by Freya North
‘That'll put me to sleep with a smile on my face,’ he grinned at her. She smiled back. She could see how sleepy the orgasm had left him yet it had energized her.
‘Did you know that the national average for sex amongst cohabiting couples is less than twice a week?’ Alice announced, the jollity of her voice, as much as her topic, causing Mark's eyes to spring open.
He had a head for figures. ‘Well, darling, we're above average, then.’
‘Did you know that 50 per cent of women own vibrators?’ Alice said, glancing at her chest of drawers, her heartbeat picking up a little.
‘They must be the ones who are restricted to the national average,’ Mark deduced.
Alice wasn't very good with figures and presumed Mark to have calculated some statistic, so she changed her tack. ‘Have you ever used a vibrator on a woman?’ she asked carefully.
He looked at her with a quick frown. ‘Why?’
She gave him a sly smile. ‘Just wondered.’ Again, he frowned. ‘You have!’ she exclaimed, triumphantly. ‘You have! Who? Tell me who!’
‘No,’ he said quite sternly, ‘I assure you I haven't.’ Because Alice believed him, she suddenly wasn't sure how to progress the conversation.
‘Anyway,’ Mark said, ‘aren't vibrators used in lieu of the real thing?’ Alice was about to suggest they needn't be restricted to such times and would you like me to show you mine; but she sensed that Mark was mid-sentence. ‘Or ridiculous props in dodgy vids,’ he remarked.
‘Have you ever filmed yourself?’ Alice probed with a mischievous glint to her voice and eye.
‘Christ, Alice!’ Mark exclaimed, looking at her as if she was suffering sudden manic insanity.
‘Might be fun?’ Alice prompted coyly.
‘Vibrators?’ Mark said. ‘Camcorders? Do I not satisfy you?’ He regarded her with a flicker of suspicion to his gaze. Actually, he looked hurt and it shocked her. ‘Do you find our sex life lacking?’ he asked.
‘No!’ she protested. ‘Not at all.’
‘Am I travelling too much? Is that what's brought on this talk of vibrators? Were you faking your orgasm just now?’
‘No,’ Alice said, ‘no. I was just— For an article. I was just editing out loud. Thinking.’
‘I can't see how a shuddering lump of rubber could possibly better what's great as it is,’ Mark said defensively. ‘Wouldn't it detract from the intensity and meaning of our lovemaking – cheapen it?’
Alice felt badly. She hadn't anticipated Mark's hurt. She'd thought, at most, he'd be endearingly embarrassed and grateful for her dominance and initiative. Or else regard her as harmlessly kinky without taking offence. ‘I was just editing an article,’ she lied again, ‘that's why I brought it up. That's all.’
He nodded. Full of surprises, his wife. He kissed her. ‘Goodnight, Alice,’ he said, ‘I love you.’
‘If you peel onions under a running tap, your eyes don't water.’
Saul watched Thea peeling onions under a running tap. ‘How do you want the aubergine?’ he asked. ‘Sliced or diced?’
‘Sliced, please.’
‘Under running water?’
‘No need. But spread them out then sprinkle salt over them to take away any bitterness.’
Saul sliced the aubergine. He reached up to take the salt from the cupboard. Thea sensed the closeness of his body just behind her. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow. Just a glance at his forearm, the soft hairs spattering down to his wrist, the delineation of muscle, shot desire through to her stomach. She could smell him and the pleasure of it flickered her eyes shut. Saul brushed his hand fleetingly between her shoulder blades and then set about salting his sliced aubergine. Pass the butter, please. Fingertips touched and electrical impulses charged. Eye contact. Adrenalin. You have flour on your cheek. I'll just brush it away for you. Thank you – here, let me feed you a fingerful of home-made mayonnaise. I need to reach up for that casserole dish. Yes, and when you do, I get to see your stomach lengthen and tauten and when you bring your arms down, your breasts swell.
‘Saul, can you pass me that tea towel? Thanks.’
‘Glass of wine? Red? Budge over – the corkscrew is in that drawer.’
Saul gently moved Thea to one side, his hands either side of her hips. She leant back lightly against his body and the proximity of his bulk sent a shiver of anticipatory pleasure through her. Suddenly Saul forgot about corkscrews. It seemed his reason for being there, behind Thea, was expressly to have his hands on her hips, his lips at the ultra-sensitive kiss of skin behind her ear. She pressed back against his chest and turned her cheek quickly; his lips leaving her neck and travelling over her jaw line to her mouth, her lips parted and her tongue tip was eager to dance with his. Behind her, rocking against her, her neck twisted round to reach his face, Saul gorged on her mouth. Something clanged down to the floor but they only half heard it. Thea whipped herself around so that she was facing him, her arms now thrown around his neck, her fingers enmeshed in his hair, urging his face against hers. He had a hand in the small of her back, his other clasping her right buttock. He pressed against her and she pulled herself up at him. The seam of her jeans was catching the swell of her sex and she parted her legs to find Saul's thigh for further friction. He backed her up against the fridge, his leg wedged between both of hers, his hands now in her hair, over her breasts, pulling and grabbing; the smattering of his evening bristles rasping against her cheeks, her chin, her neck.
Thea tried to unbutton Saul's shirt but it was taking too long so he pulled it over his head, undid his belt and ripped down his trousers to his knees. At the same time, Thea wriggled from her T-shirt and Saul pulled her bra straps down over her arms, not bothering with the clasp, not minding that it remained on, just as long as her tits were exposed for him to feel, to see and to suck. Thea's hand worked energetically over and under his boxer shorts, at last liberating his straining, leaping cock. They crumpled themselves down onto the rubber floor, romping and humping and snogging and sucking. Saul tugged Thea's jeans down, freeing her right leg. He moved her knickers to one side and took his mouth down to her. He could have spent hours feasting on her juice but tasting the rush of her moistness gave an urgency to the moment. With his trousers around his ankles, eyes closed, breathing fast and audible, Saul thrust into Thea and she ground against him. They humped and bucked and grunted and fucked, coming simultaneously; eyes scrunched shut, voices loud, faces racked into near-grimaces with the intensity of it all while their bodies spurted and sponged. And then they rolled apart, lay on the rubber floor, sticky and slippery and sweaty and satisfied, unable to speak while they let their heartbeats settle down.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Saul exclaimed on rolling towards Thea, his eyes slightly bloodshot. Just a few centimetres to the right of her face, a Sabatier knife lay glinting.
‘Christ,’ Thea agreed, her face flushed, a rash to one corner of her mouth. She reached her hand to Saul's face and gently flicked chopped parsley from his hair.
‘Ouch!’
‘Sorry, babe.’
‘I don't think the beads go there, Richard.’
‘I'm sure I saw it on some porn vid once. All right, how about here?’
‘Well, they fit – but I can't say my world is shuddering. Porn vid? What porn vid?’
‘How about if I try this with them? Hang on.’
‘Do what with them where?’
‘This! I'm doing it!’
‘Are you? Oh.’
‘Hang on, what about—’
‘Don't you dare!’
‘We're kind of running out of orifices, Sal.’
‘Do you think it's orifices or orificii?’
‘Wait a sec, let's try – this. Move that leg a bit. A bit more. There.’
‘Ouch. Give them here. You roll over.’
‘You must be bloody joking!’
‘Look, shall we just bin the beads and have a good old shag?’
‘Now you're talking.’
‘Happy anniversary, big boy.’
Adam
Seven months after Alice and Mark were married, after Saul and Thea had formed a couple, Adam came into the world. Until then, Alice had hailed her wedding as marking the zenith of her creative and organizational talent. But Adam surpassed all of that. Adam was Alice's baby. Her true love. Her life's work. Her future ambition. Her past achievement, her present success. Her key to larger offices two floors above.
Just before her first wedding anniversary, Alice won Launch of the Year for Adam at a prestigious industry awards ceremony. The trophy, a rather dramatic slash of perspex in a gravity-defying swoop into a lump of softwood, shared pride of shelf-space in her executive office two floors up, alongside a framed first issue of Adam – the one with Clint Eastwood on the cover.
‘Our project name was Quentin,’ Alice told a packed Grosvenor House ballroom at that awards night, ‘but as we kept having to stress “as in Tarantino, not Crisp” we needed something synonymous with Alpha Male. So our magazine became Adam. Biblical connotations end with the title – as we all know, publishing is no Garden of Eden, it's a men's mag jungle out there. However, with our spectacular circulation figures – and now with this major award – Adam reigns supreme.’
As she returned to her table, carried on a cushion of generous applause, the trophy pleasingly heavy, a reassuring ache in her arches from her Jimmy Choos, Alice believed the moment to mark the apotheosis of her career. Unfortunately, there was no Mark to the moment – he was in Hong Kong and she couldn't even phone him because of the time difference. With no husband to cuddle up to, Alice intended to get justifiably drunk on the company credit card and stay out ridiculously late.
‘Mr Mundy,’ she said whilst leaning around their round table topping up her team's glasses, ‘Mr Mundy, you are a dickhead.’
‘Thank you, Miss Heggarty,’ Saul acquiesced, chinking glasses and sharing a raised eyebrow with the fashion editor and advertising manager.
‘I mean,’ Alice qualified, ‘if you'd only come off your free-lance high horse and join the mag as staff, you'd be up there awarded Editor of the Year.’ The fashion editor and ad manager nodded earnestly.
‘That's kind of you,’ Saul said, pausing to applaud a woman on stage receiving her jag of perspex for being Specialist Editor of the Year, ‘but I've told you, I don't want to trade my freedom – my access to variety – for commuting, office politics and a lump of plastic.’
‘It's perspex!’ Alice retorted. ‘It's sculpture!’
‘Sure,’ said Saul, ‘but if I did Adam full-time I'd have to relinquish all my other work. And I'm a loyal bastard.’ He clapped with everyone though he had no idea of the award just won.
‘But me pay top dollar,’ Alice said in a peculiar Japanese accent.
‘Your dollars can't buy my desire for diversity, Alice,’ Saul said, tonguing the words theatrically. ‘I spend more time on Adam than on any of my other commitments. But I like my tutti-frutti life. I like dipping my finger in a fair few pies. ES mag versus the Observer, T3 versus GQ. MotorMonth versus Get Gadget. I need variety.’
Another award was won, this time by a former colleague of Alice's so she wolf-whistled through her fingers – a raucous skill amusingly at odds with her sartorial grace and sleek deportment. ‘Desire for diversity?’ she balked, turning again to Saul. ‘finger-dipping?’ Alice wagged her finger at him. ‘Your need for variety better not go beyond your professional life, Mr Mundy.’
Saul laughed. ‘I may flirt my working way around publishing circles – but at play I'm working on being all Thea's. In my mind, in my heart,’ he said, ‘I'm all hers.’
‘Promiscuous by pen is fine, promiscuous by penis – not!’ Alice declared, rather pleased with that and wondering if she could regurgitate it in print. Not for Adam, obviously. Lush, perhaps.
‘Has it escaped you that your first wedding anniversary also marks my first year with Thea?’ Saul said defensively.
They chinked glasses.
‘To Thea,’ Saul drank, ‘I couldn't love her more.’
‘I love my husband, I love my job, I love my posh house, I love the plants I can't pronounce in my garden,’ Alice proclaimed with regular sips, ‘I love Adam. I love Thea. I love you!’
‘This isn't the Oscars,’ Saul laughed.
‘It's the champagne,’ Alice rued, ‘it makes me emotional.’
‘Switch to water,’ Saul suggested.
‘Bugger off!’ Alice retorted, topping up everyone's glasses.
Mark flew back from the Far East and was immensely proud of Alice's Launch of the Year award, so much so that he persuaded her to bring it back home from the office at week-ends. Until one weekend when he was abroad on business and Alice didn't bother. His excessive travelling and deal-mongering paid dividends in the form of a large and timely bonus. He whisked Alice off to Prague for their first anniversary and replaced Alice's shopping-channel paste earrings with genuine diamonds. Only larger. And set in platinum. She'd bought him a papier mâché globe because the girls on Dream Weddings reminded her that the first anniversary is paper. Alice was overwhelmed by Mark's gift. In fact, she was a little taken aback.
‘I feel too young for such fuck-off rocks,’ she confided to Thea, ‘like I've sneaked my mum's for dressing up. Only my mum doesn't have diamonds even half this size. I have to keep them in a safe when I'm not wearing them or else they're not insured.’
‘They're stunning,’ Thea marvelled, privately thinking that, despite their dazzle, they were almost too big to be attractive or actually look real.
‘They're serious,’ Alice assessed. ‘The fun of the fakes was that they were cheap tat. A joke where I had the last laugh. Do you want them?’
‘Sure!’ Thea said. ‘Which ones?’ she added.
‘Where can I take you?’ Saul asked Thea, a few days before their first anniversary. ‘Cartier? TopShop?’
‘Memory Lane,’ Thea answered decisively.
‘Is that some spa in Barbados?’ Saul half joked.
‘Primrose Hill,’ Thea laughed. ‘I want to retrace our steps.’
‘Christ, you're soppy,’ Saul said.
‘I just want to walk hand in hand on Primrose Hill!’ Thea protested.
‘And if it's raining?’
‘We'll get wet.’
‘Can't I whisk you off to Babington House or somewhere, in a top-of-the-range Jag?’ Saul all but pleaded.
‘You don't have a car,’ Thea reminded him patiently, ‘you have a scooter.’
‘Actually, that's where you're wrong. I've been given said Jag for the weekend – to take for a spin and assess for MotorMonth.’
‘What colour is it?’ Thea asked, slightly tempted.
‘Racing green,’ Saul shrugged, ‘cream leather.’
‘But I want to go to Primrose Hill to our bench,’ Thea said with a petulant pout Saul couldn't resist.
So they compromised. They drove the mile or so to Primrose Hill and paid-and-displayed for two hours at great expense. At the top of the hill, Saul pulled out a roll of Refreshers and a family-size pack of Opal Fruits though it said Starburst on the packet. For Thea, the gesture was far more romantic than a country hideaway accessed by sports car. As an expression of her gratitude, she took off her jumper, and with no bra beneath her T-shirt, her nipples stood to Saul's attention, reminding him instantly of a year ago, when she was up there, all cold and hungover. He stroked her arms, giving her far stronger goose bumps than the November air.
Thea gazed at him, marvelling to herself that she hadn't noticed the slate-grey flecks to his irises. ‘I love you, Saul Mundy,’ she said.
‘Happy First Whatever,’ he grinned, ‘Happy Us.’
When did you stop qualifying your age with and a quarter, or and a half, or and three-quarters? Thea continued until she hit her teens. In her mid-twenties, Alice was still in the habit of saying ‘next year I'll be …’ which, according to the time of year, enabled her to add up to two years onto her current age. How
ever, the precise notch in the scale of their thirties soon seemed of little concern to others, it was the age of their relationships which generated interest now. Though both Alice and Thea had loved their first year with Mark and Saul, they were impatient for their first anniversaries to give their relationships status. As soon as Alice had passed the six-months mark, she took to saying she'd been married ‘almost a year’. Thea spoke in terms of seasons rather than months. She'd say she and Saul had been together ‘since last autumn’ – which, by the following summer, seemed a distant time indeed. Thea did theorize to herself that November probably qualified as winter, but last November – their November – really had been mild. On average. According to meteorologists. According to high-street retailers. Hadn't ornithologists been concerned that certain birds hadn't yet flown south?
