How Was It For You?

by Carmen Reid

  Did he like her? She had no recollection of agonizing like this over someone’s every glance, every word, every frown since she was a schoolgirl. If she saw him for ten minutes in the morning, she would replay the conversation in her head over and over again all day, channelling the frustration into hacking away rotten carpet, jemmying out dodgy floorboards, tirelessly sanding windowsills.

  Getting dressed for ‘work’ was a daily nightmare. Sexy overalls? She obsessed about how to get that right: had finally come up with a concoction of jeans cinched in too tight with a narrow belt, slip-on trainers and a vest top that at all times showed bra. She bundled her hair on top of her head, wore vivid stay-on lipstick and consoled herself with the thought that the glow of sweat and hard work was probably as effective as make-up.

  But a trip to London in search of more esoteric decorating supplies had landed her here, behind scented silk curtains, trying on what she could only think of as highest-class hooker underwear.

  A chair full of coloured silks awaited her attention. She tried them all on, carefully appraising the results in the low lit, full-length mirror. A plunging cleavage here, see-through black netting there . . . was a split crotch more sexy than a lace-up one? Which bras had the most alluring straps? That was all she was going to be able to lure him with – the straps of her bra, the glimpse of breast beneath her vest top.

  It was a turn-on, seeing her bare nipples peek from red and apple green lace like baby raspberries in a gift box, seeing her white buttocks strapped down beneath suspenders tight enough to leave a mark. But then she was turned on all the time. Nothing made it better, nothing made it go away. She knew it was a ridiculous madness but she had to have him. Didn’t care if it was just once, if she had to tie him up, in fact, even better if she had to tie him up. She had to have him.

  The underwear made sense to her now. She’d never seen the point before. The outward expression of all this inner desire. Her way of telling him what she wanted. To be wanted, needed, craved the way she craved him. And she already knew she didn’t want the kind of sex she could get at home – or make that had once had at home. Sweet sex, love sex, white lacy nightie sex, Dave on top, looking into her eyes, telling her how beautiful she was. No, nothing like that. When she pictured herself with Lachlan there were tensed muscles, raking nails, hard bruising bites, grimaces of pleasure way out there at the pleasure–pain dividing line.

  She remembered Ted’s partner, Liz, a bottle of wine down, semi-confessing to longings for wild, untamed, un-marital sex.

  ‘Giving birth is like really losing your virginity,’ she’d confided.‘All those strangers sticking their hands up uninvited, lying in stirrups wide open to whoever’s passing, something huge, absolutely huge moving up and down, starting and stopping in your vagina. It’s awesome!’

  Pamela had smiled encouragingly, slightly shocked, not able to offer an opinion on this. Liz was putting a spin on childbirth she’d never heard before.

  ‘I’m sure some women are utterly traumatized,’ Liz had added.‘See it like medicalized gang rape. But after the stitches had healed, I was possessed. Had to have sex like never before and with accessories . . .’ she’d confided, smiling, running hands though her silky black hair.‘Poor Ted, he was exhausted. A new baby and an insatiable partner. Very strange . . . Something definitely changed. I lost the fear – the restraint – the control most of us operate under all the time between the sheets.’ She’d stood up then and made some attempt to move bottles binwards, clear the clutter of an evening spent cooking, eating, over-drinking.

  ‘And the most important thing,’ she’d added, ‘about all this is that I’m slightly less frightened of having sex with just one person for the rest of my life. Because before . . . I was terrified. I mean, aren’t you?’

  Pamela had only needed to add a half-nod for Liz to continue.

  ‘I was sure it was going to become as boring as eating bread and butter sandwiches for lunch every day. And I would be longing for something else and end up wrecking my entire family life just for the sake of a new flavour – but now, I don’t worry about that so much.’

  Yet more proof, as if Pamela had needed it, that Ted’s on-off, hot-cold, shouting, accessorized lovemaking, child-filled relationship was better than hers.

  Pamela-and-Dave – what an entity they’d become. PamelanDave. PamelanDave. To think of one was to think of the other, to invite one was to invite the other.‘At least you’ve got each other’ had been the universal reaction to their joint infertility. As if she was so lucky to have found a soulmate, she shouldn’t really mind that he was even less likely to have a child than she was.

  She still, almost every day, despite the farm, despite the fresh start, thought about the dissolution of PamelanDave, the resurrection of Pamela, just Pamela. Hell, maybe even just Pam. Go for the full amputation. Chop the whole ‘and Dave’ bit off, and then some.

  The black, breast-framing corset, several pairs of stockings, lace-up pants, and the red and green set were all selected and boxed up for her with crackling tissue paper and a fat black ribbon tied as tightly as corset lacing.

  She handed over her credit card with the tingling recognition that she was behaving irrationally and very badly. Maybe she should tell someone about Lachlan . . . dilute the intensity of this fantasy . . . examine it in daylight . . . listen to someone else’s laughter about it. But she knew she couldn’t, wouldn’t and she knew why.

  If she wasn’t thinking about Lachlan every waking moment, she would have to think about herself – about the fact that she was probably not going to have a child . . . ever . . . about the fact that her marriage of eight years, her relationship of thirteen years, was going to end with a divorce, with the sale of the farm, with Dave’s utter devastation.

  No, no. Much better to swipe the credit card, buy pornographic satin and lace, plan the seduction of the brutishly attractive farmer she was working for . . . and not think about the rest.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  ‘UNDERCOAT,’ PAMELA GROANED. ‘We’re totally out of undercoat.’ It was a full forty-minute drive to the nearest paint suppliers.

  John, her grizzled, fifty-something co-decorator stood up and brushed himself down. They had been sanding woodwork all morning, chatting amiably. She liked him a lot, because he was good, did everything well and took pains. And in the six weeks they’d worked together, finishing the small cottage and now moving on to the bigger one, she’d learned all about John’s wife, children, his early retirement from a canning factory to devote himself to ‘a spot’ of decorating and his two racing whippets.

  ‘Why don’t I go?’ he offered.‘I forgot to bring my lunch, I’ll be needing to go out and get something anyway.’

  Before he left, he swept up his latest pile of sanding dust, scooped it into the bin bag, then took off his overall and folded it neatly. He was all right, John. She’d definitely use him again for other commissions in Norfolk, which she was determined to get now.

  Instead of leaving her home in darkness, struggling onto the early morning train, rushing through a warren of stations, the underground, arriving at work in London already exhausted . . . she was setting off at 8.30 a.m., rolling the car through the lush greens and yellows of the hottest summer in years, noticing cottages, grazing horses, majestic old trees, all the eye-catching sights that studded the twisting B roads to Lachlan’s farm.

  She would arrive happy, glowing, full of life, enthusiasm for the day ahead and not just – she didn’t think – because she might see him: he might be passing, think of some detail he wanted to check, some question he wanted to ask.

  She would see either Rosie or Lachlan almost every day. One of them would call in for a progress report and now that the strawberry season was in full swing, it was more often than not Rosie and Manda who would turn up.

  Pamela would hear the scrape of the cottage door opening and recognize how much she hoped it would be Lachlan. What a guilty disappointment it was to see his wife and little
daughter.

  Rosie kept a formality to the meetings. She would ask about the work, wouldn’t stay long and always seemed a little frosty.

  Whereas Lachlan, when he had time to come by, would make tea, pull up one of the two chairs and would want to chat: about the cottages, about his farm, about Dave’s strawberries – he liked to know how they were getting on. He would also ask Pamela how she was settling in, how she was enjoying it. What other work plans she had.

  Pamela debated with herself throughout these talks, wondering if they meant anything. Didn’t he always seem to arrive just as John went out? Why was he so interested in her? Was he this interested in everyone else?

  She would often look at his hand gripped round the mug and think with a jolt about the night he’d slipped it into her bra.

  Once John had left to get the undercoat, Pamela got back down on her hands and knees to rub at a skirting board and was watching the grey dust of old paint spray onto the floor and over her fingers, when she heard the front door opening. No-one knocked here, she’d noticed. Must be a country thing or a farm thing: never knocking, always opening doors and shouting hello. She thought of Sadie’s verdict with a smile: ‘There can’t be any sex in the countryside.’

  ‘Hello?’

  She felt the lurch, the squeeze on her heart of excitement. It was him. She jumped up and wiped the dust from her hands and jeans.

  ‘Hello,’ she called back.‘Come in, it’s just me.’

  ‘Hi there. Yeah. I saw John’s van headed for the main road.’ He came in, scrunching down, ducking to fit in through the low doorway and then expanding to full size in the room.

  ‘He’s gone to get more paint,’ she explained, trying to keep some semblance of a normal conversational tone, wondering all the time if he’d meant he’d waited till he saw John’s van leave before he’d come over.

  There was something there, between them. No way was she making all this up. She saw how his gaze lingered on her face, shoulders, vest straps, how it lowered when she turned away from him. His eyes on her, making her skin feel warm, her breathing slow, her heart race.

  ‘How are you? How’s it going?’ he asked, so she updated him on the latest work. They made tea in the kitchen together, elbows bumping, getting in each other’s way. She had to duck under his arm to flick tea bags into the bin. Caught a whiff of clean, warm sweat, felt the dizzying wave of want. He’d always looked good to her, but now deeply tanned and blonder from all his time in the sun, he was a sensation, set off perfectly by the T-shirt, jeans and boots of his summer work wear.

  They pulled the two chairs up and drank their tea together.

  ‘First holiday-makers are going into the cottage next week,’ he told her.‘And we’ve had lots of interest. So, good job—’ he held his mug up to salute her.‘I thought it looked like a tart’s bedroom in there, but that doesn’t seem to have put anyone off.’

  She almost coughed her tea up at him.

  ‘A tart’s bedroom!’

  ‘It’s very girlie,’ he grinned.

  ‘It’s white and blue! There’s no pink or anything!’

  ‘But there’s little chandeliers . . . fluffy things.’

  ‘It’s sheepskin, not fluffy stuff.’ But she enjoyed the teasing.

  ‘This place isn’t going to be like that, though, is it?’

  ‘No. This cottage will be macho – grey, green, plain. Think army barracks,’ she joked.‘Maybe we’ll have lockers and an outdoor toilet, get the visitors back to nature.’

  ‘A dunny! Fantastic!’

  ‘Shut up, will you,’ she teased him back.‘You know nothing. I know what people want.’

  ‘Hmmm . . . do you now?’ She heard the purr in that question. She did. She dared to meet his eyes then and he didn’t flinch or look away. She put a hand up to her head, tucking in a stray strand of hair, showing him a soft white armpit as she did so.

  ‘Any thoughts about the garden?’ she asked, putting her empty mug down on the floor and going over to the window.‘We should tidy the garden up, although I have to say, I like what’s out there.’ She looked out over the tangle of overgrown grass, dog roses and hawthorn.‘Wild.’

  He was standing behind her. She’d heard him get up and come over and didn’t turn to look, but knew exactly where he was because he was radiating heat at her. It was spreading through her, warming her to the very pit of her stomach.

  ‘Wild,’ he repeated.

  He was looking at the pale, downy skin at the nape of her neck punctuated with a dark mole. He wasn’t going to be able to restrain himself from touching it.

  She felt his fingers on her neck.

  ‘Nice mole,’ he said. He could smell her: a hint of perfume, soap, sweat. Wanted to bury his nose into her skin, touch her whiteness all over. Wanted to know if there was a red mark on her skin where her tight belt cut in, where those pink and green bra straps had dug into her soft shoulders.

  ‘How long have you been married?’ he asked, hand still on her neck.

  ‘Eight years,’ came her answer, in between gulps for breath.

  ‘Not as long as me.’ He said this lightly, his fingers moving from her neck slowly down to her shoulder, causing every hair along the way to stand on end.

  Then dropping down to a whisper, he said: ‘It’s nice. But sometimes you must get bored?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned her round and she saw the look in his eyes. The want, the challenge . . . the question.

  ‘D’you want to kiss?’ he asked.

  She was too surprised to speak, managed to mumble some sort of ‘Ha?’ sound back at him and then felt his hands under her chin, her face pulled in to his.

  His mouth on hers, slight scrape of stubble, the damp of sweat across his top lip, his tongue moving into her mouth and all this time his hands holding her head tight as if he was frightened she might pull away, as if he wanted to block out the sound of any objection.

  After a moment of stunned stillness, she started to kiss him back, tongue against his, pupils popping, head rushing, realizing how starved she was for him.

  And then he pulled away and she opened her eyes to look at him, find out why he’d stopped.

  ‘OK?’ he asked. There was only one answer to this; one – scruples to the wind, conscience to the back door – reckless answer.

  She grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him back towards her.

  ‘Very OK. More, please.’ His mouth was on hers again, his hands in the back pocket of her jeans, then pulling down the straps of her bra, moving to undo her zip. Her hands on the skin of his back, slipping in under his belt. Her foot raking down the back of his leg.

  And then the unmistakable sound of tyres in the gravel outside. The slam of a car door. She and Lachlan sprang apart and rearranged themselves.

  Pamela fled over to the chairs and picked the mugs up.‘Hello,’ she called loudly.‘Oh John, hello, it’s you.’ The guilt flooding over her now had made her imagine Rosie and Manda.

  ‘Lachlan’s here –’ she marvelled at her breezy voice – ‘inspecting our handiwork, making sure we’re not blowing the budget.’

  John came into the room, four tins of paint hanging from his hands. He gave Lachlan an: ‘Aye there,’ as phlegmy as a cough.

  ‘Well, that’s me.’ Lachlan was smoothing down his hair, re-securing the ponytail in its band.‘Good work,’ he nodded at John.

  John nodded back.

  ‘I’ll catch you later,’ he directed at Pamela with something like a wave.

  ‘Yeah,’ she managed to reply, starting to register her shock at what had just happened.

  When the door slammed behind him, she looked at John at a loss for what would be a normal thing to do. Unable to think of a single thing to say to him.

  ‘Tea?’ occurred to her only after several long moments of silence. His small grey eyes didn’t miss much, she was sure.

  But once John had gone home after 5 p.m., Pamela stayed on, found some jobs to do, knowing they were j
ust an excuse to wait here, see if Lachlan would come back to her.

  She was just wondering if she dared to phone Lachlan on his mobile and tell him she was still at the cottage, when the door opened and there he was, greeting her with something that sounded like far too normal a ‘hello’.

  ‘Are you finishing up?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ She was aware of the electric shocks he was causing her.

  ‘Can’t you maybe stay for a bit?’

  ‘Yeah . . . maybe,’ she answered.

  He walked out of the room, back to the front door, where she heard him turn the key in the lock. When he returned, his hand reached for the light switch and the single bulb in the middle of the room, lit to hold the early evening at bay, snapped out.

  They were left standing in the half-light, nothing but loud bird song from the garden and the sound of her breathing breaking the silence.

  ‘I know you want to do this,’ he said.

  ‘Do I?’ she asked, but she already knew the answer, was already walking towards him.

  ‘Come here, baby,’ he said. No-one had ever called her baby before; it struck her as a bit too retro, a bit macho. Did he call his wife baby? she wondered. Or did he say ‘baby’ to stop himself from saying Rosie?

  She didn’t want to know. His arms were around her now, his face against her neck, hands pulling at her straps and her zip.

  He was right: she did want to do this. She really did.

  ‘Where?’ was the single word to come from his lips.

  She pointed to the bedroom. It was uncarpeted and had big damp strips of woodchip hanging from the walls but in there, flat on the floor, was the old double mattress still waiting to be thrown out.

  He didn’t let go of her wrist, held it tightly and when they were in the room, spun her round towards him again. Crushed against him, mouth on mouth, tongue on tongue, she dared to pull his T-shirt over his head, she bit his small brown nipples as his fingers rolled hers into hard points, she put her hands on his belt buckle and nudged it loose. His breath against her ear, strained, gasping.