A Ladder to the Sky(55)

‘Lovely to see you again, Leona,’ you said, reaching forward, and, I think, surprising her by kissing her on both cheeks. ‘That was a wonderful talk.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Mr …?’

‘It’s Maurice,’ you told her then, rearing back a little, and the expression on your face changed as quickly as it had when I had stood at the end of the corridor and invited you to fuck me. ‘Maurice Swift.’

‘Well, it’s nice to meet you too, Mr Swift. Are you Edith’s boyfriend? Oh no, her husband. I can see your wedding rings. How long have you been married? You must be very proud of her!’

You stared at her and said nothing for a few moments. I could see the horror of what was about to happen but couldn’t think of any way to prevent it.

‘We met at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago,’ you said.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Leona, touching your arm and looking quite embarrassed. ‘You’re a writer too, then? I didn’t realize.’

‘I’m Maurice Swift,’ you repeated, your tone making it clear that you could not have been more astonished if she’d said that she’d never heard of William Shakespeare.

‘My husband wrote Two Germans,’ I said, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she’d never heard of it.

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. And how is it doing for you?’

‘It was published eleven years ago,’ you said.

‘Oh, of course it was. I remember now.’ She wasn’t very good at lying. ‘You must forgive me, Mr Swift. I’m as old as the hills. There are days when I can barely even remember the titles of my own books.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ you said coldly. ‘I heard you in there. You’re completely on the ball. You’ve just never heard of me or my books, that’s all. It’s fine, I don’t care. There’s no particular reason why you should have.’

Leona smiled awkwardly and turned back to me, asking me how my next book was coming along, and I offered a few platitudes, but the conversation was ruined. I wanted to leave, to deal with whatever mood you would be in now and just get past it. I suspect Leona wanted to get out of there too for she quickly moved on to someone else and we were left alone again, the rush of our recent sex vanished now, instead replaced by the humiliation that had been rained down on you.

‘Shall we go?’ you asked, and I nodded, draining my glass and rushing to catch up with you as you led the way out of the door.

Do you remember what happened when we got home, Maurice? You’ll say that I’m exaggerating but I remember it clearly. We barely spoke in the taxi but once we were in the front door and up the stairs you pulled me to you and started kissing me again. But there was none of the romance of earlier; instead you spun me around, pulling my underwear down roughly, and before I could make any protest you were inside me again. I cried out but you forced your way deeper into my body, and I held myself up, telling myself that this was what I wanted, this kind of passion, this kind of impulsiveness, even though it seemed as if the desire we’d felt earlier had been replaced now by cruelty and spite. As if you weren’t fucking me at all, but punishing me.

‘Twice in one night,’ you said when you were finished, smiling at me. ‘Who said romance is dead?’

I turned around to face you, trying to smile, desperately wanting to look as if I’d enjoyed it so that I could convince myself that I had. And then my legs seemed to give way beneath me and I slid down to the floor, where I stayed for a few minutes while you went into the kitchen to pour yourself a beer.





4. December


When my mother broke her arm slipping on some ice, we decided to go to my family after all, instead of yours, for Christmas and I got the impression that you were relieved about that. Although I knew that your parents had never particularly liked me – your mother blamed our miscarriages on my writing, telling you time and again that you should not ‘let’ me work, while your father refused to accept that I was English, insisting that my skin colour meant I was an immigrant, regardless of the fact that I was born in Hackney – I was willing to put up with their outdated gender stereotypes and casual racism if it meant not having to be around my sister. But eventually my conscience got the better of me and I knew that I couldn’t leave my mother to cater for herself, Rebecca and the boys without some help, particularly when I had barely seen her since September.

The smell of pigeon peas, plantain, cush cush and candied yams that drifted through the air brought me instantly back to my childhood. My parents had arrived in England from the Caribbean in the early 1960s and, when we were kids, the whole family returned there once every couple of years to see the relatives they’d left behind. I felt out of place there, though, more at home in England, which was the only home I’d ever known, despite the fact that the children in school, and even some of the teachers, had no hesitation in using racial epithets against me.

We went into the living room with glasses of wine and I made my way over to the shelf by Mum’s reading chair, where she kept her library books, and as I scanned the titles I was surprised to see a copy of The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal.

‘Look,’ I said, holding up the cover, and you glanced over and smiled.