you’re off to something else. The sense of the illusion, triumphantly executed, buoys you down the street.
to know right is well, but to do right is better
The following Sunday.
You flick through the newspapers’ magazines. Stop at Theo’s column. Since Marrakech you’ve not been able to read it, until now. You’ve been slipping that section into the bin before Cole gets a chance to look.
This week, it’s the usual kind of queries:
Dear Dr Theo, my new boyfriend’s getting frustrated. He loves me on top during sex but I feel so self-conscious; it just makes me freeze. It’s driving him crazy as he says he’s the only one making any effort.
Dear Frozen, ah, yes, sex on top. It can be wonderful, but only if you’re completely uninhibited with how you look. If you’re at all body conscious, it’s an extremely vulnerable position for a woman to be in. So, what to do? Well, girl, you need to get used to some friendly, relaxed nudity with your boyfriend. If that’s too big a step for now, why don’t you try wearing one of his shirts? Men usually love that.
Dear Dr Theo, my ex-husband took forever to climax and I worry I didn’t provide him with enough grip. Could it be possible that my vagina is just too big?.
Dear Worried, you know what, maybe your ex just liked to savour the whole experience. Did you ever ask? We girls just don’t ask enough, you know! But some simple exercises can strengthen your pelvic floor muscles – to find out where they are, try halting the flow when you’re on the toilet. If you do them regularly, you’ll be able to grip your men deliciously tight!
You always read her columns because she expected you to but never really applied them to your life; they were good for a giggle, that’s all. Your mother looked out for them voraciously. It always seemed slightly obscene to you that a post-menopausal woman would enjoy them so much. She was devastated when you told her that Theo made up most of the letters.
But then, but then, to a question about a lover who’s providing great sex, and is that enough to leave her husband and two kids, Theo writes in stern, condemning response:
No, it’s not enough. And just remember, it’s a strong person who has the courage to end a relationship that isn’t working, before embarking on a fresh one. It’s a weak person who cheats on someone.
Your heart pounds as you read. You push the magazine into the bin. How dare she write that; how dare she publicly pretend she’s squeaky clean; someone else. And whom is she writing that for? Cole? You, to throw you off the scent? Women are so accomplished at battling in subtle, ingenious, covert ways; at clothing their betrayers’ fingers in the smoothest of kid. And it’s usually other women they’re competing with, not men.
paraffin is highly inflammable
You ration your evenings with the writers to once, perhaps twice, a week; it doesn’t seem right, as a wife, to be out every night. Cole was amused when you’d told him of the gatherings; he felt it was a new hobby for you, a way to open out your life. You’d been careful to tell him all the men were attached, with boyfriends or girlfriends or wives.
A Friday night. There are eight of you in the pub; you’ve all come from the Library with your laptops and papers in shoulder bags. And then another man appears and the group exclaims and arms reach out.
He reddens, to see you, and the rest of them look at you afresh. The new persona dissolves in an instant, in that moment of seeing him, you’re back to your old self: your top lip trembles in its greeting.
We know each other, Gabriel says, quizzing you with his eyes.
How’s it going? Your voice is hoarse, the three words are all you can push out.
He’s just popped by for a drink and the rest of the group want to know how he is and where the hell he’s been and when is he going to get a computer and enter the twenty-first century like everyone else. You stand back and watch. You’re struck, again, by the peculiar gentleness, the shyness, still. He’s been in LA, at some castings for pilot season, it’s where all the English actors end up around this time of year, and then he stopped off in Rome and there was Barcelona too, a family wedding, and he speaks politely and affably but he’d much prefer to talk about something else. You recognise it; he’s not good in big groups. You’re struck, again, by the hair washed in night and the small clearing behind his ear, its vivid white. You want to lick it. You tighten your inner thighs as he leans across you to the bar, to pay for his wine, not beer like the rest. Another suit, of course, as if it would never cross his mind to wear anything else, as if he always visits his mother and attends church. No one in your life attends church. The suits have a vintage line to them; maybe they’re his peculiar style, or they’re his father’s, or he’s poorer than you thought. There’s so much to ask.
He doesn’t bother fitting in with everyone else. Why shouldn’t he wear a suit and write in longhand and disappear for several months? He’s a man very loved; he’s like a rock that’s been struck by the sun for a long time and is warm with it. You see him as the only boy in his family with many adoring older sisters, the late child, the lovely mistake: there’s none of the responsibility or gravity of an eldest child. There’s such a sweetness to him. It’s all in his smile.
Your breathing is wrong, it’s all jerky and light, you cannot still it. The others joke about the screenplay that’s taking a bloody long time to complete.
A woman called Martha jumps in. You’ve noticed her a lot: she walks with a heavy brow, as if her fists are clenched. She teases that Gabriel’s finished twenty-eight pages and they’re the work of a genius but they’ve taken eleven months to produce and there’s doubt among the rest of them that another twenty-eight will ever be completed, and you can see in that moment you’re not the only one caught.
What’s it called, you stumble the words out.
I don’t know, yet.
His boyish beam, his shrug. You want to get away from this bar, it’s all stilted and jostly and wrong. He’s blushed upon seeing you and it must mean something and you make an effort to still your breathing and a sip of wine slips into a gulp. One by one the others are drifting away, even Martha, lingering Martha, and finally, finally you’re alone. Silence, for a moment, then laughing from you both.
Well.
Well.
You apologise for not calling, tell him you lost his number and were terribly upset and then hate yourself for revealing that. But he’s flattered, delighted, in fact. I’m glad you were miserable, he says, it makes me feel good. And you look at him, trying to work him out: he’s not interested in shielding himself.
Then the talking, an hour or two or thereabouts, everything and nothing, the way Cole and you used to talk, in the
