take a warm bath, put the feet in hot water and mustard, take gruel and then go to bed well covered in order that we may perspire freely
But it doesn’t wipe him out.
You think of Gabriel deep into that hurting night, your hand between your legs, balming the ache, trying to press it out. It felt like he was pushing you deeper and deeper into life and it was all brought so suddenly to a halt: because he said that the rules should no longer exist. Why did he have to destroy the secret world you’d created for each other? He smashed it with love, with attachment. There’s no returning now, for God knows where it would end up if you did.
You imagine Gabriel waiting for the call that will not come. You’ve waited so many times in the past; a hostage to a lover’s silence and you know too well the heart-slam of what it’s like. You’re tinkering so thoughtlessly with his life and not cleaning up the mess. You’ve created a woman’s dream lover who knows something of the secrets of what women really want, and what they don’t. But what do women really want?
You’re not sure, now.
A cherishing? Money? Security?
They don’t, necessarily, want to fall in love.
Cole lies with his back to you and the arch of your foot locks into the warm curve of his calf; you often do this as he sleeps.
never sit in a thorough draft
The phone rings the next day and the next, Gabriel’s usual time, and his voice is on the answering machine but you do not pick it up. After the call on day three, at the same time, you slam the door shut on the flat.
You want the taxi drivers again. They take their breaks in the green cabby’s hut by Notting Hill Gate. The Scottish one told you that, the one with the face that looked as if it had been scrubbed raw by the wind, he told you he wanted you every day inside the hut, as he shoved his prick into your aching, numbing cunt; he said that he’d boot the dinner lady out. He wanted all his mates there too, he said, as he flipped you over, he wanted you spread on the table, he said, as he was fucking you up the ass.
You sit at the bus stop opposite the green hut. You’re perched, uncomfortably, on the red plastic bar. You will wait it out. It takes one and a half hours. The first driver you spoke to pulls up and you walk to his window. You don’t say anything. He looks at you, he grins, he slides his window down.
I want a woman as well, you say.
He sucks in his breath, you can see his savouring but he doesn’t want to let it out. Uh huh, he says. I’ll need a bit of time, he says. Let’s make it six o’clock.
You go to a public phone box. Tell Cole you’ll be home late. Martha’s had a trauma, she needs to go out and have a drink, talk it through. You walk from the box, thinking of being licked by a woman while the men watch; of being urinated on, of being filled up.
You wear just a bathrobe as you open the hotel room door. You don’t want them to see your clothes, to read you in any way, you don’t even want to give them your voice.
Two men this time, and a woman. As soon as you see her, it’s wrong. She’s young, wary, a friend not a partner, in it for a laugh. She wears a white shirt that’s grubby round the collar and you’re annoyed by that. She’s assessing you, reading you, she knows you in a way the men never will. It’s suddenly shameful. You lie down, awkwardly, on the bed. The sheets are too slippery. You feel cold. You can hear the television news too loud in the next room. Nothing works, it’s utterly unerotic, it hurts. The woman stands back, watches, plays with a button on her shirt. You feel your body shutting down, bit by bit, like an office block’s lights being switched off at night. You push the men off and tell them to leave.
Oh, come on, says the one you began it with.
He’s different this time, you don’t like his tone.
Just get out.
You cannot look them in the face; you stumble to the bathroom, the taste of metal in your mouth. You lock yourself in and sit on the toilet, shaking, and then suddenly retch into the toilet bowl, retch and retch, as if you are trying to heave your insides out.
The door outside clicks shut; they are gone. The room that’s left behind looks cheap, tatty, forlorn. You go to the cupboard, need your clothes, warmth, need your lovely tweed skirt. Your bag isn’t there. Fuck. Fuck. With your wallet in it. Your credit cards and driving licence. Your name. Your address.
Oh God, not that.
It was the woman, it was in her face at the start.
Think.
You can’t report it. You’ve already given the lobby your credit card imprint, good, good, but your keys, your keys: they’re in your coat pocket, thank God. But your name, your address and then the quick hot tears come and come. You push to the bathroom, to the shower’s strong hot water and scrub at your skin, scrub it into rawness and then you sag against the tiles and tears and water spill down. You slide to the floor and you stay hunched in the shower’s palm for a very long time, weeping and weeping until you hiccup to a stop. You turn off the tap. You’re still, and wet, and shivery. You can’t think how you’ll get home. A taxi’s out of the question, you feel like you’ll never be able to step into one again, alone or with Cole or anyone else.
They have your name and address. They have your name and address.
Your weeping, again. Years of not crying in it, it’s all, finally, coming out.
the importance of good food
You call your bank from the hotel room. You check out. Tell the crisp young man behind the desk you’ve left your bag at home, you don’t know why you need to explain that, you have to stop, you’re talking too much: he knows you’re lying.
You have some loose change in your pocket; you ring Cole from a phone box down the street, you’re sure he’ll be working late. He is, of course. You tell him your handbag’s been stolen and you’re stuck. I’ll be right over, he says. You go to a nearby Starbucks and wait, hunched over a hot chocolate, stilling your tear gulps until Cole strides into the cafe and you walk into his strong arms and the tears, once again, come and come. He holds you into stillness and then goes to the counter and comes back gentle with a tray of sandwiches you can’t eat.
Let’s get a cab home, he says, I’ve got some dosh.
No, no, I feel like the tube, it’s quicker. I just want to get home.
OK. Whatever.
You
