The Only Story(20)

‘I know exactly what you mean.’

‘I could always climb out of a window afterwards.’

‘And be arrested for burglary by a passing copper? That would land us in the Advertiser & Gazette.’ She paused. ‘I suppose …’

‘Yes?’ I hope she is coming up with a master plan.

‘This thing actually turns into a sofa bed. We could put you up here. If E.P. finds you before he goes to work, we’ll say—’

But just at that moment the phone rings. Susan picks it up, listens, looks at me, says ‘Yes’, pulls a solemn face and places her hand over the mouthpiece.

‘It’s for you.’

It is, of course, my mother, demanding to know where I am, which I find an otiose question, given that my current address would be right next to the number in the phone book which she must have just consulted. Also, she wants to know when I shall be back.

‘I’m a bit tired,’ I say. ‘So I’m staying here on the sofa bed.’

My mother has recently had to put up with a certain amount of insolent lying from me; but insolent truth-telling is pushing things too far.

‘You’ll be doing no such thing. I’ll be outside in six minutes.’ And then she puts the phone down.

‘She’ll be outside in six minutes.’

‘Lawks-a-mercy,’ says Susan. ‘Do you think I should offer her a glass of sherry?’

We giggle away the next five-and-three-quarter minutes until we hear a car out in the road.

‘Off you go now, you dirty stop-out,’ she whispers.

My mother was behind the wheel in her pink dressing gown over her pink nightdress. I didn’t check to see if she was driving in bedroom slippers. She was halfway down a cigarette, and before putting the car into gear, flicked the glowing stub out on to the Macleods’ driveway.

I got in, and as we drove my mood switched from pert indifference to furious humiliation. An English silence – one in which all the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties – prevailed. I got into my bed and wept. The matter was never referred to again.

Susan’s innocence was the more surprising because she never tried to hide it. I’m not sure she ever tried to hide anything – it was against her nature. Later – well, what came later, came later.

But, for instance – and I can’t remember how the subject came up – she once said that she wouldn’t necessarily have gone to bed with me if it hadn’t been for the known fact that it was bad for a man not to have ‘sexual release’. This is all that remains of the words spoken between us, that simple phrase.

Perhaps it was more ignorance than innocence. Or call it folk wisdom; or patriarchal propaganda. And it set me wondering. Did this mean that she didn’t desire me as much as I desired her – constantly, naggingly, utterly? That sex for her meant something different? That she was only going to bed with me for therapeutic reasons, because I might explode like a hot-water cylinder or car radiator if I didn’t have this necessary ‘release’? And was there no equivalent of this in female sexual psychology?

Later, I thought: But if that’s how she imagines male sexuality to operate, what about her husband? Did she never wonder about his need for ‘release’? Unless, of course, she had seen him explode and so realized the consequences. Or perhaps E.P. went to prostitutes in London – or to the front half of some pantomime elephant? Who knew? Perhaps this explained his oddity.

His oddity, her innocence. And of course I didn’t tell her in reply that young men – all young men in my experience – when deprived of female company, didn’t have a problem with ‘sexual release’, for the simple reason that they are, were and always would be wanking away like jack-hammers.

Her innocence, my overconfidence; her naivety, my crassness. I was going back to university. I thought it would be funny to buy her a large fat carrot as a farewell present. It would be a joke; she would laugh; she always laughed when I laughed. I went to a greengrocer’s and decided a parsnip would be funnier. We went for a drive and stopped somewhere. I gave her the parsnip. She didn’t laugh at all, just threw it over her shoulder, and I heard it thump against the back seat of the shooting brake. I have remembered this moment all my life, and though I haven’t blushed for many years, I would blush, if I could, about that.

We managed a brief holiday. I can’t remember what lies we told in order to have a few days of truth together. It must have been out of season. We went somewhere near the south coast. I can’t remember a hotel, so perhaps we rented a flat. What we said, thought, discovered about one another – all gone. I do remember a broad, empty beach somewhere. Perhaps it was Camber Sands. We photographed one another with my camera. I did handstands on the beach for her. She is wearing a coat and the wind is whipping her hair back, and her hands, holding her coat closed at the neck, are enclosed in large, black false-fur gloves. Behind her is a distant row of beach huts, and a one-storey, shuttered café. No one else is in sight. You could, if you wanted, look at these photographs and deduce the season; also, no doubt, the weather. At this distance, both are meaningless to me.

I was wearing a tie, that’s another detail. I had taken off my jacket to do handstands for her. The tie falls straight down the middle of my upturned face, obscuring my nose, dividing me into two halves. Backhand and forehand.