Lust is, for me, a particularly intense variety of memory. I can’t imagine feeling it for a stranger. For someone I’ve just met I might feel interest or attraction, but not lust—no more lust than love. Nick was the first man for whom I ever felt lust without loving, and even with him it was hardly lust at first sight. I thought him attractive in a kind of young, funky, nonthreatening way. My reasons for contemplating sex with him had more to do with my feelings for my husband than for Nick. I was furiously angry with Peter, desperate to right the balance of our dying marriage by taking a lover. When Nick made it obvious he was attracted to me, I felt a resurgence of a female power which Peter had all but destroyed in me.
What started out of curiosity, anger, loneliness, and revenge became something else after the first kiss. Sex, when we got to it, was explosive, quite unlike anything I’d expected, or experienced, before. It was wonderful and terrible. I’d never had orgasms so violent. Afterward I hated him for making me feel so intensely, hated him because I wanted him so fiercely and specifically.
Now I began to remember, in a pornographic, filmic rush. Positions we had used in our fierce and frantic couplings those few times we had the opportunity—on the floor, against the wall, in the bath, as well as in the beds. Even more powerful, because I’d always been left wanting more, were memories of our more public embraces, on the street, under bridges or in doorways, when we had no time, or nowhere to go, yet were desperate with desire.
It was just then, in my unusually vulnerable state, that the music began. It came from the jukebox: a plaintive love song first popular about twelve years ago. The summer I fell in love with Peter that song was to be heard on every radio, at every party, from every jukebox in the land. It was no longer in the charts, of course, hadn’t been for a long time, but it had remained popular enough for unlucky coincidence to strike, years later: it was the song Nick had chosen as a background to his seduction of me, in this pub, five years ago. He couldn’t have failed to notice the effect it had on me, and as I never told him that I associated it with falling in love with someone else, it became from that night “our song.”
And there it was again. No wonder I forgot what year it was. I realized Nick hadn’t gone to the loo at all—he’d been remembering old times and he wanted to see if “our song” had lasted the years. I hated him and loved him for it. I could no more fight the effects of that song than I could have resisted a massive shot of muscle relaxant. Already weakened by whiskey and lust I hadn’t a prayer against the power of a sentimental song.
He saw me slumping and put his arm around me. I burst into tears.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said.
When I stopped shaking he walked me over to the table in the corner farthest from the bar where, in the old days, we’d often spent hours drinking and driving each other crazy. He had seemed determined either to undress me or to get inside my clothes with me, and I had fought him off like a reluctant virgin, my occasional delicious lapses into surrender always broken by the fear of public indecency.
It was like old times. He was just as I’d remembered—I was just as I’d remembered, roused to a pitch of desire I’d nearly forgotten. It was as if we had spent only weeks apart, not years, just as in those days the weeks apart had felt like years.
“Don’t.”
“But you like it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it, just don’t.”
“But why?”
“Someone might see.”
“So?”
I struggled without success to trap his hands. “I’m no exhibitionist. Anyway, you’re the movie buff. Didn’t you see The Accused?”
He gave a soundless laugh. “This isn’t that kind of bar.”
“And I’m not that kind of girl. Can we talk?”
“We’ll only end up fighting.”
“I need another drink; so do you.”
He looked at our empty glasses and sighed. When he got up to go to the bar, I followed.
We drank; we flirted; we fought. And all of a sudden the barman was calling time. That couldn’t be right. But the clock on the wall said it was, and I looked around and realized we were the only customers left.
We walked all the way down to Holborn tube station, hand in hand, like innocent lovers. The hour and the darkness gave us that freedom. Just before we reached the station he pulled me into a recessed doorway, one that had been overlooked by the homeless sleeping in others. As he kissed me, he slipped his cold hands into my layers of clothing, seeking flesh. I felt a reckless pleasure and did nothing as he eventually managed to bare one breast. I’d barely had time to feel the cold before his hot mouth left mine and closed around the nipple.
Then the heady sensation stopped. “You’re driving me crazy,” he said, low-voiced. “This is no good. I want to make love to you. Come back with me.”
“To Kent? Your wife won’t mind?”
“I’m on expenses. We can get a hotel room. I said I might have to stay overnight… In fact, I do; I’ve missed the last train.”
All our lovemaking had been in dark corners or in cheap hotels. We’d only spent the whole night together twice. I’d planned and chosen nights Peter was away, but Nick had had to call home, once from a pay phone in a station, once from the hotel room. I remembered how much I had hated those phone calls, which I’d tried not to hear. Did he say “I love you” before he said good-bye? Afterward, when he’d said it to me, I’d hit him. That had been the next to last time we’d seen each other.
All those old feelings were still there, as volatile and immediate as the touch of his lips. I wanted sex with him, violent and annihilating, but I couldn’t deal with the emotions of before and after.
“I can’t,” I said abruptly, pushing him off, fixing my clothes. “I haven’t missed my train and I’m not going to.” I began walking toward the station.
“I’m sorry,” he said humbly. Although we’d both been married, both, therefore, equally guilty, I’d reserved the role of the innocent. Of course, the husband I betrayed had already betrayed me, but I didn’t tell Nick that. From his readiness to shoulder all the guilt I guessed that I was not the first woman his wife might have cause to hate. This, of course, added to the anger I felt at him and at faithless men everywhere.
“If you knew how much I’ve missed you—how much you still mean to me—can I see you again?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Nothing’s changed. Has it?”
He looked very sad. “I guess not.”
I had a ticket, he didn’t, so I pushed through the turnstile and left him without looking back.
In my mind, though, I never stopped looking back. I had plenty of time to think, for it’s a long journey from Holborn to South Harrow, with a long, cold wait on the platform at Acton Town making it even longer at that time of night. Yet with all the time I had to think, I really didn’t think at all. I was moving on automatic pilot, going through motions learned a long time ago, while in my head, playing again and again like some cheap, sentimental, incredibly powerful song, was the memory of Nick: the rasp of his whiskers on my face, the taste of whisky on his tongue, the strength of his arms around me, the light in his eyes, his voice whispering in my ear, his face.
Tears came to my eyes and then dried up. Older recollections—highly-charged sexual moments—mingled with the memories of a few hours before. Things he’d said to me, things we’d done. Even more powerfully: all the things we hadn’t done.
I was fairly drunk. Feeling no pain, as they say—except in my heart. As I walked up the hill from South Harrow station, I cursed myself for not having gone with him, for not having seized a precious few hours of joy. Why did I always worry about what came next, why was I so desperate never to be caught out, always to behave correctly? What was the big deal about faithfulness and propriety, and getting home before dawn? It had never made me happy.