the thrill of wanting so much what we were about to do together, in that place, without a thought of the past or what was to follow. Perhaps the moment of greatest, most intense joy is that one, when everything life has to offer comes together and you forget the rest.
We made for the only dry corner on the beaten earth floor of our ruin. I congratulated myself on thinking of the duffle-coat. I found myself babbling, ‘It’s you? Tell me you’re really here. I can’t be sure in this dark…’ And he murmured, ‘I knew we’d find each other again some day, I knew it,’ stroking my face as if he were seeing it with his fingers, before gently exploring the back of my neck, my shoulders, my waist, sculpting me bit by bit in the exquisite clay of expectancy.
No one could have described me as experienced. At twenty I had had only two lovers: Gilles, who ‘initiated’ me – into precisely nothing, given that neither of us really knew what to put where; and Roger, whose intelligence rendered me speechless with admiration and incapable of judgment. He would despatch me briskly between physics lectures on the Moroccan rug in his bed-sit (‘facilities on the landing’) with four or five quick bumpety-bumps preceded by about the same number of rubbedy-dubs for starters. I’m reminded of it, in spite of myself, every time I see a violinist plucking a string with the tip of his middle finger and then releasing it once he’s got, or thinks he’s got, the desired effect. He would manage a few considerate I love yous and I would respond ‘I love you’, mainly to convince myself that there really was something special about that quarter of an hour. I looked forward to it hopefully every time, though it must have been obvious that I never achieved even his rudimentary satisfaction. But it didn’t seem to bother him, and he wanted me the next time, so I must be OK, and this must be physical love (as I called it then). I liked the before part, he preferred the after – perhaps the well-known difference between the sexes lay right there.
I don’t remember if Gauvin was as good a caresser then as he became later. In those days men like him didn’t go in much for caressing, nor would I have been for it. I assumed that Roger’s approach was standard. Women who were brazen enough to ask, ‘A bit higher please,’ or ‘No, not there, it hurts,’ or even worse, ‘More of that, please,’ were insatiable harpies who drove good men to nice girls, girls content to worship their magic wand and drink their sacred semen with first-communion expressions. That was the received wisdom then, and anyway I had no way of checking. There was little frankness between men and women; we simply didn’t speak the same language. One belongs to one’s sex as to one’s race.
All the barriers came down that first time. It was as if our bodies had known each other for ever: matching passion, matching rhythms carried us across every difference that had divided us, as if our whole lives had been a preparation for this love-making, this losing of ourselves in each other, this never-ending desire. As one wave of pleasure ebbed, the ripples of the next one stirred. We were living a night without time, of which there are so few in a lifetime.
It was the tide that recalled us. Gauvin could suddenly tell from the sound of the waves that they were rising. That man always knew exactly what the sea was up to. ‘If we don’t leave now we’ll have to swim for it.’
We scrabbled blindly for our scattered garments. My bra had vanished. Too bad. It didn’t have my name on it, after all. Gauvin swore as he fumbled with his wet buttonholes, but eventually we were dressed, more or less, me with my stupid handbag over my arm as if I were off to a tea party, and Gauvin with his trousers slung round his neck so they wouldn’t get wet in the sea, even though they were already soaked by the rain. Hardly able to control our laughter, we ran splashing towards the narrows through which a strong current was already coursing. We clung together to avoid being swept away and, waist deep, just managed to ford across. How better to wash oneself of love?
Gauvin’s car seemed so cosy and dry, as we struggled with our sopping clothes. Back at the village he parked in the farmyard to walk me home past the warmth of the cowshed where you could hear the animals stirring in the straw. We could have done with that warmth ourselves, but it was time to return to our normal lives. Chilled suddenly, we took refuge in our last kiss.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ I whispered. I took out my poem, thoroughly damp by now. ‘You’ll think it’s very silly, probably, but I wrote it after… you know, that night… two years ago…
‘You felt it as well, then?’ Gauvin was speaking in his darkness voice. ‘I thought…’
‘It’s you who never let on!’
‘It was better not… for both of us, I reckoned. Tonight I never meant… I just couldn’t resist it. And now I could kick myself. I’m a right bastard.’
‘Why? Because you’re engaged?’
He shrugged. ‘It was because of you I got engaged. I mean, to stop myself getting ideas. It couldn’t work for us from the start. I never thought it could. I shouldn’t have asked you tonight. It was bloody stupid of me. I’m sorry.’
He rested his head with its tight ram’s curls on my shoulder, breathing hard. I longed to tell him that he would have been more stupid if he hadn’t. I knew already that you don’t get many chances like that. But he wouldn’t have understood. He didn’t function along those lines. And anyway the rain came down harder, my duffie-coat smelt like a wet dog, the mud was seeping into our shoes and we were shivering with cold and sadness. In his case, with anger too at having surrendered to his feelings. This wasn’t at all how he’d planned his life. I could feel him flexing, impatient to get back to the certainties of his ordered life.
‘I’ll forgive you,’ I said. ‘On condition that we meet just once again before you start at Concarneau this winter. Only once. But a proper bed, and no tide coming in. I’d like to know you better before I forget you.’ Gauvin’s arms tightened round me. He wouldn’t forget me now. He couldn’t.
‘Va Karedig,’ he breathed. ‘I wouldn’t dare call you that in French. Lucky it’s dark… I can’t promise. I don’t know. But I want you to know that…’
He stopped. I knew what he wanted me to know. Here he was, a trawlerman, engaged to be married, full of scruples and complexes, wanting to do the right thing. Meanwhile, I wanted to stay unforgettable, even if it meant wrecking his marriage. That is the lucid cruelty that girls have. Not for a second did I feel it might be better for him to be at peace in another woman’s arms. I needed the subtle joy of instilling in him an incurable nostalgia.
‘Kenavo… A Wechall,’ he added, even more softly, drawing away. Then in the rough Breton accent I loved so much, which swallowed the ends of his words, ‘I’ll do what I can about meeting again.’ He raised his right hand, as if on oath, and held it there until I shut our front door behind me.
-
3 Paris
-
The great experiences of life, birth, illness, death, so often reduce one to utter banality. It’s the platitudes, born of accepted wisdom which work for gut feelings, rather than any scholarly language. When Gauvin kept his promise and joined me in Paris I found myself unable to sleep or eat. I was weak at the knees, had a lump in my throat, a knot in my stomach and a weight in my heart. It was as if every function had been subsumed in sexuality. And those weren’t the only parts of me aflame: a fire raged at my core for three days, a brand from Gauvin’s red-hot iron. Like that vaginal ring in The Story of O.
‘You’ll never imagine where, but I’m on fire,’ I told him, not quite daring to be explicit. We didn’t know each other very well after all.
‘I can imagine where, never stop imagining it,’ he answered with
