'Didn't she sink a thousand ships? Quite apart from starting a war.'
'At least it was a noble cause.'
'About as noble as two blind men fighting over a photograph.'
He laughed. 'You do have a way with words.'
'That's what Bradley says.'
'Bradley?'
'My web guy. Twenty-two and as randy as a sack of rabbits.'
'Two blind men and a sack of rabbits. You're all over the place, Ms Boyd,' he said. He brushed my hair back and his expression changed. He had slipped into his thinking face. 'I don't know Greece at all. I'd like to visit Troy.'
I adored his voice; its depth, its timbre. I had written in my notes that it sounded like a cello. The words on the page had seemed overblown as they hurried out on to the screen. But it was true, his voice was cavernous. It resonated as if my intestines had arranged themselves into highly-tuned strings.
'I love your knees,' he said, and kissed them.
He continued, my belly-button, my breasts that flamed, the concave of my throat, his progress across my body soft as the horsehair on a bow, the down-strokes firm, the up-strokes tender. I had sat at my computer when I arrived home from Jacques with that feeling you get after a long flight, tense and edgy. While the world sleeps, words in the night become mosquitoes that I chase around the room, squashing them in bloody pools that I press on the page, the screen. Nothing came. No buzz. No torque. No whisper. I was in another time zone. My heart thumped. My hands felt bloated and clumsy.
A branch from the tree outside tapped on the window like the finger of someone who has forgotten their key and wants to come in. Beneath the flowing strokes of his fingers I had become a musical instrument gently weeping, tears like glass crystals streaking my cheeks. He swept them up on his tongue as if they were too sacred to squander and I recalled reading that Hindu women save tears in a phial to spill at their husband's funeral.
'You're crying,' he whispered.
'It's what I do when I'm happy.'
'Why are you happy, little Katie?
'I am not so little...'
'It's a term of endearment.'
'Endearment,' I repeated, tasting the word, filing it away like a nice pebble found on the beach. He had shaved that morning, washed his hair. It was the colour of walnuts with highlights bleached by the sun. His eyes, flecked with gold, had a look of intensity, of curiosity. His cock nestled against my tummy.
'What are you thinking about?' he asked, and I wondered what he had seen in my eyes, and whether we see what we want to see, reflections of our own musings.
'I'm thinking about who I am going to be when I meet your sister.'
'She'll be crazy about you.'
'You don't know sisters,' I said, and he licked my nose.
His weight pressed down on me. Our lips met, the sound like the closing of a hotel door. We kissed and we kissed, snatching for breath. Making love requires no thought. You move as the fronds of a palm tree move in the breeze. It is all instinct. All wonder. I adored kissing. Kissing him. A really good kiss is like a secret you want to share. There are no words to describe it. A really good kiss reminds you why it's hard to decide on the right lipstick. Time expands with a really good kiss and you add another few seconds to the end of your life. His finger traced an arc over my cheekbones, and I felt that second day of a new year as if I were on a bridge burning to ashes behind me.
The kiss extended like quicksilver over my chin and down in a line between my breasts, my tummy, gurgling still from the almond croissants and cappuccino he had brought with him in a yellow bag. An arrow of light darted across the room. I heard the drum of the traffic; people returning to work.
He eased my legs apart. I pressed down on my toes and arched my back. I was always happy being naked, like this, with him, the light moving like a tide over the ceiling. The tip of his tongue rang the divine bell, that sublime stupa, the sweet spot, and I floated off on the liquids that wet my thighs. We imagine that there is a special man who will make us feel special in special ways, not with words or gifts, not with glances, even eyes, but in the way that he makes a perfect fit inside us.
When he entered me, I held him as a drowning person would cling to driftwood. He came quickly, gushing, his breath in my ear, the speck of dribble on my neck like a raindrop, a tear. I gripped my hands behind his back. There was a zing of pain across my finger. I held him tightly. I wanted his essence inside me where it would stay warm and I would feel it all day.
We kissed slowly, breathlessly, the after love kiss, and I despaired at that part of myself who conjured up at that moment a picture of Lizzie in Jacques when she said, 'Two curiosities make a plot.' There has to be someone else, it stands to reason.
Does it? Is there? The kiss faded and there were words on his lips.
'I'm sorry I had to leave yesterday, it was a boring evening, I can't tell you.'
'I had a marvellous time,' I said. 'I met my best friend at my favourite bar and drank oodles of champagne.'
'Is that what you usually do?'
I thought for a moment. 'I don't usually do anything.'
'I'm reading Dancing Girl,' he said. 'You really do know how to write.'
'Knowing how to write and knowing how to write is not the same thing.'
'I can't wait to find out how it ends. Do they stay together?'
'I can't actually remember.'
He laughed. 'Don't worry, Katie, I'm going to finish it.'
I liked hearing the sound of my name on his cello tongue; it sounded as if he were talking to someone else.
'I'm not worried,' I told him. 'I mean it. While I'm writing a book, I'm obsessed with my baby. I love them. I wipe their tears and nurse their scars. When I start something new, I forget about them.'
'That's quite amazing.'
'I learned it from my mother.'
'When am I going to meet her?'
My head lay nestled against his side and I replied with a vampire kiss, sucking hard and biting the soft flesh of his neck. He squirmed and pressed back.
'More, more. I love it.'
I bit the same spot. I kissed his lips. His eyes. I blew in his ear. His cock stiffened and slid back inside me. We made love again, leisurely, deep in the moment, my movements unhurried, gradual, continuous, like Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase, each figure the same but different, motion captured and released.
Pink underwear. It's always right. The Zara tweed jacket with red lapels, skinny wine-red trousers, lace-up brown boots. I left the door open so he could watch me dress. Men are intrigued by our clothes, by the hooks and buttons, the straps and elastic that bind us together. When I entered the living room, he had his hands behind his back and a crooked smile I couldn't interpret.
'I nearly forgot, I have a present for you,' he said and produced a yellow ball with a smiley face.
'Thank you.'
He placed it in my right hand and stretched my figures about the soft surface.
'Squeeze,' he said. 'It's an exercise ball. It's for your finger.'
'I thought it was for me.'
'You can share it. Good girls know how to share things.'
'Yes, daddy.'
We kissed and we kissed. He grew hard and it wasn't easy tearing ourselves away from the warm sheets calling from the bedroom. I dragged on a quilted coat, a grey wool hat, and my cheeks burned with cold as we clattered down the stairs and out into the street.
Tom bought The Times in the corner shop where Mr Patel glowered from behind a counter stacked with chocolate, aspirin and chewing gum. With the red spot on his forehead and a yellowing moustache, Mr Patel wore that look people have when they reach a certain age and realize their dreams were just dreams. He was snappy with his customers, his daughter, who limps and never smiles, his wife, whose drawn face as she fills the magazine racks makes me think of the Danaides, those spiteful wives from mythology who murdered their husbands on their wedding night, and were condemned to spend eternity filling a bowl from jugs perfo
rated with holes, a futile undertaking I thought I might explore in a blog.
'Happy New Year.'
Mr Patel's head jiggled from side to side. 'Yes, another one.'
I pulled my hat over my ears: 'It's freezing out.'
'What do you expect, in England?'
He glanced at Mrs Patel as he spoke and she looked away. Was it her fault they were in London, not Mumbai?
'Happy New Year,' I said, but she didn't answer.
Tom tucked the newspaper under his arm and an old-fashioned bell rang as he held the door for me.
We crossed the road, skipping between the traffic. On the corner, a woman in a green sari studied a mannequin in a shop window dressed the same as herself, a scene that reminded me of a story by Ian McEwan. Next door, at Khan's, two boys, thin as reeds in crocheted hats, unlocked smart phones in a cat's cradle of wires and pulsing lights. A steel necklace of vehicles jangled by, filling the air with silver smoke, blaring horns, threats in so many tongues it made me feel as if we were on our way to Babel. It was noisy, chaotic, vibrant, and it occurred to me that where I lived now was more inspiring than where I had moved from, that I had been living like a genie in a bottle and now I was free. I grabbed Tom's arm and squeezed in beside him.
'Tell me, what is your deepest desire?' I intoned. 'Your wish is my command.'
He was reading the headlines as we walked along and stopped. He took my shoulders.
'That you're for real, Katie. That I'm not going to wake up all of a sudden and, poof!' he said. 'You're someone different.'
I had been light. Playful. He was deadly serious.
'I can try. But it's not easy.'
'Why?'
'To know who you are and just be that person.'
'I don't have that problem.'
A frown formed on his smooth brow and a lump grew in my chest.
'Then you're lucky,' I said. 'Sometimes, I'm moody and want to hide away from the world. Sometimes, I feel angry. Or empty. Sometimes, I'm writing and the words won't come. Sometimes I tell Mother I'm never going to speak to her again, then I call her next day.'
'And sometimes, you're happy, I assume?'
I pulled on his scarf and stared into his eyes. 'Yes. That's my default. But I get the blues, like everyone, viruses, crossed wires. It's normal.'
'Some girls think being moody is attractive. I don't.'
'Neither do I,' I said. 'And it's not attractive when men are moody, either.'
'You're right. I'm being a complete pain. It's hard to explain...'
'You can try.'
'No, it's nothing, really.' He trailed off and shrugged. 'I just think you're too good to be true.'
'Of course I am,' I said and the frown had gone.
We kissed. I had never liked kissing in the street, it seemed so crass, so cliché. It's what they do in advertising.
Two women in veils pushed by, seeing nothing, ignoring us. Tom tucked the paper in his coat pocket and put his arm around my shoulders. We continued around the corner where stacks of red suitcases stood in pyramids behind the 'SALE - Final Day' sign, and it struck me that it wasn't so much a ploy, a deception, as a philosophical statement, that any day is potentially the final day and you shouldn't put off doing what you want to do for some far away time. Buy those blood red cases, travel to Troy.
As we made our way down the steps into the car park, he started singing, his voice magnified over the low roof. The fact that he was singing, and quite loudly, seemed out of character, although, in truth, I had no way of knowing. We were in the time of mystery, the time when love is thin ice that you skate over half believing it is going to break at any second.
'You have a nice voice,' I said.
'Oh, no, I wasn't singing was I? It's a nervous habit.'
'Do I make you nervous?'
'Absolutely not,' he replied, and turned. 'Well, a little.'
'Good, I'm glad to hear it.'
I followed him into the shadows asking myself why I had said that; why, when you clearly like someone, there is an absurd inclination to show otherwise. We reveal false versions of ourselves, a protective veil we weave with words, then wonder why there are misunderstandings. He opened the door to an old Land Rover streaked in mud. I kissed his cheek and he kissed me on the mouth until I pulled away, breathless.
'I just love kissing in car parks,' I gasped.
'You do it often?'
'All the time. Car parks, the street, bus stations...'
'I don't believe you've ever been in a bus station.'
'In Paris once.'
'I knew it.'
We kissed again and he slapped my backside as I hauled myself up into the cab.
'You are so predictable, Tom Bridge,' I said and he laughed.
With the doors closed, I caught the familiar smell of stables and moist earth. My seat had split seams and bounced up and down as the engine fired. The gear box grated. He reversed, swept up the curving incline and lurched into the traffic as if casting off into an empty sea. He spotted an opening, accelerated and switched lanes. The car behind blasted its horn.
'You have driven before,' I remarked.
'It's a jungle out there,' he replied, foot hard on the gas. 'In Sri Lanka the roads turn to mud in the monsoon. It's like driving in blancmange.'
'Did you bring the car back with you?' I asked, and he laughed.
'No, no. Course not. It belongs on the farm. Tamsin and Joe drove up in two cars and left it so we had wheels.'
'That's kind.'
'They always think of those things. They're quite amazing.'
'Isn't everyone amazing, in their own way?'
'Not at all. But they are. They've just got it together, you know. Joe's American, an economist turned financial consultant...'
'One of those.'
'Can't live with them, can't put them all behind bars. He's got an office in the City and manages to spend most of his time working from home,' he said. 'Tamsin's a busy bee, baking and sewing, growing things. She started making ceramics, vases, coffee sets, all that sort of stuff, and it just took off.'
'I hate her already.'
He laughed again. 'They've got horses and dogs – and the children, of course.'
'Three children?'
'You are a spy. How did you know?'
'It's the fashion.'
'I don't think that's the reason...'
'It's quite an achievement.'
He glanced sideways for a moment. 'What, having children? It's not difficult.'
'Not having them. All the other things that go with having them.'
'Do you want children?'
I cleared mist from the side window and glanced out. 'Some time,' I said, but he can't have heard me.
'Sorry?'
The vehicle shuddered, the cogs grinding like an olive press. 'Yes, some time,' I repeated in a louder voice.
He shot by a line of buses. The road was clear for a moment. We followed the river; it was slate grey, the colour of an old pipe, the surface serrated by the wind. Flickers of light slid across my knees as we crossed Blackfriars Bridge. The Tate Modern came into view, the Oxo Tower and, in the distance, Shakespeare's Globe with its mock Tudor façade and the sudden recollection of Julian Rhodes in a red duffel coat and white fur hat like a pantomime woodcutter.
Julian had been anxious to meet the director of Much Ado About Nothing, a rising star straight out of Cambridge, not that we got to see him that autumn night when Julian had tickets. What I did remember was sitting on my hands with freezing feet uncertain whether I should identify with the witty, alluring Beatrice or the intense, yielding Hero, the two female leads. It was Shakespeare's genius that I found in myself a fusion of both these women. I could be shrewish and sharp-tongued as well as compliant. I took offence easily and was quick to lie back and submit. The play ends with two marriages, Beatrice with Benedick, Hero with her beloved Claudio, an uncommonly positive resolution for Shakespeare and for me, too, as it turned out.
'Have you b
een to the Globe? I asked.
'No, we must go,' he replied. 'That's what I miss most about London, the theatre, the galleries. I'm becoming a philistine.'
'Yes, that's what I thought,' I said and he laughed, a deep, rich laugh from the diaphragm. He crunched into second, accelerated, and eased back through the gear box.
The A3 took us through Kennington Park and Clapham Common. The sky was pale and watery, devoid of birds, the sun like a mourner at a funeral. I watched a jogger move through the cold trees, vanishing and emerging again. I thought about the Danaides. Mr Patel. Jo and Tamsin – baker, potter, mother. Tom was doing something he believed in. Something that mattered. Father the same. I was more like Mother, filling my days with the intangible, an occasional job waitressing, an odd sort of masochism.
'What's it like in Sri Lanka?'
'Incredible,' he said. 'I love it. The people are unspoiled. They're not like us. They're not grasping to have more than they've got.'
'You mean they're happier because they have less?'
'No. Not that...'
'People looking for work, single mums, teenagers on sink estates, they're not celebrating their poverty.'
'Now you sound like The Guardian.'
'No,' I said. 'I sound like me.'
'You're right, that was below the belt.' He paused. 'The thing is, we have higher expectations. Maybe too high. The banks, the corporations, the internet; we're one world when the developing world is still developing. We had a Parliament in England for three hundred years before women got the vote. They have these insane wars and expect the Afghans to create the same kind of democracy in five minutes. People I meet, every day, every single day, have integrity. An honesty. The Tamils aren't trying to be something, succeed, all the stuff that's important to us.'
'Are they really more honest? I doubt it. People are people. Good and bad...'
'It's different. It's hard to explain,' he broke off, glanced at me, then back at the road. 'If you book a sleeper on the train, you are expected to give the ticket clerk an extra couple of rupees. It's his job to sell the sleeper and the baksheesh is a sort of thank you. In the developing world where wages are low, you bribe people to do what they are actually paid to do. In our world, we bribe people to do what they are not supposed to do, what's illegal. It's a different mindset.'
Katie In Love: full length erotic romance novel Page 10
