by David Lodge
I remember thinking to myself, as I drove into the University later, that with Carrie away, on the other side of the world, conditions would have been ideal for a dalliance with Helen Reed, thinking what a pity it was that she had turned me down so unequivocally a few weeks ago, kicking myself for having made my pitch too soon, too early in our acquaintance, or perhaps just too crudely. She looked so attractive at Bourton-on-the-Water, in a close-fitting pair of white jeans that showed her shapely bum to advantage, and her breasts moving about interestingly under her sweater. And she was teasing me a little, with her quips about ‘the great duck race of life’ and computers being autistic (though that’s a shrewd comment, actually, typical of her to just throw it off, maybe I’ll use it; computers for instance have fantastic memories but no common sense, they have a deficit of affect, they can’t tell the difference between a true story and a fiction, they don’t know how to lie . . .) yes, she was definitely winding me up a bit with these bons mots and then quoting Duggers’ snide comment, ‘the master of the scientific sound-bite,’ glancing at me to see how I took it, but not at all nervously, still less flirtatiously. She obviously felt at ease with me, whereas I like any woman I’m with to feel, if only very faintly, in danger.
That was how it looked on Monday morning: the cat was away, but the mouse I was interested in wouldn’t play. When I got to my office, I thought I would call her anyway, on the thoroughly plausible pretext of telling her about Carrie’s father. Naturally she was very sympathetic, and asked how I was going to manage house and family while Carrie was away. I told her that Edna was going to do extra hours and there was a stack of prepared meals in the freezer. She offered to come over and cook dinner for us one evening and I booked her at once, for Friday. Then I asked diffidently if she would care to have lunch in Staff House on Wednesday, expecting to be turned down, but to my surprise she said yes. ‘And why don’t we go to a pub this time, the food in Staff House is so ghastly.’ Of course I agreed, trying hard not to give the impression that I was wagging my tail and licking my chops in delight.
My first thought was to take her to the King’s Head, a nice little pub near Horseshoes, where we often go for Sunday lunch when Carrie doesn’t feel like cooking; but on reflection I didn’t want to entertain Helen at a place where I was well known, and from which mischievous gossip might get back to Carrie. So I rang up a country pub called the Anvil near Burford which I’d been to only once before, without Carrie, and reserved a table in their bar-restaurant. I remembered it as somewhat over-endowed with antique agricultural implements hanging on the walls, but the grub was good and it was pleasantly uncrowded. It’s in The Good Pub Guide but it’s so hard to find that I’m sure lots of potential customers give up in despair and go home to their locals instead.
I cancelled a couple of supervisions I had in my diary for this afternoon – not because I had any inkling of how it would turn out, but because I didn’t want to rush the lunch, and the Anvil is a good forty minutes’ drive from the campus. Helen commented on the distance we seemed to be covering on the way there, and I said I hoped she wasn’t bothered about getting back promptly. ‘No, not at all,’ she said. I said I had a free afternoon. ‘So have I,’ she said, and this banal little statement suddenly became charged with significance. It was like the moment in Prague when I said, ‘I can think of several things,’ and Ludmila blushed. Helen didn’t blush, and neither did I, but we fell silent for a minute or two. The thinks bubbles over our heads filled up. I was wondering, ‘Is it possible that I’m going to get lucky this afternoon? Has she changed her mind about me for some reason?’ I had no idea what was in her bubble, however, and resolved to proceed with extreme caution. If this was a second chance, I didn’t want to bungle it. I let her break the silence. ‘What a lovely day!’ she said, turning her head to look out of the car window. ‘I do love the spring.’ Which was a conversational filler if ever I heard one.
I glanced quickly across at her. She was wearing a red shirt with a silk scarf loosely knotted round her neck, a fawn cardigan round her shoulders and a pair of matching tailored trousers. Gold earrings and a classy-looking brooch. She looked good. She’s always well turned-out, but it seemed to me that she had taken particular care with her appearance today. A good sign.
The Anvil was as I remembered it, whitewashed brick and thatch on the outside, exposed beams and rafters and agricultural ironmongery on the inside. We sat down at a snug corner table. ‘Watch that scythe on the wall,’ I said, ‘and don’t wave your arms about when you talk, or they might have to re-name this pub the Amputee.’ She laughed more heartily than the joke was worth. Another good sign. Ditto that we spontaneously chose the same dishes from the lunch menu, moules marinières to start, followed by pan-fried duck breast. I suggested a glass of white wine to go with the mussels and a bottle of Pomerol for the duck. The moules were excellent. ‘This is what I call a gourmet pub-lunch,’ she said, spooning up the liquor with relish.
I gave her an update about Carrie’s father. She talked a bit about her own parents, who sound like a right pair of old fogies, and she asked me about mine. I told her they were both dead. She said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I didn’t go into details. I wanted to steer the conversation away from this gloomy topic as soon as possible, and fortunately I had another one up my sleeve.
I’d taken the trouble to speed-read The Eye of the Storm the night before. It’s a rather tedious story of a woman going into and coming out of a depressive illness, and the effect this has on the people around her, her husband, children, parents and friends. Her depression lifts suddenly in the course of a trip she makes with her husband to Paris, where they spent their honeymoon years before. Most of this episode is a typical Francophile rhapsody about recovering the forgotten charms of Paris – the boulevard cafés, the aromas of garlic and freshly baked bread, the patter of tyres on the cobbled squares, the bookstalls along the Left Bank, etc. etc., the usual Frogbollocks, but there was one interesting bit, about the reawakening of the heroine’s interest in sex, which has been at a very low ebb during her illness. The couple are staying at a five-star hotel, somewhere like the Ritz, because the husband’s on a journalistic freebie, and one day, while he’s out, the heroine, her name’s Anna, finds in a drawer in their white and gold Second Empire bedroom some intriguing objects evidently left behind by the previous occupants: two black velvet facemasks and some lengths of thick silky cord. She takes them out and handles them with a thudding heart, wondering what to do with them – hand them in at the desk? throw them in the waste basket? In the end she puts them back in the drawer and shows them to her husband when he comes in. At first he laughs and makes a few ribald jokes, but Anna can see that he’s quite excited by the discovery. When they’re going to bed, he takes the masks out of the drawer and hands one to her. ‘Put it on,’ he says, and goes into the bathroom taking the other one with him. Anna puts on the mask, which covers the top half of her face, and looks at herself in the mirror. ‘A depraved stranger stared back at her through the eyeholes of the mask,’ the text says. Anna takes off her nightdress, and poses in the room’s long mirrors, naked but for the mask. Her husband comes in, also masked, naked – and erect. They look at each other ‘with smiles of licentious complicity’. Anna takes the heavy coils of silken cord out of the drawer and holds them out to him. ‘Tie me up,’ she says. Annoyingly, the chapter ends there, but we’re given to understand from Anna’s retrospective thoughts that they enjoy a night of unprecedented orgiastic sex, from which Anna emerges a new woman, finally purged of her angst.
When I said that I had been reading one of her novels, Helen tossed her head nervously and pulled a face. ‘I wish you hadn’t,’ she said. ‘But on the other hand, I’m surprised it’s taken you so long. Most of the people I meet rush off immediately to borrow my books from the library. Then they make a point of telling me and seem to think I should be grateful.’
‘I put off reading your books in case I didn’t like them,’ I said. ‘I’m not ver
y good at disguising my opinions.’
‘So why did you change your mind?’
‘I feel we know each other well enough now for it not to matter.’
‘Which one did you read?’ she said. I told her. ‘And did you like it?’
‘“Like” wouldn’t be the right word,’ I said. ‘To be honest, it’s not my kind of thing. It’s what used to be called “a woman’s book”, though you’re not allowed to say that any more. But I admired it. I could appreciate the skill that had gone into it.’
‘“Thank you, sir, she said.”’ This with a little ironic bow.
‘No, really, it’s beautifully written,’ I said. ‘And there was one scene that really made me sit up. Towards the end, when they’re in Paris.’
She laughed a little self-consciously. ‘You mean the bedroom scene? With the masks? I’m afraid that’s everybody’s favourite chapter,’ she said, ‘except for my parents.’
I asked if it had any basis in fact.
‘Oh, Messenger!’ she said, ‘I’m disappointed in you. Everybody asks me that.’
I said I was sorry, and I did feel a bit of a prat; but what impressed me more was that she had called me ‘Messenger’. I couldn’t recall her having done that before. Only the family, and very formal colleagues like Duggers, call me ‘Messenger’. It seemed to move us on to a new level of intimacy. I don’t know whether she was aware of it herself. Since I would have to drive later, I had replenished her glass rather more often than my own, and she was a little flushed and inebriated.
‘The long weekend in Paris is based on experience,’ she said, ‘and the luxury hotel, but not finding the masks and the silk cord in the chest of drawers. I made that up.’
‘You’ve never experimented with that sort of thing yourself?’ She shook her head. ‘You should try it one day,’ I said.
‘Someone else said that to me recently,’ she said, with a rather strange smile.
‘There you are, then.’
She shook her head again. ‘I’m too old for such antics.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘It’s the only way to resist ageing. Feed the flame of sex. Keep it burning at all costs.’
The girl who had been serving us our lunch came up with the bill.
‘Can I share this?’ Helen said, reaching for her handbag.
‘No, it’s my treat,’ I said. I paid with cash and tipped the girl generously.
‘Well, thank you very much,’ Helen said. ‘It was delightful.’
It was the first time she had allowed me to pay for her meal. Another good sign. I decided to take the plunge – literally and metaphorically.
‘It’s far too nice an afternoon to go back to work,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we drive over to Horseshoes and have a hot tub?’
‘I don’t have a swimming costume with me,’ she said.
‘You won’t need one,’ I said. ‘There’s nobody there. The deck isn’t overlooked.’
Our conversation had reached the point where she usually says that she isn’t going to have an affair with me, but this time she didn’t. ‘Perhaps you could find the things I wore last time,’ she said.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But it’s actually much nicer without anything on.’
‘Yes, I can believe that,’ she said.
It isn’t easy to drive with an erection. You have to lean forward over the wheel with your chin practically on the dashboard, as if you’re short-sighted. I don’t know whether Helen closed her eyes to spare my embarrassment, but after a while I realized she had fallen asleep, and I was able to relax. She didn’t wake until I drew up outside Horseshoes. ‘Goodness, I nodded off,’ she said. ‘It must be the wine and the food.’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘perhaps we should rest for a while before we go in the tub. Digest the lunch.’
‘You mean, “have a nice lie-down”?’ she said, echoing a line of my own from that lunch in her house.
‘Exactly,’ I said.
Horseshoes, as usual, was quiet and deserted. Only the drone of a distant tractor disturbed the deep rustic peace, and the shriek of the burglar alarm in the hall when I opened the front door. I silenced the alarm and closed the door behind us. Then I kissed Helen long and hard. She did not resist. Indeed, I was the one to break off. ‘Let’s make love,’ I said.
‘I’ve forgotten how to do it,’ she said. ‘It’s been such a long time.’
‘I’ll remind you,’ I said, taking her hand. I led her up the stairs and into the master bedroom. ‘First you have to take all your clothes off,’ I said.
‘You must draw the curtains, then,’ she said. ‘I feel shy.’
I drew the curtains, thinking of that afternoon in the Yorkshire Dales many years ago when Martha drew the thin cotton curtains across the window of my room in the farmhouse, filling it with soft pink light. These were thicker, but there was enough light for me to see Helen’s naked body, and not be disappointed. I took a condom from the bedside cabinet and made sure she saw me place it ready to hand.
The sex was short but sweet. I didn’t want to give her any time for second thoughts, and I soon discovered that there was no need for any elaborate foreplay. In fact she came with astonishing rapidity, almost as soon as I entered her. I suppose it’s the same for women as for men, abstinence makes the sensations of intercourse more intense, and in her case the dry season had been a very long one. She came like a flash flood, and I saw no reason to hold back myself. I fell almost immediately asleep. When I woke, I found she had covered us with a sheet. She was lying on her back, with her head on the pillow, and her face had the soft blurred look of a satisfied woman. She gave me a strange little smile, both shy and wry. ‘So, how was it for me?’ she said.
I had envisaged the hot tub as a prelude to sex, but in the event we had it afterwards – much the best order, lolling satisfied and languorous in the bubbling water. After a while, though, I started fooling about and got aroused again. I wanted to have sex out there in the tub, under the open sky, but she wouldn’t. I offered to take her into the house and tie her up. That was when she bit me.
Emily is calling up the stairs about something the boys have, or haven’t, done, asking me to intervene. Time to save this.
27
WEDNESDAY 14TH MAY. It’s some time since I made the last entry in this journal. I haven’t felt like writing anything down, even for my own eyes only, about the events of the last three weeks. I’ve been too preoccupied with living them. No, that’s not the real reason. A journal is a kind of mirror in which you look at yourself every day, candidly, unflinchingly – without the protective disguise of a mask, without even the flattery of makeup – and tell yourself the truth. I haven’t felt like doing that since Messenger and I became lovers. I didn’t want to record my behaviour because I was afraid that scrutinizing it and analysing it might awaken scruples of conscience and inhibit my pleasure. (In fact I still shrink from examining this experience with the straight unflinching gaze of the first person. Let me try it another way . . .)
For that was what she had become, a woman of pleasure, a scarlet woman, a woman of easy virtue, a woman no better than she should be – or so she would have been described in the pages of an old novel. Not in a modern one, of course. She was only doing what everybody else was doing, evidently: fulfilling her desires, making hay while the sun shone, squeezing every drop of joy from her ageing body before it was too late, because ‘This is the only life you will have,’ etc., etc. And whatever happened she would never regret it, it had been so exciting.
Nerve-racking, too, at times, because they had taken tremendous risks. Twice she had gone to the house on Pittville Lawn to cook dinner for the family, and stayed overnight on the pretext that she’d drunk too much wine to drive home, and on both occasions he crept into her room and her bed in the middle of the night, just as she had fantasized on the night of his birthday party, and they made love that was somehow all the more sensuous and passionate because they dared not make a sound, in case one of the c
hildren should wake and hear them. They had to mime their ecstasy to each other like a pair of dancers, in the movements of their limbs and the expressions on their faces. They lay on a sheepskin rug on the floor because the bed creaked, and he held his hand over her mouth as she reached her climax. She bit on the cushion of flesh at the base of his thumb as if it were a bridle or a gag, to stop herself from crying out, and heard a sharp intake of breath as he stood the pain. (He called her ‘Biter’ in pillow-talk. He seemed to like it, but she had stopped doing it, because Carrie was coming home soon, and mustn’t find her husband visibly nibbled and gnawed, like a joint attacked by mice.) After the silent, balletic sex, she had to unlock the door and peer out on to the landing to make sure that it was safe for him to slink back to his own bedroom, for it was always possible that one of the children would get up to go to the toilet and see him coming out of the guest room.
One afternoon they were in bed at Horseshoes, and a car drew up outside and someone rang the doorbell. Messenger crept, naked, to the window, and peeped out through a gap in the curtains. ‘It’s the VC!’ he whispered. ‘It’s Sir Stan and Lady Viv. What the fuck are they doing here?’ Helen found this untimely visitation terribly funny, and got the giggles, but Messenger was afraid of discovery and hissed at her to keep quiet. His car was parked in the drive, so the visitors knew he was in the house or not far away. Helen and Messenger lay low in the curtained bedroom until they got tired of ringing the doorbell and calling over the garden wall, and drove off. Messenger went downstairs and came back with a scribbled note he’d found on the doormat: ‘We happened to be passing and saw your car parked, but obviously you’re out. Another time, I hope. Stan.’ He vaguely recalled that Carrie had invited them to drop in at the cottage at any convenient opportunity. ‘They were very interested in seeing the hot tub,’ he said. ‘They’d have been even more interested if they’d found the two of us in it, stark naked,’ Helen said. ‘And having sex,’ he added with a grin, for she had indulged him in that ambition one day. It wasn’t particularly successful, for herself anyway, but he was delighted. He liked to have sex in unusual places, even public places. The risk of discovery seemed to sharpen his pleasure.
