Sweet Sorrow(91)

‘You look beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t bring anything nice to wear.’

‘Well go home and change! Sorry. Shouting. Um …’ She tucked her hair behind her ear, and looked round the room. ‘By the way, I’ve, um, found something for us to do. Board games!’ She crossed to the shelves. ‘They’ve got Scrabble, Boggle, Pictionary. Operation’s the sexiest. I mean it’s practically foreplay, but the batteries are probably flat. Monopoly?’

‘Maybe later.’

‘You don’t want to start a game of Monopoly?’

‘Not this second.’

‘You can be banker. I realise it’s a time commitment. Or there’s a jigsaw. View from Waterloo Bridge, five thousand pieces.’

‘Maybe if it rains tomorrow.’

‘Okay. So – what do you want to do now?’

‘I just really want to kiss you.’

‘Do you?’

‘I do.’

‘Good. Come on then.’

And so we kissed for some time. I knew from all of those songs about taking it slow, making the night last a long time and seeing the sun come up, that longevity was the key to success, and so we stopped to open the cava, and to make jokes and, once drunk enough, to slow-dance, stopping to move some of the nightlights that were dangerously near the curtains. ‘Imagine the headlines,’ said Fran, ‘“Virgin Dies in Blaze”.’ We finished the wine and I made two vodka and Cokes and Fran put Portishead on the CD player, then took it off again – too doomy – and played Mazzy Star instead. But there was something a little awkward about it all, and the white sheet of the sofa-bed glowed radioactively throughout until eventually we found ourselves there, undressing clumsily then finally making love.

And again, there’s a problem of language because there was scarcely time to make anything at all. It would be wonderful to boast of some great, modulated and sustained act, full of shifting moods and tempo changes like some epic symphony. But the mere fact of it, the responsibility to make things happen in a certain way, meant that the whole thing was quite overwhelming, threatening at all times to spin out of control. I’d been led to believe that in moments of passion, some ability would kick in, an erotic sixth sense, instinctive like dancing – not my dancing, someone else’s dancing. Instead, it was the most extreme version yet of not knowing what to do with my hands. Not just hands, but mouth and eyes and hips, and though I’d yet to learn to drive a manual car, I imagined the co-ordination required would be something like this. Why, in all the depictions of sexual intercourse I’d ever seen, did everyone move around so much and with so much vigour? Surely that was a lie, and surely the only way to sustain the act for any length of time would be to treat it with steely, taut concentration, trying not to be distracted by the great cacophony of questions in my head. Should I maintain eye contact or is that creepy? If I look away, is that cold? Are we too near the edge of the bed? Does her head hurt, hanging off like that? Should we pause and budge up? ‘Budge up’ – isn’t that a funny phrase? That candle, is it still too near the bottom of the curtain, and now the sheet is untucked, should we stop and tuck in the sheet? If I close my eyes, will it last longer? She’s smiling – is smiling good, or is she trying not to laugh? What’s my face doing? Are we allowed to talk? Am I too heavy? Consequently, the moment of crisis was a little too much of a crisis, a thrilling panic, like that stretched moment when something irreplaceable, an ancient vase say, is knocked from a shelf, judders and then seems to hang suspended as you wonder, will it fall? Please don’t fall, it’s too precious, don’t fall, before accepting regretfully that, yes, there’s nothing you can do now, it’s going to fall, so that the moment was literally breath-taking and something that I’d probably have to apologise for.

But despite all the anxieties, the overwhelming sensation was amazement; that I should be permitted to do such a thing and with such a person, that she should not just allow it but urge it on. Gratitude is too weak a word, humble and wheedling, but if it’s possible to imagine an intense, active passionate gratitude, then that is what I felt. Saying ‘thank you very much’, as if I’d been handed my change in a shop, was out of the question. I’d also got the impression that saying ‘I love you’ while making love was frowned upon, and that for those words to slip out in the throes of passion – especially the first time – would have been like passing wind: inappropriate and fatal to the mood. I’d resolved to do neither and had succeeded, but there was no doubt that I did love her and would never love or want anyone more as long as I lived, and that a sincere attempt had been made, not entirely successfully, to focus and communicate this in the act of love.

I wasn’t sure I’d got this point across. Certainly, I wasn’t able to put it into words. All I could manage was, ‘Oh, God.’

‘You all right?’ she said.

‘Yes. Yes, just need to …’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Just a moment …’

‘Okay. No rush.’

‘I need to …’

It was some time before I could speak again.

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Cramp?’ she said.

‘Not exactly. Was it …?’