Men I've Loved Before

by Adele Parks

  ‘Yeah, I missed Ben,’ admitted Neil. He was always more willing to be openly sentimental after he’d had a bit to drink.

  ‘It’s such a pity, especially for Fi. I get the feeling she was desperate for a night out.’

  ‘When are they going to find a reliable babysitter?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I asked when Fi rang up to make her apologies this evening. She seems to think that a babysitter calling up to cancel at the last minute is situation normal. Just one of the things that goes with the territory.’

  ‘Miserable for them,’ mumbled Neil. Truthfully he thought this conversation about babysitters was a bit boring but he knew Nat liked to talk about this sort of stuff. He’d prefer to just sit quietly in the back of the cab and think about the chances of them having sex tonight. He kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelt great. Like summer fields. God, his wife was beautiful. He was a lucky man.

  ‘They’ve had kids for four years now, yet in all that time they haven’t found a babysitter who actually turns up when they’re supposed to,’ added Nat.

  ‘I know, finding a reliable babysitter seems to be like searching for the Holy Grail.’

  Natalie found this fact strangely comforting. She’d never wanted children and when she met Neil she’d made that clear from day one. Conveniently, he’d never felt the need to dispatch his genetic bank, happy to leave the breeding and passing of the family name to his brother. Hearing about the countless discomforts and inconveniences that went with being a parent cheered Natalie. It was not that she needed to hear about sleepless nights, shortage of cash, rows between partners and endless self-sacrifice to be reassured that she’d made the right decision. Not at all. Natalie was more than happy with her choice. But she found that it was helpful to remember these continual hassles faced by other people. From time to time, more regularly than was polite, Natalie (never Neil) was asked whether they were planning on starting a family any time soon. Her reply would always be a staunch, no. She tried not to be drawn into any sort of elaboration; she preferred to follow a mantra of never explain, never excuse. But often the inquirer, either through genuine concern or inexcusable insensitivity, would plunge on.

  ‘Can’t you have any?’

  ‘We’ve never tried so I have no idea,’ Natalie would answer frostily.

  ‘Don’t leave it too late.’

  So Natalie would feel compelled to clear up the matter. ‘We don’t want children, actually.’

  Then the imprudent inquirer might gasp, extremely shocked and not able to hide it. If Nat was lucky they’d be shocked into silence but more often than not they’d ask, ‘But why not? Don’t you like children?’

  Natalie was always tempted to reply yes, she did like children enormously and add the joke, ‘but I couldn’t eat a whole one.’ She always resisted, as she knew that very few people found this subject a laughing matter. She’d cite the importance of her career, the lack of space in their home or their dislike of the thought of endless sleepless nights as reasons she did not want to have children. She’d play back all the things she’d heard parents say. You’re always broke. You lose your sense of self. You end up with a slack vagina, but rarely could she get anyone to understand. Nat was sometimes tempted to say she did have a medical problem, at least that way people would understand why they were childless. Childfree. But she couldn’t stand the subterfuge or endure the optimistic suggestion that they could ‘always adopt’ which would inevitably follow.

  It was impossible for Nat to explain why she didn’t want to have children but she was sure, absolutely certain, one hundred per cent positive that she did not.

  4

  Nat and Neil stumbled through the door to their home and fell against the wall in a messy tangle of limbs that signposted drunken intentions to have a crack at passion. He urgently and continually kissed her; the kisses were sloppy but intense. He ran his hands up and down her body and she pushed the door closed behind them. As he continued to kiss her face, neck, shoulders, she considered that they could have a quickie, she could drink a pint of water and then they could still get to bed by about half past twelve. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy prolonged, lusty love sessions with Neil any more, of course she did; she adored them. She loved him. A quickie was not the perfect culmination to such a boozy, fun and loving night but it was a realistic compromise, admitted Nat with an internal mental sigh. She was very aware that she had a big meeting with her boss tomorrow at 8.30a.m. and as tempting as an all-night session might be, she just couldn’t afford to be shag tired. She tried to edge her foot out of her high heels without breaking away from the kisses. The shoes were new and horribly uncomfortable but Nat considered that it had been worth the pain because both Jen and Alison had agreed with her that the patent petrol-blue shoes with the needle-thin stiletto heels were beyond beautiful. Now they could go back in the cupboard until the next special night out.

  ‘Leave them on,’ murmured Neil, once he understood that Nat was trying to cast off the sexy shoes.

  ‘Really?’ Nat did as Neil requested, even though she could feel a nasty blister bubbling on her right toe. If it made him happy, she’d put up with the discomfort for a little while longer.

  Since listening to Karl brag about taking the Dutch air hostess (from behind, as she bent over the bath in the hotel room), Neil had spent the evening indulging in a sexual fantasy of his own. His fantasies were always pretty tame and tended to be anchored to the conventional (he fantasised about sex with Nat, Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon). He never fantasised about sex with colleagues or mates’ girlfriends (the way Karl did), nor did he have any interest in bestiality, voyeurism or anything odd with a gas mask. He didn’t even want to see Nat’s buttocks pink with the signs of a gentle spanking, but he did like shoes with a mean heel. He was pretty sure that his fantasies about high heels were all very normal and acceptable, because in none of his fantasies was he the one wearing the shoes.

  ‘My feet are sore,’ muttered Nat, hoping he’d be sympathetic.

  ‘Leave them on,’ he instructed, too horny to be as considerate as he usually was. He wanted to sound forceful, vigorous and powerful. Tonight, Karl had been saying how women are really turned on if you are authoritative. But then Neil considered that he and Nat usually had an equal relationship, he didn’t want to sound peculiarly bossy, so he added, ‘Please.’

  The timing of the delivery of the afterthought was poor. The word gushed out with a burp that hit Natalie square in the face. The smell of red wine and steak was not as good the second time round.

  Nat pulled back a fraction but managed to summon a forgiving grin. Still, the moment was lost and they both knew it. They broke apart. The kisses and urgency stayed in the hallway. Without discussing it, Neil went to put the kettle on to make a sobering cup of tea and Natalie went upstairs. She carefully undressed, cleaned her teeth, put toothpaste on Neil’s brush and then got into bed. Her disappointment at the lack of sex was not overwhelming; she would never have admitted it to anyone but part of her was a tiny bit relieved. Sex would have been pleasant, it always was, but really, she did have to consider that important, nerve-wracking meeting tomorrow morning. Now, they’d probably just cuddle for a bit and then drift off to sleep in each other’s warmth. And Neil’s disappointment, whilst intense, disappeared almost instantly as he was still too squiffy to hold on to any sort of intention; being drunk always made him mellow, not ferocious.

  As Neil waited for the kettle to boil, he noticed that there was a fly buzzing around the kitchen. It repeatedly flew at the strip light even though that undoubtedly led to great pain. The buzzing became annoyingly frantic and Neil wondered if he had the energy and coordination to get the fly out of the house alive or whether he should just spray it with an aerosol can of poisonous stuff. He didn’t care about the fly’s life, he wasn’t Buddhist, he was straightforward apathetic Church of England, but he didn’t like the smell of fly spray. He stared at the fly with a death wish for a while but then got
bored and his mind wandered back to the conversation he’d had with Karl that night. There was something about Karl’s chat that niggled him. Not just the fact that Karl was playing away, something else.

  The claim had been seductive. Sex was everything, Karl had said. Everything? Was it? No, it wasn’t. But was it? There was something about that idea that was completely wrong and another part of it that intrigued him.

  Neil thought that the best thing about having sex with Nat was that he knew every time they did, it was not the last time. Which was a relief; a comforting thought. And to follow the same argument, not having sex with her tonight wasn’t a problem because this was not the last time he was going to not have sex with her either, marriage had guaranteed that. Neil thought about that for a long time. Was that what he meant? It was hard to know. He really shouldn’t have had that last liqueur, he didn’t even like liqueurs. He wasn’t saying that having sex with Nat was the same as not having sex with Nat. What he was saying was that being with her, sex or not was everything. That was it!

  When Neil was single and used to have sex with other women, the sex was often spectacular and always a result. But somewhere, deep down inside him, he’d always found single-man sex unsettling. He found it a problem that even in the very moment of orgasm he’d start to panic about where his next shag would come from. Being married to Nat took all that uncertainty away. He was sure he wouldn’t swap his feeling of security and intimacy for a million illicit affairs, similar to those Karl had, no matter how electrifying they were. Yup, Neil Preston, thirty-five years today, was a happy man.

  Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. He said the word over and over again as he waited for the water to reach 100 degrees C. Funny little word. If you said it often enough it sort of lost its importance, its threat, its intrigue. It became more playful. What did it mean exactly? What did it all mean?

  The taxi journey home and the inconvenient burp had gone some way to sobering Neil up but still he had to concentrate very hard on making the tea in order not to scald himself. He put a bag in each mug, added water, let it stew, added milk (semi-skimmed for Nat), considered and rejected the idea of opening a packet of Jaffa Cakes (after all, he had eaten three courses plus birthday cake at the restaurant). It was during those seemingly run-of-the-mill, innocuous minutes that Neil finally got to grips with the sex debate. He understood the conundrum. The answer was revealed to him.

  The exact train of thought was tricky to detail as his thoughts were fuzzy around the edges due to the amount he’d drunk. Thinking about his birthday cake tonight (a rich, moist, dark chocolate cake decorated with fat marshmallows, lovingly made for him by Nina, his mother-in-law) suddenly brought to mind other birthday cakes he’d been presented with in the past. Lopsided, butter-iced, sweetie-covered affairs, often moulded into the shape of whatever craze he was into at the time. The Rubik Cube-shaped cake was legendary, the chessboard a tad embarrassing as his mother had no eye for detail and had fashioned the cake into six rows and six columns which (as all his mates had pointed out was stupid because everyone knows that a chessboard has sixty-four squares).

  His all-time favourite birthday cake was the train-shaped cake that his mother made for his ninth birthday. He’d been going through a fervent train phase which his brother and sister teased him about, mercilessly, declaring that his early signs of geekiness were bound to lead to social failure. The teasing, of course, was in good spirit; harmless and natural. Besides, they could not spoil the day for him. Neil’s mother had outdone herself as she’d embraced the train theme with gusto. Not only did Neil get to take three of his friends (including Tim) to the National Railway Museum in York (where Neil could satiate his curiosity about all things train) but they also got to have his birthday tea in the famous, long-established Betty’s Teashop. Neil remembered the delight of eating a cream cake the size of his head; for once he did not have to share ‘two between three’, which was usually the case with treats in their home. That day his parents splashed out and bought every one of the kids their own cake, whichever one they chose. Plus, most magnificently of all, he and all his pals went home with a Flying Scotsman replica nameplate (purchased from the museum souvenir shop) and so on return to school the following Monday, Neil and his mates became an instant playground gang. Neil still owned his nameplate (Nat had generously allowed them to hang it in the loo). He wondered what Tim had done with his, he must remember to ask him.

  It had been a perfect day. Well, all Neil’s birthdays had been perfect. In fact, Neil’s entire childhood was chipper. Of course there were times he’d fallen and hurt himself, lied, broken valuable things, worried about small things, failed exams and embarrassed himself on the sports field. These growing pains were inevitable but, as the tea brewed, Neil started to count the things he liked about his childhood, the things he loved about being a kid. Cherryade, sherbet fountains, football in the street, laughing himself sick with Ben and Ashleigh, his father hoisting him on his shoulders to see over a crowd, his mother’s minty breath as she kissed him good night, holidays, summer days, Christmas Days . . . His childhood was a safe and wonderful place to live.

  He would never be able to pinpoint exactly where the revelation, vision or clarity came from but suddenly he was sure, more sure than he’d been about anything before or likely ever to be again. Karl was right. Sex was everything. But Neil did not mean the sort of sex where several nymphomaniacs fought over your throbbing hard-on (if indeed that sort of sex genuinely existed outside Karl’s imagination). The sort of sex that truly meant everything, was everything, made sense of everything was the sort that led to making a baby.

  To making a life.

  To starting a childhood, like his own.

  The room tilted and Neil staggered slightly; it was not the effects of the booze, it was the enormity of his fresh understanding. Neil felt doused in excitement, swathed in possibility. Of course! It was the natural next step. Why hadn’t he made the connection before? Why hadn’t he thought of all this before? Nat was probably thinking the same thing by now. She used to say she didn’t want kids, but everyone says that when they are young, don’t they? Of course she must have changed her mind by now; they’d been married five years. He was thirty-five years old today, that was a perfect age to be a dad, and Nat was thirty-four next birthday, inevitably her clock must be ticking, you were always seeing articles about it. God, Nat was just amazing. Other women started to ladle on the pressure to start a family the minute they turned thirty, sometimes earlier, but not Nat. Maybe Nat had been waiting until he was ready to make the leap. Until he made the jump.

  Neil dashed upstairs with a mug of tea in both hands and he barely noticed it slopping over the rim on to the carpet. He burst into the bedroom and was momentarily distracted from his purpose as he encountered the thirty-five helium-filled balloons bobbing around the room. He pushed through them. Nat was already in bed. She was wearing pyjamas and reading through her notes for the meeting the next morning. Admittedly she didn’t look as though she wanted to make a baby right that moment but she did look just like the sort of woman who should make a baby. She looked calm and beautiful and cosy. The pyjamas were covered in tiny pink rosebuds. Neil thought Rosie might be a nice name for a girl. But first things first.

  Neil put down the mugs and hurriedly tugged off all his clothes. He dropped them in a heap on the floor and dived under the covers. He started to kiss Nat’s thighs through her PJs. He couldn’t wait to edge those down. She had great thighs. They were often tanned (courtesy of San Tropez spray-on booths), smooth, slim and, in Neil’s opinion, best when edging open. Nat was a brilliant woman to find yourself in bed with, find yourself married to, thought Neil. A brilliant woman to make a baby with! She was cute and quick and clever but not arsey and over-learned. Plus, she was generally reasonably cheerful (caveat being that at certain times of the month she turned into an unadulterated, raging psychopath). Neil considered that in his pre-Nat experience, clever and cheerful were an unusual combination to find in
a woman, quite rare indeed. In his opinion clever women tended to be as bleak as the North York Moors after a thunderstorm and cheerful birds often felt the need to limit their conversation to inane twitter about Daniel Craig’s arse. (OK, Daniel Craig was a dude, Neil could see that, but how long could a bloke’s arse be the centre of conversation?). Neil thought of Nat’s tits nestled under her pyjama top. Her tits were magnificent. Not too big, not too small. A perfect B cup and Neil was a firm believer that more than a handful is a waste, unwieldy. Then he thought of her mouth. It was the sexiest mouth imaginable. Big, fat, red lips. Large, lush, licky lips. As ever, the thought of said lips caused an instant erection. Neil hit Nat’s leg with it; she lifted the duvet just long enough to throw him a look of exasperation.

  ‘You weren’t talking about football tonight, were you?’

  ‘Never said I was.’

  ‘It’s not like you to be so persistent. You’ve been talking about sex all night, haven’t you?’ It pleased him that she knew stuff like that. Unlike Karl, Neil had never wanted a woman who could have the wool pulled over her eyes. ‘What sort of sex have you been talking about?’ He didn’t want to reply. He didn’t want to say that every time Nat, Ali and Jen had been out of earshot the conversation had sunk into in-depth discussions about slutty lap dancers, hot film stars and pert twenty-somethings at the office, in other words all manner of foreign, unavailable totty. Neil knew that if he confessed as much, Nat wouldn’t find his raging hard-on especially flattering. Few women take a throbbing cock as the compliment men undoubtedly think it is; women prefer flowers. And even if he told Nat that he was thinking about her lips when he became hard, she’d guess exactly where those lips were clasped in his imaginings. She might not think that was especially romantic either. And he was being romantic. He wanted to make a baby, what was more romantic than that?