Gravel Heart(37)

I lost all sense of time when the light went from the sky but it did not seem as if either of us wanted to sleep, and I found myself talking between caresses with a freedom I had not known before. Perhaps it’s always like that the first time. I don’t know if everything I said was true but it flowed sweetly from me. She ran her hands over my body and said again and again, You are so beautiful. Me? We must have fallen asleep at some point because I woke up suddenly in the very early light and remembered where I was. Annie was fast asleep beside me, lying on her side facing me, breathing lightly. I smiled with incredulous pleasure at my memories of the night, and I thought I saw a small smile on her lips too.

I must have fallen asleep again because I woke up much later when Annie put her hand on the side of my face. It was past eight and I was already late for the café. I splashed myself in her tiny shower, regretting that I had agreed to work every available day, and rushed down the stairs after a hurried kiss. Come straight back after work, she said. We’ll have the carbonara. I was an hour late and the café was buzzing, everyone at full stretch with Sunday morning breakfasts and pavement customers lingering over their newspapers and espressos. Mark did not make eye contact and in my elation I hardly cared. His eyes roved with satisfaction over the crowd of people in his café. When it was time for him to notice me he looked very deliberately at his watch and said, Fucking is fucking and business is business.

The café only opened in the morning on Sundays, and after work I took a detour through Church Road, looking for a toothbrush, and found myself delaying my return to Fountain Road. Something niggled. It was a sense of having neglected something, of being in the wrong. As I walked on Church Road that Sunday morning I felt a stab of grief, a pang of guilt for my Mama and my Baba and the sorrow of their lives. The night with Annie had been a lavish joy and it was a self-indulgence I had no right to. I pushed the thought away and took the next turning towards her flat. She let me in as soon as I began to speak in the door phone. The carbonara was ready in a matter of minutes and we sat eating under the big open window, with our plates on our laps.

We went back to bed for the afternoon and for a while it felt as if these languorous pleasures could go on endlessly, but we could not, of course, and afterwards Annie explained how things were. She was not apologetic or sentimental about what she had to say, a confident woman who knew how to take care of herself.

‘My boyfriend works on the ferries. David. He’s doing Portsmouth to Santander, so he’s due back on Monday morning. Before that he was on the Portsmouth to Caen route, an overnight trip coming back the next day. That was where we met when I worked in the ferry restaurant. It was good on the ferries for a while, different and exciting, glamorous, working odd hours, meeting crowds of new people every day, but it was not for me in the end. I could not cope with the long hours into the night, and when I got tired the sea made me ill. Anyway, when I started at the café on Monday…’

‘Was it only a week ago? It feels as if I’ve known you longer,’ I said, and the interruption earnt me a few extra caresses.

‘Anyway, I knew David was going to be away all weekend,’ she continued, smiling in anticipation, ‘and I fancied a fling while he was away. I love doing that every now and then, when I get the chance. Did you not notice how much I fancied you? Was I too obvious?’

‘I thought you were very discreet,’ I said.

‘Do you know what I really like about you apart from your beautiful body? That you speak so softly and hold me as if I would slip out of your hands if you were careless,’ she said. ‘I love that. But you won’t be able to stay tonight. I need time to clean out the place and wash the sheets and make the place as it was before David comes back on Monday. I need to get your smell out of my hair.’

I smiled to myself as I walked home, soft-spoken beautiful body, you proper Indian Ocean boy. It was absurd, even flies do it – was it Romeo or Mercutio who said that? – but I still felt as if I had done something brave and daring.

Annie did not think it was anything permanent between David and her, maybe or maybe not, but she was living in his flat and he paid the rent, so she had to respect that. Maybe we could have another weekend like that some other time when he was away. Annie stayed at the café until the end of August, and I went to Fountain Road on three other nights in that time. At work she did not touch me, or only briefly, but blew me kisses if she thought no one was looking. She was at the café for just over a month, but it seemed like a full season to me and filled my days with excitement and an unfamiliar anxiety. Annie banished the memory of my longing for Marina and, for a time, the memory of everything else: one fire puts out another’s burning, one pain is lessened by another’s anguish. At the beginning of September she moved to Portsmouth with her boyfriend. That had been the plan all along but in the end she was not so sure. What was there in Portsmouth?

‘Then there’s you,’ she said. ‘It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about you and just stay on in Brighton, but where would I stay? I’ll end up being broke all the time and living in a slum. I did not fancy that but it will be unbearable to leave you. I think I’ve fallen in love with you a little bit. Do you think you’ll miss me?’

After she left, the weeks she had spent at the café seemed like a fantasy to me at times, and the memory of her lived in my body for years. Later I knew that she would have been too much for me, and her life of pleasure would have looked different when viewed from the other side. I remembered how in repose after pleasure her face was slack-jawed with satiety. I thought that despite what she said about David, they were likely to be more permanent than she made their lives together sound. Perhaps it was not at all strange for people to choose to live on the edge of crisis like that. I wanted to tell someone about her but I could not think who that would be.