‘Have we had analsex?’ Damien asked.
‘Oh for God’s sake! Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
‘A drunken experiment. It didn’t really work out. And we’re not trying again.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Well, I do and we’re not trying it again.’
I twitched as I walked past the duty-free cigarettes. Even though they’re not duty-free any more. And I no longer smoke.
‘Are we going to buy you a car this evening?’ he asked.
‘But it’s the last day of the month. Date night.’ Because our hours are so long, Damien had decided we should try for one romantic (read ‘sex’) night a month.
‘Oh Christ!’
‘Thanks a million! It was your idea.’ I’d been quite opposed to something so contrived.
‘Not the idea, it’s the word. “Date”,’ he said. ‘When did it become part of our vocabulary? Like “cheating”. When did we achieve consensus as a nation to change over from “two-timing”? And “there for you”. That’s another one. “I’m there for you.” “She’s there for me.” “We’re all there for each other.” Cultural imperialism. We’re all Americans now.’
‘Is it happening or isn’t it?’ I was in the mood for sex.
‘Do you want to?’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then yes.’
Bizarrely my flight wasn’t delayed and I got home before Damien. I put on music, turned off lights and lit candles. There was ice-cream in the freezer, blueberries in the fridge (they’d have to stand in as strawberries) and a bottle of red wine on the coffee table. (No proper food. I’d had a disgusting panini on the plane and he said he’d get something at work.)
I was impatient now. I undressed to my bra and knickers and put on a robe and, unexpectedly, noticed my underwear. Black cotton pants, plain black bra. (Two different blacks.) Nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t much… fun. Would it have killed me to buy nice stuff? Technically, no. But I suppose I didn’t really approve. I was a real woman so why should I dress up like a male fantasy?
Damien said he didn’t care about tricky knickers. But what if he was lying? What if he left me for some silken-skinned girly with a drawer full of red suspender belts and diamanté thongs…?
For a few moments I indulged myself in the bleak fantasy. Then I stopped. If he was that stupid, I decided, she was welcome to him. They were welcome to each other.
I sipped my wine and stretched out on the couch. I was dying for it now. It had been ages.
∗
He was home!
I bolted to the hall and presented him with a glass of wine. Like a 1950s wife, I was keen to wipe away the stresses and strains of the outside world – so that he’d quickly get in the mood for sex.
‘How was your day? Drink this.’
Pleasantries had to be observed, although Damien was never not in the mood. Which I appreciated – it must be horrendous to be rebuffed when you were desperate for it. Sometimes I felt sorry for men. (But most of the time I didn’t.)
His hair was sticking up in tufts from the lid. With a whizz, he unzipped his bike jacket and revealed his suit; it was like watching Superman in reverse.
I pulled him by his tie into the living room.
‘Jesus, give me a minute,’ he said, trying to drink his wine, then bumping his knee against the bookshelf that I’d accidentally steered him into.
On the couch, I straddled him and slid my hand under his shirt and up to his chest; I’ve always liked his chest.
But I was too impatient. I climbed off him and worked my hand under his waistband, then began moving my fingertips in circular, teasing, downward motions, my nails gently scraping his skin.
‘Whatever happened to foreplay?’ he asked.
‘No time. Too horny.’
There were instant stirrings, like a speeded-up video on the life-cycle of a plant – a tiny, harmless-looking sleeping bud, beginning to uncurl, unfold, straighten up, thicken, strengthen, harden, flipping up from the finalfold, to stand upright and proud. I loved the feel of it, rock hard, resting in the palm of my hand.
‘Lift,’ I said, shifting his hips, so I could pull off his trousers. Already he was unbuttoning his shirt and with a rustle of starched cotton had discarded it.
He unhooked my bra and I leant forward until it fell away. Instantly he reached for my boobs, weighing them in his palms and pinching my nipples between his index and middle fingers. His eyes had become glazed and I had a sudden unwelcome insight: how strange that sex was meant to be about intimacy; sometimes it could feel like the opposite, as if we became inhabited by different people.
‘Tell me your fantasies,’ I whispered, trying to retrieve the closeness. His fantasies usually involved me getting it on with another woman. A little repetitive, but harmless. I wasn’t sure how happy I’d have been if they’d involved dressing up in adult nappies or weasel outfits.
‘Grace,’ he whispered.
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s move to the bedroom.’
‘No. We’re being spontaneous.’
We were on the living-room floor, me on top, moving up and down onto him. I shut my eyes to get back into the feelings.
‘Grace.’
‘What?’
‘It’s killing my shoulder blades. Let’s go upstairs.’
‘Okay.’
My knees were starting to hurt.
‘This is when I miss them the most,’ Damien said, punching his pillow like it had called his mother a whore. ‘Post-coital bliss isn’t half as good without cigarettes.’
‘Be a hero,’ I said.
‘Some people are just born smokers,’ he said. ‘It’s a fundamental part of their personality.’
‘Have a blueberry.’
‘Have a blueberry, she says.’ He stared up at the ceiling. ‘A million blueberries wouldn’t fill the hole. I dreamt about them last night.’
‘Blueberries?’
‘Cigarettes.’
‘You should really try the gum.’
‘Ah no,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t work.’
I kept my mouth shut, but it was hard. He had this macho self-reliant thing, where he believed nothing could help him. When he had a headache (often) he wouldn’t take painkillers. (‘What good would they do?’) When he had a chest infection (every January) he wouldn’t go to the doctor. (‘He’d only write me a prescription for antibiotics.’) It’s maddening.
‘Don’t forget,’ I said. ‘On Thursday night Marnie, Nick and the kids are coming from London. Ma is doing dinner.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten. Don’t leave me alone with Nick.’
Nick was Marnie’s husband, a handsome little devil who’d transcended his working-class origins to become a commodities trader awash with cash. (Ma and Dad, the old socialists, tried to disapprove of him and his Thatcherite economics but he was irresistible.)
They lived in a big house on Wandsworth Common and they were very ‘lifestyle’ – Marnie’s car was a Porsche SUV.
‘No room for gloom in Nick’s world,’ Damien said. ‘I’ll have to listen to him going on about the merits of the new Jag versus the new Aston Martin and which one he should get.’
‘Maybe he won’t. It looks like he won’t get his bonus again this year. Second year in a row. World hemp prices aren’t what they were.’
I knew all about their finances. Marnie told me everything.
‘Nothing gets him down. And don’t you forget that on Friday night we’ve been summoned to Christine’s for dinner.’
Christine was Damien’s elder sister and we suspected that this wasn’t just a routine catch-up visit. It wasn’t very often that we had intimate dinners with his siblings, there were just too many to get round to them all. Mostly we met Damien’s family en masse (and I mean en masse: there are ten nieces and nephews aged between twelve and zero – we actually have a spreadsheet of their birthdays) at big, overwhelming shindigs: fortieth bi
rthdays and golden weddings and first communions.
But we’d deduced that the reason we’d been invited over to Christine and Richard’s, just the two of us, was because they’d recently had their fourth child and they were going to ask us to be godparents. It made sense. All three of Damien’s other siblings – Brian, Hugh and Deirdre – were already godparents to Christine’s eldest three children. Now that a fourth child had arrived, it was obvious that Damien, and probably I, would fill the vacant slot.
‘What exactly does a godparent have to do?’ Damien asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said. I was Daisy’s godmother. ‘Just give them money at Christmas and on their birthdays.’
‘Don’t you have to take care of their spiritualwelfare?’
‘Only if the parents die.’
‘But Christine and Richard won’t die.’ No, they’d never do anything so crass.
‘Hey, Bomber Command,’ Damien suddenly exclaimed. ‘I’m not doing anything the Friday after next, am I?’
‘I’m not your keeper.’
‘Hah! Now that’s funny. Have you anything lined up for me?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s my twenty-year school reunion.’
‘Schoolreunion? You?’
Damien was one of the most unsociable people I’d ever met. It was hard to get him to go anywhere. Frequently he said that he hated everyone, that he wanted to live on top of a lonely mountain and that the only person he could stomach for any length of time was me.
Suddenly I knew what this was about. My stomach sank. ‘Will Juno be there?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘You suppose?’
‘She’s the one organizing it, so yes, I suppose.’
Since Juno had sent that bloody DVD, I’d been waiting for something like this.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing!’
‘She rang you? You rang her? What?’
‘She rang Mum. Mum rang me. I rang Juno.’
‘When?’
‘I dunno. When was Monday?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday, then.’
I stared at him long and steadily. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
‘One careful owner… and a few careless ones too. Only messing. Hahaha.’ Terry, the second-hand car salesman (another chicken-and-egg-style conundrum: which comes first, the job selling second-hand cars or the sleazy, overfamiliar persona?), looked Damien dead in the eye. ‘Seriously. One lady owner, never went above forty.’
I was bobbing up and down, trying to break the eye-lock between Damien and Terry.
‘… full service history…’
I just needed to get the laser beam of Terry’s gaze redirected onto my face instead of Damien’s.
‘… new set of tyres…’
Damien was gesturing in my direction. ‘Tell Grace,’ he said, but Terry had him in an ocular death-grip.
‘Terry!’ I called.
He pretended not to hear me. ‘… fully taxed…’
‘Terry.’ I stood four inches away from him and said, very loudly, into his face, ‘The. Car. Is. For. Me.’
‘Oh sorry, love.’ He winked at Damien.
‘That’s not okay, love. But I don’t blame you for winking at Damien. Gorgeous, isn’t he?’
‘It was like being hypnotized,’ Damien apologized, as we drove away. ‘I just couldn’t make my eyes stop looking at him.’
‘No problem!’ It was great having a car again! Another Mazda, not as nice, not as new, but I wasn’t complaining. ‘Let’s go for a drive!’
‘Out to Dun Laoghaire? Look at the sea?’
‘Then we can drop into Yeoman Road? See if Bid is better and if we can start smoking again?’
He barely hesitated, which just goes to show what a fantastic mood he was in. (He always hesitated whenever a visit to my family – or indeed his family, but you could expect that – was proposed. He insisted he was very fond of my parents – and quite fond of Bid, which is the most she deserved, the way she sometimes carried on – but that families per se gave him the heebie-jeebies.)
We were greeted by deafening Shostakovich. Dad was in his chair, his eyes closed, conducting the music. Bingo was delicately stepping forwards and backwards, dancing like someone in a Jane Austen adaptation. All he was missing was the bonnet. Ma was at the kitchen table, reading Islamophobia: How the West Reconfigured Muslim Ideology. Bid was wearing a yellow-and-white-striped knitted hat on her bald head – it looked like an egg cosy – and flicking through something called Sugar for Susie. Everyone – including Bingo – was drinking Dad’s disgusting dandelion wine.
Ma saw us first. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I got a new car!’
Dad’s eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright. ‘Did those extorting crooks actually pay up?’
‘Yes!’ Damien lied. It would be months before we saw a penny but none of us could take a Dad-rant. ‘How’re you feeling, Bid?’ Damien asked.
She laid down her book. ‘Dying for a fag, thank you for asking.’
‘I meant your generalhealth…’
‘Oh that,’ she said sadly. ‘Only five more goes of chemo, then we can all start smoking again.’ A tear rolled down her yellowish cheek.
‘Please don’t cry,’ I said in alarm.
‘I can’t help it. I miss… I miss… I miss cigarettes so much,’ she choked out.
‘Oh so do I, Bid, love, so do I.’ Ma closed her book then she began to cry too – then Dad!
‘It’s exhausting,’ he said, his voice hoarse and desperate, his shoulders shaking. Bingo rushed to him, his nails clicking on the lino, and laid his head on Dad’s lap. ‘It’s utter bloody torment.’ Dad rubbed Bingo’s head a bit manically. ‘It’s all I think about and it’s a full-time job just staying away from them.’
‘I don’t mind having cancer.’ Bid looked up, her face wet. ‘It’s the not smoking that’s killing me.’
‘I dream about them,’ Ma admitted.
‘Me too!’
‘Me too,’ Damien said.
‘And me,’ Dad said wetly. ‘I’ve never eaten so much cake. I can’t see what benefit there is in giving up nicotine only for trans fat to kill us.’
‘How’s your Mills and Boon?’ I nodded at Bid’s book.
‘It’s not, it’s erotica. About this girl called Susie who keeps going to bed with people. Silly, very silly, but the sex bits are good.’
‘Right! Lovely!’
Jesus, Marnie had got so thin. Through one of Ma’s woolly cardigans, I could feel her ribs. She’d always been skinny but she seemed thinner than ever. Aren’t we supposed to plump out a bit as we get older? Even if you haven’t given up cigarettes? (It had only been four days and already I was having trouble getting my waistbands to close.)
‘I’m frozen,’ she said. ‘This house. Where’s Damien?’
‘On his way.’ He’d bloody better be. ‘You’re very thin.’
‘Am I? Good.’
Oh God, I thought, I hope on top of everything else that she hasn’t gone and caught anorexia. I’d recently done a piece on it being a growing trend among women in their forties, and although Marnie was only thirty-five she liked to be ahead of the curve.
Down in the kitchen, there was shouting and chaos. Daisy and Verity were galloping around the table being ponies, Ma was stirring a pot and doing the crossword and Dad had his face buried in a biography of Henry Miller.
It looked like a pink bomb had exploded: pink rucksacks, pink anoraks, dolls dressed in pink…
‘Hello, Sweets.’ Nick stretched over (actually he stretched up, if I’m to be honest) to kiss me hello. ‘You look gorgeous!’
So did he. He was only about five foot eight, but had mischievous good looks. His haircut was noticeably cool and his jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt looked new and (as Ma said later) ‘magaziney.’
‘Say
hello to Auntie Grace!’ Marnie ordered the girls.
‘We can’t,’ Daisy said. ‘We’re ponies. Ponies can’t talk.’
She thundered past and I grabbed her and kissed her petal-like face. She twisted away, yelling, ‘You kissed a horse, Grace kissed a horse.’
‘She’s kissed worse in her time.’ Damien had arrived.
‘Glad you could make it,’ I said quietly.
‘I’m not.’
I shouldn’t laugh, it only encouraged him. I pinched his thigh, hard enough to hurt. ‘You’re very bold. Who let you in?’
‘Bid. She’s gone back to bed. Why’s Bingo outside?’
Bingo’s face was pressed up against the glass, mournfully watching all the fun in the kitchen.
‘Verity’s suddenly afraid of dogs.’
‘Uncle Damien!’ Daisy launched herself at him and tried to clamber up his leg, like a monkey up a tree. He held her upside down by her ankles and carried her around while she shrieked in terror and delight. He put her down, then held out his arms to Verity. But she’d taken a defensive position behind the kitchen table.
‘Say hello to Damien,’ Marnie said. But Verity retreated further and stood with her back against the wall, staring fearfully at Damien.
‘Don’t worry, Verity,’ he said kindly. ‘Not the first time I’ve been rejected by a woman.’
Poor Verity cut an unattractive little picture. She was small and oddly shrunken-looking but had an old face. There was something wrong with her eyes – nothing serious – but it meant she had to wear glasses, which made her look adult and knowing.
It must be hard being Daisy’s little sister. Daisy was so cheery and confident, tall for her age and as clear-eyed and velvet-skinned as an angel.
‘Beer, Damien?’ Nick asked.
‘Yeah, Nick, beer, great!’ Damien always went extra-blokey around Nick, to compensate for the fact that he had nothing to talk to him about. ‘So! How’s work?’
‘Great! You?’
‘Yeah! Great!’
‘Is there wine?’ I found a bottle of red and poured four glasses.
‘None for me,’ Marnie said sorrowfully. ‘I’m on antibiotics.’
Dad looked up from his book, his face alert, about to launch into his anti-drug companies tirade.