After eating, she asked permission, lit up a cigarette and then, for no reason I could see, simply smiled directly at me. Her lips, which weren’t well defined, had a rather sad wise twist, blowing out smoke. Her cheeks were full. And I recalled something I’d been thinking lately, on a bus somewhere, watching somebody kiss somebody: that all young women, however apparently plain or even ugly at first glance, all have their little attractions, their charms, their lures, not one without some way of catching your eye: a ready smile of complicity, a way of cocking the head so that hair falls to one side (why does this attract me so much?), a way of lightly touching your wrist perhaps, or of taking a knuckle in the mouth to laugh. One way or another, and consciously really I often think, they compensate for what they may not have, that archetypal body. So with Rosemary, her frank friendliness, utterly without flirtation, her acceptance of you, without any of the barriers of male-female social manoeuvring (viz Joyce, the more unnattainable the gigglier and flirtier she became), all this seemed to draw attention to the large fleshy presence of her body as something straightforward, animal, loveable, that might well embrace you, without difficulty, without anxiety, if only it could be unlocked from that angular uniform.
Her breasts were inescapably large, even extravagant.
And I was just getting definite ideas into my head, toying with breathtaking strategies, thinking it would be wise to drink a bit more for courage, when Peggy arrived, complete with baby Frederick and, after rushing up to see Mother, announced (she had cropped her hair since last I saw her) that she would be staying the night in her own room. So that in the event I was left with the rather less voluptuous, though not entirely unsatisfactory curves of the North Circular.
Wild Summer Rain
I don’t know what took hold of me that night. I went to bed, as usual, an hour or so after Shirley, having read, perfectly calmly, through a couple of hardware reviews I like to keep up with. I undressed and slipped under the quilt. It was July, but raining hard outside. In just two weeks we were supposed to be going to Turkey, except that all was up in the air with Shirley’s saying she didn’t want to come. Would I go on my own? Hardly. But the place on the ferry was booked. Why couldn’t Shirley be more reasonable?
Almost at once I realised I wasn’t going to sleep. I lay still. I assumed my customary sleeping position. No chance. I was in a state of such extreme physical and mental alertness. My skin seemed to sing and crawl with contradictions. There was just so much blood in me, unused, unfulfilled. I clenched my fists, my toes. I ground my teeth. For a while I surrendered to the most vivid erotic images, my tongue pressed against the blue cotton swell of a girl’s plump panties, for example, that sort of stuff. Then trying to force my mind elsewhere, I wondered about my mother’s life, its astonishing sexless serenity. How could people be so different from each other? What had happened to the straightforward sensible life I had planned?
Zombie-like, as if controlled from elsewhere, I sat up in the stale dark half light. I stood and went to the window, immensely tense, aware of sweat on my hands. Pushing back the curtain revealed the inevitable parallel lines of stationary cars, gleaming dully in rain and lamplight down to the dripping park. ‘My whole life,’ I thought, recalling Charles, while at the same time reflecting how unlike me this was, ‘has been nothing but a pathetic trundling along on the metalled rails of my early social and sexual conditioning.’ Confused, excited, I pulled some clothes on, found my shoes.
For more than an hour then, without an umbrella, wearing nothing more than Terylene trousers and a cotton shirt, I walked the respectable brick streets of Finchley. I sucked in the fresh damp air. I felt at once bursting, bursting with strenuous life, and at the same time paralysed, trapped, marching at a zombie-ish pace. But trapped by what? Was anything or anyone preventing me from doing as I chose?
I walked. The wild summer rain fell in dark gusts and clattered against sensible silent houses, the black gloss of blind suburban windows. And so I began to plan very definitely how I would invite Rosemary on holiday to Turkey in place of Shirley. Why should she say no? I would pay for everything. She had taken up agency nursing to be flexible, she said. She wasn’t married, she said.
I planned my approach in immense and teeth-gritting detail. I would have nerves of steel. I would say this, say that, smile that smile which Shirley had told me was sexy. And I fantasised what would follow, hot nights in Turkish hotels, Karma Sutra positions followed by good cheerful meals in spicy restaurants. Other people found relief in affairs, didn’t they? I had even heard a somewhat embarrassing and wimpy confession from Gregory recently.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I sat in the living room reading through papers from work, and the following morning, bewilderingly early, a good half an hour before she was due to be substituted, I was pushing into Gorst Road from a breezy damp morning to put it to Rosemary. Turn of the key, customary tug and push, and the door was open.
‘Hello, love,’ Mother’s voice sang, ‘I’m back on my feet.’ Embracing me, she said, ‘It’s something of a miracle really. I felt so ill yesterday.’
Indeed she still looked frail as rice paper. Though she gave a little clap of her hands and beamed. Which is a way she has. Rather as if we were at Sunday school, singing choruses.
‘And the nurse?’
‘I sent her home, poor dear, she was so tired. I think I can cope myself now. To be honest she was being rather bossy with poor Dad. I’m just making tea for Peggy if you want a cup.’
Peggy was still in bed, despite the fact that her infant could be heard yelling in the kitchen.
I suppose it must be indicative of the state I had got myself into, or rather that Shirley, that life had got me into, that only two hours later, as soon, that is, as I had a moment alone in the office, I was actually on the phone to this girl I had merely eaten a frugal meal with, watching her slow white hands as she fed herself.
‘I got your number from the agency. I said you’d left your purse.’ ‘Oh did I? How silly of me. I’ll. .’ ‘No, no you didn’t.’ ‘What?’ ‘You didn’t leave it. I got your number because I want to see you again. I enjoyed meeting you so much.’
After a short pause, she said: ‘You do realise you just woke me up. I’ve been on my feet all night.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I was ready to hang up the moment she said no. I truly did like her but I couldn’t see myself hanging on the phone and begging. My wife was a misery was the point. I wanted some fun.
She said: ‘Okay, how about next Friday?’
I put the phone down and stared around me: the desk, the Venetian blinds, the attractive HewPack hardware. Done it! Done it!
If you really want to do it, George. If you really want to be that person.
I stared, pushing the knuckles of both hands together, biting the inside of a cheek, concentrating. And realised I hadn’t really thought this through yet. I hadn’t decided. My heart wasn’t that hard. The truth being, I suppose, that for some people — Peggy springs to mind — new departures of this kind are just water off a duck’s back; experience doesn’t touch them deeply whatever they do, and so any course of action is more or less as good as the next. While for others of us, for me, it is a bath of acid. Did I really want to become an adulterer? There was a fear of changing, of losing myself somehow, a fear my mother had always exploited. I would far rather be good and stay put, if only one could have fun and pleasure with it.