Simply Heaven (53 page)

‘Probably,’ says Rufus. ‘They were a lot more sophisticated than we give them credit for. You’ve got to remember, this lot bred Byron. Terrifically into rumpy-pumpy before the Victorians came along and spoiled things. Come on, darling. We’ve got to get downstairs. The gong went ten minutes ago.’

‘Do I have to go?’

‘Yes. You do.’

‘I’m not looking forward to this.’

‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

I look at him over Mrs Radcliffe and pull a face.

‘They’ll be so pleased,’ he says. ‘Honestly. I don’t understand why you’re so scared.’

I put the book, face down and open, on the bedcover. ‘One of two things is going to happen here,’ I say. ‘Either your mum is going to throw a wobbly, or I’m going to be turned overnight from sex diva into milch cow, and I don’t relish the prospect of either much.’

Mary hasn’t spoken to me since I came back. So there’s a surprise.

Rufus comes over to the bed and puts a hand on my tummy. God, it’s freaky the way everyone wants to touch your stomach the minute they know you’re pregnant. ‘You’ll always be a sex diva to me,’ he says.

‘Give it time. I’m going to be a sex heffalump before you know it.’

‘You’re going to get such a great big arse. I can’t wait.’

I tousle his hair and he kisses the side of my throat. And then he gets up and goes over to sit on the chair and put on his shoes. Not fair.

‘I’ll tell you,’ I say, pulling back the bedcovers, ‘it’s horny stuff. Which one should I read next?’

‘Oh,
The Monk
, I should think. Seriously dirty. Makes
Dracula
look like
Little Women
. There’s a scene in there … well, I’ll let you find out for yourself. Put me off my dinner, I’ll tell you.’

‘That wouldn’t be difficult.’

‘You said you wouldn’t be sarky any more.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right. Come
on
, darling. Get a move on.’

But the book and the throat-kissing have got to me. And Rufus. He always gets to me, one way or another. ‘What do you say we give dinner a miss?’

Halfway to the door, he stops, turns, says: ‘And just how popular do you think
that
would be?’

‘A girl can’t spend a little time with her husband?’

I sit forward, press my upper arms in to my sides so my breasts pop out of my top like ripe melons. In my experience, most guys will forget dinner when you do something like that. And I’ve got great bazookas, already. I can’t think how I didn’t notice them before.

The gong sounds again, echoing reproachfully through the house like a slave-bell. Rufus twitches towards the sound, havers on the carpet as I work my ancient charms. You want to see what a man caught on a cleft stick looks like? Try pulling him between his two primal urges. It’s great. I feel powerful.

‘Blow it,’ I say. I know my NLP. ‘What does it matter?’

He still looks uncertain. ‘They’ll notice.’

‘Let ’em notice. What are you, a man or a mouse?’

He drags his feet, slowly, across the room.

‘We can be a bit late, you know. We’re adults.’

And I put my pen between my lips, give it a long slow suck just to remind him what adult entertainment is all about.

Rufus gets his half-smile, looks me right back. Strike! Did I ever tell you how dark his eyes are? Like pools of oil, pinpricks of light shining in the depths.

‘How,’ he asks, ‘are you going to persuade me?’

I pop a button open, kneel up on the edge of the bed. ‘Come here and I’ll show you.’

He takes another step closer, and I get him by the belt-loops. Pull him towards me so he towers over me, arms folded, looking down.

I show him.

‘Oh, God,’ says Rufus, ‘you’re such a minx.’ Then, just: ‘Oh God.’

And after an interval when there’s not much but silence between us, I stop for a second, look up and say: ‘Do you like that?’

He says: ‘Yes. Oh God.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘How much of a whore am I?’

He starts to speak, stops because I’ve just bent back to my task and made him breathe in, fast, says: ‘You … are such a … fucking …
whore
.’

Which gets me happy as well as horny. So I show him just how deeply the whore in me runs, because sometimes you don’t want to be anything else. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed for better purchase, and Rufus lets out the sort of long, desperate groan that only a whore deserves.

‘Ah, Jesus, do that,’ he says like a porn star, ‘oh, yes,
aaah
,’ and I have a powerful urge to smile, which is sort of impossible under the circs. He grabs, sharply, at my hair, digs his fingers into my scalp and pushes, and calls me a bitch and tells me he loves me, all in the same speeding breath. So I get my hands round his buttocks and go for it, and he’s got his head thrown back and he’s talking really loudly now, bitch-slut-whore-slag-harlot-go-on-then-you-fucking …

And there’s the sound of the door handle turning and a bang as the door is thrown back against the wall, and Mary’s commanding voice going: ‘For heaven’s sake, we’re all waiting to start dinner. Didn’t you hear the …?’

Then there’s a deafening silence.

I can’t do a lot to dissimulate. And to be honest, I don’t want to. Because it’s my room, and she’s the intruder, and I’m as mad as a cut snake. I sit back, slowly, with all the defiance I can find, and look at her. Rufus just stands, frozen to the spot, refusing, or unable, to turn round.

The look on her face would turn you to stone. It’s a mixture of shock, faint nausea, and undisguised contempt. You’d have thought she’d just found me with her son’s cock in my mouth, or something.

‘Yes?’ I ask. Coldly, and refusing to show any embarrassment, because I’ve had it with her. I’ve fucking had it. Standing here giving me that ‘I’ve found you out now, missy’ look when it’s
her
that’s just burst into my marital bedroom without so much as a tap on the door. I can hear those bitch-slut-whore-slag words racing round her brain, and I’m absolutely fucking furious. ‘Yes?’ I say again. ‘Can we help you?’

Mary regains her composure. Addresses the back of her son’s head. Not the two of us. Not me. ‘Rufus,’ she says, ‘dinner is ready, if you’re not too …
busy
.’ She says this last word with vicious sarcasm. ‘We’ll see you in the dining room, if you can tear yourself away.’

He doesn’t answer. I glance at his face, and it’s a weird mix of rage and misery and profound embarrassment. I suppose it would be worse for him. Primal trauma works in many, many directions.

Mary turns on her heel and slams out of the room.

My blood boils over. I’m not having it. I’m not bloody having it. I’m not going to be made to feel guilty about making love with my own husband, in my own bedroom. I will
not
. She can have the run of the rest of the house, but I’m not having
this
.

Rufus realises, too late, what I’m about to do, grabs, ineffectually, at my arm, but I shake his hand off and cross the room, hair flying, in two bounds. Throw the door open and storm out into the corridor. Take her by her upper arm and swing her round to face me.

‘Don’t you ever fucking
knock
?’ I ask.

Mary blinks. ‘
Don’t
swear at me.’

What she’s not saying is: don’t swear at me, whore. Don’t even dare to address me, crawling doxy. She doesn’t need to say it, because her tone does all the work. And I’m not bloody taking it. Though her son’s just been calling me the same words, I’m absolutely not taking them from her. I’ve put up with months of sniping, interference, freezing out, condescension, the poisonous lies she’s spread about me when she thinks I’m out of earshot, but I will not have her stand in judgement over me.

‘Don’t ever,’ I tell her, and I’m surprised at the level of threat in my voice. Shouldn’t be. I learned at the feet of masters, after all, ‘
ever
come into my room without knocking again. Knocking and waiting for permission to enter.’

Mary looks like she’s bitten an apple and found a slug.

‘Do you understand me?’

‘How dare you?’ she says. ‘
You
should be apologising to
me
.’

I don’t get how she could even begin to justify a statement like that. But I don’t care.

‘Do. You. Understand. Me.’ I repeat.

‘I will not,’ she says, ‘be told how to live in my own house.’

‘What sort of sick bitch are you? Wanting to walk in on your little darling when he’s nearly thirty years old?’

‘How
dare
you talk to me like that?’

I sound like a strident Strine fishwife, but I don’t care. ‘I’ll talk to you like that, lady,’ I snarl, ‘because it’s what you deserve. What? Did you think I was going to just sit back and let you do whatever you wanted with my life and never utter a word? We have a right to our privacy, and you’re going to learn to respect that.’

‘Hah,’ says Mary. ‘Privacy to behave like … like …
animals
.’

I fold my arms and tilt my head to one side. ‘What’s the matter Mary? He’s not a kid any more. You’ve got a problem with me making love with my husband?’

She shrieks. Literally. Shrieks. ‘You call that
making love
? That’s not making love!’

‘Well, what do
you
call it?’

‘Revolting,’ she snaps. ‘I don’t want to have to walk into a room and find people doing … especially not my son. It’s disgusting. Disgusting! You behave like a … a …
guttersnipe
!’

‘Well, bloody knock before you come
in
, then!’

‘Get some bloody self-control!’ she shouts at me. ‘You’re like bloody rutting pigs! You come here, and you bring the values of your bloody
funfair
existence into this house, and I won’t have it!’

‘It’s what people do! It’s what people
do
! We’ve got hands and mouths and cocks and tongues and pussies and tits and arses, and it’s what people
do!
It’s what
we
do!’

‘Listen to you! Your values! They’re right down there in the gutter, and you’re dragging him down there with you!’

I rein it in, stand back on one heel and look her up and down with a raised eyebrow and a twisted lip. Say, triumphantly, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Mary. Believe me, he was right there when I found him. I didn’t have to teach him a thing.’

And she whacks me. Right across the face. So hard my ears sing. And I think for one bally second, and then I belt her one back. And I slam the door on my way back into our bedroom.

I’m so berko I don’t even notice his reaction for a minute. My head is hurting and so are my knuckles, and my breath comes like a charging bull’s. ‘That’s it!’ I shout. ‘I’m out of here! I’ve had e-fucking-
nough
!’

I dive under the bed and retrieve my suitcase. Throw it on to the floor and start piling through the chest of drawers. ‘If she thinks she can talk to me like that she can shove it. Fucking
bitch
.’

‘You hit my mother,’ says Rufus.

I stop what I’m doing and look at him. He is ashen-faced, grim with shock and rage, and even Blind Freddie wouldn’t have trouble spotting that the rage is not directed towards Mary.

‘Yeah, well, a
terrible
bloody tragedy,’ I say, ‘but in case you hadn’t noticed, she started it.’ I pick up a handful of underwear, throw it into the case.

He speaks again, louder this time and more angry. ‘You
hit
my mother!’

And I’m on my feet, standing right in his face and shouting back, ‘
Your
mother hit
me
!’

He sounds completely at sea, talking like a man who’s just banged his head on a roof-beam. ‘What is it with you, Mel? What did you think you were doing? Have you
no
self-control?’

‘
What?
’

‘We’ll never get past this. How on earth can we get past this?’

I say several s-words in a row. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I ask. ‘I don’t give a damn. Because I’m not spending another night in the same house with her! Don’t you
see
what she’s like, Rufus? Are you going to stay blind to it for ever?’

Rufus collapses. Drops like a stone on to the bed and wraps his arms around his head. ‘I’m in
hell
!’ he shouts. ‘I am in
hell
!’

Shocked, I go to sit next to him, put a hand out to touch him. His forearm comes up and pushes it away. ‘Don’t!
Don’t
! Don’t touch me!’

‘Rufus!’

‘No! No! Just
leave
me alone! You’ve done enough damage! Jesus! God! What am I supposed to
do
?’

And my calm, self-possessed husband bursts into noisy tears. Wraps his right arm around his stomach as though he has a pain and rocks, back and forth, still holding the hand nearest me out to fend me off.

‘It’s impossible!
Impossible
! You’re tearing me apart, the two of you, and I can’t do it any more!’

‘Rufus, I—’

‘
Don’t touch me
.’

‘I – darling, I – God …’

‘It’s beyond bearing. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know … you pull one way, and she pulls the other, and you don’t seem to understand, and they’re refusing to listen to a word I say about the house, and I’m responsible for
all
of it … I’ve got lawyers on my back, and banks and the heritage people, and Daddy’s taxes, and all the village expecting me to do something about the state of the place when there’s nothing,
nothing
I can do, and you came and I thought you’d help me … I thought you’d at least try to understand, but you don’t. You
don’t
…’

I try, once again, to put my arms around him, to show him some comfort, but he shoves me away, hard and finally, and gets to his feet. Starts pacing, up and down, up and down the carpet, his fists clenched. I am appalled. Have I done this? Has it been me all along?

‘You’re such a … God, you say Mummy’s a bitch, and you –
listen
to you. Look at the way you spoke to my grandmother. You’ve got such a temper, and I
can’t
… I’ve tried and tried, but I’m at the end of my tether, Melody. Between you, you’ve …’

‘Rufus …’ I say lamely. ‘I’m sorry.’