Andrea Newman
* * *
TRIANGLES
Contents
WARMTH
POISON
SECRETS
COUNTING THE COST
FINDING A VOICE
FANCY SEEING YOU
A LONG WAY FROM PARADISE
JESSICA IN LOVE
CHRISTMAS MAGIC
THE CONSOLATION PRIZE
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
CASUALTIES
LUKE’S WOMEN
MEMENTO VITAE
BLISS ON WHEELS
FOLLOW PENGUIN
Also by Andrea Newman
A SHARE OF THE WORLD
MIRAGE
THE CAGE
THREE INTO TWO WON’T GO
ALEXA
A BOUQUET OF BARBED WIRE
ANOTHER BOUQUET …
AN EVIL STREAK
MACKENZIE
A SENSE OF GUILT
Warmth
They met at a party and he told her that he had been a virgin until he was twenty-nine. Several other people looked round in amazement, which her friends unkindly suggested later was probably the object of the exercise. But at the time she merely marvelled that anyone could admit such a thing in public, and thought him courageous.
He was then thirty-one. Of medium height, thick-set and dark with perfect features, he was probably the most beautiful man she had ever seen. She had several lovers and did not need a new one, but she took him home with her because of his beauty, as she might have bought a puppy or a picture. He made love quickly and clumsily, but with such warmth and enthusiasm that she was captivated against her will. In the night he woke her several times to make love again and was more demonstrative than anyone she had ever known, even her former husband. When he left for work in the morning he thanked her, which she found touching. ‘Thank you for having me,’ she said, her favourite old joke, and he replied gravely, ‘Thank you for coming.’
They began to meet several times a week. He lived at home with his family whom he disliked but had not thought of leaving because they did his washing and put meals on the table. She tried to find out why he had made such a late start sexually, but he could not tell her and put it down vaguely to nerves. Also in his youth he had been seriously overweight. She could not imagine that he had ever been other than beautiful as he was now, so he showed her pictures to prove it.
He wanted to know about her other lovers and was pleased that she had them. Sex was so new and exciting to him, he said, that he wanted everyone to have as much of it as possible with any number of different partners. The concept of jealousy meant nothing to him. He did not intend to be faithful and did not expect fidelity from her. But he thought honesty was important. From time to time he mentioned various girls he had tried to sleep with but who had refused him.
In the summer they went away for a few days because he fancied himself in love with a girl in his office whom he wanted to leave her husband and live with him. The girl was not very interested and he thought a holiday might take his mind off her.
Despite this unflattering reason, the holiday was a success. The sun shone through the open roof of the car as they drove along. ‘Come on, you golden beast,’ he said. ‘Shine on me, not on her.’ He talked a lot about his work, which he enjoyed, and told her interminable stories about his childhood. When she was bored she had only to stare at his profile.
With him she felt the relaxation of youth: their jokes were repetitive, and very soon they had old favourites, always witty because well-beloved. They used catch-phrases that never failed to amuse and pulled faces and put on heavy accents. ‘Ve have vays of making you laugh,’ he would say in his stage German and she would collapse, knowing it was not really funny again but unable to resist it. Or he would imitate people in films or television for her entertainment, or mimic the speech of his colleagues at work. She found so much easy laughter very healing.
They ate huge meals and made love every night, every morning. He was always so affectionate that she felt she was floating in a warm bath, or painlessly connected to an electrical circuit, or elegantly wrapped in fur. Her other lovers had been sexy but cold, which ought to have been impossible but was only too easy: it meant that out of bed they did not like to be touched.
In the autumn he announced casually, ‘I slept with a bird on Tuesday,’ and described the details. It had not been very enjoyable and he wanted her to tell him why. What had he done wrong? She had never experienced jealousy before and found it uniquely painful. However, she tried to hide it as best she could because it was against his rules and she did not want to offend him. She reminded herself that he had warned her it would be like this, that sex was a novelty to him and he could not bear deceit. But she wished he had not told her. It always embarrassed her when he asked about her other lovers, although he did not mind at all.
He did not see the other girl again. They had had nothing to talk about, he said. She wondered what he meant. Sometimes she felt he did not know her at all. When she tried to tell him about her marriage he found it depressing. ‘I don’t like to hear about you being unhappy,’ he said. If she talked about her work she could see his attention wandering. Her friends asked her if she thought she would become seriously involved with him and she said no, because he didn’t have enough experience of life. She felt much older than he was, although they were the same age. He had all the charm and heartlessness of a child.
Gradually she taught him to make love expertly, until she thought she had never had a lover who suited her so well. But even more than that she enjoyed the pleasure she was able to give him. It was unique, he said.
He stayed at her flat several nights a week and every weekend. They went out to dinner or she cooked. They held hands in the cinema or watched television, curled up together like puppies. Between visits he would telephone her for no particular reason. Although she loved the calls, she always dreaded that he would mention another girl. She would be unbearably tense until he referred to a boring evening at home or drinking with his friends, and then she had to disguise her relief. She tried to rationalise herself out of jealousy, but it was like toothache and would not be rationalised. It took over her head.
He began to talk about getting a flat of his own and she encouraged him. He was amazed.
‘But why? You know it means I’ll be more likely to sleep with other girls.’
She said, ‘Yes, I know,’ with an effort, ‘but everyone should leave home and live alone some time.’
He took a flat but did not like it and was back with his family inside two weeks. ‘I don’t mind admitting I made a mistake,’ he said.
At Christmas she thought she was pregnant and wanted to have it, which made her realise she had fallen in love with him. Another rule broken, for he had always said they must not become serious. He wanted her to have an abortion. He knew nothing about abortion and preferred not to be told; he thought it would be all right. Luckily she was not pregnant after all, but the incident unnerved her: she had not intended to get in so deep.
In February he had a short affair with his best friend’s girl and was surprised that his best friend minded. He soon gave her up. ‘Very dull and diluted compared to you,’ he said. This time the jealous pain was much worse and against her better judgment she made several scenes which he disliked and she regretted. ‘It’s as if I’m eighteen,’ he said. ‘I want to try all the chocolates in the box.’ She tried to keep calm and be fair, reminding herself that this was how she had felt when her marriage broke up. But she had kept each affair a secret from the other, if they were concurrent, to spare people’s feelings. ‘I never want to hurt you,’ he said again and again, ‘but I must be honest.’ This made her feel it was her fault for being vulnerable.
He had changed
his job to forget the married girl at work. In his new office he found another married girl and had a short affair with her. This girl she would have liked to kill.
He told her about the girl’s contraceptive methods and her behaviour in bed. She tried not to listen but the subject had a terrible fascination. She lost control of herself and threw a glass across the room. It shattered a vase but remained intact itself, something she would have thought impossible had she not seen it happen. He was very upset by this display of violence but took her to bed and comforted her.
She asked him if he could keep it secret when he slept with other girls but he said that would be too difficult. If he had to be careful what he told her, it would spoil their relationship.
‘I don’t mind what you do,’ he said. ‘Why should you be jealous? So long as we’re always honest with each other, that’s the important thing. And you know I don’t mean to hurt you.’
‘No, but you do,’ she answered.
‘I’d hate to lose you,’ he said. There was no answer to that, so they made love again and for a while she was happy.
She thought about it afterwards. It was true, he had never minded when she told him about other men, but now there was nothing to tell because she could no longer bear to sleep with anyone but him. Perhaps this was a burden to him. She wondered if she should invent other lovers to make him feel safe.
Her friends disliked him because he made her unhappy. ‘You’re mad to put up with it,’ they said, flinching from her pain. ‘But he makes me so happy as well,’ she said. ‘He makes me laugh and he’s so warm and beautiful and sex with him is so marvellous.’ She tried to explain, as much to convince herself as them. ‘He’s bound to want to sleep around, it’s all so new to him, but maybe it’s just a phase and if I’m patient he’ll grow out of it.’
‘Well, if he has to do it, at least he could keep quiet about it,’ they said, angry on her behalf.
‘I know,’ she said, hating to hear her own thoughts expressed, ‘but he’s got this thing about honesty.’
She met his friends. Apparently they felt he was treating her badly too. But if anyone was unpleasant to him he did not mind. ‘It’s all attention,’ he said.
He talked incessantly about himself, his past and his future. She listened, giving him even more attention than she had given her husband. It seemed a way of atoning. But they could not discuss anything controversial. ‘I always feel you know more than me,’ he said. ‘You always win; you make me feel inferior.’ At dinner parties he would change the subject after five minutes, just when she felt they were getting somewhere. ‘I’ve got a butterfly mind,’ he said cheerfully. Although she tried to accept that he preferred conversation to be superficial, she had to admit to herself that if she had not been in love with him she might have been bored. But they were so busy making love, eating and drinking, going for drives and laughing at each other’s jokes that there was hardly time to notice. She reminded herself that nothing could ever be perfect: she had made the mistake before of expecting too much.
For six months he was very busy at work and she did not have to be jealous. Six months of warmth without pain: she absorbed it like a drug. ‘I seem to have gone off other birds,’ he said in a puzzled tone, as if he had lost interest in food. ‘Never mind,’ she said with an effort, ‘I expect it’ll come back.’ He agreed. ‘It’s probably because I’m working so hard.’ She took a chance and said, ‘Of course, it can’t be anything to do with me.’ He laughed.
He began to talk about houses, children, dogs, all in a light-hearted, unspecific way, but often enough to give her hope that there was a future for them, although with her sober mind she knew it was insanity to think of such a thing. It was unlikely to happen and if it did it would not be ideal. But she was still under the physical spell she had created for herself. The power he was using over her was the power she had given him.
One time when he was very late and she had imagined him dead in a ditch, she let her panic and relief, combined with alcohol, allow her to commit the ultimate indiscretion of saying to him, ‘I love you.’ He had often told her he did not think he would ever be able to say that to anyone. ‘But I suppose I love you more than anyone else,’ he said, in bed and drunk. He went on about their being friends and fond of each other, which was not quite what she meant. ‘I’ll always want to sleep with you,’ he said.
When she was ill he brought flowers and champagne, collected her medicine from the chemist, made funny faces to amuse her and cuddled her in bed until she felt better. ‘I think you need me to look after you,’ he said. He even emptied the bucket in which she’d been sick (before the champagne) and for this she was profoundly grateful. ‘Well, you weren’t very sick,’ he said, ‘or I couldn’t have done it.’
They went abroad for two weeks and had a perfect holiday. Sun, food, wine, sex and laughter. It was hard to believe that anyone so demonstrative did not actually love her. The joy of sleeping with him every night made her a little dizzy, as if she had had too much sun.
After the holiday she had a doomed feeling, a premonition of disaster. They had reached their zenith: the rest could only be anti-climax. Everything continued as before but she could not repress her anxiety although she managed to hide it. It was so long since he had mentioned another girl. Had he learnt at last to deceive her? She did not want to know but the uncertainty nagged at her, poisoning everything. She had lived so long with the pain of being told: now that she had the relief of not knowing, she could not bear it.
In the autumn they went away for another week’s holiday. It was not quite as perfect as before, although the sun shone, they ate lovely meals and made love every day or night. She could not have said what was wrong. She stared at his beauty, laughed at his jokes, curled up beside him in bed, and yet she felt there was a barrier that made a mockery of it all.
On the way back, at the airport, she suddenly asked if he had slept with anyone else recently. Yes, he said, twice. She felt the familiar constriction in her chest, the blackness, the heat, the demented sensation that made her understand what was meant by being beside yourself. She asked who it was and he told her. ‘Was it a success?’ she asked. ‘That depends how you measure success,’ he said.
She became quite dislodged from herself and made a scene in public, feeling that it was someone else who was behaving with such total loss of control. It was quite alarming, like being suddenly in the grip of a violent illness. He was embarrassed but held her hand all the way home as if to comfort her.
For two or three weeks they went on as if nothing had happened. Then one night he said he wanted to talk to her. ‘I think we should meet less often,’ he said. ‘My feelings are not getting deeper. I don’t think there’s any future for us.’ He told her he did not think he could ever love or marry anyone, or even live with them. ‘It’s been like one long honeymoon with you,’ he said, ‘but you have to come down to earth some time.’ He began to cry and she had to comfort him: she held him while his body shook with sobs.
They went out to dinner. Once the shock had worn off and she had stopped fearing that she might be sick, she said she was willing to see him less often. He was pleased and grateful. ‘I thought you’d throw me out,’ he said. He became even more demonstrative, hugging her in the street. ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘I find you so terribly attractive.’ They spent the weekend together as usual making love, but she kept bursting into tears. ‘Do you despise me?’ she asked, and he said, ‘No, I respect you more than ever.’ The morning he left, she cried so much that her hairdresser took her out for a drink.
On Saturday he was back. ‘I’m lonely and miserable too,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if I’m leaving you for another girl.’ He behaved as affectionately as ever, confusing her, making her think she had imagined the whole thing. ‘I’d like to die in bed with you,’ he said one evening over dinner. But his visits grew less and less frequent. She never knew when he would phone and the uncertainty, after nearly two years of continuity, drove h
er crazy. She tried to be calm, just as she had tried not to be jealous, and with as little success. Her friends told her she should have given him up completely.
They spent Christmas together and opened their presents in bed. As usual, he had spent a lot of money on her. At New Year he was busy. The gaps between visits grew longer. She was supposed to be able to phone him, at work or at home, but did not feel she could. She imagined what he was doing. Her friends tried to console her but found her humiliation embarrassing. Some of them understood but others thought she should have had more pride. She tried to fix her mind on his faults. ‘I never could talk to him about anything important,’ she said. ‘If it had lasted it would have been a disaster, I know that really.’
They met again and he was as amusing and demonstrative as ever. Encouraged by this, she invited him for the weekend. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m seeing someone else regularly now.’ She froze, hating him for not having, for never having had the grace to lie, to spare her feelings instead of his own. She asked, ‘Does she know about me?’ He said yes, and she lost control, hitting him and kicking him. Then she spent about five minutes telling him in precise detail all his faults. She dealt with his work, his family, his friends and his ego. He listened in silence, even nodding his head as if he agreed with her. Afterwards she could not remember what she had said but she knew she had covered it all. ‘And I taught you everything you know,’ she added, something she had always meant not to throw at him. He left in tears saying, ‘I must go, I’ve been hurt.’ Sobbing, she screamed at him, ‘You’ve been hurt? What about me?’ He said, ‘I know,’ and left. In the morning he phoned to say they must meet and talk, but she knew it was over and he did not phone again.
It was almost a relief. At least there would be no more pain.
Later, talking to a friend, she said the worst part had been being in love with someone she did not respect. ‘I suppose I wanted to fall in love and he was there,’ she said.
Triangles Page 1