hot chocolate’s rather special, though I sez it myself – made with cream and melted marshmallows.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’

  And she was still waiting on him, for heaven’s sake! But why? True he had kissed her passionately last night, stroked every inch of her body, but it was clear she had wanted more. In fact, she’d made scarcely any effort to hide her disappointment and frustration. And that, of course, had only made things worse. The more she wanted it – he wanted it – the more feverishly limp he’d become: a melted marshmallow himself, in truth. Finally they had given up and gone to bed, to sleep. Not that he had slept – at least not until 4 a.m. – but had tossed and turned, endlessly rehearsing the fiasco, and horrified that he should be lying close to a luscious, naked female and still not have a hard-on.

  ‘Won’t be long!’ she said, scooting towards the door. ‘Why don’t you get back into bed?’

  So she planned a second act. The very thought made his former terror swoop back in a quivering rush. One failure might be overlooked; two would spell disaster. He saw his future stretching hopelessly ahead: Mandyless and sexless; a eunuch like Gerard Manley Hopkins.

  And he seemed incapable of making even the smallest decision: should he go or stay; undress or finish dressing; invent some reason why he had to bolt back home? He was so agitated he was perspiring from sheer nerves. God! Suppose he began to smell? Whatever else, he’d better have a shower. He dashed into the en-suite bathroom, removed the trousers he had just put on and started soaping himself vigorously, to try to scour away his mortification; scrub off his sense of shame. Useless. What he really needed was Viagra. Adverts for the stuff popped up daily on his computer-screen, but he had always airily dismissed it as something for old men. Why bother even to read the ads, when normally he could get it up just by seeing a flash of leg or walking past Anne Summers? Yet now he was ignominiously limp again – and when Mandy was about to join him in bed, in a matter of mere minutes.

  In fact, he could hear her now: putting a tray down in the bedroom, by the sounds of it.

  ‘Breakfast’s ready!’ she called. ‘And I’ve heated up the croissants, so don’t let them get cold!’

  There was nothing for it – he’d have to jump out of the window. Leaping to a certain death was infinitely preferable to risking another failure. Except there wasn’t a window – not here in the bathroom. And Mandy was waiting impatiently, not wanting things to ‘get cold’.

  He turned off the shower and stood paralysed, glancing down at his penis. Why had blokes been made so badly that mere thoughts and fears could kibosh an erection, however eager its owner might be to go full steam ahead?

  He tensed. The bathroom door was opening; Mandy c
oming in; Mandy no longer in her coat but completely, wildly naked; Mandy stepping into the shower with him; Mandy kneeling at his feet; Mandy running her amazing hands across his buttocks, down his legs, then letting them glide up again until they were doing such exquisite things he was giving little strangled gasps of pleasure. And now she was taking him in her mouth; lips clamped tight; tongue flicking, swirling, busy. And the skulking blob had changed entirely into some great, headstrong thing that craved to thrust and thrust and explode like last night’s rockets. But, no, he had to stop, control himself, hold back. He mustn’t come, mustn’t come, because this was her time and he intended to have her right there on the bathmat and make it really special for her – go on and on and on and on, till she was crying out in excitement, and still go on until, until, until …

  ‘Hey, Eric …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were you ever a lion in another life?’

  ‘Not that I remember. Why?’

  ‘Because lions do it twenty times a day and you’ve almost beaten that record.’

  ‘Come off it! We’ve only managed four, so far, and we’ve been in bed all day.’

  ‘I know.’ Mandy stretched and yawned. ‘It’s almost dark outside and I didn’t even notice.’

  ‘I don’t want to get up – ever.’ He twisted a strand of her hair round his finger, to yoke the pair of them together. ‘If I let you go, you might disappear in a puff of smoke. Anyway, since you’re obviously expecting me to perform another sixteen times, I can’t afford to dissipate my energies!’

  ‘I’m starving, though, aren’t you?’

  ‘Mm. Ravenous.’

  ‘Well, suppose I cook us something really quick and bring it back here on a tray?’

  ‘Fantastic! But let me help this time.’

  ‘No. The kitchen’s too small for both of us. You stay here and keep the bed warm. Though, actually,’ she said, shivering as she reached for her blue dressing-gown, ‘it’s a bit chilly in this room.’ She rummaged in a drawer and tossed him some long, hairy thing that looked more like a tunic. ‘Put this on. The heating’s not too brilliant.’

  He sat up against the pillows and struggled into the garment, which did nothing for his image. That apart, everything else bordered on perfection: a woman who could cook and who fancied being pleasured twenty times a day! How different females were, he mused, in their attitude to sex. For Christine, it had been a solemn thing, with none of the crazy, giggly games Mandy seemed to like. Besides, the passion of their early married life had gradually cooled and dwindled, until making love became something of a duty for her; even a chore, he’d often suspected. And, once she’d joined Kroszner-Merriott, there was barely time for it at all – not with her high-powered business breakfasts, focus groups and the like. Mandy, on the other hand, made it clear that there was nothing more important than to try out new positions or enact erotic fantasies. Certainly, today had been a first for him, in that he had played the roles of Henry VIII as a young virgin-prince, along with an Arab sheikh and Mr Universe.

  He slipped out of bed to glance at himself in the full-length wardrobe mirror. Perhaps he had actually changed; become a muscleman, a king, a sultry Eastern potentate. No, the same old Eric looked back at him – boring eyes, curls in disarray – although with a badge-of-honour love-bite on his neck. Inside, however, he was totally transformed. Mandy had told him she adored him, so now he was capable of anything. He could swim across the Channel; run up Everest and down again; beat Oscar de la Hoya in the boxing-ring – and all because of her. What a contrast to his state of mind at the time of the divorce, when he had shrunk to pygmy-scale; become so insignificant he could have drowned in a scant teaspoonful of water, or been felled by a falling leaf. It was as if he had taken on Mandy’s own fearlessness and confidence, and, indeed, while they’d been making love, he had experienced a sense of total union; become fused with her and part of her; their cries merging into one; even their bodies undifferentiated, so that he was no longer really sure where he ended and she began. For someone who had always felt incomplete and separate, that truly was incredible. And it was connected with New Year – his genuine new start.

  He had even found the courage to own up about his string of lies, desperate to make her understand that the invented party, cake and car were simply proof of his desire not to let her slip away. If she had vanished from his life, he had dramatically declared, then that life would be rendered worthless at a stroke. And, far from rebuking him for falsehood, she had giggled in a delicious fashion and told him she was deeply flattered by such romantic sentiments. And, yes, he had to admit that, since his stuttering debut, he had definitely made progress in both the sexual department and the oratorical.

  Knotting a towel around his waist, he went to find her in the kitchen, unable to be parted from her for more than fifty seconds.

  ‘Too hungry to wait?’

  ‘Hungry for you.’

  ‘What, still?’

  ‘Yes, still.’

  ‘Won’t be long. Why not park yourself on the sofa.’

  Banished to the sitting-room, he examined all the photographs; envious of her parents and her sisters, who had known her so much longer. The sisters were all redheads; one of them a carrot-top, so he was beginning to feel a definite sense of belonging. He even knew their names now: Karen, Angela and Prue.

  ‘Were you christened Mandy?’ he called, ‘or Amanda?’

  ‘Amanda Sophia, actually – a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think? It was shortened to Mandy pretty quick!’

  How extraordinary, he thought, that she should share the name with the woman in Tom Jones – the entrancing, virtuous, well-born girl Tom had eventually married after a thousand dizzying vicissitudes. Perhaps it meant their relationship was blessed; that he, too, would win his Sophia; achieve his happy ending.

  All at once, he knew, at some deep level, that he ought to tell her – now – about his origins; that it would constitute betrayal to conceal them any longer. Instantly, he panicked, remembering past occasions when coming clean had landed him in trouble. Even when he’d confided in his wife, she had been concerned about her family’s reaction and what her friends might think. But since he and Mandy were one spirit and one flesh, he yearned to strip himself bare – as he had just done physically – so she could get to know the real Eric and not the man in the mask. Yet, there he was, cocooned in a woolly tunic (top half) and a luridly patterned purple towel (bottom half) – hardly the appropriate gear for broaching such a delicate subject. Too bad. If he didn’t take the plunge now, he knew he’d lose his nerve.

  Fastening the towel more securely, he went to join her in the kitchen. ‘You know Tom Jones,’ he said.

  ‘’Course I do. I can sing all those old favourites – “It’s Not Unusual”, “The Green, Green Grass of Home”.’

  ‘No, I mean the book.’

  ‘I didn’t know he’d written a book.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the singer – the Tom Jones in Fielding’s novel.’

  She looked completely blank; seemed more concerned, in any case, with grating cheese into the omelette pan.

  ‘It was written in 1749, by this famous—’

  ‘Eric, it’s all I can do to keep up with modern books, let alone dusty old historical things.’

  It had been a struggle for him, too – 900 close-packed pages, when he was only seventeen. But the subject matter had kept him reading right until the gratifying end, when Tom had not only wed his true love but was proved to be of noble birth and thus heir to a great fortune. ‘It’s not the book itself. It’s what it’s about. You see …’ The words faltered to a stop. He was going far too fast; should have waited till they knew each other better; introduced the subject more obliquely; seen how she reacted, then instantly backpedalled if she showed the slightest distaste. He could still do that, in fact. Best to move on to another topic – fast. ‘It … it doesn’t matter. Forget it.’

  ‘Of course it matters if it’s importan
t to you. I want to know everything about you.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Yes. I feel we belong together.’

  ‘Oh, Mandy, that’s just …’ All the words were inadequate: wonderful, incredible, bordering on miraculous. ‘Do you really mean it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. But, look, the omelette’s almost ready now. Why don’t we eat it in the sitting-room, then you can tell me all about this book. Though I have to confess I’m not the world’s greatest reader, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance.’

  Never mind her ignorance – what mattered was his ‘confession’. If he waited till she served the meal, he knew he’d change his mind – again. ‘Why it meant so much to me,’ he blurted out, top-speed, ‘is that it’s the story of a foundling, and I’m a foundling, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mandy looked startled; all but dropped her spatula.

  ‘What I said. My mother left me in a recreation ground. I presume she couldn’t cope, so she had to simply dump me.’

  ‘But, Eric, that’s quite awful!’

  Quickly he studied her face. ‘Awful’ in the sense of unacceptable, or a sympathetic ‘awful’? The latter, thank the Lord.

  And he was aware of the concern in her voice as she asked, ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I was discovered by the park-keeper, who called the police, and they, in turn, called an ambulance. Apparently, I was on the small side and pretty close to starving, so they rushed me straight to hospital.’

  Mandy turned off the gas and came over to embrace him, stroking his hair, his cheek. It was all he could do not to blub. This was the mother he had imagined twenty-thousand times, reunited with him, at last – at last – and holding him with just such tenderness. He had always done his damnedest to make himself believe that she had abandoned him against her will and against her natural instincts; forced by some quite desperate plight beyond her own control. She was penniless and jobless; had strict, religious parents who had banished her from home; been seduced by her rough brute of a boss and was thus acting out of panic. The alternative was callous rejection – an act too cruel to countenance.