Instead of walking out of the kitchen I lift my head, and our eyes meet. Selwyn’s eyelashes and hair are coated with grey dust, as if he’s made up to play an old man on some amateur stage. He doesn’t try to reach out for me again, and I’m sharply aware that this is disappointing. My heart’s banging against my ribs, surely loud enough for him to hear, and my mouth is so dry that I don’t think I can speak.
Why now? Why, after all these years, is this happening again?
The answer comes to me: it’s precisely because of now.
We’re not young any longer, there’s no network of pathways branching invitingly ahead of us. No personae to be tried on for size. We’re what, and who, we are.
But we’re not yet ready to be old.
We stand in the silent kitchen, speechless and gaping like adolescents, but both of us realizing that through decades of duty and habit we’ve somehow forgotten about the thrill of choice: oh God, the breathtaking drama of sexual choice. The cliché that swims into my head might have been made for this instant. I do feel weak at the knees. I’m not sure that my legs will hold me upright.
When I don’t say anything, Selwyn sighs. He brushes his hand through his hair and a shower of splinters and plaster particles fall like snow.
‘Would it be all right for me to have a bath?’ he asks.
‘You don’t have to ask permission. You live here.’ My voice comes out in a croak, sounding as if I’ve borrowed it from someone else.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
I listen to his steps as he goes upstairs, the familiar creak of the oak boards, the clink of the bathroom latch somewhere overhead.
Without giving myself time to think, I run after him.
From the linen cupboard opposite my bedroom door I snatch up an armful of fresh towels. I race along the landing and push at the bathroom door. Not locked. It swings inwards.
The taps are full on and the room is already cloudy with steam.
Selwyn’s barefoot. He’s taken off his filthy sweater and shirt and dropped them on the floor. As soon as he sees me he nudges the clothes gently aside with his bare foot, clearing a space. He holds out his arms.
What I feel is an extraordinary lightening, giddiness, swirling of blood; it’s like being very drunk but with all my senses cleansed and heightened.
‘I’ve brought you some clean towels.’
‘No, you haven’t.’
He snatches the towels and drops them on top of the clothes.
It’s me who takes the last step.
Our mouths meet. Immediately we begin to consume each other, as if we’re starving, with the steam billowing in clouds around us. Out of the corner of my eye, as Selwyn twists off my jersey, I see that the bath is almost overflowing.
Once we’re started, rediscovering the inches of skin and the declivities and shadows of a pair of bodies that were once familiar territory (only yesterday, as it now seems), it’s impossible to stop.
Selwyn fumbles to his knees, drawing me down with him, wrestling to extricate me from absurd layers of vest and straps. Towels coiled with clothes and grit mound beneath us. Water laps at the very rim of the bath.
I hear myself gasping with laughter. ‘There’s going to be a flood.’
‘Fuck it.’
He drags me with him as he strains to reach the taps and stem the tide.
In the quiet that follows, there’s the sound of voices.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ Selwyn slumps back against the side of the bath.
I’m already on my feet, spitting building rubble out of my mouth and frantically raking fingers through my hair. I pull my clothes into a sort of order and plunge out of the bathroom.
Colin and Katherine and Polly are all in the hall below. They’re laughing and exclaiming and apparently having some difficulty in taking off their boots and coats.
Polly glances up and sees me on the landing.
‘Colin’s been getting the eye from a nice young chef,’ she calls.
‘I had to carry these two home, just about,’ Colin says drily.
The hall clock chimes. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.
Luckily, they’re all too busy and happy to notice anything.
I run down the stairs, relief all but cancelling out guilt.
Ben and Nicola
The boy climbed the flight of stairs that led straight up from the street door. With the usual smell of warm grease from the café following him, he leaned briefly against the thin ply of the flat door and juggled a bunch of flowers, a brown takeaway bag and a carton of milk. He twisted a key in the Yale and the door sighed open. He nudged it further with his hip and wriggled into the dark, confined space beyond.
‘Nic? ’S me.’
No answer came but he shouldered his way cheerfully onwards past the coat pegs and the parked Hoover and a stack of cardboard boxes. The light in the main body of the flat was slightly brighter. There was only one room, L-shaped, with a kitchenette and a partitioned bathroom that would not have passed a health and safety inspection with flying colours. To excuse this Nicola’s Greek landlord told her that he was not making formal rental, no, more like place for his own family, and cheap for now while he wait for his cousin to come and fix up.
Nicola was sitting in the armchair at the end of the room farthest from the unmade bed, next to a window overlooking a row of lock-ups and the fading leaves of a plane tree. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. Ben saw that she was wearing her grey holey jersey and leggings, for about the fourth day running, but she had pulled a little skirt on over the leggings and her hair was freshly washed.
‘Hi, babe, you OK? Look, I got you these.’ He held out the flowers, yellow and white daisies that he had chosen from a green enamel bucket outside the grocer’s at the end of the road. ‘And some soup as well, properly healthy, bean and something. It might have got a bit cold but I can heat it up again, easy. Or would you rather have a cup of tea? There’s milk.’
Nicola gazed up at him, her wide eyes expressionless. He was uneasily conscious of wanting to placate her, although he didn’t know why she should need this treatment. She had been a bit off, lately. He kept looking up and finding that she was staring at him. When he responded with his wide, frank smile she’d blink, and quickly look away again.
‘Not bad out,’ he went on. He put down the takeaway bag, and the milk and flowers.
Nic stirred, unwinding her legs and biting off a yawn. ‘How was work?’
‘Yeah. It was good. You know, average.’
‘Did
