and she felt a renewed confidence. Confident enough to direct them again. For that was what they seemed to want of her.
Not so bad, really, she thought, forcing moisturizer into the parched pores of her forehead. On a good day, in her lemon suit, the grey nubuck pumps and seven deniers, she could still draw herself up, stretch herself out – so taut she could hear herself ping.
In the other bathroom, Brian was humming louder and louder which meant that he was expecting – no, inviting her intrusion any minute now. She pursed her lips and left him to it.
Brian wondered what he had been thinking about for the past half-hour – the blanks were growing longer these days. Nothing much most probably. Some old crap about his own reflection or his sense of self. It worried him mildly that he had succumbed so easily to the self-absorption of Julia’s class – anomalous to his upbringing, he thought with satisfaction. There was grit and hard grind for you. He gave himself a flinty look in the mirror and pulled the towel between his legs, just rough enough to smart a bit. Now so.
He padded, still dripping, into the bedroom. The suitcases were stacked up neatly by the door. His clothes for the morning lay draped across one chair, Julia’s across the other. She was already in bed, reading. Glasses perched on the end of her nose. ‘You’re wet,’ she observed, turning a page with a licked thumb.
He stood by the end of the bed and slapped his palms against his chest. ‘And yourself?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Dry as in Gobi, Sahara … Martini.’
‘No change there then.’
She peered at him over the rim of her glasses. ‘We have to be up at the crack of dawn,’ she said.
‘So?’
Julia sighed, allowed the book to drop to the floor, folded her glasses shut with a click. She studied him for a moment with her head cocked to the side. Is it love, she wondered? After so many years, she felt what she could only describe as ‘shy’ on occasion. There was something slightly embarrassing about making love with your partner. Snorting like a zebra one minute, rubbing Ariel Ultra into the skid marks on his underpants the next. The groping hands of night that would not dare to fondle by day. Waking from an erotic dream in the half-light of a winter’s morning to grab your partner’s frayed pyjama collar – ‘You’ll do.’
Middle-aged sex was nothing if not safe; no need for health exhortations there. It was comfortable and reliable, warmth and familiarity tinged by a certain something unpleasant like the smell of your own sneaky fart under the bedcovers. And safe, God, safe as houses.
There had been moments. They had tried whispering obscenities or, in Brian’s case, little affected grunts, nothing earthy or guttural, no uhhhs, and so patently out of sync that she had bopped him on the back of the head one night: ‘Shut up.’
Understandably perhaps, he was very quiet for a long time after that. Not so much as a gruntlet to dilute the lonely sound of two bodies wearily shunting into each other in the dead of night.
She wondered if every marriage was as smelly underneath the perfume sprayed on for friends and family. Below the surface: strata of unresolved, residual odours – like decay – so that the simplest gesture or caress took on a thousand resonances, rekindled a thousand rancid grudges. Briefly dispelled by ropy buttocks pumping up and down in mechanical despair, beneath which slappy thighs spread just wide enough for entry. Tentative arms reaching out under as yet unsoiled sheets, always ready for rejection – as if it were the only thing that could be counted on. Keeping each other company in the end as if that were an end in itself. She often thought of all the miserable elderly couples out there keeping each other company. Now, for a brief moment, she wanted to cry. She felt that she should – for the passage of love, or what passed for love, or something like it.
‘Tempt me,’ she said.
‘I thought that’s what I was doing,’ Brian responded plaintively. He whipped the towel off and grinned at her. Sometimes he harboured dark thoughts concerning his wife. Sodomy up an alley by a mad, defrocked priest with a club foot – that would soften her cough. He fantasized doing it himself on occasion. On the premise that she was generally softer, a bit soporific, the day after sex – still vocal, of course, but less strident – he’d figured sodomy would buy him a week at least. However, although she was open to most things, the servants’ entrance was most definitely bolted. He had got as far as accidentally on purpose losing his way one time. Just a little prod to see how she would react. Then a cheesy, shame-faced grin when she had craned around incredulously.
‘Where do you think you’re going? Piles, remember?’
Remembering her piles was not high on his daily agenda, in truth. But he never forgot them again.
Now, Brian began to rotate his hips in slow wide circles. He hummed a striptease tune and wriggled his backside. Fair play, I’m a tryer, he thought. Julia watched through slitted eyes; well, he’s trying and I don’t see anyone else there, she thought.
The journey in was always the same for Brian. He felt that he was travelling to a safe, familiar place. Nothing to harm him there, just a warm enfolding darkness where there was no need for the cutting quality of words. Where he could just be without having to worry about what or who it was that he should be. She was soft and fragrant as a pineapple inside. They fitted one another. It was as simple as that. They just fitted. He kissed her mouth, remembered a porn video they’d watched together and told her that he was seeing her stretched out on the bonnet of a car.
‘Colour?’
‘What? Oh, red.’
Julia twisted her mouth to the side. It would be red – high-gloss polish, perfect for rippling cellulite. She wondered who it was he really had over the bonnet. There were times when she had a genuine craving for him, but tonight was not one of them. She had to suppress a sneeze – always a martyr to her polite upbringing.
‘I’m coming,’ Brian gasped.
She thought: Don’t let me stop you, dear.
He thought: I don’t know why I don’t just go down to the local abattoir and shag a dead sheep.
He blinked. She twitched. He yawned. She sneezed. He came. She didn’t.
They curled up. She reached for a wad of tissues.
He thought: I could divorce her for less.
She thought: The sheets need changing anyway.
They thought: Not so bad. Must do that again some time soon.
‘Sore pet?’ he joked, a throwback to the days when they used to skin each other.
She thought: You’d have to pump a bit harder than that, buddy. ‘Mmm,’ she responded, because she might need him again.
She wrapped his arms around her waist and ground her buttocks back against his damp crotch. Nestling in for the night. He kissed her sweaty neck. The kindness of it, she thought, imagining her on the bonnet of a red car.
A high wind pulled up at the bathroom window, out of nowhere. Julia sighed. They were safe. Brian snored softly.
Oh yes, it was love all right. A build-up over the years, invisible most of the time, but always there, always returning, accreting like plaque on teeth. And just as ineradicable. Brian snored
