The Best a Man Can Get

by John O'Farrell

  The house was offensively opulent and I felt like I was probably the only guest there who’d had the temerity to turn up without a hyphen in my surname. I attempted to mingle, but none of the circles opened up as I stood on the edges of them, so I stared at the enormous tropical fish tank for a while, but even the guppies seemed to look down their noses at me. All the men were the same – confident, self-possessed rugby captains in their casual gear. Why is it that posh men don’t lose their hair, I wondered. Is it in the breeding, or something they put in boarding-school meals? They all had thick, floppy Hugh Grant fringes and bright-red cheeks and loafers and Pringle jumpers and talked about people they knew who were ‘bloody great blokes’. I had more chance of striking up a conversation with the Filipino ladies handing round champagne, and they didn’t even speak English. So I ended up talking to Kate for most of the evening. She kept asking me what ‘song’ the pianist was playing, and I told her the name of each new piece and said a little bit about each one. She had just bought a guitar and was having lessons and I told her some good pieces she might try to learn. She was genuinely interested and it was a real pleasure to be able to talk about music to somebody. The fact that she was gorgeous was, of course, an added bonus, but I really wasn’t trying to chat her up or make her fancy me. And for someone so beautiful I think she found this quite refreshing. I think it made her fancy me.

  A few glasses of wine later, Jim and Monica came over and told us to come down to the basement to see the swimming pool. I thought they were joking, but I followed them into the lift – because you have to have a lift to get to your underground swimming pool – and when the doors opened again I found that we had been transported to an echoey underground paradise. It was like no room I had ever seen. This was the Sistine chapel of swimming pools. This wasn’t like the municipal pool I went to with Millie. Nobody had taken the trouble to cultivate green algae between the tiles or leave blood-stained sticking plasters stewing in pools of discoloured water; there were no bad cartoons on the wall telling me what I could and couldn’t do. Here I could blow all the smoke rings I wanted, if the mood took me.

  Jim informed us that the pool was regularly rented out as a location for films and fashion shoots, and it was obvious why. You just had to walk into the room to feel like an actor; like you were someone else, someone glamorous and sexy. There was nobody down there and the lighting was low and sensitive; the only bright lights were deep at the bottom of the turquoise oasis, which drew you seductively to the water. The surface of the pool was completely still and flat, like the seal on a coffee jar, just waiting to be broken.

  ‘Come on, let’s go for a swim,’ said Kate infectiously.

  ‘But we haven’t got any swimming costumes,’ I pointed out, ‘though they might have some spare . . . costumes . . . upstairs . . .’

  The end of my sentence trailed off. Jim, Monica and Kate had all stripped completely naked.

  ‘Um . . . although there’s, er, no sign saying that costumes are compulsory or anything.’ The girls were already jumping in and swimming breaststroke with real live breasts.

  Deep down I had a sense that cavorting with naked young women was not top of the one hundred ways to remain faithful to your wife, but I couldn’t exactly keep my Y-fronts on and just paddle a bit in the shallow end, so I blushingly followed birthday suit. I quickly dived in and the water washed over every part of me. It felt sensuous and liberating. I manfully swam a whole length underwater, partly to demonstrate my athleticism, but mostly to postpone the problem of having to make casual chit-chat with a beautiful, naked twenty-four-year-old. Eventually I surfaced and breathlessly remarked that the water was lovely, which I believe is correct swimming-pool etiquette. We swam a few widths independently and then Jim found a beach ball, which we knocked back and forth in the air. It flashed through my head that there might be some hidden camera somewhere and that Simon was sitting at home watching it all on the Internet. We splashed about trying to be first to the ball and playfully pushing each other out of the way, and then Jim swam underneath Monica and lifted her up on his shoulders. Her skin was brown, except for three white triangles on the parts of her body that were normally covered with a bikini, which seemed to only emphasize the illegality of being allowed to see them. She laughed as Jim struggled to keep his balance.

  ‘Piggy-back fight,’ shouted Monica.

  ‘Come on,’ said Kate and she looked to me to lift her onto my shoulders and I obligingly did so.

  The first time I suspected my wife was interested in me was when she first leaned across and lightly brushed a hair off my jacket. Just that tiny electrical moment of physical contact, that tentative foray into my personal space, had told me that we were more than just acquaintances. Now, as I wrapped my arms round Kate’s naked wet thighs and felt her pubic hair bristling against the back of my neck, I thought we had probably crossed that personal space barrier by this juncture. I mustn’t let it get too intimate, I thought to myself as she fell forward, pressing her breasts against the top of my head. I had a naked woman literally on top of me, but I was still telling myself I hadn’t transgressed the line of actual sexual infidelity. Anyway, it was fun; it was a good laugh. In fact, it was fantastic. I’m playing piggy-back fights with two beautiful, naked women in a luxury swimming pool at midnight; they won’t believe me when I’m in my old people’s home. Jim pulled Kate off me and we both plunged underwater and her arm brushed tantalizingly against my groin. I tried to stand up, but I was at the point in the pool where the gradient slipped away dramatically and there was nothing there for me to stand on. I was in deep water. I swam back towards the shallow end, towards Kate as it happened, and then I splashed her and she splashed me back. Then the spray died down and I saw that Jim and Monica were standing in the water kissing, gently at first and then more passionately. And I was standing next to Kate. The pool was warm and the lights were low and this secret grotto felt like the only place in the universe. We looked at the other two, wrapping themselves round each other like a pair of overexcited eels, and Kate smiled at me and I stood there self-consciously for a second and smiled back. Her nipples pointed at me like General Kitchener. I felt a sense of heady recklessness; I’d had sun on my body and wine in my belly, and we were young and tanned and naked. I hadn’t meant to fly this close to the flame. The moment was heavy with expectation. I had to do something.

  ‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘Erm . . . how do you know Monica?’

  ‘Well, we work in the same office, remember?’

  ‘Oh, that’s right, you said. Yeah … So you, er, so you met her through work.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jim and Monica were writhing a few yards away and had started to moan slightly.

  ‘I think a lot of people, erm, meet other people at work,’ I observed.

  ‘Yes, I suppose they do.’

  There was another awkward pause.

  ‘I like your erm . . . your . . .’ I was trying to remember the word ‘pendant’, so I pointed at it in the hope she might help me out.

  ‘Breasts?’ she said, rather taken aback, looking down at them.

  ‘No, no, no. Good God no. I mean, they’re very nice too – not that I was looking particularly – but now you mention it . . . er . . .’

  Why is there never a great white shark to drag you underwater and swallow you whole when you want one?

  ‘No, I meant your necklace thingy.’

  ‘Pendant?’

  ‘That’s the word. Pendant. I like your pendant.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Er, I think I’ll just do a few more lengths now,’ I said, and she smiled a half smile as I rudely left her standing there and took off for the other end of the pool as fast as I could. And as I swam away from her, I wondered what Catherine was doing right now. It was about midnight, so she was probably just feeding Alfie. I hoped Millie hadn’t got up as well. I’d meant to tighten the window above her cot to stop it rattling in the wind, in case that was what kept waking her up
. Catherine had asked me twice but I hadn’t got round to it.

  I deliberately didn’t look up for the first five lengths, but when I did, I saw that Kate was out of the pool and dressed. I had been so very close to kissing her; I had wanted to press my naked body against hers and kiss her full on the lips; this basement pool had felt like another world, with its own rules and morals. I had travelled deep into the hills of my bachelor Narnia – almost too far to come back.

  I couldn’t risk getting that close again. I didn’t trust myself to be so strong next time, especially if I carried on drinking, so I resolved to leave the party and go back to the flat.

  ‘Yeah, let’s,’ said Kate when I unilaterally announced I was going.

  Oh no, I thought, look I’m trying to be resolute here; don’t make it harder for me. But as Jim drove down the King’s Road she put her arm around me and I didn’t feel able to ask her to remove it, so it stayed there, draped over my rigid shoulders all the way back to Balham. The roles were strangely reversed. I was like the nervous young girl and she was the predatory older boy. I was attracted to her, but I knew I had to fight it. My eye was drawn to the gap at the top of her shirt, where I caught a glimpse of the upper slope of her bosom. Bizarrely, this was still exciting, even though I had just seen them bouncing around naked in the swimming pool. For a second I thought I saw Catherine pushing the buggy under the street lights, but as we drove closer I saw it was in fact a tramp pushing a shopping trolley packed with old bags and that two people could not have looked more dissimilar.

  Back at the flat I had to play it carefully. We all stayed up drinking and sharing a joint, but as soon as it was polite I announced that I was off to bed.

  ‘Which one’s your room, Michael?’ said Kate brightly.

  And I instinctively answered, ‘Past the bathroom, first door on the left,’ as if she were only asking because she was interested in the layout of the house. Then I realized the subtext my directions had given her, so I said a pointed, ‘Goodnight, Kate.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said.

  And I thought, Phew!

  And then she gave me a naughty wink.

  Five minutes later I was nervously lying in bed watching the door handle, waiting for it to turn. I worked out what I would say to her; that she was really lovely and that I found her very attractive, and that I hoped she would understand but I was in love with someone else and that I couldn’t betray this other girl. These excuses were mentally rehearsed over and over again until I realized she wasn’t coming after all and soon I was fast asleep.

  And then I dreamt Kate was next to me in my bed, kissing me on the lips and running her hands through my hair, and it was a nice dream and I wanted it to carry on. I kissed her back and felt her bare buttocks, and this was like a dream that you could navigate because then she clasped mine. I stirred slightly, but the dream didn’t end. In fact, it felt even more real. She nibbled my bottom lip and I opened my eyes and Kate smiled at me and kissed me again, and she really was in my bed, all fresh and clean and chlorine-scented, and her body felt different to Catherine, but it still felt good and there were no barriers now. All my defences were blown away and no-one would know, and Kate kissed me long and hard and ran her hands down to between my legs, and I moaned weakly, ‘Oh God. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  chapter six

  naughty but nice

  As Kate and I had sex for the third time that night she discovered that when it came to lovemaking there wasn’t much I didn’t know. We did every position that I’d seen on Simon’s Lover’s Guide video, and then we made love in every position they’d shown in the rip-off sequels. We stood, we lay, we sat, we did it in the shower, on the bed, on the floor and against the wall. Still entwined, I manfully lifted her up and carried her across the room. Since both my hands were clasped to her naked buttocks, she tilted the glass of champagne into my mouth for me. Most of it missed and we laughed decadently as it ran down my chin and fizzed in the space where her bosoms were pressed against my chest. Still carrying her, I pushed her left buttock against the ‘play’ button on my stereo and it turned on my CD of the 1812 Overture. With her right buttock I turned up the volume. Then Tchaikovsky conducted us through our lovemaking. As the Russian national hymn battled symbolically with ‘La Marseillaise’ we rolled around on the carpet, fighting to go on top, playfully scratching and biting each other throughout the Battle of Borodino. I rose with the string section and she moaned with the brass fanfares. Finally the overture reached its crescendo and we climaxed together on the floor; she screamed, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ as the cymbals crashed, the artillery guns fired and Napoleon’s army was halted at the gates of Moscow. And then we just lay there throughout the coda, panting on the carpet as the peal of bells rang out across all Russia.

  Well, that’s how I imagined it would have been if I’d gone through with it. I hadn’t been able to do it. I couldn’t lie there and betray my wife. I think this became clear to me when I held Kate close and said, ‘Oh, Catherine.’ I hadn’t been able to put her out of my head. Not quite. The compartments in my brain needed slightly thicker walls.

  Kate’s reaction was not what I expected.

  ‘God. No-one’s called me that for years.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Catherine. You just called me Catherine. How did you know that I was a Catherine not a Kate?’

  ‘Er, well, Kate is short for Catherine, isn’t it. I read that in a baby-naming book. Not my baby-naming book; a friend’s. The person who was having a baby.’

  ‘I stopped calling myself that when I left boarding school. I hate the name Catherine, don’t you?’

  ‘Er, no. No, I don’t, actually.’

  ‘Which do you prefer, Kate or Catherine?’

  ‘Er, well, they’re both lovely. But I’d have to say I prefer Catherine. Sorry.’

  The moment of passion was gone and I quickly pulled myself together. It was better this way. The reality would never have been so erotically perfect. Sexual climax would have been swiftly followed by enormous regret, guilt, self-loathing, fear and depression. Which is quite a high price to pay for five minutes of sweaty groping in the dark. So I invented a memory of what almost was, which I’d be able to keep with me for ever. Kate was very nice about it really. She thought it was rather sweet that I was so faithful to this other girl who I didn’t want to talk about. In fact, she was so nice about it that it made me want to kiss her, but I don’t think that would have helped clarify where she stood.

  ‘Well, whoever she is,’ said Kate, ‘she’s a very lucky girl.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ I replied.

  We talked for an hour or two and I felt less guilty when she told me that actually she had a bit of a crush on Jim, but was fighting it because he was going out with her best friend. It was just as well we never went all the way, I thought, because I would have been going, ‘Catherine! Catherine!’ and she would have been going, ‘Jim! Jim!’ Eventually I gave her my bed while I slept on the floor with a piece of music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky going round in my head as I imagined what might have been …

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ said my Catherine the next day.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Humming the 1812 Overture to yourself.’

  ‘Was I? Oh sorry.’

  We had been sitting in a hospital corridor together. We had been waiting so long that her twelve-week scan felt like it may have to go down as a fourteen-week scan.

  ‘You’re very quiet. What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I lied. ‘Just wondering how much longer they’re going to be.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ she said, squeezing my arm. ‘It’s nice just to have some time to ourselves without the kids.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, unconvincingly. I thought she must be joking. This was her idea of quality time! Sitting for an hour in a sterile-smelling hospital, watching deathly white old people with tubes sticking out of them being wheeled past. For Ca
therine, this was a treat!

  ‘If you’re really good,’ I said, ‘I’ll see if we can get stuck in a two-hour traffic jam on the way home.’

  ‘Ooh, yes please. There’ll probably be a play on Radio 4, I can just recline the seat in the car, close my eyes and relax. Sounds like heaven.’

  ‘Well why not?’ I said, seizing the moment. ‘Why don’t we go and sit in the park somewhere and take a book and some wine and spend a couple of hours just doing nothing?’

  ‘Hmm. It would be lovely, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it would, so why don’t we?’

  ‘Just imagine it. Bliss.’

  ‘So let’s do it.’

  ‘That would be just paradise.’

  She imagined this tiny window of self-indulgence as if it were some impossible dream, a ludicrous fantasy that would never be attainable in her lifetime.

  ‘But it wouldn’t be fair on Mum.’

  ‘But she loves looking after the kids.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be fair on the kids.’

  ‘They love being looked after by your mum.’

  She paused because she’d run out of excuses.

  ‘No. I just can’t. Sorry.’

  And that was the rub. She wanted to be with the children for every hour of the day and I didn’t, which meant I couldn’t see her without the children, except on occasions like this when we were waiting to look at a picture of the next one.

  Her legs were tightly crossed and she was rocking back and forth in her plastic moulded chair.

  ‘You wouldn’t be needing to go to the toilet by any chance, would you?’

  ‘How could you tell,’ she squeaked painfully as she swigged another half pint of mineral water from her plastic bottle. She’d had it on good authority that you got a better picture of the embryo if the mother’s bladder was full. Judging by the number of gallons she was holding in she must have been hoping for a real David Bailey. ‘And can we have the embryo side on, looking round and smiling? That’s great. And now put your arm round the placenta and give me a big thumbs up. Fantastic! Now, last one. I want you to point to the birth canal with one hand, and with the other give me a big fingers crossed. Ha ha ha, that’s lovely.’