‘You’re beautiful,’ he says. ‘D’you know, I couldn’t take my eyes off you at the private view? You were the most attractive woman there.’
He’s mocking now – he must be. I wrench my mouth away. ‘Seton didn’t think so,’ I say acerbically.
‘Seton’s no real judge.’
I realise what he’s doing now. I’ve met his type before. It’s not me he wants, but the chance to do his friend down, steal his buddy’s girl. I’ve known men sleep with frights and frumps just because they belong to someone else and they can’t stand being told ‘Don’t touch’; have to prove they’re grown-ups who are allowed to break the rules. I suppose if I wore a wedding ring, he’d find me still more irresistible.
‘You’re so exciting,’ he says softly. He’s not drunk, just good at lying. My face is Gruyère-pale, I probably smell of vomit, and my size-eight feet are displayed in all their gracelessness, since I’ve kicked off my tight shoes.
‘So you like the hair?’ I ask him. ‘Vidal Sassoon spent hours on it. It’s called the natural look.’
‘Well, it was a sort of … shock at first – that I must admit, but now I’ve got more used to it, I find it rather striking. It’s dramatic, isn’t it? And you’ve got such fantastic cheekbones, it really shows them off.’
I bet he’s good at writing blurbs – all his lousy artists billed as ‘exciting’ and ‘dramatic’. He’s already described that Steiner girl as ‘lively’, and no doubt black Lovena has amazing Marxist bones. I’ve never trusted men who talk about a woman’s bones when they’re really after flesh.
‘How about my ears?’ I ask.
‘Your ears?’
‘Are they exciting, too?’
‘You’re exciting all over, Nial.’
He assumes that deserves a second kiss and a hand inside my blouse. He’s not a brilliant kisser, dribbles saliva down my chin. I wipe it off with my serviette (which is cream, of course, and damask); take advantage of the pause to return to his chief rival. ‘Hey, Zack …’ I make it teasing to put him off his guard. ‘Did your detective work extend to John-Paul’s family?’
‘What?’
I’ve thrown him. Men can never do two things at once. Most normal women (the sort with homes and kids) often manage five or six at least. ‘Seton told me John-Paul’s father was a …’
‘Darling, let’s not talk about John-Paul – not now.’
God, a ‘darling’! I spent naked weeks with Seton trying to coax just one – and failing – yet Zack’s obliged before we’ve got our clothes off. Actually, he’s unbuttoning my blouse, trying to slide the buttons through the holes in such a suavely sneaky way he thinks I’m unaware. Seton did it better by just tugging.
‘I mean, you didn’t happen to hear his father was a plumber?’ I don’t remove his hands. I’ll swap a stretch of naked cleavage for a few more solid facts.
‘Christ! Your tits are …’ He kneads one like a pastry-cook, seems lost for adjectives.
‘Too small,’ I murmur softly, trying to help him out. One favour for another. ‘I mean, did anyone you speak to know about his family or background?’
‘They’re perfect, Nial. The big ones always droop.
I let him suck a nipple before I return to John-Paul’s father, smile at him coquettishly. ‘No one mentioned plumbers, for example?’
He sits up rather crossly, one hand on my breast still. ‘Plumbers?’
‘Yes – you know – geysers, boilers, stopcocks, all that sort of thing. Seton said …’
‘Let’s leave Seton out of this. All right?’
I nod. I’ll kid him if he wants that, but I can’t say I admire him. He doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing Seton down, nor blush for his hypocrisy in claiming to be shattered by his friend’s recent sad relapse, then touching up his mistress a cool twenty minutes later. I admit I did encourage him by hugging him so wildly, which must have seemed the most outrageous come-on, especially when I offered him a twelve-course slap-up dinner. But even so, I backed off pretty quickly once he’d got me in his car, refused to let him stroke my thigh, told him almost primly he needed both his hands for driving. Now he’s backing off from me, and I haven’t got my answer yet, so I pop a grape between his lips (which is what they do in porn movies, and always with results). ‘Just tell me if the plumber bit was true, Zack?’
‘What plumber bit?’ He crunches up a grape-pip with more venom than it needs.
God! He’s not just hypocritical, he’s thick. I’ve repeated it at least three times. I try again, a fourth time, but he still looks mystified.
‘John-Paul’s father is a doctor, Nial – a rather eminent neurologist. Half the family are doctors – brothers, cousins, nephews. That was easy to find out. His surname’s so unusual and the clan are fairly thickly clustered around Harley Street and …’
‘But is he a doctor?’ I interrupt. ‘I mean a proper medical one?
Seton said he’d only got a doctorate in philosophy from some foreign university.’
Zack grabs the cheese-knife, hacks off a chunk of Brie, masticates it angrily, as if he’s chewing up a whole Harley Street of eminent neurologists; devouring John-Paul in a gulp, then wolfing down his brothers, cousins, nephews. He’s still talking as he chews, so that tiny flecks of Brie-and-spittle spray into the air. ‘Well, I suppose Seton had to deny him as a doctor, just to give himself an excuse to quit his therapy and blame someone else for his failure to improve.’
I look at Zack with new respect. That’s really rather subtle, even worthy of John-Paul, though again disloyal to Seton. Maybe they’re not good friends at all, just employee and employer, which still doesn’t quite explain why Zack should waste his evenings visiting a mental case. I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt – he’s genuinely kind (if a shit in other ways) – concerned for Seton as a suffering, human being, and not just as a framer who works eighteen hours a day and probably charges well below the market rate. I offer him my breasts again – a reward not just for kindness, but for saving John-Paul’s family. An eminent neurologist’s far safer than a plumber. I’m feeling safer altogether – no dogs, no lousy paintings, no jumped-up Cockney father. In fact, I’m so thoroughly elated, I let Zack remove my skirt, admire my black net stockings. My own mind’s still on doctors, and prickles with unease again as I realise Zack didn’t actually answer my last question. I don’t repeat it yet – timing’s crucial in these matters – but pretend to moan with lust as he inserts his podgy hand inside my stocking-top.
He’s so encouraged he starts tackling my suspenders, which affords me a remission, since he’s obviously more artistic than mere practical and seems baffled by their simple snap-on fastenings. I use the breathless pause to ask a question. ‘You mean, he’s got all his degrees and things, and went to proper medical school and did his …?’
‘Christ! They’re so exciting, stockings. Whoever invented tights deserves to burn in hell.’ He outmanoeuvres one, at last, rolls it down in a sort of panting ecstasy, strokes my naked leg from thigh to toe, and back to inner thigh.
‘If you could just fill me in on the basic facts – I mean, which particular medical school or analytic training, the year he qualified – all that sort of thing.’
Zack’s not concentrating, doesn’t even seem to hear me. It’s probably my own fault. I’m speaking very huskily, in that sexy throaty sort of voice which is meant to drive men wild, so that they obey your every whim. This man’s blithely unaware there’s anything I want – except his hot hand travelling back towards my groin. I clamp my legs together, pretend I need the loo again. He’s thrilled – assumes I only need it to insert my diaphragm, so we can go full steam ahead. I pout him a long-distance kiss as I glide towards the bathroom. ‘Don’t go away,’ I purr.
He doesn’t vanish – just his clothes – which is definitely a mistake. Zack undressed is not a pretty sight. His clothes were his best feature and without them he’s a slug, one of those pale fat ones which (sensibly) stay hidden under stones.
His body’s bald, except for two small greyish tufts sprouting from his underarms and a sort of mangy ruff around his prick. His prick’s another slug: erect, but small and squashy. It always rather fazes me that men make such a thing about their pricks, comparing them to Martello towers or howitzers, when they’re really more like fungi or invertebrates. John-Paul’s the worst of all; wrote this book called Penile Greed (though I’d have called it Phallacies), in which he associated phallauses with anything and everything which is long, tall, pointed, powerful, extendible or sharp, or which thrusts, probes, inflates, explodes, turns on and off, spurts, squirts, slogs, strikes and batters. His list went on for ever; included trees, spears, cars, cocaine, whips, taps, thunder, lightning, pistols, tigers, sharks, swords, Zeppelins, Cape Kennedy, Mount Olympus, and even God the Father.
I shift my gaze from Zack’s Ferrari/ oak tree; glance around the room. It seems also full of phalluses – John-Paul’s kind, at least – knives, pens, lamps, plants, and a still unopened wine bottle. Neither Zack nor I have drunk much. We’re still on our first Chardonnay, haven’t touched the hock. I stroke the cool green glass, embrace it like a lover, so my hands are safely occupied. ‘Hell! I’m thirsty, darling. Can we open this, d’you think?’
He doesn’t look too pleased, despite the ‘darling’. I suppose it isn’t very flattering to prefer a phallic symbol to the genuine McCoy. Mind you, he’s made it very difficult. I’d planned a little respite, a spot more gentle questioning before we returned to heavy petting, but it’s not easy to conduct an inquisition when the respondent is stark naked and wondering what to do with his erection. Actually, it punctures quite dramatically once he struggles with the cork, so I quickly get my word in.
‘So Seton was mistaken, then, about John-Paul’s doctorate in philosophy?’
‘Nial, I’m just slightly sick of Seton – right? I’ve had him up to here these last two weeks.’ He gestures to his neck, which looks both fatter and more slack without the arty tie to hold it in.
‘We’re not talking about Seton, we’re talking about John-Paul.’
‘Well, I’ve even less interest in John-Paul. I realise you’re obsessed with him, as Seton was himself, but frankly, Nial, I …’
I gulp my wine, upset by this new peevishness, and by a sudden shaming insight that I’m betraying Seton just as much as he is, could share that label ‘hypocrite’. Seton’s in a hospital, not in a clinch with Cressida, so what exactly am I doing lolling on a sofa with his friend/employer/ confidant? I grab some weird exotic fruit, which looks a cross between a mango and a small Belisha beacon, remove its pips and peel, then stuff my mouth with it, which provides me with a good excuse not to talk, or kiss – a chance to think a moment. Am I really such a cow? After all, Seton said ‘No ties’, and he ditched me at that private view, never phoned me to apologise or find out how I was – and lied to me quite flagrantly on almost every subject. Okay, he’s schizophrenic, which I suppose excuses him, but it excuses me as well. If my (ex?) lover doesn’t know me, treats me like a chair or stretch of carpet, then it’s high time I moved on.
The fruit tastes almost bitter, or perhaps it’s just my mood a sudden sad sharp longing to have Seton back in bed – yes, even drugged and crazy. I miss him terribly: his size eleven feet which made mine small and feminine, his whorls of wild black body hair which seemed alive in their own right – rough and hot and springy; even the smell of nicotine which lingered in his mouth. Zack’s mouth smells of Roquefort, fighting with mint mouthwash. The fact Zack doesn’t smoke seems another missing bond. We’re just two aching strangers. Even our two bodies look completely wrong together – his legs too short and plumpish for my longer leaner ones; his pallid doughy skin-tone making mine look sallow. (He’s two-tone, actually – face and hands well-bronzed, the rest like uncooked pastry.)
I drain my glass. Better a mild hangover than self-pity and regrets. And anyway, aren’t I more concerned with John-Paul than with Seton? John-Paul’s my whole future, Seton just my past. I could even keep my next two-ten appointment, if I could get the final evidence that my therapist’s a fully trained professional – turn up on the Monday as if I’ve never been away. If I agonise much longer, I’ll lose scowling Zack as well as vacant Seton. I try a few soft words, but they fail to change his mood. (Men never quite forgive you if you ignore their full-blown pricks. It’s like ignoring the Pyramids of Egypt, or the Colossus of Rhodes, or the other Seven Wonders of the World.) I’ll have to try much harder, divert him with some party trick. I kick Seton from my mind, edge up close to Zack, fill my mouth with chilled white wine, transfer it to his own mouth (spending some time on the process); then wow his limp Colossus with my lips, my hands, an ice cube and a few peeled grapes, though not in quite that order. He’s so ecstatic, he not only rears up instantly, but disgorges facts like semen, and by the time we’re both stretched naked on the sofa, ready for the final lap, I’m chanting in my head, ‘BSc, MD, FRCPsych, editor of the new International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, member and ex-president of …’
‘Happy?’ Zack whispers, as he lumbers up on top of me, plays that game which babies play of fitting round pegs in round holes.
‘Oh, yes.’
I hardly notice what he’s doing. I’m mulling over John-Paul’s long career, seeing him at Cambridge where he did his BSc, then going on to Barts to train, remaining there a decade for a gruelling spell of National Health drug-and-shocks psychiatry (and even a foray into sex therapy – real phalluses, for once); then his second (analytic) training, and his move to private practice; his phase as brilliant author, writing books on …
‘All right, darling?’
I wish he wouldn’t interrupt. I’m busy counting minutes now and he’s made me lose all track. I twist my neck, so I can peer down at my watch – the only thing I left on, very fortunately. It’s a pity that it’s Thursday, which is the longest gap of all between my sessions – four thousand aching minutes till two-ten on the Monday. No, I think I’ve got that wrong. It can’t be quite as …
Zack lets out a sudden gasping moan, slumps inert on top of me. I only realise he’s been thrusting when he stops, though it was so extremely brief and feeble, the word thrusting seems hyperbole. A trickle of saliva oozes from his open mouth and dribbles down my neck. ‘Was it all right for you, darling?’
I fight a laugh. I thought people only said that in bad novels or worse jokes. ‘Mm,’ I whisper softly, as I recount my triumphs one by one: no wives, no dogs, no plumbers, no murders, no slashed paintings – best of all, just three thousand, eight hundred and ninety-seven minutes until I see my fully-trained, totally professional, indeed almost over-qualified John-Paul.
‘Yes, absolutely wonderful,’ I tell him, truthfully.
Chapter Twenty Two
Bryan slipped behind a tree, wished it had its leaves still, so it could hide him more effectively. The woman working in the garden of number thirty-three had been watching him suspiciously for the last half hour or so. He’d walked up and down Thurlston Grove twenty-seven times so far, passing her each time. He might be less conspicuous if he weren’t carrying such a huge bouquet, wrapped in rustling cellophane and fastened with a showy yellow bow. It had already proved a hassle on the crowded tetchy tube trains, the jam-packed lifts and escalators, and finally on British Rail, where a child had cannoned into it, snapping off at least three precious flower-heads. He had almost retaliated by breaking off the child’s head. He wasn’t often violent, but those flowers had cost nearly half a session with John-Paul – not that he begrudged the cash. Wasn’t Mary worth it, worth an arm or leg? He limped on down the road again, imagining he had lost a leg, proud to sacrifice any limb she specified.
The houses all looked closed and almost hostile – no children in the driveways, or friendly garden gnomes; just a rash of officious notices saying ‘Beware of the dog’ or ‘No hawkers, no circulars’ (or even ‘No charities’) – suburban euphemisms for ‘GET OUT!’ ‘GO AWAY!’ Burglar alarms bristled ever
ywhere, and many of the houses had not just dogs, but lions – the fierce stone sort rearing up on pedestals, threatening him with bared teeth and fearsome manes. He hoped Mary’s road would look a little friendlier. She lived in Sylvan Gardens, which was the street exactly parallel, though he hadn’t dared approach it yet. She might see him from her window, realise he’d arrived a good sixty minutes early and was already semi-dead with cold and fear.
He’d left off his vest and sweater, so he’d look leaner and more elegant, more the city gentleman, but the bitter wind was cutting through his favourite lightweight suit. It had taken hours to choose his clothes. What did one wear to a birthday tea in Walton? Grey shorts and his Cub tie was his first immediate thought. He’d told his Mother he was going to a seminar. She hadn’t known the word, been immediately suspicious, especially as he’d never left her on her own before on a Saturday afternoon. Saturday was Mother’s Day – well, every day was Mother’s Day – but weekends most especially. He could hear her voice still squalling in his head – all those guilt-inducing words which ruined his own pleasure: ‘selfish’, ‘thoughtless’, ‘giddy’, ‘irresponsible’.
He repositioned his bouquet. The wet stalk-end was oozing through its cellophane, and it would give quite the wrong impression to turn up with a damp patch on his groin. He checked his watch again: nine minutes to four. Only eight and three-quarter minutes and he could knock on Mary’s door. The thought so terrified him, he broke into a run – away from Sylvan Gardens and back towards the station. He sweated, stumbled, shilly-shallied; finally forced himself to change direction, recite the eight-times-table to calm his jangling nerves, as he turned the corner into Mary’s road. ‘Eight threes are twenty-four, eight fours are thirty-two, eight fives are …’
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