‘I don’t understand women sometimes,’ Michael said to Damian.
‘Me neither,’ said Damian.
‘Like the other night, I went to give her a hug and you know what she said?’
‘What?’
‘She said you just want me to service you.’
‘Service?’
‘As in petrol. She’s Esso, I’m the tank. I’m not a tank, I told her.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said you are. All men are tanks. You use women like fuel. You come home and expect me to be lying there waiting for you wearing Ann Summers underwear.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said that’s not true. I was just showing a little love and affection, remember that? And she goes yes, you want to be loved passionately your whole life, don’t you? And I said well yes, I do, what’s wrong with that?’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said I need to get real and life ain’t like that any more and it can’t run like that now. I don’t know what’s happened to her, man. It’s like she’s turning into a different person.’
‘Maybe it’s postnatal depression. Stephanie had that after Summer was born, it makes them crazy. You have to just go with it and be meek.’
‘Meek.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t wanna be meek.’
‘I know, but it’s the only way.’
‘God.’
‘So how did you leave it?’
‘She went to bed. Then I went to bed.’
‘The same bed?’
‘No. I slept on the sofa.’
There was a grave silence at the seriousness of this disclosure.
They were in the Satay Bar in Brixton on a Friday night having an after-work drink. They had initially met at the station and walked down to the Arcade to find a bar, but they were alarmed at the lack of black people in there, they were nowhere to be seen, it was as if they had been shooed away into small, dark mouse holes where the buildings met the streets, so Michael had said cha man, let’s go to the Satay. And here they were, a fuchsia glow at the glitzy end of Coldharbour Lane, opposite Kentucky, around the corner from the Ritzy cinema, meeting point for dancing at Plan B. It was one of the few places in Brixton that had triumphed against the bleaching conquest of gentrification. It was full of weaved women, dressed to the maximum in shimmer tops and cute jackets and silky dresses, their hair flowing smoothly from their fibbing scalps, their fingernails dynamic. This was a place you made an effort for, guys too, well-snipped, best denim, musculature optimised if applicable. Damian felt conspicuously lame and provincial in his bad suit. Michael was wearing a suit as well, but his was a better cut, a slick faint navy, more fitted, and there was only half of it, he was wearing jeans and a trendy belt, and his stomach didn’t bulge out against the belt the way Damian’s did. They had discussed before the wearing of the suit and how they felt about it. Damian could never seem to pull it off, the shoulders were always a bit too wide for him and the trousers too tight, and no matter where he’d bought the suit it always looked like it came from Blue Inc on Oxford Street. Although he claimed also to struggle, Michael did not share these failings. He power-dressed powerfully. He had swagger. For him it seemed effortless, like many other things.
In order to attend to the issue of his ailing mental health, as Stephanie thought of it, Damian was trying to spend more time in London, to reconnect with himself, and it was his idea to meet up tonight. What a relief it was to walk along Brixton Road in the evening hubbub and to be sitting here now in these cosy leather armchairs next to the bar with a good friend and a bowl of wasabi nuts and Roy Ayers playing from the speakers. It made him yearn again for his former life, and the dangerous thing was that the feasibility of returning to that life seemed less impossible, sitting here with Michael, than it ever did in Dorking. He could get a studio flat somewhere, he was thinking, it wouldn’t have to be anything fancy just a roof over his head, he could visit Stephanie and the children at weekends, finish his novel, surely in London he would finish it, maybe even get a publishing deal. The idea of it was making him sweat, as was the bad pleasure he was feeling at Michael pouring out his heart to him like this. All was not well in M&M paradise. He was enjoying every word.
‘It’s oppressing me now, this relationship,’ Michael was saying. He was on his second whiskey. ‘Sometimes I feel like walking out, like not going home after work, just going somewhere else instead.’
‘Like where?’
‘I don’t know, to a hotel, a club, just somewhere.’
‘But that’s the thing,’ Damian said. ‘There isn’t anywhere. It’s a fantasy.’ At least this was the theory he tried to live by.
‘Is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘You know the one thing that stops me from leaving?’ Michael said. ‘The kids. I wanna be with my kids, man. I wanna be there when they wake up. I wanna smell their morning breath.’
‘Yeah, I know. It’s all about the kids.’
‘But it shouldn’t be all about the kids. I don’t want to live like that either.’
Melissa did have a point, Damian thought, about Michael needing to get real. Marriage, it was all about the kids. He himself had accepted this a long time ago, that children claim the love, they change it, they drink it, they offer it back to you in a sticky cup and it never quite tastes the same. The romantic love from which they sprang becomes an old dishevelled garden visited on rare occasions fuelled by wine and spurts of spontaneity, and the bigger, family love is where the bloom and freshness lie. But Michael and Melissa were not married. That was the difference. They had not crossed that line, and Michael could keep on walking without paper, and he could look around at all these fit, shimmering women – as he was now, intermittently, particularly at the one on the table over there in the ivory dress who was looking back at him – and wonder at other futures, more experience, more pleasure. Damian did not dare look at them. If he looked at them, really looked at them, he would be faced with the ugly and excruciating abstinence of his own life.
Michael turned from the honeys and stared into his drink with deepening bleakness. He wanted Melissa, not them. But he didn’t know how to get to Melissa any more. He was stuck. It was hard to stay and hard to go.
‘What do you do,’ he said, ‘when you reach a point where you know it’s just not going to work out with someone? It’s never going to be good again. What do you do, huh? You have to make a decision, right? You accept unhappiness, or you do something different. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.’ He moved his drink to the side of the table and drew a square with his finger. ‘There’s a window. This is the window. Everyone, at some point in their lives, is faced with this window, and in the window you can choose not to become what you seem to be becoming. You can take a leap, do something off the wall, something reckless. It’s your last chance, and most people miss it. They just walk past it. Then one day it closes, and once it’s closed it’s closed for ever. This moment right here with Melissa, this is my window. I can either risk it and jump, or stay where I am.’
‘But could you jump?’ Damian said. ‘Do you have the courage to jump?’
Michael pondered, sighed. ‘I’m such a coward.’
They drank from their glasses, both looking through this metaphorical window, which for Damian was closed (or was it?) and for Michael was still open.
‘When are you two gonna get married? This long engagement is one long engagement.’
It had been announced in the closing embers of the last century. There had been the meeting of respective families, the gathering of friends, champagne, cashew nuts, then nothing. The century turned. Babies, a house. What were they waiting for? They should just damn well get married and put the nail in the coffin like everybody else.
‘I think we’ve missed that boat,’ Michael said.
‘It’s never too late.’
‘Ain’t gonna happen.’
‘Have you ever thought that might be half your problem?’ Damian said, energised, calling on a line of reasoning he employed often with some doubt. ‘That you haven’t taken that step together? That final step? You haven’t fully committed. The grass on the other side is still available to you. You think it’s greener but it’s not. You’re torturing yourselves, man. Just close the door, seal it shut, and get on with your lives. Deal with what you’ve got, innit.’
‘That sounds like a really dry reason to get married,’ Michael said, at which point Damian felt belittled and stripped of the protection of his reasoning and a bit irritated, and wanted to do something mildly violent like poke him in the eye.
‘Do you and Stephanie ever fight?’
‘Yep.’
‘I can’t imagine you fighting.’
‘We do it by not talking.’
Which ranks high on the list of dangerous domestics, close to the exit door. When you are only tolerating each other, avoiding each other, becoming to one another mist, vapour, ether. Damian went to work. Stephanie took the kids to school and went to work. In the evenings they put the children to bed and did their own thing. All was not well in D&S land either, though Damian was less open about it, there seemed more at stake. He was not exactly contemplating divorce, but last week while Stephanie was putting the colander in the kitchen cupboard and he saw her bending down like that with her shoulders all thrown into it and the side of her face flushed from the kitchen heat, then standing up and leaning on the edge of the counter, just at that moment he had felt like being perfectly and devastatingly honest and saying, ‘I can no longer live this life and I am going to go and save myself.’ But of course he didn’t. He couldn’t. The evening passed, the next day came, and things went on as normal. If you entertain and act on every impulse that passes through your mind, went his line of reasoning, you will find yourself in chaos. Hold on to the things that bind you. The self is a doomed and wayward creature. It can be neglected and this will not kill you, at least not in every way.
Stephanie had said to Damian the night before last, ‘Get a therapist. That’s what people do when they’re depressed. It’s not something to be ashamed of.’
And Damian had said, ‘I’m not depressed.’
‘Oh really,’ Stephanie drawled with her now frequent sarcasm. ‘Well, I beg to differ.’
Her well of comfort and support was running out. Exhausted were the don’t-shut-me-outs and I’m-here-if-you-want-to-talks and blah blah blahs. Wrung out and stiff were the soothing cloths of cool water to mop his brow through this momentous time of bereavement and adult orphanness. It was time for psychology, for she herself was not adequately trained, and there was only so much a wife could do to help when her husband had turned into a ghost, when he spent entire evenings sitting at the computer looking at random websites or whatever he was doing. Sometimes with horses that won’t drink you have to just drag them to the water and dunk their face in it. Forget about their feelings.
‘I have three children, Damian,’ she had said, ‘not four. Please, for all our sakes, get some help.’
With that she had removed herself from the dining room, leaving behind on the table some leaflets for local counselling services that she’d picked up. Since then she had practically ignored him, and he had ignored the leaflets, putting them on the shelf where the maps and telephone directories were kept. He couldn’t imagine sitting in front of some nodding stranger in a little room with a plant and a box of tissues and unveiling his heart. It was not in his make-up. His father would never have done such a thing. He would see it as self-pitying and white. Did the slaves have access to therapy? Were they treated for post-traumatic stress disorder? No, Laurence would opine. They got on with it and mustered strength and sang songs and drew on their spirits, and they had a whole lot more to complain about than one measly little family bereavement. They were being bereaved every day, every hour, every minute, en masse, their throats cut, their sweethearts raped, their brothers whipped, their fathers lynched. Who are you to complain?
Two weeks ago, Damian had gone to his father’s flat in Stockwell to clear out the last of his belongings. The books, the African carvings, the crocodile skin shoes were now in boxes in the garage at home waiting to be sorted through. He wasn’t sure what to do with it all, and its presence there was having the effect of magnifying the feeling that he was being haunted. He’d been having absurd dreams. He’d dreamt that he was in an airport and he had to catch a plane and he was running but his suitcase was too heavy and when he opened it he found his father inside but he was a boy instead of a man. There was an unnerving instant last week when Summer, who bore a striking resemblance to Laurence, had looked at him in a particular way, and it had seemed exactly as if Laurence had come to say hello to him in her face. And then just now, on the walk from the Arcade to the Satay Bar, crossing Railton Road with Michael, a chilling moment of déjà vu. On that same street, about a year ago, he had been walking towards Brixton station after a meeting, when he had seen coming towards him a shabby old man in dirty jeans and a threadbare denim jacket, his hair wild and matted, his face long and haggard, a hopeless, wayward gait, almost like a drunk. It was Laurence. He hadn’t recognised him at first, his own father. When he did recognise him he was shocked and embarrassed, for them both. They shook hands. They stood there for a while trying to have a conversation but it was stilted, and after a few minutes Laurence had walked on. Watching him go, Damian’s strongest thought was that he would never, ever end up like that. He would never become a penniless, staggering drifter of a man whose own son did not recognise him. It occurred to him now that Laurence must have already been ill on that day. It was only in the last six months of his life that they had seen each other more often.
‘My bad,’ Michael said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Been meaning to ask you, how you getting on without your old man?’
Damian nodded, fake lighthearted. ‘I’m getting through.’
The spectre of Stephanie rose before him, with her therapy leaflets.
‘You miss him?’
‘Not much. I guess. A little. Not really, though.’
‘Look, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, bro. I get it.’
Damian did think about telling him about the déjà vu moment back there, but he was ashamed. Michael wouldn’t understand. He came from a happy family where the mother and father were eternally in love and the children were adored and did not call their parents by their first names. Instead he went to get more drinks, after which they talked of other things, eventually returning to the problems with Melissa. It was the pressing issue, and Damian had always been more the listener in their friendship. It also made him feel better about the recent ‘feelings’ he’d been having, which sitting here drinking with Michael he could see were off-key.
‘What you need is a date,’ he said. ‘When was the last time you went out alone together?’
‘Last month some time,’ Michael said, and just then, as though conjured by the memory of it, Bruce Wiley stopped by their table, a largeness of belly and scruffy jeans, beer in hand. He was with one of his models.
‘What’s up, Mike,’ he said, clamping his shoulder in greeting before giving dap.
‘Hey, big man, you just crossed my mind. That was a bashment to remember,’ Michael said.
Damian and Bruce shook hands as well, having not seen each other in years. ‘And where’s the mighty Melissa tonight?’ asked Bruce. ‘Friday night is date night in Obama custom, you know. I hope she’s not at home all by herself.’
‘He brings the message,’ Damian said. ‘You see? Date night.’
‘We’re not the Obamas,’ Michael said when Bruce had moved on, running into someone else he knew, which was practically the whole bar.
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s the same principle.’
‘I don’t like booty schedules, they don’t work. It kills the spontaneity. I prefer things ital.’
‘Who’s calling it a booty schedule? It’s just a date,’ said Damian. ‘Look, babies throw a spanner in the works. Take her out, that’s all. Go out dancing or to dinner or something. Make her happy.’
‘Oh, that’s not easy, to make a woman happy,’ Michael laughed. ‘Men shouldn’t be held responsible for that.’
‘True,’ Damian was laughing too. ‘But you’ve got to try at least. Look what’s at stake.’
Michael thought about it, downing his drink. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, and looked around again at all the honeys. None of them compared.
‘We’ve got to do something, I guess. She’s the love of my life.’
‘OK. I need tops, skirts, trousers and shoes,’ Hazel said.
‘I need a red dress. I don’t have a red dress. I’m trying to be more feminine.’
‘You always say that.’
‘I know, and I always end up buying more jeans. Don’t let me.’
‘OK. Where do you usually get your jeans from, by the way? I like your jeans.’
‘Topshop.’
‘Oh theirs never fit me, I’m too fat. They don’t make them for women with hips.’
‘You’re not fat,’ Melissa said. ‘You’re Amazonian.’
Having met at Topshop as planned, they were walking now through the central avenue on the ground floor of Selfridges that led from perfumery to the clothing concessions. Why wade and trawl through the Oxford Street hoi polloi, tramping from shop to shop, when you can come here, where everything resides? This was Hazel’s view, lover of the department store, frequenter also of John Lewis and House of Fraser. Melissa liked the tramping, albeit less on a Saturday when you could walk only in slow motion – concessions were only highlights, you missed stuff. Ultimately she preferred a more bohemian kind of shopping experience like Portobello or Camden, where from the cubic shade of a market stall a face might look out, lined and wanting, as you touch earrings, pendants, fabrics, and a little hut nearby might sell falafel or mulled wine and you could drift along drinking it in the cold air, in the strange colourings of light, the charisma of the cobblestones, the dirty sheen of the canal. Department stores had no personality and they lacked fresh air. And Selfridges was a beast of a department store, a glittering homage to materialism, the shop assistants were like overseers, standing around with their open pots of cream and eau de toilettes, their faces extreme with paint, all around them a dizzying profusion of objects and escalators and wild electricity. High and multiple-ceilinged as it was, it was more of a subterranean experience.
It had been some time since Melissa had been shopping for clothes, not since buying maternity wear. Everything looked over-bright or over-tight, too frilly, clothes for clowns and nubile nymphs, tacky colours, strange concoctions of garments. It was making her feel weary, not excited like it always had. ‘Look at all this stuff,’ she said.
But Hazel was already delving. ‘I love this place.’ She picked up something bright green made of lace with holes in it.
‘I don’t even know what that is.’
‘It’s a dress.’
‘Wow.’ Melissa noticed a grey skirt and held it against her. ‘Hm. Not sure how I feel about pleats.’
‘Pleats are for schoolgirls and the over-fifties. You told me that,’ Hazel said.
‘Did I?’
They trailed the cotton. They perused the chiffons, silks and satins, meanwhile chatting.
‘I must come over and see him soon.’ Hazel was talking about Blake. ‘I’m such a bad godmother. I did warn you, didn’t I? Why do you have to live so far?’
‘It’s not that far. Just go to London Bridge and get a train.’
‘But a train! An actual train!’
Hazel was one of those Londoners who perceived the south as another state. West was best. The river was the end. Beyond it was no-man’s land, the streets were alien, the skies were darker, the people were base. She did not understand Melissa’s relocation to a random road in such a southernmost enclave, far away from friends, family and civilisation. She herself lived in Hammersmith. Oxford Street was a short bus ride away, or she could take the tube. She only ever took trains to places like Margate, to the provinces.
‘You westerners, you get a nosebleed if you cross the river, it’s pathetic,’ Melissa said.
‘I seem to remember you were the same once.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve evolved. Actually, I’m getting used to the train thing. It’s good reading time.’
‘If you say so,’ Hazel snorted. ‘What are you reading? I need some recommendations.’
‘I’m trying to read Middlemarch but I’m thinking about giving up. Hemingway as always, some of his stories. And I just read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s good but very depressing, end of the world kind of thing.’
‘I hate those kinds of books.’
They were long since agreed that Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex was one of the best books ever. Melissa liked The Corrections but Hazel didn’t so much, she had found it wayward and self-indulgent. She was a fan of The Kite Runner, which Melissa hadn’t read yet. As for the Chekhovs, Delmore Schwartzes, Grace Paleys and the more obscure books Melissa liked to read, Hazel didn’t have time for it.
She was Melissa’s oldest, boldest friend. They had gone to the same primary school. Hazel worked in advertising. She had a wide and glamorous smile behind which was an oft-foul tongue, and long, bouncing, half-French, half-Ghanaian curls falling down her back, the most beautiful, the most envied of their schoolgirl pack, the one the boys always went for first and then made do with a lesser girl if she was already taken. She was gutsy, self-actualised and tactile. Today she was wearing a clinging blue wool dress, caramel eye shadow and high-heeled sock boots. And a red coat. She was that type. She twinkled.
At the shoe section she sat down to try on a pair of pink wedges but didn’t like the way they looked in the mirror. She put them back and they walked on, passing boiler suits, jeggings, a blind man tapping his stick with a young Asian woman holding his arm, two people with buggies, wide walking. The music coming from the speakers was a Mariah Carey remix. Melissa recommended another book, which Hazel asked her to put aside for her. ‘I’ll get it when I come and see Blake.’
‘You don’t have to come and see him, you know. I’m always reminding him that you love him. Your main duty as a godparent is that you take him in if something tragic happens to me and Michael – that’s if I don’t kill him first.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Hazel said.
‘I’m not being silly.’
‘You love him. He’s your beau.’
Melissa had already talked about the current hostilities at Paradise, the tiffs, the time Michael neglected to pack a night bag for Blake when they were visiting his parents, the time he forgot to change his nappy before going to the park, because he didn’t think of things like that, men just don’t think of things like that, meanwhile Hazel’s eyes had started to glaze over and Melissa, noticing, quickly fell silent, ashamed. Hazel put the arguing down to common post-baby disruption. It would settle down. They just had to keep the peace and enjoy Blake.
‘Come on, it can’t be that bad. You and Michael are solid.’
‘Right now there is no me and Michael. It doesn’t flow any more. It’s too much like hard work.’
‘Wait,’ Hazel paused in her perusing, ‘you’re not thinking of splitting up with him, are you?’
‘Um, no … kind of … I’m not sure. In a way it feels like it’s happening all by itself, like we could break up any minute.’
‘But, you’re M&M. I mean, you’re chocolate. You can’t split up.’ Hazel had stopped shopping completely now and there was a look of dismay and urgency on her face. ‘If you and Michael broke up I’d be devastated. You’re my favourite couple. You still love him, don’t you? Tell me you still love him.’
Melissa didn’t answer the question. ‘Chocolate can break, actually,’ she said instead. ‘It crumbles, when you break it into pieces.’
‘Not M&Ms. It’s really hard to break an M&M in half.’
They both laughed. ‘Even if I do love him,’ Melissa said, ‘I don’t think it’s enough.’
‘Of course it is. Now you’re just basically being cynical.’
Hazel was disturbed, though, by the look of hopelessness on Melissa’s face, an absolute lack of faith. Grasping the severity of the situation, she pictured Ria and Blake without their father, which to her was a terrible thing, a sad and tragic thing. ‘The children!’ she said. ‘What about the children?’
Melissa had started looking through a rack of tops in French Connection, not really seeing anything, not concentrating. When she thought about the children she entered the realm of the caves. There were no answers. There was only darkness and fuzz, a sense of groping and things happening as they happened. ‘They’ll be fine,’ she said distantly. ‘As long as they still see both of us, they’ll be OK. There are other ways of bringing up kids than the nuclear family, you know. Why are we even talking about this anyway? I haven’t said we’re definitely splitting up.’
‘You’re not splitting up.’ Hazel put her arm through Melissa’s quite firmly and they walked on. ‘You and Michael are perfect for each other. You’re just not seeing straight. Do you really want to be a single mother?’
‘What’s so wrong with being single? I’d love to be single.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘I would.’
‘You think you would but you wouldn’t. It gets lonely being single. Believe me, I know. You’re lucky to have what you’ve got, a good man who adores you. Michael’s good for you. He’s a catch. He’s something to be celebrated. You know what? Your life really started coming together when you met him. Remember you were living in that horrible room in Kensal Rise?’
‘Yeah, and?’
‘And you had to share a bathroom with that horrible girl? And there was that nasty fuckhead upstairs who was threatening you? What was his name again?’
‘Victor?’
‘Yeah, him.’
‘What about him?’
‘Don’t you remember the way Michael looked out for you? That day he was banging on your ceiling and shouting at you and Michael went up and dealt with him? He protected you. He defended you.’
‘I defended myself. I went up there too, remember. Michael didn’t need to be there. Anyway, the place wasn’t that bad. My room was nice.’
‘If it wasn’t for Michael you’d probably still be there.’
‘No I wouldn’t.’
‘You could be.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Where would you be, then?’
‘That’s what I’m always asking myself, where would I be? Maybe I’d be somewhere different. Maybe I’d be living in Brazil or Peru or the Caribbean, who knows? Maybe he’s holding me back. There might be another way, another course I’m being kept from. If things hadn’t happened the way they did they would’ve happened a different way, and that way might have been —’ Melissa’s phone started ringing. She found it in her bag and answered it, ‘Hello?’
‘Hi!’ said a sprightly voice. ‘Am I speaking to Melissa Pitt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hi! It’s Chun Song Li from Baby Beat. How are you today?!’
‘Fine.’ Melissa rolled her eyes at Hazel, who in turn was rolling her eyes at what hippie-shit confused rubbish she had just been spouting and now returned to perusing the merchandise.
‘I was calling to see if you’re ready to sign up for ten weeks, that’s ten for the price of nine! Remember the special offer? And I can also —’
‘I’m shopping, can I call you back?’ Melissa said.
‘OK! That’s fine! There’s only three days left to take advantage of the revised special offer, though! I’ll wait to hear from you!’
‘OK, thanks, bye.’
‘Bye!’
‘God, that woman is so pushy! I hate it when people are pushy, it has the opposite effect. Is there no escape from capitalism, from everyone trying to make a buck?’
‘Who was it?’ Hazel was assessing a two-tone blue coat against herself.
‘Oh, just baby stuff. What was I saying?’
‘You were saying that if it wasn’t for your gorgeous man you’d be living in Peru and there’s not only one way of living life and things might have happened a different way if they hadn’t happened the way they happened, or something like that. Do you know you seem to have this ridiculous fixation with being strong and alone and unconventional and – what’s the word? – resistant. Like, you can’t just live your life the way other people do. What is that? You’re dog-headed, that’s what you are. It’s gonna mess you up. Lots of women would love to be in your position. What do you think of this coat?’
‘Hm, don’t know, I think it would hang cheaply …’
‘Hm.’ Hazel put it back. ‘Do you know what you and Michael need?’
‘What?’
‘You need to spice things up a bit. I bet you haven’t fucked in ages, have you? Look, here’s one for you.’ She picked up a red dress, tight, bulge-clutchy, low at the bust. ‘How about this?’
‘It’s slutty.’
‘It’s sexy!’
‘It costs sixty-five pounds.’
‘Yes, that’s cheap, for a whole dress? God, the fashion industry is so wasted on you. Try it on, go on. Sometimes the best garms are the ones you’d never pick out yourself.’
‘Well, I’d definitely never have picked that one out. OK, I’ll try it on. Are we going to MAC? I need powder.’
They went to the changing room, Melissa with the red dress and a couple of tops, Hazel with a mound of skirts, trousers and blouses, several of which she bought. Melissa bought the dress, commanded by Hazel (‘Michael will love you in it, he’ll eat you up’), and afterwards they went to MAC, which was situated by the main entrance in the make-up hall. It was guarded by a gang of beautified creatures in black clothes listening to dance music, the MAC ladies. They wore their make-up pouches slung on belts around their hips, from which they flipped out eye pencils, mascaras and colours to paint the faces of the weak. They were deliverers of blue, scientists of pink. They knew the secrets to lifting a dull skin and mattifying a stubborn shine. They had understanding browns, many shades of it, placing them above those brands who allowed only a few dark tones to be flawless. At the entrance to the enclosure was a podium above which a muralled face with cascading hair waited with pen and paper, making appointments for makeovers. Her eyes were meticulously designed, broad streaks of shadow, temple-bound, a layer of silver studs along a light-blue background, and beneath this, cool green eyes staring nonchalantly out, acknowledging their hipness, their futurism. Around her women lingered by the cabinets, trying out the glosses and putting lipstick on their hands, looking for better versions of themselves, or they sat on high stools with their eyes closed and their faces lifted to the power of the lady, hoping for transformation.
Among the staff were two gay men in tight jeans and leather waistcoats, likewise heavily made up. ‘You OK there, babe?’ one said to Melissa, who was studying the pressed powders.
‘Do you have NC45?’
‘We’re out of that one, sorry babe. Do you want to try something similar? We’ve got a new range come out. Gives more coverage.’ He slipped a compact out of one of the revolving display cabinets and opened it. Melissa said she’d try it and her name was added to the list. A few minutes later she was sitting on a high stool while he puffed at her face with a thick brush.
‘Oh that goes nice on you.’ He dabbed and flicked with his brush some more. ‘Have a look,’ and handed her a mirror. She was lightly almond, perky.
‘Looks nice,’ Hazel said.
‘Isn’t it too dark?’
‘No! Gives you a glow. You’re just not used to it. That’s the mistake a lot of people make with make-up. They see it and think too light too dark too red too yellow or whatever, cos they’re so used to what they see in the mirror. But what you see in the mirror is only like a blank sheet of paper, right? It’s meant for colouring in.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I was basically just saying,’ Hazel said. ‘I think you should get it.’
‘OK, I will.’
MAC ran a special offer of a free lipstick if you returned six empty compact cases, which Melissa loaded out of her bag.
‘Babe, I don’t mean to be rude but your eyebrows need doing, love.’
‘Yeah, I’m always going on at her about her eyebrows.’
‘Changes your face. It does.’
‘I know, I haven’t had time to get them threaded lately …’
‘Got to keep yourself beautiful. You’ve got a lovely face, darling. Don’t waste it.’
‘See,’ Hazel said as they walked away, linking Melissa’s arm, though she was taller so Melissa changed it round and linked hers instead. ‘Don’t you feel like a new woman? You’ve got a red dress, a new face, new lipstick – time to get it on. I promise you, all you and Michael need is some time alone together and you’ll be sweet. Get a babysitter for a night. I’ll come over and babysit if you like.’
‘What? You? Will cross the river? To babysit?’
‘Of course I will, what do you take me for? I can see when two people need some emergency loving. You and Michael are not going to break up. I won’t let it happen. I mean, if you two broke up I’d stop believing in love! I’d stop believing there was hope for any of us!’
‘OK, OK, calm down,’ Melissa laughed, out through the revolving doors with their bags, out from the subterranean whirl and back into the weather, cool air on their faces, into the pigeon-stepping crowd. ‘You don’t need to worry, though. You’ve always got men on your heels. Tell me about your love life. What’s happening, anything interesting?’
Hazel, going on thirty-seven, had for some time been on the lookout for ‘the man’. She did believe that there was one man, a right man, of the fairy tales, and she wanted to find him and marry him and buy a house and have babies who would run around the garden wearing nappies that she couldn’t be bothered to change. She wanted to go the traditional route, but she was beginning to worry that it might never happen.
‘There has been a development, actually,’ she said.
‘Really? Oooh.’
His name was Pete. He was Greek–Moroccan via Harrow. They met at the milk-and-sugar stand in Starbucks, she putting chocolate on her cappuccino, he putting cinnamon on his latte, his shoulder half a foot higher than her shoulder, pleasingly, as she liked it, possible prince material, they lingered, a lot of chocolate and a lot of cinnamon, drew it out with more sugar, by the time they looked at each other side-on these were two very sweet beverages, he smiled, she smiled, and they had a little conversation about how they liked their beverages, and then they were sitting at a table by the window talking and getting to know each other. He was a travel consultant and liked clubbing and going to the gym. He ticked all the boxes, muscles in the forearms, apparently intelligent, sense of humour, does not live with his mum, has no children – but Hazel was not going to get ahead of herself.
‘You don’t meet the man of your dreams in Starbucks,’ Melissa said.
‘Well that’s what I’m thinking, innit, it’s like meeting someone in a club or something. But you never know. I’m leaving it to the stars. Right now we’re just hanging out. It’s only been two months. He’s gorgeous, though. He is gorgeous. He looks like Al Pacino.’
‘Let’s see.’ Hazel handed over her phone. He did look a bit like Al Pacino. ‘So have you slept with him yet?’
‘What do you think, it’s been two months, of course I have. Can’t you see the bags under my eyes? We’re at it like rabbits. He is wild, you know, even by my standards, but he’s sensitive with it. Best cunnilingus this side of Kentucky. That boy knows exactly where to flick me.’
‘Do you mind, I’m trying to eat my edamame beans!’ Melissa spluttered.
They were now sitting across from each other in Wagamama waiting for their mains.
‘You asked.’
‘He sounds almost too good to be true. Maybe you do meet the man of your dreams in Starbucks.’
‘We should have a foursome some time – you, me, Michael and Pete.’
‘What kind of foursome?’
‘Not that kind of foursome,’ they were both laughing, ‘God, some people just have sex on the brain! You know I wouldn’t be able to share you with anyone else.’
Despite their joking, Melissa was remembering with nostalgia those exact same times of helpless, compulsive honeymoon love with Michael and feeling jealous. A foursome was a terrible idea. When new couples get together with old couples there is only unhappiness for the latter, watching the lovebirds glow at each other and gaze at each other and lock hands uncontrollably under the table. She mumbled something vague, avoiding the suggestion.
Hazel noted her noncommittal tone. ‘But you and Michael have your twosome first. Seeing as we’re on the subject, when exactly was the last time you fucked?’
‘Do you have to be so crass?’
‘I’m serious, man, this is important. If you stop having sex it just dies. It’s the life force. It’s crucial, you’ve just got to do it. Tell me, when?’
‘I don’t know, months. We’re basically flatmates.’
‘Oh no. Me and Oli were like that in the end, it’s horrible.’
‘There’s no time, though. I can’t be all the things my life is asking me to be. It’s too much.’ Melissa was hiding it but she was close to tears.
‘But he’s a man, Lis. He needs it. You’ve got to make time for him, otherwise you’ll lose him.’
‘I don’t want to make time. The little time there is left I want for me, not him. I don’t want to be answerable to someone’s sex drive.’
Hazel was appalled. ‘Jesus, listen to yourself. You’re disturbing me now. Answerable? Is that how you see it?’
‘Yes, frankly. We’re not lovebirds any more like you and Starbucks. It’s been thirteen years. How many times can you keep having sex with the same person without it becoming vapid?’
‘What does vapid mean?’
‘Kind of dull and flat.’
‘Why don’t you try something different, then?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, use your imagination!’ Their food arrived. Melissa was having ramen and Hazel was having vermicelli. ‘All I know is that you’ve got to make love. Men need to feel wanted. So much can go wrong when they don’t feel desired. Instead of thinking of it as something you have to do, for him, make it for you, know what I mean? It’s a two-way thing.’
‘Hm,’ Melissa said, unconvinced.
‘Wear that red dress. Go on, get penetrated. Give him blowjobs. Everything will be fine.’
‘You’re so disgusting.’
‘You know you want to,’ said Hazel, and they tucked into their noodles.
Thus cajoled, thus alerted to the imperatives of their partnership, their perfection, their chocolateness, Melissa and Michael went out on a date. Not to a party, no fraternising with other people and forgetting about each other. Just the two of them, a nice quiet dinner in a good restaurant, some wine, some music, easy adult conversation, perhaps followed by a walk hand in hand in the romantic winter’s night, an evening of remembering each other and feeling like a couple again, of laughing together, flirting, a tipsy, canoodly ride back home in a cab afterwards, then rounding off with some steamy, redemptive copulation.
That was the plan. In preparation, for they had to look their best, dress up for each other, Melissa went to the mall in Bromley to get her eyebrows threaded. There was a pod there where three Nepalese women worked all day holding the string between their teeth. They hewed at her brazen follicles, snipped at stray hairs, eventually achieving a sharp, thinned-down brow which always made her look alarmed for a couple of days until it softened. While she was there she also bought some red high heels to go with the dress, the kind of shoes Hazel might wear, in fact it was as if she had spotted them with Hazel’s eyes. Meanwhile Michael attended to his own follicles, setting his clippers to a close grade 1 and shaving three weeks of growth off his scalp. It always gave him a cleaner, chiselled look, and there was that promising moment when Melissa was finishing it off for him, as was their custom, gliding up with the blade from his neck to his crown, neatening the edges, rubbing at the stubborn patches, she had to stand very close to him in order to do this, between his knees, her arms raised over him, and already they were reminded of how perfectly her smallness slotted into his largeness, his length, his octopus arms. He couldn’t help but stroke lightly down the backs of her legs as she stood there, a blush of Saturday afternoon sun coming in from the window twins. It was a warm, natural moment. So there was hope. They could return. Perhaps it really was this easy.
Hazel arrived in a blaze of southward trauma. ‘God, my satnav wouldn’t work. It just died on me, I had to read a map! I ended up taking Vauxhall Bridge instead of Battersea. Didn’t know where I was. You need to come back to civilisation, man. Wow, you two look be-auu-tiful.’
They were pictures of themselves. Oiled, snipped and perfumed, Melissa in the new lipstick and powder, the dress and shoes, darker and taller than she knew herself to be, and Michael also wearing red, a new V-neck sweater beneath the chestnut leather jacket. They were matching.
‘I don’t know why Mummy and Daddy have to go out tonight,’ Ria said. ‘Why can’t you just stay in and have a nice time?’ She hated it when the two of them were leaving her for some private adventure. It made her feel bereft, like the world was dissolving.
‘Sometimes,’ Hazel said, ‘adults need time on their own, and anyway you’ve got me to hang out with now. What shall we do?’
Make cakes, watch TV, have a disco, eat cakes, make a house, have some hot chocolate, shrink, not have a bath. These were just some of the things. Ria stood in the doorway watching them go, wearing her one white glove and her strange nightwear of cotton strap dress on top of fleece pyjama suit. She watched them right up until they turned the corner into the high street and all that was left to see was the plane tree leaning out into the road and the moon behind it. Then she went back inside.
Open air! Childlessness! Pramlessness! And carlessness. They walked. It was a windy night. That was the first thing. It was the kind of wind that blew at you from all directions so that whichever way you went your hair still got trashed. Melissa got frizzy up the high street while Michael was trying to hold her hand, down the slope they went to the station to take the train to Crystal Palace, where they were going to have dinner. Michael had booked a table. They were going to a secret gig afterwards as well, which Melissa did not know about. He was trying to re-enact another long-ago night when he had taken her out for her birthday to the Soho Theatre, afterwards they had walked through the London streets in the dark as she loved to do, bound for a restaurant in Covent Garden, holding hands, he a little way ahead, leading her, she enraptured by the mystery of it, the excitement of not knowing. Tonight was going to be just the same. He would lead her and she would follow, enraptured. As they stood on the platform he put his arms around her and she sheltered in his leather coat. It was stilted, though, that was the second thing, not like before during the haircut. They felt that they were putting on a show for themselves and watching it uncomfortably. The train came slowly in, its low lights shining over the tracks. They got on and sat next to each other, facing the dark windows.
When the Crystal Palace was still standing, when people had come from miles and miles to see the colossi of Abu Simbel and the tomb of Beni Hassan, there had been two ways to get there, via the High Level line or the Low Level line. The High Level line was no longer in use; it was the Low Level platform on to which Melissa and Michael disembarked, climbing the many steps up to the street after a rustling, verdant journey (the foliage thickens and closes in around the tracks along the way, as if you are going into a different world). Dutifully hand in hand they emerged on to the street, into this rolling, hilly town on the far south edge of London, where from the pinnacles of the steeps the city centre is a shimmering, distant valley view of many coloured lights. You can hear seagulls, possibly bound for Brighton, it is so far out, it has a seaside sensation, and they and other birds soar amidst the peaks of the two Eiffels, the taller standing in the park on the flat plane of Crystal Palace Parade, the shorter at the top of Beulah Hill towards Thornton Heath. Up they walked in the frizzing wind towards Westow Hill where all the restaurants were. There were lots of people about, spruced up for Saturday night, people who had moved out here for affordable places to live, thus joining in with the endless expansion of the city, bringing Kent and Bromley into the party, making Brixton central and Dulwich hip. With these people had come the trendy furniture boutiques and wholefood juice bars, the vintage clothes shops, and the indigenous folk, those who had watched all this happen, carried on in their own sweet way, the boys who came down from the tower blocks with their dogs, the old folk who couldn’t believe the price of a flannel in Sainsbury’s these days. There were other couples too, walking hand in hand more naturally, peering at the menus in the windows beneath the awnings.
The place Michael had booked was one of those chic and stately modern places with elegant chairs and no music, where the food is considered the only music necessary and actual music an unnecessary distraction. There was gold panelling around the doors and windows, light-grey tablecloths. A stern, unsmiling host placed them next to a pillar in the centre of the room, neither discreet nor intimate, and they struggled in this classy sterility to vibe. Melissa ate wood pigeon for the first time in her life and didn’t feel right about it. They tried hard not to talk about the children, but it was difficult, and they ended up talking about the mice. Between intermittent silences they sipped from their different wines, his red, hers white. At the next table sat an old couple who also had nothing to talk about and had given up trying to make it look as if they did, both of them with tight looks on their faces and deadened eyes.
‘You look beautiful,’ Michael tried at some point between the mains and the desserts. At exactly the same instant, the candle in the middle of their table went out.
‘Thanks,’ Melissa said. A deep melancholy was rising within her. She wanted to be miles away from him. But they were here. And here was her chocolate cake. It had a bitter orange-peel edge, a dark chocolate cream running out of it. She ate it with a grave and absolute absorption. When the desserts were finished, Michael checked his watch.
‘You ready?’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘Come on.’
He got up and pulled out her chair for her. He held open her coat as she slipped in, and it was something, these small attentions, it might still turn out well. Around the corner, off Westow Hill, there was a black car parked at the kerb. A man got out as Michael approached it, they conferred for a while, then Michael opened the door for Melissa to get in. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked him, but she was beginning to enjoy the mystery, to remember, the evening was changing. Michael just smiled. He got in next to her and they took off at some speed down the hill.
The driver was playing loud R&B. He was a bald, plump Ghanaian in a black polo-shirt, the Ghanaian flag dancing from his rear-view mirror. He drove like a maniac, down and up over crystal hills, through the southern quarters, ripped through them as if he were evil, as if he were Knievel, as if there were no paying customers in his car. Melissa leaned into the enclave of Michael’s arm. Grey tinge of night leaves in the curves of Honor Oak, flares of lime flowers and holly leaves in the secret crescents, they flew by, the driver knew all these back streets, silver birches were here then gone, mere suggestions in the night and the speed, other trees, fast lights, sweeps of green. He beeped at slower cars, driving right up to their bumpers. He jerked at turns. Every brake was an emergency. When he almost jumped a red light, Melissa was thrown forward in her seat.
‘Will you slow down!’ she shouted over the music.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ The driver slowed, momentarily, bopping to Jodeci, but soon charged off again. The next time he slowed down was to swing into a petrol station, where he pulled up next to one of the tanks and got out. ‘Wait now, back in a minute,’ he said.
‘Hey, you can’t stop for petrol when you’ve got customers!’ Melissa baulked.
He filled the tank anyway and went off to the kiosk. Michael refused to pay him the whole fare, which Melissa said was only right. ‘We’re your customers not your homies.’
Looking at her in his rear-view mirror, the driver said, ‘You are from Nigeria, I know.’
‘I’m half Nigerian.’
‘Your mother or your father is Nigerian?’
‘My mother.’
‘Eh, I know.’ He chuckled. ‘You are just like my wife. She is always making trouble.’
He chuckled some more, and drove on with continuing recklessness towards the river, along the vast urban tarmac of the A2, turned off at the exit to the O2, and there ahead of them was that once-failed Millennium Dome with its twelve yellow cranes sticking out of it like monstrous and very painful acupuncture, pointing to specific points in the solar system, a suggestion of alien transmission. So much grand expectation had been placed on this building at the turn of the century, to be mighty, to be showy, to be somehow sci-fi, and they had gone too far futuristic with it and forgotten all about beauty. People were disappointed with the thing after all that hype, and once the new century had begun no one knew what to do with it for a while. What do you do with an empty, 80,000-square-metre, disc-shaped spaceship grounded in an ugly concrete desert off the A2? What else? You give it to music, let music make it sing. Here in this enormous space, in these stretching auditoriums, popstars and crooners, the angels of the modern age, delivered their voices. Prince had sung Kiss here, wearing a pair of high-heeled white boots. The Spice Girls had made a comeback over seventeen consecutive nights. Beyoncé would come and swing on a flowery trapeze with her weave flowing. The O2 was the Wembley of the south side, and it had better acoustics, most of all in the IndigO2, the smaller auditorium where the lesser divinities sang, the ones not quite arena-famous, the niche, the lovers rock line-ups and R&B revivals, a jazz hip hop soulstress from Philadelphia known as Jill Scott, who stood there, swaying in green smoke and a misty light, as Melissa and Michael entered.
‘It’s Jill,’ Melissa said.
‘Yeah, it’s Jill.’
She was their early music. The music of the palace, the seventh sky. She had seeped through the rooms with her honey molasses and her love moans, her hip hop beats which sometimes pumped and churned and then slowed again, or disappeared entirely. Jill Scott shimmering before them in pale-green smoke. It lifted from the stage, whispering to her afro puffs, wafting around the band. The backing singers wore black and did the finger-clicking gospel two-step. The pianist was lost in jazz, and Jill was gently dancing, her wealthy waist, her wide American smile, her voice deep and saccharine at the same time. From a distance away her eyes glittered. The lights went pink, went yellow. She was singing Do You Remember. In between songs she made chains of words. Whether she was speaking or singing, her voice was constant melody.
In the audience were soulheads and hip hop fans, observers of the culture, headwrapped Afrocentrics and followers of the new jazz. Couples swayed against each other intoxicated by her sound. There were single people sipping at her wisdom, men in good shirts looking for women, knowing that this was a place to find them, that Jill would make them open and heat them up inside. Jill had the power to make a world, with her sweetness, her girlishness, which was soft and malleable and wholly woman. Sometimes she sang hard, wanna be loved, sometimes the guitars stilled and she brought her voice down to a whisper, and everyone in the room if they closed their eyes felt almost that she was whispering only to them. They listened, spinning on her axis. The trombone went submarine. Trumpets cascaded in flashes of gold.
In the middle of a song, Melissa felt Michael’s hand on her waist. He wanted to dance with her. In a gentle closing around her with his arms he sent them moving, he behind her, she with her back to him. But here, even here, in this musical mirage, there was something else that was not right. They didn’t dance right. They never had danced quite right together, because of how they were different inside when it came to rhythm. Melissa was obedient to it, directed by it, she danced on top of the beat. But Michael instead went inside it and did his own thing, slower than the beat, loose and nonchalant, as though he believed that his inner rhythm was superior to that provided by the music. The effect was that as they swayed they did not sway as one. There was friction, a slight forcing. Halfway through the song, the music slowed down again. The trumpets hushed, the drums subsided, the piano watered down until it was gone. A single blue spotlight centred on Jill. She was going to talk to them again.
‘Ladies,’ she said, ‘Fellas, I wanna tell you something. Can I tell you something? Come here … come closer …’
The audience stilled. They were held in her palm, in this big disc by the river, huddled in her light.
‘Tonight,’ Jill said, ‘I stand before you a divorced woman.’
The music returned for a brief twirl and subsided again.
‘Yeah … I was married, and I gave him all of my heart … I gave him everything, we were happy in our love, in the morning, in the evening in those cold – night – hours … I loved him all the way through. I was married for life, for always … But you know what he did? Ladies, do you know what that man did?’
‘What?’ the women called.
‘Well, he went to somebody else’s house. Hmph, yeah. You’d think he woulda known there was nobody else like me, nobody’s love so fine like mine …’ now she was fully singing again ‘one is the magic number …’
It was a message for the world but it seemed to come directly for them. It was the loudest moment of all, louder than the trumpets, the brass, even than the finale when Jill came back on for an encore. The music that had married them was now telling them to divorce. There was no more dancing after that. Michael went to the bar, and while he was gone Melissa looked around her at all the other people, other couples, other men, and wondered. Those words were sitting on a swing in a back garden in her mind, going back and forth, I stand before you … a divorced woman …
The drive home was quiet, very quiet. There was no canoodling in the back seat and the tipsiness was private and going dry. As they approached Bell Green the disappointment of the evening thickened. It manifested in the bleakness of the high street, the stony mannequins in their bridal gowns, the sinking into Kent. In the distance the towers were half cut by a thick fog that had descended, smothering their peaks, so that they were half of themselves. And this man and woman sitting in the back of the cab were just like those two towers, in their distance from one another, their separateness, he was Beulah and she was Crystal, and there seemed no way, in this fog, in this pretence, that they might come together as one. The cab turned into Paradise Row and slowed at number thirteen. The house glared out at them with its narrow face, the window twins murky, foreboding, tightly shut against the cold.
Hazel was mid-doze on the sofa in front of 4 Music, where a host of bikinied girls were languishing around Nelly’s musculature. She came to at their footsteps.
‘Oh hi, you’re back. I conked out. How was it?’
‘Good,’ they both said, their faces tight like the old couple in the restaurant. ‘We went to see Jill Scott,’ Melissa added.
‘Did you? Oh yeah, I heard she was playing – was she good?’
And while they filled her in on the amazingness of Jill – that voice, that sass, what poetry – a hard, nudging pressure built up in their midst, reminding them of what they all knew must now be done, that thing up in the red room, that overdue sail, the drowning ship. Hazel started getting her stuff together, her nail varnish, her Russian hat and her red coat. ‘By the way,’ she said before she left, ‘does Ria sleepwalk? I found her standing at the top of the stairs and she didn’t hear me when I called her. I took her back to bed and everything, she’s fine, it was just a bit weird, that’s all.’ Soon afterwards she was bound for the west with her satnav (which was working again) and craving Pete, hoping that she had contributed in some way tonight to the preservation of long-term romantic love in London, while her chocolate pair were left stranded in their hallway, burdened by the task ahead.
‘I’m going to check on them,’ Melissa said.
She had that flash again of Lily under the skylight as she was going up the stairs, except that now it was Ria under the skylight, asleep, unhearing as Hazel called to her. She was glad of this distraction. She had been hoping for Blake’s bleating cry, a pressing need, a detour, but both of them were supine in their swathes of cotton, breathing deeply, Blake lying on his front with his mouth open and one tiny arm stretched upwards. She rearranged his blanket, for it was cold in there, colder than usual, most of all next to Ria’s bed closest to the window. Looking down at her – the crescents of her lashes were completely still, a sliver of moon lay across her cheek – she wished that she could sink into the newness of their years, that she could fall into their innocence. It was such a strong wish that for a moment she had the sensation that she was falling down into Ria’s body, and she was not sure any more whose mind she was in. When she left the room there was a sadness, faint but definite, enough to make her look back, that this childhood room was no longer her world. He was waiting for her.
Passion, at its truest and most fierce, does not liaise with toothpaste. It does not wait around for toning and exfoliation. It wants spontaneity. It wants recklessness. Passion is dirty, and they were too clean, once their faces were washed, their mouths freshened, the doors, windows, cooker and taps checked so that the house would not burn, flood or explode. Michael had wanted to undress her, to prise her out of the red dress in the red room, but he was again too late. By the time he got there she was hanging the dress up in the wardrobe. She was wearing the rich cappuccino gown, the same colour as the raffia. He took in the sight of her, the shape of her gentle brown waist and the soft, shadowy dunes of her thighs beneath the satin. Oh how she threw him, electrified him, by doing almost nothing, just standing there with her back to him, her gold arms raised. He wanted to drink from her sweetness and break her until she was set to flowing. He wanted to take her higher, like a Legend, past the sublime plateau, into the wild and peaceful air of the ninth cloud. Tonight he was going to lift them up from under this old love and make it new again.
But the wardrobe is so dusty, Melissa was thinking, so much dust on my red dress, on my clothes. The air in here is so old. The floor is creaking. The window is shivering. It needs fixing, he hasn’t fixed it. She tried her best to relax as he kissed her neck, but the light was still on, it was freezing, she wanted to get under the covers. Once these things were done she tried once more to relax, to think of the sensation, how nice it was. This is a nice thing that people do together, a nice … gentle … stroll … along the calm … water’s … edge. And it is available to you, this warm, relaxing thing. Think about nothing else. She held his head with her palm. It felt like the fur on a newly skinned animal. She wandered across the plane of his back and his whip marks with trailing fingers as he smelt her for chicken but found none. He was breathing deeply, quickly. He was racing towards her, in fact almost past her, she could hardly keep up.
The kiss. Kissing her on the mouth. This is the centre, the core. This is how you know. He kissed her, a long, moist, demanding kiss. But it was so far away from that first, fully formed kiss, the one with its own psychology and personality. Desdemona was not around. Neither was Angelina. It was dry despite its moistness, neither swirling nor euphoric, and he had the feeling, as he was kissing her, that while she was kissing him she was also pulling away from him. This kiss was mean and finite, whereas Desdemona had been infinite and boundless, was in some form possibly existing even now, in some other young new kiss. A little saddened, he drew up, unbuckled his belt. There was a scramble between them to pull away the denim, she out of an eagerness to be proactive and helpful, and he out of her failure to be the latter. He became self-conscious at the falling fabric, too aware of his feet, one of which got caught in the hem as he was trying to struggle out so that he lost his balance and almost fell down on top of her. With the socks it was no more graceful. He stood up to take them off to avoid further stumbling, the floorboards groaning beneath his weight, an ugly serenade to their clumsy foreplay. But you can’t make love in socks, unless passion allows it.
Meanwhile Melissa shrugged off her gown, her skin was free, his skin was free, the light next to his heart the shape of a boomerang which made the skin a touch yellower there, was free, he came back to her. There was another, meeker kiss, warmer and tender this time though still not wholly satisfying, so he moved southward to seek a better kiss in her breastplate. The left, the right. This old order, this weather-beaten script. She yearned for something new, something else. He wished that she would tell him what she liked, where she wanted to be touched, with what pressure. He didn’t know any more. He couldn’t read her. Michael had always tried to propose a path of adventure, to keep things interesting. Adventures, he believed, were in the cavities of what already exists, in the folds and possibilities of your own life. You do not need to travel to the south-eastern coast of Corfu or climb the Andes or go to Chile. You can travel right here, in spasms and leaps, to heavens close by. He had tried new things, new shapes, different kisses, bolder gestures, but such flamboyance was wasted on her. She was no match for his level of aspiration, and eventually, reluctantly, he had accepted this slow moderation of the burning inside of him and succumbed to routine. They had become missionaries, she below, he above. After all, it worked. It was highly adequate.
And all was quiet, so very quiet, hardly a moan, hardly a tremor. Melissa let it continue this grazing around breastplate along torso, concentrating on the feeling, the actual biology of it, but her mind was wandering (Blake’s blanket, school-dinner money, mice who might be coming upstairs, the night thing, Ria under the skylight …). But then he kissed her hip bone. And when Michael kissed her hip bone that meant only one thing, the next thing, that lush and rhythmic licking, the thing she always came back for, if she was sailing over the south-eastern coast of Corfu or climbing a mountain in Peru or considering celibacy. He stayed there a long time, calling her, swirling her, drowning richly. Her sex to him was a celebration, its soft and falling walls, its avalanching liquid, she was a waterfall. She stretched out the blankets over them to keep them both warm, and she lay there with her arms by her sides swimming out to him, in a kind of soft self-erasure, for part of her still remained elsewhere, was in a cave, where the truest part of her lived, waiting for the glorious summit to pass, that frightening yet delicious surging, that oh my god what’s going to happen? sensation, which often felt to her like rising to a peak with great expectation and the peak being less than what was promised, an explosion that disappeared as it happened, or a train arriving at a station that was no longer there.
Afterwards she felt that she should return the gesture, and she held him in her hand but her hand was dishonest. This dishonesty had an effect on her heart, was a kind of poison, though she continued with it, with a sense of terrible duty. She took him in her mouth, made flowers on the head with her tongue, making everything seem all right for a while, almost natural, and he surged and came up full again. Yet there was something cold and clinical about it all. He still, even now, did not feel fundamentally desired. He was racing, reaching, breathless; she was cool, reticent, retreating. They were not flying. There was no ninth cloud in sight. They had not even left Bell Green. Irritated with her, yet ready, needing, he went inside and she received him. It took her breath away, how he filled her, but so disappointed did he feel at the prospect that it should end like this, in this awful monotony, that in a ferocious reach for that Legendary cloud he encouraged her to turn over, though she didn’t quite want to so she clung to him, resisting. With these conflicting longings they rolled on to their sides in complete disharmony until she gave in, feeling herself fading, becoming just biology, just the science. For the sake of love, for the sake of chocolate, for the sake of their children, she did what he wanted.
This, however, was not Melissa’s favourite shape. The length of him was such that he reached right to the end of her and, unable to go any further, shoved and bulged against her, causing an unpleasant ache. ‘Ow,’ she said. ‘Does it hurt? Lift up.’ ‘No, it’s OK,’ she said, not wanting to prolong it. He put a pillow underneath them to help, then further taken with his desire for more, more adventure, more transcendence, more love, he coaxed her up on to all fours, which did not suit their difference in height, she was forced to assume a downward dog shape. There were several of these shiftings to make them match better (we used to match, we used to match so well, thought Michael, what happened?), and at the pinnacle of this disaster, he straightened to full height, straightening her with him. Her hands were flat against the wallpaper, his legs awkwardly bent. He pumped at her, over and over, he couldn’t quite reach the place, kept on angling himself in different ways, going harder and harder, until he finally arrived at his own lonely summit, then crashed forth, defeated and upset, his knees buckling. When it was finished he deflated like the hot-air balloon that had lost its flame, pulling her down with him, and they collapsed in a heap on the mattress.
They were sweating, embarrassed, crestfallen. It was not what they had planned, not redemptive, not romantic. In the leak of the late raffia moon Jill’s words echoed through the air like a ghost, I stand before you … a divorced woman. They lay there, in the cooling red darkness, in the failure of their feast, unable to look each other in the eye. For they both knew, with a sharp, cold definition, that an end point had been reached.