A Love Like Blood

  I’ve often wondered why I married Sarah. We met at a college ball one summer; we dated for a little while. I think we got married because she wanted to, and because I thought I was supposed to. Then it became simply what we were doing, but I don’t think I ever stopped to wonder if I was getting married because it was the right thing to do, and certainly not if it was what I wanted.

  She and I were close enough, I suppose, and I thought I had loved her, but when the girl in Rome walked past me, I think what had actually been stirred up in me was the memory of Marian.

  I watched the girl in the market furtively, developing a sudden interest in oranges as she stood nearby in front of a high pile of aubergines and artichokes. I tried not to make it obvious I was trailing her, and at the time I don’t think I even realised that that was what I was doing. I was so taken with her that I was just pulled after her, magnetically. She stood still once more, her body adopting that curving stoop common to tall people, but which in her gave off powerfully sexual signals.

  People passed by me, passing between the woman and me, locals, tourists, but they were no more than shapes and colours; suddenly the only living person in that whole square was the woman.

  I saw that I was not the only one appraising her. Two stallholders, young men, stared at her blatantly, their Italian masculinity putting my furtiveness to shame. They were open about what they were thinking, and whistled at the girl. She appeared not to notice, or certainly did not react. One of the two men turned and caught me looking at her too, and winked, grinning from ear to ear. He turned back to stare at her some more as she moved away.

  I followed.

  She was barely dressed. She wore a light white blouse, open at the neck, with two or three buttons undone. It was clear she wore nothing underneath, and pathetically I found myself manoeuvring opposite her as she bent over to smell some flowers, in order to catch a glimpse of her. I did so and was rewarded with the glimpse of one dark nipple on a small pointed breast.

  She straightened, and she caught me looking. For a brief moment our eyes met, and I knew she knew what I had seen. She showed no reaction, maybe just the slightest smile before she looked away. I, of course, turned and picked up a dreadful souvenir of cheap rosary beads, waiting for her to move on.

  She did.

  She was tall and slim, and if not beautiful, she was very pretty, with a delicate face, and an elegant neck. She moved gracefully and slowly, and I walked after her, trying to make my progress appear random. I didn’t know what I wanted. The stallholders did, for one of them made a rude gesture with his fist as I passed, leering, his eyes popping.

  His friend laughed, and I followed the girl more directly as she left the square and headed down a small street heading east. The street was busy enough for me not to be noticed, and I ambled along, pausing when she did, taking her in some more.

  She wore tiny denim shorts, torn from an old pair of light blue jeans, and had bare legs down to her knees. She had knee-length socks in light sandals, making her look younger than she probably was.

  She stopped by a shop window and peered in, and I saw that her shorts were so brief that the curve of one buttock peeked out below. The skin was golden brown. She lifted a strand of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear.

  In that moment I knew I was seriously affected. I turned away from her, staring blindly into a shop window of my own, waiting for my heart to stop beating so wildly. I turned back and looked at her thighs again, and suddenly the image of Marian in her guest room at Caius came back to me. I remembered wanting to kneel in front of her and kiss her naked stomach, and now I had similar feelings towards this strange girl. I saw myself stroking her whole long naked body. I saw other things.

  Turning away again, I waited once more, and this time, when I turned back, she was gone.

  A desperate feeling of loss suddenly swept into me and I hunted for her. I ducked into shops and down alleys, retracing my steps, turning this way and that, but in the end I had to concede she had gone.

  I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I just told her what I wanted, like the stallholders had? And then I knew why. Because she was half my age, because she almost certainly was married or had a boyfriend, because I would be unattractive to her, because a million reasons.

  I slunk away and by twelve o’clock I found myself in a bar, sipping a long cool drink. And then she walked in, sat down at the next table, and looked straight at me.

  She ordered a drink, knowing my eyes were all over her as she spoke to a young and handsome waiter. She fingered the topmost of the closed buttons on her blouse as she spoke, as if suggesting she was about to undo that one too. The waiter went away and soon came back with her Campari, but she this time ignored him, and he went away, scowling.

  She fumbled in her bag, fishing for a pack of cigarettes. She found them, and dropped them. On the floor, right by my feet.

  She bent over quickly to pick them up, and this time, as she straightened, she kept her eyes on mine as I gazed at the beautiful sight of both her breasts, realising she had somewhere along the line undone that button.

  She smiled, and I smiled back, and that was how we met.

  Chapter 4

  Her name was Arianna. She was Italian, but spoke perfect English, and explained that her mother was English, and she had spent many summers in England, though her father was from Sicily.

  I asked her what she was doing in Rome.

  ‘I’m studying art,’ she said, and lit a cigarette, offering one to me.

  ‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, and why’s that?’

  ‘It’s bad for you. I’m a doctor.’

  ‘But you’re not my doctor, are you?’

  Even I, as old and out of practice as I was, could see that she was flirting, very openly. I found that I liked it. There was no pretence of what was happening, no games. For some reason she wanted to flirt with me and I was enjoying it.

  I didn’t even care that I felt I was spouting awful clichés as I did my best to flirt back. I was pretty clumsy; it had never been, how to put it, my line . . .

  She began to suck on the cigarette, blatantly teasing me.

  ‘What kind of doctor are you?’

  I thought about telling her I was a haematologist. It didn’t seem like a great chat-up line.

  ‘The usual kind,’ I said, instead.

  ‘And what’s that? Kind? Caring? Or brutal and cold?’

  She held my eyes again.

  ‘That depends,’ I said.

  ‘On?’

  ‘On what’s called for. A good doctor knows that every patient needs to be handled differently.’

  I was more pleased with that one.

  ‘Oh. I see. And if I were your patient, how should I be handled?’

  She had moved a little closer to me, and sat with her legs slightly apart, allowing a slight view disappearing up inside her thigh.

  Then I wanted her. Quickly, soon. As hard as possible.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’d have to give you a full examination first.’

  It was corny and clumsy, but I didn’t care, because it seemed to be working.

  She looked me in the eyes again. Long and deep. Although she was young, I was impressed with her. If I’d noticed her to start with from pure sexuality, she wasn’t the young giggly type. She seemed mature, thoughtful. Intelligent even. I knew she could be dangerous too, though I couldn’t have explained how. But I didn’t care. All I wanted then was to be naked with her, in a more powerful way than I think I had ever felt before, with anyone else.

  ‘Do I . . . make an appointment?’ she said, her eyes twinkling.

  ‘Tonight?’ I suggested. Then more decisively, ‘Tonight. Nine o’clock?’

  She smiled, downed her drink in one.

  ‘Via Farini. There’s a bar. La Bianca. Ciao.’

  She stood, and left.

  I was paying for both our drinks, no more than a minute later, when she came back in.

&nb
sp; She grabbed my wrist with her delicate hand and winked at the barman.

  ‘We have places to go,’ she said, and laughing, I let her drag me outside.

  It was lunch, and suddenly the streets had emptied as they always do in France and Italy at the stroke of noon.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, but I wasn’t really interested. I was more interested in the fact that she was taking me down a quiet street, and then turning into a tiny alley, at the end of which was a little yard behind the back doors of some restaurant or other.

  She pushed me against a wall and began kissing me hard.

  I kissed her back and then pulled away.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You want me to draw you a diagram? You’re the doctor.’

  Then there was no more talking.

  We did it standing up, but before we did she took my hand and pushed it down the front of her shorts. She flicked the button open and pushed my hand further in, and up, tilting her head back as I did so.

  She opened my trousers and turned around, dropping her shorts to her ankles, and as she did so, I saw that my fingers had blood on them, from her.

  I said something, nothing really, I can’t remember. Maybe I just said ‘Oh’, but she looked at the blood as I showed her my fingers, and she gave me a look that was neither a smile nor a sneer.

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘You can’t have sex without a little blood, can you? We wouldn’t have this, for a start.’

  She took my erection in her hand and tugged it.

  ‘No blood,’ she said, ‘no sex,’ and putting me inside her, turned her face to the wall and the rest . . . well, the rest is obvious enough.

  I went back to my hotel where I lay on the bed while the shower ran.

  I washed myself, washing the dark, red-brown blood from me, and thought about nothing but Arianna.

  No blood, no sex.

  I didn’t know if I was disgusted or aroused by what she’d done. What I’d done. Disgusted or aroused, or maybe both.

  She’d told me to meet her later, as we’d arranged before the two minutes in the alleyway.

  At seven thirty I ate in the restaurant for speed, after which I felt sweaty and went upstairs to shower again and change.

  My head was full of her. Of her long brown hair, her legs. The sight of her breasts, the intensity of the way in which she’d set out to catch me, and had. That was what excited me the most. Maybe she had a thing for older men. I really didn’t care, I’m not sure I even thought about it. I just wanted her again.

  At half-past eight, I left my room, dropped my key in at reception, and as I was walking away, the receptionist called me back.

  ‘Signor Jackson?’

  I turned. ‘Yes?’

  The receptionist, an older woman, was holding out something towards me. ‘You have a telegram. And a message.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A lady calls from the university.’

  She was reading carefully from a note.

  ‘She says that the professor phoned this afternoon. She says to say he does not know of your visit and cannot help you. She is sorry for your trouble.’

  I stared at the woman for a long time, but there was nothing to say. She had no idea why I was so confused, what the mystery was.

  ‘And the telegram?’

  She handed it to me, and even before I read it, I knew it was something serious. No one would send me a telegram otherwise, but I knew more than that. I knew immediately what it was.

  It was from my sister, and that was how I learned that my father was dying.

  All thoughts of the Roman girl vanished, and within two hours I was catching the last flight home to London, to wait with my father while he died.

  Chapter 5

  I didn’t go home.

  I went straight from the airport to Richmond and met my sister at the hospital.

  ‘You look bloody awful,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, Susan,’ I said. ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s dying, you idiot. How do you think he is?’

  I kissed her cheek and she filled me in on our father’s approaching end.

  It’s fair to say that we were not a close family. Mother was the one who held the rest of us together, and when she died, Father became a recluse, and he and Susan and I all saw very little of each other.

  We could have tried to treat Father’s leukaemia. If we’d known about it. But he kept it to himself until it was well beyond that time.

  Leukaemia. The irony was not lost on me, nor on Susan.

  ‘Can’t you lot fix this stuff by now?’ she said, as we walked away from my first visit to see him.

  Father looked worse than I’d guessed he might. But then, as Susan said, he was dying.

  Already he didn’t know who I was, what time of day it was, or even what was happening to him. He was no longer there, because of the morphine they were giving him. Pain control was all there was to do. That and wait, and it turned out there was a lot of waiting to be done.

  I waited for another day or two, finding a cheap guesthouse in the same road as the hospital. Susan lived a half-hour drive away. There was no suggestion I stay with her and Roger. That was fine by me.

  After another day had passed, however, Susan put her foot down.

  ‘Charles, go home and wash, will you? Get some clean clothes, for God’s sake.’

  I wrinkled my nose.

  ‘Right.’

  So I headed for Cambridge, making sure not to sit next to anyone on the trains and walking from the station to Hills Road.

  The last thing I was expecting to see when I got back was a police car in my drive.

  Chapter 6

  I knew things were serious when I saw a detective in plain clothes standing by my front door. A cop in uniform hung at his shoulder with an unpleasant look on his face.

  They were talking to Mrs Sully, my cleaner. She hadn’t let them in, but maybe they’d only just arrived.

  The detective turned as Mrs Sully saw me coming, and I saw from the look on her face that I was in trouble. She wouldn’t meet my eye.

  ‘These gentlemen—’ she began, but the plain-clothes man cut her off.

  ‘That’s fine, ma’am, we’ll handle it from here. Mr Jackson? Mr Charles Jackson?’

  I nodded.

  ‘May we come in?’

  ‘Look, this isn’t the best . . .’

  I saw there was little point in protesting.

  ‘Be my guest,’ I said, and followed them in, shutting the door behind me.

  I waved them into my study, Mrs Sully hovering in the doorway still with a duster in her hand, probably wondering if she should offer us tea.

  A sick feeling had started to crawl up from inside me, and as I listened to the detective it did nothing but get worse.

  ‘Detective Lovering,’ he said, then nodded at the cop. ‘Sergeant Francis.’

  He stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We have received certain information that we are sufficiently concerned about that, well . . .’

  He hesitated and pulled out an official-looking sheet of paper. He handed it to me and though I looked at it, I didn’t notice a single word.

  ‘This is a warrant we have obtained in order that we might search your house. I trust you have no objection to that.’

  I had all sorts of objections to that, but we both knew that didn’t really matter.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What am I supposed to have here? Who gave you . . . Look, you can’t just go looking in—’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ said the sergeant, who had already begun to pull drawers open in my desk. He rifled through a few things and then seemed to freeze.

  ‘Sir?’ he said, looking up, and handed a plain Manila envelope to the detective.

  I had no memory of having such an envelope in that drawer, though I might have been mistaken.

  ‘I see,’ said the detective, and then he read me my rights.

  An hour later, I sat in an inte
rview room in the station in St Andrew’s Street.

  Detective Lovering sat across from me at a table on which were spread a sordid little array of photographs of naked girls. Young girls. The sergeant, and another come to gawp, stood behind him.

  I repeated again, and again, that I had no knowledge of the photos, of how they came to be in my possession, in my drawer, in my desk, in my study, and while I spoke, and while I felt sick, and while I was fully aware of everything going on, another terrible idea was screaming at me in my head.

  They have been in my house. They know where I live.

  Why? I thought. They came for me, but why? I felt cold; I almost wanted to appeal to these mindless policemen for help, have them protect me. Get them to help me understand what he wanted with me. It was a stupid desire, and I repressed it; these men wanted to do nothing but humiliate me.

  ‘So you deny these photos belong to you?’

  ‘I told you that.’

  ‘And you claim someone broke into your house while you were abroad and put them there?’

  ‘I don’t claim that,’ I said, ‘I deduce that, because there is no other explanation.’

  ‘Unless Mrs Sully, your cleaner, put them there?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  That wasn’t a smart thing to say.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m not saying anything else till my solicitor arrives.’

  ‘What gets me about guys like you is how arrogant you are.’

  I knew he was trying to wind me up, and it was working. Despite my firm intention to shut up till I had representation, I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘You have absolutely no proof whatsoever that these photos are anything to do with me,’ I said.

  ‘Apart from the fact that they were in your house.’

  ‘Someone broke in!’

  ‘A proposition that we are looking into at this very moment,’ Detective Lovering said, unsmiling. ‘And in the meantime, you say you have never bought or otherwise obtained photographs of this nature.’

  ‘I have not.’

  He shoved the photos towards me again.