This was too much. I crept back to the kitchen, and sat with my head in my arms, slumped forward on the table. I couldn't stand this. I decided on the hour's drive to my parents' house. They'd be pleased to see me, wouldn't ask any questions. They'd fawn on Claude. But hey, where were the car keys? Oh God, oh no, there was only one possible place.
I was careful to make some noise as I went up the stairs, hoping to give some warning that I was around. There was no light coming from under the closed bedroom door, and no voices from inside now, unless you count the eloquent bedsprings. I almost turned and went away again, but there was no getting away from it. "Cathy" I called, more loudly than I'd intended. "Cathy, I'm very sorry, but I've got to come in for the keys." There were small groans of impatience and annoyance, and a rustling and creaking. The dim yellow bedside light clicked on, and I turned the brass doorknob. "Couldn't you have made sure earlier?" said Cathy, in a tone so embarrassed it sounded like anger. Anyone else would have called it anger, but I knew her.
As I headed for the window sill, I tried very hard not to look towards the bed, but I couldn't help myself. Mark was turned away facing the far wall, not moving. My glance registered his short thinning fine fair hair on the pillow, and an expanse of pale back and shoulder. His glasses were beside him on the table. Cathy was half-sitting, with the duvet pulled up almost over her white breasts, the way they do in films, but not quite, for one big shape still hung over the cover. Her face and neck and chest were deeply flushed, her hair was everywhere, and she was breathless. She faced straight ahead, but as I retreated to the door, she shot me a brief look that said "How could you?"
I suppose it's possible to feel worse than I did at that moment, but I never had. I faked a benevolent smile. "I'll see you're not disturbed again" I mumbled as I closed the door behind me. I had barely crossed the landing when the light clicked off again.
Across the bed there would be the faintest glow from the streetlamps. He would turn back towards her, and see her eyes close as she sank down and spread her arms wide, her fingers opening and closing like starfish. He would nuzzle into her underarm hair, and kiss her breasts, first one, then the other, then back again. He would insinuate his tongue into her deep navel. Her heavy soft breasts would welcome his weight as he spread slowly over her again, sliding a leg over hers, and leaving a faint wet snail-trail across her stomach with the tip of his erection. She would throw back her head and offer her mouth for his thin lips and his tongue. Before long, without her willing it, she would cry out and her legs would open wide and encircle him. She would be trembling uncontrollably, and so would he.
I made it down the two floors to the kitchen, and across to the sink, before I was sick. A blast from the mixer tap took it away, and left me with my guts knotted up, and a feeling like a fur-ball in my throat. Jealousy is all the fun you think they're having without you. The real agony is when you
know
what they're having without you, and it's a hell of a lot more than fun.
It would be so easy. At first they would whisper each other's names, but then they would find themselves invoking only God. They would forget who they were, and where they were, and what they were doing. They would leave all that far behind, back down with those two lost triumphant struggling people in the heat of the bed. They would go where no one could follow them. They would walk hand in hand in a place beyond the imagination.
I didn't go into work on the Friday. My parents were happy to have me around, the weather was lousy, the roads weren't good. And I couldn't face it. I drifted back home in the early afternoon, hoping for a few hours alone. I didn't know what I would do later. But there were two briefcases in the hall. That fur-ball again. I could hear running water, and I could
feel
that doors were open where they'd been closed before. When you really know a house, it has a life of its own, you relate to it like another person.
As I got to the landing, I heard the shower buzzing, and the sounds of soapy splashing coming from inside the bathroom. The bedroom door was open, and the curtains drawn back, so I went in. There was Cathy, fast asleep, a tiny figure lying diagonally across the unmade bed, face down, her breathing rising and falling with a little click. She was wearing her office clothes: but she wasn't fully dressed. Her dark pleated skirt was thrown up over her back, and her black tights and silk knickers were rolled down a few inches below her bottom. She still had on her smart heeled shoes. I felt I ought not to stare at her, lying there so exposed, but I didn't know what was the proper thing to do any more. So I did stare. Spattered over her bottom, and running down the crack to the thick tuft of dark hair where her thighs met, was a great deal of glistening liquid. It was the work of a moment to go across to the bed without a thought, unzip my trousers, pull out my cock, lean forward, slide it a little way into her hot wetness, and pull out just in time to add my own warm copious contribution to the cold puddle. I didn't think she would wake – once she was asleep, nothing ever woke her – and she didn't. Feeling faint, I took my dressing gown from the hook and laid it over her: then, before I turned to go, I stroked her hair gently, just once. She sighed in her sleep, and a shudder passed through her little body.
They would have got off the train, and smiled tensely at each other without speaking. They would have almost run along the lane to the house, she would have wrestled with the front door key, and once inside, they would have thrown down their briefcases anywhere, and leaped up the stairs, shedding only their dark jackets on the way to the bedroom. Still without a word, they would have grabbed at one another, gasping, he would have turned her round and lifted her breasts roughly in his hands and bitten her neck as she arched back against him, her bottom pressed into his groin. She might, knowing her, have come more than once already, on the train with anticipation, and/or as soon as her nipples felt his long fingers. He would have moved his hands to her armpits, and shoved her forward on to the crumpled duvet, following her down as soon as he had wrenched her black skirt out of the way, and uncovered her just enough. She would have been unable to move as he toppled onto her. She would have grunted as his weight crushed her into the bed. He would have picked an opening arbitrarily, one or the other. She would have been past caring. She would have come with a scream as soon as he entered her, and hearing and feeling that, he would have started to come too, pulling away from her with an awful groan and spurting over her back and bottom. Seeing it squirt and puddle on her smooth pale skin would have proved to him that it was all real. They would both have been exhausted. She would have fallen dead asleep immediately, while he staggered to the bathroom, dry-mouthed and shaking. It would have lasted perhaps ten or fifteen seconds.
I left the house quickly, taking the dog with me. I didn't want to meet Mark coming out of the shower. I didn't want to have to appraise his body. He wouldn't have wanted to see me there either, though he'd see the dressing gown and maybe guess. Or maybe not. We walked along the river bank until it began to get dark, and hurriedly turned for home. The cold wind from the north hit me, and it was only then that I felt the tears running icily down my face. I was afraid to go back to the house, but all was quiet now, and I turned on the kitchen TV, not knowing what I was watching, but glad of the noise and the colour.
In the mid-evening, there was a call for Cathy. Her father. I told him, without a hint of humour, she was still on the job. But I'd get her to ring him as soon as possible. "I can't help thinking she's overdoing it" he said. "Oh, I agree with you" I said. "But you can't tell her, can you? Once she gets going, she can't seem to stop." I could have said a lot more. Like:
"To tell the truth, Cyril, she's flat on her back, though knowing her it's probably arched like a rainbow, and she's hanging on with white knuckles to the bedhead, with the black hair in her armpits soaked with sweat. There's a man leaning down over her with his head locked between her thighs. His chin and cheeks are abrading her soft skin. His mouth is slurping around in her cockles. By now she'll have her arms round his haunches, and be inspecting the hairy bottom in front of her face, and the wrinkled scrotum, and the penis still shiny and gluey, still letting itself down in faint throbs from a few minutes ago. Her body and limbs will be getting more and more rigid till it seems they're about to fracture, and his head will be jammed, and his tongue working furiously but gently where he's found she needs it most, and then she'll hold her breath, and screech out – can't you hear her from there? – the unbearable release. Her fine hair will be matted to her forehead, and their bodies will be stuck together again. When he runs his wet hand over her wet navel, the little cup will suck air and make them giggle. She'll lean over and absent-mindedly start to play around and around his glans with her little tongue, and bobble his balls in her fingers, and tenderly peel back his foreskin to taste the strong stuff fermenting inside it, while he shudders and cups his hand over her sopping vulva. No matter how many times this makes it, he won't even try to resist that lovely mouth for long, and she'll feel the hardness grow again under the silky skin, and she'll take all of him in and deliver him painlessly with her tongue, making appreciative sounds through soft closed lips as she swallows rapidly, oh, maybe a dozen times. Endearing that she never spits, always swallows."
But back to the phone call. "I know, I know" said the old boy. "That's just how her mother was." I didn't like the way the conversation was threatening to go. It was a stupid game, and I was the only player. I said my farewells and rang off, utterly dejected. I had a few glasses of
Absolut
before turning in. It didn't make me feel good at all, only numb, but that was about the best I could expect.
When I woke, chilly and alone in the big spare bed, on what I assumed would be the last morning of the visit, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen either Cathy or Mark in the kitchen since at least Friday, and now it was Monday. Had they really not had anything substantial to eat or drink in all that time? Were they
that
busy? Well, yes, I supposed they were. I felt a pang, of something quite like tenderness. The pain was always there, of course, but I wasn't praying for death quite so often.
Down in the kitchen I made tea, and brewed fresh coffee, and squeezed oranges. I warmed croissants and toasted muffins, and put the whole lot on a tray with all the fruit I could find, then climbed the three floors to what I still ironically thought of as our bedroom. I knocked lightly at the door, announced "Room service!" and walked in. They didn't seem displeased to see me this time. They were half-sitting, and Cathy had her white nightdress on, though it was unbuttoned down at least to where it disappeared into the covers, revealing a high percentage of her heavy white globes. Mark was dressed in his glasses now, but not much else as far as one could tell. Radio 3 was playing Schubert softly.
The aroma of coffee steaming up from the jug didn't quite mask the more acrid smell in the room, a smell I recognised, and which made my stomach turn over with anguish again. I tried not to let it show. When Cathy and I were first together all those years ago, we'd often make love – carefully, of course – three or four times before we went to sleep. By next morning when we wanted to do it again, she'd have turned our joint effusions into a pungent metallic brew that spread in patches over the bedlinen, and still oozed out of her, reeking darkly. We didn't find it at all unpleasant. We referred to that part of her as her "yogurt machine." In the present circumstances I was rather less charmed by it.
