by Paul Charles
‘Take them off completely,’ she pleaded in a whisper.
I tried again to get them to give and couldn’t, so I made to undo one of the ties on her leg.
‘No, no, don’t untie me! This is too delicious. Get some scissors or a knife, David. Yes, David… get a knife.’
So I did, and I cut her pants on the thin sides so I could pull them off her. I was about to lie on her again when she asked me to do the same with her bra. So I did, and now there was nothing, absolutely nothing between us. Very soon we were comfortable again and I was lying between her legs and I was using what’s referred to in the dictionary as ‘an instrument of copulation’ to touch her. I wondered, what was the dictionary term for what we were doing? As per my promise, I never entered her – just touched her, and daringly caressed her. Her eyebrows would rise when we got a little bit close. Eventually she seemed to stop thinking about it and just started to follow her pleasure, and so I followed mine, and very soon we got each other and it was the best it had ever been. We both told each other this, our bodies completely covered in sweat. We’d no reason to lie.
I untied her and as I did so I kissed where the ties had marked her skin.
She sat up in the bed and started to rub her wrists. ‘You dear, dear boy, you. That was just the best,’ she eventually said, in a near hoarse voice, ‘I can’t remember a time I ever felt as thrilled or as excited as that. It was painful for me in that you had control over me and you had the power to keep this liaison going between us, because if you had entered me, you’d have most certainly ended everything. But the fact that it was so close and you had the power to ride me, but didn’t, well, that just made it all so flippin’ unbearable. You could have entered me at any time and you didn’t. The fact that you didn’t means that we can continue doing this, this thing that we do to each other, forever. I mean that. Nothing or no one will ever change that, ever! Feel me, feel how every part of my body is just buzzing. We can keep doing this just as long as we never consummate a fully physical relationship.’
I mean, I really had no response to that. What was I meant to say to her? Did she really expect me to say that no matter who I might be with in the future, Mary Skeffington or otherwise, I would still be up for our encounters? Did she believe that I would? Did she even believe it when she said it herself?
I did what most people who like to eat their cake and keep it too do; I went to make a cup of tea as Jean Simpson started to try to fix her bra by tying the straps together. By the time I’d returned with the tea she’d succeeded and was pulling on what was now becoming her regular spare pair of pants. She omitted her stockings, shirt and skirt and just put on her duffle coat as she enjoyed her tea.
‘You know John came around to see me last night?’ I said, as I put on a new record, Spooky Tooth’s, It’s All About.
She ignored my statement, choosing instead to focus on the music. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be negative on a Dylan record again,’ she said, breaking into a grin, ‘particularly that Dylan record.’
‘John thinks you’re cheating on him,’ I continued on my original line, if only to warn her of the conversation we’d had. And then I insisted on telling her everything that had happened the previous evening. ‘He only left,’ I concluded, ‘when he’d convinced himself that I wasn’t meant to be seeing you myself.’
‘Oh, he’s getting to be such a flippin’ bore,’ she said with a sigh.
‘So where were you yesterday evening?’
‘Oh, it’s all getting so complicated, David,’ she said, wrapping her duffle coat tighter around her. ‘Why can’t it all be so simple, like this? Why can’t we just lock the door and throw away the key and do naughty things to each other forever?’
‘Because then I’d be the next one to be a bore,’ I offered, with a hike of my shoulders.
‘Oh no,’ she protested, ‘not if you’re going to dream up little treats like that for me every night.’
I didn’t bother to protest and tell her that she’d now received my entire bag of tricks – she clearly wasn’t in the mood for that reality on that particular evening, so we dropped the topic and about ten minutes later got back to a much safer subject: pleasuring each other.
It wasn’t as great as the one we’d just experienced but then it’s always the averages that make the peaks the peaks.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
Refreshingly my relationship with Mary Skeffington was somewhat less complicated and, it has to be said, all the more rewarding for it. I hope that doesn’t sound disrespectful to Jean Simpson, or even Jean Kerr for that matter, because it’s not meant to. It’s just, as I’ve said before, Mary came along at a time in my life when I was least expecting her to. You know, you’re always wary when you see friends and relations and their wives or girlfriends arguing and you just think what’s the point? If they obviously dislike each other as much as they appear to, then why are they spending even a day together let alone potentially the rest of their lives?
One of the things I’ve never been able to come to grips with is husbands and wives, or even boyfriends and girlfriends, belittling each other in public. It shows neither of them in a good light. It’s like advertising their mistakes and flaws in the most effectively public way possible. I’ll let you into a little secret here. The reason I’m considered to be a romantic, I suppose the reason I’m happy to be a romantic, is because I buy into all of that happily ever after stuff. Equally, and because of that, I felt that it would take me a considerable number of years and a bit of living before I either met the right person or knew what to do about it.
I’ve always thought the biggest mistake I could make in my life was to have a failed marriage. I don’t know why I shared that with you. I don’t really know why I thought that. It might have something to do with the fact that my parents are enjoying a great marriage. Notice I didn’t say there ‘enjoying the perfect marriage’. Another recipe for a potential disaster is to think that you are in the middle of the perfect marriage. You’re only tempting fate. But back to my parents for a minute, the reason I feel their marriage is so good is that they met and felt they were right for each other and embarked on the wonderful adventure of sharing the rest of their lives together. Now, they may have been lucky in that at the time they met, breaking up, separating or getting a divorce was never considered to be an option. Come good or bad, for either or both of them, it didn’t matter: they had committed to be together for life. When troubles came along, and I’m sure troubles did, they would work their way through them. But, and here’s another important bit for me, neither of them worked it out in front of either my sister or me. I’m sure it wasn’t always a bed of roses, but as far as we were concerned there was that major bit of stability: our parents were a team for life and were always there for us.
I suppose in a way I did know why I told you all of the above; when I met Mary Skeffington and it seemed we might have a chance, a chance of making it work well, all of the above was a constant backdrop in my mind.
Equally, I know I could be accused of setting a bit of a double standard here. You know, at the same time as I was embarking on my dream romance with Mary Skeffington, I was helping to wreck another potential marriage between Jean Simpson and John Harrison. But it’s not quite as simple as that, is it?
‘Oh it’s not, is it not?’ I hear the gallery shout.
Well, actually no, it’s not.
Chronologically speaking, I met Jean Simpson first. Jean Simpson and John Harrison were going to suffer their problems whether I was a catalyst or not. If it hadn’t have been me then it most certainly would have been someone else. Not very flattering for me I know, but nonetheless a fact. The more serious Mary Skeffington and I grew, the more I resolved that I would have to stop seeing Jean Simpson.
‘There, you knew it was wrong!’ I hear you shout, ‘Otherwise why would you feel the need to stop the encounters with Jean Simpson if you weren’t doing anything wrong?’
Okay, good point.
> At a time in all our lives, we’re preoccupied with sex. In my particular case, I will admit I was totally preoccupied with it. That particular time in my life was the time I knew Jean Simpson. And the same applied for Jean Simpson, I’m sure, hence the reason for our encounters and experiments. Now, where we differed was that Jean was happy for us to continue our encounters, she claimed, just as long as I didn’t consummate the physical relationship, even potentially (I have to believe after what she’d said the other night) after she and John Harrison had married.
Are you with me so far? Good.
Now, Mary Skeffington was, I believe, trying to decide what her true feelings were for me. Up to now, you could hardly say that we were boyfriend and girlfriend, so you could hardly imply that I was cheating on her with Jean Simpson.
I hadn’t even kissed Jean Simpson, for heaven’s sake!
Anyway, it’s time I got back to the story and told you what happened next.
As you know, I saw John Harrison on Tuesday night. I saw Jean Simpson on Wednesday night. I went to the Marquee Club on Thursday night by myself to see The Nice (they were very nice, in fact). I suppose apart from anything else I wanted to be out of the flat in case anyone else felt like popping around. Friday night I went to Mary’s for dinner. I spruced myself up, trimmed my moustache and bought a good bottle of wine on the way. Things got off to a great start when Mary greeted me with a long kiss on her doorstep.
Mary was a more confident dresser than either of the two Jeans. Jean Kerr dressed in a wannabe glamorous style, very forced, pretty expensive and a wee bit too mismatched for my liking. Jean Simpson was literally just finding her legs and loved to show them off. She left the eye-catching to the quality of her legs, and not to the quality or class of her clothes – her clothes complemented her rather than helped to create her, if you know what I mean. Mary Skeffington, on the other hand, dressed classy and casual, yet she was always elegant, very elegant – like, you never felt it was a show or a statement.
For instance, on the evening in question she wore an ankle-length dress with a high neck and no sleeves. It was a deep blue and, to my eyes, worked brilliantly with her blonde hair, which she’d done up from her usual Cathy McGowan style. The fringe remained, though. Her skin was clear and benefited from only hints of make-up. Mary Skeffington’s mid-lips were parted, she looked happy, if slightly frail, as she whisked around the room, her free-flowing dress betraying the rich contours of her body, a body I longed to hold as close as I had during our night in Bath. You see, that was another important thing for me, I would be happy just to lie with her again, you know, holding her close like we’d done on that night.
The more I watched her happily going about her cooking rituals the more choked up I became. Up to that moment I had been happy to leave events up to her. If she decided that she wanted to give it a try, I would be happy, but if she’d decided that she’d mistaken her emotions and wanted to let it pass, to let this pass, well, then I’d have been content to move on as well. But at that exact moment, the moment I studied her fighting to return a few strands of her blonde hair back to the top of her head while adding flour to a bowl, and brushing some from her cheek with flour-coated fingers, well, I knew I couldn’t just let her go, would not let her go.
I felt a resolve to fight for this relationship.
‘Mary,’ I called out, almost involuntarily, ‘I need you to know that I need you.’
‘My hands are full, David,’ she replied, playfully.
I went over to her and rubbed her back as she regained control of her various tasks.
‘I just meant,’ I started to say and was surprised to find that my voice was barely above a whisper, ‘I need you to know how much you mean to me.’
I hadn’t planned to say that, it just came out. I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that I had resolved not to see Jean Simpson again.
‘I know, David,’ she replied, turning to face me, ‘I’ve seen it in those green eyes of yours.’
I forced a smile.
‘I just feel this force pulling us together,’ she continued, brushing my nose with her floury hands. ‘It feels strong to me, like everything is meant to be this way. I’m sorry it’s taken some time for me to accept it. I hoped it wouldn’t scare you off or, worse, away for good. I just felt it was important–’
‘It was,’ I offered, I suppose to try to let her know I understood. ‘If you went into this doubting your reasons it would never have worked. It was better this way.’
She grabbed me and pulled me towards her and hugged me. We both clung on to each other as if our lives depended on it. On reflection perhaps, they did.
I pulled back from her and looked at her face. Her wisp of hair had broken free again. This time I tried to replace it but after a few unsuccessful attempts I decided that she looked better with it hanging freely anyway. She took her towel and brushed the flour from my face, then she used the same towel to shoe me over to the sofa and away from her cooking castle. My turn in the kitchen was later, with the dirty dishes.
About thirty minutes later we were eating chicken in a mushroom sauce with potato gratin – a personal favourite – and a few vegetables. All washed down with a nice, crisp and dry Chablis. We talked about everything under the sun – nothing important and nothing unimportant – and we laughed a lot. We had released all of our reservations and were now getting to know each other, and enjoying doing so.
She was very proud of her mum and of how well she had done for her. Mary Skeffington was the first person I’d met in my life that was ambitious. I don’t mean she was ambitious in terms of longing for a successful career or enjoying financial rewards. She was ambitious because she wanted to enjoy a fulfilling life. Her career, her money and her home were only a very small part of this. The major part for her was to be in a successful relationship and to build on everything from there. As you know, I believed that neither of the Skeffington women would be a slave to their work, or their money. I just hadn’t come up with an alternate priority. She had, and she said it was thanks to her mother.
We cleared away the dishes – mine for later. I retuned her radio once again to Radio Caroline just in time to hear Dylan’s ‘Just Like A Woman’, and if I’d requested it myself I couldn’t have picked a more apt song. I particularly found myself focusing in on the line:
And she makes love just like a woman.
And then, and this is true, this is exactly how it happened, Mary rose up from the sofa, took me by the hand and led me into her bedroom.
And we made love.
It’s important that you know and accept that that is exactly what we did. We made love. It’s not important to describe here how we did so; love-making is precious and private. But it’s very important that you know that is exactly what we did. There was one point that maybe I should mention, though: I have never seen anyone look so glorious, soulful, spiritual or beautiful as when I stole a glance at Mary Skeffington during our love-making. She was in that state, like she was midway between Heaven and Earth. She was lost in the celebration of her and her partner’s pleasure. Her hair was a mess, which made her look wild. Her eyes were lightly closed; the middle third of her lips was slightly apart, as ever; her face was slightly flushed, coated in a fine film of sweat, which testified to the sheer physicality required to achieve our joint bliss. But you know what? In that moment, that very moment, I was so overcome by the enormity of the whole picture, really… of the vision of Mary Skeffington and the light and the angles of her long, slender, elegant and sensual neck… it was enough to make one believe in a God or some special creator, to make me believe in something capable of creating an image so inspiring, so exotic, and yet so pure.
We made love.
We declared our love for each other and by our actions and reactions and feelings and deeds and words, I believe we formed a bond that evening that could never be broken for as long as we both should live.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
‘I was,’ I replied, ‘I was totally happy.’
‘I lay awake most of that night in Bath,’ she said, and paused again, perhaps so that she could re-live the memory. ‘The feeling was so potent and so strong that I just didn’t want to waste any of it by sleeping. For the first minutes, maybe even as much as half an hour, I felt that you would turn over and start to kiss me and want to make love, and I wouldn’t have resisted, I couldn’t have resisted. Yet I just preferred that we didn’t do it then, and you instinctively seemed to know that.’
It wasn’t a great big decision for me, you know – ‘will I, won’t I?’ It just wasn’t… I mean, I’d just felt… waiting was important and it was. Because that night in her flat after Dylan, well, it was how you dream it should be, it was how you dream you should feel. It’s not even that; the intensity of the feeling was really so much more than that. It was perfect. I didn’t even want to try to put it into words for her there, that night. It’s not even important who did what to whom and how, and how many times this, that, or the other thing happened. The course of the whole series of events and feelings and actions all added up to those three magical little words.
