‘Bloody hell, Vaughan – you’re just supposed to look at her tits.’
‘Oh, not you as well! Honestly, Katya says that men in England are only interested in her for her body.’
‘She’s a bloody table-dancer, for God’s sake! Not the Gender Equality Officer for Lambeth fucking Council!’
Gary was determined that the evening’s mission should not be aborted, despite having to listen to my musings about equal opportunities tribunals as applied to lap-dancing clubs.
‘You know, women are allowed to breastfeed their babies at work.’
‘No …’
‘Well, they are – it was a hard-fought battle. I just wondered if that included topless dancers?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, if Katya decided she wanted children, could the lap-dancing club legally sack her for getting pregnant? Or for bringing her baby into the workplace and then breastfeeding it while on stage?’
‘Urgh! Is that what turns you on, then? ’Cos I’m sure there are websites—’
‘No! It’s just that seeing those women dancing naked up there – well, it made me think about employment legislation issues.’
‘Yeah,’ laughed Gary, ‘well, that’s men for you!’
Unsurprisingly, my condom stayed in its packet that night, despite Gary doing his best to re-create the cliché he’d seen in a hundred films where two men spot two unattached women in a bar and offer to buy them a drink. In six different pubs and wine bars, we found just one pair of women who were not with boyfriends or husbands and it turned out they were waiting for the rest of their book group to turn up.
‘How old are you two anyway?’ one of them had said to Gary, who came straight back with the unwitty retort ‘Old enough!’ This failed to make them want to abandon discussing their magic-realist novel and sleep with two middle-aged strangers instead.
But away from the over-eager, vicarious prowling of Gary, I did soon find myself in a situation where some women were interested in me. It was the night after school had broken up for Easter, and for once I accepted the invitation of the younger teachers to go to the pub after work. My work colleagues had always been cautious not to appear nosey about my medical condition, and generally tried to act as if nothing had ever happened. But after a few bottles of white wine, a group of female teachers finally broached the subject of just how much I could and couldn’t remember.
‘Well, I can’t remember why my marriage broke up, so I’m feeling pretty sore about that, to be honest.’
‘You poor thing … Can you remember your childhood and stuff like that?’
‘Bits of it are coming back. I don’t really remember my parents, or growing up or going to university or anything.’
‘Maybe your mind has shut it out because you were abused?’ suggested one particularly intense science teacher, who could usually be seen sitting in the staffroom reading misery memoirs with titles like Cry Silent Tears Child 7.
‘Er – well, I don’t think so.’
‘Yeah, I’ve read about it. It’s a self-defence mechanism so you don’t recall being used as a sex slave by Catholic priests and then locked in the cellar as punishment by your abusive step-parents who fed you scraps from a dog bowl—’
‘Jane, shut up, will you?’ said Sally, the English teacher. ‘But it must be weird to have no past. It sort of means you don’t quite know who you are in the present.’
‘Yeah, exactly. Though it’s made me think none of us really knows who we actually are – we just invent a persona, put it out there and hope everyone else goes along with it.’
The others reflected on this profound thought for a moment.
‘Or maybe you were a child prostitute?’
‘Shut up, Jane!’
‘Actually, my friend Gary says I’m a virgin because I don’t remember having sex!’ I joked, but this information sent an electric ripple through the crowd.
‘What – you haven’t had sex since your amnesia?’
‘Well, no – my wife and I are separated.’
‘And you don’t remember having sex beforehand?’
‘No – it’s a complete blank!’
This bewitching detail instantly seemed to elevate me to the status of the most desirable man in all Europe. Suddenly my half-jokes were hilarious, my anecdotes were deeply fascinating, and any bit of fluff on my shoulder was urgently in need of brushing away as I was subjected to an hour of intensive flirting from a collection of beautiful and vivacious women.
They took it in turns to top up my wine glass and listen to my story about how I had spent a week in hospital not even knowing my own name. I told them about having no memory of my friends and family and then discovering my marriage had failed and that my father was dying.
‘Ah, come here – you need a big hug,’ said Jennifer, who helped late developers with special needs, which clearly included Mr Vaughan, as she held me close and rubbed my back for longer than might be considered just kind and supportive.
‘Yes, you’re badly in need of a cuddle,’ agreed Caroline, who taught media studies and drama but seemed keen to expand to adult education, perhaps as soon as that very evening.
And I realized I was thoroughly enjoying the star treatment and the undivided attention of all these women, even though it felt alien and slightly scary to be this physically close to members of the opposite sex.
‘And I have no memory of my own mother at all …’
Hug.
‘And I’m trying to rebuild a relationship with my father from scratch, as he lies dying in his hospital bed …’
Hug.
‘And, er … I had to re-learn all the history modules before I could teach Year Eleven their GCSE coursework.’
That one didn’t seem quite so tragic, but they gave me a hug anyway.
The topography of the pub, coupled with the perseverance of one particular woman, meant that eventually I was no longer talking to a group of ladies but just to one, and a few drinks later it dawned on me that it was quite possible that I might spend the rest of the night with her. Suzanne was a tall, thin Australian brunette in her early thirties who worked in the PE and drama departments at the school. She had previously been a dancer, and it showed in her impeccable posture and penchant for woolly leggings. Where other women might have a cleavage, Suzanne’s low top revealed a bony sternum that made you want to knock on it to see if it was as hard as it looked.
She had seemed fairly attractive at the beginning of the evening, but following several pints of beer and a bottle of red wine, I was even better able to appreciate her stunning good looks and seductive allure. The more she talked to me, the more convinced I became that I should sleep with her that very night. She taunted me with her provocative story of how she had introduced a B.Tech in dance for those not able to do the GCSE; her account of how she was unfairly passed over for the vacancy of Assistant Principal (Curriculum) seemed positively erotic.
‘So you know you said you were going to Greenwich Market on Sunday?’ I said. ‘I have an A–Z back in my desk that you could borrow if you wanted.’
‘I do own an A–Z!’ she blurted out too quickly, immediately cursing herself as she realized that this had been offered up as her excuse to follow me out of the pub.
‘Oh,’ I said, seemingly defeated by the first hurdle. ‘Oh, but my A–Z is, like, a ring-binder one,’ I persevered, ‘so you could actually keep the map open on the Greenwich page …’
‘Oh, a ring-binder A–Z? No, my one isn’t like that, no, that would be really useful, actually, yeah …’
‘’Cos then you wouldn’t have to keep remembering the right page number …’ I said, as if this was the most laborious, time-consuming business imaginable
‘… and then opening the book to that page, blah blah blah – yeah, that can be a real drag …’
There was a moment’s silence while we both wondered how to get round the second problem.
‘The only thing is, my desk is
really messy, so it might take me a while to find it.’ I was concentrating hard now. ‘So, if you like, you could finish your drink, with the rest of your department over there, and then I could meet you in school in about ten minutes?’
Kofi and John, the security guards, were well used to teachers coming in at all hours to work late on emails or collect piles of homework and thought there was nothing unusual in seeing me walk past the reception desk around midnight. They were friendly and respectful but they weren’t going to let a senior member of staff distract them from the important business of sitting behind the counter all night reading the free local tabloid.
‘Evening, Kofi. Evening, John!’
‘Hello, Mr Vaughan, sir!’
‘You working too hard, sir, isn’t it?’
‘Aha, ha, yes, work, work, work! Just picking something up, actually … Won’t be long.’
I swiped my smart card to pass through the main doors and then headed up the stairs. It felt illicit to be in school so late. I had never heard the place so quiet; the cleaners had all gone home and the lights were dim and emitted a low buzz I hadn’t noticed during the daytime. In the staff toilets I dragged a wet paper towel under my armpits and wetted down my hair. Looking at myself in the cracked mirror, I was excited and nervous that this could really be the night when it was finally going to happen.
In my form room I grabbed the requisite A–Z from my drawer. And now it could lead me to my first sexual experience: you just followed the route from talking to touching, kept going till you reached kissing and eventually that led you straight down to … And then I realized that I had no idea how you actually went from one to the next. Would I be any good at it? Would she think me ridiculous? Perhaps I should make an excuse and forget the whole idea? At that moment the beep of my phone made me realize how jumpy I felt. The text message read: ‘Hve bought wine. Am in gym store. S.x’
Now I felt myself physically shaking. ‘S.x’ she had signed the text. It just seemed to put me in mind of something. This information changed everything. Suddenly I had been robbed of the journey home with her, the time to work myself up to the big moment. Suzanne had unlocked the gym store and was waiting for me in a room smelling of sweat and rubber. I was going to lose my virginity in the gym, like some jock in an American teen movie.
The door was slightly ajar, and Suzanne was sitting on a pile of exercise mats with a bottle of red wine and two plastic cups in front of her. The room was a chaotic jumble of five-a-side goals, folded-up ping-pong tables, netball poles and running hurdles, with coloured bibs and balls of every shape and size scattered around the place. Suzanne made sitting cross-legged look so natural – she was like a Buddhist statue, a yoga teacher, while my gangly legs refused to fold underneath me and my limbs grew stiff as they worked hard to make me look relaxed. In the end I perched myself on the edge of a low bench and drank my wine far too quickly, while we pretended to have a conversation.
‘Are you okay, Vaughan?’
‘Yeah, great, fine. Why?’
‘Your leg is tapping, like, really fast.’
‘Oh, sorry. There, it’s still now. Do you want some more wine?’
‘No, I’ve still got my first one.’
‘I’m sure there are rules about members of staff drinking alcohol in the gymnasium after midnight,’ I joked.
‘Who’s going to know? Kofi and John never leave the reception desk, and anyway, I can always lock the door!’ She got up and did so with a suggestively raised eyebrow and I worried that I might have given out a slight whimper.
But still the Rubicon had to be crossed. We were still only chatting; we were just two work colleagues who had met in the pub earlier and officially were now just having one perfectly innocent drink in the locked store room of the gymnasium after midnight.
‘It’s incredible to think that you have no memory of having sex!’ She chuckled as she sat beside me, looking directly into my eyes.
‘Yeah, but you know, I got in the swimming pool and immediately remembered how to swim. And I got on a bike and I remembered that …’
‘Oh, right, so you can still cycle and drive and everything?’
‘Er, well, actually, no. I tried driving. And I demolished my neighbour’s wall—’
Her insane laughter made me realize that she was even drunker than I was.
‘Maybe I should give you a few driving lessons?’ She laughed.
‘Well, no, I think it’s important to have a proper instructor, with dual controls and everything. Oh, I see—’ The rest of my sentence was cut off at source as she kissed me full on the lips.
Her skin smelt quite distinctive: it was how the perfume counter in a department store might smell if it was moved into a pub. Her lips contorted around mine. I could smell hair lacquer. She was either wearing too much of it or had started drinking it when the bar had run out of vodka. ‘Okay, we’re doing this now,’ I thought. ‘I understand that this is one of the required stages along the way.’ I wondered how many women I had kissed like this in my previous life. Gary had given me the impression that I had always been the shy one, that I had dismally failed to match his tally of conquests at university, and that I had not even looked at another woman after I had met Maddy.
Finally I broke off the kiss, ostensibly to have another glug of wine. I had tried my hardest, but had failed to keep Maddy out of my mind. This woman’s body was so completely different from that of the mother of my children. And I knew which I preferred. Madeleine’s body was softer than a man’s; she had curving hips and breasts and tumbling red hair that wasn’t cropped short for sport. And then I did something I did not feel proud of. As Suzanne launched her face at mine once more, I imagined it was Madeleine. I closed my eyes and kissed harder now, and eagerly pulled her close to me. Suzanne let out an approving grunt that I finally seemed to be getting into it, and I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her with passion and meaning, pretending she was the woman I had told myself that I was over.
She put her hand under my shirt and I felt Maddy’s hand tenderly stroking my back. Maddy’s other hand ran through my hair. Her lips were softer now, her skin smelt sweeter. I tried to put Maddy out of my head again. My mission this evening was to lose my virginity; it was a target I had set myself, like running a marathon or climbing a peak. I had to remain focused on my goal, however uncomfortable I felt along the way. Despite the accumulating evidence, I still didn’t dare believe it was actually going to happen, and so a thrilling tingle of excitement shuddered through me as each station was reached along the way. When I ran my hand up inside the back of her top and my hand brushed against the mystery mechanics of her bra, she invitingly suggested that I made her ‘more comfortable’.
Undoing a lady’s bra – this was definitely the furthest I had ever been! I was virtually being granted access to her breasts! She wasn’t screaming or turning round and slapping me in the face – she actually wanted me to do it. Her bra-strap had three separate hooks, but one of them seemed to have become caught in a loop of cotton thread from which it refused to be disentangled. I tried to keep kissing her as if there wasn’t an awkward problem going on at the end of my left hand, but there was no denying it once the final sharp jerk at her back actually dislodged her face from mine.
‘Ow! What are you doing?’
‘Sorry! Sorry – one of the little hooks seems to be caught in a bit of material there …’
‘Oh, just give it a tug – doesn’t matter if you rip it.’
I yanked it firmly, but still the thread of cotton was stronger than I was. ‘Hang on a minute, I might be able to see the problem properly if I put my reading glasses on …’
The sexual tension dipped more than a little as I reached for my jacket and took out my glasses case, opened it up and eventually had a good look at this little problem, like an old clockmaker studying the inside of a pocket watch.
‘There! Got the little monkey!’ I finally announced. But I feared that just advancing straight to her breas
ts now might seem a bit perfunctory, so I just left the strap hanging loose across her back and resumed kissing her again in the hope of building up another head of steam.
I was surprised by how forward she was, effortlessly undoing my buttons to rub her hands over my chest. At each stage she was ahead of me. She wriggled out of her top and her bra in one deft movement and then moved to pull my shirt and vest over my head. I could see Suzanne’s breasts now. Even though we hardly knew each other, she seemed to have no qualms about baring the upper half of her body to me. I tentatively went to touch them, like a wartime child who had never seen this particular exotic fruit before and wasn’t sure how you approached it. She wriggled out of her tights and I thought I ought to follow suit by taking off my trousers. ‘But would it look too forward if I took off my underpants as well?’ I thought. ‘I mean, this might be as far as she wants to go – I don’t want to come across as some creepy flasher exposing himself in the school gym store.’
‘Have you brought something?’ she suddenly enquired.
‘Well, I’ve got some wine in my bag, but you already had a bottle, so—’
‘No – a condom. Have you got a condom?’
That was definitely it, then. That surely was confirmation that sexual intercourse really was going to happen.
‘Oh, sorry, yes, I’ve got one in my wallet.’ And I reached across to my discarded trousers to find the little sachet that Gary had bought me a few days earlier. ‘But that doesn’t mean I was automatically expecting, you know …’
‘What?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to think that I presumed you would have sex with me so I put a condom in my wallet—’
‘Who gives a fuck? Quickly, just put it on …’
‘Right, will do.’
I tugged at the foil, and for a few seconds was unable to open the packet. In my urgent desperation I attacked it with my teeth, and I bit the serrated edge of the foil, recoiling as the seal broke and I got a tiny taste of the sterile lubricant inside. Once the thing was in my hands I couldn’t help but think how pathetic it was. ‘All that fuss over this?’ I thought. ‘A wet bit of crumpled polythene?’ But my disdain masked a certain amount of fear. I had no idea how to put the thing on. The Year 9 pupils had recently been shown how to put on a condom as part of their health and social care curriculum, but I had thought at the time that it might seem a little strange if I turned up to the lesson to find out myself.
The Man Who Forgot His Wife Page 20