David said, ‘Oh God, it’s easy. I’ll leave my Birmingham telephone number with you and if he rings up, you ring us and Gemma can ring him back. Tell him she’s in the bath or something.’
It was easy; he was right. ‘And how serious is my illness?’
He went on smoothly. ‘Food poisoning, I think. You went out to a heavy lunch. Oysters, probably, followed by pheasant. You’re allergic but you won’t admit it. There’s nothing Gemma can do but you don’t want to be alone. He’ll tell you to suck ice cubes. It happened to me once.’
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Provided he doesn’t come rushing up here to minister to me.’
‘He can’t leave the children,’ Gemma said quickly.
‘He could ask your mother to babysit.’
‘He won’t.’
No. He certainly wouldn’t. My health was not a matter of much concern to him.
‘There’s nothing anyone can do,’ David said with authority, ‘not even a doctor. You feel so ill you just want to die.’
‘But not alone.’
‘That’s right. Now you’ve got it.’
I remembered to say, ‘And I was planning to go away for the weekend.’
‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘you can go another time, can’t you?’
* * *
On the appointed day she did no typing, needless to say. She arrived late, overnight essentials hidden in her handbag, her face such a mixture of happiness, fear and excitement that I did not know what to say to her. But I doubt if she’d have heard me if I had spoken. She was hardly in the world at all.
‘When I was a child,’ she said, ‘and I read love stories, I always thought there was something magical about the night, about actual sleep. Two people together in darkness, unconscious…’ She balanced on the edge of her chair, rocking it gently. ‘That seemed to be what made the bond between them. Anything could happen. Giving your unconscious to someone – I thought that was why there was all that fuss about the wedding night. It seemed the essence of marriage somehow, being together asleep in the dark.’
* * *
And of course Christopher telephoned. About nine, when I was beginning to feel secure. Gemma had done her bit in the afternoon, ringing neighbours to collect the children, ringing Christopher to describe my symptoms and ask permission. I was surprised how genuine she sounded, what a competent actress she had become. Perhaps David had been coaching her.
But was she good enough? The telephone bell sent chills through my stomach, momentarily making me feel almost as ill as I was alleged to be. It could, of course, have been anyone, even Gemma herself. But I knew it was Christopher. I had foreseen it from the time I cross-examined the guilty lovers and David concocted the plan.
‘Yes?’ I hoped my voice sounded suitably weakened by vomiting.
‘Oh.’ He seemed slightly taken aback. ‘Alex. I thought you’d be in bed.’
‘I am.’
‘Oh. Yes, of course. It was only that I expected Gemma to answer as you’re not well.’
A pause. He had not asked, but I suddenly felt obliged to answer his silence.
‘She’s in the bath,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ He sounded – what? Relieved. Disappointed. Disbelieving. All three. And something more: the unutterable sadness that Gemma had described in her letter to me, that invaded his voice and, dislike him as I might, totally overwhelmed me. But it was not a time for sentiment; rather was it a time for a calculated gamble.
‘Shall I call her?’ What was I to do if he said yes? Why had I chosen to take such an appalling risk?
‘No.’ I had of course known he would, he must say no. ‘It’s very trivial, I only wanted to ask her where she put some notes…’ His voice trailed off.
‘I’ll get her to ring you back.’
‘No. Don’t bother her. No need.’
For a moment I was insanely convinced he knew.
‘No bother.’ Was my charade effective?
He pulled himself together, put on his doctor’s voice. ‘How are you feeling, Alex? Any better?’
‘Pretty weak. You know what these things are like.’
‘Yes, indeed. I told Gemma to tell you, just suck ice cubes. There’s nothing else for it. Don’t even swallow water till tomorrow, you’ll only be sick again.’
‘I know, she told me. And before that – I found out to my cost.’
‘It’s a wretched business. Give it twenty-four hours though and you’ll be amazed at the difference. Well, I must get on. Goodnight, Alex.’
He was gone. I hung up slowly, half expecting to see Gemma emerge from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her face full of guilt and apprehension. I had convinced myself at least. But then I have always had a talent for make-believe. What surprised me was the lack of gleeful conspiratorial response. I felt instead – well, no, not guilty, no, but embarrassed. His pain was in the room with me. Did he really love her that much?
I was wasting time. I looked up the number and dialled. It rang several times. A cross sleepy voice answered; they must be in bed already.
‘David,’ I said sharply, ‘get Gemma to ring home, would you?’
There was a startled pause. Then:
‘Christ. He actually rang.’
‘Yes. He actually rang.’
‘I never thought he would. What did you tell him?’
‘She’s in the bath. I didn’t change a word of your dialogue.’
Silence. Then Gemma came on the line. ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing much. He asked for you, of course. Something about some notes – he said it was trivial.’
A long sigh. ‘Oh God, yes. I was typing something for him – he’s going to a conference next week – oh God, I suppose he couldn’t find it. I should have thought.’
Her remorse irritated me profoundly. ‘Look, instead of explaining to me, why don’t you ring him?’
She didn’t even notice my irritation. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Not much. He asked how I was.’
‘But did he sound all right?’
‘You’ll know if you ring him,’ I said, ‘won’t you?’
‘You don’t think he’s guessed?’
‘How can I tell?’
‘It might have been an excuse about the notes. He might have been trying to catch me out.’
‘Then he’d have made me call you, wouldn’t he?’
‘Oh yes. Yes. That’s right.’ What was that extra note in her voice beyond the relief? Disappointment?
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t know how long you usually take in the bath, but hadn’t you better ring him back?’
‘What’s the matter?’ she said abruptly. ‘You don’t sound yourself.’
‘I’m not feeling well,’ I said. ‘Have you forgotten? Something I ate disagreed with me.’
May
Oh, but I forgave her everything when I saw her. It is not granted to many to witness such perfection. I was reminded of the Bible: ‘They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions,’ although strictly speaking, speed and strength were not what I saw. But as a measure of sublimity the ancient words echoed in my head. What I saw was love. When Gemma kissed David all over his body it was because she loved every inch of him, as the saying goes, literally, and this was her way of showing it. I followed her tongue with my eyes, my own lips sensing the feel of the curly black hairs. Her body arched over his, charming in its imperfections, breasts sagging a little since the last child, stomach a little stretch-marked and curving with maturity. I loved her imperfect body and so did he. Lying there like a Sultan in his private ecstasy, he was of all men most enviable. All I lacked was the smell of his sweat and the warmth of his skin under my face. And he looked so young. As Gemma moved, I glimpsed his face behind her tangled hair and his youth hurt me even more than his pleasure. No one had ever kissed me like that, and now it was too late: no one ever would. I was ugly, and I was old. I was undesirable in every sense of the word: sexual, aesthetic and social.
When he made love to her I was enchanted again and in a different way. I had expected a marathon, to judge from Catherine’s jokes and Gemma’s letters, and that to me suggested coldness and endurance, a long-distance battle of wills. Instead there was a young man struggling to hold himself back, to give pleasure, to prolong the magic or to repeat it. And when I heard that strange lost cry from Gemma’s throat, I did not marvel that he should strive so hard to conjure it. Kingdoms had been well lost for less. She clutched at him as if she were dying, as if he were a raft in the sea or her last hope of spiritual salvation. Her fingers dug into his flesh, her mouth closed on him, her arms dragged him closer till it seemed he would go right through her and they would both suffocate or drown.
There was so much I had forgotten: wilfully, I suppose. In a spirit of self-preservation. So as not to go quite mad. The contorted faces of those in the last extremities of sexual pleasure: a weird sight indeed. Like victims struggling under torture. Was that how the whole sado-masochistic sexual mythology had arisen, by chance, from an observed phenomenon? It was so long since I had had a partner and I was not in the habit of watching myself – in my case there was no pleasure to be had in that. But the typical interplanetary visitors, beloved of newspapers and science fiction, reproducing like the amoeba or the fish, how astonished they would be if told that these were lovers enjoying the highest form of physical delight vouchsafed to mankind. They would never believe it. These twisted features, these cries of rage and pain and loneliness – no, never. Everyone knew that these people were torturing each other. Any fool could see that.
I had forgotten how they spoke, too. All that loving chat, and the jokes. Unfinished sentences. A word, a look, a laugh. How easy it was for them. It flowed. There is no way I can describe it as it was: even now your memories will have to do their work. For they moved from caress to speech, from activity to inertia, and back again. To recount it is to make distinctions, and it was all one.
When he came he sounded angry. As if his seed were being wrenched from him.
Afterwards they were very still and silent, like the dead. They had the same repose and exuded the same air of invulnerability. They were beyond everything, out of harm’s way. ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ was in my mind as I watched them. They lay in a huddle of limbs, flopped down where they had fallen and wrapped around each other, sweating and breathless and silent, still as stones. Until they opened their eyes and smiled at one another; smiled and began to talk. And to kiss.
If I had forgotten the foolish words and the caresses, the endearments and the silly jokes, still more had I forgotten the kisses. The afterwards kisses, for love only, not to excite, when there was nothing more to gain, different by a world from those lavished on the body to arouse. Kisses on the mouth and eyes to say Thank you, to say Goodnight and go to sleep, my love, and rest, you’re safe with me. No, I had not forgotten. They were something I had never known.
I watched through a mask of tears and I was not ashamed.
* * *
Gemma noticed the innovation at once. ‘I like the new mirror,’ she said to me on Wednesday.
‘Yes, I thought you deserved something better.’
* * *
God, it was a happy time. It did not seem much hardship now to have endured sixty-four wretched years to reach this state of joy. Twice weekly, Mondays and Fridays, in my own private cinema, a programme fixed but infinitely flexible, and on Wednesdays lunch with Catherine. Three matinees a week, starring all my favourite people.
Of course I was terrified at the start. On the first Friday, terror almost overcame excitement. It took a real effort of will to install myself behind the locked door, unhook the tapestry and wait. I wanted to run away. Quite frankly, I could have (almost) abandoned the entire scheme there and then. The waiting was so long. Once David had arrived (about eleven, late because he thought I was away, I noted) I was of course a prisoner. Too late to retreat now: the die was cast with a vengeance. I had to lie quiet in my room, trying to give out emanations of emptiness, and listen to him bustling about with dusters and polish; the chink of washing up, the roar of the vacuum cleaner. These familiar sounds seemed very foreign because I was not supposed to be there. I was reminded of the first day he had come to me, when I was very aware of everything he did around the flat because he was a stranger. It is an eerie sensation to be in your own home, on your own bed, pretending to be away, while another person makes free with your other rooms and your cleaning equipment. I could hear my heart beating. I was terrified. That was absurd, of course. The worst that could happen was that he would try the door and find it locked. That in itself was no crime, merely odd, perhaps not even that. But of course he did not try the door: why should he? He had cleaned the room last Wednesday and had no reason to go in it till next Wednesday. All I had to do was keep silent. Unless I made a sound, I could not be found out. Immediately the greatest temptation in the world was to sneeze, cough, scream. Even that he made easy for me. He turned on the wireless. It was bizarre to lie there, a helpless victim of popular music, waiting for the greatest experience of my life.
Gemma arrived about twelve. I thought they’d be sure to go straight to bed but they were ages in the kitchen and living-room, eating and talking. I could hear the sound of their voices but not what they said – an infuriating predicament. When they finally came into the spare room the angle of vision prescribed by the mirror prevented my seeing everything they did: by focussing on the bed I had lost the rest of the room. Somewhere in a private recess they were undressing and I could see nothing, only hear tender banalities: ‘God, you’re so beautiful,’ and ‘Darling, I do love you.’ So it was a shock when they finally came naked into my sight and began to caress each other. There is something touchingly vulnerable about the naked human body. But I do not want you to imagine I was obsessed with anything so crude as mechanical performance. As always in these situations, the most titillating sensation arises first from anticipation, next from the feeling of power and privilege that watching unobserved can give you: the secret intrusion into privacy, the furtive participation in intimate rites. Of all stolen fruits, these are surely the most delicious.
* * *
‘You’re looking very cheerful,’ Catherine said. (Tea at the Savoy.) ‘Has something happened?’
‘My work’s going well,’ I said.
* * *
They were not sexual athletes like Oswald and Miranda, but I got some wonderful photographs all the same, despite the difficulty of working at an oblique angle. Nothing new, not more than half a dozen basic positions in all, but some lovely movements with all the grace of dancers. I concentrated on their faces: there is, after all, nothing more erotic than the expression on the faces of two people in love who are giving each other pleasure. I did not find out anything new about sex but I learnt a great deal about love.
Oswald and Miranda had in some ways been a disappointment. Young and beautiful though they were, they seemed to me to experiment too much. They were not truly in love. When I look back over their photographs, I am struck by an air of strain, of improvisation for the sake of novelty. Sometimes, anyway, it was as if they were trying something new simply because they had heard about it, like a drug or a T-shirt, or because someone was paying them to pose for a calendar. They lacked tenderness.
* * *
In the streets as I went about my business, shopping or strolling, I half expected to be arrested. I felt my air of satisfaction and well-being (which Catherine had noticed) was conspicuous to passers-by, and anything so blatantly happy must surely be an offence.
* * *
Perfect love casteth out fear of germs. I was impressed and envious at the mutual worship of genitalia that was going on in my spare room, all that licking and sucking, like animals devotedly grooming one another. They had pet names for each other’s sexual organs and lay staring at them for long periods of time, saying at intervals, Isn’t he (or she) lovely, in the same tender rapturous tone that th
ey used when talking about their children.
* * *
One day they didn’t make love at all but lay on the bed with their arms round each other, naked, silent. They kissed for a while. I waited for the action to start but nothing evolved. I took a few photographs and began to get bored. Then: ‘Leave him.’
‘Oh darling, don’t.’ A long sigh from Gemma. ‘Not again. I can’t bear it.’
I switched on the tape recorder.
‘If I get that job we’d have enough money.’
‘Not for four children.’
‘Just bring yours. I’ve given up. I don’t think Cathy’d let me have mine anyway – not really. She’s a cow, she’d fight me all the way and the bloody courts would back her up.’
Silence.
‘I can’t do that to Chris.’
‘What about what you’re doing to me?’ Very sulky little boy voice full of injury.
‘Oh, darling.’
A lot more kissing and hugging; an air of desperation. Nothing I could record. Then she sat up, arms round her knees, legs apart, breasts hanging loose, hair tousled. I took a photograph; she looked very appealing.
He said, ‘You couldn’t just leave them, could you?’
‘I’ve thought about it.’
‘God, are you serious? I thought you’d be shocked.’
She said very sadly, ‘I was shocked at myself when I first thought of it. But I’m not shocked at you. I’m glad you’ve said it.’
‘But you won’t do it, will you?’
‘Oh God.’ Another long silence. ‘I wish I could.’
He said with sudden furious energy, ‘I just can’t bear to think of you on holiday with him next month. He’ll get randy in all that heat, won’t he? He’ll be at you all the time.’
An Evil Streak Page 17
