Normal People(35)

He doesn’t remember how he got back to her house, whether they walked or took a taxi, he still doesn’t know. The place had that strange unfurnished cleanliness that lonely houses sometimes have. She seemed like a person with no hobbies: no bookcases, no musical instruments. What do you do with yourself at the weekends, he remembers slurring. I go out and have fun, she said. This struck him even at the time as deeply depressing. She poured them both glasses of wine. Connell sat on the leather sofa and drank the wine for something to do with his hands.

How is the football team looking this year? he said.

It’s not the same without you, said Paula.

She sat beside him on the couch. Her dress had slipped down slightly, exposing a mole over her right breast. He could have fucked her back when he was in school. People joked about it, but they would have been shocked if it had really happened, they would have been scared. They would have thought his shyness masked something steely and frightening.

Best years of your life, she said.

What?

Best years of your life, secondary school.

He tried to laugh, and it came out very goofy and nervous. I don’t know, he said. That’s a sad thought if that’s true.

She started to kiss him then. This seemed like a strange thing to happen to him, unpleasant on the surface level, but also interesting in a way, as if his life was taking a new direction. Her mouth tasted sour like tequila. Briefly he wondered if it was legal for her to kiss him, and he concluded it must be, he couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be, and yet it felt substantially wrong. Every time he pulled away from her she seemed to follow him forward, so that he found himself puzzled about the physics of what was going on, and he was no longer sure whether he was sitting upright on the sofa or reclining backwards against the arm. As an experiment he tried to sit up, which confirmed he was in fact sitting up already, and the small red light which he thought might have been on the ceiling above him was just a standby light on the stereo system across the room.

Back in school Miss Neary had made him feel so uncomfortable. But was he mastering that discomfort now by letting her kiss him on the sofa in her living room, or just succumbing to it? He’d hardly had time to formulate this question when she started unbuttoning his jeans. In a panic he tried to push her hand away, but with such an ineffectual gesture that she appeared to think he was helping her. She got the top button undone and he told her that he was really drunk, and maybe they should stop. She put her hand inside the waistband of his underwear and said it was okay, she didn’t mind. He thought he would probably black out then, but he found he couldn’t. He wished he could have. He heard Paula saying: You’re so hard. That was an especially insane thing for her to say, because he actually wasn’t.

I’m going to get sick, he said.

She jerked back then, pulling her dress after her, and he took the opportunity to stand up from the sofa and button his jeans back up. Cautiously she asked if he was okay. When he looked at her he could make out two separate Paulas sitting on the couch, so clearly delineated that it was no longer obvious which was the real Paula and which the ghost. Sorry, he said. He woke up the next day fully clothed on the floor of his living room. He still has no idea how he made it home.

*



He must be insecure about something, says Marianne now. I don’t know what. Maybe he’d like to be more cerebral.

Maybe he just has good self-esteem.

No, definitely not that. He’s …

Her eyes flick back and forth quickly. When she does this, she looks like an expert mathematician performing calculations in her head. She sets the coffee cup back in the saucer.

He’s what? says Connell.

He’s a sadist.

Connell stares at her across the table, simply allowing his face to express the alarm he feels at this remark, and she gives a cute little smile. She twists her cup around on the saucer.

Are you serious? says Connell.

Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.

She laughs, a stupid laugh that doesn’t suit her. Connell’s visual field shudders violently for a second, like the beginning of a gigantic migraine, and he lifts a hand to his forehead. He realises he is scared. Around Marianne he often feels somehow innocent, though really he’s a lot more sexually experienced than she is.

And you’re into that, are you? he says.

She shrugs. Her cigarette is burning out in the ashtray. She picks it up quickly and drags on it before stubbing it out.

I don’t know, she says. I don’t know if I really like it.

Why do you let him do it, then?

It was my idea.

Connell picks up his cup and takes a large mouthful of very hot coffee, wanting to do something efficient with his hands. When he replaces the cup it splashes up and spills over into the saucer.

What do you mean? he says.

It was my idea, that I wanted to submit to him. It’s difficult to explain.

Well, go on and try if you want. I’m interested.

She laughs again now. It’s going to make you feel very awkward, she says.

Okay.

She looks at him, maybe to see if he’s joking, and then she lifts her chin at an angle, and he knows she won’t back down from telling him about it, because that would be giving in to something she doesn’t believe about herself.

It’s not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me to. Does that make sense? I don’t know if it does, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s about the dynamic, more than what actually happens. Anyway I suggested it to him, that I could try being more submissive. And it turns out he likes to beat me up.