He leans forward for another kiss, and thinking, “A mercy kiss,” I close my eyes and lean forward and kiss him again. I think, “Here’s where I get up and say something breezy like, ‘let’s get this tidied away shall we?’” But I don’t. For entirely selfish reasons, I don’t do that. For the kiss feels good. It feels almost like a homecoming.
Tom links his arm around my back and I stiffen – he’s trying too hard – but he realises and drops it and stands. He nods towards the bedroom and winks at me.
I shake my head but smile all the same.
“Oh go on,” he says.
“I’m not ready,” I answer.
“It’s just a shag,” he says. “It’s not a contract. You can still dump me tomorrow. If you want.”
Despite my best efforts not to, I smile again. Tom nods his head towards the bedroom again, beckoning anew. “Oh go on,” he says. “You can fuck me from behind and pretend it’s someone else.”
I grimace. “Tom!” I protest.
He shrugs. “I need a shag,” he says. “I’m willing to negotiate about how, when and what you get in return.
“Tom!” I say again.
“Come on, you’re killing me,” he says. “I really need a shag. I’ll pay you. I’ll do cleaning duties for a week.”
He’s trying to be cute and succeeding - my dick is stiffening. “Why not?” I think. “It would hardly be the first time my dick took me somewhere against my will.” And then, “A mercy shag – just to see.”
It feels fine in fact. Tom and I have always had two kinds of sex: the gentle eye-to-eye lovemaking, and the rough and ready release kind, as emotional as a game of squash. This is clearly the second kind.
There’s something in his eyes that keeps putting me off. It might be love actually. On second thoughts, that’s definitely what it is. So I turn him around and take him, as suggested, from behind. Where usually I’m guided towards any movement that produces an “Ah yes,” and away from anything that generates, “Ow! Ah!” today it’s the other way around. In fact I slam into him so hard he yelps like a dog. I’m not sure if I’m having sex or exorcising my anger. On second thoughts, I am sure – it’s the latter. This is clearly sex as punishment. The irony of course is that it’s clearly what Tom wants and, I realise, rarely gets.
Encouraged, I slip into role-play. “God you like that don’t you, you cheating little slut,” I pant, gripping his thighs so my fingers ache and slamming into him so hard it hurts my balls, and thinking how paradoxical it is that I mean every word I’m saying, and that Tom is loving it all the more for that.
“God!” Tom says. “Ohouh … oh I love … huh… it. Uh, uh, ohh, God ye, ye, yes. That’s – Ahh, ahh … amazing!”
Good Enough
Over the next few days, Ricardo phones me only once, but I genuinely miss the call. When he doesn’t leave a message and he doesn’t try again I feel both relieved and jilted. I would have at least expected him to tell me in person about his decision to leave.
For her part, Jenny mopes surprisingly little over his announced departure – every time I bump into her she is smiling and happy. It seems that after so much inactivity, going out to work is doing her good.
But the modified structure of Jenny’s day changes mine too, as now, when she showers at six a.m., the water rushing down the pipe just outside my window invariably wakes me. If that doesn’t get me then her newfound penchant for clompy high-heels certainly does. And then, once awake, my torment about the future takes hold and sleep is lost for good. For though the New Year’s Eve mercy shag does lead to a slightly more relaxed atmosphere between Tom and I, it doesn’t lead to a repeat performance and in my own mind, nothing has changed – nothing is resolved. Tom doesn’t seem unduly troubled by this though, at least not enough to lose any sleep over it, so I get two hours alone in the silent flat before he gets up; time to sit and wonder if anything were possible what I would want, and where and with whom.
My only option seems to be to let things slide and to wait for some major tremor to realign my life into a comprehensible pattern. I watch and wait.
*
A tremor comes surely enough, on the third Monday of the New Year. But it’s not of a nature to clarify anything – it simply adds a stressful time-line to the decision process. I’m eating a croissant and sipping thick black coffee when the phone call comes. Tom answers it initially but quickly gives in and hands it over to me. “Sorry,” he says. “But it’s too complicated for my French.”
When I finally hang up, Tom, who has been watching me and biting his nails, says, “Bad news?”
I honestly don’t know how to reply. I feel a bit light headed. Not with joy or fear, but just at the added pressure.
“What did he say?” he asks. “Has it fallen through?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say spacily. “No … he said it’s all OK.”
Tom goggle-eyes me. “Wow!” he says. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Whatsisname is gonna be declared missing at the end of the month, and then we can sign mid February. He wanted to fix the date, but I said we’d get back to him.”
Tom grins at me. It’s a sweet, genuine smile I’m unable to match. “That’s brilliant,” he says.
“Yes,” I say again. “I suppose it is.”
Tom twists his mouth. “You do still want to don’t you?” he asks.
I sigh deeply. “I don’t know Tom,” I say. “I’m sorry but I really don’t know anymore.” And it’s true that I don’t know. I couldn’t categorically say that I don’t want to do it anymore. But I realise that I truly have been hoping that the project will fall through. I’m feeling a sense of near-panic here. It feels like the walls are closing in around me.
“I see,” Tom says. “And can we? Pull out, I mean.”
I shrug. “We’d lose the deposit,” I say.
“All twenty grand?”
“All twenty grand.”
“Shit,” Tom says. “Well we can’t then, can we?”
“No,” I say. “I guess not.”
“I got an answer you know,” Tom says. “To one of the messages I posted on that hill-walking site.”
“Yeah,” I say. “The one from Egypt?”
“Egypt?” Tom says.
And I remember that I’m not supposed to know. And I realise that I don’t give a damn. “Yeah,” I say. “I traced the IP address. It was posted from Egypt.”
Tom frowns.
“I checked your email,” I say. “I read it.”
“You checked my mail?” Tom repeats incredulously.
I nod.
“OK,” he says, evenly, then, “Why?”
“Doh!” I say.
Tom feigns confusion, so I explain. “I didn’t trust you,” I say. I wonder if I should have said don’t.
“Right,” Tom says. “I don’t suppose I have the right to feel outraged about that.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think you do, no,” I say.
“How did you get the password?” Tom says.
I roll my eyes. “Well, it was gonna be woofter or Brighton, wasn’t it?” I say. “You always use the same two. Anyway, what’s woofter? Like woolly-woofter for poofter?”
“No,” Tom says quietly, clearly still taking this in. “Woofter – our dog. When I was a kid. Those are so going to be changed. So, what’s this about Egypt anyway?”
“The message was posted by someone in Egypt,” I say.
“The one saying the place was sold and …”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I thought that was probably posted by Chantal,” Tom says.
I nod. “Yeah, me too. Couldn’t work out why she didn’t say, ‘I’ve sold the place,’ though.”
“No,” Tom agrees. “I suppose she might have told someone else.”
“Someone in Egypt,” I say.
“Yeah,” Tom says. “Anyway, does this mean he’s really dead now?”
I shake my head. “No, just officially gone. It means she
can sell the house.”
Tom nods. “If we want it,” he says.
“If we want it,” I repeat.
“I can’t believe you checked my mail,” Tom says.
“I can’t believe you cruised the net to find a dick to suck,” I say.
“It was the other … Anyway. Quite,” Tom says. “I really didn’t think it would be this important though; I honestly didn’t think it would jeopardise anything.”
I let out a gasp. “You so did,” I say.
Tom scratches his chin. “I guess,” he says. “I hoped it wouldn’t then … I still can’t really understand why it should.”
I shrug. “It’s mainly the dishonesty,” I tell him, feeling a sharp pang at my own hypocrisy. “Plus, why risk a lifelong relationship for a blow-job? I don’t really get it. Why fuck everything up for so little?”
“I didn’t think it would,” Tom says. “Fuck everything up.”
I snort sourly. “Yeah, because I wasn’t supposed to know.”
“Yeah,” Tom says vaguely. “Plus, you know me and lifelong relationships. Scares the willies out of me.”
“I forgot,” I say. “You’re a non-believer.”
Tom chews his lip. “No, I do believe,” he says. “But I think maybe I’m not capable.”
“Yet you expect me to want to buy a gîte with you,” I point out.
“Well, I’m not saying I’ll run off in six months’ time or anything,” Tom says. “I am capable of committing to a project for a few years.”
I cough. “That’s good of you,” I say.
“Sorry. That sounded…”
“Honest,” I say. “For once.”
“I think monogamy scares me,” Tom says, apparently emboldened. “A whole lifetime of…”
“Of what?”
“Never mind. It’ll sound worse.”
“What?” I insist. “A whole lifetime of sex with me?”
Tom tuts. “No! But it always gets boring after a while… everyone knows that. I just want to enjoy all the options.”
I nod. “So in a nutshell,” I say. “You’re prepared to commit for a couple of years. But the cheating and lies will continue?”
Tom looks outraged.
“No, seriously Tom, it’s fine; these things have to be said.”
“Yeah, but it’s how you say them,” Tom says. “It doesn’t have to involve cheating or lying.”
I roll my eyes at him. “So how does that work then?”
Tom shrugs. “If we agreed that this sort of thing is bound to happen, then it wouldn’t involve lying.”
I laugh in disbelief. “An open relationship?” I say. “Is that what you’re offering?”
Tom shrugs. “I’m not offering anything,” he says.
It strikes me as a profound truth and I sit in silence for a moment absorbing it. “No,” I say eventually.
“I’m just discussing,” Tom continues. “It seems to me that things might last a bit longer. If we allow a bit of freedom, a bit of leeway.”
“I don’t believe that at all,” I say. “That’s the trouble. It’s like going shopping to save money.”
“You what?”
“If you spend time in shops you spend money. If you spend time cruising in bars or checking out the web then you’ll meet someone else. Someone who seems better. At first glance they will anyway. If you want it to last, you have to stop shopping. That’s my point.”
Tom nods. “I see what you mean,” he says. “But if you don’t think your relationship can bear comparison – well, it doesn’t say a lot about it does it?” His mobile rings at that instant, and he spins it towards him to look at the screen. “Jenny,” he says. I shake my head and he nods and presses the cancel button.
“You were saying,” I prompt.
Tom rolls his eyes to the ceiling, and then looks back at me. “What does it say about a relationship if it implies never looking elsewhere just in case you’re tempted,” he says. “That’s my point.”
I shrug. “It’s an act of belief,” I say. “It’s a decision. That there isn’t anything better. That something can be good enough.” I have a sudden feeling of déjà-vu and wonder if I haven’t already had exactly this conversation with Tom once before.
Tom nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I see. But I don’t think I’m built that way.”
“No,” I agree. “Maybe not.”
“I could try though,” he says.
I blow though my lips. “Maybe that’s not enough,” I say.
“I would try,” Tom says. “I promise.”
“It’s the trying I’m having trouble with,” I say. “It just isn’t very convincing.”
“No,” Tom says. “Well,” he adds, cleverly, “maybe that requires an act of belief on your part.”
I bang my hand on the table and stand. “Well, that’s quite enough of that,” I say, realising that we have somehow slipped into dialectic – point-scoring tactics for winning arguments rather than anything deep or useful. “I’m going for a walk. My brain’s saturated.”
Tom smiles at me. “Yeah,” he says. “I could do with a breath of fresh air too.”
I smile tightly at him. “Good,” I say. “Go for it.” Then just to make sure that it’s clear we aren’t doing this together, I add, “See you later then.”
Expert Advice
Initially unsure of my destination, I walk briskly through the old town. I’m trying my hardest – for now – not to think about Tom or the gîte. There just doesn’t seem to be anywhere sane for those thought processes to go.
It’s three p.m. and the winter sun is already low enough in the sky to leave the streets in deep, cold shadow and my denim jacket is, I realise, insufficient. When I notice that I’m heading for Cours Saleya, I take a sharp left and start to wind my way up towards the Parc Du Château. Pausing after the first eleven steps (of hundreds) are two women – a fit looking wiry one in walking shorts and her very red faced friend. As I stride past them, the fat one, who looks like she’s been eating Morgan Spurlock’s McDonald’s diet not for thirty days but thirty years, speaks to me in English. “Hey Mister,” she says. “Can you tell us if the chateau is this way?”
When it comes to foreigners in France assuming everyone can speak English I have a similar reaction to most French people: I consider it arrogant enough to want to ignore them, or worse still feed them duff information. But knowing the number of steps to go, looking at the woman’s face and seeing that she won’t make it alive, and noticing something about the pair that I can’t put my finger on, I do my good deed for the day and tell them that a) there is no chateau in the Parc du Château, and b) it’s a very long way to the top.
“You see,” the fat woman says, wheezily addressing her friend. “You made me walk all that way for nothin’.”
The sporty woman catches my eye and almost imperceptibly raises an eyebrow, and I smile and wonder if I have just sabotaged her attempt at getting her fit, or perhaps her hopes of inducing a heart attack. I give them a little wave and charge on up the hill, only now realising that the vibe I picked up is because they are, in fact, a couple; they are family.
After a hundred or so steps and a sharply inclined alleyway, I pass the gates at the base of the park. I zigzag on and up through little archways and up more steps past the waterfall, and by the time I get to the top, to the balcony overlooking the bay, stunningly lit by the beginning of a red sunset, my heart is pounding and I’m sweating freely and my brain has slipped into a restful silence.
I watch another couple of tourists taking portraits into the setting sun and wonder if they will be able to see anything except the red sky behind, and then I take a few deep breaths and head down the other side of the hill towards the port.
A guy in his fifties dressed in beige Crimpelene trousers – where do they get these things? – is lurking in the shadows on one of the bends. As I glance at him he offers what I guess must be his most winning smile, in fact a fairly nerve-wracking grimace; so I jerk my head b
ack to the fore and walk even faster, and wonder how many days he has to lurk in the shadows of the park before he gets a result.
At the bottom of the hill I pass out through the gates – always a relief when closing time at the park is so random – and walk on down to the port. I wish I had put my running shoes on – I would happily have jogged the rest of the way. I continue past the restaurants and down past the boarding area for the Corsica ferry, then climb an alleyway of steps back up to street level. As I round the corner, I nearly bump into someone coming the other way, and as I dodge around him, I see that it’s Ricardo. “Oh!” I say breathlessly. “You!”
“Ah!” Ricardo echoes. “Hello!”
I’m already one step past him and I hesitate between lingering and speeding on.
He smiles at me. “You are late for somewhere?”
I consider lying but he gives me his face-cracking grin and I weaken. “No,” I say. “Just walking, burning calories, getting rid of stress.”
Ricardo looks around like a cornered animal and glances at his watch. “I only have a little time,” he says, nodding at a bar/pizzeria over the road. “But perhaps we can have a quick coffee?”
I shrug. “Sure,” I say. “Why not.”
The woman in the pizzeria is as welcoming as Guantanamo Bay. “We’re not open yet,” she tells us as we push in the door.
Ricardo turns his grin on her and says, “Ce n’est pas grave. Nous allons simplement boire un coup.” – “It doesn’t matter. We are just going to have a quick drink.”
Incredibly, as if hypnotised, the woman shrugs and picks up her order pad.
“I was sure she was going to say no,” I say, once we have our drinks – two beers in fact – and the woman has disappeared out back.
“You just have to tell them how it is,” Ricardo says. “If you’re forceful enough people just agree.”
I wonder if it isn’t how Ricardo gets everything he wants.
“I’m so happy to see you,” he says. “A good surprise.”
His smile is such that I can’t help but grin back at him, and I realise that I haven’t used these muscles properly for days. “Yes,” I agree.
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