Dear Beneficiary (7 page)

He was a tease, letting me believe he was going to stop, that it was all over and my release would have to wait. I'd be disappointed and then he'd start again, daring me to think my time, and I, might come.

‘You're very beautiful, Cynthia,' I could hear him mumble under the duvet cover. I thought to tell him not to speak with his mouth full, but didn't want to distract him. I was hoping he was on the final run, the Beecher's Brook of our physical journey – the one offering the most excitement, danger and ultimate satisfaction, if ridden properly.

He went to work again, faster and with more determination. He put his cupped hands under my buttocks and worked furiously at me until my blood pulsed and my head filled with nothingness, just a swirl of electric anticipation.

The explosion of physicality was like nothing I'd known before. It was then I thought I'd probably had an orgasm; my first involving someone else.

Once he had taken me, gently at first but with increasing energy, for the third time, I felt incredibly sore in the genital region. It had been some years since I'd been ‘bothered' by Colin and certainly not in such a forthright fashion. In fact I could only ever really remember thinking that sex seemed to cause so many problems considering how dull it could be.

But now I could see what the fuss was about, I looked forward to every occasion with Darius. We did things I didn't know you could do with another person, and also had a few close shaves, like on my birthday when the entire family decided to let themselves in to the house to cook me a surprise lunch, thinking I was playing golf. Darius only just fitted into the wardrobe and it was unfortunate he had to stay there quite so long.

He said he'd never met anyone quite like me, which I took as a compliment. He added that apart from being good company, he also liked my cooking. So our relationship wasn't just about sex.

At first I found his attention difficult to believe. Then he told me I reminded him of a teacher he used to have – the mother of one of his school friends. The family were from north London, and while the father was working for an oil company in Lagos, she'd give English lessons to local children.

‘I was thirteen,' he told me. ‘I thought she was a goddess. Once I saw her changing to use our swimming pool and I couldn't take my eyes off her. She wore this grey pencil skirt with a slit up the back and I'd look at it, wondering where it would lead. When I saw her remove it I was in heaven,' he'd said.

He also told me he'd had a number of girlfriends but found them wanting, each in different ways. They were either set on marriage and children or would withdraw emotionally in a passive-aggressive bid to manipulate him into following their lead.

‘You are like that teacher. You're the mistress of unspoken communication and never apologise for who you are,' he said, hugging me close. ‘You don't need to be rescued or make cute “womanly” mistakes to make me bend to stereotypes. All I know is I don't have to be with you long for something magical to happen.'

My lips made a wavy line for a smile. I'd never been spoken to so gently, so warmly and with so much feeling. Perhaps true love does exist, despite age, class and culture?

I explained the story of Mrs Robinson from
The Graduate
and we watched it one rainy Sunday afternoon, sitting on the sofa. He told me he completely understood the young Benjamin's fascination with Anne Bancroft's character, adding that she wasn't nearly as sexy as me. He then proceeded to take my clothes off with his teeth, carefully peeling away the barrier between our bare flesh before he slowly caressed my body with his soft hands, building up my anticipation before he took me on the Persian rug, bartered for with much effort on a family holiday to Turkey.

The following week I'd made chocolate cupcakes (I found out he had something of a sweet tooth) and he'd brought the soundtrack of
The Graduate
with him. He made me dance to ‘Mrs Robinson', singing the words until he got to ‘Jesus loves you more than you will know', substituting his own name for Jesus, and we both laughed at the line ‘put it in your pantry with your cupcakes' – it was then I knew our relationship meant more to him than just scratching at a physical itch.

Having said that he spent a good deal of time investigating nooks and crannies I didn't know existed. As for the multiple orgasm – I'd spent forty years thinking it was a fantasy.

It was a good arrangement.

CHAPTER TEN

I've often found it quite difficult to get out of the driveway without hitting one or the other side posts. I'm sure they are too close together, as they make the angle difficult when reversing.

Colin used to say I never looked properly and drove like a ‘typical woman'. Well, in my opinion that is hardly a matter for derision as a ‘typical woman' would read a map, ask directions if they were lost and let people through when they have accidentally got into the wrong lane, all qualities that make superior drivers if you ask me.

I can't be that bad. I did start an Advanced Driving course, after all. Even if I was a bit distracted throughout the one and only occasion I attended and didn't really believe anything that dreadful woman said about using speed on bends. Anyway, my car has more dents in it than a teenager's stock car, as well as a shaky front bumper from the incident with the next door neighbour's raised bed. If only I hadn't decided to go on a late night trip to the supermarket for Maltesers.

I'd gone in search of chocolate because I always get a taste for it after drinking sherry. I'd only had a couple. Oh, yes, and the Spanish brandy, but it isn't really brandy so doesn't count. There was so little to look at on the television and my book had started to bore me, so the distraction of illicit and pointless calories had a certain allure. Nothing was capable of distracting me from the gap Darius had left in my newly awakened life and my growing concern for him. I hadn't heard any more about his predicament and was at a loss about how I could act without knowing exactly where he was or what I might be able to do to help.

It was only a little accident but seemed to befuddle all those who eventually became involved. There was an awful lot of pushing and shoving by a lot of people (men) who finally decided they couldn't use sheer will and fading testosterone to get the car to move. A neighbour called the AA to get it lifted up and off the brickwork. The damage was probably more to my ego than anybody's property, although many people (apart from the people next door, whose cyclamens were crushed beyond recognition) were very much amused for many months.

On hearing about the incident, Jonjo castigated me for the potential consequences of being caught drinking and driving, particularly in my position as a local magistrate. It all reminded me slightly of the incident with the skip, at which point I thought how judgemental my son had become.

‘It is hardly a great example to society, is it?' he'd said, rather pompously, I thought. ‘There's you happily taking away the licences of any hapless driver who happens to tot up twelve points for daring to drive at a decent speed on motorways so they can go about their business, and you're endangering all and sundry just for the sake of a bag of sweets!'

The tune of ‘Mrs Robinson' sprang into my head and the line ‘most of all you've got to hide it from your kids' seemed highly relevant, as if written just for me.

What he didn't know was that I was no longer allowed to sit on the bench after telling one of the unemployed defendants he should jolly well get a job and stop relying on the benefits system to pay his court fines. I'd been feeling particularly alone that day and had been reminiscing about my time with Darius and whether my messages had got through to him. The thought of never seeing him again had put me in a particularly bad mood.

That and the conversation I'd had only a few days previously with the young policewoman at Epsfield station after my parking incident put an end to my interest in the legal system. After dutifully reporting as requested, I was told the officer who'd arrested me had lost all his paperwork in an altercation with some angry bus passengers and had since been signed off sick with stress.

Anyway, apparently one isn't allowed to express disgust at laziness and theft – or suggest to young parents they should think about contraception if they can't afford their children. I wasn't exactly asked to leave the magistracy but was told I might need ‘retraining' so decided to resign. I didn't fancy being patronised by a left-wing legal executive on the merits of social inclusion or how to work effectively with the morally challenged.

‘I'm retired now so it hardly matters,' I'd said, sounding petulant even to myself. ‘So who cares what I do in my own time?'

Jonjo looked at me as if I was some kind of stranger who had walked into the family home uninvited, and then wondered if his childhood had been a dream and he had really grown up somewhere else. He looked at me quizzically.

‘You didn't tell me you had retired. When did that happen?'

‘I didn't know myself until a few weeks ago,' I said. ‘I'm getting a bit old for it all now anyway, and there is far too much training. It takes up so much time.'

I wanted to change the subject. I sensed Jonjo thought I was going off the rails by small degrees and his reaction to my resignation suggested he was secretly rather pleased I was no longer a magistrate. We once had an argument about sentencing for drug dealing and my thoughts that in some very rare cases it should lead to capital punishment. Jonjo was horrified and said the thought of someone like me judging those who possessed cannabis for personal use filled him with horror. My own view is he was trying to cover up for his own seedy behaviour with that woman he went out with from the Hinchey Green council estate. The state of the skin around her fingernails was enough to tell you she was up to no good. At the time of his various public and usually drunken antics with the mother of four, who knew the father of none, he said he was escaping the narrow constraints of his uptight upbringing and that he took pleasure from marginal disregard for the law.

What he doesn't know is that Colin was the driving force of disapproval for the majority of our time as parents, and while Jonjo might have lived in fear of facing my wrath, it was his father who would have issued the harshest responses to his behaviour – had he known the full facts at the time. I couldn't be bothered to argue any further, having decided many years ago that motherhood as a career choice was highly undervalued and mostly a task for which the sacrifices and effort are generally only appreciated posthumously.

Jonjo piped up: ‘Oh, that's a shame. I know you rather enjoyed it. But I suppose they have their rules.'

‘Mostly it was boring,' I told him. ‘And I've better things to do these days.'
Like remembering my sexual antics with a black man over twenty years my junior
, I thought, wickedly.

I swear Jonjo raised his eyebrows at me but I let it go. I suppose he might have been thinking that I didn't really have better things to do but then he didn't know what I got up to in my own time.
Thank goodness
. I flushed as I thought of what Darius could do with my time (and various bits of my anatomy).

‘Well, maybe it's turned out for the best, then. But I still don't think you should go out driving when you have been drinking. You could kill someone,' he'd said.

I was feeling sorry for myself and didn't want to listen to him. I wanted to do something that didn't involve being told off by my children. I'd been waiting very patiently for a number of weeks and, in the absence of any idea what to do about my lover I needed something to take my mind off him, if only temporarily. I had finally decided it was time to go to the bridge club and find out why, since I was in possession of a sound and very viable email address, I hadn't received any communication from them.

I parked in the last spot in the church car park, for which I was thankful as the church seemed very busy; even for days when a funeral is taking place. Checking my jacket and smoothing my hair, I marched in what I considered to be a determined fashion to the hall's entrance. I pushed the doors open firmly and in doing so they smashed against a small table holding leaflets for local community activities, knocking half of them to the floor. I tutted in frustration at the mess, as I'd mentioned this problem many times to the committee. I ignored the flurry of papers. Why should I pick them up when they were so obviously in a stupid position in the first place?

When I arrived, the doors to the church hall were closed but unlocked. It was usual for the group to wait until everyone had arrived, after which they would secure the entrance against any passing murderers looking specifically for bridge club members. Most were convinced that the day they left the door open, their downfall would be guaranteed.

I wasn't quite of the same opinion. I told them they were paranoid and they should have sufficient confidence in their own abilities to talk themselves out of a violent death. I certainly wasn't going to spend my life worrying about what could happen. It seems that whatever I've been planning falls foul of fate anyway.

When I got into the hall I saw a few old faces. I mean old, too; used up, exhausted and lacking in the sparkle that makes youth what it is. Like a white shirt that's been laundered so many times it never really ever looks white again, regardless of the number of bleach washes.

Only a few of them retained any evidence of previous excitements, illicit knowledge, private reveries of days gone past; and these flashes came in the occasional surge of energy that could only be seen by looking directly through their eyes and into the core of their diminished souls.

‘Hello, everybody. Sorry I haven't been for such a long time but I haven't been getting your emails.'

I looked accusingly at Mavis, with the sort of stare I reserved for this and any other confrontational occasion.