You’re a good wife, a good actress: it’s surprisingly easy, the cover-up. You were acting all along and scarcely realising it. But you want to grow old with Cole, you still want that. You’d be perfectly happy never to have sex with your husband again, except to create a child; and you’ve heard that before from married friends. Cole represents something larger than sex: he’s embedded in your life plan.
But where does desire go? Will this fugitive feeling eventually die out? Or now that it’s loosened will it lurk within you into old age, all rangy and discontented, just waiting to trip up your life?
You’ve been careful, Cole will never find out. Gabriel won’t tell, for you’ve been entrusted with a secret about him that virtually guarantees that. How mutually beneficial it all is, how perfect: you’ve found a lover who’ll do exactly what you want.
Who’ll never talk.
Who’s woken you up.
Lesson 75
the shoddy trade
A gift box, just like the one that held your vibrator. It’s beautifully wrapped. Handcuffs. No note. You smile, you don’t need to ask anyone now.
They lead to a new lesson, with the bedhead. There are the sharp, hot spurts of your cum; it’s such a lovely shock. Your voice is deepening when Gabriel’s in you, it’s dropping an octave and you listen, astounded, to the woman you’re becoming.
To be fucked in the ass, something you’ve always wondered about. The pain, the exquisiteness, the illicitness of it. You don’t want it often, it has to keep its edge, you need it to remain unique.
Gabriel wants it a lot, but he respects your wishes when you say no, he backs off.
There’s a beauty to his carefulness, his intent; you think, with some amusement, that he learns with the focus of a first-time driver who’s never before sat behind the wheel. He’s so earnest and grateful. You teach him to touch with assurance, confidence; you teach him to mask his fear, but you can tell that love, for him, will be a vice when it comes, will grip him hard, will swallow him complete. Your heart already bleeds for him, for what is ahead.
He’s still glamorous to you; his honesty has glamour. You love his chuff when you come, you love watching his eyes, delighted and astounded, at you as much as himself. You can’t bring yourself to tell him that so much of this is new for you, too, that in some ways you began these lessons as virginal as he. That everything you want has been, for so long, in your head; that you’ve never spoken out.
Your Elizabethan woman did, it’s in the confidence of her voice. You hear her whispering, delightedly, through your blood: go deeper, further, don’t slip back.
There are many women admired not so much for their virtuaes, as for their vices and imperfections.
Lesson 76
few women pass through life without being called upon to nurse a relation or friend
Your mother rings. Theo has called.
Really? Why?
I don’t know. She just wanted a chat. She remembered it was my birthday.
I haven’t spoken to her for a while.
She said that.
We had a bit of a falling out.
She said that, too. What was it about?
Oh, things. I just felt that she was crowding me. I was beginning to feel a bit suffocated by her.
It’s not such a bad thing, perhaps. People come and go. I always thought she was so high-maintenance. Exhausting, you know that.
Your mother’s reservations about Theo used always to be the flint for another fight but you see it now, she’s right. Your best friend was vastly entertaining but the flip side was the constant calling, the jealousy at any new lover or friend and, most smothering of all, the insistent interventions in your own life. Your mother had categorised Theo as overwhelming from the age of thirteen: she’d requested you be placed in separate classes at the start of the next term and out of fury at her meddling you didn’t speak to her for a month.
She said that Tomas and her are trying for a baby, she says now, as the conversation winds down.
Oh?
She wanted you to know.
Oh.
So, Theo gets in first. She always does, from starting her period at eleven to losing her virginity at eighteen to getting married: and now this. Why has she chosen to keep you informed, does she want you to know that something has passed?
You hadn’t told your mother about Cole and her; dreading the knowing in her voice, perhaps, wanting to sort it all out for yourself. Now, it doesn’t seem worth letting her know. You’re moving beyond it. The rage is softening from you, at last; like a fire collapsing into its embers, it’s almost out.
Lesson 77
rules for choosing
As autumn encroaches upon the light, sometimes there’s just sleep with Gabriel, nothing else, several hours of it; skin to skin and his lovely warmth. And as you lie there you think of the next step, perhaps: groups of men, anonymous sex, women.
You think, where does this stop?
You can’t imagine how you’ll end these afternoons but some day you must. You fear, already, they’re slipping into something else, you can feel a binding being spun over you both. On the first day of November Gabriel washes your hair in the bath and then you his, and afterwards you hold him so tenderly, so quiet, and you wonder at all that has happened over the past few months, a summer so different from the last. You’ve made love like you’ve never loved before, you never felt capable of such giving, or such a response. During the sex with Gabriel you’ve grown younger, you’ve utterly let go, you’ve showed another person, for the first time in your life, your true self. A woman who astounds you and scares you. A woman demanding, selfish, sparky, in control. He’s made you feel accomplished as a lover, he’s given you confidence.
So, it has come to this, and neither of you will speak out about what comes next. On the tube hurtling home you think of those sounds breaking from you that you’ve never uttered before, and the arch of your back, and your fist clutching the sheet. But then you’re home, promptly, by six, you’re never late. And every night there’s Cole pressed into you—his arm, or the cheek of his bottom, or the length of his torso – every night there’s his exhausted, trusting weight. You prize your husband still, so much: you don’t want all that he represents gone from your life. You lie awake trying to find a way for your needs and your wants to coexist peacefully; you don’t see, yet, how they can.
Yes, you did begin, with Cole’s gift of freedom, you did find a way to fill up your days. You’re living with the light and the guilt of that.
It’s a see-saw of delight, and doubt.
III
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
Anne Sexton
Lesson 78
when a girl has a rosy, healthy face we know that her lungs do their work well
The more sex you have, the more you want.
Perhaps, now, a man who’s always insisted on doing it his way, which you haven’t liked enough. You sit at your desk, with your thumbnails hooked between your teeth, and smile at the challenge of that.
A Saturday afternoon. You tell Cole you’re stuck with the book. You laugh that you might end up throwing it all away and having a bit of fun; you might just write about what your Elizabethan housewife was really interested in – sex.
You?
You flick suds from the dish-washing brush. Yes, me.
Maybe I’ll write about what women really want, mate. Oooooh, he says, holding up his hands in mock terror.
Half an hour later, languid with laziness. Lemony sun through the tall windows, dust motes dancing in the light. The magazine supplements of the weekend newspapers are scattered across the bed and Cole comes into the room and he kisses you on the lips, in his special way, and he says, so what do you really want, and there’s a new intent: it’s as if he’s finally responding to the new energy that crackles around you and you do n
ot shy away from his kiss. You whisper to him you want him to shave you; you’ve never said anything like that to him before.
His sharp, soft intake of breath.
His voice is barely audible, one word, yes, just. He looks at you as if he always suspected there was a woman like this underneath. He goes to the bathroom and retrieves your razor, and changes his mind and brings out his own: it’s sharper, he says, more effective, excitement in his voice and that strange new intent, and you lie on the bed with your thighs spread wide and outside is the buoyant sky, the air fat with the coming summer, and you don’t know what to expect. You wait for Cole with one hand between your legs and the other thrown above your head. Your nipples are erect, they’ve rarely been hard for him over the past few years, as if they couldn’t be bothered getting into that state. Now you want him, quick: you’re already arching your lower back, in soft waves.
What’s got into you, he asks.
You say nothing, your hand hooks him behind his neck and pulls him down to a kiss. And then he begins, and as he’s brushing his razor through your pubic hair a change plumes through you like ink shot into water, you start to feel young again, a teenager, to feel with all the intensity of those years. Something’s combusting within you, it’s like a varnisher’s hand whipped over a painting, as if all the leaden textures that have dulled your life for so long are shot through with light. You open your mouth and gulp air, you bunch Cole’s fingers in yours and squeeze them tight. At the end of it you both stare in fascination and horror at the childlike slash. Cole scrabbles off his trousers as if he doesn’t want to lose the moment, as if he, too, knows how rare it is. He comes quickly – too quickly, he thinks – but for you it’s perfect and you turn from him to the windows, to that lovely lemony light, and smile a Cheshire smile.
For you’ve just had your first orgasm with your husband.
Later that night. An Italian restaurant round the corner, your favourite. You haven’t been there with Cole for ages; you used to go often when the relationship was young. What’s got into you, he asks again, over a bottle of red that’s spreading warmth through you both. You smile, your hand hovers at your throat.
I’ve found this special section in the Library, you say, it’s full of these books, erotic books, and you stop, you blush, you cannot go on.
Cole leans back in his seat. He folds his arms like a headmaster who’s just heard a fantastical tale of remorse.
I keep on going back to them, you say.
Well, here’s to the London Library, then, and he raises his glass.
Lesson 79
no dirt should be left in the interior crevices
You don’t tell Gabriel, you let him discover for himself. You’re not wearing underpants, of course. You feel an exquisite vertigo as he kneels before you, as his hands push up your skirt.
He recoils.
What’s this?
Cole did it.
Gabriel tightens, his whole body, his face.
Are you still sleeping with him, he asks.
Well, yes. He’s my husband.
There’s a prickle of irritation at having to say that.
He gets up and goes to the bathroom. The door slams shut.
Gab? Gabriel?
He talks through the door: I just didn’t think you were still fucking him. I thought – and there’s a sigh. What? Gabriel?
I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought. I’m married, remember.
Gabriel comes out, he is flushed, he sits you on the bed and his hands hold your upper arms. He says that you’re unhappy with your husband, you’ve been unhappy with him for so long, he asks why you’re turning back to a man you don’t love. I never said that, you bristle, you shake your head: it’s too big a question, he has no right. He says let’s go to Spain, let’s go be together for more than a few hours.
There’s a little villa by the sea, that my family owns.
You stand. You know in this moment that Gabriel is at your mercy, you can do what you want, he is completely yours and with the knowledge of that something goes, you can feel it slip from you like a fish through the net.
I don’t want this to stop, he says. You don’t either, he says. We can’t. We’re part of each other’s lives now. You know it. Don’t lie to yourself. I feel like the past couple of months have been the happiest time of my life; the only time I’ve been living.
You step back. Gabriel has fallen in love and you almost despise him for it; it’s all messy before you, he’s a man wild with uncertainty and want. He’s broken the rules; insisting on exclusivity and demanding nights. You’re not sure, suddenly, what it was that bound you to him. Infatuation, perhaps. The craving for a man to be tender with, to touch. The challenge, the thrill of the chase. Revenge. The desire to learn, to open up your life.
And then he was caught.
And you’re at a loss, in this moment, over what to do next.
You stand before Gabriel with your hand covering your mouth, as if in shock at some terrible news, as if you’re about to be sick. You feel you’re learning everything about love as you watch him, from the other side. He imagines you leaving your cosy London world for a man in his thirties who has no real job, who still travels on buses, who’s never found a firm footing with his life. The poet, the dreamer, and you would have fallen for it once. But you’re too old, now. You just want to fuck. As did the author of your little book.
Where trow yee finde a man be hee ever so kind and curteouse to his wife that was willing to substitute another man in his place.
There was nothing in there about leaving her husband. That wasn’t the point.
Gabriel’s still on the bed, the heel of his fist at his forehead. You assess with your head, not your heart. You want him to have more of a life than you, to have other women, to open out his world. The idea had once given you a frivolous thrill: you dreamt of him going off and finding other women and learning their secrets too, and bringing all that he gathered back to you.
Like a snail prodded with a stick, you retreat.
Are you going home to your husband, he asks.
Yes.
Fuck you.
There’s such a force in that ‘fuck you’, it brings you up sharp, it’s a side of him that takes you by surprise: he’s masked it well.
And fuck him too, he spits.
Something curdles up within you; a defensiveness, a protectiveness. Leave Cole out of this, you say. You want your husband, suddenly, very much. His calm, his dependability, quiet. You fear for him suddenly, for what Gabriel might do. For you’ve seen now the vehemence of someone who shakes a girl to rattle the laughter from her, shakes her so hard that she will never come back.
You dress. You leave. In silence.
Lesson 80
opium eaters grow lean and hollow-eyed and yellow-skinned, and always appear to be looking out for something
The lessons must stop. You can see Gabriel, suddenly, hijacking your life.
And you have a strange, new tugging in you for Cole; you weren’t expecting it, you never thought the moribund relationship could be woken up.
You stick out your arm for a cab and feel the vivid bareness between your legs as you stretch your body out. The cab driver asks you where you want to go, he’s young, not very good-looking, a father, perhaps. But he has a beautiful nape. You say, bewildered, barely thinking, I want to have sex, do you want to sleep with me, I need it, please, and he turns and looks at you, he pulls up. You repeat the question. You will never see him again, you will make sure of that. You will dye your hair after this, you will change your look, you will be someone else. You say, I’ll meet you in two hours at…at…and across the street, a little way up, is a Hilton Hotel. At the Hilton, you say. The room will be under Green. And you are floating as conventions and assumptions drop away on all sides and the words slip from you, so easily, so quick, for you’ve rehearsed what to say, what to do, for so long, at night, in your head.
Two of you would be good, you add, I t
hink.
He looks at you, as if he knows exactly where you’re coming from. You turn your head, your fingertips appalled, trembling, at your mouth. He lets you out. You pay with a twenty. You do not take the change. He doesn’t say if he will come.
You know exactly what to do. You ask at a paper shop where the nearest hole in the wall is. You get out cash, a lot. You check in under the name Green, you like the name Green; you give Theo’s address. You hand across your credit card for an imprint, realise suddenly it has your surname on it but the woman doesn’t even check, you’re too respectable-looking for that. You go to the room, you shower, you pour yourself a glass of red wine, and another, and you wait.
There are three of them.
You tell them to do anything.
Your face is still young, still sweet, you can see their surprise: they never expected this. It is what you have always wanted, even as a child on the cusp of adolescence, you’d always dreamt of it, naked, spreadeagled, and a group of men or boys fondling you, curious, growing bolder, getting more excited, moving in. You do the things you’ve always wanted to do, what you devoured in the letters pages of the porn magazines you filched from your uncle when you were fifteen. You are not shy with these men because you are not interested in any connection being made, you’re not interested in talk, in anything that will give you away. You will never see them again. You will not be coming to Gabriel’s flat any more, the lessons must stop, you will not be getting a taxi for a very long time. This will be the end of this chapter in your life. It is all worked out and so you are free, in this hotel room, to do whatever you want.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 13
