Hard to believe sometimes, you know – the way time passes. Just been glancing through my, er, oh Christ – you know, date thing, date book, can’t remember the name of the bloody thing, and it’s been weeks now, weeks, since they both of them have gone, Susie and Amanda. Tip of my bloody tongue …
Not saying it wasn’t odd at the beginning – and for Alan in particular, I rather think … but the passing of time, you know, it brings a sort of salvation all of its own. Diary, that’s the chap. Yes. One does find oneself adapting remarkably well, rather extraordinarily. But God, though – that first night, the very bloody day we’d both of us been horsing around in that bloody little twister’s bloody awful house … I really do believe that when we’d each of us in our bewildered turn read through Susie’s letter (and then read the fucking thing again) we thought, we really did think it, Alan and I, that we might have, I don’t know – completely lost our minds. Had we not had one another’s sanity to cling to, for frantic reference and gabbled verification, we – well Alan, anyway – could very well have fragmented on the very spot he tottered. Because still we were bold and jovial, you see – I remember our mood of mighty triumph, the conquering heroes returned from a determined campaign and deserving if not gilded laurels and palm fronds strewn before us (rose petals fluttering in the sunlit air) then at the very least a damn big Scotch. Because we’d canned the little worm, well hadn’t we? Observed from on high the lowly erk scrabbling for the money, betraying his true and ludicrous being. And although we neither of us said it – it was, rather nobly, not once even alluded to – I think the coming prospect too of Susie’s eventual returning, this added considerably to the general rather carnival feel – hangdog, bruised, she might be (though I think we can rule out penitent) … maybe even simpering rather, and making her eyes go wide and liquid in the way she was of course aware was always so thoroughly irresistible. Champagne, really, was the order of the day – and none of the usual stuff either: this called for Krug. We had done for the kid, and now we could get on with things the way they used to be. Mm. The letter, I don’t know … must just have been pushed through the box at some point, while still we were clinking glasses. Alan was still talking about Amanda, and I had been distantly and maybe even vacantly agreeing with him, what he was saying – because it was odd, it was of a sudden, it did seem out of the blue – but truly my mind was cleaving still to the shivery thrill of all the tremor that remained, the gleeful ripples of aftershock relating to our masterstroke. So Alan, he was still, as I say, in rather full flow as I ambled easily out of the room, and was then just passing through the hall on my way to the pantry in quest of another decent bottle.
‘I mean to say, Blackie … if it’s a school trip, why didn’t I know about it? You see? I mean – Amanda, she said I’d had a letter. Said I had it ages ago. I don’t remember getting any letter. Maybe Susan did – maybe she got the letter, but I certainly didn’t, that’s for bloody sure. She didn’t mention it – if Susan did get a letter, well she never mentioned it to me. Anyway – I suppose it’s all right. Switzerland. Decent people in Switzerland, aren’t they? Just as well you had some cash left, Blackie. Christ – what would we all do without you? Tara’s going too, Amanda said. Think it’s Tara. Could be Tamara. Doesn’t really matter. She didn’t take much, pack much, Amanda. Anyway … I suppose it’s all right. Have to square it with Susan when she gets back. Don’t want the blame. But it’s odd though, isn’t it Blackie? School trip all of a sudden – completely out of the blue. Oh well. There it is. But you’d think it would’ve come up, wouldn’t you? In conversation. If you’re going to Switzerland … Have to ask Susan about it, when she gets back. See if she remembers any damn letter. When do you think she will be, Blackie? Susan, I mean. Coming back. Shouldn’t be long. Do you think she’ll phone us first? Or just come back? Poor little thing – I do, you know, I do feel quite sorry for her. She’ll be hurt, no doubt about it. But it was a cruel-to-be-kind sort of a situation, wasn’t it really? We acted properly. In the long run we did, oh yes. We did the right thing.’
‘Um … talking of letters, old man – seems to be another one here. No stamp, or anything. Just stuck through the, ah … you know: hole thing.’
‘Ah! That’ll be from Susan. Poor little thing. Paving the way, I expect. Here – let me see it, Blackie. Yes – her writing, look. On the envelope. “A & B”. That’s us. Husbands A and B. Sweet. Right – see what she’s got to say then, shall we? Poor little thing.’
Yes well. You just had to take one look at his face to know that something was up, to see that something was off. Eyebrows – at first just hoicked up in anticipation, I supposed … then they contract, and soon they’re dark and knitted. Next thing, though, they’re just all over the place, the eyes beneath hurried and flickering, as if quite stunned by confusion. And then he wasn’t looking at the letter at all any more – just gaping blankly ahead of him – so I prised it gently and then quite forcibly from the white tight grasp of his fingers. Read it. Looked up sharply to find Alan’s gaze, alight with the need for assurances (we’re not mad, are we? We haven’t lost our senses …?). And then I read the bloody thing again:
Dearest Alan, Dearest Black. You must both think me the most heartless woman, if not insane. But the awful truth is – I now have found my heart, you see. We have gone away, I will not say where. It’s no good trying to contact me – I’ve got a new mobile. My wardrobes and so on are cleared – anything I’ve left, I don’t really want. We will talk again, but I can’t say when. I hope you both won’t think too badly of me, and I also hope that in the future we can all remain friends. The dry cleaning dockets are in the red and gold box on my dressing table. Take care of yourselves. Love, S.
We looked at one another, Alan and myself. No real words yet, though our eyes were splintered by half-put questions, and smothered in bafflement. I could hardly bear his pain and silence … I was on the verge of saying something, then – not sure what, can’t have been much – and that’s when Alan, he finally spoke to me:
‘Blackie … what the fuck …?!’
‘Mm, yes. Well quite. Our elation was clearly premature. We appear to have been diddled, Alan. Made fools of. I can’t say I like it. Not only has she left us, gone off with the bloody little shit, but I have just funded their expenses …’
Alan was wagging his head, his flat eyes pleading for reason.
‘Can’t believe it. I just can’t—! He didn’t seem to have it in him – deception on that sort of a scale. Just a kid. Little kid. What does she want with a fucking little kid …? Christ, Blackie … did they – plan it, do you suppose? Did Susan know we were going to go round there? Attempt to buy him off? She’s capable – Jesus is she capable! Christ – they must both be laughing their fucking heads off. Right now. At our expense. We walked right into it. Four fucking grand! I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it …! Christ, I feel so …’
‘Can’t have been. A plan. Susie – she’s got lots of money. I see to it, I’m afraid. She doesn’t need four thousand.’
‘Oh Jesus. Well – can’t you get it back? Freeze the account, or whatever they do? Christ if I ever see that little bugger again …!’
‘No. Money’s cleared. Clears every month. Hers now. Nothing to be done.’
‘Well … at least she won’t be getting any more. Have to bloody work for a living, same as … well, most of us. Because him, the little shit, what can he earn? Yes. Well … at least she won’t be getting any more. Will she? Blackie …? You’re not saying anything, Blackie. Why aren’t you saying anything to me?’
‘Well, Alan – we can’t, can we? Let her – starve. She’ll come to her senses, of course she will eventually. But until then, well – can’t just cut her off, can we? She is our wife, after all …’
‘Great. That’s just great. You’ve given them four grand for their honeymoon, and now you propose to maintain them both in the manner to which you have accustomed her! Excellent. And what sort of a wife is it anyway? That would hook up with a, Jesus – toyboy, and walk out on her husbands! “Take care of yourselves”, she says. Huh! No fucking choice, is there …?’
Bitter, bitter, oh Lord how bitter he was. We drank a lot that night, I mean more than usual. Alan, he came up with all sorts of, well – schemes, he called them, but each one was really only a recipe for vengeance: Let’s go back round to his house, the shit. Why, Alan? He won’t be there, will he? Remember? He’s gone away with Susie. I know, I know … but at least then we can tell his stupid parents what a shit he is. Or OK then – let’s hire a detective to find them! Why, Alan? She won’t come back if she doesn’t want to, will she? I know, I know … but at least then we can shame them in public – tell everyone what shits they are. Or what about this then? We take out a full-page advert in all of the papers …! On and on. Poor Alan. Bitter, oh yes – Lord, how very bitter he was. And I suppose at the time, we neither of us could see, project, not beyond the black and hurt of the night – could not imagine how anything other could one day be. But time, as I say – and of course one has noted it before, but still you know, it always rather delights and amazes me … how, just by its passing, it can not only mollify, dab at one’s tears and smooth the jagged edges, but somehow it will heal, like a tacky mastic shot from a gun, the way it fills up all of those voids and cavities, bestows a welcome evenness and polish to a new and somehow more durable surface. Changes in the procedure, adaptation to the new-found road, ways of going about things that never one would have thought to even float, or tentatively fly … and though unsought, they become so surprisingly quickly not just grudgingly acceptable, but a mighty step beyond. Maybe even … the very consummation that had always been desired: true companionship, without somewhere at the back of your mind being constantly frightened to death.
At first, though, there was a very strong sense of … what might you call it? Displacement. Yes, I think so. Odd, in one way, because Susie, she had never been the personification of the hausfrau, and nor, to be fair to her, had so humdrum a role been ever her remotest ambition. Her absence, however, was everywhere. Not just in the vastness of the silent vacuum, but in the little things as well. Alan would say, Where are the Corn Flakes? Aren’t they usually here? Isn’t this the shelf they’re normally kept on? Well I couldn’t help him, of course. Didn’t know we bought Corn Flakes – never eat them, stick in my teeth, as do most things: might, you know, need dentures soon (yet more delight in the offing). And then he’d say. You know Blackie – while never understanding why it was she ever stuck around, still you know – I never thought she’d leave me. Poor Alan. He’d worked out, you see, that by importing me on to the scene, Susie had put into train the only solution to her loathing of the situation as then was standing. Joyous, he said he had been, when it all seemed to be going so smoothly. And – he said this repeatedly – and now all this. Then he would marvel at the fact that she hadn’t phoned, not once, to check that the two of us were still alive, if not very kicking (young people, you know – they say that: I’ve heard it on the television. They say that this or that is ‘kicking’. Extraordinary, isn’t it really? No idea what it means). Now then … what was I …? Oh good Lord, it’s happened again, you know. More and more this is happening to me now. Start off talking about a thing, some other damn bit of nonsense suddenly strikes me and poof! Gone. Thin air. Awful, isn’t it? Bound to get worse. Everything does, in the long run. Might be the first stages of … can’t remember the fucking name of it. Went to my doctor the other day – nothing to do with that, this was something else. Said it’s my knee. Aches like blazes. And then sometimes when I walk, it sort of gives out a twingeing kind of a thing and buckles in on itself, best way I can describe it: one of these days, it’ll have me over. So he checks me over, gave me a check-up, the doc, and he says to me it’s my hip. Jesus, I don’t know – how can my knee be my hip? You wonder sometimes whether it’s you or just everybody else who’s losing their minds. Alzheimer’s, that’s the chap. And much to my surprise, I’ve just remembered my thread, so I’m not completely gaga yet, at any rate – but don’t hold your, um … Alan, yes. And then he says, Well you’d think at least she’d phone to see that Amanda’s all right, even if she doesn’t give two fucking hoots about either of her husbands. Breath – don’t hold your breath, God curse it. And I remind him that in the first place Amanda isn’t here (bloody long school trip, is all I can say – don’t say it to Alan, though: it would only worry him) and in the second place, they both have mobiles, don’t they? Could be chattering away thirteen to the dozen twenty times a day. Alan says: I doubt it. I doubt it too, but you’ve got to say something, haven’t you?
Yes, so in the early days I was heartily engaged in bucking him up to the best of my ability on a more or less wall-to-wall basis. I didn’t mind. What friends are for. And for his part, well – he’s just been marvellous, you know, with all of the running about. If I’ve left something upstairs or in the garden, say, he’ll hare away and fetch it. Do it a lot, goes without saying. Constantly leaving things all over the bloody place, and more often than not, of course, I’m damned if I can remember where. But Alan, he always seems to track them down. I call him The Bloodhound. Actually, that’s an arrant lie – never called him The Bloodhound in my life. Maybe I ought to start. Doesn’t matter. And he does all the shopping, you know, because I don’t even drive now. Truth is, in Alan’s car I can’t reach the pedals, and I don’t want to be fooling around with adjustments all the time; did toy with buying a car of my own, but even as I was toying, I knew that I’d never get round to it. And never mind a car – it’s a hip, apparently, I’m going to be needing now, according to the doc. That’s the latest. Maybe two, he says. Well why not? More the merrier. The things they can pull off though, these days – remarkable, isn’t it? What did people with useless pelvises do in the old days? Lie down, I suppose.
But time, you see – that’s what I was saying: the passing of time, and how it affects things. Now, Alan buys the – well, Corn Flakes, say, and puts them on whatever shelf he damn well pleases, knowing they’ll be there for him the next time – not moved, and not eaten. We dine, you know, not so much at mealtimes, but just whenever the fancy takes us – and nearly always simultaneously, as chance would happily have it. He cleans – and very well too, I must say. New pin. And I do the accounts. We both of us continue to cook, and we’re becoming rather good at it. The gardeners go on gardening, and everything there is lovesome (God wot). We formulate ideas, that’s another thing we do. Well, I say ideas – more viewpoints, really: conclusions reached in the face of the evidence. And because, I suppose, we each well know our respective audience, we’re not at all afraid to express them, Lord no: eager for it, really. We store them up. Other evening, I postulated the theory that the reason this country has now been quite thoroughly overrun by yobboes and foreigners is that the decent English people, the proper ones, were too polite to lock the doors (certainly true of the BB bloody C). And when it became plain to all that this upsurge of moujiks could barely express themselves, they somehow contrived to make inarticulacy a lovably fashionable idiom, if you can fucking believe it. Why now with even highly educated and literate people you have to machete your way through a throttling overgrowth of sortas, kindas and likes (know what I mean?). Alan was right behind me on that one – no huge surprise, I confess – and in return suggested to me that as one gets older and is seeking to improve one’s lot, it is no longer a question of ambition nor frantic acquisition, but first a process of shedding, and then one of simple barricade: ruthlessly excluding all that one very certainly does not bloody want. Much the principle with first-class travel and accommodation, really: it’s not really about what you get for your money, so much as all of the horror that can be loftily avoided. Yes. I sometimes think we ought to be on Question Time.
One other evening recently, we were in the drawing room watching a delightfully titillating DVD directed by somebody called Tinto Brass (odd name, I agree – Italian, Alan was telling me, although if that’s true you’d rather more expect him to be called Brasso, wouldn’t you really? Anyway). Yes – watching this film (he has a thing, old Brasso, about young ladies’ bottoms, and who can mind?) – and we had a bottle of Scotch between us, new discovery, Glenmorangie Port Wood Finish, indescribably mellow, and Alan was pulling on a fine Havana and marvelling at the wonderful truth that no one was about to barge into the room and complain about the stink, condemn the film for objectifying women, and nor to suggest that we had both had quite enough whisky for one evening, thank you.
‘You see – what it is, Blackie, is that we don’t really need them. Women. Not, you know – all the bloody time. They make you think you need them … maybe they have to think it themselves. But because they make sure they’re always around, they lead you to believe that their presence is vital. When clearly it isn’t. I mean – look at us. Fine, aren’t we? Perfectly happy. Got our own little ways, and no damn harpy to mess them all up. But do you know what they’d accuse us of? Do you? Tell you: misogyny. Yes, oh yes – that’s what they’d say. Whereas I would call it self-sufficiency. Well … self as in … I mean I don’t think that on our own, Blackie, either of us would be that – self-sufficient, no. But as a couple we are – oh yes, by Christ. But that doesn’t make us co-dependent. Does it? Don’t know. Maybe it does. But it’s women, in my view, who despise men, not the other way around. And there isn’t even a word for it, so far as I’m aware – not misanthropy, no, that refers to the whole of mankind. But a woman’s hatred of men – there isn’t even a word for it, so therefore, they would have you believe, such a thing can’t possibly exist. Wrong. Look at TV: man puts up a shelf, what happens? Bloody shelf falls down. Woman sighs, wags her head, rolls up her eyes. Look at all the endless bloody articles in the papers and magazines: a woman, a mother – she has a cold and stoically gets on with her ten thousand cares and responsibilities: breast-feeding, slaving over and servicing horrible men, running the government, whatever. But a man …! Oh – he’s convinced he’s got flu, poor little hypochondriac diddums, and takes a week off work; woman, of course, becomes a long-suffering night nurse. And they’ll illustrate it, this piece of blatant hokum, with a library picture of a red-nosed great fat oaf with a towel draped over his head and his feet in a fucking galvanised basin of steaming hot water. Just not true, is it? And at Christmas, Christ – the woman, she multi-tasks twenty-four fucking seven, as they will keep on saying, fucking journalists, so that everything is prepared and beautiful for the slobbo man who lies on the sofa watching football and drinking lager and buys her a crappy little present late on Christmas Eve in a bloody service station. Or, if she’s lucky, Chanel No. 5. Again. Just not true, is it? Now women – I don’t say they’re useless. They’re not. Obviously. But do you ever see an article saying they are? No you do not. Why not? Think I’ll write one, just for the hell of it.’
Amusing, Alan’s diatribe – diverting, yes – but irksome nonetheless because all through this latest little polemic of his I had been gamely trying to discern whether or not there was even a suggestion of plot somewhere lurking in this Italian film about young ladies’ bottoms. Didn’t matter, as it turned out – we didn’t get close to the end of it, because just at that moment the doorbell rang.
‘Late, isn’t it? Not expecting anyone are we, Alan?’
‘Course not, Blackie. We’re never expecting anyone, are we? I’ll just see who it is.’
Alan still held his cigar, and tugged on it briefly as he swung open the door. Delight, he later decided, was his overriding reaction when confronted by these two young girls there, lolling against the columns of the porch.
‘Hi,’ said one of them – Nordic blonde her hair was, with almost creamy stripes. ‘Sorry to bother you but we’re doing a charity walk, yeh? British coastline. And we were wondering if you’d like to sponsor us. Got a certificate here, and badges and everything.’
‘Sponsor you …?’
‘Yeh,’ said the other one – smaller, darker, with bright-green eyes, which you don’t often see. They both wore the same school blazers – maroon, with a pinkish piping. ‘Like, you agree to give us so much per mile we cover, see? All the money, it goes to this, like – charity? It’s all written down here. It’s official, and everything.’
‘I see. It’s rather nippy, isn’t it? Why don’t you come inside so we can discuss it?’
‘OK then,’ agreed the blondie brightly.
And they must have felt it, you know, Alan was reflecting – nippy, he meant – because look at them, won’t you? Just these little pleated skirts, and nothing on their legs.
‘Come into the, um – room, yes? And then you can tell us all about it. Yes, that’s right – just in there. First door. Good good.’
‘Nice house …’ murmured the smaller, darker one, with bright-green eyes (which you don’t often see).
‘Oh I’m glad you, um … we like it, yes. Look Blackie – two young ladies here in quest of our sponsorship. That’s right, isn’t it? Sorry – I didn’t catch your names …’
‘I’m Lucy,’ said the blondie, ‘and this is my friend, Crystal.’
‘Crystal … and what bright-green eyes you have, Crystal. Don’t often see it.’
‘Yeh,’ she agreed. ‘People are always saying that.’
‘Come over here,’ offered Black, sitting up and craning his head around (very pleased indeed that he’d managed to snap off the television just before everyone had walked into the room). ‘Maybe you two girls would like a, um, I don’t know – drink of some sort? There’s chocolates there, if you …’
‘Yes, girls,’ enthused Alan. ‘Do sit. And then you can bring us up to, what is it? Speed. Yes.’
‘Really nice house …’ said Crystal again. ‘You got any Coke?’
‘Um – think so,’ said Alan. ‘Diet, probably – suit you? And you, Lucy? Coke? Tell us about your charity walk. They’re going to do a walk for charity, apparently Blackie. Coastline – that right? British coastline. Not all of it, presumably.’
‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘South. Hastings. Bognor, round there. It’s the school’s idea, but we’re quite into it now. And you, you sort of sign up for so much per mile, see? Any amount you want.’
‘Hm. And how many miles do you think you’ll cover?’ asked Alan idly (and he was thinking that the both of them, you know – they really did fill out nicely those little white shirts of theirs, ties just slightly awry).
‘Well – don’t know, really. Depends on the weather and stuff. We’re doing two overnight stopovers so, could be … don’t know. Fifty miles? What you think, Crystal?’
‘Jesus – fifty miles!’ Crystal hooted. ‘That sounds like endless.’
‘Yeh …?’ doubted Lucy. ‘Might not be fifty. Forty, maybe. Don’t know.’
‘I see,’ said Alan, smiling and nodding and really quite gleeful. ‘Well I reckon we could stretch to … hm, what do you think, Blackie? Oh – this is Black, forgot to mention. And I’m Alan, by the way. Sorry – should’ve … Yes. Well let’s see now … say, what? Pound a mile? How’s that sound?’
‘Tell you what would sound better,’ Black was chuckling. ‘Two pounds a mile. How about that?’
Lucy was clapping her hands in delight.
‘Oh yeh – oh wow! That would be great. Oh wow thanks a lot. Most people, they go oh OK then – ten pee. And it is for charity, after all.’
‘Indeed,’ agreed Alan. ‘Now then – two Cokes, is it?’
Lucy paused, and looked up cheekily.
‘Um – look, I know it’s a bit, um … but you don’t have any ice cream, do you? I could really just go some ice cream. What about you, Crystal? Like some ice cream?’
Crystal nodded eagerly. ‘That would be great … but it doesn’t, you know, matter if you haven’t, or anything.’
Alan glanced over at Black, and briefly their eyes gleamed in fusion.
‘Well it just so happens,’ he said, ‘that you two young ladies are in luck. What’s more, you might even learn a little bit about the coastline in the process. We can have our ice creams on the beach …!’
Lucy and Crystal eyed each other, slightly uneasily.
‘Sorry …?’ Lucy ventured. ‘Don’t quite …’
‘Well follow me and all will be revealed. Blackie – you’ll pop up in the lift, will you? Meet us up there?’
‘Oh wow!’ cooed Crystal. ‘You got a lift …?’
Black was already on his feet.
‘All mod, er …’ And then he tailed away. ‘You know – what is it? Cons, yes.’
‘Shall we go? I promise you, you’ll be amazed. But in a pleasant way, rest assured. And don’t, um – worry, will you? You’re perfectly safe. Coming?’
Lucy and Crystal had a swift and whispered conversation – a thing of eyebrows, squints and elastic lips. They both stood up and were smiling, indicating to Alan and Black their willingness to go for it with a puppylike eagerness overlaying a more modest undertone of sisterly courage and mutual support.
Their reaction upon stepping into the room was more than Alan could have wished for. He had briefly left them just outside (could hear their muffled giggles, bless them, through the panels of the door) while he rapidly set up a gorgeous sunset, the sounds of the gulls and then the lapping of waves at the shoreline. The sand was warm to the touch.
‘Oh – wow …!!’ they yelled in unison. And they repeated it several times more and increasingly softly as they wandered in wonder at the seaside – fingertips outstretched, though reluctant to touch, and eyes as wide as wide.
‘Well girls!’ Black regaled them, coming into the room and closing the door behind him. ‘Never seen anything like this before, I’ll warrant.’
Lucy seemed reluctant to disengage the sweep of her eyes from over all of this magic around her.
‘It’s just … oh my God, it’s just so …! Isn’t it, Crystal? It’s so real … the look and the noises and … even the smell, Jesus …!’
‘Mm,’ nodded Alan, quite as pleased as ever he could recall. ‘Salt and ozone and just the merest hint of Sarson’s vinegar. Took a while to get it right …’
Black was in a deckchair, holding the blade of his hand across his eyes to shield them from the livid orange glow of the slowly sinking sun.
‘Well come on then, Alan! Ice creams all round, I think.’
‘On my way, Blackie. On my way.’
Yes I am – oh God yes: I am. On my way, yes yes yes, and very much so. Because this bit is nearly new, and I love it so much. Blackie, he arranged it all for my birthday. I nearly wept with joy. He’d somehow tracked down a derelict nineteen-fifties ice-cream van – I know, I know: just so thoughtful. And he’d had it sawn down the middle, longways, and completely and beautifully restored, the half of it, inside and out, and now it stands so perfectly against the whole of the far wall. It had to be assembled on site – and still he managed to keep it all a secret. It’s powder-blue and a deepish cream and covered in hand-painted pink lettering and original tinplate signs showing all the varieties of cornets and lollies of the period, each of them sixpence. And does the whippy ice cream nozzle actually work? Why of course it does, and splendidly. I have become quite good at this – and the girls, very gratifyingly, are watching me now as I do it – twirling the cone around in my fingers as the ice cream squeezes out, just to create the ideal whirl. Flakes – we get them wholesale – I now slide into the finished works of art. A grunt of satisfaction from Blackie, squeals of nearly rapture from these two lovely girls – and then Alan plonked himself down in the remaining deckchair. And even the following day, he wholly failed to put into words the extraordinary stab of sensation that jolted him when Lucy, smiling impishly, sat down across him and put an arm about his shoulder. But it was as nothing compared with the very next instant when she blobbed her ice cream onto his nose, laughed quite gurgily, and then licked it off cleanly, with a darting little tongue. Black had beckoned to Crystal, and she sauntered over to his side. He closed his eyes and swallowed quite hard – on the very teetering brink of a now-or-never moment. And then his fingers just barely grazed her calf – lay there frozen, poised to take flight … and then in the peace that ensued, he slid it up softly the length of Crystal’s leg. Crystal looked over to Lucy, who now was kissing Alan, and deeply, and came quite close to a chortle as she crouched down low and laid her head in Blackie’s lap. He just longingly exhaled, more than content to just let her get on with it. Alan now stood and guided Lucy to a private section of the beach, and laid her down on to the sand. Only sighs and a gentle moaning, as the burning ball of sun was now extinguished; the scene was then one of indigo night, overlaid by whiffs, and then the stench of pleasure. Tomorrow is not a concern tonight.
It came, though – as next days will, no matter how tenaciously you cling in desperation to the one before, striving to keep a hold on it for just one moment longer. Not though, when it came to it, how Alan felt at all: he bounded out of his bed, wholly refreshed, noting only that it was a little bit past his time, and eager for coffee and Corn Flakes. When Tarzan was awoken by his chimp of a green and sunlit morning with a nice big cup of freshly macerated jungle juice, and uppermost in his mind was just the coming joy of swinging through the trees on ropes of vine, this swiftly to be followed by an energetic bout of chest-thumping and the lowing undulations and then irrepressible echo of his very own siren call … well Alan for one knew exactly how he felt. It was the freedom, that’s what did it – the absolute and uncompromised freedom to do precisely as one pleases with the added pleasure of knowing that one’s sole cohabitee either shares with enthusiasm your tastes and urges, or else is quite careless and wholly indulgent to all of your other impulses, your every passing whim: those that are peculiar to you. A basic human right, freedom is – that’s what people say: but in truth it’s a rare thing, very. We become inured to kowtowing at a horribly early age – civility, it’s called, manners, selflessness, concern for the happiness of others … but all it comes down to, if, in the process, it messes you up, is a grinding pain in the bloody arse and a build-up over decades of yearning and resentment that one day when you realise that here is the pattern for, oh my Christ – just ever, the dam can burst with irreparable consequence. But the thundering stew of my turbulent waters, it has receded – the boiling of the mountainous waves subdued now, and tranquil, merely a pond with a shallow and silky surface. We live a very regular but not rigid existence, and this suits both of us. Clean and tidy – everything in its place. Order, within and without. Pleasing, and very calming. I am – very calm. And we don’t discuss it, you know, but you can see quite plainly the selfsame thing in Blackie – he doesn’t erupt at the slightest thing: life no longer appears to him as an eternal inconvenience, a jinxed and worrisome obstacle course, plotted by fiends and goblins. Doesn’t even seem to need to dash off to the lavatory quite so frequently. He reads a lot – he’s forever reading; just become a member of the Folio Society – he does so much love just the touch and heft of a beautiful book. (I got him a little present recently: Picasso’s very late erotic – some would say pornographic – drawings and etchings, rather lovely edition; Blackie immediately dubbed it his Pubist period.) He goes out and encounters people less and less, that’s certainly true, not through dread or evasion but simply because he has seen to it – and I, I hope, have abetted him in this – that all he desires is here, with me. And sometimes, in order to spike and enrich the warm and creamy everyday flowing and lapping of our lives together, treats and surprises are in order.
‘Morning, Blackie – morning morning. Your Earl Grey is all set out, look – you just have to boil up the water. Sleep well, I trust?’
‘Like a lamb, dear boy, like a lamb. Eventually. By golly though, hey? Those two little firecrackers …!’
‘I know. Are you having toast? I thought we might have an early lunch, if that suits you. Sort of picnic affair, maybe. Gorgeous day – I could set it all out in the pergola.’
‘Capital idea. What time is it, Alan? Not that it really matters …’
‘Not sure. Tennish, I think. Which one did you prefer?’
‘Tennish, hm. That’s a very interesting question, Alan. A very interesting question. Anything in the papers?’
‘Not really. Murders, war, higher taxes. The lies of dullard politicians. I only really look at the weather and the crossword. Obituaries, of course.’
‘Don’t think I shall – bother with the toast. Not if it’s tennish. I think on balance it has to be Lucy, really, if only because I’ve always had a particular thing about blondes. Well we all have, I suppose. Especially in that dinky little uniform. But Crystal’s curves … dear me. Dear me. And the kiss … so much more than a meeting of mouths. It was as if she was supplying a taste of her lips as the sweetest sample of all that was next to come. How old do you reckon, Alan? Crystal, I mean.’
‘Hm – she’s the younger one. Twenty-two or so, I’d say. Not her real name, of course. Lucy, well – I don’t have to tell you about Lucy, do I? Just knows every trick there is to know. She could be twenty-five easy, maybe more. Who knows? But she’s in beautiful condition. Not cheap, of course, but you’d hardly expect it, would you? Not if you want a decent sort of a show.’
‘It was just so good of you, Alan, to set it all up. So terribly thoughtful. What a treat! And you divined it exactly correctly, you know – well of course you know. What I – like, and everything. Thought I’d take my tea out on to the terrace. Coming?’
‘Mm. Why not? Have a glance at the crossword. What are you up to today? Anything? I’ve got to see to the beach. Took a bit of a pounding. What was that …? You hear that? Was that in the hall …?’
‘What? Didn’t hear anything. Not too surprising. Can hardly hear you. Got to take this thing in …’
‘Mm. Could have sworn I heard a …’
‘Could be the post. Could it have been the post?’
‘Could have been, I suppose. Oh … better take a look …’
Alan wandered into the hall, expecting only the usual slew and clutter of plastic-wrapped catalogues to be littering the doormat (don’t get much in the way of regular post these days, and that just suits me fine). But what he saw there instead was a large and grimy canvas bag, recently rifled and spewing rumpled denim and magazines. Also on the floor – quite recently polished by Alan in the old-fashioned way, hands and knees and beeswax – were kicked-off and streaky wellingtons, the track of the soles thick with dried-on grassy divots. A dented can of Diet Coke was on its side and askew on the hall table, harming the arrangement, and it had dribbled its dregs on to the surface, brownish globules shivering. Alan heard Black now padding out behind him and he whirled round to gaze at him, aghast and open-mouthed. The returned expression on Blackie’s face was one of at first uncertainty, and then a cold and looming horror. Not only would it appear, then, that Amanda had returned to the bosom of her family, but going by the yelps, initially, from the floor above, and then the more outright screaming … it would further appear that she has just encountered, mm – Lucy, yes. And also Crystal. Asleep and sprawled out Christ knows where, almost certainly naked (more bosoms to her family than Amanda could frankly shake a stick at) … or – and Alan now winced as he acknowledged a rather stronger likelihood: in rucked-up pleated skirts, and strewn about them with the abandon of the hot now so cold moment, cobalt knickers and pink-piped blazers. Mm.
What, thought Alan, next …? Well next, Amanda had hurtled back down the staircase, her hands clasped over her ears and was shrieking out the word ‘dis-gusting!’ over and over and over again. And then the word ‘sick!’, repeatedly. She streamed through the hall, knocking aside Black and colliding into Alan – and lest there be the slightest doubt as to just who in this house formed the butt of her repulsion, she drew back the lips from her teeth and in a shrill now cracked voice she was screeching that both of you, oh God yuck yuck yuck! You are both so totally sick and fucking dis-gusting …! Her face seemed caught in a panic of revolt. She ran out of the house, crashing shut the door behind her.
In the shimmering silence, Black was idly massaging the shoulder that had borne the full brunt of a rioting Amanda. He glanced across to Alan, his eyebrows raised. And then he looked up at the sound of a voice from the landing above.
‘What was all that then, boys?’ Crystal was calling. ‘The day shift …?’
Her jumpy breasts were dangled down over the banister rail, their rosy nipples singling him out. And Black could only sigh. Alan held a hand across his eyes. My waters, he thought, are turbulent … they are rapidly becoming a thunderous stew: the walls of the dam are being hammered by the boiling of the mountainous waves.
Amanda, for once, had sounded genuinely distraught, and so I rather rashly told her to come straight over. Already regretting it. I could just slip out, I suppose – be gone by the time she gets here … but that would seem a little cruel. I said to her on the phone: Amanda, my darling – five days now and you haven’t called. I am your mother. Remember that? You said you’d call me every day. Didn’t you? Didn’t you, darling? Don’t ask me if she heard or not – wailing and babbling, she was. Distraught, as I say – and not, I thought, her usual teenage ‘freaking’, as she terms it, and general overreaction to even the very slightest thing. Something clearly was amiss – and I felt quite fond, I suppose, that it was me she sought to talk to. But then she’d hardly ring her father, would she? What use has he ever been in a crisis? Or at any other time, really.
But I didn’t want her here. Because we hadn’t spoken, not properly, about my moving away. And oddly, she hadn’t bombarded me with an eternity of questions and all of the customary recrimination. Seemed wholly engulfed by something of her own, which at the time I must admit was something of a relief. Because whatever questions she might have asked me, I doubted whether I had the answers. I had been quite flighty – hadn’t thought things through, and perhaps deliberately. One of the curses of growing older is that you are forever doing that, thinking things through, pursuing the course to its logical end, investigating the possibility of alternative avenues – yes, and judging how the mood will take you. And then either ducking the whole thing, ditching it completely, or else trudging on through it with a lowering sense of premonition and the expectancy of doom. And so yes, it is entirely possible that I willed myself into my current irresponsibility, and I must say it did feel so good. Just to leave all the old behind – hurry away with my brand-new lover. Yes. It seemed, as they say, a good idea at the time. But now, whatever had so selfishly consumed Amanda had clearly withered away, or else exploded, and so now of course, when I have done with consoling her, there will be nothing between us to protect me. She will be ‘on my case’, as she so horribly says. Well … it has to be faced some time. Maybe just talking about what I have done might help me to understand it. She will, quite naturally, be furious. And possibly even revolted. Which I would expect, in the circumstances. I don’t, of course, have to tell her. And that is the doorbell.
‘God,’ was the first thing Amanda said, dropping her jacket on to the floor. ‘This is so like creepy …’
‘I can’t see why you think that,’ sniffed Susan, while seeing it exactly, for she felt it herself. ‘You lived here for years. It’s not as if it’s strange to you.’
‘I know. That’s what’s so creepy. What are you doing here? Why have you …? I thought this place was let or like sold or something.’
‘Do you want tea? You look perfectly ghastly. What have you been doing to yourself? It was to be let out, yes. Or sold. But I didn’t get round to it. Quite a good thing, as it turns out. I mean, quite apart from anything else it has already considerably risen in value. Tea? Yes or no.’
‘Don’t want tea. I just want to die …!’
‘I don’t recall a single year passing when you didn’t, at one point or another. What is it this time?’
‘You don’t care. So long as you’re all right, you just like so don’t care about me.’
‘That hurts, Amanda. And it’s quite untrue. You’re here, aren’t you? And I’ve asked you what’s wrong. How much caring do you want?’
Amanda just threw herself on to the sofa and held a cushion across her face.
‘I can’t hear you, Amanda. If you want to talk to me I suggest you don’t hold a cushion across your face.’
‘ I said …!’ bawled Amanda, hurling the cushion aside, ‘that just everything everything everything’s wrong, just like all of it, OK? And I so just want to die …! And you! And you! Why are you back in our old bloody house? What are you doing here? I just don’t understand … And listen, right? Before you say like anything, you’ve just got to tell me this because I’ve got to know, OK? And you’ve got to tell me the truth. Yeh? Right? Right, then: have you ever … oh God yuck, I can’t even say it, it’s so …!’
‘What on earth are you talking about, Amanda? Have I ever what?’
‘Oh God. Have you … ever been with Harry? Oh God …!’
‘Harry? That odious little shit, you mean, who took advantage of you? Well yes.’
‘Yes …? Yes?!’
‘What are you so upset about? I told you I went to see him. I told you that.’
‘I don’t mean – that, I don’t mean then. I mean again. Have you? Like – you and Harry … did you ever …?’
Susan just stared at her.
‘Am I picking this up correctly? Are you seriously asking me – me, your mother … may I yet again remind you, Amanda, that it is your mother now you are talking to? Are you completely mad …?’
‘Well did you? Just like tell me, OK?’
‘I find the very suggestion quite utterly repellent and deeply, deeply insulting. Christ – I can’t even understand how you could have borne him to be even near you. His skin is appalling. What put this perfectly slimy little idea into your head? Did he say so? Did the lying little shit say so? I’ll have him arrested if he did.’
Amanda sighed – a mixture of fractured and tainted relief, creeping weariness and a tumult of confusion.
‘No … he said you didn’t. It was me who thought … I don’t know. Maybe I am mad. I don’t know … I just don’t know anything …!’
But it is like a thought – could be, couldn’t I? Like, crazy or something? Because I really did believe he, like – cared for me? A bit, anyway. And at first it was just so great because what we did, Harry and me, is we like got on the Eurostar? To like Paris? Which I’d never been to, and it was just so cool. And he got us this most amazing hotel and we went up the Eiffel Tower, like just so scary. He bought me this so cool scarf from a really expensive shop called Hermès and it had like red and yellow flowers on it and it felt like heaven. Food was great and we got so like smashed, you know? It was great. And then one evening in this like brasserie – famous one, can’t remember – he just starts chatting up this girl, if you can believe it. In like French? Me just sitting there. Touched her hair and stuff and they were both like laughing? And I was just so angry I copped off with this boy at the very next table and I walked right out of the place with him and I was thinking yeh well screw you Harry, you bastard. And it was awful because the boy, right? He was called Pascal which is a pretty geeky name, I think, and we went to a bar and we were on, like – Pernod? Which tastes like sweets and medicine and oh man, I was just so out of it. And he got me up to this room and I was so like woozy and he shoved me up against the wall and like pulled down all my things and just fucked me then and I couldn’t stop him and it was only for like less than a minute but it really hurt me and I was crying. He got me a taxi – oh yeh great Pascal, you fuck – and I went back to the hotel and Harry wasn’t there. And when he came in just like hours and hours later, I told him what I’d done except I made it sound all like kind of romantic? I did it so he’d be jealous, but he wasn’t. He just said – Cool, babe. Grinning, eyes all wild and crazy, like high on some shit. So next morning I just like hated him and I hated me and he gave me some of Black’s money – there was so little left – and I got the train back to London. And before I left, I went to him Yeh and I bet you did – you did, didn’t you Harry? You did go with my mother – you were lying. And he said Haven’t, I swear I haven’t … yeh, and I so like didn’t believe him. And why did you go with that girl? Why did you do that to me, Harry? And he just went, she was ‘kinda cute’. Yeh – like my mum. I chucked the scarf right in his face just before I ran right out of there, and I so like wish I hadn’t, you know? It was just so beautiful, and it felt like heaven.
‘Why don’t you,’ suggested Susan, ‘go back to the beginning?’ Amanda blinked at her, suddenly bereft of anger and scorn. I’d love to do that, is what she was thinking: go back to the very beginning. Before all the shit started happening. Whenever like that was. But yeh – I know what Mum means: tell her what’s been going on. And I will, actually, because I think I need some help.
‘See, Mum … I’ve been away, OK?’
‘Away? What do you mean away? Away from me, do you mean?’
‘No. Well yeh – but no, I don’t mean just away from you. I’ve been, like, on a sort of a … holiday?’
‘Don’t know what you – but you’re at school. How could you …? Are you telling me you haven’t been at school? Is that what you’re telling me? But what was your useless father thinking of? Where have you been? How long have you—?’
‘Look, Mum – if I’m going to talk, right, you’ve just got to stop being Mum all the time. I’m going to tell you what’s been happening, OK – and then maybe we’ll all be just like less crazy.’
‘I’m not crazy. You may be crazy – I’m not crazy.’
‘You going to listen or what?’
‘Oh … I’m listening. And the truth, mind. Otherwise there’s no point to it, is there?’
‘Yeh – I’m going to tell you the truth. That’s what I’m going to do. So – I’ve been away, OK? Like – to Paris?’
‘To—!’
‘Oh Jesus just listen, can’t you? Just shut up and listen, Christ’s sake. I went to Paris. I told Dad it was a school trip to Switzerland, don’t know why I said Switzerland, but I did. And, well – you know it wasn’t.’
‘And he believed you? My God, what a man. But the school, though – haven’t they been in touch? They must have noticed you weren’t there, for God’s sake …!’
‘Don’t know. Maybe. Don’t know.’
‘And were you on your own on this … holiday of yours?’
‘Yeh. No – I was with Tara. No – I wasn’t with Tara, I was with … Harry, OK?’
‘Oh – Amanda …! And that little bastard – he promised me—!’
‘Yeh well. You said the truth, so I’m giving you the truth. Anyway, it didn’t work out, and I came back. Just today. And I just got so like confused, because if you and Harry weren’t … well why have you moved out? And to here – why are you here? It’s just so weird. But then – well then the really bad thing happened. I just can’t …’
‘What? What bad thing? Tell me.’
‘Well actually – another bad thing happened first. I’m like – pregnant?’
‘But … you’re not any more, Amanda … The clinic …’
‘Yeh. Didn’t go to the clinic.’
‘You didn’t keep the appointment? Well why on earth not?’
‘Because I wasn’t pregnant.’
‘You weren’t …? But you said to me—!’
‘Yeh. But I wasn’t.’
‘And, what – now you are …?’
‘Yeh. I am now. Bummer. But we can see about that, can’t we? Just like make a new appointment?’
‘Oh God, Amanda – you make it sound like going to the dentist …’
‘Well it is a bit. Get something rotten taken out.’
‘Jesus, Amanda … Maybe you really are crazy …’
‘Anyway. That’s not the big bad thing. The big bad thing is, I get home, right? And I really feel like tired and stuff so I just drop everything and I go upstairs for a shower, OK? And just kind of chill. And oh God …! It was just so … dis-gusting, I can’t tell you.’
‘You’d better tell me, Amanda. What is it, Christ’s sake? Are they all right? Alan and Black? Is one of them—?’
‘Oh I’d say they’re very all right. Oh yeh. Oh yeh. What a filthy pair they are. There were – women, Mum. Like – girls? One on the floor, the other on top of Dad’s bed …!’
Susan was just so amazed.
‘Women …? You mean—?’
‘Yeh. Young. Slags. No clothes. Christ, I’m so like sick … Why did you go? Why did you leave them? They never would’ve done it if you’d … well Black would, probably. Ee-yow! Tried it on with me once. Sick.’
Susan sat forward.
‘I don’t believe you. Black did? I don’t believe you.’
‘Yeh well – believe what you like. He did, though. All over me. If Dad hadn’t come home I would have had to brain him.’
‘I can’t believe it … when did this happen?’
‘On one of the nights you were out, like all tarted up. I thought with Harry. I, um – told Dad that’s like what you were doing. He and Black, they went round. Gave him money, Harry, so he’d stop seeing you. Loads. How we went to Paris …’
Susan was staring.
‘Did they really do that? Alan and Black? That is just so … and girls – I just can’t … I mean, Alan of all people. Oh dear. Oh dear me. Well this … this just changes everything.’
‘Like – what’s left to change …?’
Well yes – but the ground is altered, and it is largely my doing. All that’s left that now must change are more, yet more of my plans. In which, I have to confess, I am increasingly losing faith. I no longer, in truth, actually had one, a plan – more it was a hastily devised possibility of escape, a bandage over the seeping wound, a hopeful attempt at salvation (and my own, of course my own) … but now, in the light of things, even that – it just seems to be beyond, beyond. I believed that I had been flooded by an unstoppable force for good (and my own, of course my own) and suddenly, girlishly, all the old, the clinging on to all of the old, it seemed not just ridiculous but such an encumbrance – accumulated ballast that was holding me down. I had forgotten – or certainly I chose not to recall it – that it was I who with such great care had made sure that such an anchor was firmly keyed, and then, for certainty, I added to its weight. This much was wise. But since I cut away, that total freedom that we all of us, I suppose, so stupidly dream of … it appears to have resulted in aimlessness and shame (and not just my own, of course not just my own, although I know I am alone in feeling ugly and foolish). I doubt whether others, the two old boys, will be thinking this way. They must at first have hugged to themselves with a hot and mutual hurt and fury the righteous outrage of the wronged and badly done-by – and then, very touchingly, they had attempted repair. They still cared for me that much, at least. I had never wondered quite how much – and yet when I was gone, I thought of them not at all. I was in love. And Amanda too – that appointment at the clinic? And how I was going to accompany her? I thought of her not at all. I was in love. Who can there be left who is still in the heaven of ignorance as to just what love will do? You feast so greedily on all its sap and sugar – and, in your eagerness to suck up more, are blissfully careless of how much you have torn. And so it was love, not calculation, that made me know I had to go. It could not be ‘as well as’, no not this time, for here would be a heinous infidelity: for you must be true to love. I imagine I was not the first person to be so dazed, so knocked, so struck and damned and dazzled as to have hardly thought at all. One’s being, it comes into its full-blooded own – headily, with the anticipation of yet another coming together with the adulated other, and then so very wildly on impact. Other people, other lives – they were quite as wholly irrelevant as anything but he whom I held in my arms. Is it my fault I am a sensualist?
At first, I had hardly known he was even alive. Because in the early days of trying to get the house and garden together, there were men just all over the place. It consumed me. I was running around from this project to that, consulting with Mr Clearley – constantly on the Net, tracking down not just all these specific and typically elusive materials, but also such details as doorknobs and tie-backs. A hundred decisions a day. It was fraught, but I must say I adored it. I am a manager by nature. There was also, well … I did derive a very large satisfaction in seeing the household I had envisaged, the confluences I had engineered, surely and steadily pulling together. Black’s blind faith and seemingly fathomless resources, Alan just being there as just always he had been – Amanda, by degrees, accepting with reluctance at first this new situation, and then with the thrill of her very own suite, embracing it madly. I felt, in truth, more of an architect than the architects, whose services eventually I quietly dispensed with. Once the marble floor in the atrium was finally and beautifully done (it turned out we were lacking just three square metres to finish, and Mr Clearley, he had to order it specially from the original quarry somewhere in the south of Italy, though still the problem of actually matching it was quite a thorough nightmare) … but yes, that was the key to it – once that floor was down, it acted as a sort of a bridge, is the way I saw it, to all the other rooms and floors. It joined things up – the disparate sites were becoming a whole. And that’s when I felt freer to concentrate on what was for me the most exciting part of all – my fabulous schemes for the garden.
The first lot of gardeners we got, they turned out to be utterly useless – and Mr Clearley, to give him his due, he spotted it fairly early on and got shot of them. The new team we got in I had read about in one of the endless stream of monthlies I was buying. They’d done quite a lot of work for the Chelsea Flower Show, medals and everything, though I nearly didn’t bother even ringing them because I thought it highly unlikely that they could take on so big a job as this would be at such very short notice. But they didn’t seem even remotely fazed by the scale of the thing; sent over in the first instance a gang of navvies to clear the ground – I lost all count of the number of skips of useless clay and tree stumps we got rid of – and then the landscapers there, they went over my plans with me, pointed out all manner of practical considerations that of course would not have occurred to me, but generally were very encouraging. All of it was possible, they assured me – ‘quite do-able’ was their phrase – though the final cost, they said, would be … well, ‘considerable’ I think they plumped for – that was their word of choice. ‘Massive’ comes closer – and all the time it was being revised, upwards and upwards, very often because of me, it must be admitted – all my glorious afterthoughts and so swish refinements – but sometimes too because of unseen complications: the rerouting of the drainage, for one – and then the discovery of what seemed to be a subterranean boulder, quite vast, that no one could explain and in the end it had to be blasted out. When finally the layout was more or less apparent, I could start in on all the earnest discussions with the plantsman, the man in control of the project on the ground. Herb. Though at first I had hardly known he was even alive. Saw him around – didn’t know his name. And then I did, and I just thought … well I said it to him, actually: I know people must have remarked on it before, but it is a perfectly wonderful name you’ve got, isn’t it really? For a gardener, I mean. He grinned and said he was grateful his parents had resisted calling him Daisy.
And, like the garden … it just grew. I tried to remember, I have tried to decide … was it his eyes, warm and peeping from under the long mop of hair? The first thing to tweak me with a strange delight? Or was it his big and bony capable hands, crescents of earth beneath the nails, so very tenderly peeling away the layers of a tiny little pod, so that he could show me the seeds within …? At first, I doubted my senses – I could not possibly be attracted to so unsophisticated a person, let alone one so very almost laughably young. He had a rather odd voice – a bit sort of strangulated, his accent, quite weird noises, sometimes. Never in my life have I felt myself drawn to such a thing – maybe, I don’t know, why the allure was daily proving stronger and stronger. He flirted in a rather clumsy sort of a way – but what man have I ever met who didn’t? I laughed, I parried – I glanced over my shoulder at him and smiled, whenever I walked away. The day, though, he just roughly took hold of me, I could not call up even a show of resistance – I sighed out loud with so huge a relief that all the waiting now was over. The sex at first was brief, gratifying and very literally dirty, often on a bed of mud: I was surprised to remember how much I liked it. And soon I lost all caution. God – I remember one day when Amanda had come home early from school and I rushed to call out to her, so bathed in gratitude that she had not arrived just five minutes sooner when she might just have spotted us emerging from behind the pergola, my back so wet from having been just mashed down into a bed of petunias. I was no more than babbling, really – the scent and essence of him still sticky on my fingers. That was the day she told me, Amanda, that she was pregnant. But, it turns out, she wasn’t. But now, however, she is, or so she says. Christ. But anyway – all the risk and discomfort, it could not go on. And that’s when we started to meet in Chelsea – in the old house, yes. I went there every evening I could, daytime too. The thrill of the journey nearly choked me. When I was not with him, I dangled at the mercy of the give and pull of a long elastic yearning. And one night, gazing at the mere and slightest shimmer of blue on the twitch of his sleeping eyelid, I simply fell in love. And so everything then just had to be changed – for this, you see, was it: the bare and true and longed-for thing. Not the outcome of a calculation, nor a canny move. From the blue (if just the slightest shimmer) – here was now the bolt, thudded into me. And this, no – it could not be as well as, no no – this just had to be instead of. And yes I know it was contrary to, oh – everything, all of it, which before I had seen quite plainly to be right – yes, and proper; I knew that, of course I did – but somehow there was now a new and more valid propriety, all the contracts of old quite suddenly null: I saw them just as dust. This great man whom I loved … I must marry and be with him, and him alone: it must be good in the eyes of God.
And I remember that night, remember it utterly – will remember it for ever, as well as all that came after. So impatient was I for him to awake, my mouth formed into an ‘O’ and I blew with care on to that slightest shimmer of blue on the twitch of his sleeping eyelid, so that at first I could be gently anointing his stirring consciousness with the merest whiff and then a smudge of unction – a tiny brilliant speck of love – and then when he embraced me, we both would be engulfed by the full great weight of it: it would fill us up and we could laugh at our own amazement.
He awoke, and I kissed him. His eyes were lit with a lazy ease. I breathed the words … I love you. He smiled and touched my hair. I breathed the words … I love you. He sat up then and stroked my arm. My glance was urgent and I whispered the words … I love you. He swung his legs away from the bed, picked his shirt from a tangle on the floor and said to me, ‘Susan.’ I pulled off the shirt he now had half on and I said to his face that I loved him. He tugged the shirt back over his shoulder and stood, detaching my hand from whatever escaping part of him I could quickly catch a hold of. Doing up trousers, he walked to the bathroom. I called out the words – I love you …! He closed the door behind him and I was left alone, and in a different amazement, one not of our own, but only mine. And when he came out and jangled his keys – I rushed to him, rushed, and in a voice now cracking I just failed to scream at him all of my passion … and his eyes were lit with a lazy ease, he touched my hair and stroked my arm: Have to go. Why? Why, I said – why do you have to? It’s late, he said, and looked at the floor. It’s been late before – it’s been later than this, so why? Why? Why do you have to? I love you …! Before he slipped away and out of the door and into the dark he said quite simply, Because I do.
Disappointed, so let down – but no more than hurt: here was not a devastation … I had maybe, simply, been too premature. Men are like boys – they will shy away. And yet … I have endured a lifetime of gangs, dozens and scores – bustling throngs of hopeful hopeless men, all of them battering with crudeness and determination against my strong defences, the towering limit of me, just for the sight of a glimmer of light. Here the gates were flung their widest – the flooding beams were dazzling. But, he said, he had to go. I tried to write him a poem, and couldn’t. So on my special lilac paper, I wrote him a note instead, saying simply, ‘I love you’. But because of what came after, I never did give it to him. Forgotten it till now. Don’t know what became of it, where it might be, and nor do I really mind.
He came again the next day, with not good champagne. He knew I liked champagne, but did he know I would not care for this one? He is ignorant of champagne. He brought as well some truly tawdry flowers. He knew I liked them, flowers, and well he knew I would not care for these: he is an expert on flowers. He said, Mellors is come, my Lady – a joke, I suppose it is a joke, that he had made before, and not just the once, and each time I had asked him not to again. We made love soon and quickly, and I remember with wonder that I barely even was aware: my mind was elsewhere and onward. After, he drank the not-good champagne – I held my glass, and didn’t. And then I told him – my voice was steady – that it was not just, did he see, that I loved him (was that a wince? Did he slightly turn away?) but that I needed to give myself to him quite utterly: the bestowal of my body (which always made him grunt and gasp and fill up his hands) … my red and eager heart, only tinged with bruising … and then my very soul – still close, at least, to the core of me. I need, I said, to be his wife. He drank a good bit more of the not-good champagne. And then he said Susan, you’ve got a husband: at least. He, I said – they – must go: I need to be your wife – and yes, exclusively. Well … he said. Well? Well what? (I think I quelled most of it, my rising anger, my lowering shame, the quiver of impending terror.) Answer me, please: well what? Well you see, he said – scratching, now, at the back of his head, his eyes alive and darting, seeking out snipers on every rooftop – well you see, Susan … I have one of those, a wife. You see. And one, he said, is quite enough. Very quickly I had to wall up the vastness of all that would soon crash down and crush me – because for now the vital point had rapidly to be pursued. One wife, yes – I agree, I agree: and that one wife … will be me! His eyes were lit by an active unease – his hand came up to my hair, and then towards my arm. He looked away and shook his head.
He did not come the next day (following my tears, and then the shrieking – after I hit him with a chair, I was not too surprised) and so I set myself hard to plotting his recapture … which for me was a new game, very. His, oh God – wife … what could she be? Nothing. Nothing much at all. Or else why would he … do what he does? Well no – that didn’t quite follow. Didn’t, did it? Because with me, what man wouldn’t? You see? This is not an average situation. But whatever she was – his, oh God, wife – she could be just snuffed out. Guttered. Like the old flame she was destined to become. And suddenly, I hated her, this woman, whoever and wherever she was – hated her with violence. And then, later … it was he whom I hated, for betraying her: for reneging on his contract. And then, I suppose inevitably, I came to hate me, myself, for just understanding everything so horribly clearly … and even for being around. So, I thought – that is that then, really. There will be no plot after all, no scheme – and no recapture either. Let the fugitive flee. And me? I must smother the flaming of shame, damp it down to a smoulder, and then embrace regret. Reparation, now, is all I can think of. But through all of this – it was long, yes long, and so terribly lonely – I would keep coming back to this one and stark marvel: the love that had filled me, that had impelled me to be drastic, that had opened my eyes and set my sensuality ablaze – the love that was to have fuelled me for the whole of the rest of my life … was gone. Done with. My eyes were deadened, and I felt only lassitude … just so terribly empty: outrage, then, and a barely simmering fury. And so this, I thought – well it does, it changes everything. And had Amanda asked me then: what’s left to change? I should have answered, well – just one more thing: to get back, to get back – I have to change it back. But in the light now of what she tells me … Black with Amanda … his and Alan’s belief that I had simply had something so casual as a fling with a boy … and now even the glimmer of the thought of their – girls … oh, can it ever be possible? Well yes – because they want me, you see. They must do. Well of course they do – they always did: they paid out money to get me back. And so – get back, get back … we all just have to get back. It’s what I want.
And Amanda – was she in love, as I was? Did she feel all that I did? I doubt. She is no sensualist – so never ablaze. Although whatever she was feeling, it had impelled her to be drastic – it had certainly opened her eyes. And now, poor girl, she is done with. Her eyes are deadened, and she feels only lassitude … just so terribly empty: outrage, then? And a barely simmering fury? Well. So we must all, now – just get back. I have, after all, always done everything for them – Alan, Black, Amanda. Haven’t I? And who is to say I cannot again? But the boys, the taste they have had … the flavour of the two young girls. Because it is always true – even if ultimately you do just everything for a man, he can and will find another – one who is willing to do anything at all, the distinction being clear.
‘All I have, Amanda, for us both … is a hastily devised possibility of escape. A bandage over a seeping wound. A hopeful attempt at salvation.’
Amanda just gazed at her mother and shook her head so slowly.
‘Jesus. Jesus … OK – look. I’m like – out of here, yeh? And you, Mum: listen to me – you just so have to get over yourself. You know?’
Susan nodded sadly. I know. I know. But it’s hard. And it’s going to be harder. Because I’m lying. Getting back? I don’t want it at all. It’s just … necessary. And my love? It is not done with – it has simply done with me. I cannot think of it as only a loss along the way. It’s just … necessary. And yet, she’s right. I do – I just so have to get over myself. I know. I know. But it’s hard. And it’s going to be harder. Because me, you see – I’m so very steep as to be practically unconquerable.