After Purple (7 page)

A blob of glue had dried hard on my finger. I opened my legs and touched the glue against myself. A man once told me I was over-sexed. That worried me. Men are never over-sexed — only virile. Adrian hinted it was simply boredom and said that once I found a satisfying job, I'd get sex into perspective (which I suppose means doing it once a week, at night, with a shower before and after and all the lights turned out). I haven't got a sister, or even a close girlfriend, so I've no idea how much normal people think about it. All I know is that when we do it, Leo likes me more. If he ever said, ‘I love you', it would undoubtedly be in bed.

I was lying there, imagining him saying it, and trying out different approaches with the glue, when Leo came in. Or rather Karma did, with Leo on the end of him. Karma is a cross between a mastiff and an Afghan hound, which is more or less impossible. He had lost all the shaggy, silky, swanky Afghan bits, and retained the square solid shoulders and the black mastiff muzzle. He had the faults of both breeds — being aggressive, neurotic, temperamental and difficult to train. He was also a loner, a fighter, ruggedly independent and rare — all of which Leo is himself. If he weren't Leo's dog, he would have looked grotesque. As it was, he looked majestic — dark, large, lowering and explosive.

He came right up to the bed and sniffed me between the legs, which is one of the reasons I don't like him. He always knows what I've been up to, and then reports to Leo. If I lie in his bed, Leo usually comes and fucks me, anyway. It's our sign language. Proud men like him can't demean themselves by asking. My legs were already opening wider and my nipples sitting up and begging. Leo has that effect on me. Even if I see him in a supermarket, I start to moisten among the cornflakes and the Fairy Snow. That's why sex is so dangerous, I suppose. I'd worship Jack the Ripper or Idi Amin if either of them fucked like Leo does.

He hadn't even looked at me. He was standing with his long brown back towards me, dragging off his sweater. The hair grows very low on the nape of his neck and then stops abruptly, as that slope of pale, singing flesh plunges down, down, towards his buttocks. I lay very still and tried to think of Belsen and Cambodia and the sinking of the Titanic, anything to turn me off. Leo pulled another sweater on, a thinner one, and then a grey cashmere polo over that. And finally his sheepskin.

“I'm taking Karma for a walk,” he said.

Karma barked when he heard his name. I could almost see him gloating. He had plumed up his tail (which he probably shouldn't have had, being half a mastiff) and was pawing the ground with his great eager feet.

“But it's almost dark,” I objected. I dug the glue in hard, to try and hurt myself.

“So?”

“Can I come too?” See how I grovel? I should have shrugged and lain there, read a book, filed my nails. Instead, I was already pulling on my clothes, panting after Karma, zipping up my jeans, wailing, “
Wait
, Leo,” like a five-year-old. He always walked faster than I could. I had to half run to keep up with him, which is very uncomfortable, not to say undignified (which I suspect is why he does it). He strode, and I trotted, down the hill, round the corner, across three streets and into the entrance to Holland Park. It was twilight and they were almost locking up. Grass and sky were both grey, trees only shapes and shadows. It was raining again, the sort of thin, hopeless drizzle which somehow makes you wetter than an out-and-out downpour. I hadn't had time to grab my coat. I was wearing only a shirt and a sweater, and I could feel the cold sneaking its hands inside them, turning my breasts goose-pimply and clammy.

I prayed for Leo to speak. I had no idea what he was thinking, whether his breakfast (lunch) with Otto had gone well, and if he'd bought the vase. Sometimes, he was silent only because he was thinking, or working on a problem like the relationship of relativity to nirvana. He'd been reading a book on modern physics in relation to Taoism. It caused him a lot of anguish which I couldn't share. I dared not even raise the subject since the time I'd pronounced Tao wrongly. One mispronunciation could ruin a whole day.

Leo walked, too fast, down towards the Holland Walk entrance where dogs are allowed off the lead. Karma wasn't on one, anyway. He was swooping in proud, swaggering circles, like a race horse. He was so large, he made the grass throb. After every eight or ten circuits, he bounded back to Leo, rammed his huge black head in his master's hands, and then crashed away again. He seemed to be flaunting his own simple joy in rain and speed and motion. If I ever return to earth in some reincarnation, I hope I return as Karma. Only then could I be best beloved of Leo and yet spared his anger.

I didn't even know if he
was
angry. But the silence made me so tense, I filled the spaces with what I
imagined
was his fury, and then built it up, up, until I was almost choking in it. I was always doing that. Then, when I was all but dead with terror, he'd lean across and kiss me, or pick up a pebble in the shape of a heart and smuggle it into my palm, or ask me what I thought of Olive Schreiner.

It was like falling up a step you didn't know was there. I'd realise, then, the fury had all been mine, something I'd cultivated in my head like a patch of dark, spongy fungus. Often, I made him angry simply by assuming that he
was
. Even now, I could hear myself trying out phrases in my head, stupid, dangerous things guaranteed to wound him. I wanted to grovel, humble myself, lie at his feet and lick them, but all the loving, healing phrases had rotted away like summer leaves and there was only the thick black mulch we were squelching underfoot.

The sky was turning darker and darker. The clouds were like chunks of rough grey pumice stone, chafing and scouring the trees. I kept glancing at my watch and playing little games with it. If Leo didn't speak within one more minute, then I would stop in my tracks and scream. The minute passed. Two more minutes. If he hadn't broken the silence by another two, I would kneel in the mud and beg him to kick me, trample me, anything to prove I still existed. Three minutes, four. It was almost closing time. Any moment now, they would switch on the floodlights in the Belvedere Gardens, lock all the other gates, turn us out. The park was almost empty, anyway. Only the odd drenched dog with its owner, birds muttering their bedtime stories, a tramp growing on a bench like mould.

Only Karma was alive, pounding and streaking past us, throwing up the grass, barking to the sky. I had never seen such exultation in a dog, rolling on his back, shaking the water from his coat, pouncing on sticks, terrorising trees. I knew he was mocking me, my misery, my silence, the strange, stupid fears I was piling in my head. I longed to race and flaunt like him, to bark, romp, flurry, chase my tail. All I had to do was break the tension, fling my arms round Leo's neck and yell out wild, singing, leaping, glorious things; tell him I loved him, loved the park, the rain, the sky, the earth, the cold. But somehow, the words wouldn't form themselves. They were broken, soggy, unravelling. Another minute passed. Leo's feet made blurred, sludgy noises on the path. The rain was drammering through the trees, shining and streaming on the holly leaves. Karma rocketed past, spattering me with mud. I tried again. It should have been so easy. The park was full of things I could pick up and present to him — the greys, the greens, the shadows, peacock feathers, skeleton leaves. Or if I could just say something
ordinary
— “Was he tired, would it rain tomorrow, weren't the puddles deep?” I edged a little closer, cleared my throat.

“I went to Twickenham today,” I said. My voice had suddenly come louder, as if someone had switched an amplifier on. Leo hadn't answered. He was striding ahead, lashing into the branches with a stick.

“And Adrian screwed me on the kitchen floor.”

Leo stopped. I realised now, he hadn't been cross before, at all. He'd simply been meditating, or digesting his lunch with Otto, or watching the changing colours in the sky. Karma stopped, too. Even the rain seemed to let up for a moment — one brief, shocked, paralysing moment while Leo caught his breath. I could see the bare trees fidgeting and whispering behind him. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it behind me. Karma dropped his tail. He could pick up anger like a seismograph.

“You're a whore, Thea, a dirty little whore.”

His hand had made red marks across my wrist. I shook it free. “I can hardly be a whore when Adrian's my husband.”

“He's
not
your husband. Not any more.”

That hurt. Marriage to Adrian was like saving with the Abbey National. It had made me feel cosy and protected, sensible, conventional, joined to all the other savers in the land. Now I was a debtor, a drop-out, who didn't have a number any more, or a little blue book which told me who I was and how much that was worth.

“It's your fault, anyway. If you'd screwed me first, I wouldn't have needed Adrian.”

He had pinioned me against a tree. Both my hands were trapped behind my back. He does that when we fuck. I love it then. He rams in and out of me while I lie disabled from the waist up, kicking and flailing with my feet and yelling. Sometimes he muzzles me, as well, so I can't even scream, only bite his hands. He loves me powerless.

I was powerless now. His face was very close to mine. I could see the tiny points of dark stubble pricking against the sky, the fine black hairs protruding from his nose, his full, brownish lips.

“If you ever sleep with Adrian again …” he said. I could almost see the stubble growing, hear his whole body breathing, digesting, excreting, beating, “I'll
kill
you.” His voice was so soft, it was like a tiny beechnut dropping in a dense wood. I heard a twig snap underneath his shoe. “I'll break you into pieces. Do you understand me, Thea?”

I nodded. I almost worshipped him because he could say things like that and mean them. Adrian would never threaten me, not in a thousand years, not even if I committed some atrocity. Leo let me go. It was raining faster now, almost in relief. We had left the formal centre of the park and were striding towards the woodlands. There were rustlings and cracklings in the undergrowth, sudden swoops of wings, the cackle of a rook, and, over everything, the hoarse, bad-tempered rumble of the rain. I loped along behind him, my shoes squelching in the mud, jeans clinging sodden to my knees. I felt horror mixed with pride. Leo had made me powerful like a woman in a Greek myth, dark, dangerous, monumental, driving men to murder. With Adrian, I was only the Upper Second, some scatty and exasperating urchin whose ear you tweaked or sweets you confiscated.

Leo turned into the avenue of chestnut trees, dark trunks lined up like guards, branches reaching out to trap us. It was so hushed, so gloomy, even Karma seemed subdued. He was padding along close to Leo now, both of them large, black, unpredictable. I suddenly realised we belonged, all three of us. We were all dangerous, all majestic, all from the same dark myth. I wanted to shout with triumph, hurl myself upon them and claim my kinship with them. I fell against Leo's back and smelt wet leaves, wet sheepskin.

“Leo,” I cried. “Leo.”

He stopped and turned around. He was kissing me so roughly, my whole mouth had turned to pain. I could feel his hands moving further down. We were pressed against the fence which lined the wild, tangled enclosure beyond the trees. Half the fence was broken. Leo trampled it down and forced a passage through. I followed. I wanted him so wildly, I was already pulling off my sweater, fighting with my shirt. Leo pushed me down. The ground was soggy underneath my back, a briar scratched against my breasts, and I could feel cold, clammy leaves sticking to my shoulders. Leo was tearing off my jeans. The cold was so sharp it hurt. As soon as I was naked, it swooped in and stuck its fingers in all my secret places. Leo had entered me, too fast. Everything was pain, the tall trees rushing past me, the steel rain stinging in my eyes. I was shivering with cold and shock and sheer simple shouting ecstasy, like Karma's. Leo had only half his clothes off. His body burned against mine, yet was cold round all the edges, as the rain lashed in between us and tried to force us apart.

He was hammering against me, as I slid and slithered in the black sludge underneath. It was a wild, surrendering feeling. I was a leaf, a twig, a straw, crushed by his body, joined to all the earth. I could smell bright rain and bruised leaves and the strange oily tang of Leo's hair as it brushed against my eyes. A bird swooped past, an insect ran across my hand. I opened my eyes and saw the sky sweeping down towards us, clouds wrapping round our bodies like a duvet, stars and moon blanked out to keep us private. The bell was clanging for closing time. They were shutting all the gates, turning people out. They couldn't turn us out — they would never find us. The rain was muffling all our cries. It was joining in with us, slamming down on me in time with Leo, forcing its way inside me like another lover. The whole world was inside me, sky and earth, clouds, great trunks of trees.

Suddenly, the lights went on, further down the park. Leo stopped, sat up. I could have wept for those few lost moments before he entered me again. I was nothing on my own. But joined to Leo, I was a king, a priest, a god. My body only worked when it was under him, over him, sharing the same wild purple rhythm, the same crashing heartbeat.

He rolled me on my belly and licked the mud off my shoulders. His tongue was rough and humble at the same time. He was like a dog, a great, dark, dangerous animal mounting me from behind. His own dog was blundering through the undergrowth, but he hardly heard it. He had pressed my face against the earth. I could feel the sting and prickle of holly leaves, the nudge of a tree root underneath my breasts. My hair had fallen over my head so that I lay in a tent of drenched, soggy strands. The gardens were floodlit now, the park shut, but here everything was dark and open. We were in our own private park, which had no lights, no gates, no rules. Leo had twisted his body at an angle to my own. I was burning hot inside, freezing outside. My hands and feet were numb. Cold was darting through me like a snake. I hardly cared. Cold and rain were all part of it, part of us. I couldn't tell where Leo ended and I began, where the numbness at the edges melted into the scorching, spinning feeling, further in.