‘You amaze me,’ Helen says. She really is amazed. She had imagined a row but never a separation. She didn’t think Elizabeth had the guts.
‘I amaze myself,’ Elizabeth says. ‘Of course I’m hoping when we get back together it may be better, well, different anyway.’
‘You’re sure you’re going to have him back then,’ says Helen, sorry that Elizabeth’s courage doesn’t extend to divorce. She would like to see Felix humiliated, lonely and penniless, since a slow painful death doesn’t appear to be a realistic option.
‘I can’t imagine life without him,’ Elizabeth says, almost fondly, as if she has already forgiven him for everything. ‘I just want him to behave better. But meanwhile’ – and Helen can hear the thrill in her voice – ‘I’m actually going out with someone else, isn’t that a joke?’
‘Well, why not?’ says Helen, determined not to be impressed or worse still, envious.
‘Well, he’s only thirty-five, separated from his wife and children, and he’s borderline manic depressive.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ says Helen stoically.
‘And he’s another writer. It’s David Johnson actually.’ She waits for Helen to react. ‘Well, he did win the Tessimon prize for his first novel and he seems very nice. I mean very civilised, even if he does talk about himself rather a lot, well, they all do that at first, don’t they? It’s probably nerves.’
‘So you’re having a good time,’ Helen says. ‘That’s splendid.’
‘It’s a very strange feeling to be actually dating someone at my age. It sounds very silly but I don’t know what else to call it.’ She gives an apologetic little laugh.
‘Well, why not?’ Helen says again. ‘Make the most of it.’
There is a pause.
‘Anyway, how are you?’ Elizabeth asks in a solicitous voice, as if Helen were ill. Underneath, Helen imagines she can hear exasperation that Elizabeth’s news hasn’t achieved greater impact.
‘Fine,’ she says irritably. She hugs Jordan to herself. She doesn’t want to share his existence; she’d rather be seen as a social failure. The idea of exchanging girlish confidences with Elizabeth revolts her. Besides, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see Jordan again. She finds the uncertainty very painful and she resents the pain. She is appalled that after their shared past Jordan should use her just for a one-night stand to comfort himself when they are both in such a vulnerable state. And she wonders if she asked for it. And she wishes she hadn’t bothered to cook. A month of silence is quite insulting.
‘Any news from Richard?’ Elizabeth asks.
How remote Richard seems now. It’s a strange feeling to have this man she has lived with for eight years transformed into someone she doesn’t want. It seems quite easy to talk about him to Elizabeth.
‘Yes, he called round three weeks ago. He’s got Inge pregnant and he’s in a panic.’
‘My God,’ Elizabeth says.
Perhaps Jordan is just very busy, Helen thinks. Or away. Or too depressed to ring up. Perhaps there is a very good reason that will mean she doesn’t have to hate him.
‘What a shock.’ Elizabeth sounds very concerned.
‘Yes, Richard seemed quite shocked. Apparently Inge didn’t talk it over with him first.’
‘But where does this leave you?’
It feels like an odd question. But then Elizabeth is out of date.
‘Exactly where I was before, I imagine.’
‘You’re being very good about it,’ Elizabeth says, sounding puzzled.
‘I think it’s rather funny,’ Helen says, surprising herself.
‘Funny?’
‘Yes. Richard always wanted me to have a baby. He hated Sally having an abortion. And now Inge’s pregnant and he doesn’t like it but he’s stuck with it. Don’t you think that’s funny?’
‘Well, it’s certainly ironic.’
‘Oh, all right, ironic then.’ Suddenly she is desperate for Elizabeth to get off the phone.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elizabeth says. ‘Are you going to divorce him?’
Helen sighs. ‘I’ve no idea. He hasn’t asked me to. It doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other. It’s just a word. Sometimes I feel as if he’s always been married to Inge and I was just someone he lived with for a while. It seems to make more sense that way.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Elizabeth in a maddeningly sympathetic voice.
‘It really doesn’t matter,’ Helen says.
* * *
She is almost asleep when the phone rings. It’s after midnight. Her instant thought is Sally, trouble; she snatches the phone. ‘Yes?’
‘Helen? Did I wake you?’
‘Oh – Jordan.’ So many emotions flood through her: panic into relief into rage into pleasure, so fast she scarcely has time to breathe.
‘Is it too late?’ he says.
‘For what?’ she says.
‘I’m visiting friends near you and I wondered if I could call in.’
Silence while she thinks. She ought to be angry and she is, but she’s also thrilled.
‘You’ll have to put the money on the dressing-table first,’ she says.
He laughs. ‘All right, I deserve that. In ten minutes?’
‘And I don’t take cheques,’ she says.
She lies there for a moment after he hangs up, letting her heart stop racing, checking how she feels. I’m definitely cracking up, she thinks. I’ve been holding myself together for too long and pressing too hard: now I’m in fragments.
Then she gets out of bed and takes off the ancient T-shirt she sleeps in now she’s alone, puts on a bathrobe, brushes her hair, sprays herself with scent. She finds she is suddenly thinking of Richard sleeping beside the pregnant Inge, not thinking of Jordan at all. She told Elizabeth it was funny, which is true, but it hurts as well, she’s surprised how much. It’s confusing. Is that how it is for them too? Does Richard get images of her as he lies in bed with Inge, does Jordan see Hannah slowly dying even as he picks up the phone? Are we all so badly damaged we can never love whole-heartedly again? she wonders as she prepares herself.
* * *
Opening the door to a stranger smelling of whisky who puts out the light and takes hold of her by the throat. Being held so she can’t cry out while he removes her dressing-gown. Being forced down naked on to the carpet of her own hall in darkness while his hands touch her everywhere. Being violated in her own home. Hearing him tell her in detail what he is going to do to her and how much she will enjoy it and how she will beg him to do it again. Making her repeat the words after him. The weight of him. The smell of his sweat. Feeling him heavy on top of her as he talks in a low monotonous almost casual voice about the detail of what is going to happen to her and how many times and what it will feel like. Hardly believing what is already happening now. The sound of him unzipping. Her face crushed against the carpet as he penetrates her. Feeling him huge inside her. Hearing the sounds he makes. Hearing the sounds she makes. Losing herself, giving up, going under. The rhythm taking over, getting inside her head, like music, like dancing, like violence, like heartbeat, like death.
* * *
‘Well, it makes a change,’ Jordan says. He shifts his weight. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’d have cleaned the carpet if I’d known. And it’s thirty quid extra for the dirty talk.’
He puts his arm round her and kisses her neck. They giggle like children. ‘When in doubt, try an old favourite,’ he says. ‘God, I could use a drink, I’m knackered.’
They get up with a big effort and stagger into the living-room. Her face in the mirror is younger, softer, blurred with pleasure, a transformed face, a face she remembers from long ago. She pours them both whisky while he takes off all his clothes, very old jeans and cracked boots with an ancient leather jacket over a faded shirt, the sort of clothes she remembers him in, not his New Year’s Eve finery. He puts on her bathrobe, which looks ridiculous, as if he’s in drag. They both laugh.
He says, ‘God, I love to
look at you naked. You’ve got such a functional body. Nothing’s just for decoration. I think you’re the most naked naked woman I’ve ever seen.’
She kisses him. ‘Pity it took you a month to remember that.’
‘It can’t be a month. Can it?’ He looks genuinely astonished. She nods. He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got no sense of time, don’t you remember?’
She gives up on that. Why spoil it all? ‘I’m getting cold,’ she says. ‘The central heating’s gone off.’
‘Shall we go to bed then?’
She could say, ‘And you shouldn’t ring after midnight, after a month’s silence, and expect a welcome. You’re using me to cheer yourself up. You’re taking me for granted again after fifteen years and it’s just not fair. You know I’m in a vulnerable state.’ And of course he will argue that she could have said no.
She says, ‘Oh, d’you want to stay?’
‘Can I?’ He sounds completely neutral.
‘Yes, of course.’
He leaves his clothes lying in a heap on her living-room floor and they go upstairs with their arms round each other. He looks at home in her house. He looks as if he belongs there.
* * *
In bed he slips his hand between her legs and probes inside her for the juices they have both left behind, using them slick on his fingers to stroke her and slide her into another climax. ‘Come on,’ he says coaxingly in his most beguiling voice, at its most Welsh again now, as his fingers move, ‘you’re so wet, you can manage one more, I know you can, you didn’t have quite enough just now, did you, and even if you did you can always manage one more, I remember, you don’t think I’d forget a thing like that. Come on now, Helen, just a little one, it’s easy, a little one won’t hurt, it’ll settle you for the night, help you to sleep, just you relax now and let me do all the work.’ And presently she finds to her surprise that he is right and it happens, fluid and effortless, gliding her into pleasure again where she thought there wasn’t room for any more.
* * *
‘Well, I owed you one from last time,’ he says, touching her lips with his fingers so she can taste herself and him. He isn’t hard again and she doesn’t bother trying to make him; she wraps her leg across his body and rests her head on his shoulder. He puts his arm round her. They seem to be like a couple of friendly animals trying to get comfortable, arranging themselves for the night.
‘Shame we can’t sleep like this,’ she says.
‘I know, we’ll have to turn over eventually. Get some oxygen.’ He assumes an exaggerated American accent. ‘Get some personal space. It’s only in movies people can sleep like this for Christssake.’
‘And wake up wearing lip gloss. It’s nice to be having our second night. We only ever had afternoons in the old days.’
He yawns. ‘I always meant to take you away for a dirty weekend but I didn’t, did I?’
‘No, you certainly didn’t.’
‘I didn’t have the cash. Would you have come?’
‘Probably not. I had a conscience in those days.’
‘If it didn’t stop you screwing in the studio, why should it stop you screwing in comfort in a hotel?’
‘Humping in a hotel. Fucking in a flat. I don’t know, I suppose I’d have felt I was stealing from Laura and the children.’
‘She was glad to see the back of me. I was a big disappointment. She thought it was going to be glamorous being the second Mrs Painter. Don’t ever marry one of your students, Helen, they get very angry when you don’t turn out to be God.’
He’s falling asleep. She can tell from the sound of his voice, slowing down, blurring at the edges of the words. Well, he’s entitled, she thinks; he’s worked hard giving me all that pleasure. But something about the conversation disturbs her. His casual tone. His assumption she might marry again someone other than him. She’s shocked to be suddenly in so deep, as if, idly paddling in the shallows, she had suddenly missed her footing and plunged into a hole she didn’t know was there, up to her neck, maybe even over her head, in cold dark water. Three meetings, a couple of phone calls, a few hours’ conversation, two lots of sex and she appears to be more involved than she was before. At any rate she is having fantasies of permanence, like a silly teenager. Like Sally, in fact. She’s scared. It was probably just a meaningless affair to him fifteen years ago; how much more so now when he is mourning Hannah? He still reminds her of Carey, which is why she gave him up in the first place. He is still the person who left two wives and five children. What is she doing, imagining a future with him?
He kisses her shoulder and turns over with a heavy movement, settling down to sleep. She puts her arm round him and cuddles him, her face against his back. She loves the smell of his skin. I’m on the rebound, she thinks, and immediately pictures herself leaping over Richard and bouncing into Jordan’s arms. The image makes her smile. She goes on holding him as he sleeps. She puts off turning over as long as she can.
* * *
In the morning they wake early and she climbs on top of him before he is fully awake, hoping to fuck her way into his heart. It is lovely to watch his face, at first drowsy and crumpled with sleep, then growing ever more defined and focused by pleasure, like a photograph emerging in developer. She rides him lovingly, not thinking of herself this time, only wanting to give, but at the end she is surprised by the power of his climax and she too comes faintly on the strength of it, almost too late, like an echo, as if catching the last of a wave. She collapses on top of him and says presently in a casual voice, ‘Morning,’ and they both laugh. They lie there for about ten minutes while he strokes her hair and she is lulled by his heartbeat slowly returning to normal beneath her ear. Then he says, ‘Well, time to get up,’ and she has to slide off him. He goes into the bathroom and she listens to the sound of the shower and pictures him washing her off his skin.
* * *
She makes coffee. She has put on jeans and a jersey; she doesn’t like to be in her bathrobe once he is dressed. It seems to put her at a disadvantage. He says he doesn’t want any breakfast, then has a few plums from the fruit bowl.
‘Trying to lose some weight,’ he says. ‘I got on the scales the other day, gave myself quite a shock. I must have put on all the weight Hannah lost.’
She is startled by his casual use of Hannah’s name. She herself is never sure when it’s all right to mention Hannah, so she takes her cue from him. Then she wonders if he’s using the name to warn her off, a simple way of telling her not to forget he’s still in mourning and special allowances have to be made for him.
‘You look fine to me,’ she says. But the image stays with her, of him assimilating the weight of his dying wife, light as a dead bird at the end, he said, as some kind of morbid legacy, a way of becoming Hannah perhaps or carrying her around with him. Is it hopeful that he’s starting to be ready to shed some of her now?
‘Well, thanks for the night of passion,’ he says in a jokey tone. ‘I’ll remember it.’
‘How long for, another month?’ The words snap out before the censor gets to them.
His shoulders sag. All the energy goes out of him. He looks irritated. ‘Oh, Helen,’ he says, ‘I did warn you.’
‘I know, about the bandages. What about my bandages?’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘We’re the walking wounded, both of us.’
Silence. It would be so easy now to let it drift, end on a sour note, see him walk out of the door and perhaps not come back. She’s scared how much she wants him. She makes a big effort.
‘I know being bereaved is different from being divorced.’
‘I thought you weren’t divorced yet.’
‘No, but we will be.’ She hadn’t known she was thinking about that; now she hears herself say the decision has been made. ‘Jordan, I’m so angry with Richard, I think my life took a wrong turning when I met him and I want to get back on track. I’ve had nine months of nothing and I’m sick of it.’
‘So you’re randy,’ he says, not her favouri
te word. She supposes it’s accurate but it seems to trivialise what she feels. Does he use it to put her down or protect himself from emotion? ‘Well, so am I. Now and then. Like last night. I’d had a good evening with my friends and I wanted to see you. But other nights I just stay at home and get drunk and think about Hannah and I don’t want to see anyone. It’s that simple. I’m not sitting there thinking, “Now, how long shall I leave it before I ring Helen, how about a month, that’ll show her.’”
She manages to smile.
‘Plus,’ he says, ‘I only got rid of the last of my brood a week ago, she thought I needed looking after. Plus I haven’t done any serious work since before Hannah died and I’m trying to start again before I get in a financial mess. Plus I’ve only been renting a flat and a studio since I came back and next month I’m buying a place in Docklands and moving in…’
She covers her ears. ‘All right, all right, you’re at full stretch. I do understand.’
‘And I warned you,’ he goes on relentlessly. ‘I said I’d be no good to you or anyone else. I told you that on New Year’s Eve.’
‘I know, I know. That’s why I haven’t rung you, I didn’t want to be demanding.’
‘What’s the bloody good of that,’ he says, ‘if you’re only going to nag me when I don’t ring you?’
Suddenly, simultaneously, they both burst out laughing.
He says, ‘Oh, come here, woman,’ and she goes round the table and they hug each other. The hug seems to obliterate every problem. Till the next time, she thinks.
‘You know,’ he says. ‘Not only do we fuck pretty well, we could have a bloody good row if we put our minds to it.’
They kiss.
‘Forget bandages,’ he says. ‘Think crutches.’
A Gift of Poison Page 12