15

The Sperm Liqueur

MADDY LOUNGED ON the edge of the bed and observed her ex-lover. He lay naked, half sheathed in a sheet, papers and documents strewn around him. Tortoise-shell specs made a slippery descent along his perfectly sculpted nostrils. His warm, salty smell was so familiar to her. Maddy felt a low spasm of lust. What was the jail sentence, she wondered, for assault-bonk of a sleeping ex? Resisting the urge to sink her teeth into his flesh, she placed her hand firmly over his mouth and shook him roughly.

Alex’s bleary-eyed and vacant look accelerated into a panicked stare. His body jolted awake. ‘Who are you?’ he gulped through her closed fingers.

‘You’re kidding me? You haven’t seen Fatal Attraction?’ Alex shrank back. ‘It’s me, you great drongo.’

‘Who?’

‘Me.’

Alex scrutinized her incredulously. His body may have relaxed, but his eyes went Tarmac-hard. He pulled the sheet up around him, resurrected his glasses and humphed up on to the pillows. ‘Congratulations, Madeline. You have just reached a personal best in psychotic behaviour.’

Maddy couldn’t contain a splutter of inappropriate laughter.

‘And what the hell are you wearing?’

‘What?’ Maddy had forgotten she was travelling under an assumed mane. She discarded the merino perm wig and shook free her now neck-length red hair. Alex coyly contorted into his jeans beneath the sheet, catapulted to his feet and, tugging on a T-shirt, strode to the door. ‘As I’ve already had a wife-ectomy, perhaps you’d be kind enough to exercise your man-hating vendetta elsewhere.’

‘You and Felicity . . . you’re really divorcing?’ As he’d told porky-pies about everything else in his life – this was a man who couldn’t lie straight in bed – Maddy was disinclined to believe him. But following him into the kitchen, she noted the signs of batchelorhood – the Quentin Tarantino video on the table, the old Grateful Dead albums scattered on the carpet. It was the contents of the fridge which finally convinced her. It was empty, bar a couple of beers, a cracker-barrel cheese left unwrapped and cement-rendering at the edges and a few petrified lumps which could once have been salami.

‘If you’ve never seen a dozen divorce lawyers in a feeding frenzy, don’t feel deprived,’ Alex snapped, slamming the fridge door in her face. ‘Thank you for dooming me to a life of laundry collection from late-night dry cleaners.’

‘Pig’s arse, Alex. You didn’t leave your wife for me, but to spend more time being embraced by the media.’

‘Ah, the Chocolate Incident.’ He poured himself a large whisky. Maddy waited to be offered a drink. When none was forthcoming, she confiscated the entire bottle and trailed him into the living room. The large bronzed scrotum (otherwise known as a Bafta statuette) lay on the carpet where she’d knocked it during her aerodynamic ascent through his window. ‘Yes, thank you for humiliating me in front of the national press,’ he stated in a brittle voice. ‘I suppose that was just a precursor to the police bursting in and accusing me of harbouring you.’

‘Alex, my charge sheet should be on the best-seller list, for fiction.’

‘Of course! And absconding makes you look completely innocent. Jesus!’ He glanced furtively out the window before closing it. ‘Did anyone see you come in?’ He bolted the wooden shutters. ‘Your photo will be out on the goddamn lines! Tell me, do you always make friends this fucking easily?’

‘Tell me, do you always behave like such a fucking deadshit when a friend’s in trouble? Not just a friend, but the mother of your child . . .’

‘Don’t give me that mother of your child crap,’ he snarled, creaky-voiced from sleep. ‘I begged you not to go ahead with that pregnancy.’

Maddy cradled the whisky bottle. ‘No wonder I hate all men.’ The fight was draining out of her.

‘I failed my first two kids, if you recall,’ he justified. ‘Parenthood. God, I don’t have the qualifications; I just haven’t a bloody clue how to make models of space stations using old shoe boxes, at short notice on a school night.’

Maddy kicked off her shoes, flumped on to the sofa and sighed resignedly. ‘Look, a lot of sewage has flowed underneath the bridge since then . . .’

‘Huh! I’d say your river’s got too big for its bridges.’ He paced in front of her. ‘Stealing wallets! Jesus Christ. Let me guess . . . you thought the change would do you good. I mean, what the hell did you have to go and . . .?’

‘The point is . . .’ Maddy dismissed him with a wave of her hand. What was this? She asked herself. International Forgive, Forget and Turn the Other Cheek Day? No, it was just that she was running on empty. ‘I had a baby. It was fate . . .’

‘Ah, so that’s what you want . . .’ Alex said, with a world-weary groan. ‘The moving finger writes and having writ . . . issues one.’ He folded his arms petulantly. ‘The Child Support Agency is a Suicide Act.’

‘What?’

‘All over the country men are gassing themselves in their cars or stringing themselves up – hounded for payments they can’t make. What do you call four divorced fathers with overdue CSA payments? A mobile.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I know you better than that, Alex. You’re the type of bloke who thinks a paternity suit is the latest look in leisure wear from Armani.’ A hint of a smile flared in his eyes. He quickly extinguished it. ‘It’s not like you’re unique, or anything,’ she added. ‘Giving up any claim to your child is a trait directly traceable to the Y chromosome.’

‘Not according to Felicity. You should see my alimony bills. That bitch has screwed . . .’

‘I don’t want your money. I don’t even want you to hide me.’

‘Oh.’ That stumped him. ‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked in a quieter voice, sitting opposite her.

Maddy gulped from the whisky bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Find Gillian and Jack for me.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere in Britain.’

‘Oh, that narrows the field . . . You called him Jack?’

‘He looks just like you.’

They locked eyes for a moment, before Alex got to his feet and stretched languorously. There it was again – the low voltage electric charge in her groin. ‘I’ll get you some of Flick’s old clothes if you like.’

Maddy watched him stand on a chair and reach into a cardboard box on the top shelf of the hall cupboard. His T-shirt rode up, offering a tantalizing glimpse of mohair median strip descending beneath his belt buckle. Maddy felt her crutch moistening in-subordinately. This was not going to plan. ‘You’ve lost weight.’

‘Is it any wonder? The “Lose Your Wife, Kids and The Love of Your Life Overnight Diet”, by Alexander Drake. You could have killed me, you know.’ Alex dismounted and sat back down. He crossed his legs; the delicious bulge in his groin disappearing into the conniving denim. ‘It’s true. Medical opinion now states that you can actually die of a broken heart. Something to do with secretions of stress hormone.’ He balled the jeans and shirt he’d scavenged and over-armed them in her direction. ‘Nothing Verdi’s Violetta or Shakespeare’s Ophelia didn’t know.’

With a great moan of relief, Maddy groped at her waistband and shucked the heavy skirt. It spilt around her ankles, a pool of tweed. She shook off the jacket with alacrity. Lassoing it over her head, she sent it flying with a whoop of freedom. She was so used to undressing in front of him that it wasn’t until she’d also raised her blouse, lariat-style, that Maddy registered this behaviour was no longer appropriate. Alex was letting his eyes travel the length of her prison-issue-underweared body. She caught his gaze. He looked away.

‘You ruined my health. If I’m ever tempted to say the words “I want you back”, I pray my saliva dries up.’ He chugalugged another drink. ‘Or that I go mute . . .’ There was an animal urgency to his movements. ‘Or . . . have a bloody brain haemorrhage . . .’

‘You want me back?’ she said, confounded. When it came to life’s experiences, Maddy was a shopaholic. But this was something she hadn’t bargained for.

‘I didn’t say that,’ he replied staunchly. ‘Why? Do you want me back? Is that why you’re here?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ She yanked on Felicity’s T-shirt. ‘I’ll always love you, Alex. It’s just your life philosophy, pseudo-male Feminism, rotten, ratfink, dirty-dingo lying and dress sense I can’t tolerate.’

This time Alex allowed himself an absolving bark of laughter. He threw back his head and guffawed.

‘Do – do you still love me?’ she hazarded. Alex stared at her for so long that she felt herself redden under his scrutiny. ‘Look, it’s not the sort of question you have to swot for.’

He got up out of his chair. He got closer and closer . . . so close he was looking like a Picasso painting. Their noses rubbed together and then their lips did a melting marshmellow impression.

When they drew apart, Maddy was breathing hard. ‘Just because I’ve forgotten what we were fighting about, doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.’

‘Me neither.’

‘What were we fighting about?’

‘Whatever it was, the fact that we were fighting at all says that this is not a good idea,’ he responded, moving away. Maddy noted the stippled surface of the skin on his neck. He might be saying that he didn’t want her, but his body was saying something else all together.

‘Absolutely. I agree.’ (At least one or two of her neurones were standing firm. ‘The guy’s a lying mongrel. Don’t do it,’ they whimpered into the mental void where her brain used to be.) ‘I mean, a soufflé doesn’t rise twice, right?’

‘Right.’

As Maddy threaded on Felicity’s old jeans, Alex pretended not to watch and Maddy pretended not to be aware of Alex watching. He passed her a pair of sandals. Their hands brushed briefly. There was so much electricity between them it could have been privatized.

‘It’s a shame you hate all men.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. A month in a women’s prison does tend to recalibrate a girl’s opinion of the opposite sex, somewhat.’

They sat in heated, awkward silence.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Maddy probed, finally.

‘Me chewing your way out of all those clothes you just put on.’

‘Me too.’

The next thing either of them knew, their teeth were colliding in mid air with the sort of passion that would require months of periodontal work. It was the kind of sex, Maddy reflected, that you have as a teenager. Sex that wouldn’t let you stop thinking about it afterwards in full Technicoloured detail. It would be vaginal déjà vu. For weeks. Maddy felt sorry for all the women who would never know what it was like having Alexander Drake take his warm mouth to you.

The sun was tinting the morning sky when they finally pulled apart. They lay across the sheets, stunned by their sexual symbiosis.

‘Playing hard to get, eh?’ Maddy panted, adding, ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It’s just that I’m kinda carnally malnourished at present. I get aroused glancing at that picture of Paul Newman on the salad dressing.’

‘Oh, really?’ Alex laughed. ‘What a shame, ’cause I was thinking it was time we got married. We have, after all, a three-month-old baby,’ he bantered. ‘People are starting to talk.’

Alex leant up on one elbow. He traced the stretch-marks the baby had branded her with. He bent over her abdomen and tenderly kissed the puckered skin. He suckled the milk beads from her breasts.

‘Forget Mother Love. The real reason I have to find Jack,’ she explained, ‘is my breasts are about to explode. The IRA could use me as an incendiary device . . .’ Her voice trailed away into a vibrating whisper.

This time he moved over her body slowly – slow as a t’ai chi master going through his paces.

‘The Sperm Liqueur,’ Maddy laughed to herself, wiping a white coruscation from her lips.

Alex’s breath was hot in her hair. ‘Why am I so bad at relationships?’

This was something new: admitting he was wrong. Maddy added it to her mental checklist of things she liked about him – his penchant for puns (punnilingus, he called it). The fact that he actually knew all the twenty-five functions of his Swiss Army knife. The curve of his buttocks in black denim. His mischievous streak (he’d once given her oral sex in the Planetarium’s Photo Me Booth – she still had the Polaroids to prove it). The way his nose crinkled when he laughed. The dedicated scrutiny he gave a wine list, as though he’d written it.

‘The truth is, I’ve never been good enough for you, Maddy.’

‘That’s true!’ She looked at the father of her child. Maybe she’d judged him too harshly. She had been hormonal, for God’s sake. And where had going it alone got her? Destination Nowhere.

‘Do you know what I’ve realized? Getting back to the simple things in life . . . that’s what’s important.’

She yawned, cavernously. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow while we’re shopping for His and Her hand towels at Habitat.’

Coiling into his broad back, she replayed their Sex-o-rama on her mental screen. Skin humming with pleasure, the taste of Alex on her tongue, heady on the oxygen of resuscitated hopes, she buried her face in his neck. ‘By the way, the only qualification for parenthood is knowing someone who can make scale models of NASA space stations using old school boxes at short notice on a school night.’ And then, muscles like melted butter, body warm as bathwater, she lost consciousness, abseiling into a deep, deep sleep.