The Only Story(8)

‘Anything to help the rich save money,’ I replied, carefully shifting gear. ‘I’m your man.’

‘You are my man, strange as it may seem,’ she agreed, slipping her flattened hand beneath my left thigh as I drove.

‘By the way, what’s wrong with your eyes?’

‘My eyes? Nothing, as far as I know.’

‘Then why did you go on about having them tested?’

‘Oh, that? Well, I have to have a form of words to cover you.’

Yes, I could see that. And so I became ‘the young man who drives me’ and ‘my tennis partner’, and later, ‘a friend of Martha’s’ and even – most implausibly – ‘a kind of protégé of Gordon’s’.

I don’t remember when we first kissed. Isn’t that odd? I can remember 6–2; 7–5; 2–6. I can remember that old driver’s ears in foul detail. But I can’t remember when or where we first kissed, or who made the first move, or whether it was both of us at the same time. And whether perhaps it was not so much a move as a drift. Was it in the car or in her house, was it morning, noon or night? And what was the weather like? Well, you certainly won’t expect me to remember that.

All I can tell you is that it was – by the modern speed of things – a long time before we first kissed, and a long time after that before we first went to bed together. And that between the kissing and the bedding I drove her up to London to buy some contraception. For her, not me. We went to John Bell & Croyden in Wigmore Street; I parked round the corner while she went in. She returned with a brown, unbranded bag containing a Dutch cap and some contraceptive jelly.

‘I wonder if there’s a book of instructions,’ she says lightly. ‘I’m a bit out of practice with all this.’

In my mood – a kind of sombre excitement – I’m momentarily unsure if she’s referring to sex, or to putting in the cap.

‘I’ll be there to help,’ I say, thinking that this covers both interpretations.

‘Paul,’ she says, ‘there are some things it’s better for a man not to see. Or to think about.’

‘OK.’ This definitely means the second option.

‘Where will you keep it?’ I ask, imagining the consequences of its discovery.

‘Oh, somewhere-somewhere,’ she replies. None of my business, then.

‘Don’t expect too much of me, Casey,’ she goes on rapidly. ‘Casey. That’s K.C. King’s Cross. You won’t be a crosspatch, will you? You won’t get all ratty and shirty with me, will you?’

I lean across and kiss her, in front of whatever interested pedestrians Wimpole Street contains.

I know already that she and her husband have separate beds, indeed separate rooms, and their marriage has been unconsummated – or rather, sex-free – for almost twenty years; but I haven’t pressed her for reasons or particulars. On the one hand, I am deeply curious about almost everybody’s sex-life, past, present and future. On the other, I don’t fancy the distraction of other images in my head when I am with her.

I am surprised that she needs contraception, that at forty-eight she is still having periods, and that what she refers to as The Dreaded has not yet arrived. But I am rather proud that it hasn’t. This is nothing to do with the possibility that she might get pregnant – nothing could be further from my thoughts or desires; rather it seems a confirmation of her womanliness. I was going to say girlishness; and perhaps that’s more what I mean. Yes, she is older; yes, she knows more about the world. But in terms of – what shall I call it? the age of her spirit, perhaps – we aren’t that far apart.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I say.

‘Oh, just the one, occasionally. To keep Joan company. Or I go out into the garden. Do you disapprove terribly?’

‘No, it just came as a surprise. I don’t disapprove. I just think—’

‘It’s stupid. Yes it is. I just take one of his when I’m fed up. Have you noticed the way he smokes? He lights up and puffs away as if his life depends upon it, and then, when he’s halfway through, he stubs it out in disgust. And that disgust lasts until he lights up the next one. About five minutes later.’

Yes, I have noticed, but I let it go.

‘Still, it’s his drinking that’s more annoying.’

‘But you don’t?’

‘I hate the stuff. Just a glass of sweet sherry at Christmas, so as not to be accused of being a spoilsport. But it changes people. And not for the better.’

I agree. I have no interest in alcohol, or in people getting ‘merry’, or ‘whistled’, or ‘half seas over’ and all the other words and phrases which make them feel better about themselves.

And Mr E.P. was no exemplar of the virtues of drinking. While waiting for his dinner, he would sit at the table surrounded by what Susan called ‘his flagons and his gallons’, pouring from them into his pint mug with an increasingly unsteady hand. In front of him was another mug, stuffed with spring onions, on which he would munch. Then, after a while, he would belch quietly, covering his mouth in a pseudo-genteel manner. As a consequence, I have loathed spring onions for most of my life. And never thought much of beer either.

‘You know, I was thinking the other day that I haven’t seen his eyes for years. Not really. Not for years and years. Isn’t that strange? They’re always hidden behind his glasses. And of course I’m never there when he takes them off at night. Not that I want to see them especially. I’ve seen enough of them. I expect it’s the same for a lot of women.’