Not Married, Not Bothered

by Carol Clewlow

  I drank a lot that night – Black Russians, my favourite drink of the time, a bottle of wine, then brandy. I was drunk by the end of the meal. I can see Nathan, exactly as I saw him then, leaning back in his seat the other side of the table, staring at me, his hands linked tight over the buckle of the belt of his old man’s grey trousers. I feel the same tremor looking back at him as I felt then, and I know that part of me was always a little frightened of Nathan.

  I can see him so perfectly, and yet I can’t remember precisely how or quite when the chill set in between us. All I remember is that it was there in the heavy damp air when he called for the bill, and how he scarcely looked at the thing when it arrived, reaching for his wallet, and poking two thin fingers in, and throwing down the money carelessly and all of this in silence. He didn’t wait for me to gather myself together, instead he got up sharply and strode across the lobby and out into the street. It seemed like all he wanted to do was to leave me behind. Outside, the rain had already started. It spattered down but he strode on up the street, seemingly oblivious of it, and so fast he left me many yards behind and I had to run after him, soaked sandals slip-slapping on my feet as I called his name, crying. And that was when he did that extraordinary thing, raising that great bull head upwards and turning his face to heaven as the rain spattered down it and letting out this cry of rage and sorrow.

  He said, ‘If only I could make you understand how much I love you, Riley.’

  He shook his head with an air of weariness and turned his face back down to me. I was shocked at the open dislike in it.

  I said, ‘I love you too, Nathan,’ and I gulped as I said it, because even then I knew that the words weren’t true, but that I wanted them to be true and this more than anything else in the world.

  The look he gave me in that moment, staring down at me, survives to this day, not least the look of pity, not for himself, but for me.

  He spoke the words calmly and sadly, staring down at me as if the rain did not exist, as if it it did not spatter down his face, as if it did not run in and out of his eye sockets like tears.

  He said, ‘No. I don’t think so, Riley.’

  Reading through all this now, it occurs to me that you may feel there is something missing in this chapter (can you spot what it is, dear Reader?). Yes, you’re right. It’s a sex scene, precise description of the pleasure, preferably with anatomical details. Well, I don’t do sex scenes (it’s one of the pleasures of being a children’s author). As far as I’m concerned, sex scenes in books are either too clinical* or too flowery,† too athletic‡ or squeamishly embarrassing.§ The Victorians had the right idea, leading us up to the bedroom door, then closing it firmly in our faces, and I shall do the same (this despite the enormous attraction of gaining the opportunity to make that public thank-you speech to my mother while picking up the Bad Sex Award).

  Thus I shall only tell you that the first time Nathan made love to me I thought I’d fallen asleep without noticing, woken up on a different planet. Because what happened then, and all those subsequent nights, on that single bed, with the light flashing on and off through the blinds had, theoretically, been practised on my person before but with Nathan there was not one scrap of recognition. With Nathan there was none of that reticence, that air of duty, of derring-do. Neither, as can happen, was there the faintest sense of embarrassment. And all, on the face of it, so utterly unexpected, from a man who said, ‘I’m too old for you, Riley,’ who wore strange, unfashionable old man’s clothes, and yet who seemed possessed of a sort of magic.

  I came, each night, with a last shuddering cry, whereupon, almost immediately, I would find him beside me again with his arms around me. Gathering myself together, I would try at least in those first days to move down his body. But he would hold me tightly, preventing me.

  ‘It’s OK. Just relax.’

  ‘But … I want to do the same … I want to make you … happy … too.’

  ‘I’m happy. Go to sleep, Riley.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Danny,’ I said, telling him all this, ‘I think he was the best lover I ever had.’

  His lips pursed in a small expression of disapproval.

  He said, ‘It might have been good to tell him that some time over the years, Riley.’

  * And if this view of heaven doesn’t tear your heart out, oh, spinster, nothing will …

  * See Z for Zing Zing Zing. But don’t spoil it all and turn to it. Dammit all, this is a novel.

  * Barefoot in the Park, There’s a Girl in My Soup, Cactus Flower, etc., etc.

  * All those anatomical terms, so often favoured by male writers, you feel belong on a chart to be pointed out by a man in a lab coat.

  † I.e., rivers flowing, lakes becoming seas, woman becoming earth becoming man becoming mountain becoming ONE; visions of the Eternal, the Ineffable, etc., etc.

  ‡ Pumping, thrusting, arching, plunging, piercing, prodding, probing, spurting, spattering, that sort of thing.

  § See all those dirty words and the daisy chain stuff in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

  P is for … Philophobia

  Philophobia.

  A fear of falling in love.

  Courtesy – as with so many things – of Bad Ponytail Peter.

  Philophobia was Peter’s parting shot. He fixed me with his traditional accusative look, the one that said, if the cap fits wear it. He said, ‘Some people are terrified of falling in love.’

  I said, ‘Really?’ this in the shocked and horrified tones of a woman who couldn’t believe such a thing could be happening within the borders of her own country. I said, ‘Can you believe it?’ and afterwards, ‘Yeah … yeah … yeah …’ to Danny.

  Because this is not a new one on me. I’ve heard this before – not a thousand times, it’s true, but still enough to know when it’s about to happen. It’s the last refuge of the belligerent male and this when you’re doing your damnedest to dump him with the maximum degree of tact and decency.

  You’re afraid of falling in love, that’s your trouble …

  No, no. No.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  I’m just afraid of wasting one more precious hour of my life in your company.

  In my experience you don’t get any thanks for all that tact and decency, just a barrel-load of barrack-room psychology.

  You just won’t let yourself feel …

  I know, I know …

  (Trust me I do, I will. Just not with you, baby.)

  I always let them get away with it. It seems only fair. I stand there, head bowed, hands folded dutifully. After all, they’re not wrong. Entirely. There is a fear of falling in love, just not one that they know anything about or that Peter needs to worry about curing. Because it’s a decent fear, this one, a responsible fear, not some pathetic neurotic shirking. It’s a terrible fear, the fear of hurting others. It’s born of self-knowledge, and your desires and limitations. It comes from knowing that no matter how much you want to want something, it won’t be the same – even if you manage it – as truly wanting it. And it comes from knowing that what someone else is willing to offer in the absence of what you are able to give, generous as this is, simply won’t solve the problem.

  If only I could make you understand how much I love you, Riley.

  I slipped away from Nathan in the end, did what I wanted to do – what I’ve always done – which is to untether myself, set myself free, this is order to minimise the pain of parting.

  ‘It’s not as if we won’t see each other again. I’ll visit you … in Australia.’

  But the words were an excuse, a pretence. He didn’t lift his head from his papers and his reply was heavy with irony.

  ‘I look forward to it, Riley.’

  ‘Look, he didn’t say, “I’d love to take you to New York,”’ this to Danny defensively. ‘He didn’t say, “I will take you to New York,” or, “Come back home with me now, Riley.”’

  ‘Would it have made any difference if he had?’

  But a qua
rter of a century on it still wasn’t a question I wanted to answer.

  It came as a relief the day Barnie ran a finger down the calendar behind the bar.

  ‘We need to extend your visa again, Riley.’

  Three times we’d been down to the grubby breeze block immigration building to extend my visa. There the pair of us would sit on hard little chairs in the waiting room with a dozen others, a mixed bag, Europeans and Asians of all persuasions. Eventually an official would come out and call our name, and we’d go into a little plywood box of an office where he and Barnie would conduct a set-piece conversation like a ragged gavotte, Barnie in stuttering Thai, the official in occasional broken English.

  ‘Look humble,’ Barnie would say. ‘Smile a lot,’ and I would. The officer would play the game, pursing his lips like this really was a decision of major importance. He’d hum and hah and bounce his biro up and down on his blotter. Eventually he’d leave the room with the air of man who needed some important piece of paper. As the door closed Barnie would reach into his pocket, and take out the wad of notes and slip it under the blotter. A short while later the official would return and then before you knew it, we’d be out on the street with a fresh stamp on my passport.

  Barnie said, ‘They might not buy it this time, Riley. You might need to take a trip out.’

  I said, ‘Probably time to move on anyway,’ and I didn’t look at him when I said it.

  Because something was happening to the affair by then. For the last month and a half, I’d leapt into a tuk-tuk each night outside the Oasis, raced across the city in a white heat of passion and longing to be with him. In my haste I’d stamp at the lift buttons in the lobby of his hotel, jump out before the doors were properly open, run along his corridor to his door. At first the changes to all this were scarcely perceptible, no more than a less feverish touch on the lift buttons, a more stately tread along the corridor, something natural, something desirable, I know that now even if I didn’t know it then. The point where the affair passes into its second stage, the less frantic stage that heralds the future. But I didn’t want the future heralded. I guess I still don’t. Close on the feel of that gentle slowing-down of my footsteps along that hotel corridor in Bangkok came something else, a listless quality, faint at first, coupled with a vague feeling on my part that things were not as fresh as they once were. Following on from that came something worse, the most wicked feeling of all, the destructive feeling of restraint and then something else too early to call resentment, but sitting like a chill on the back of my neck and unignorable, making me want to shake my shoulders.

  One night, I didn’t go to Nathan’s hotel at the end of the evening. It was as simple as that. Instead I went out with Zoe. It was December by then. We sat in the foyer of one of the five-star hotels beneath the shadow of a large imported Christmas tree winking with lights and coloured balls and tinsel, and standing out like an ungainly intruder among the delicate sandalwood and silk wall hangings of the touristy Siameserie.

  Errol came across to us first. He gave a deep bow from the waist in front of us, and said, ‘May I introduce myself?’ in a Southern voice both courteous and musical.

  ‘Why, certainly you may,’ said Zoe.

  They were off a carrier, Errol, all corn-coloured hair and blue eyes; Quincy, dark and dangerous, stagehands from New York in a different life. They’d joined up to beat the draft. Now they settled down into one of the foyer’s pouchy leather sofas opposite us and drank a toast to going home.

  ‘You think you will be?’ I held out my glass.

  ‘Why, sure. Everybody knows it.’ Errol sluiced the champagne into it joyfully. ‘Of course. The war’s over.’

  They wanted to go somewhere good to eat, somewhere the tourists didn’t go, so I took them to a place Nathan had taken me. I walked in feeling disloyal and guilty. Afterwards we went to a cabaret where the band played loud and brassy, and the stage turned, and the lady-boys strutted and kicked and dipped their feathers.

  We were on our way back to their hotel when it happened. The tape in the taxi was playing Santana loud and tinny. I was sitting in the back, against the window with Quincy next to me, an arm around my shoulder. Zoe was the other side of him. She’d pulled a joint from her bag, lit it up. Now it passed around, even the driver taking a toke, seeing a big tip coming and thumping on the wheel in time to the music. The windows were wound right down and Zoe was leaning out, whooping. The whole vehicle seemed to reverberate to the sound of it, all the youthfulness in it, the craziness, the gaiety and laughter. I was laughing too, feeling like I was recapturing something I didn’t want to identify, or how or when or why I’d lost it. I threw my head back with the joy of it as we pulled up at some lights, turned to look out the window. And that was when I came face to face with Nathan.

  The first thing I said when he opened his door that night was, ‘Nothing happened,’ but there was a belligerence, a dark, mutinous feeling of rebellion to the words.

  He said, ‘If only you knew how much I don’t want to be having this conversation, Riley.’

  He’d dropped his eyes as soon as they met mine through the taxi window. In an unhurried, curiously dignified and courteous gesture he’d swung his shoulders away from me. I didn’t get out with the rest when our taxi pulled up outside the boys’ hotel. I made excuses. I said, ‘I have to go somewhere.’ Errol said, ‘What? C’mon …’ and I almost changed my mind but then and Zoe said, ‘Leave her,’ mockingly, ‘the girl’s in luuurve,’ cutting off my exit and reminding me.

  Because it didn’t feel like love, walking into Nathan’s hotel that night. It felt like duty and, of course, he knew it. That thin line of derision was there on his lips at the door as he let me in.

  ‘Riley,’ he said. ‘What a pleasure. I wasn’t expecting you,’ and he sat down almost immediately at the table, made a play of being engrossed in his papers.

  I said, ‘Don’t stay angry at me,’ touching his shoulder. I felt him freeze beneath my fingertips.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Riley,’ he said. ‘I’m not angry.’ His voice was very cold and he looked up but only at the wall ahead of him. ‘You looked like you were having a good time. You looked like you were where you belonged,’ this said thoughtfully. But then his head bent again to his papers and the next words were harsh. ‘It’s none of my business, Riley.’

  I dropped down on to the floor then. I was kneeling beside him. ‘Don’t talk like that.’ I looked up into his face. ‘I want to make it right, Nathan,’ and I think I did too, in some awful impossible yearning way – in a selfish way too, not wanting the pain shooting in small darts across my heart. I said, ‘Can we forget it?’

  He turned to me, staring down, and there was that same look of pity on his face I’d seen outside the Oriental.

  ‘There’s nothing to forget. I’ve told you, you don’t have anything to apologise for. You can do what you like. It’s your business, Riley.’

  ‘I’ve hurt you.’

  ‘Damn you, damn you. Damn you.’ He was up on his feet, the movement throwing me away from him, striding up and down. He stopped abruptly in front of the blind, looked out through the slats at the flashing neon. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ I had my hands over my face. I was beginning to cry. ‘Tell me what I can do, Nathan.’

  He put a hand to his forehead as if all this was too much for him, took a deep breath, closed his eyes and threw his head backwards. When he spoke his voice was low and calm.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do, Riley, that’s the trouble.’

  He walked back towards me where I knelt on the ground, held out a hand, but instead of getting to my feet I grabbed at it, pulled him back down on the chair beside me.

  ‘Please, Nathan, please. Say it’s OK.’ I was whispering the words, pulling at him, putting my arms around his waist, burying my face into him.

  I was crying now, sobs shaking my shoulders. At first he was rigid but then I felt his body soften in my arms.
His hand began to stroke my hair, tentatively at first and then more firmly. There was something kind and comforting in the strokes but also something deeply regretful.

  He tried to lift me up but I wouldn’t let him. Instead I burrowed my face deeper and deeper into him, which was when I felt him stir beneath my forehead.

  I lifted my face and began stroking him with the flat of my hand. I didn’t look up, but the stroking stopped and I could feel him staring straight at the wall.

  I pulled at his belt, unzipping him, taking him in my mouth, at the same time pulling at his trousers.

  He was still there, rising, harder than I had ever known him as I pulled him to the bed, tearing off my own dress and underwear. I was on top of him in a moment, reaching for him, grabbing at him, trying to jam him into me. But it was too late. Already I could feel him softening.

  I cried out, a greater cry than any of those great ones I had cried before when I came. I flung myself off him and down beside him, began to weep again.

  He said, ‘Don’t. Please don’t, Riley.’

  Some time later, staring into the darkness, for he had put out the light as we lay there, side by side, I said, ‘Is it me?’

  ‘No.’ And now he turned, drawing me into him, saying it into my hair.

  ‘Is there anything I can do? Something I’m not doing?’

  ‘No.’ The room was very still, as if nothing moved, anywhere, here in the world, as if everything waited.

  I said, hesitantly, afraid of the words, ‘Would it … come back?’

  But Nathan was not a man to compromise and, unlike me, not given to lying. He said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t say, Riley.’

  That was the night we heard it. I’d fallen into one of those deep, satisfied selfish sleeps as I always did after he’d made love to me, when somewhere at the bottom of my dreams came that long low continuous rumbling.

  ‘What is it?’

  I don’t know how long he’d been awake, leaning back against the wall like that, his hands at the back of his head. Perhaps he’d been watching me.