by Pip Drysdale
And then he kissed me. Soft tongue. Rough cheek.
He tasted like cigarettes and smelled like spiced limes. And everything else melted away.
‘Do you really have seven siblings?’ I asked softly, pulling away, trying to puncture the intensity of the moment. Our lips were still touching. I could feel his breath.
‘Have you been stalking me?’ he laughed gently, his hands on my waist.
I smiled. ‘No, I wouldn’t have bothered, I thought you were a bit of an arse actually. My boss has.’
‘An arse?’ he asked, his lips touching mine.
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘So, do you?’
‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘I have one full sister and six half-siblings from my father’s first two marriages … but you shouldn’t believe everything you read, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said.
He kissed me again. The tip of his tongue was touching mine. His hands were around my ribcage. I pulled away from him. Just an inch.
‘Truth or dare?’ I asked.
He took a deep breath. ‘Truth.’
‘What’s your favourite …’ I let the question linger. ‘Colour.’
He started to laugh and I could see his teeth flash in the low golden light. ‘Would you please shut up?’ He grinned and then his lips were back on mine. Stubble on my cheek.
He walked me slowly backwards, one hand on my back and the other in my hair, until he pushed me down onto the bed and then lay on top of me. I was lying half on his coat, so he grabbed it from beneath me and threw it aside. His chest was heavy and warm; I could feel it through my dress and our mouths were almost touching. Then he smiled and I smiled, and he kissed me again. His hands moved beneath my dress, tugging at the waistband of my pantyhose. He knelt by my side and peeled them slowly from my calves, my ankles, my feet.
‘Hey,’ he said and smiled down at me as he kissed my foot and threw my pantyhose to the floor. His voice was croaky and his eyes kind. Then he lay back down beside me, his hand stroking my face.
‘Hey,’ I said, my voice small and my lips parted. I was still lying on my back and my hand reached up and stroked his cheek. Rough stubble on soft skin. And I remembered the way it glinted when I first saw him in the restaurant, his jaw clenching as he tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed me, so I laughed.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked as he turned his face and kissed the palm of my hand, his eyes still on me.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘I’m funny, am I?’ he asked as he moved on top of me, now propped up on one arm.
‘A bit,’ I said. My hands were in his hair – it was soft – and then his mouth was pressing against mine as his hand reached down and undid the tie around his waist and the bathrobe fell from his shoulders. His hands were on my hipbones, peeling off my underwear. He moved my legs apart with his knee and his eyes looked into mine.
And then he was inside me.
My breath was fast and my heart beat hard. I put my arms above my head out of habit and he grabbed my wrists, and for a moment I thought of Angus, but then I could smell David’s hair – spiced limes – and our hipbones melted into each other and his breath was loud and hot in my ear. And for just a little while, I forgot.
I slept soundly beside David that night. Completely unaware of what the following week would hold; but then, there was nothing to warn me. Except, perhaps, the imaginary voice that tore me from my contented state at around 6am whispering: Happy birthday, sir …
And then I remembered.
saturday
Master Sun said: ‘Rashly underestimate your enemy and you will surely be taken captive.’
11 FEBRUARY
I awoke to a mouthful of pillow and hair. A faint smell of cigarettes filled the room, the curtains were half-open, and the grey morning light streamed through them, gently drumming on my eyelids. I felt the warmth of his body behind me, his arm around my waist, its soft hair beneath my fingertips.
‘Good morning,’ he whispered into my ear.
‘Good morning,’ I croaked back. The untouched cake and empty champagne bottle sat on the coffee table in my eye line. And the chandelier that hung above it caught the light in its crystals, reflecting it onto the wall.
His breath was on the back of my neck, his lips barely touching my skin, and it gave me goose bumps.
I rolled around to face him and he reached up to remove the hair from my mouth and tuck it behind my ear.
‘How’s the head?’ he asked, his eyes inches from mine.
‘Okay,’ I whispered. His arms were around me. His body was encasing mine. It was one of those hugs that tells you almost everything you need to know about another person in a fragment of a second.
‘God,’ he said, rolling onto his back, ‘last night was amazing.’ He was grinning at the ceiling.
‘Mmm,’ I replied and rolled over so my back was facing him. I was looking at the window, at the light bouncing off the edges of the champagne bottle and at my black dress hanging over the side of the chair in the corner of the room. It was one of those moments I would remember forever. Even lying there, I knew that. A mental Polaroid to be added to the deck I carried with me everywhere. Because it was one of those rare moments in life when everything was fine.
‘I haven’t had that much fun in ages,’ he said with a heavy sigh. ‘I just want to stay in bed with you forever.’
I turned to look at him – his free hand was running through his hair. It was that colour that straddled dark blond and brown. What do you even call that?
‘So, let’s do that,’ I replied, then I looked back out the window.
‘Deal,’ he said. His lips started to kiss the back of my neck again. His breath was warm and his stubble prickly. And I could hear the faint hum of traffic coming from a cold road somewhere outside.
‘So, tell me something I don’t already know, David Turner,’ I said.
He laughed and I could feel his breath on my ear. Then his teeth. Gently.
‘Well, you appear to already know almost everything,’ he laughed, ‘but what do you want to know?’
‘Anything,’ I said. He was so warm on that cold February morning.
‘Anything?’ he replied.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘anything.’
‘Okay,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘I have syphilis.’
‘Oh shut up,’ I laughed. ‘No seriously, tell me something. I want to know you.’
‘Like what?’ His voice sounded hesitant here. That should have warned me.
‘Like the thing you least want to tell me,’ I said, turning my head to face him.
And he was silent – not the thinking kind, the loud kind of silent that is always painfully pierced.
‘Seriously, tell me anything,’ I continued.
His lips were slightly parted. ‘Actually there is something I should tell you,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
His Adam’s apple bobbed and he cleared his throat.
‘Oh hurry up,’ I said, panic moving through my veins. ‘Too much suspense.’
‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, so please let me explain.’
There was something cautious in his eyes and he’d moved a little further away from me so he could properly focus on my face.
‘Fine, but what is it?’ My smile was now turning to a frown.
‘Don’t scowl,’ he said, his thumb massaging the lines out of my forehead.
‘What is it?’ I asked again. My tone was getting darker.
‘I’m …’
‘You’re what?’ I said. ‘David?’
‘I’m married.’
‘You’re what?’ The blood drained to my feet. ‘What is fucking wrong with you?’ I hissed, pushing his chest away from me and wrapping myself in the tangled sheet. I stumbled out of bed, leaving him naked, exposed and watching me move across the room.
‘You said you’d let me explain,’ he said calmly.
‘That was when I thought it w
as something fixable,’ I said. My heart was racing but my voice was low and steady. A veil of ice had fallen over me – I was tired, so tired, of men deceiving me – and I just wanted to go home.
I walked quickly to the bathroom, grabbing my dress from the chair, my pantyhose from the floor and my knickers from the edge of the sofa. Then I closed the door heavily and slipped them on.
My mascara had smudged around my eyes during the night, so I wet a tissue from a box below the mirror and tried to dab my face clean. The bathroom was vast and white, with a big clean mirror, thin white curtains covering a small window that looked out onto a backstreet and a huge old free-standing bath with clawed feet. It was the kind of room good memories should be woven in. The kind I had shared with Angus many times.
David was knocking gently on the door. ‘Taylor, it isn’t how it looks,’ he said.
‘No?’ I retorted, giving up on the tissue and splashing my face with water. I grabbed for a towel to dry it and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Pale. Sad.
‘We have an understanding.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said loudly through the door. ‘Seriously?’ Kim’s face appeared in the mirror before me. Then Angus’s. Then my father’s. And then my mother’s, cracked with her tears. ‘Why didn’t you say anything, David? You didn’t think that our little why-are-you-still-single chat last night might have been the ideal opening to mention it?’
‘I didn’t want to ruin things,’ he said through the door.
‘Ruin what?’ I replied as I roughly rubbed my face. ‘Your affair?’
‘No,’ he said as I unlocked the door and pushed past him, avoiding his gaze.
‘Well, there’s nothing to ruin,’ I replied, putting on my coat. I grabbed my handbag, opened the hotel-room door, slammed it behind me and moved quickly down that gold and black patterned hallway towards the elevator. My shoes were dangling from my hand and I felt stupid. Really stupid.
And David? Well, he let me leave.
The tears waited politely until I was inside my flat before they decided to fall. But fall they did: me crumpled on the floor like a discarded poem that never quite made it to the wastepaper bin. It seemed that no matter where I turned, no matter whom I trusted, men lied to me. And it had always been that way. Starting with my father.
The first seven years of my childhood were idyllic, at least in my memory: beachside holidays, laughter, blown-out birthday candles, Christmas trees decorated with garish tinsel, even if Christmas Day itself was just me and Mum. But around the same time that I learned that Santa Claus was definitely not real – a fact I discovered via a girl called Emily at school, not a realisation I came to on my own – I discovered something else was not real: the other magical man in my life. My father.
Or rather, my mother discovered it. And then through her tears, the sound of his footsteps leaving, and the fact that his newspapers lay piling up near the front door until a kindly neighbour brought them in, I discovered it. Because we were not his only family. She was not his only wife. The only thing common to both his lives was his name – and that’s the thing that eventually got him caught. A credit card sent to the wrong address. I guess he must have filled in the form too quickly. Forgotten what was what. Or maybe in some way he wanted to get caught. But it was one of those situations you see on daytime TV talk shows and presume the people presented are all out-of-work actors: because nobody could be that stupid, could they? You would know. Of course you would know. But between travelling a lot for his work and the fights he would instigate with my mother in order to have a reason to be absent for a few weeks – or vital holidays such as Christmas – we didn’t know.
My mother never recovered from the shock, and when I went off to boarding school I started telling people my father had died when I was seven. Even Angus thought that. Because he did, in a sense. I never saw him again. But brief as his cameo spot in my life was, Charlotte’s poignant diagnosis was: he’d shaped me. Because of him, my life was an endless quest in search of a happy ending for which I would endure anything. Just to prove to myself that it existed after all. And so marriage, weddings, rings, flowers and dresses always mattered more to me than most. As though somebody promising to be with me forever and meaning it was the only thing that could adequately fill the void my father gouged when he left.
A void that remained long after my memories of him faded. But there is one image of him, one memory, I have never been able to shake: he’s wearing a red-and-green checked shirt, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his eyes a sparkling green. About ten vinyl records are lying scattered on the muted brown carpet in front of him and he’s making me a mix tape: The Stones, Coltrane, Leonard Cohen, The Doors, Bob Dylan, James Taylor – my namesake – and some of the Beatles’ later work. He’s singing along and I’m trying to sing too, but I don’t know the words. The tune. And it’s just me and him and the carpet and that mix tape. That was the last time we were alone together.
My mother threw that tape away, along with boxes and boxes of anything else he’d ever touched, soon after he left. But there are some photographs we snap with our mental camera that are branded onto our minds for life. And that image of my father remains the uncontested king in the pack I always refer to in my darkest hours, either for confirmation or solace. At that moment, my father’s polaroid was held beside that of David, in bed, just before he told me he was married.
I stayed there, in that pitiful crumpled position, for about ninety minutes. That’s how long the tears lasted. But eventually they dried up and I made my way over to the kettle. Made a cup of tea. And opened up my computer: I needed to focus on work. It had been slipping and I needed that promotion – it would mean paying off my credit card, no more living hand-to-mouth and maybe, with that on my resume, even being able to move to another industry in time. And work was something constructive I could focus on. Something unrelated to men.
Because ever since the break-up I had been consumed with either hating Angus or sedating myself, yet none of it had worked. Booze was just a Band-Aid, and my attempts at revenge hadn’t proven to be the salve I’d thought they would. Instead, an image of Angus in bed with two prostitutes and yellow bows haunted me whenever I let my guard down. My daylight romp with Jamie had simply confused me further, and my night with David had torn the wounds open wider than they were to begin with. I was better off just leaving it all behind me. Drawing a line in the sand. Stepping over it. Nothing before that line had ever happened.
Yes, work was the only thing I could count on. That one thing I could control. And the sole part of my life that Angus couldn’t touch. I would focus, get back on track and get my damned promotion.
It was around 4.30pm. After five hours of intense concentration I was taking a break, staring into the open fridge, its chill on my face. My hair still smelled of cigarettes and I was wondering if I should wash it. That was when I heard a faint noise. A gentle tapping: knuckle on wood. I ignored it at first, but it grew louder. More urgent. It was my door.
Someone was at my door.
I closed the fridge and walked towards the sound.
‘Who is it?’ I said through the wood.
‘Me,’ came a voice.
I looked through the peephole, and there he stood.
Angus.
My ears buzzed. My vision swirled.
Shit.
Why is he here? Is it about the prostitutes?
Does he know it was me?
‘Hi,’ I said through the door.
Fuck.
‘Are you going to open the door?’ he asked.
My teeth were chewing my inner cheek and my ribcage pounded.
I looked through the peephole again. And his hands, formerly behind his back, were in front of him now: he was carrying roses.
Fuck.
I read once that a spider’s silk is stronger than steel. My love for Angus was always like that: barely visible to the eye but unbreakable. And the more I struggled, the more stuck I became. But I really though
t he’d snapped that thread, finally gone too far. It was only when he was standing there on the other side of the door, his presence palpable, that I realised some threads fray but never break. And the longer he stood there, the tighter that thread wrapped around my heart.
‘What do you want, Angus?’ I asked sharply. But I sounded stronger than I felt.
‘Darling, please just open the door?’ he said. He didn’t sound angry.
‘I’m busy,’ I said. Then I stood there watching him, waiting for him to leave.
‘Taylor, please,’ he said. His voice cracked and his eyes implored me through the peephole. But then an image filled my mind: Holly’s nipples pushing against mine, the smell of her musky perfume and the way her dark hair felt as it brushed against my face. My cheeks grew hot.
‘There’s nothing to talk about, Angus,’ I said, my voice calm and low.
‘Can I just give you these?’ he asked, holding the flowers up in front of him.
Fire swelled inside me. ‘Well, unless they’re magic flowers that can take sex tapes off the internet, I don’t want them,’ I said, my voice less calm.
‘Darling, I know you’re angry,’ he said, ‘but we really need to talk. Please.’ There was kindness in his eyes, vulnerability, and it reminded me of the man he was when we met – the one who organised spontaneous picnics by the Seine.
But I hesitated.
‘Baby, it’s me, you need to at least talk to me,’ he said. ‘This is silly.’
I let out a sigh and opened the door just a crack. He smelled the way his pink work shirt used to smell before the laundry detergent robbed me of that, and it hit me. Hard.
‘Hi,’ he said. He was pushing the flowers towards me. He looked tired, like he’d been up most of the night. My mind moved to the prostitutes and the yellow ribbons and my throat grew tight.
‘So?’ I asked, my voice rough. ‘What do you want?’
‘Darling, I’m trying to make things right,’ he said, nodding at the flowers.
