Hey, he says, how are you, and the lightness in his voice tells you all you need to know. His tone is unscarred. He’s cured, he’s moved on; your heart sinks.
I need to see you, you say, wanting to pull him down too.
He laughs. I’d love to, but I’m flying to Spain early tomorrow.
Oh.
The screenplay’s really come together. I’m going to a fight on Monday night, for a last bit of research.
Good, good: barely knowing what you’re saying, just wanting him with you, on the phone, not wanting him gone, not wanting this night alone.
So where is it, the fight?
Chiclana, this little place near Seville. It’s where my father began.
Oh. Great.
Another time, perhaps?
Yes. Of course.
Your voice retreats.
So, he feels, now, that he doesn’t have to try.
And you want him more than you ever have before.
Lesson 117
how do people hasten death?
An hour or so from Seville.
The last week of the pregnancy that you’re allowed to fly.
You’re not sure why you’re here but it feels magnificent to be doing something so foolish and impetuous and reckless and rash, to stop all the censoring of yourself. You know it’s wrong to trap him again but the thought’s not enough to hold you back.
What valley of need is within you? To want to do this right now, with your husband almost returned and a baby, soon, in your life.
You know the answer, but you’re not sure if you can follow it through: you’re allowing yourself one blast of pure selfishness, before you surrender yourself to the needs of everyone else.
The bullring’s ridiculously small, dusty, temporary, in the middle of a funfair’s glary din. It’s not like anything you expected. There’s the boom and jangle of a sideshow alley on one side and a roller coaster hurtling its cargo of screaming faces on the other. Your thumbnail worries a line down your ticket. It’s hot, the air’s baked dry. It’s seven thirty in the evening but the sun still has bite in it. The baby squirms; you hope it’s all right. Within the ring there’s an atmosphere with the grubbiness and sleaziness of a cockfight. Around you, on the rough wooden benches, are clusters of middle-aged men out with their mates for a night. You peer at them, looking for Gabriel in every unlikely shape. You’re flushed, heavily pregnant, an obvious foreigner, you’re not sure what comes next. You shouldn’t be here.
Wanting him, just that. It’s worth everything, to have such desire singing through your blood.
A tinpot band on the benches beside you strikes up a fanfare. You sit forward like a child, so curious about all this; Gabriel’s told you so much. A bull trots into the arena, reluctantly. You’d always imagined the tournament beast as massive, black and glistening, hurtling its forehead at its enemy like a locomotive, but this one’s small, brown, rangy, lost. You glance around the tiered seats.
In the ring, four young men dart about, goading and taunting and running for their lives behind four wooden screens. No one seems to be in control, not the men, not the bull, it’s farcical, a pantomime, you weren’t expecting that.
Your eyes settle on a shape that could only be him, that sharp angle of the shoulders. He’s on the other side of the ring. Late, with a knot of men that look like family. Your heart pounds, the blood swishes in your head, you can feel its pump.
One last lesson, one last hit, that’s all you want, before Cole comes back.
An older man enters the arena. He holds two long sticks festooned with coloured paper ribbons, they’re comically festive. He holds the sticks high in both hands and, on tiptoe, jabs them swiftly into the bull’s shoulders, as if he’s a conductor finishing an aria with a flourish. The animal’s enraged. Its blood is thick, red, it glistens in the heat like spilled paint, it shines against his sweat. Gabriel roars with the rest of them. You’re hot. You imagine him sweating, you want to run your tongue on him. There are little lightning flashes in your belly, it’s like a sky playing host to a faraway storm. The atmosphere’s no longer farcical. The baby tumbles a slow loop within you, as gentle as a whale. You place your hand on your belly, stilling it: Gabriel doesn’t know about this yet. Foam plumes at the bull’s mouth, it’s tiring, you can hear its panting, see its blood, its bewilderment. The matador enters. He’s small, ridiculously so. Dressed in austere grey, like a theatrical undertaker. His penis has been taped to his thigh, the trousers so tight so there’s no loose clothing for a horn to snag, Gabriel told you that once and you’d fluttered, inside, as he spoke.
You want to stand and make your way to him, to break into his tight little group, but there are too many knees to climb over. You keep looking across to him as he drinks the fight up. You’ve seen his intentness before: in his London flat, as you pushed up your shirtsleeve for his mouth, as you unbuckled his belt.
The matador lures the animal, forcing it to turn closer to him, to almost brush him. They’re communing with each other, he speaks to the bull and you lean forward to catch it, God knows why, you won’t understand. The band on the benches beside you strikes up an intermittent commentary like a lazy pianist at a silent film. The bull wheels, slower, and you can see starkly now its age. Gabriel told you the animals are never more than four years old but this one looks older, tireder than that; maybe they’ve cheated a little for this country event. The bull can sense defeat, it’s worn out. The matador hides a small pointed sword behind his back and swirls, beautifully, and the animal stands and charges again and Gabriel roars with the rest. It seems so one-sided; you feel sick. You rub your belly and think of the life brewing inside you and imagine it panicky, defenceless, the odds stacked against it. You’re not enjoying this. Gabriel had conveyed to you another world entirely when he spoke of the corridas: a world of discipline and daring and beauty, but what’s here before you just seems desperately sad and you’re stunned by that. It’s cowardly. Tedious. There’s so much stillness, watching, waiting, sizing up, panting.
The matador sights down the sword and plunges it into the bull’s broad neck and then he arches his body, as bold as a calligrapher’s brushstroke. The bull’s enraged, it struggles, its big heart is bursting. It crumples to its knees. Flops to its side. Raises its head with the agony.
You’ve seen enough.
The animal’s flank still heaves, its eyes roll, it has a look of utter astonishment: who are these barbarians? A dagger’s plunged behind the crown, severing the spinal cord and finally, finally the straining head drops. The kill has been difficult, there’s been such a big, fighting spirit to stop.
You look across to Gabriel. You stand, tall, you crane behind the nuggety men, you will not sit. He does not see you at first, he does not see you, he’s talking and laughing and his arm is loose round another man’s shoulder, an uncle or cousin perhaps, he does not see you. And then he does.
His talking stops.
He blushes, deeply.
A quiet, gentle nod of acknowledgement. Unbearable in its intimacy, as if you and he are the only people there. It tells you all you need to know: you won’t have to work hard, he’ll say yes.
He’s holding the moment too long, the people he’s with are looking at him and trying to see what he’s focusing on.
Slowly, slowly, you sit.
Trembling. Wet.
Lesson 118
never buy anything you cannot pay for
There are five more fights. You can’t bear to watch even one more. You wanted something else entirely, the bullfight of your imagination: the thrilling sense of competition between man and beast, the beautiful cunning of the matador’s dance, the bull’s invincible strength.
Why do you feel so let down?
Were you expecting the secrets of men and their machismo, perhaps, the secrets of Gabriel, unlocked? The matadors have made it all too easy for themselves and you never anticipated that.
What is the shocking weakness in virtually every man you know
well? The whimpering like children when they’re ill. The need for women to ask directions for them. Help shop for their clothes. Book appointments for their hair to be cut because they don’t care to speak for themselves. The inability to pick up the phone if they want a relationship to stop. Are the weaknesses you see again and again a symptom of men of this age, or have they always been there, and women, secretly, have always known?
It is not wine nor kings but woemen that are strongest.
You know one thing, as Gabriel gazes at you from the other side of the ring: he’s not over it yet. A stopping and a blush told you that. But he doesn’t know you’re pregnant, he can’t have seen it as you stood behind the men in the crowd.
Suddenly it seems so unthinking and reckless to act on the impulse to have him back; and just once. Men lure exlovers all the time—why, now, in the thick of it, are you suddenly so uncomfortable? You can’t just walk away from your nature, it’s following you here, yapping at your heels, calling you home.
You should leave right now.
He’s looking across at you.
Lesson 119
all people, very properly, like to be considered respectable
You make your way along the bench, indicate you’ll be out the front. He’s out almost as quick. Your heart brims at that: the eagerness.
He flushes, at your belly, he stops. You step forward and say nothing, take both his hands in yours, then move, hesitantly, to touch his cheek. He pulls away like a child from a mother’s hand with its cleansing spit; he doesn’t touch you back. He looks again at your belly.
Well, I wasn’t expecting that.
It’s not yours, it couldn’t be, you laugh awkwardly.
I know, he says, too quick.
He takes your arm, he doesn’t look at you, he’s propelling you away from the arena as if he’s shamed by all this and you’re shaking inside, at his response, you’re faltering suddenly, anxious, chastened. First-date nervous.
Gabriel, too, feels distracted, changed. Not as inkyhaired as you remembered, worn. You see him now as a man who’s stepped suddenly into that queasy time when he’s not yet middle aged but no longer young. A time of uncertainty when mothers stop asking when their sons will find a nice girl and settle down, but begin asking others, what’s wrong with him? And as you walk with him through the dusty, jostly fiesta streets you feel another presence between you. A new woman perhaps, or just his moving on, you don’t know, but something has been snuffed.
He turns, he laughs, he suddenly kisses you, as if what the hell, after all your indifference, even with a baby large between you. As if just once, on this crazy night, he wants to remember what it was like. You kiss him back. Shocked, drinking deep, not able to read him any more.
You’ve been busy, he says, and you grin, shy, and look down, rubbing your belly.
Oh yes.
You mumble an apology for disappearing, mumble something about needing to sort some things out in your life and he says yeah, yeah that’s what they all say, it’s in his teasing voice and you’re so relieved to have the old Gabriel back, you’re tugging him along, come on, you mad bugger, let’s get out of here, and he’s laughing and tugging in return, saying wrong way, mi amor, down here, I’ve got a room, and you’re both relaxing into that old familiar companionship, it’s as smooth as ice cream slipping down your throat. Then there’s silence as you walk the streets with the tender matiness of old lovers, not sure what’s next.
So what did you think of the corrida, he asks.
It wasn’t what I was expecting. I wanted all the sternness and beauty you’d told me about but it just seemed, I don’t know, cowardly. Sad. I didn’t like it at all.
Where does that cruelty spring from, from what deep seam within you? The cruelty that makes you say to your husband he’s a failure in his life, to your mother that you may love her but do not like her, to your lover that a passion seems bullying and weak? Those who are closest to you are the only ones who ever see it, no one else would believe it exists.
You can never be satisfied, can you, says Gabriel, and his hands, mocking, are at your throat; a little too hard, just a touch.
Lesson 120
modesty is holy and good
Why are you here, he asks, as he turns the key to his hotel room.
I –
You stop, can’t go on, the tips of your fingers press your mouth; you don’t know why you flew to Seville any more, why you didn’t just walk from the bullring, from his life. This is wrong, this is wrong.
You’re pregnant, he says. This is something I shouldn’t be doing.
I know.
But I want to, he says, leaning close.
I don’t think I should be here, you protest, you back off.
But you are here, he says.
He kisses you as soon as the door is shut, he crowds you into the wall. Take off your clothes, he says softly, breathing close to your ear—you’ve always loved it when he does that. You hesitate, look down at your belly, you remove your clothes slowly, your belly looms like a moon, marking you as taboo and there’s a stirring, the baby, but you can’t say no, can’t resist the demand. Gabriel stands back with his hands clasped behind his back, he watches your body, he smiles at it. Then he drops to his knees and smoothes his palms over your breasts and your stomach, now drum tight, he nudges between your legs and suddenly pushes two fingers up, without warning, like a stick into rain-plumped moss. You weren’t expecting that, the violence in it, it’s nothing that you’d taught him. Something has changed, he’s found confidence, he’s surprising; your knees buckle. You hold out your hand for support, you’re almost coming already, he’s slipped from your grasp and you don’t know why but it makes you want him to go on, and on, and on, to see where it ends, to not stop.
And there are three of you in this hotel room. Trying not to think of that.
You curl sideways on the bed, wait for him to take off his clothes. You, now, watch his body, it’s always given you pleasure to savour it. The beautiful hips, the pale scar where his appendix was taken out, the small, silver crucifix round his neck, the pianist’s wrists, the half-hearted hair on his chest, the long, curved cock. Gabriel drapes your body with his and kisses your neck, and you feel his hardness nudging between the crack of your ass and then you turn slowly, face to face and you see for the first time his concentration, you can see in his face that this type of experience is entirely new and strange; emotionally, and physically, it’s an unknown quantity, a performance impossible to rehearse.
Item one: the suburban housewife.
Item two: the heavily pregnant woman.
Item three: God knows what’s next.
You’re beautiful like this, so beautiful, he’s murmuring with his hands over your belly and your breasts and you should be hating it, you should be looking inward, nurturing, instead of raging with want but you’re ready in that greedy moment to hand him your whole life. You can feel strongly through Gabriel’s kissing and stroking that his lovemaking has firmed, he knows what he’s doing now, the lessons have worked. His touch is competitive and creative, it’s as if he’s trying to wipe the memory of every other man you’ve ever been with, to stamp your skin with the permanence of his own stroke. You feel the heat of envy: what other woman has he touched, who’s given him this confidence, this command? And yet the thought of other women thrilled you once. When you had him well and truly caught.
You turn again and Gabriel slips in from behind, you’re thirty-four weeks pregnant, you shouldn’t be doing this but before you have time to tighten against him you come, almost before he’s begun, again and again you come, the orgasms are tripping over each other, they’re seizing you up. You clutch his fingers and he clutches yours and your knuckles are bone-white and the aftershock lingers on and on.
I want to come inside you, he whispers.
It feels like a violation, it doesn’t feel right. It isn’t right. You don’t tell him that.
Please, he says.
You
don’t even feel it.
Lesson 121
our feet should be kept warm and dry
At one a.m. or thereabouts he’s on the hotel couch and you’re sitting in a chair in front of him with your bare feet crossed on his chest and your soles can feel his heart, its beat, and he bows his head and looks up, his eyes redrimmed, and that’s when all the honesty begins.
I don’t think I can go on with this, he says. I’m not sure if we should see each other again. It’s like a sickness in my gut, he says, because it feels so good; but you’re pregnant now and that’s sacred to me; I know, I know, he says, despite what I’ve done. But I’ve got to get on with my life. You changed me completely, you were so vital to me and I’ll never forget that. But it’s my life now. The work’s all coming together, I’ve got a producer on board, the script’s starting to work, and then you’re jumping in and suturing all his talk; you just had to see him, that’s all, one last time, and your voice is too quick and light, it’s wanting to get it in first and as you speak you can read his heart racing through the soles of your feet. It’s agony, agony, all this; he wasn’t meant to be moving away at this point. Your voice is repeating itself, it’s wobbling and trailing out: one last time, that’s all, you’re telling him, you’ll be going back to your London life after this, you’ll never see each other again, from this point on any connection between you will stop, it’s over, it’s over, this is it.
The great calm, the anaesthetisation of the shock when everything slows, even your heart. The shock at his rejection, and at you telling him there’s no going back.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 18