The Only Story(24)
Whereas it seemed to me, back then, in the absolutism of my condition, that love had nothing to do with practicality; indeed, was its polar opposite. And the fact that it showed contempt for such banal considerations was part of its glory. Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.
You might ask how deep my understanding of love was at the age of nineteen. A court of law might find it based on a few books and films, conversations with friends, heady dreams, aching fantasies about certain girls on bicycles, and a quarter-relationship with the first woman I went to bed with. But my nineteen-year-old self would correct the court: ‘understanding’ love is for later, ‘understanding’ love verges on practicality, ‘understanding’ love is for when the heart has cooled. The lover, in rapture, doesn’t want to ‘understand’ love, but to experience it, to feel the intensity, the coming-into-focus of things, the acceleration of life, the entirely justifiable egotism, the lustful cockiness, the joyful rant, the calm seriousness, the hot yearning, the certainty, the simplicity, the complexity, the truth, the truth, the truth of love.
Truth and love, that was my credo. I love her, and I see the truth. It must be that simple.
Were we ‘any good’ at sex? I’ve no idea. We didn’t think about it. Partly because any sex then seemed by definition good sex. But also because we rarely talked about it, either before, during, or after; we did it, believed in it as an expression of our mutual love, even if, physically and mentally, it might have given us different satisfactions. After she had mentioned her supposed frigidity, and I had – from my vast sexual experience – airily dismissed it, the matter was not discussed again. Sometimes, she would murmur, ‘Well played, partner,’ afterwards. Sometimes, more seriously, more anxiously, ‘Please don’t give up on me just yet, Casey Paul.’ I didn’t know what to say to that either.
From time to time – and not in bed, I must point out – she would say, ‘Of course you’ll have girlfriends. And that’s only right and proper.’ But it didn’t seem right, or proper, to me, or even relevant.
On another occasion, she mentioned a number. I can’t remember the context, let alone the number; but I slowly realized that she must be talking about how many times we had made love.
‘You’ve been counting?’
She nodded. Again, I was baffled. Was I meant to have been counting too? And if so, what was I meant to count – the number of times we’d been to bed together, or the number of my orgasms? I wasn’t in the least interested, and I wondered why the notion had crossed her mind. There seemed something fatalistic about it – as if she would have something tangible, calculable, to hold on to if I suddenly wasn’t there. But I wasn’t suddenly going to be not there.
When, once again, she made reference to my future girlfriends, I said, very clearly and firmly, that she would always be in my life: whatever happened, there would always be a place for her.
‘But where would you put me, Casey Paul?’
‘At the very worst, in a well-appointed attic.’
I meant it metaphorically, of course.
‘Like a piece of old lumber?’
I was hating this conversation. ‘No,’ I repeated, ‘you’ll always be there.’
‘In your attic?’
‘No, in my heart.’
I meant it, I truly meant it – both the attic and the heart. All my life.
I didn’t realize that there was panic inside her. How could I have guessed? I thought it was just inside me. Now, I realize, rather late in the day, that it is in everyone. It’s a condition of our mortality. We have codes of manners to allay and minimise it, jokes and routines, and so many forms of diversion and distraction. But there is panic and pandemonium waiting to break out inside all of us, of this I am convinced. I’ve seen it roar out among the dying, as a last protest against the human condition and its chronic sadness. But it is there in the most balanced and rational of us. You just need the right circumstances, and it will surely appear. And then you are at its mercy. The panic takes some to God, others to despair, some to charitable works, others to drink, some to emotional oblivion, others to a life where they hope that nothing serious will ever trouble them again.
Though we were cast out of the tennis club like Adam and Eve, the expected scandal failed to break. There was no denunciation from the pulpit of St Michael’s, no exposure in the Advertiser & Gazette. Mr Macleod seemed oblivious; Misses G and NS were abroad at the time. My parents never mentioned the matter. So by a very English combination of ignorance, true or feigned, and embarrassment, no one – apart from Joan, and that at my invitation – acknowledged the story’s existence. The Village tom-tom might have been beating, but not everyone chose to hear its message. I was both relieved by this and disappointed. Where was the merit, and the joy, in scandalous behaviour if the Village declined to be scandalized except behind closed doors?
But I was relieved, because it meant Susan brought her ‘thinking’ period to an end. In other words, we took a deep breath and started going to bed together again, taking as many risks as before. I stroked her ears and tapped her rabbity teeth. Once, to demonstrate that all was still the same, I sprang up the jutting brickwork on to the porch and through her bedroom window.
And, as it turned out, she had a running-away fund too. With more than five hundred pounds in it.