This Is All (64 page)

‘Just for an hour. You’ll sleep better afterwards.’

‘Honest. I shouldn’t.’

‘I’ll count three, then I’m going to blow my horn till you say yes.’

I knew he would. So I said, ‘All right, you fool!’ pulled on some jeans and a top, crept out of the house and joined him. And yes, it was fun because it was naughty, but I was uneasy about it as well. Not for doing it, but because of Edward, how he was. As I told you, our sex had been tempestuous sometimes. But it was never out of control. It had always seemed like a game. That night for the first time, I felt frightened. I hadn’t experienced anything like it. Edward became so intense, so unrestrained, so urgent, so powerful, that I was afraid he might lose control and hurt me. I remember taking hold of his head with both hands and saying, ‘Don’t hurt me! Don’t forget I’m here! Don’t forget it’s me!’ Which brought him to himself again, he eased off, stroked my face, kissed me, said, ‘I’m sorry. I won’t. I won’t hurt you. It’s okay. It’s just, I love you so much.’

Call Number Three, the night before our final weekend.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

I went to the window. No car, no Edward.

‘Where are you?’

‘In the kitchen at home.’

‘Is that okay?’

‘She’s dead to the world. The kids have been ill all day. Can we talk?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Three.’

‘What!’

‘I need to. Look. This can’t go on.’

‘What can’t? You calling me at three in the morning? I agree.’

‘No. Me. Here.’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘No.’

‘You sound like you have.’

‘Tired. Bad day. And then the kids.’

‘You should go to bed.’

‘I’ve been to bed. Can’t sleep for thinking about you. I love you. You know that, don’t you.’

‘Go back to bed. You should.’

‘I want to see you.’

‘
Now?
’

‘Why not?’

‘Tomorrow. You’ll feel better in the morning.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Please, Edward.’

I felt like a weary mother wheedling with a demanding child.

A silence before he said, ‘Let’s go away. Tomorrow. A weekend by the sea.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You like the sea.’

‘What’d I tell Dad?’

‘The usual. A surveying job.’

‘He wasn’t too keen last time. Very against.’

‘Want me to call him? Square it with him? I can be very persuasive.’

‘No! … No.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘Us.’

‘I’m not prepared.’

‘A proper talk. A serious talk.’

‘O, Edward, I don’t know, I don’t know! You’re rushing me.’

‘You’re up to it. You’ll cope. You’ll be fine.’

‘My hair’s awful.’

‘Forget your hair. Do it for me.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘When have I ever asked you to do something for me? Something that really mattered.’

‘Never.’

‘Well then?’

How could I refuse?

‘All right.’

‘Bravo! The office, five-thirty?’

‘Yes.’

‘I love you.’

I knew he wanted me to say the same back, but I couldn’t. Another trivial detail, symptom of detachment.

‘… Night, Edward.’

‘Night, my lovely Cordelia.’

The words that stayed in my mind as I climbed back into bed were: ‘This can’t go on.’

18

We were in a five-star hotel at boring bourgeois Eastbourne-on-Sea. We’d arrived late on the Friday evening.
Next morning while I was sitting spread across him (which he liked, he the horse, me his rider), Edward reminded me of how our affair (he meant our sex) had begun two days after my seventeenth birthday – a prelude, I sensed, to the serious talk he’d mentioned.

I said, trying to be light and jocular, ‘So, Mr Malcolm, what was it about me two days after my seventeenth birthday that made you
dare
admit to yourself that you fancied me something rotten?’

‘Not just
fancy
you.
Fall
for you.’

‘O,
that
.’

‘Yes,
that
. You don’t believe me? Still?’

‘I prefer not to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’

‘Because what?’

‘Because I don’t believe in falling in love. Not after Will. Not any more.’

‘Such cynicism in one so young.’

‘Such naïveté in one so old.’

‘Never mind about the
old
.’

‘But you do mind about the
young
.’

He moved under me and was erect.

‘No, Edward, wait.’ I dismounted. ‘Not just now.’ And lay beside him, my face on his chest, looking up into the jut of his chin with its overnight growth of prickly whiskers and the kissable swell of his lips and the caves of his nose and his closed eyes.

Since we’d become lovers we’d talked now and then about me, about him being married, about the difference in our ages, but always avoiding the heart of the matter by teasing each other all the time. We both knew that bringing anything important about our situation into the open and discussing it would have consequences. And we didn’t want to face them because we were scared of them. But, as I’ve
explained, before we came away on this third clandestine trip Edward had behaved in ways that made me uneasy.

‘Please,’ I said, ‘I want to know what happened that made you fancy me and do something about it.’

Whenever two people reach a dangerous moment of truth about themselves, they pause and draw breath before taking the leap into unknown depths of the ocean. And both of them know that if they take this step there can be no turning back. Nothing will be the same.

Edward said, ‘You lied.’

‘
What?
You fancied me because I lied?’

‘No. I already fancied you. But I only dared admit it to myself because you lied.’

‘I did not.’

‘Yes you did. You lied about why you wanted to see me.’

‘O, but that’s not—’

‘Yes it is. A white lie. A social lie. Call it what you like, but it’s still a lie. You lied so that you could see me and you lied about why you wanted to see me. Two lies in one.’

‘You fancied me but didn’t admit it to yourself. But then I lied and then you could. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’d never lied. Not once. About anything. Not even just to please me or out of politeness or anything. But that day you lied because you wanted to see me and didn’t want me to know the real reason. But you’re a hopeless liar. I knew straight away, as soon as you came into my office and babbled on about needing to know some information about sewage and then could hardly wait to thank me for the necklace and to show yourself off wearing it. I knew then you had a thing about me – that you wanted me. You’d lie about it. You’d lie to me, and I knew you’d lie to other people about it. And even to yourself. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that how it was?’

Silence. I hid my face from him. I couldn’t say anything. I
knew he was right. But I couldn’t even then bring myself to admit it.

After a moment he said, ‘You don’t like that, do you?’

I shook my head. I felt like a little girl when caught red-handed, not the woman I’d always felt I was when with him. Little C wanted to be cuddled, soothed, told there there, it’s all right. Typically of Edward, he sensed it, put his arm round me, pulled me to him, and with his other hand began to stroke my hair.

He said, ‘You’d rather I lied? Said I fell for you because you’re so beautiful?’

‘No! Yes!’

‘You
are
beautiful.’

‘No I’m not,’ Little C puled.

‘Yes. To me. And I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Nor should you.’

‘But you didn’t do anything.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I do have
some
scruples.’

‘You did something the next Saturday, though.’ I sat up, cross-legged beside him. Big C in the ascendant again. We considered each other, eye-to-eye. He began to caress my thigh. ‘What happened to your scruples then?’

‘More accurate to say
we
did something, wouldn’t you agree, Ms Kenn?’

‘You started it.
You
kissed
me
.’

‘Sure about that?’

‘I didn’t stop you, no. But you’re the man and you’re the adult, and you were – you are – my employer, so you were the one in charge and you were the one who was responsible.’

‘Ah, that modern PC rubbish.’

‘It isn’t rubbish.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘I don’t want to get into an argument about that. This is too important. Please, Edward.’

‘Yes, I am a man, and yes, I am an adult, and yes, I employ you. But you’re quite sure, are you, quite certain, that I was the one in charge? That I was the one making the running and – what? – imposing myself on you? – and you weren’t responsible in any way? And that you aren’t responsible now, my sweet Cordelia, who never lies, except once so that she could see the man she wanted to show herself off to, and was wearing a nice tight top and a short-short skirt and was carefully made up and was air-brushed and warm from cycling fast and was flashing her eyes and flirting her hair, and pretending to be an innocent schoolgirl on a homework mission with not a thought in her gorgeous head except sewers. Is that how it was? … Give me a break, Cordelia! Lies aren’t worth lying for.’

I didn’t, couldn’t look him in the face. I propped myself up with pillows against the bed-head and stared at the room. A smart hotel room. We were supposed to be on a surveying job, but that was only an excuse. Another romantic adventure. I’d been excited by the others. Being spoilt by this clever, sophisticated man. Being made love to in ways I didn’t know were possible. And talking about it. Nothing out of bounds, nothing taboo, nothing embarrassing or unexplained. I’d learned so much, been stretched in mind and body. But suddenly now this plush room with its prairie-sized bed rumpled from our night of sex seemed a terrible cliché, a scene in so many movies. As I looked at it something shifted inside me. Something about Edward and me. But, as I’ve told you many times, I don’t ever really know what I think till after an event is over and I’m alone in the safety of my own room and can think about what has happened, feel my way through it and probe its meaning.

‘Well?’ Edward said. ‘Cat got your tongue?’ There was an unfamiliar harsh tone in his voice, which frightened me.

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘When I came to see you.’

‘You mean, you weren’t lying and you weren’t dressed sexy and you weren’t flirting?’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Okay, then, explain.’

‘It wasn’t like that in the front of my mind.’

‘But it was like that in the back of your mind?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it must have been.’

‘So if that was in the back of your mind, what was in the front?’

‘What I
knew
I knew about. I was excited because of your necklace and because you’d thought about me and remembered my birthday, and I’d had a row with my father and my aunt, and Will wasn’t – I don’t want to talk about Will – I just wanted someone – I wanted
you
– to be pleased with me, to pay attention to me. That’s all.’

‘And the way you dressed? You’d never dressed like that before. Not that I’d seen.’

‘I wanted to look nice for you.’

‘
Nice!
’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Again.’

‘About girls, I mean. Of course we want to look sexy. And we learn how to do it so that men look at us. Not boys.
Men
. Boys are hopeless. They can’t get it right. They don’t know how to behave. Not Will. He knows. But I don’t want to talk about Will.’

‘You can hardly blame them. They’re not experienced. Give them a chance.’

‘They’re all over you one minute and the next they’re off with their mates, and forget all about you. Mates! I ask you!
Mates!
You’d think they were married. They’re
hopeless
. They aren’t subtle and they aren’t exciting.’

‘But men are?’

‘We want to be looked at, we want to be
liked
by a man we admire and can look up to. It’s just the way we are. It’s biology. But that doesn’t mean we want them to
do
anything. We don’t want them to grope us. We don’t want to
sleep
with them. We just want them to admire us.’

‘It’s all very well for you to go on about boys being hopeless with girls, but from what you’re saying girls aren’t any better with men. One thing I know for sure is that when most men see a girl dressed like you were that day they want her, and not just to be
nice
to. They think she’s up for it. And maybe that’s biology as well.’

‘But we don’t know that. How can we? We haven’t enough experience of men to know.’

‘So I’m right. Girls are no better about men than boys are about girls. QED.’

‘All I’m saying is, all I’m trying to explain is, that I dressed the way I did because I wanted to look attractive for you. That’s all.’

‘And to look attractively sexy.’

‘Well, is that so bad, is that so
wrong?
’

‘Now I suppose you’ll give me the line about how you should be able to wear anything, however skimpy, however provocative, and if you inflame the guy you’re so keen will be
nice
to you, that’s his problem not yours.’

‘Yes.’

‘O for God’s sake, Cordelia, come off it! You’re not that crass.’

‘I’m only saying how girls think. How they
are
.’

‘You can see why men complain that women give mixed messages.’

‘I’m not talking about
women
. That’s the
point!
I’m talking about
girls
. I don’t know about women. I’m not a woman yet.’

‘And you’re not a girl either. Or else, to judge by what
you’ve just told me, you’d have run a mile as soon as I made a pass, and you wouldn’t be lying on this bed, engaging in this deliriously exciting talk after a night of hot sex.’

‘That’s because you never made me feel like a girl. You always made me feel like a woman. I liked that. That’s why I didn’t run away.’