by Sarah Dunant
“Yes,” she said, running her index fingers under her eyes and watching them come up black. “I suppose they are. But if you didn’t think . . . I mean, why did you ask Patrick for my number?”
He frowned. “Your number? I didn’t . . . I mean . . .”
“Oooh. Oh, it’s okay,” she said hurriedly. “Don’t worry. I think I know what happened. Shit. Oh, well . . . What exactly did Sally say to you?”
He gave a little shrug. “Nothing much. Just that you needed taking out of yourself. That it was the end of a long affair.”
“Yeah, well, ain’t that the truth,” she murmured as much to herself as to him. She smiled. “Listen, thank you. You’ve . . . er . . . been very kind.”
He looked at her, then shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’s quite the word. I’m sorry, too.” He paused. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I . . . er . . .well, I mean, if it makes you feel any better I was really into it. I just couldn’t believe that after downstairs—well, that you weren’t, I suppose.”
“No,” she said. “Neither could I.”
He smiled at her. There was a silence. What is this? she thought. A second chance? She felt the thrill of a low electric voltage in her stomach, but she was still too scared to let herself take note of it. “It’s all right. I understand. You can go. Honestly, I’m fine.”
But this time he deliberately held her gaze longer than was polite. Maybe he liked madwomen. It takes all sorts. “Well, I mean, if you really want me to . . .” Male ego: a terrible and wonderful thing.
She shook her head fiercely, as much in confusion as denial. “I just don’t want to screw it up again.”
He waited for a while, then moved a step toward her. “You’re a very attractive woman, you know.”
She laughed angrily.
“No, I mean it. I would never have stayed in the first place if I didn’t. Nobody needs to get laid that much.”
“That’s true,” she said.
“You still are. Attractive, I mean.”
“Funny. Right at this moment I thought I looked like a panda.”
“What?”
“The eyes.” She looked up at him. “Mascara rings.”
“Oh, I always liked it untidy. Looks kind of . . . I don’t know . . . slutty.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Whoops, that’s probably not the right word.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure.” She laughed. And this time there was a touch of delight in it. They both noticed it. He stood his ground. If she put out a hand she could touch him. The guilt had gone and suddenly he was no longer such a little boy. His newfound confidence was infectious. Or maybe it wasn’t just his. “Have you ever seen The Big Easy?” she said.
“What?”
“It’s a film.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“It’s just got a good sex scene in it. A bit like this, only Ellen Barkin isn’t quite so off her head.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Dennis Quaid.”
“Well . . .” And you could see that despite himself he was flattered. “What happens in the end?”
“You know, I can’t remember. I think they try again and then the phone rings.”
He looked at her. Then they both looked at the phone by the bed. God help me, she thought, I hope I’m doing the right thing. She put out a hand and slid it off the hook.
eleven
Of course, life is not like the movies. Not only does the phone not always ring, but neither does the earth move. Though sometimes things do not need to register on the Richter scale to be memorable. Sometimes the quiet shudder can be as powerful as the crack of the tectonic plate.
He was, she thought, as she lay there underneath his sleeping body, not the world’s greatest lover, but, then, neither was she. He had been right though. She still knew how to ride a bicycle.
Truth be told it had moved a little too fast from the kissing to the fucking. She could have wished for more ceremony, more touching, playing, caressing. Her body felt so much like a foreign country that she needed its landscape to be charted and admired before letting the tourists take possession. But she was scared that if she articulated her own desire it might suddenly evaporate, and she would lose it again. At least this way, carried along in the current of his passion, she felt safe, inside the pleasure dome, rather than watching from the outside trying to get in. And if the actual fucking lasted too long, was too much governed by his own need and not enough of her own, then there were ways in which she could make it work for her, the very distance between them helping her to realign, find a place in both her body and her mind where she could regulate the pressure and use it to satisfy herself. In the end, she tried too hard and missed, falling off the wave when it was still gathering force. But to have been on the surf at all after so long seemed like an enormous achievement, so much so that as they both lay there afterward, she felt all right about the white lie that she offered when he asked. Some things, it seemed, hadn’t changed within the dance. Still, it would be nice to have ridden the wave to the shore. In the postdoctoral warmth of the night even her greed seemed healthy.
She leaned over and kissed him, but it was too soon for him to be really interested. His very reticence made her flirtatious. He smiled and yawned. “I should go,” he murmured sleepily. “I have to be up early.”
“I’ll put on an alarm,” she said, suddenly needing him to stay very much, although how much that was to do with her body and how much to do with the likely behavior of the kitchen she couldn’t tell. He peered up at her in the darkness, a silent question on his lips. “It’s all right,” she added gaily. “It’s not an invitation to move in. I’d just like it if you stayed till morning. If that’s okay?”
He smiled and kissed her on the nose. “Sure,” he said. “Anything for you, sexy lady.” But it was more courtesy than lust, and within minutes he was asleep, half on top of her. Interesting how we all have to try to make it better than it is.
In sleep he grew heavier, his right leg thrown across her thighs like a tree trunk pinning her to the bed. She tried to shift him, but it was impossible. She lay awake for a long time underneath him.
The house was quiet around them. So, was this it? she thought. Have my subconscious rebellious energies really been tamed by sexual release? She certainly felt different. More open, lighter, as if, despite his weight, a burden had indeed been lifted off her. How weird, this thing called sex. The way its energy ran like a current underneath one’s normal life—vital, crucial, even when it didn’t seem to be there, always ready to smash its way through the surface, consuming everything in its path. The image was so clumsy and Freudian that it made her laugh. But even that was okay, too. She slid her hands down her body, over the soft flow of her breasts and her belly toward her vagina, her fingers searching their way to the tiny concealed nub of her clitoris. She rolled her forefinger over the mound, her breath catching in her throat as the touch found its mark. She was already halfway to orgasm in her head, but the weight of his body on hers left her no room to move herself properly, and in some ways it felt almost discourteous, doing it without him. She lost the concentration and let the touch slip from arousal into erotic comfort, almost like an adult version of sucking your thumb. Maybe tomorrow morning, she thought, or later in the night. And she smiled to herself.
In a deliberate attempt to test her newfound sense of security she moved away from thoughts of sex and into the kitchen. And it was then she remembered that she hadn’t locked the door.
When they had left the room an hour or so before they had still been in the grips of that first stumbling passion. Not only had she not locked it, she couldn’t even remember shutting it, which meant it would be wide open now. The realization rekindled a stab of panic, such an instant distress that she even tried to shake him awake so she could send him downstairs to close it. But all postcoitus male animals sleep like the dead, and try as she might she couldn’t rouse him.
Sh
e lay back, tired from the effort. The sense of panic gradually subsided. So the door was open. What could it possibly do to them now? Suddenly the whole idea was ridiculous. As if it were only her definition of the space that had made it so threatening. Maybe this was exactly what she needed to do. Open the door and let it all flow out. Discover that, like sex, it simply needed to be freed, to be allowed to become playful rather than frightened, and with the whole house at its disposal it would simply fade away, overwhelmed by space and possibility. After all, if her enlightened vicar was right and she was the cause of it, then surely her own release would already have triggered its own.
I’ll make a pact with myself, she thought. If there’s nothing there tomorrow, I’ll take it as a sign. She lay awake for longer, watching the digital clock blink its way into morning. One-thirty, two, two-thirty. She thought of trying to wake him, to get him to touch her some more, but the edge of her desire had faded into sleepiness now, and she decided to let it be. She never made it to three.
The alarm went off what felt like minutes later. It was still dark, and the air outside the duvet was freezing. She reached out and slammed the button down. The little green lights flashed 6:00 A.M. Beside her he groaned. She turned to meet him, interested by her own pleasure at finding him there. She ran a hand lightly down his chest, giving him the chance to take it further, once more surprised by her own appetite and ease. He half responded, then registered the time and moved gently away. It was a new day now, and they were both working people.
Luckily the feeling of night allowed them a continued semblance of intimacy. He touched her on the cheek, then pulled himself heavily out of bed. “Ooooh, God. I don’t want to do this.”
She made a move to join him.
“No. Relax. Go back to sleep,” he muttered. “It’s too early.”
“It’s all right. I’ll get you some coffee—”
“No. No, I’m fine. I’ll go home and have a shower. I have to pick up some stuff from there anyway. You sleep.”
And it was clear that he would prefer it this way: a clean exit, no last speeches, no having to pretend anything. She lay back and listened as he stumbled toward the bathroom.
“How will you get back?” she called, as the water flushed.
“I’ll phone a taxi. I have a number.”
Do you? she thought sleepily. And how often do you use it, I wonder? She lay listening to him making the call against the sound of the toilet flushing. A man with a portable phone; there had been some changes in the world since her last one-night stand. He came back into the room, quietly fumbling for his clothes around the bed. His clumsiness was rather endearing, she thought. When he was dressed he perched himself on the side of the bed and leaned over to find her. Their lips met. His breath smelled bad. But, then, so, no doubt, did hers. “Good-bye,” he said. “Sleep well.”
“Bye. Take care.”
“Yeah, you, too.” He touched her cheek again. “I’ll . . . I’ll call and—”
In the half-dark she lifted up a hand and put it over his mouth. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”
Above her she heard him give a little sigh of relief. “You’re lovely,” he whispered. “I mean that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Then he was gone. She lay and listened to his footsteps on the stairs, the sound of the door opening and slamming shut behind him. Gone. Relief and regret in almost equal measure. When she was younger and did this kind of thing more often, the end was always one of the sweetest parts, assuming you knew how to play it: a mutual sense of romance without the responsibility of a future. She was pleased with herself at having remembered so many of the moves.
She lay for a while tempted by the thought of sleep, intrigued by the faint smell of him on the bedclothes and the way she didn’t seem to mind it. But though she lay with eyes closed sleep didn’t come. If she got up now she would be jet-lagged and slightly crazed for the rest of the day, but what the hell, that could be just what she needed—the freedom of a kind of emotional unraveling.
It was 6:45 A.M. She pulled on a robe and went downstairs. The kitchen door was half open, the beginnings of a charcoal winter dawn seeping in through the French windows. She pushed and it swung open all the way. I am healed, she said to herself under her breath as she went to switch on the light. I am healed and you are now just a kitchen. . . .
And so it was: a kitchen as they had left it. The two coffee cups cold on the side, the k.d. lang CD case open by the stereo, the disc still in the machine. She put on the kettle and made herself a cup of tea, standing looking out onto the garden as the heating gurgled on and the morning came in, heavy and cold. Welcome to a new day, she thought. Then she took the mug of tea and went back upstairs to bed, just for a while. And it was so warm and comforting there that after a while she put the cup down and fell asleep.
When she woke up she felt dreadful: clotted by sleep and confused. Through the curtains she could make out a grainy light that could have been dawn but might also be the prelude to a winter twilight. The clock by the bed stood at 4:03 P.M. How extraordinary. She had slept the day away. The house was again quiet around her. She lay for a while savoring the exhaustion of too much sleep rather than too little and this anarchic new relationship with time, its very lack of control filled with possibilities. And then, suddenly, she was very hungry.
Downstairs the kitchen was ordinary, with even Millie consenting to be there, albeit equally ravenous and complaining. She fed the cat, then herself, going for a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, and two chunky pieces of toast, all to the accompaniment of Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey,” a love song from a time in his life when it seemed as if love came easily and brought with it guaranteed redemption. Dusk came in as he sang, and she felt happy.
Afterward she lay long in a hot bath, then went in search of some clothes. In the bedroom she found last night’s wardrobe storm-tossed around the room, the sweet evidence of someone’s lust for her. Even the smell of them was different. She picked them up, put them into the laundry basket, and went to the closet.
Getting dressed had assumed an unthinking monotony for her over the last months, always going for the same sort of garment, loose-fitting, enveloping, hiding rather than exposing or exploring. Now she found herself in search of something else, something tighter, something that she could feel, that showed her who she was.
She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a woman with a body—with curves and plumpness and hidden places—and it brought back a sudden longing for him. Or if not him then his touch. She imagined him standing behind her, slipping one of his hands inside the top of her T-shirt, cupping his palm under her breast, feeling its weight, teasing the nipple, bringing it to obedient erection. In the mirror her eyes sparked with reawakened desire. She felt a sudden confidence, almost a sense of happiness. Thanks, Malcolm, she said, allowing the rush of feeling toward him precisely because she knew she would never see him again, and because they had absolutely nothing between them but a night that was already gone.
The feeling gave way to one of contentment. It sat more easily with her. She had never been someone who had counted on or even anticipated happiness, was never one of those radiant young women who assumed that life would deliver what they asked of it as long as they wore the right shoes and reapplied mascara regularly enough. On the contrary, she had never really known what she wanted, had certainly never understood how to fit men into the landscape.
Instead she had simply treated them as sex. To her surprise she had found herself rather good at that, though some would have diagnosed it as a defense against feeling. She was adept at asking only for what they could give and she didn’t feel diminished by what they couldn’t. Rather she felt relieved. She had certainly never been interested in falling in love.
Tom had been the first one to call her bluff. He had needed to be adored, and in order for that to happen he had had to awaken that capacity in her. The trouble was once she’d
been won, he wasn’t that interested in adoring her back. By the time she realized the depths of his narcissism it was already too late. By then she was hooked, and the sex had become emotion, which, of course, meant that it no longer offered any defense at all.
In the end her loyalty could only be eroded gradually, death by a thousand careless moments and unthinking remarks, a steady trawl of missed opportunities. And so, gradu-ally, she withdrew. Only by that time his ego had grown so monstrous with the feeding that he didn’t even notice she was no longer there to nourish it. No wonder their relationship took such an unconscionably long time to die.
But all of that was over now. And nine months down the line she was, finally, more like herself again. Last night, for all its traumas, had helped her realize that. She ran her finger lightly along the line of her breast and returned to the mundane task of brushing her teeth. Then she made herself a cappuccino and went up to her study to work.
And because she was feeling so steadied and so sure, it never occurred to her to wonder what she might find there as she pushed open the door and turned on the light.
twelve
If you counted the English version as well as the Czech there were probably something near to five hundred pages of manuscript scattered around the room. A snowstorm of huge white leaves, so wild it was almost beautiful, as if someone had held the sheaf under a fan and then let go. But white was not the only color. There was also red: great dark trails of it, smeared down the walls, running over the desk, flowing down the computer screen onto the keys, thick and glutinous.
She let out a long moan, a physical pain in the sound, the coffee cup falling from her fingers, adding its own streaks of dark color to the walls and floor. When, finally, she got her wits back she moved slowly across the room to the computer screen, her feet crunching on irregular verbs and images of violence. As she got closer she realized the machine was on, humming quietly, the screen so smeared with gunk that you could barely see what it showed. She put a finger out to touch the stuff. It was sticky. She pulled back and smelled it. There was a tangy, spicy quality to its scent. When she brought it to her lips the taste was unmistakable: ketchup—one of the world’s great fake bloods.
