by Emlyn Rees
I take a seat and gaze out at the trees, making a mental note to cut back the Virginia creeper, as it’s started encroaching on the window and blocking out the light.
In spite of the gloominess, the room has a pleasant, relaxing feel to it. Granted, this probably has something to do with the bonfire reek of dope smoke, but it’s also down to the old-world atmosphere of the place. As with the kitchen, it’s clear that Jessie hasn’t yet had a chance to redecorate in here.
There are a couple of oil paintings of ships in storms on the walls, both derivative of William McTaggart, who I like, and both badly in need of a clean. The bookshelves are strictly PG (pre-Google), crammed with various encyclopaedias, dictionaries, atlases and other reference books, along with at least a dozen old bound volumes of Punch.
A wooden Bang & Olufsen stereo in the corner is playing Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’, and I listen to that, instead of earwigging on Jessie’s conversation, which is work-based anyway, something to do with advertising revenues for her show.
I do, however, hear her call whoever it is she’s talking to a ‘chickenshit’ and ‘dinosaur’, before she finally terminates the call by slamming the receiver down.
‘My fucking producer, Alex,’ she complains. ‘Honestly, he’s driving me insane.’
I stand up, as she walks over towards me.
‘How are you, darling?’ she asks, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘Sorry I didn’t come out to say hello before, only I’ve been stuck in here all afternoon, dealing with bloody idiots.’ She beams at me. ‘But enough about me. How are you?’ She nods towards the window. ‘I was watching you working out there. It’s looking great.’
‘Thanks.’ As I follow her stare, I notice a marijuana plant on the windowsill, about a foot high. Glancing across, I see that Jessie notices me noticing it too. ‘I see you’ve been doing a bit of gardening yourself,’ I say.
‘Oh, that. It’s Roland’s. Was Roland’s. I don’t even know how to harvest it.’ She nods towards a small bag on the desk. It’s transparent and through it I can see a pack of red Rizlas and a bunch of green. ‘That’s his as well,’ she explains. ‘I found it in the bedside-table drawer. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste . . .’
As if to prove it, she then collects a half-smoked spliff from an ashtray on the writing desk, and sparks it up. She blows smoke in my direction and smiles slowly, like a cat. She offers me the spliff.
‘Want some?’ she asks.
‘Not if it’s got tobacco in it.’ I quit smoking when Amy got pregnant and vowed I’d never touch a cigarette again.
‘It’s OK,’ says Jessie. ‘It’s pure.’
Warily, I accept. I say warily, because I’ve got no head for hash these days, on account of the fact that I don’t smoke enough. Judging from how badly this joint’s been rolled, Jessie’s clearly no big smoker either. Plus, she doesn’t seem remotely wasted, which means it’s probably not that strong. So I think what the hell, and take a couple of hits, before handing it back.
Thanks.’
As she smiles at me again, I notice that she seems shorter than usual. Looking down, I see she’s barefoot, clearly going the whole hippy mile. She’s wearing a short plum-coloured skirt that shows off her well-toned calves, and there’s a silver bangle round her ankle. She looks knockout, in fact. The biz.
She returns the lighter and joint to the ashtray, which I now see is resting on the piece of A4 paper which I covered with a rough pencil sketch for Jessie of an arbour. I reckon it would look gorgeous at the end of her garden, between the oak and the copper beech.
‘Have you had a chance to look at that yet?’ I ask.
‘What? Oh, yes.’
‘And?’
‘I adore it,’ she says, pulling the sketch out from under the ashtray, like a magician whipping off a tablecloth. She holds it up before her and cocks her head to one side, appraisingly. ‘You’re very good at drawing, you know,’ she then says.
‘Thanks.’ I feel myself start to zone out a little, as the dope kicks in.
‘Were you trained?’
‘Housetrained, certainly,’ I joke. ‘I haven’t peed on a carpet for years.’
She raises her shades and rolls her eyes at me. ‘No, I mean did you train professionally as an artist?’
She sits in the armchair and I lean against the desk, and I fill her in on my background, about how I used to work in a gallery, about the paintings I sold, and how it all then fell apart.
‘So you see, there was no money it,’ I conclude. ‘Or not for me, anyway. I guess I wasn’t good enough.’ I’m feeling pleasantly high now, and can’t be bothered to make excuses for myself.
Jessie can. ‘Just because you didn’t make a living out of it doesn’t mean you weren’t any good, Jack. There are plenty of famous artists . . . like Modigliani and Toulouse-Lautrec . . . who never made a bean while they were alive.’
‘Yes, but they both committed suicide,’ I point out, ‘after becoming impoverished, depressed and chronically addicted to absinthe. And,’ I continue, ‘as appealing a prospect as that is, I guess that, when push came to shove, I decided to follow a more conventional path instead. Besides, I had a wife, and a child on the way. I made the only choice I could.’
She wags a finger at me. ‘Ah, but all choices can be unmade, Jack. All of them,’ she repeats, in such a way that I’m left wondering if we’re even talking about painting at all.
I stare out of the window, and wonder what time it is, and contemplate the fact that I really should think about getting home soon. Then I picture Amy in our tiny kitchen, fixing Ben’s tea, and I wonder what kind of mood she’ll be in. I imagine the wan greeting I’ll receive, and suddenly staying right here strikes me as so much more pleasant an option. I reach for the joint and relight it.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ I ask.
I take a long, deep drag and watch Jessie as she walks across the room and stops in front of a large oval wooden mirror. She removes her sunglasses, pushes her hair back, and her reflection flashes me a smile.
‘I’ve never had a portrait done,’ she says.
‘No?’
She stares at herself. ‘Do you think I’d make a good study?’
‘Sure.’
‘Why?’
‘Well . . .’ I half-laugh, embarrassed at being put on the spot like this. ‘I don’t know . . . because you’ve got an interesting face . . .’
‘Interesting?’
‘Er, yeah . . . you know . . . an expressive face.’
‘Do you mean you find me attractive?’
I laugh. ‘Well, yeah, sure . . . or rather, yes, you are . . .’
She turns round to face me. ‘Would you paint me?’
‘No. No, I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
I wouldn’t normally say anything, but my tongue feels loosened by the dope, so I tell her the story of Sally ‘She Who Must Not Be Named’ McCullen. Sally was the last woman whose portrait I painted. This was back when I first started seeing Amy. When Amy discovered that Sally was actually modelling for me in the nude, she freaked. But not half as much as she did when I admitted that Sally had set upon me orally during my sleep – an indiscretion which, to this day, I swear occurred accidentally and through no fault of my own.
After Jessie’s finished laughing, her eyes quickly narrow, and she says, ‘So you haven’t always been such a good boy then.’
Such a good boy as what? I’m tempted to ask, but I don’t. For fear of where the conversation might lead. I’m in danger enough already, because, as I watch Jessie look me coolly up and down, once more I feel The Itch, and Phalius twitches inside my britches, awake.
‘It’s time I headed home,’ I say, pushing myself off the desk and standing unsteadily before her, feeling suddenly quite high.
She ignores me. ‘Well, if you won’t paint me,’ she says, ‘maybe you could give me some advice.’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s upstairs.’
&nbs
p; ‘What is?’
‘The thing I need advising on . . .’
She opens the door and beckons me towards her with her forefinger.
‘Come on,’ she tells me. ‘Don’t be shy . . .’
‘I really do need to –’
But she’s already gone.
I follow her out into the chequered entrance hall.
‘Can you leave your shoes downstairs?’ she calls back down the marble staircase. ‘The carpet fitters came yesterday.’
I’m actually wearing flip-flops, but do as she says, leaving them in the hallway, before joining her. I’ve got every intention of making my excuses again, but I never get the chance, because as soon as I reach her, she sets off again, and I find myself giving chase.
It stinks of paint upstairs and there are dust sheets on the floor of two of the bedrooms we pass. We head up another flight of stairs, taking a right at the top, and continue down a long white corridor overlooking the garden which, if anything, appears even more magnificent from up here.
‘This was my bedroom when I was a kid,’ Jessie explains, as we reach a steep wooden staircase and continue our ascent. ‘I’ve been camping up here while the decorators have been fixing up the main bedrooms downstairs.’
A few steps from the top, Jessie stops without warning, and I walk straight into her. She pushes her bum back against me, so that I’m forced to step down.
‘Oops,’ she laughs, before hurrying on.
What have you got yourself into now? You should have left, I tell myself. You should never have agreed to come up.
I rack my brain for excuses, for a reason to turn right round, but I’m having trouble concentrating. The dope’s left me feeling unfocused, and Jessie’s short-skirted rear is now level with my eyes. It’s shaped exactly like a peach.
The door at the top of the stairs is plastered with Garbage Pail Kids stickers and a sign that reads ‘Keep Out! This Means You!’
‘Ta-da!’ Jessie says, flinging it open and disappearing inside.
I follow her into what still looks exactly like a teenager’s bedroom. There are Smash Hits posters of 1980s pop stars on the wall: Kajagoogoo, Duran Duran, The Belle Stars, and the like.
Jessie walks up to a photo of Simon le Bon and kisses him on the lips.
‘Bloody hilarious, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘It’s like I told you last time you were here: this whole house is like a time trap – and this room in particular. For me, it’s like turning back the years . . .’
I nod, looking around. There are clothes scattered across the stained cream carpet: a pair of inside-out jeans, a crumpled white dress and a black pair of knickers. An open copy of Vogue lies amongst the scrunched-up sheets on the folded-out sofa bed. On a school desk in the corner of the room rests an Amstrad computer, covered with cobwebs.
Jessie opens the door just past the desk and steps out on to the wide, railed balcony beyond. I join her and look out across the rooftops of West London, towards the setting sun.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I say.
‘That’s what I need your advice for. I want to start doing my yoga up here, but I’m going to need some plant cover, because I prefer to do it without any clothes on.’
I list off some plants that will do the trick. They’re pretty much the same ones I used for Slim Jim’s Covent Garden rooftop, hardy and densely foliaged, but Jessie doesn’t seem to be paying much attention. Soon we go back inside.
‘That’s quite a gallery,’ I say, staring at the walls, which are covered with photos. There must be hundreds of them pinned there.
She plucks off a framed photo, and hands it to me. It’s a black-and-white wedding shot. ‘My parents,’ she says.
‘Your mother’s very beautiful.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everyone’s always told me that I look exactly like her.’
I can’t help smiling, embarrassed by the way she’s twisted my words round into a compliment for herself.
‘Nice outfit,’ I tease, noticing a photo of Jessie in her early twenties in a black and red jacket with sharp pointed shoulders. She’s wearing fishnet tights and red velvet boots, and her figure hasn’t changed a bit. ‘You look like an extra out of Thriller,’ I say.
She blushes. ‘Batwings were very fashionable back then, I’ll have you know.’
‘And who’s that?’ I ask, nodding at a handsome-looking guy standing next to her in another photo, where she looks younger still, maybe eighteen, tops.
‘Duncan Musgrove.’
‘Old boyfriend?’
‘My first boyfriend. Or my first real boyfriend, anyway,’ she confides. ‘I lost my virginity to him.’
‘Oh.’
‘In here.’
‘Ah.’
She sits on the edge of the sofa bed. ‘On this very mattress.’
‘Ah-ha.’
‘Right in front of that mirror on the wall,’ she adds, glancing at her reflection.
‘Is that a fact?’
She winks at me. ‘Well, surely you didn’t think you were the first boy I’ve smuggled up here, did you?’
I should, of course, be shocked by Jessie’s frankness, and tell her that I really don’t think such revelations concerning her sexual history are appropriate in the context of our employer/ employee relationship. And then I should, of course, leave.
I do neither. Because being here feels . . . I don’t know . . . right . . . and mellow . . . and easy . . . and cool . . . I feel like something of a teenager myself. Everything seems so fresh.
I walk over to the mirror and stare at my own reflection. It might be an effect of the spliff, but the Jack I see staring back at me seems suddenly altered, and, without wanting to come over all Alain de Botton, it makes me wonder: have I changed? Do we change? Us? As people? As we get older, do we alter and grow and sometimes grow apart? And if I really have changed, then isn’t it likely that Amy has too? But what if we haven’t changed in tandem? What if we’ve gone in opposite directions? What if we no longer belong together at all?
Because that’s how it feels . . . like Amy’s a million miles away . . .
‘Duncan was older than me,’ Jessie continues. ‘Have you ever been with someone older than yourself, Jack? Because you should. It’s educational. It’s something you should try at least once.’
I don’t reply. I turn round and stare at the photos again.
‘Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed.’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to know what was really weird about Duncan?’
‘What?’
‘His willy was shaped exactly like a toadstool. I mean exactly. Right down to the pointy round end.’
She starts to giggle, and so do I. Contagiously. This dope’s obviously stronger than I initially thought, because, without warning, we both collapse on to the sofa bed, with uncontrollable tears of laughter running down our cheeks.
The next thing I know, we’re swapping secrets like a couple of Cold War double agents. I tell her about losing my virginity to Mary Rayner and lasting less than twenty thrusts. She confesses to having secretly slept with her best friend’s boyfriend when she was seventeen, and then with the same woman’s husband last year.
And on, and on, it goes.
Until we’ve got very little left to tell.
But even then, after our sexual glasnost is over, the conversation keeps flowing, unstoppable now, like the river when it hits Niagara Falls. It’s like we’re a couple of sci-fi characters, who’ve just gone through some kind of Accelerated Friendship Vortex. Things between us will never be the same again.
Of course, it’s partly the drugs, but it’s something else as well.
I never get this kind of fresh intimacy with Amy any more. This feels all new, like popping a spoon through the foil on a coffee jar, whereas, with me and Amy, it’s so much more familiar than that, more like scraping the last of the Marmite out of the jar.
Amy and I know too muc
h about each other. There’s nothing left to discover. Whereas this reminds me of dating. I feel young – and horny as hell.
Inappropriate phrases start to queue up in my mind (like flashers, queuing up to jump out of a bush): For an older bird, you’ve got cracking knockers; Are they real?; Can I feel?; With muscle toning like that, I bet you’re dynamite in the sack.
I don’t say any of them, of course, but I want to. I want to very much.
Then Jessie goes for a pee and, in her absence, the effect of the spliff seems to drop off, like my ears have popped on a plane coming into land, and whatever spell it is I’ve been momentarily under breaks.
I stand and stare at myself in the mirror again. How long will it be before I start looking old, even to myself? Because it will happen. Early middle-age will lead to late middle-age. And onwards and down, until one day I’ll look in a mirror and I’ll be grey, or bald. My skin will look like creased-up baking paper, and my balls will be hanging round my thighs like an Argentinian ranchero’s bolas, while my cock will look like a half-smoked, stubbed-out Cuban cigar.
It should depress me, this thought, but what it actually does is fill me with fire. Because I’m still young. I’ve still got what it takes. I’ve still got it in me. Which means I should be fucking at every opportunity I get. While I still can. These days are precious. I shouldn’t be letting them go to waste. I don’t want to be sitting there in some rest home, looking back on my life with regret. I want to be sitting there smiling, knowing that I had just as good a time as I could.
And I do feel good, here in Jessie’s room, acting the way I am. I can’t help grinning at my reflection. I’m flirting. I’m flirting and it feels great. It’s like exercising an old muscle: the more I work it, the easier it becomes. I feel like I’ve just graduated from Charm School, like I’ve got this woman wrapped round my little finger.
Then the smile falls from my face and I slump back on to the sofa bed, because I also know that being here isn’t right. In fact, it’s plain wrong. I’m no longer a free sexual agent. I’m Jack Rossiter. Married to Amy. Father of Ben.
I’ve got to get the fuck out of here, before I do something I regret.
I sit up on the edge of the bed. I move to stand.