A Good Woman

by Lisa Appignanesi

  It was not long after I moved that the party which was to prove so decisive for my life took place. The invite came from a certain Angelika van Helden who ran a SoHo gallery but whose husband ran everything else. Nor did it come to me, but to Wayne Masters, head of the PR section, who asked - though he was usually a little remote since I seemed to work to Grant rather than to him - if I’d like to come along. I was pleased to accept. I had begun to think that if I didn’t pay more attention to Wayne, my life at Rutherford, Owen and Marks, might in the middle term prove difficult. So I tagged along with Wayne, who was a gentleman of the old school, probably in his mid-fifties, always in a trim pin-striped suit. And I behaved respectfully, listening to his every word, staying close to his side as he met old friends and acquaintances.

  The party was in honour of a much-lauded British actor who was starring in a Noel Coward comedy which had just opened on Broadway. Everyone I could recognize in New York was there and many others I couldn’t. Perfumes and labels thicker than the pages of Vogue battled for recognition against the old and new masters that lined the walls. From one side of the vast van Helden mansion music boomed. I identified some Coward songs and then forgot to listen in the melée of faces and voices. At some point in the evening, when I had had a few too many of the lethal cocktails that were making the rounds, I found myself dragged away from Wayne and towards the music by a young writer I vaguely knew.

  William Sykes, in honour of the Van Heldens, was wearing his best torn jeans and a partially tucked out shirt. But he had a lanky grace to him and a lop-sided smile which could charm the creases out of any forehead and before I knew it, we were wrapped arm in arm and cruising round the dance floor. A little later, though time was none-too-clear, he was pressing me against some darkened column and was kissing me vigorously. I guess I must have been responding for it took a little while for me to recognize the voice at my side.

  ‘I think it’s time to go, don’t you?’

  ‘She doesn’t,’ William Sykes answered for me.

  ‘I do.’ I slipped away from William and looked into the forbidding set of Grant Rutherford’s features. ‘I came with Wayne,’ I said inanely.

  ‘So he told me before he left.’

  ‘Give me a ring,’ William Sykes squeezed my arm.

  I didn’t answer. Grant was manoeuvring me towards the door. He didn’t exactly hold me or press my shoulder but he manoeuvred me just the same, all the way to his car.

  ‘I’ll take you home.’

  I didn’t protest. I was too busy trying to work out whether he expected me to apologize and then thinking that he didn’t own me twenty-four hours a day so I wouldn’t whether he expected it or not. And by the time I had worked this out, we had crossed town and he had parked at a stone’s throw from my door.

  ‘Are you inviting me up?’ he asked, though it didn’t sound like a question.

  ‘Yes, of course, if you’d like to.’ I was mumbling.

  ‘Good, because we have some talking to do.’

  I tried to delay the inevitable lecture.

  ‘I love the apartment,’ I said to him as I switched on the lights. ‘I have thanked you for finding it for me, haven’t I?’

  He grunted, looked around. ‘A little bare, I’d say.’

  ‘It suits me that way. Can I get you a drink?’ As I said it, I wondered whether I had anything in the house, then remembered a bottle of whiskey someone had brought me. ‘Whiskey, coffee? I’m afraid that’s all I have.’

  ‘Both.’ His expression was still relentless.

  I retreated into the kitchen and tried to collect myself as I made coffee, chipped ice out of a reluctant container.

  When I got back, he was slouched into the sofa and staring into space. On the table in front of him were my four notebooks laid out in a row and I quickly piled them away, as I put the tray down.

  ‘What are those?’ he asked.

  ‘Notes. For work,’ I met his eyes. ‘There’s so much to remember.’

  He almost smiled. ‘Then you’d better make a note of this.’ He stood as I handed him the whiskey glass and started to pace.

  ‘If I asked you to come and work for me, Maria,’ he began drily, ‘it’s not simply because you’re clever, but because you’re a beautiful woman, with a good chance of growing even more so in the coming few years.’

  He studied me for a moment as I shifted uncomfortably in the sofa. ‘You flatter me,’ I met his tone, though I wasn’t quite in control of the irony.

  ‘No I don’t flatter you. I assess. Now, as I see it, beauty is not there simply to assuage male desire. That’s too easy. Beauty is there to be used tactically, to attract that desire and divert it to another end. Beauty, like language, like a catchy tune, is a tool for persuasion. You understand me?’

  ‘You’re telling me I’m the woman in the margarine ad. Look at me and think you’re eating butter.’

  He chuckled at this. ‘Almost like that, but not quite so crude. Your beauty is there to oil the great social machine and make sure it runs smoothly in the direction of Rutherford, Owen and Marks.’

  ‘And when do I get to stop being a mechanic?’

  ‘Only in private.’

  I had a sudden attack of giggles. ‘You remind me of a story I once read about a priest in the 17th century. At morning mass, he preaches against frivolity and finery and the sins of the body. For evening mass, he asks the most beautiful woman in the village to stand at the church door in the hope that her charms will seduce alms from the miserly locals.’

  ‘They teach you crazy things in French schools.’

  ‘No crazier than what I’m learning here this evening.’

  We stared at each other in thickening silence. Then he moved abruptly towards me and pulled me up so that we were standing face to face.

  ‘I guess if any desire is to be assuaged tonight, I would rather it were mine.’ His voice was a little hoarse as he said it and I drew away from him just a fraction so that I could see his eyes.

  ‘Is that a question?’

  He didn’t answer. He kissed me instead. It was a long, slow, serious kiss and I only realized how much I liked it when I realized that perhaps I shouldn’t.

  ‘Did Will Sykes phrase a question?’ he asked when he let me go.

  I laughed, ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t remember.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you won’t remember this in the morning.’

  He kissed me again, with more urgency this time, so that I could feel the imprint of his body against every inch of mine. You know how you sometimes have a rare sense that bodies fit one another, something about the texture of skin, the shape and location of all the separate parts, a fluidity of motion? Well, I had it then, with Grant.

  The last thing I remember saying to him before limbs and lips took over completely, was, ‘You mean, you don’t want me to remember?’

  He gave me that hard glint of his, then eased the zipper of my dress slowly down my back, so that the slip of a garment slid to the floor. After that his eyes only warmed me.

  Grant Rutherford was a surprising lover, quite unlike any of the other New Yorkers I had known. Not that the others hadn’t performed well. They had all read the manuals after all and mostly been round the block several times. But it was a performance they were engaged in and they all seemed to want intermittent reports on their prowess and a score sheet out of ten at the end, as if we were acrobats in some competition for an athletic trophy. Having to admire their dicks seemed to be de rigueur and though I hadn’t quite grown used to that, I had grown used to commenting on how this was nice and that was wonderful.

  Grant wasn’t like that. He didn’t ask questions and he didn’t fish for compliments. Best of all he didn’t make me feel watched and waited for. He was sure, certain, silent. Maybe it was just that we fitted each other so well, there was no need for words. When we lay back to savour each other or to fill our glasses, the phrases that passed between us were like little bits of ourselves, childhood moments
, secret flights of fancy.

  I never thought about his wife, though I had glimpsed her twice in the office, a lean leathery women with tanned skin and a full length mink coat. Maybe she was away that weekend, because he must have stayed very late. Though in the morning when I woke, he was gone. I watched the sunlight creep round the budding trees in central park and then dozed again. The next thing I heard was the sound of the bell. A youth with a baseball hat appeared at the door bearing a large deli bag. There were bagels and smoked salmon and cream cheese and freshly ground coffee. While I was gorging myself, the bell rang again. It wasn’t Grant, as I had momentarily suspected, but another man, this time bearing a sumptuous bouquet of flowers. I laughed at the message: ‘For desires assuaged. At least partially.’ There was no need of a signature.

  In the office on Monday, nothing had changed. At the staff meeting, there was no word or glance that betrayed what had passed between us. He still looked at me in the same stern way, from above his specs. He didn’t avoid me, but he didn’t search out moments to be alone with me. Perhaps he was waiting to see how I would behave and perhaps because of that I behaved no differently. In any event, during the days there was always so much to get on with, that there was little time for behaviour. Then, too, I think I relished the secrecy. Late in that week, I was in his office with a new prospective French client, when something about the way Grant leaned back in his chair reminded me of how he had leaned lazily into the pillows of my bed, a big, satisfied cat. The doubling up of impressions together with the need to keep the doubling secret, excited me, tickled. Perhaps it was mutual, for Grant held me back for a moment, alone after the meeting.

  ‘Dinner tonight? At your place. I’ll bring it.’ He was scribbling something on the notepad on his desk and he didn’t look at me as he spoke.

  ‘Can’t. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh?’ He looked up at me then. ‘Someone else?’ His eyebrows rose.

  I left a little silence before I answered. I was choosing my words. ‘Just following the bosses’ orders. Oiling the great social machine.’ I laughed. ‘With Monsieur Farjeon.’

  ‘I see.’ Tension bristled in the air between us. I thought he was going to touch me to defuse it. Instead, he said, ‘Later then?’

  ‘Too late. I’m a working woman.’ I laughed again. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him. It was simply that I wanted to be with him at my best, not feel like a limp rag. But he looked so irascible at my answer, that I added, ‘Tomorrow, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He mimicked my pronunciation. He was good at parrying, Grant. I liked that about him. He looked down at his schedule and took a long time over it, before answering, ‘Tomorrow then, 8.30.’

  Our eyes met, fenced, subsided. ‘I look forward to it,’ I said softly.

  I didn’t have long to look forward to it, for just after midnight that evening, Grant appeared. I knew it was him as soon as I heard the bell. Perhaps I had been thinking about him. But I wasn’t altogether pleased to see him.

  ‘I was just about to get into my bath,’ I said as soon as I opened the door. I pulled the towelling robe more closely round me.

  ‘Perfect timing, then. I wouldn’t have wanted to get you out of it to answer the bell.’

  I suspected from the way he looked round the room, that he had half-believed he would find someone else there. I must have looked disgruntled, for he stroked my cheek softly and whispered, ‘I wanted to see you. Wanted. I’ll help you with your bath.’

  ‘Do I look as if I need help?’

  ‘No, but you might like it.’

  I liked it. I liked the ruffle of his hands along my breasts as he took off my robe, liked the way he soaped me all over and ran his fingers in patterns along my skin, liked the way he rubbed me vigorously dry so that my body tingled. Later, I liked the weight of his penis as I took it in my mouth and the way it filled me when we came together and the purring sounds he made which merged into groans. The next day in the office, I liked his occluded eyes and the formal tones and the parry and thrust of working life with him. I liked Grant Rutherford.

  Over the two years or so we had together Grant and I would meet two or three times a week. Sometimes we would go to the theatre together or he would take me out for dinner, but usually we met at my apartment, which gradually filled up with things he bought for me on our travels. Oh yes, for it was my turn now for those intimate little weeks abroad. But we didn’t go to France. The choice was mine and I chose Mexico, then Rio de Janeiro, then a trip down the Nile. I imagine by then, given the coincidence of holiday times, everyone in the office knew there was something going on between us. But we never let on and no one ever said. And by then, in any case, it was clear that I was increasingly good at my job and I was rewarded appropriately. One thing that pleased me was that I hadn’t gone to bed with Grant before he had offered me a post and that I stayed on, at least for a while, after it was all over.

  Grant and I laughed a lot together and over time, we gossiped and schemed. He was as hungry for my impressions as I was for his knowledge. In that sense, we were a good team. And he liked the fact that he couldn’t be certain of me, that he couldn’t be sure where else I might choose to assuage the desire he had so readily acknowledged I was there to provoke. Just as much as I liked the sense of risk and the fact that he wasn’t around all the time. I was too hungry for life and its myriad experiences to want what I thought of as the stranglehold of coupling. And the days were so full that I relished my moments alone.

  On the infrequent occasions when I saw Grant and his wife at parties or events, I tried to vanish into another corner of the room. Once when it wasn’t possible, he introduced me to her, but apart from a perfunctory politeness, which I returned, we had little interest in each other.

  It was soon after that I think that he said to me one night in that musing way he had after passion was spent, ‘You’re a strange woman, you know.’ He was stroking my hair.

  ‘Oh?’ I curled away from him and looked into his eyes.

  ‘You’ve never asked me when we’re going to meet next. You’ve never asked me about my wife. You never ask me whether I love you’

  I took this in. ‘Is that strange?’

  He grinned, ‘It’s strange.’

  I thought about it for another moment. ‘Your wife is your business. You’re here and I know we both like that.’ I nuzzled the smooth skin of his shoulder, felt his arm lift round me to draw me closer, laughed, ‘Don’t we? And as for the rest, well certain things don’t need language.’ I surveyed the firm planes of his face. ‘I don’t want to marry you, you know.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ He looked a little hurt.

  I laughed again. ‘I’m far too young for marriage. I’ll always be too young for marriage. Besides,’ I grew a little more serious. ‘I’m not too sure what marriage is for. Perhaps because I never had a couple for parents.’

  He kissed me then, as if he were trying to make up for something. ‘Maybe you’re just foreign,’ he murmured a moment later.

  ‘Just?’ I wound my leg round him.

  We both laughed as we watched his penis rise. ‘And you have everything of me you want.’

  I surveyed him hungrily. ‘There is something else,’ I reflected.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know that wonderful wine you brought us for dinner… Well, I’d love another glass.’

  He leapt groaning from the bed, ‘Whatever my mistress desires…’

  While he was gone, I thought about it. I know it’s not a thing one is meant to admit, but I liked being a mistress. Maybe it’s just that in French the word maintains something of its old status. A mistress, after all is a superior being, a maîtresse, a teacher. The word has far more power to it than ‘wife’ or ‘femme’, which is also any woman.

  Any woman, my mind stopped at that and I suddenly saw Amy Burton, the woman who had come to work for the art department a few months back. She was a pretty blonde, about my age, who preferred to wear her skirts a little too s
hort for her slightly buxom legs. She was showing me the layout she had done for some art work for one of the French accounts. I didn’t like it much and I said so, rather bluntly, pointing out that the style was a little too jazzy for that particular account. Amy turned on me and lashed out, ‘Grant Rutherford gives very good head, doesn’t he?’ Then with the flick of a leg she waltzed away.

  At first I didn’t know what she meant. I was still a little slow with American sexual slang. Then I thought she was throwing in my face her knowledge that I had a relationship with Grant, which was the only reason I felt I had the right to criticize her work. And then, at night, it came to me that she was telling me just the opposite, that we were so to speak bedfellows and that I had no right to criticize her because she had intimate knowledge of the way Grant ‘gave head’.

  I hadn’t said anything to Grant about it and I had put it out of my mind. Until now.

  Grant came back into the room balancing a decanted wine bottle, glasses, a bowl of cashews. He had - have I said this already?- an exceptionally fine body, trim and strong from those daily hours he spent in the squash courts doing deals with the boys. I admired him openly for a moment as I sipped the proffered wine. ‘Grant,’ I said then, ‘You say you’d like me to ask questions.’

  ‘Mmmm?’ he chuckled, a little nervously.

  ‘Well, you know Amy Burton, the lovely blonde in the art department?’

  He had the grace to look just a little abashed and then meet my eyes with a smile, ‘You mean the one with all the hair?’

  ‘Well, what do you think of her work?’

  ‘What do you?’ he turned the question back on me.