With My Body

by Nikki Gemmell

  Because you need buoyancy not weight, the older you get. Fun. A loosening. Your clever fingertips trip up Hugh’s back, under his shirt, reaping goosebumps.

  A giggle in your heart.

  Lesson 206

  Let all these powers of vital renewal have free play

  Can desire be so crusted over it is gone for good? Buried too deep to ever be aroused again?

  You used to think you never wanted to sleep with anyone again; that kind of life was gone. You had your children, sex had served its purpose. You used to think you were broken, that it was too hard to ever be fixed—adults never get repaired they get worse, life chips away at them and they carry the damage throughout their adulthood; it hardens, calcifies, in fact.

  But you feel freed. Miraculously.

  After years of being the yes woman you have found a voice. And with that, comes confidence.

  You’ve also noticed that you’ve put on a bit of weight recently—and it seems to have woken your husband up. Odd, that. Or not. As you relax, unclench.

  That night you make love with Hugh for the first time in years. Rusty, like an old lock. You have to force yourself into a working, a remembering, but then it all comes back. And this time, crucially, it’s on your terms—not anyone else’s.

  Telling your husband what you want. And what you don’t.

  Night after night. Whispering, spilling your honesty, revelling in his astonishment. You want his tongue taut, there, right there, keep going, no talk! Lift my leg up. Higher. The clit! Now let me go on top. You teach him, direct, grab his finger and place it exactly on the spot.

  A woman he’s never seen in his life.

  The pleasure in utmost precision.

  All of it coming back.

  His body is soft from his indoor life, not fat but lacking tone; you do not care. It’s not supreme fitness you want, it’s the touch. The tenderness. It’s always been everything. He never got it.

  Until now.

  A woman he never knew existed.

  That you’d never dared show him.

  Lesson 207

  Her greater independence in middle life

  Now he’s coming into bed at 4 a.m. and gently making love—with sleepy, spidery tenderness—because he is finally listening to what you want. Now he is slowly prising you open with a whisper of a fingertip until you are shuddering, endlessly, turning to him then turning from him, pushing him away, alone in your loveliness. Then you want to sleep and he lets you; he wants it too.

  You are parents after all: tomorrow, from 6 a.m., the great wallop of life.

  It was never like this before. When you had babies to make. When it was so calculating, fraught, businesslike. All that pressure of coming, at the precise moment in the month, pumping the juice from him and then flipping your feet up to the ceiling and praying that gravity would do its work.

  Just pleasure left.

  The pursuit of it, an endless experiment. You know that now. It is fluid, dynamic, changing, even within a partnership of years, decades. It’s possible, if you both allow it. A revelation. You can see now that through the great span of a lifetime there are troughs and peaks, floods and droughts—the less you have the less you want—but then the extraordinary opposite.

  Lesson 208

  It has fulfilled its appointed course

  Mel and you avoid talk beyond banalities at the school gate. You could never do the lesbian things; cripes, the clash of the hormones, twice a month, and God help you if your periods were in sync. But every time you see her there is a smile of secrets, thanking her. For springing you back into life.

  Like a steel trap suddenly burst open, you are released.

  She knows it. She can see it. She wishes you well, it’s in her face.

  Lesson 209

  Both parties grow out of friendship and cast it, like a snake his last year’s skin—this is a fact too mournfully common to be denied

  Courage now, to face so much.

  Life is leaving its imprint on your forehead and you can see the years stretching ahead of you—of school gates and speech days and GSCEs with your heart in your mouth and all the Susans, again and again, with their unthinking crowing confidence; or insecurity, perhaps, actually—all the Susans you will have to face throughout life, as a mother trapped in the glare of their headlights.

  Or not.

  Has that world cemented so firmly around you that it can never be cracked apart?

  ‘Sooz, I love you, but you really don’t have to give me a rundown of Basti’s achievements every time I see you. He’s precious. I get it. He’s a beautiful boy. But they’re all precious. My boy as much as yours. I just don’t feel the need to say it, darl. I have to tell you this—gently—alright? It’s doing my head in.’

  Her astonishment.

  The pulling away, from that point. The necessary pulling away.

  Your relief.

  Because actually, your boy’s alright. You know it now, no matter how much she needs to give you her little critique when you pick up Rexi from her doorstep. Your boy is growing up fine. Beautifully, in fact, in tandem with your own happiness firming, your settledness pushing through into all pockets of your lives. And it doesn’t matter anymore that she doesn’t see it, or does but can’t bring herself to declare it. It’s her problem. You’re strong enough in yourself, as is Rex.

  You know now you only want to be surrounded by heart-lifters. Girlfriends who allow you to be yourself. Susan doesn’t. In fact, there’s a little catch of anxiety ahead of any coffee you have with her. Why on earth do you put yourself through it? You heard at a funeral once that a person’s life should be measured in deeds not years; and deeds Susan has done aplenty, you will happily praise her to the heavens, a good kind woman in many respects, yes—you just don’t need her entwined in your life anymore.

  Not anymore. As the distilling gathers pace.

  A lesson you are finally acting upon: some friendships will naturally run their course in life and there is no shame or guilt in that. They are right for a particular time and then they are not. Move on, cleanly, as the souring starts.

  It’s good for you both.

  Lesson 210

  Women are but rarely placed in circumstances where they have actively to assume the guardianship or rule of others

  Taking control. Blindfolds, handcuffs, vibrators—sometimes two at once. All those things you had reserved for one man and one only but now you can articulate, you have a voice and are not afraid to use it. No blow jobs, and you are hugely apologetic about that—it’s just something you’ve never liked—but Hugh concurs to get everything else. For you it is empowered sex. The balance has shifted: it was always his way in the past.

  You laugh at yourselves, the two of you; finish off giggling, side by side, on your backs. How ridiculous and silly and lovely it all is, how amazing that your bodies can still do this. It’s like your sex life, as a couple, has burst into colour after years of black and white. He knows now that you will no longer tolerate bad sex. If it is, you don’t want it; you’ll push him away, you’re too old for anything substandard. You’ve moved beyond youth hostels and Primark and pot noodles and sleeping mats—in middle age you’ll only stand for the best.

  It has to work. Fabulously. For both of you.

  In terms of sex, you have entered a dialogue. Finally. After so many years of marriage.

  It has saved you both.

  And at night, alone, before Hugh slips into bed with you, you take out your little Victorian book with all its notes, those little nuggets of memory that plummet you back to a time that is burnished.

  By what worked. Then, and now.

  Heroic sex.

  Finally. What Tol was preparing you for. This moment, your entire adult life. You send him a smile, from across the waves, across the world; send a smile to Woondala in gratitude for an awakening, once.

  Lesson 211

  In growing old, we are able to see the clearing away of knots in tangled destinies

&n
bsp; Mel picks up her boy a tad late in the afternoons—on the days her ex or her mother isn’t doing it—sauntering always a little behind everyone else. So she doesn’t have to engage, perhaps, to become too enmeshed. She has her own life and it’s filled up; doesn’t need the clutter of the school gate. You can see the zest and serenity of divorced women like her, in control of their lives. You are learning from it.

  You tell Hugh you will eat with the kids and leave his dinner on the stove from now on, for when he comes in late, to eat by himself; it’s killing you waiting up, having dinner at ten or beyond.

  ‘OK,’ he says, with something like relief.

  Gosh, as easy as that.

  ‘It’ll keep you fresh,’ he adds, with a filthy grin.

  You burst into a laugh. He’s right.

  So, just like that, you won’t have to hear his loud chewing for five days of the week; one of the many irritations among all the irritations but it’s never enough for any type of action. He is a good man. Who delights in preparing his sons’ lunch boxes, shoos you off on Saturday shopping treats, insists you take girly nights off for your sanity and will even, now, do the boys’ nit bath and clip his own head in solidarity—and practicality—because he likes hugging them so much and stray head lice won’t be stopping that. It says so much about him.

  A kind man. To be cherished. Tol would have wanted it.

  You cut your own hair and finally dye it, obscuring the grey sneaking in at your temples. Throw away the camel colours, the sand and the chalk, bolden yourself up. Fight the flint of the weather with exuberant colour, purples and greens and reds and pinks. A bit of dazzle on your eyes, a bit of sparkle on your cuffs. Who cares what people think—you are freeing yourself from that too. Seizing joy. Celebrating the wonder of everything around you, the crazy vivid glorious beauty of so much. Becoming that woman who revels in life; who seems like she has sex a lot, three times a day, whether she does or not.

  It’s in the laugh.

  Lesson 212

  We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it

  In the languidness, post-sex, of a lazy Saturday night Hugh is hearing all about Susan and rolling his eyes—women—a species he knows little of.

  ‘Why on earth are you still friends?’

  A not unreasonable question.

  ‘I’m not so much. Anymore. We’ve drifted apart.’

  You tell Hugh how you were forever commenting on the amazingness of her children, especially her daughter, because Susan’s conversation always cannily steered you into it.

  ‘She’s not malicious,’ you laugh. ‘She just has no idea. It would never occur to her that maybe I’ve always dreamt of a little girl. She’s just one of those people with a complete absence of empathy.’ And as you’re explaining you’re aware that envy isn’t hardening, actually; isn’t stewing and festering. It’s leaking away.

  As you firm. As you realise the extent of your limitations. You’re never going to get that Prada dress and holiday house in the Luberon, the vintage Aston Martin and the princess with her bedroom of fairy wings and tutus. Ah, who cares. Life, as it should be, is a process of simplification. Tol taught you that.

  ‘Let’s make one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A girl.’

  You laugh at the ridiculousness. ‘I’m far too old for that, mister.’ You’re on the cusp of menopause, you can feel it.

  ‘Let’s try.’

  You slam the duvet over your head.

  ‘I need some sleep,’ you giggle. ‘It’s footy tomorrow. Your turn for a sleep-in. Nigh’ nigh’.’

  Lesson 213

  Whether great or small her talents, she has not let one of them rust for want of use

  But he’s got you. Now, feverishly, Googling ‘gender selection/ female/diet’. It’s extraordinary how much information comes up. What is repeated, again and again, is dairy: milk, eggs, ice cream. Yoghurt most of all. To change the lining of your vagina—its alkalinity—to make it a more conducive environment for the female sperm. To kill the male sperm off.

  You go grocery shopping. Sunday afternoon. You have little hope.

  But a girl. A woman of this new world.

  Your mission already is to raise new men—who respect and value women, who are not afraid of them—and there is the great chuff of that. But then a girl. Imagine. The world at her feet, the confidence.

  Lesson 214

  Happy above all must be that marriage where neither husband nor wife ever had a friend so dear as one another

  Hugh takes you to Paris. Is aware, after the Australia trip, that you don’t really need him—could live quite capably without him—alone with the kids, the old bush girl roaring back. The lack of need keeps him bound, freshly. It’s revived the relationship.

  You stock up on magazines at St Pancras. An irrefutable sign of middle age: neither of you recognise the starlet on the cover of Vanity Fair. Good grief, it has come to this. The world galloping away from you, so soon, so fast.

  You both gulp complete like an Indian summer that gleeful, child-free Paris weekend. The room service in bed in front of the telly. Matching bathrobes. The uninterrupted bath. The sleep-ins. The break from the intensity of three little men in your lives.

  And in a creamy hotel that Louis Armstrong stayed in once, Hugh asks you what you want. He listens. He complies. You remember what happiness was. You teach him. Show him your vulnerability. The woman Tol wanted all along. Teaching him how to kiss, the last frontier, your way not his. Unlocking your body, and once again in thrall to it. What it can do. Touched into light, into life.

  ‘You like sexy sex,’ Hugh says in surprise, more to himself than to you.

  You smile, he has so much to learn; knows nothing, all those hidden depths like an iceberg under the surface. You stroke his penis, it has returned to its milky velvety softness, so tender, so vulnerable, and you lay your cheek to its warmth in wonder. Because this is the first time in your life you have successfully taught a man. Shaped him. You have confidence now. That is Tol’s lesson, it is all coming to fruition. Finally. And it has taken until middle age to get to this point.

  What you love about Hugh most of all: that you’re comfortable with him, in talk and in silence, and you were never completely comfortable like this with Tol. Affection is what binds you as much as anything, and that’s not to downplay the word. There’s such a warmth, a cherishing, a delight with your husband—and it’s deepening over the years and there’s an astonishment at that.

  And you know now there can be no sex more profound—more touched by grace—than that which attempts to create a child. The one type of sex Tol never talked about.

  The most extraordinary of all.

  And the most traditional.

  Lesson 215

  If man is without occupation, what a poor creature he becomes!—what a dawdling, moping, sitting-over-the-fire, thumb-twiddling, lazy, ill-tempered animal! And why? ‘Oh, poor fellow! ’Tis because he has got nothing to do!’ Yet this is precisely the condition of women for a third, a half, often the whole of their existence.

  So, to writing. Not sure why, just need to now, it is time. Writing this book for Tol, yes, but for Hugh most of all.

  For your husband, for all husbands. For your lover, for all lovers.

  The anonymous, leather-bound manual beside you that you have carried with you your whole adult life. Joining the ranks, and wouldn’t she love that.

  Hugh has never known what happened to you during your teenage years; has never twigged. Marriage took you away from that edged awareness but now you have found a way back to it. It is possible.

  Galloping with your words.

  Then commanding fuck me in a way you never have in your life.

  Waiting on the bed for him. Pulsing, wet, exposed, stripped.

  Lesson 216

  A principal agent in middle age is a blessing which rarely comes till then—contentment

  Is this, the ea
rly forties, the supreme moment of a woman’s life?

  The secret, you think: letting go.

  You have finally found the courage.

  To fail.

  Say no.

  Be different.

  Apologise.

  Accept your faults.

  Seize.

  Admit you were wrong.

  Be honest.

  And then, and then, two blue stripes on the plastic stick.

  Lesson 217

  I can bear anything, except unkindness

  A music assembly at the boys’ school. One by one the parents get up and leave as their child has played. You look around in horror at the diminishing audience, the consummate selfishness. Every child, always, wants to be seen as a success; yet so many of these parents cannot be bothered to give another twenty minutes of their time to a performer not their own. As the recital pushes on, the empty chairs increase. Of course, no one’s interested, really, in a child not their own, unless they’re relatives or close friends or Godparents—and sometimes not even then.

  You have morning sickness, can feel the great engine inside you drawing on every ounce of your energy as it brews a baby and you grip the chair: you will not leave this.

  Because of those tiny, aghast faces of the children, five and up, who have yet to shine. Your Jack included, his big moment—and to the middle child who can so easily be lost it means so much, of course. Piano is one of the last group of instruments left, and then violin. You know exactly who will leave and who won’t. Susan, of course, sweeping out with her domineering energy as soon as her precious boy has played his flute. Mel hangs on, God love her, and her child was only in the choir at the start. She catches your eye and winks her appreciation at Jack’s performance; you wink back, tears in your eyes that he can play anything at all, even if it’s the simplest of Bach. More parents leave, and more, until by the end just a handful of adults remain. You rub your belly and rub it, into calm. The last performer sitting on the stage, waiting, has a face that deepens its distress every time she clocks someone else leave, then someone else. She plays beautifully, from memory, the most talented child of the concert. To six parents. You sweep to your feet with wild applause at the end and the rest of the audience follows. What hope have these kids got?