by Adele Parks
"You stupid fucking bitch."
And that's another.
Che ending, like the affair, lacks decorum. It is rough and filthy and exciting and undignified. I call.
"Luke's away. Are you free?"
He hesitates for the longest time and eventually says, "Err, no, I'm going to the pub."
"Who with?" My voice is unreasonably high as I battle to avoid sounding like the chief whip in the Spanish Inquisition.
"On my own."
"Well, I'll come and keep you company," I say with false joviality. I have no shame.
"I'm meeting the lads there."
"Oh." Is he? "But you agreed last week that we would meet today." It's a thin line between clingy and angry. I want to remind him of his commitment but I don't want to sound entirely desperate.
"Did I?" He sounds vague and uninterested, which I know he is.
"A quick one." I mean a drink but he misunderstands me.
"Look, Con, I think we should cut out the sex and just be mates. This just doesn't make sense. You're married and I'm going to make a go of it with Andrea." When he says her name I feel sick.
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"OK, then, if we are mates we can have a drink together." Even I don't believe it.
"No."
"Please."
"No." He wavers.
"Why not, if we are friends? Look, I'm happy to be your friend. You like your friends better than your lovers anyway."
He laughs, "Oh, Connie, you know me so well."
"So? Look, I'll drive over to your place and we can go to the pub. If I have the car, I won't drink, so neither of us will do anything you will regret." I force a laugh but I don't feel funny. Not being wanted is never amusing. Eventually, after a lot of persuasion, he agrees. I have recovered the situation. He is muddier and sadder but he has, in some small way, come back to me.
The car journey is hellish. It is dark, the traffic is appalling and I don't know the way from Clapham to Clerkenwell. Perfect conditions. I nearly clock up a number of points on the unofficial scale of dangerous driving and do irreparable harm to passers-by. I feel faint and clammy and agitated. I vow to myself that when I get there, I will be different. There will be no sex, no confusion, no anger. If mates is what he wants, I'll give it a go. Or at least I'll pretend to, until I can convince him that I am a Sex-Diva that he cannot live without.
I can't find anywhere to park near his house, so I park in Australia. I run to his door, arriving sweaty with anxiety and anticipation.
"It's me," I utter tonelessly into his intercom, mindful not to let the edgy excitement that I feel leak into my voice. He says nothing but the door opens immediately. He's been hovering, waiting for me. He flings open the door and more or less pounces, knocking for six my intentions to parrot, "Oh, I'm so fine with being your friend, I wish I'd thought of it." He pulls me into his hall, kissing me passionately.
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Not expertly.
Still, his unexpected enthusiasm delights me and more than makes up for his sudden lack of ability. He tugs roughly at my clothes and I reciprocate by pulling at the buttons on his shirt and within seconds we are both undressed. Within minutes he has come on my breasts.
His urgency at once flatters and disappoints me. After he has come he does make half an effort to entertain me, lapping happily . . . but the oral sex has become just that, oral sex. He could be setting a table down there or writing a shopping list, it is that exotic. I'm pretty good at fooling myself most of the time but for some reason I am not able to this time. Sex may end in bed but begins in the head. My head knows that he's moved on. I look at his transparent skin and his amazingly elegant cheekbones that frame his outrageously exquisite eyes and I feel dull. The eyes are still unfair, wickedly blue, but they are changed. They do not burn with lust or curiosity or desire or love. His eyes are glacial and bored. He is just as sexy but I am amazed by the entire lack of feeling. Does he know who I am? In the past when he'd licked my thighs and lapped my clit, I'd been extremely appreciative that I was lying down. Convinced that if I hadn't been my legs would have buckled and I'd have ended up flat on my back anyway. Now I am horrified that I am lying on my back, as I wonder how I will ever stand up, under the strain and shame of not being wanted. I push his head away. I wipe his cum off my breasts with his T-shirt and slowly begin to fold my body back into my clothes. I turn away to button up my blouse, suddenly wary, suddenly shy of him. He watches me pull on my leather trousers. My guaranteed-hit trousers. Spurting on tits seems alarmingly like a miss.
"Nice trousers."
"Thanks." I force a bright smile as I turn to him, sitting down to pull on my suede ankle boots. What happened to
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"You look drop dead" or "You are the sexiest bitch alive, I want to eat you"? Why is he commenting on my trousers?
"Where'd you get them?"
He is not a girl, so he can't be interested in the answer to that question. Unless, oh, horror of abhorrence. I have to know.
"Joseph. Are you thinking of getting a pair for Andrea?"
He looks at the floor and is not able, willing or bothered enough to deny it.
I sigh and pick up my bag.
"Where are you going?" He seems genuinely perplexed.
"Well, I think I'm finished up here," I snap abruptly. "You said that you wanted to go for a drink with the boys—well, go. I'm off." Naturally, I don't want to go. Naturally, I want him to take me in his arms, and kiss me, and tell me he is sorry. I want to start the evening all over again. And this time, the imaginary time, I ring him to tell him Luke is away and he offers to take me to a restaurant. He picks me up and when I get in the car (after he's opened the door for me) there is a huge bunch of white roses, with tightly closed buds, my favorite kind. In my imaginary start-again-day he tells me I look wonderful and he gazes at me longingly and he treats me well. He treats me the way people that genuinely care for each other treat each other. He treats me the way . . . the way Luke treats me . . .
I feel overwhelmingly morose and moronic. Unscheduled tears well up in my eyes. Angry tears. I am angry at myself, angry at John, angry at Luke, angry at the whole damn setup.
"I can't just go to the pub. Not after that." He points to the floor where he hurriedly had me. "I can't just go out with the boys." Slowly, reluctantly? he adds, "We'll go to the pub."
So we go to a dirty, intimidating pub, with no other women and no decent wine. I order a Diet Coke and he orders a half, indicating a swift and certain exit. Even I, with my unreason-
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able sense of invincibility, begin to understand that it is garbage-shoot-wipe-a-tear-baby-dear-say-good-bye-another-suitcase-another-hall time, and yet I long to believe that I've put my marriage in jeopardy for something more than a lusty shag, a feckless fuck. Isn't there just a chance that he still wants me?
No. Fool.
Yes. Cynic.
No. Do you want to be humiliated further?
Yes.
No.
If I am left caressing even the most minute glimmer of hope, within a month I will be able to magnify it into a galaxy of promise and intent. I need all doubt and uncertainty to be taken away. I require it spelt out, I want to hit rock bottom. I almost crave the words "You repulse me" or as near as he dares to go.
"So why the restraint? Charming as a novelty but really rather out of character," I snipe bitchily. It is important that he continues to think I am unassailable, that he hasn't touched me beyond a mild irritation.
"Restraint." He moves his cigarette half an inch, indicating, as he always does, that he is interested, and that I should carry on.
"Coming on my tits, not inside of me." Painfully clear, I think.
"Well ..." He squirms on his chair, trying to avoid answering me.
"Oh, I see. Sex without penetration isn't infidelity. That"— I can't bring myself to be explicit—"that thing we've just done isn't being unfaithful to Andrea?"
H
e nods sheepishly.
"You fucking hypocrite," I snap, possibly showing my hand.
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"Maybe, but you taught me the rules, Con."
Shame, he has a point. At the very beginning, in Paris, I used the exact same argument. Our relationship was based on challenge. He wanted to get me into bed and I wanted to get him to fall in love. As soon as I'd slept with him my allure instantly vanished. He'd won months ago. He won in Paris, just when I thought the cards were being dealt. I don't like losing.
"What's changed?" I ask.
"This just doesn't make sense," he offers. He doesn't say: "This doesn't make me happy" or "I'm jealous of Luke" or "I've gone off you" or "Your insatiable appetite is making you indiscreet, which is tiresome." Instead, he keeps on insisting that what we have doesn't make sense. He says it forcefully, calmly and repeatedly. He is not hysterical or impassioned or drunk, simply resigned, determined. He stares at me, with his fuck-me eyes that have turned into you-bore-me eyes, and he says again, "What we have doesn't make sense."
"Sense!" I spit the word back at him. "Sense, what does sense ever add up to? A detached house which you will fill with furniture, knickknacks and arguments. Keep your sense for Andrea." I never wanted sense. I wanted passion, a lack of temperance, anger, love, filth. I pull my lips together in a tight, controlled line of misery, as my brain desperately tries to get my heart to accept that I've lost. This thing we've had is gone. I want to wail. I feel cheated. I watch him as he lets my words lick his consciousness and he nods.
"Look, OK, so I want sex with you but that's it. I find no comfort in intimacy, it's claustrophobic."
"Well, if that's the case, aren't I the perfect answer? A married woman that can never get involved. I'm offering exactly what you said you wanted, unconditionally. You charm me and I want to keep you around. I simply want you as you are, your damaged, faulty self. I want this on a regular but infre-
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quent basis. I know you'll eventually choose a more tempered permanence but you'll always long for the exquisite exhilaration, which is self-destruction. We can come clean with each other."
I am surprisingly cheerful. I am enjoying this. Even if he ditches me in the end, at least it is dramatic. At least it is exciting and big. There is a long silence and for a moment I think that I've reached him, so I add, "You wanted intimacy in Paris."
Then he plays his ace card, he beats me at my own game. He draws upon popular culture.
"What's the phrase they use in films, Con, 'a few stolen hours'?" He smiles the widest smile and then struggles excitably to find the correct words. "Con, what we had in Paris was more vibrant, definitive, exhilarating, than anything I'd ever felt before or since. Of course that stupefying happiness was because I'd bagged an unlikely conquest."
He laughs and I don't know if I am supposed to believe him. "I dunno, it was probably the excessive alcohol or the unusually balmy nights of the Indian summer."
"No"—too excited to be embarrassed I babble on—"I know, and you know, too, John, in the deepest part of your soul, where we keep the secrets that we are most ashamed and afraid of, that you fell in love with me in Paris. You know that you can't reason it away. That you simply loved me. And although you keep this thought secluded in a largely undiscovered recess, it does from time to time surface. The fact that you discovered you have a heart and soul which will beat in time with your cock scares the living daylights out of you. To you the unleashing of possibility is the unleashing of vulnerability."
Despite his constant professions of having a minute attention span, he sits through this lecture. Which is rather courteous of him. He plays with a Tetley Beer mat, concentrating on
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tearing around the T and the B. Breathless, I let my daring words swim between us. He nods his head a fraction and for a moment in time I think he is going to agree with me.
"Maybe. Or maybe, Connie, you really are just another tart and I don't give a shit."
Thud.
That is me hitting rock bottom.
He grins and finishes his drink. He is walking toward the door, without acknowledging anything that I've said, and without negotiating over taking me back to his flat. He doesn't seem to understand the monumental consequences of accepting that it is over. The consequences are obvious to me. If it is over, I've been wrong.
I've lost.
He walks me to my car and says, "It's been great. Hey, don't look sad. You'll meet someone else." He is oblivious to the fact that he is someone else. "One day, maybe we'll meet up, you know, have a beer." He is being artificially bright and his chirpy politeness fills me with wrath. "I knew you'd understand."
I don't watch him walk away from the car. Not because I am being big and brave but because it is final. I turn on the engine and for the first time since I passed my driving test, over a decade ago, I conscientiously mirror, signal and maneuver. I drive directly to All Bar One, I do not pass go, I do not collect £200.
Lucy and Sam are sitting amongst the smoke and sawdust. There is no need for me to explain my unexpected appearance or my obvious distress. Lucy takes one look at my face and says, "You've never been very good at letting go." I put my head on the table and concentrate on ignoring her.
"Men are traditionally better at letting go," observes Sam.
"Well, he's ace at it. I need pudding. I'm in shock." I grab the menu and momentarily perk up.
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"I'll join you," says Sam, salivating at the choice. We order chocolate mud cake and banoffee pie.
"Shock?" asks Lucy. "Why are you shocked? I've been wondering how you were managing to ignore flashing neon lights." I gawk at her, not comprehending. "The lack of telephone calls, the lack of e-mails, the vacillating between intensity and indifference, not to mention the vacillating between blondes and brunettes." We sit silently until the puddings arrive. I dig my spoon into the mud cake and cram a crateful into my mouth. Instantly I feel better.
"Well, I've read the signs now. It's just that I am a bit late. About five months, two weeks, three days too late. About. To be exact. I think he stopped wanting me in Hampstead Heath, sometime between putting away his dick and pulling up his zip."
I give them the details about undiscovered recesses.
Lucy sighs, "Where do you get it from, Con?"
"Films."
"Oh."
"He confused things in January, by hinting that there might be more to it," comments Sam. She looks at her banoffee pie, as if it has the answers. Luckily, we have Lucy on hand to offer some clarity.
"His emotional speech was the result of accumulated alcohol and sentimental Christmas songs. The equivalent to Daisy auditioning for Stars in Their Eyes via the security cameras at Peterson Windlooper. Didn't you notice that he's never called you except when he is returning your calls, or when he is utterly pissed, or randomly randy?"
"No, Lucy, I didn't."
She flicks her blond hair over her shoulders. I glare at her. Saddam Hussein is more sensitive than she is.
"You're right, Lucy, after that first time he never said, 'Stay' or even 'don't go.' He didn't call for a month. But that didn't help, it only made me want him more."
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"I bet if he'd suddenly turned hopelessly devoted, you'd have got bored, you always used to," comforts Lucy.
"Well, it would have been nice to have been given the opportunity to find out."
"So what's your next project?"
"Project?" I reiterate, shocked.
"Yup, project," confirms Lucy. "Men have always been your project. I think that's the issue. When you married Luke you finished your 5000-piece jigsaw and now you don't know what to do except break it up again and start again. What's the next big thing?"
"That's ridiculous," I snap. "Isn't it, Sam?"
Sam doesn't answer my question but says instead, "Maybe if you were a bit more fulfilled at work, then ..."
"I have a good job."
"You have a job that someone else would think was good, but you only became a management consultant because of the male to female ratio of the staff. Once you married you had no motivation to be there."
"Oh, thank you very much, for your understanding." I hastily make to gather up my handbag and huffily pretend I'm going to leave the bar. Sam and Lucy are unperturbed, they know I have no intention of leaving. We've all known each other far too long to care about a mild bout of self-indulgent histrionics. They know what I want to hear.
Lucy: "He's a bastard."
Sam: "You deserve better."
Lucy: "You have better."
Sam: "Don't blame yourself. It takes two to tango."
Lucy: "Well, it looks like your dance card's empty." Lucy starts to veer off the comforting script here and instead reverts to "telling me like it is." She has every right to do this as she is a very close friend. I hate her.
"I can't believe you accepted he had a girlfriend and the
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fact that he took other lovers. Didn't it cross your mind to tell him how unacceptable it had all become?"
"Of course it didn't," Sam defends me. "She was looking through carnality goggles and listening through infatuation earmuffs."
"Where did I go wrong?" I wail, as I finish my chocolate mud cake and start to edge my fork into Sam's banoffee pie. I am flat with disappointment and regret. "Maybe I should diet? Grow my hair? Have it cut?" The girls stare at me in silence.
"You look good."
"You look brilliant." It is true to say that never before have I spent so much time and money at the beautician's. I am toned, tanned, pumiced, exfoliated, manicured, pedicured and cleansed to within an inch of my life. Normally a neat size ten, I recently hit that previously inconceivable nirvana, size eight. Anyway he was keen on my bod. I remember his voice, "I love your tits, Connie, you are so fucking sexy." (Not sexy enough as it turns out. Well, you know how sexy is—going for a song nowadays.)
I shake my head. "Maybe if I hadn't rung him as much over Christmas. I should have played it cooler."
