Helena (9 page)

It wasn't
long. I clenched my teeth, feeling you inside me, my sex tight
around you. I felt myself coming and you coming at the same time,
us merging into one pleasure, the shared oceanic joy of our mutual
orgasm ripping through us simultaneously. Then, the hotness of your
seed as you ejaculated inside, launching, as you knew it would, my
own orgasm, each gush of you leading inextricably to another charge
of electric spasm. I let out an uninhibited scream of satiation as
your sperm rocketed inside me, my climax gradually eddying,
blanking out my mind in the intensity of my pleasure.

After we had
finished, you lay beside me holding me in an embrace, kissing me
gently on the forehead, as my head nestled between your chin and
shoulder. If that old fear, if the guilt was going to return, you
kissed and caressed it away so I could feel nothing but contentment
lying beside you, wondering how I had existed so long without that
degree of pleasure.

I concentrated
on it, tried to remember it in my mind, every single detail of what
had happened between us, blanking out everything else: my work, my
past, even, or especially Gregory. I fell asleep on you like that.
It was the most satisfying slumber I think I have ever had.

It is funny,
but I can even recall the dream I had, which wasn't really a dream,
but only the memory of what we had done. How long did I sleep?
Thirty minutes, an hour?

When I woke up
you were asleep beside me on the bed, lying supine, your legs
sprawled out, your arm lazily dangling over me. I couldn't resist,
Freddie. I never knew what was going to happen. It could have been
the last time. I wanted to take as much of you as I could. Maybe I
would never see you again, maybe I would never feel such pleasures
again. It would at least be something to have you in my memory, and
the more I had to remember you by, the more I could re-dream what
had happened between us.

I looked down
at your long, thick cock, flaccid now, flopping down onto the bed.
Stroking your scrotum as I did so, I took your length into my mouth
again, tasting the salty head, spreading my tongue over the slit at
the top, and slowly licking the whole length of your shaft, paying
attention especially to the thick dome. I felt it expanding in my
mouth.

I don't know
whether you had woken by then and pretended to sleep, or if I sent
you into a half dream so you lay between wakefulness and sleep, but
you didn't stir. Your tool grew to its immensity, at first tickling
the back of my throat until I slid down your oiled pole with
greater force I could feel it sliding further and further back,
more vigorously, with greater urgency.

Eventually you
woke with a mild start, and suddenly realized what was happening to
you, reached your hand to my head, and rocked me backwards and
forwards on top of you.

I could feel
you twitching inside me. Then the shock of your seed flowing
between my lips, hitting the roof of my mouth before sliding down
my throat. I wanted to swallow every last drop of your seed as if I
was swallowing you down, your life, your love, your history.

You know,
Freddie, because of that afternoon, I can never listen to Mozart
now without thinking about you. You put on Mozart as we lay
together, now under the duvet as the chill air had turned cold as
the darkness descended on us.

I loved being
with you like that, skin to skin, feeling your warm breath on me,
listening to you talk, telling me about your family, your Italian
background, your world travels. You seemed to have been everywhere
and done everything. You told me everything: the books you wanted
to read and the books that you were determined to write. I know
that you didn't intend me to feel that way, but I did feel a little
embarrassed, being so inexperienced, never really having been
anywhere. You made my life seem so small, my ambitions feel so, so
unambitious, my life restricted by duty and my low
expectations.

But you didn't
judge, never, not I suppose until the very end, not even my
Christianity. Where others found it so easy to mock, especially
somebody who had the intellectual credentials that you had, you
were generous, neither snide nor dismissive. And you were always
such a good listener. I have met so few people who were as
genuinely interested in the world as you were, you showed concern
for the smallest of details.

Then suddenly,
glancing down at the clock by the side of the bed, I realized how
late it was; early afternoon had suddenly become dusk. I knew that
I couldn't stay any longer. It was not panic exactly, but something
inside me told me that I needed to leave you, Freddie, if I wanted
to really understand what had happened to me that afternoon: I
needed distance to be able to see us with more clarity, to
understand.

You casually
lay on the bed and watched me as I gathered my clothes together, a
beatific smile crossing your face, so gentle, so angelic you looked
as I dressed before you.

"Can I see you
again, Helena?"

Suddenly I
thought about my life, my real life, the shopping that I was
supposed to do, Gregory arriving home finding me not there,
worrying about me, fretting, calling friends. I thought about the
argument that we had had the previous night, so remote from me now.
I thought about the little flat we lived in, the housework I hadn't
done, the meeting that I hadn't attended at the school. The
afternoon had been so wonderful. You were like some fantasy figure
from an erotic dream, unreal, detached from the prosaic.

"I don't know,
Freddie. I really don't know."

You didn't
seem upset, nor did you plead with me or tell me that you had
fallen madly in love with me. I have to confess I was a little
disconcerted by your nonchalance.

"You know
where I am," you said, and getting up from the bed reached over to
your jacket and pulled out a little card with your name and
telephone number on. Then you stood beside me, you totally naked,
me fully dressed, and kissed me. "Oh, I do hope so, Helena, I
really hope so."

You saw me to
the door. Outside on the street I saw you looking down at me,
smiling, before I turned my head and walked to the tube
station.

Only I
couldn't bring myself to go home. I didn't know at that stage what
you meant to me, nor what I might mean to you. I needed to think
about what had happened, before I faced Gregory. I knew I would
have to lie to him and I hated lying to Gregory because I was no
damn good at it apart from anything else.

I walked along
Shaftesbury Avenue, the street thronged with tourists and theatre
goers. I glanced at myself in shop windows, tried to see if there
was any discernible change in my appearance, anything that would
make Gregory suspect, although I doubted that he would ever
conceive of me being chatted up in an art gallery and going back to
a stranger's flat for afternoon sex.

I wondered if
that was all that in truth had happened, that I had been picked up,
fucked and had now been discarded; after all, Freddie, you never
asked for my telephone number. What was I to think? What did I want
to think? Through my confused mind flitted images of our
lovemaking. I could still taste you on my lips, still feel the
pressure of your hands on my body, still smell your warm breath,
your skin, your voice echoed in my head.

I hadn't
fallen in love with you, at least not in that romantic conventional
way. You had disturbed me, frightened me, hurricaned into my life.
I didn't know what to think. I was dazed, bewildered, and yes,
traumatized.

When I got
home, Gregory wore a concerned look on his face. I told him that I
had taken the day off from work and I'd visited an old friend. I
think he must have thought I had done it all to spite him, which
wasn't totally true. In his genuinely forgiving manner, Gregory was
full of apologies. He had been unkind and inconsiderate, to not at
least talk to me before deciding on the Nairobi trip. It was
important that he go, but he could find somebody else.

For the first
time in my life I felt pity for him. I looked at his green eyes and
they seemed to contain so much sadness. We had vowed to share our
lives together yet there was a part of mine that I knew I could
never share with him, a part that would always be hidden from
him.

His face
looked sad, and his kind voice expressed concern. Could I forgive
him for being the selfish prig that he was? I began to cry. What
else could I do, Freddie? What else!

He embraced
me, held me in his arms. Of course I forgave him and it was me who
should apologize.

"What for?" he
asked puzzled by my violent apology. Of course you know what I
should have apologized for, Freddie, for deception, betrayal, for
doing the one thing that I knew would break his heart, but I
couldn't. I couldn't mention all that. For being so selfish, for me
being so bloody selfish! He clasped me to him more tightly. Don't
worry, don't worry."

So my guilt
effected this great reconciliation between us, the greatest pyrrhic
victory of our relationship, both of us vowing to try harder, to
mend whatever there was that was broken between us.

When we were
in bed, he tried in his usual way to make love to me, reaching his
arm over to me, and stroking the side of my face. I couldn't do it.
I couldn't let my own husband make love to me; I couldn't let him
touch me where you had touched me that day. It seemed somehow
sacrilegious. I told him that I was too tired. He nodded
understandingly. Another wave of guilt swept over me, as I realized
that Gregory could never reach that part of me that you had
reached, that my lovemaking with him had been what it always was,
and what I had never really faced up to until that moment -
symptomatic of my whole constricted and duty bound life - a lie, a
deceit.

Of course, I
couldn't sleep. I stood by the window smoking, looking out at the
night sky. A light snow was falling gently under the neon amber
light. For the second time in my life I was looking into the abyss,
my life once again chaosed, disordered, terrifying. The difference
this time, for all that I hoped the contrary, was that I think I
knew even then, Freddie, that I had crossed the boundary with you
and that there was no going back, ever.

I woke up at
six as usual, showered, breakfasted, went to work, did my job, made
apologies for my absence, but all the time in a daze, trying not to
think the inevitable: what the true consequences had to be of what
had happened the previous day.

As each hour
passed by, I thought back to what had happened at the same time the
previous day. I could not get you out of my mind. Sometimes I would
clench my hand into a fist as I recalled you, your body, your
kisses, your hot tongue on me, your hot cock in my mouth.

As could be
expected, my sensible-shoed self tried to play it all down, to
belittle the magnitude of the event. I had to give myself a good
talking to! How could I throw away everything that I had achieved
over such a long period of time? How could I treat Gregory so
badly? If only I waited, the whole thing would gradually recede in
my memory as my night with the three rough boys had done. Nothing
had happened, I tried to tell myself, that was really decisive.

So the days
passed. Gregory was kindness personified and I could easily
reciprocate. I threw myself into my work. I bothered myself with
books and chores, hoping that the painful temptation would go away,
the painful temptation of you, Freddie. But sometimes I would take
out your card and stare at your name and telephone number. When
Gregory was out I would sit in the armchair nearest the telephone,
my hand tapping the table it rested on; once I even picked it up
and dialled the first digits of your number before replacing the
phone.

Freddie, it
was torture. I went further, much further. I walked around the
gallery again, illogically sat for half an hour gazing at
Leonardo's cartoon, hoping that you would come to sit beside me. I
walked up to Soho, took a meal in the restaurant opposite your flat
and gazed up at the half closed blinds, but you weren't there, my
heart pounding, my blood racing through me, unable to eat, my hands
shaking.

Let me be
clear about this: however loveable you were, I hadn't fallen in
love with you. That would be too simple, too pat. In truth, a large
part of me still loved Gregory. I did not want a domestic life with
you, even one that was full of your delicious love- making. I
wanted excitement, sexual excitement. I wanted to explore, to
conquer, to discover all those pleasures that until recently I had
only sadly dreamed about from the comfort and the secrecy of the
bathroom. This was the attraction.

I thought that
this is what you had wanted to. When I had been lying with you in
your bed after we had made love, I asked if you had a wife or a
girlfriend.

"No, Helena, I
don't think that is me." You looked down at me and kissed me. "I am
too curious and I still have too much learning to do, too much
exploring. I have lots of close friends, but I'm honest with them.
I tell them the truth. It's better; it lowers expectations."

"But don't you
miss intimacy, I mean with one person?"

"I have lots
of intimacies, but I'm so easily tempted. It would take a special
person to accept me, a very special person indeed." You lowered
your eyes down to me again and stroked the side of my face.

Fleetingly,
the thought crossed my mind that I could be that person. I could
accept you having an alternative erotic life, as you might be able
to accept me having one. Maybe you were thinking the same thing,
hence your qualification. I've seen people try to live like that,
but it never seems to work, openness always seems to tempt the
allure of the secretive, the clandestine, sexual magnanimity fades
into petty jealousy. I construct my life on the principle of my
freedom and independence. I do not believe that I could live any
other way.